E10: The Beginning of the End Transcript

Nov 29, 2021

Steph  Like, we're attributing jetlag to breaking up the Spice Girls?

 

Ashley  Alright, what are we talking about today? Episode 10!

 

Sinead  As we talked about last episode, they fired Simon Fuller, the press was really shitty to them about it, it was very dramatic. With Simon gone, the girls are ready to get into the real business of running the world -lol- and being able to publicly claim that they're doing it for themselves. They have hired Nancy Phillips who is running the office for them and the girls are officially managing themselves. The band found themselves at London's Victoria Palace Theatre the first week of December 1997, meeting the queen. They did actually follow all of the typical royal protocols this time, although there was a little bit of drama that people felt that Geri didn't curtsy deep enough, which the press speculated was because she was wearing a very low cut dress and couldn't curtsy any deeper. I'll send you guys a picture of that in a second.

 

Elyse  What a stupid thing.

 

Ashley  They're just obsessed with her boobs.

 

Sinead  Yeah, I mean, I think it's just misogyny and I think it's just looking for any reason to criticize them. It wasn't like with Charles where they were always kind of pushing boundaries with the queen. They did not, like they were very much on their best behavior. And the queen told the Spice Girls that she already knew about them because Prince Harry had told her, which I think-

 

Elyse  Those boys were OBSESSED, I feel like that's come up in half of our episodes is how obsessed the princes are the Spice Girls.

 

Steph  I feel like we should interview Prince Harry.

 

Elyse  Yeah, I can't imagine why he wouldn't want to... be on the show...

 

Steph  I can't imagine either. 

 

Sinead  Anyway, if you want to check your Spice Girls chat, you can see all five of them looking very proper, which is unusual. 

 

Elyse  Oh, they look so beautiful. 

 

Sinead  You can see that Geri's dress is quite low cut. 

 

Elyse  It's very Marilyn Monroe.

 

Ashley  Yeah, almost loose even it's like tighten up those straps. You know, the fabrics hanging off.

 

Sinead  Mel C looks beautiful and extremely like demure. It's like a different person. 

 

Ashley  Mm hmm.

 

Sinead  She really does. When I saw these pictures of them meeting her it was the sweetest and most polite and... like they knew how important this was or quote unquote important whatever if you believe in the queen. Like she's the-

 

Megan  She exists!

 

Ashley  No, she's like Santa Claus to me.

 

Sinead  I don't believe in queens. I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't believe in queens- personally, I don't think they exist.

 

Sinead If you don't subscribe to like their weird cult of like "you need to treat them this way because they exist" then you might just be like fuck them, whatever. I think, I mean, all of them are working class girls from England meeting the queen. That's a big deal. They all were very sedate and sweet to her.

 

Megan  So she only knew about them because of Harry? Like, she watches no news... Does not listen to the radio.... I don't understand?

 

Sinead  Didn't know that their son- her son kept getting embroiled in weird situations with them in the press?

 

Ashley  I'm like really shocked that she wasn't briefed on that because it would have been all over the press.

 

Sinead  I'm quite certain that the only show the queen knows about is Murder She Wrote. It's the only one she'll watch. She has it all on DVD and she refuses to admit to the existence of any other media.

 

Steph  I feel like she's into Murdoch Mysteries, too.

 

Sinead  No, I think it's Prime Suspect because Prime Suspect made the mould for a lot of woman crime dramas and it's British. Prime Suspect is like the archetype of like every British crime drama with like a rough-and-tumble woman at the head. Prime Suspect is where all of that came from.

 

Elyse Oh I didn't know that! Okay, yeah, I agree with you, that's what the queen's into.

 

Cheryl  She's very picky about women solving murders. She's like no, no, no-

 

Steph  So Mrs. Marple

 

Cheryl  Yeah,

 

Sinead  I liked that- also, we've just like white girl projected on the queen that she's only interested in true crime.

 

Megan  I was thinking that it's like, is this like a known thing like, did I miss a queen press release? 

 

Ashley  Literally what I was thinking like, why is she only into crime haha

 

Steph  She's the original white lady intro true crime. When we have Harry on we'll ask him if she's into true crime or not.

