Marcella's Tale
The Second Coming
OR
"Hormonally Yours"
It was Siobhan's desire to start writing the "Hormonally Yours" album with just the two of us. She said, if we were going to be a band, then we should try to do it ourselves. So, we started writing in February of 1990, at my house in Los Angeles. I had an 8 track fostex machine, an akai sequencer to program the tracks, some outboard gear (i.e. sound effects), some microphones, guitars and keyboards; everything a girl could want to write some songs!!
It was interesting to write at first, the album was based on an unusual concept. Siobhan's husband Dave, being the entrepenuer that he was and still is, had an idea to buy the rights to an old B movie called "Cat Women From The Moon", in which Siobhan and I would star. We went to a screening of the film, and we all loved it and started fantasizing about shooting some film of us and editing it into the movie. It was a wonderfully tacky movie, shot in the late fifties, complete with fake rockets, and fabulously unfrightening monsters! We ended up using the film for inspiration for the writing of some of the album. Hence, the songs "Moonchild", "Cat Woman From the Moon", "Emotional Thing" were written. In fact, I believe "Cat Woman" was one of the first songs written. Then it was "Emotional Thing", and then "Moonchild". Then came time for "Stay".
One day, after a week or so of writing, Dave come over with Siobhan and said he had an idea for a song. There was a part in the film, where the character that I would be playing, (who, incidentally, was a Cat Woman!) would fall in love with one of the Earthling men that came to the moon. In the scene, I would be begging him not to go back to earth. Dave suggested that it be a song kind of like a ballad that I used to sing at some of his parties. And suddenly he presented his idea. He started playing and singing the verse, some words completed, and some blank, and when he got to what would be the chorus, I started singing, "Stay with Me-e-e-e!! and it just gelled! Then of course we had to refine it. Since I was singing the body of the song, Dave said, that we needed to come up with a bridge section for Siobhan. So, we came up with the music and melody for her part. Then it was a matter of Siobhan writing the rest of the lyric for the song. We did the demo, which was quite good, at my house, along with the other songs I mentioned including, "Hello, Turn Your Radio On". After we finished about 5 or 6 songs we brought them over to Dave and Siobhan's where Dave was recording with his band, "Spiritual Cowboys" with Chris Thomas producing. We played the tape and everyone loved it! Chris, upon hearing "Stay" kept saying, "It's a number one smash!" much to our surprise. Little did we know......he would be right.
In case you are wondering whatever happened to the "Cat Woman" movie idea, Dave decided not to go for the rights for the film as it would be too expensive and London Records also vetoed the idea due again to the tremendous potential expense it would incue so the idea was shelved. Still, it proved to be a tremendous source of inspiration for us. We wrote more songs at my house for about 6 or seven weeks total.
Something else I forgot to mention. During the writing of the album, in fact at the beginning, I got pregnant. Siobhan and I discussed it and she said that maybe she shouls get pregnant as well since my being preggers would set the release date of the album back, and we might as well be in the same boat together. I took her seriously and bought her an ovulation kit, and presto, about a month or so later, she was pregnant as well.
The next thing that happened was, although we were both pregnant, I lost my baby due to a miscarriage, at the end of April. Of course, it was devastating, as it was my second miscarriage and was very stressful. We were due to go to England at the beginning of May to write an record at George Harrison's house. The connection was through Dave and it was a such a fantasic experience - so generous of him to let us use his wonderful studio and all the amazing guitars of his, not to mention the amps as well. We were very grateful.
As I mentioned, I had the miscarriage and had to go to the hospital to have something done due to the miscarriage and five days later, my husband and I were on the plane to London. We were taken out to George's home and it was like a fairytale. However, my husband and I were kind of in a state of shock due to the miscarriage and all. The next day after our arrival and a good night's sleep, Siobhan came into my room to have a chat. She was luckily still pregnant and said to me, "I don't think you should get pregnant again for a while because it will interfere with the release of the album." I was so upset by this remark and shocked as well, and didn't know what to say, really. I remember crying and saying you don't know what it's like to lose a baby, it's a really horrible experience. The next day, she apologized for being so insensitive by saying that to me. Honestly, I felt like, I'll get pregnant if I want to, it's no one else's business. This is about life which is more important to me than the release of a record.
