It was the greatest pop song of 1988. Fairground Attraction’s first single Perfect hooked listeners from the moment they heard Eddi Reader sing that irresistible chorus, “It’s got to be-e-e-e-e…perfect…”
It blared out on radios, in wine-bars and on football terraces – where the lyrics were quickly adapted to “be-e-e-e Chelsea” or Charlton or whatever; and shot straight to No 1, spawning a double-platinum debut album, The First Of A Million Kisses.
But in January 1990, the attraction turned fatal. The folk-pop band fell apart on the first day of recording their planned follow-up album. It’s taken them a mere 34 years to regenerate.
Guitarist Mark Nevin, who wrote Perfect based on two of his imperfect relationships, recalls playing it for the first time at the Back Kitchen club at the Duke Of Wellington pub in the Balls Pond Road, Dalston, east London.
“By the third chorus, the whole crowd was singing the words back to us,” he smiles. “Eddi’s friend Martine said ‘That’ll be Number One’ and she was right but we never expected it. The charts were full of S’Express and New Order, and we were the antithesis to that.
“It was like going for a ride in a Morris Minor and accidentally taking a left onto a Formula One track.”
They were skiffle in a world of auto-tuning, acid house and synthpop. “We used to play alternative cabaret clubs – little back rooms in pubs doing jazzy torch songs between comedy sets from people like Vic & Bob; getting a No.1 record wasn’t even thought of.”
But, says Mark, “It was too much too soon. We were young and naive and we didn’t last. So it’s great to come back together as grown-ups and respond to each other in a more mature way.”
Fairground Attraction recently released their second album, their critically acclaimed Beautiful Happening, 36 years after the first. Their UK tour sold out.
“We had great audiences every night, and they responded to the new songs with enthusiasm. It was very touching,” he says.
Perfect was a hit around the world, a bona fide communal joy. But overnight fame and the band’s abrupt break-up made life difficult for Eddi, 65.
“Everywhere I went people were coming up to me singing, ‘It’s got to be-e-e-e…’ I had to either embrace that or hide from it. I couldn’t go to a pub without someone mentioning Perfect and I’d say ‘That was 15 years ago’. But it had become this thing…”
To cheer her up, a friend took her to party “full of people who were 14 when Perfect came out; they didn’t know who I was and I quite liked that.
“I came back from the toilet and one guy asked me what I did for a living. I said I liked singing, and he pushed me, so I explained that I was in a band and we’d had a massive hit in 25 different countries… and everybody got up and left the room.
“My friend was laughing. He said, ‘I told them you were off your head and you thought you were a singer’.”
Glasgow-born welder’s daughter Eddi – christened Sadenia – has told a few porkies herself in her time. At 17, the former Glasgow College Of Art student fibbed her way into auditioning as a backing singer for post-punk Marxist band the Gang Of Four, assuring them she’d sung with Simple Minds and Van Morrison.
She had learnt every lyric and every drum part to all of their songs back home in the family’s Ayrshire council house.
The next day, she appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test with them, singing and playing synth-drum. “It paid £20, which was more than the dole,” she shrugs.
Eddi played her first Gang Of Four live show at a Los Angeles festival in front of a 60,000-strong crowd.
“I’d never even been on a plane before and there I was on this bill with The Police…”
Reader, nickname ‘Ever Ready’, became a top-rated session singer appearing on Top Of The Pops with Alison Moyet and the Eurythmics. She also busked in Paris, where she met first husband Milou, father of her two adult sons.
Ebbw Vale-born Mark, 65, joined late ’70s combo Jane Aire & The Belvederes before playing in Motown covers band, Gina & The Tonics, with former Kinks backing singers Debi Doss and Shirlie Roden.
He recalls, “We were playing in a pub in Tooting, south London, when for no reason the landlord and the bouncers set about us with baseball bats. We ended up with broken ribs and bruises.”
Unsurprisingly he needed to find a new singer. A friend in The Waterboys recommended Eddi whose awesome voice and amazing range sealed the deal, beginning their alliance.
Soon after, Mark became musical arranger for Sandie Shaw’s 1986 comeback bid. He recalls feeling queasy on the flight back from the San Remo festival. “I was sick, and she was brilliant. She said, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to the highlife’.”
Eddi adds: “But he didn’t! He’s still sick on a plane.”
He was writing songs in the USA when Reader suggested he should come home and write for her instead. For Fairground they added veteran jazz drummer Roy Dodds and Simon Edwards on guitaron – a six-string acoustic bass used in mariachi bands.
RCA snapped them up, offering them creative control. They won two BRITS at the 1989 televised ceremony hosted by Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox “terrible – the worst programme in TV history,” laughs Mark.
Perfect was also used in TV ad campaign for Asda, earning a then-record £400,000 over four years.
They toured so hard, they sometimes forgot where they were. In Brussels, Eddi told Belgian fans how great it was “to be in this wonderful city of Boulogne”.
Both describe the breakup as “traumatising” and “heart-breaking”. But says Mark, “We carried on until we found each other again.”
She praises his authenticity; he adores her emotional commitment. It’s no surprise that Eddi worships Edith Piaf.
After the split, RCA scraped together a second LP of B-sides and left-overs from the first recording sessions.
Mark later released the songs intended for the real second album as Sweetmouth, and went on to work with giants like Morrissey and Kirsty MacColl.
Reader’s busy post-band career included roles in John Byrne’s TV drama Your Cheatin’ Heart, Hollywood film Me And Orson Welles, and the stage production of Brokeback Mountain.
Serendipity played a part in their reunion. A chance meeting in a coffee shop on the morning of Eddi’s annual Union Chapel show…Eddi coming to Mark’s solo show in West Hampstead Arts Club last year…his wife Louise asking her to get up and sing with him…
The audience were overjoyed.
Then a Japanese concert promoter invited Eddi to play at the 35th anniversary of Nagoya’s Club Quattro. As Fairground Attraction had played on its opening night, she suggested the band instead and the comeback began.
They recorded their new album in London. It still sounds like “jazz musicians playing pop songs on folk instruments” – including accordions and ukuleles – but songs like What’s Wrong With The World? prove Niven hasn’t lost his songwriting knack.
He paid for it, so they own it. Nobody tried to tell them what to do.
“We realised we were very important to one another in our experience on this planet, and there were lots of things left to say,” says Eddi. “I feel we’ve all got our own lives, but we have become family. We are old family, reunited.
“If somebody offers us a tour or a festival, we’ll discuss it. It’s not so much us getting back together, it’s more about finishing off what happened before.
“I’d love to do the things we didn’t do – play gigs in America, go to Australia, New Zealand…But I don’t really give a monkey’s about what happens, as long as we’re still friends.
“It’s been a triumph of the year. If we never played another gig together, it would be a success.”
*Beautiful Happening by Fairground Attraction is out now; for news see fairground-attraction.co.uk