 

Cheryl As we talked about previously, shortly after this event, Spice World premieres in theaters on December 26, 1997. It was an instant hit with audiences. Their singles are actually doing really well and the girls actually end 1997 as the most played artists on US radio. They're still incredibly financially successful. Their merch is flying off the shelves for the 1997 Christmas season. However, while this is happening, and as we just saw, the press continues to tear at them at every opportunity. And we have a headline-

 

Steph  "Any more Spice and you'll be ill"?

 

Megan  That's a weird headline. That's a bad headline.

 

Sinead  I think it was just, I mean, it's obviously hitting back on a lot of what we talked about in episode nine, which is just that the press was constantly at them for being oversaturated. And because critically, the movie was panned, I think it was easy to lean into that. But this is where this movie becomes incredibly successful when it's released to public audiences. As we talked about last time, it was the biggest grossing like celebrity band movie ever. It was also around this time that some prominent music figures claimed that the Spice Girls were the Antichrist. 

 

Steph  What?!

 

Megan  Who think they're the Antichrist? 

 

Sinead  I will tell you. So first-

 

Ashley  Like musicians?

 

Sinead  Musicians and famous record producers. So first, we have noted convicted murderer/record producer Phil Spector, who at this time this is before he murdered.

 

Steph  Okay, okay, so this is pre-murder Phil Spector-

 

Sinead  Pre-murder Phil Spector. And if you guys aren't familiar with Phil Spector, he's like a huge, huge deal in the music industry. Like he has worked with every famous act between like 1965 and like 19- or 2000, or even later than 2000. He claimed in an article that they were the Antichrist and it got headlines, this was in November of 97. His reason was essentially that they destroyed the music industry by virtue of being popular at all because he thinks their music is bad. On top of that, in Christmas of 1987, Thom Yorke, who is the lead singer of Radiohead a band that I fucking loved in the 90s, now I feel bad, also claimed in an interview that they were the Antichrist. Okay, and they are specifically- both of them have said the Spice Girls are the Antichrist. He said: "I'd move to an island where you can't get hold of any Spice Girls stuff at all."

 

Steph  Maybe they thought "2 Become 1" really was about Jesus and his mom.

 

Elyse  Um, you know what, though, it doesn't make me think back to that time when like, it was very in to shit all over anything feminine. Like, it was very much the time -I guess it's still the time- but I remember a lot of the whole like, "not like the other girls" attitude in like movies, media, even like, honestly, I felt that way too. Like I didn't want to be thought of as being just like another one of the girly girls. I wanted to be the cool girl. And I think that it's just like so much of that, that they embody so much femininity, that it was very cool and very easy to like... that is literally the antithesis of everything good.

 

Sinead  Absolutely. And I think in a way the Spice Girls don't help their case in 1997, because they don't prioritize the music the way they prioritize the rest of their career, but it's still good pop music. And I think part of, like, for Phil Spector and for Thom Yorke, I mean, these are like big rock and roll types, who obviously are like rock and roll's the best genre of music. It's the only legitimate genre like anti-pop sentiment is common. And it does tie into what Elyse said about pop typically being something that's directed towards women, they essentially were just mad that the Spice Girls were popular because they personally didn't like their music, ergo, they are the Antichrist.

 

Ashley  Did it have anything to do with, like, the saturation like in terms of merch?

 

Sinead  Yeah, the Thom Yorke interview that he did definitely was a lot about like, why am I seeing them in every shop? That's not how you consume music, which I think he has like a shred of a point. But then it's destroyed when he calls them the fucking Antichrist because they're not the fucking Antichrist. Again, if you believe in God... still, they're not the Antichrist.

Cheryl  I often generally feel like to trash this place girls music is to miss the point of the Spice Girls. They are musicians, yes, technically, but like they are an experience and they are a brand. You know what I mean? Like it's like, yes, okay, fine. Say what you want about the music... Yes, it did last, but like, also, that was never the point. It helps, but I don't think it was ever the point.

 

Ashley  Yeah, but despite that, they're still competing in the same charts that the other bands are so like, regardless of their intention, like they're playing in the same pool, so...

 

Cheryl  I think it also just makes me think like, these are a bunch of dudes who are bitter that the music business changed.

 

Elyse Totally 

 

Sinead  100%. And we've talked about quite a few times now the sort of like, feud between Oasis and the Spice Girls. Well, on New Year's Eve of 1997, British newspaper headlines ran citing a poll from the public which voted Oasis and the Spice Girls the worst bands of 1997.