So, we ended up being in England for about 5 weeks recording. Steve Ferrara, a drummer, who did some gigs with us and whom we met during auditions for the "Sacred Heart" album promotion, joined us out at George's house. He played drums on the album and brought along a wonderfully talented guy named Ian Maidman who played bass and keyboards. They helped us write "Black Sky" along with Dave. Ian played keyboards and bass on "Stay", played some incredible wah-wah guitar on "Black Sky" and more bass on some of the other tracks. We recorded "Stay", "Black Sky", "Moonchild", "I Don't Care", "Emotional Thing", "My 16th Apology", "Cat Woman", "Hello", and "Are We In Love Yet"; all the basic tracks for those songs were recorded in England during that five week period.
Then I went back to L.A. with the old man.
A few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant again. And this time we had a heartbeat. Good news.....
So, I was pregnant, and Siobhan and her clan came back to L.A. to do some overdubs on the tracks and also to do a little more writing. Steve Ferrara came as well, and we wrote a few new songs with him, "The Trouble with Andre" and "Let Me Entertain You". We started to lay these new tracks down in L.A. at Dave's home studio and they were sounding good. During that bout of writing, Siobhan and Steve and I were working on a song called "Unfaithfully Yours" which never made it to the album. The reason I bring it up is because, when we were trying to figure out what to call the album, Siobhan mentioned using the title, "Unfaithfully Yours". I said, "Hey, what about "Hormonally Yours" since we are both seriously under the influence of - to which we laughed and agreed it would be a great title. And so it was born.
During that period of writing and recording in L.A., Dave suggested that we invite Steve Ferrara to be part of the band. I wasn't sure it was such a great idea as I didn't know what his commitment would be and I knew he had a band with his girlfriend that he was trying desperately to get off the ground. But they insisted that we do it, by offering him percentages on the record, ect. When it came time for us to start rehearsals and do a video in London for the first single, "Goodbye Cruel World", a few weeks before things were about to start, Steve said he couldn't make it, that he had to quit the band. So we were kind of left in the lurch for a drummer. He did however appear in the video along with his friend, guitarist Mike Cozzi, who also played guitar on "Goodbye Cruel World". I'll call that song "GBC" from now on. That song was written and recoreded in London when I was too pregnant to be there. So all my vocals were done five weeks after I had my son, which would have been in May 1991, back in L.A.
During the time Siobhan and all were recording "GBC" they also decided to completely change "The Trouble With Andre" putting new drums and things on it and sent me a copy. I must say, it sounded terrible, very complicated and boring. So I called and said, what have you done to that fantastic song? Put it back the way it was, it was soooo great before. I finally got them to agree, and so the arrangement remained more true to the way we wrote it. And thankfully, too...
After giving birth to our record, it was time to give birth to our children. Siobhan's son Django was born in December of 1990 and my son Maxwell was born in April of 1991.
As I said the video for "GBC" was done in London in June of 1991. Sophie Muller did a fantastic job of directing it. It was great in every way. The little scene at the beginning which was modeled after the "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" movie and also references to "Citizen Kane" were great and lots of fun to do. I had been studying acting for several years and got to use some of my pointers - great fun!! I was there for about 2 weeks. After that, I came back to L.A. for a bit. "GBC" was going to be released in September.
So, I came back to London with my family, in August, where I planned to stay until November to do promotion, gigs, whatever, to promote the album. Unfortunately, "GBC" was not very well-recieved on radio, which put a little bit of a damper on things. Still we did lots of press, photo shoots, and some gigs with very good response. It was the beginning of the rollercoaster. Near the end of my stay which was around the very end of October, or beginning of November, I remember doing one of our last photo shoots scheduled for that time period with Siobhan. She suddenly started telling me that London Records wanted to release "Stay" as the next single, which I was kind of surprised about, but excited as well. She also said that she didn't think it should be the next single because she felt it "didn't represent Shakespear's Sister." I was kind of stunned. She talked about it for some twenty minutes; I knew she was not happy about it all but there was nothing I could do.
A few days later I went back to L.A.......
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