 

Megan  That love-to-hate. Even if you were like "oh the Spice Girls, I can't stand them", you knew all the songs, you knew the Stop dance, I'm sure you do still today. 

 

Cheryl  During this time, the girls are actually taking a year outside the UK to avoid taxes on the millions they are earning. Several members of the band spend Christmas of 1997 in Dublin. It was chosen as a rehearsal hub for the upcoming tour because of its proximity to the UK, so they could invite over friends and loved ones, and because it met the tax requirements for the year. Victoria actually said that being this close to the UK would have been unfathomable with Simon in charge as he liked to set them up further away.

 

Sinead  And while they were in Dublin doing their rehearsals for the Spice World Tour, they actually like video linked into the American Music Awards, which were celebrating their 25th year in 1998 and they really wanted the Spice Girls to be on it. And they actually won fan voted awards for Best New Album, Best New Artist, and Best Group. This was February of 98, after they were supposed to have failed. They were doing fine.

 

Cheryl  Also in early winter 1998 Victoria's engagement to David becomes public. She was actually really adamant that they have a proper engagement before going on tour. They had actually been engaged before previously in a very private thing in the days before Princess Diana's death. They were keeping it secret and they had just like moved the rings they normally were to their ring fingers for the day until the paparazzi caught them and the photos were published. For their proper engagement, the pair spent a night at sort of a spa hotel hybrid after a successful football match. And not only did he propose she also proposed to him, and said "don't forget about girl power, I have to ask you"

 

Elyse  That's cute. 

 

Steph  That's cute. 

 

Cheryl  It's cute.

 

Sinead  Sure throwing that word around a lot, eh?

 

Sinead  That might be one of the closest things to actually feminist, though, that they've stumbled upon-

 

Elyse  That is so true. 

 

Sinead  -that Victoria wanted an equal engagement instead of just it going one way.

 

Elyse  I mean it's a numbers game. Like, if you say in every other sentence eventually you're gonna stumble upon something that's accidentally radical.

 

Sinead  You are correct.

 

Cheryl  Okay, but are the 22 engagement rings she has acquired also Girl Power?

 

Sinead  In my opinion, yes.

 

Elyse  Uh, I think they are... neutral.

 

Sinead  Going a little bit forward. "Stop" was released as a single on March 9 1998, which was my ninth birthday. It peaked at number two in the UK behind "It's Like That" by Run DMC, which actually finally broke the group's streak of number one singles because every single they'd ever released prior to this was a number one.

 

Ashley  I do think it's ironic that the first song that is not a number one is called "Stop".

 

Elyse  What foreshadowing haha

 

Sinead  I also find it very funny because there was sort of all this talk about it being a flop because it was number two, and it was a sign that they weren't doing as well anymore. But like, everyone knows that song, and everyone knows the dance to that song. So it's very funny to me that it's like, "oh, no, they're stumbling". But it's like 25 years later and we're like, everyone knows that song though. Like it's a... it's one of their most iconic songs, you could probably argue

 

Cheryl  Also like, number two is not a bad place to be, guys. "Stop" was also much better received by critics than most of their other singles, drawing comparisons to The Supremes from Rolling Stone and Billboard magazine. Most critics complimented the song's Motown influence and sound. Sylvia Patterson of NME called the track "an obscenely catchy Motown swinger" and "a proper pop genius destined to be number one until Japan falls into the sea". And most of us remember this really iconic video with the dance moves and then going through a residential street in Ireland and doing the Stop dance and interacting with members of the community. 

 

Elyse  I'm very surprised that the critics liked that song. Like now that you say it had Motown influences I can hear it, like I see what they're saying. But I guess I was taken aback by that originally, because the lyrics are so basic. And like, I love it. It's an amazing song. Like, who doesn't love it? And it's so fun to dance to. But I'm just very surprised that of all their songs, that's the one that critics were like, "Yeah, okay, that's not bad".

 

Sinead  I'm also wondering, too, if it's just because by this point, this is their sixth or seventh single that's being reviewed. And maybe they're tired of just being like "fuck pop music". 

 

Elyse  Yeah, maybe 

 

Sinead  Because so many of the earlier negative reviews have since been revised, like in retrospectives, and there's so much like... Like "Who Do You Think You Are" now is like considered one of the best songs of the 90s. But it got trashed at the time. It could be that they were finally just tired of saying everything pop sucks, I'm not sure. 

 

Cheryl  I also wonder though, how much of it is this is the sound that like is written for a girl group. Like, the Motown sound is written to be performed by a girl group, I think as part of this. And I think the other part of it too is it's the sound that they successfully replicate really cleanly, like a lot of their other tracks, sort of pick and choose influences, whereas like this track almost like adopts as much of Motown as like it physically possibly could hold and still make it on a chart. Whereas like other tracks, it's like, oh, here's like a little bit of hip hop influence and a little bit of the Latin influence, you know?

 

Elyse  Mmhmm like they picked a lane for this one is what you're saying. 

 

Cheryl  Yeah. 

 

Elyse  Yeah, that makes sense.

 

Sinead  Despite their devastating entry at number two, they did perform the song at the BRIT Awards in 1998. They also received this special award, quote, unquote, that's what it was called for "being one of the biggest bands on the planet". It was a pretty cynical move on the part of the Brits that was read as a way to get the girls onto the show, because they weren't nominated for any awards, but they wanted the ratings. And so they created this special award, and it was only given out once to the Spice Girls that one time in 1998, it's never been used again.

 

Elyse  You can tell when they had a brainstorm to name that award they went with the first thing that came up, they put one phrase on the board and they're like, yep, that's it, let's go, don't rethink it's fine.

 

Sinead  Cheryl and I were interested to see what other awards were they doing in 1998 and the Grammys completely ignored the Spice Girls in 1998. They were not invited. Actually, I shouldn't say that they may have been invited, they were certainly not invited to perform. They were not nominated for anything, they just were off the radar.

 

Elyse  Their loss. 

 

Cheryl  So while all of this is playing out, in late February of 1998, the Spice World tour kicks off in Dublin. The tour saw the group perform to an estimated 2.1 million fans over 97 total shows, covering the UK, Europe and North America. The North American leg of the tour would have 41 sold out shows play to over 720,000 fans and gross $60 million US. It is to date the highest grossing tour ever by a female group. So with the tour chugging across Europe, things actually become increasingly difficult for Geri. Performing live, we've talked about previously, was always kind of Geri's weak spot. She hasn't been to stage school, she has no formal training in singing or dancing. And those skills don't come to her naturally either. Previously, when doing a media circuit, she'd been able to rely on her wit and her charm in press tours, filming Spice World, and filming commercials. You know, you can get away with being charming there too. But in a concert tour, it's a very different beast, really not a good venue for those talents.

 

Elyse  I have a counterpoint. Geri says very explicitly in her autobiography that the thing that started to really wear on her was the travel. And she said the shows were amazing; "the shows were easy for me because you could rely on the adrenaline", she said there was still magic there. But it was as soon as you came offstage, you didn't have that adrenaline anymore. And the travel was, in her words, "life sucking" and she just felt like a hamster on a wheel. And that that's really what took the toll. It wasn't the performances themselves.

 

Steph  So Geri leaving the Spice Girls, like we're attributing jetlag to breaking up the Spice Girls?

 

Sinead  No, no

 

Elyse  No, it was way more complex. 

 

Sinead  Yeah

 

Steph  I know I was just being a bit of a shit.

 

Sinead  There was a lot of factors. The tour changed the power dynamics in the band, where Geri had always kind of been in, especially since Simon had been fired, in quite a leadership role. You know, facing the media. She was often the most opinionated person like doing all in the interviews and whatnot. Because she was the weakest performer at least in the sense of like, she wasn't a dancer the way the other ones were, so she was always working harder in rehearsals and stuff, she found herself sidelined. At least this is what the people around them say not the girls themselves. This is like the- their managers and like handlers and stuff like that. 

 

Sinead  All five of them found the tour really hard, but it seemed to be the worst for Geri. She got overtired and sick, which definitely is related to all the travel and just like constant go-go-go of like being in different places. Simon Fullerlater claimed "Geri couldn't carry it off. With me gone, she was the leader of the group, but she knew she'd be found out on tour and the other girls would probably turn on her because I was the one who kept the balance. Even though she was probably the strongest. Without me around it was obvious what was going to happen. They probably would have bullied her, she would have said I hate touring, fuck you, I'm gonna do it myself. It was so predictable." 

 

Elyse  That is very fascinating because one of the things I noticed in her book, she says a lot of times she's like, "I can't pinpoint a moment. It just felt like the right time". It felt when I was reading it almost like a little bit evasive and a little bit melodramatic in parts. And I wonder if it's because the thing she doesn't want to talk about is the fact that she knew she was out of her depth, and that she was being sort of outstripped by the other girls. And that maybe she wasn't filling the platforms in the way that she needed to (haha). I did feel like something was missing in her personal story, and maybe that's what it is. 

 

Cheryl  I also find that really sad because part of the joy of being in an ensemble is that you can lean on each other and work together, you know? 

 

Cheryl  One of the rather foreboding thoughts that Geri gave in a media appearance shortly before the tour began, she says, "At the end of the day, we are realistic. If it all ended tomorrow, we have done more than we set out to achieve. We're very proud of what we've done, not just for ourselves, but for female bands. When we started, we couldn't get our faces on a magazine cover because they said girls don't sell pop magazines. That is what we came across. Now they've accepted other girl bands. In a sense, we've done our job. We were on a mission. We've got to be optimistic. At the end of the day, it's not about continuing forever, it's about pleasing ourselves."

 

Sinead  According to those who worked around the band, the 19 Management team and stuff, there would often be conflicts between Geri and the rest because of Geri's inclination to lead. Nicki Chapman, one of their handlers during the Fuller era, said quote, "The girls used to turn on Geri quite a lot. They hated her for organizing everything and being the mouthpiece and being the most opinionated, but also, there had to be some respect there because she was the one who went off and got things done. And if you wanted a point got across Geri was the person to do it." And Nicki also cited an incident where she said that quote, "There were times when Geri would upset the other girls. I remember once when we were flying to America, Simon just walked up to her on the plane and said, 'Congratulations, you've made everybody on this plane cry.'" Chapman, she went on to say that although there had been a lot of issues between them behind the scenes, all five of the women were very united in not letting that get to the press. It was incredibly important to them that they always present a united front. And so we didn't really hear about this and Chapman's comments come years and years after Geri left. Like after she left, they were all tight lipped about it -anyone who had been in Team Spice- because that was just kind of their thing. And they didn't shit talk to each other in the press.

 

Steph It worked. I mean, I never knew any of that.

 

Sinead  So yeah, pretty unsurprisingly, the changed dynamics between the bandmates led Geri to feeling isolated and obsolete. And she says that later about how she didn't even think she would be noticed when she quit because they were already doing everything that she could better than she could.

 

Elyse  There was a line in her book that I didn't actually wind up putting in my notes, because I was like, oh, this just seems kind of like a cop out. Like you're just trying to make it seem like you're being such a good, considerate person. But having said that, I'm like, oh, maybe that's the grain of truth in all of it. If she says- she's like, "The girls have always made it clear that they're extremely professional and they have the training to carry this on, they will be fine without me. They don't need me." And it reads very differently, it reads in a different light, knowing sort of that context.

 

Sinead  Like we've said with touring, the strongest parts of what Geri brought to the Spice Girls really weren't being utilized the way that they were when they were doing all of their press tours and funny interviews and you know, like really personable stuff where she could be witty and charming and lead the conversation. In a concert that's not a thing. And she had drifted so far away from the other four that during the tour she alleges that she told them she was planning to leave when the tour ended in September at Wembley. According to Geri, her intention had been taken seriously enough that they had met with the group's lawyer Andrew Thompson, but that the girls had decided to keep a lid on it for the time being. However, Victoria disputes this. In Victoria's autobiography, she said quote, "In her autobiography," (her referring to Geri) "she said, we knew she was leaving. Perhaps she thought we were mind readers. We didn't know. Why she said that I have no idea. Perhaps because it makes her look better, because otherwise it was like admitting she had left us in the lurch, which of course is exactly what she did. Geri Halliwell had left us totally in the lurch."

 

Elyse  That is very interesting, because that's exactly how she makes it sound, because I have not one but two, sort of anecdotes about her quote, unquote, like telling the girls and the first time she said that she thinks she wants to stop after the September tour. And she's like, "I threw it out there, but nobody reacted. The girls simply assumed that I was joking or having a bad hair day, I said nothing more. But now I realized that none of the others had any thoughts of calling it quits after the World Tour." And then she has another story of saying "I'm leaving after Wembley Stadium in September", and like making a big deal of how she wants the finale to be at Wembley. And, yeah, it sounds like maybe those conversations didn't happen!

 

Megan  For a group who spent so much time together... and, you know, provided this united front and in the early years that we talked about -the years; it was only months before- in the early days of the Spice Girls they were very united on like, this is what we want, this is our dream, we're all working towards the same thing. And like just the...

 

Sinead  There's such an utter communication breakdown, which- 

 

Megan   Yeah!

 

Sinead  -is hard not to pin on Simon Fuller, and how he separated them during their really crazy ascent to fame, and they just never... well, at least some of them never really reconnected after that is what it seems like from my perspective.

 

Cheryl  I also think to some degree too there's some truth definitely and, like, "we heard it, we didn't take it seriously". I also think there's probably a little bit of truth too and just like, not wanting to hear that, you know, like being in the rest of the group and hearing Geri say that, knowing it could be true and just being like, "I don't want to hear that"? 

 

Megan  In Viva Forever, which is like a Spice Girls documentary, Mel C said she'd left before but not publicly. And then she went on to say, "I mean, I think a few of them had left. Well, Melanie and Geri left a few times." But then she goes on to say, like, in a different part, and in other interviews, like how they were just like, shocked when she left. Like, you know, blindsided. They obviously... she had said it before, but they didn't take it seriously.

 

Elyse  Hmm. 

 

Steph  Well, it's almost like... I mean, I'm sure they all got so frustrated sometimes. They were probably like, "fuck it, I'm just gonna quit, just gonna quit, I'm tired. Just gonna quit." Like they do in the movie. So like, how do you take it seriously? Like oh, they'll be back in an hour, they need to cool off.

 

Ashley  Steph, did you read anything from Emma? Or does that pretty much cover it?

 

Steph  Pretty much- she was just like, really pissed and angry, which is like, I think Emma expressing anger is not a common occurrence. It's interesting, because she still doesn't really talk badly about anything that happened. Like, she's done an interview with Ru Paul, and they like straight up asked her about it. And she just said it was like, shocking, they like went through this whole thing together, and she just left them.

 

Elyse So I'm gonna to tell you the time that she like re-told them, like the time she theoretically told them the second time to really reinforce it. She says, "we sat in a dressing room in Milan waiting to go on stage. I suddenly announced 'I am definitely going to leave after Wembley Stadium in September'. There was silence. 'Why do you want to leave?' asked Victoria. 'I've had enough, I just want to finish with the big finale at Wembley.' I didn't have a defining reason for leaving. It was a combination of things a mass of emotions that were keeping me awake at night. They left me with an overwhelming knowledge that I had to go in September." And it makes me wonder, if that first telling in Frankfurt, if upon writing the real story where she basically just blurts out in a dressing room, "I'm gonna peace out, this is too much", if in writing that she was like, "That's a bit harsh", or if her editor was like "that's a bit harsh", they added in this sort of softer went unnoticed, you know, grey area story of like, I'm gonna leave and then no one taking it seriously. Because the second part to me aligns with how the girls reacted.

 

Megan  She didn't make it to Wembley. So what happened? 

 

Sinead  Yeah, well...

 

Cheryl  So one of the stories that is put out there is that in May of 1998, while the band was doing their tour dates in Helsinki, Geri was approached by Finnish media to do an interview about breast cancer awareness and to talk about her experience of having a lump removed from her breasts as a teen. Allegedly, the rest of the group vetoed her solo appearance, and she quit the band almost immediately afterwards.

 

Sinead  So there's this story, all of them have talked about it- well, Geri hasn't talked about it but the other four have-

 

Elyse  I've got her side.

 

Sinead  -about the plane. So they were- after Helsinki, they're flying back to the UK, they're on this plane, their private plane, or whatever. They're leaving, but they're going to be seeing each other like later that day. And Geri says goodbye to all of them. Which immediately, Emma and Mel B were like, that's weird, why would she say goodbye? We never say goodbye to each other, because we're always gonna see each other again in like three hours. And that was I mean, the last time they saw her for a long time.

 

Elyse  Oh, wait, I thought I had Geri's story, because she does talk about the plane, but she does not talk about that!

 

Sinead  That that's the only plane story I have. So if you have a different plane story...

 

Elyse It's not nearly as interesting. Do you want to hear her version of how that went? 

 

Sinead  Sure! Yeah. 

 

Elyse  Great. "So the next day, we flew to Marseille on the surface, things carried on as usual. But I sensed that the girls felt hurt and let down. This was understandable. We'd been so close, we had shared the same dream, we had been clear about what we wanted. We had fought for it together and broken through. Now I think deep down they felt as if I was abandoning them inside. I was also crying. The marriage was over. And it was almost like a grieving process. But I hoped that until September, and long afterwards, we could all remain friends. Then I would wish them luck if they carried on without me. In many ways, I felt that our friendships might have been even greater because we could go back to being mates rather than business partners." So she made it very fluffy and flowery of like, having this big epiphany internally, and it sounds like outside just like "See ya!"

 

Sinead  It's fascinating because none of- all four other four girls have have never told that story. Like they all maintain that they were shocked and blindsided and it was the goodbye on the plane when they came back to the UK from Finland that made them feel weird and it was like that night that they were told that she had quit.

 

Cheryl  I also think it's odd that this is one of the very few instances where like, even though Mel C will go on to claim she's angry about a lot of stuff to further her career later, like, this is one of the very few instances where they all look back, and they are all angry. Like, they're all allowed to be angry for, like the betrayal of the group that was- that happened. And I think it's really interesting that like, that's what they're allowed to express emotions about as a girl group. Otherwise, they just have to be fun and bubbly. Like, we can be angry about someone leaving, and that's about it. 

 

Megan  I'm just gonna ask a question we might be getting to this, this may be something that I came across that was totally not true, but that she just didn't show up for the show? And they were all expecting her to be there?

 

Sinead  Yeah, that is true. 

 

Megan  That blew my mind! I didn't know that!

 

Sinead  So basically, the group returned to Britain from Helsinki to make an appearance on the National Lottery show. So that morning, the plane came in, Geri said goodbye, which they thought was weird, then they thought they would see her at the National Lottery. So then later on that day, the four remaining girls were contacted by their lawyer Andrew Thompson, informing them that Geri had left the Spice Girls. 

 

Elyse  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Because in her book, she says she told the girls and like as a group, they decided it was time to talk to Andrew and figure out legally what they should do. She talked to Andrew and then he talked to the girls?!

 

Sinead  Yeah, yes. She, she had gotten her own lawyer. 

 

Cheryl  This was all done through lawyers. 

 

Sinead  Yeah.  She had gotten her own lawyer, contacted their group lawyer, Andrew Thompson, said Geri's out. So they had to go to this National Lottery appearance, so they said that Geri was sick. And so they went on they said, "Oh, she's sick. She's not feeling well." And then after that, they actually had two shows left in Oslo for their- for the European leg. And so they did them without her and just said she was sick. And around the same time Geri was I guess seen getting on a plane to France by paparazzi. So I think there was like some foreshadowing. 

 

Sinead  31:46

The strategy of Geri being sick only lasted for a few appearances until she released -and the band didn't know she was gonna to do this- on May 31, she released the following statement: "This is a message to the fans. Sadly, I would like to confirm that I have left the Spice Girls. This is because of differences between us. I'm sure the group will continue to be successful and I wish them all the best. I have no immediate plans. I wish to apologize to all the fans and to thank them and everyone who's been there. Lots of love, Geri. PS I'll be back."

 

Cheryl  And shortly afterwards, on the same day, the remaining Spice Girls released this statement: "We are upset and saddened by Geri's departure, but we are very supportive in whatever she wants to do. The Spice Girls are here to stay. See you at the stadiums! We are sorry to all our fans for having to go through all of this. All our love Victoria, Emma, Mel C, Mel B. Friendship never ends."

 

Sinead Two weeks after Geri quits with that big statement, the Spice Girls' former chauffeur, Kevin Attridge, announced to the press that he would be releasing a tell-all book about why she left and the inner dynamics of the band. He'd already been paid about 30,000 pounds by a newspaper for leaking a story which said that Mel B taunted Geri so much that that's why she quit.

 

Elyse I love to believe that.

 

Sinead  So yeah, so this is two and a half weeks after Geri quit. So the band's legal team, as well as Geri's legal team, got together and immediately hit back claiming that Attridge had broken his confidentiality agreement, and they sued him. So within weeks of suing him, a judge issued a gag order for Attridge which said he was not allowed to disclose any information about the Spice Girls love lives, their business affairs, or their spending habits. And Attridge actually kept trying to take this to court to have the ruling overturned, but by the fall of 1998, basically, the judge upheld that the book was banned and the book was never released. It never saw the light of day.

 

Sinead  Oh, but a manuscript exists somewhere?

 

Sinead  It's hard to say if he was just grandstanding to get like a book advance, you know, like cause he'd been paid for the story, but... he's legally, I mean, probably actually to this day can't even say anything about it. But he went away.

 

Cheryl In the middle of all this legal chaos, there's only two weeks until the North American leg of the tour begins and the vocals and choreography of the tour all have to be reshuffled. The tour was completely sold out, had 41 dates, and of course, the remaining four girls were keen to deliver. They're performers, after all.

 

Sinead  Around this time, one of the dancers hired for the Spice World tour was this guy named Jimmy Gulzar, and by March of 1998 Mel B was dating him, one of like the backup dancers. There were a lot of negative rumours about their relationship, the biggest thing being that he was dating her for her money. He'd been working for years in retail as well as dancing at gay clubs in Amsterdam, and people around Mel B noticed that after they began dating he started wearing like much nicer designer clothes like everywhere, and he even had his own copies of her credit cards. And people observed that he wasn't very nice to her. So by May of 1998 Mel and Jimmy were engaged, which is-

 

Megan  Very Britney and K Fed...  

 

Elyse  What was his name? Jimmy Gulzar?

 

Steph  Jimmy Gulzer

 

Steph    ...and J. Lo and her dancer boy too

 

Sinead  Yeah, it's definitely a path. And yeah, so halfway through the North American leg of the tour they actually had to change the setlist to remove choreography which had Mel B and Victoria lifted in the air because both of them were newly pregnant. 

 

Steph  Oh yeah! 

 

Sinead  We'll talk more on our next episode about weddings and babies, which came after pregnancy for both of them. But that was a big development that again changed the tour a little bit.

 

Cheryl  In the midst of North American leg of the tour, in July of 1998, Viva Forever was released as the fourth single from the Spice World album. The release of the single had actually been delayed three times because at one point in time the b-side was "Never Give Up on the Good Times", and it was kind of deemed inappropriate. And some of the promotional elements of the song actually still feature Geri, including a stop motion music video and a pre-recorded Top of the Pops performance. The single debuted at number one in the UK, which was a recovery from "Stop", which topped out at number two, and it didn't actually make the billboard list in the US.

 

Sinead  And yeah, by September of 1998, their Spice World tour concluded with four dates in the UK, including two at Wembley Stadium, which is what finished out the tour, which were filmed for later release. So they were sold as the "Spice Girls Live at Wembley Stadium" and the VHS tape actually went certified platinum in the US and the UK. 

 

Elyse Oh my god, a platinum VHS. 

 

Sinead And it was also broadcast live on Pay Per View. Apparently, Geri watched the concert from her home in the UK. And she later said quote, "It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do." And I guess the media wanted a reaction, so Mel B jokingly replied, "That's her own fault."

 

Elyse & Sinead  [laughs]

 

Megan  It is! 

 

Cheryl  So on that note of spicy payback, in a lot of ways today we're talking about the beginning of the end of the Spice Girls as we knew them. And so our next episode will be our last, and we'll cover up until what's generally considered the end of that first era.

 

Ashley  See you next time. 

Ashley  Spice Invaders is hosted by Sinead O'Brien, Cheryl Stone, Elyse Maxwell, Stephanie Smith and Megan Arppe-Robertson. It's produced, researched and written by Sinead O'Brien and Cheryl Stone, and produced and edited by me, Ashley McDonough. To see any visuals we talked about in this episode, as well as bonus content, be sure to follow us on Instagram @spiceinvaderspod. Thank you to Lukus Benoit for composing our theme song and for mixing this episode.

 

Transcript created by Ashley McDonough and Cheryl Stone.