Sam interview
Jad
and within a few years was one of England’s most famous Page 3 girls
and most photographed women. Twenty years on, Sam Fox has now earned a
reputation as a talented pop musician and is coming to Perth as part
of The Countdown Spectacular Tour. Here’s what Sam had to say to
OUTinPerth’s Megan Smith about life after Page 3…
Megan: Being American, I didn’t know what a page 3 girl was…
Sam: It’s the page after page 2…
M: [laughs] There you go. So, has page 3 helped or hindered your
musical career?
S: There was a competition in the paper and it said “the face and
shape of ‘83” and I had no intention at that time to be a topless
model. I must say, I didn’t think everyday, ‘Ooh, I want to be a page
3 girl.’ I did very well in that competition, though I was still a
schoolgirl… I’d been going to Spain with my mom and dad and I was
always going topless. We were a quite liberal family really. I was
brought up reading the Sun, me and my mum, looking at it every
morning, discussing her hair, what she’s not wearing or whatever she
is wearing. It was a talking point every morning. So, to me, it was
just something I had always been around.
The Sun had seen my picture in the Sunday People, which is the Mirror
Group paper, then [Rupert] Murdoch sent a journalist and a
photographer to my school. I was doing my O levels at the time and I
wasn’t there. My friend told them where I lived and they knocked on my
door and offered me a four year contract, quite a lot of money
actually. I always had me savings, but when I saw this check, I
thought ‘Oh, my life is going to change.’ I discussed it with my
parents, and they said they knew I could handle it, I was very mature
for my age.
There I was at 16. I was like, college don’t look so good now and I
took it on. There was no other girl in the Sun who ever had a
contract, and it was basically that I couldn’t appear topless in any
other paper. I was like their girl and for 4 years it was a very
lucrative career. I said to myself, if I am going to do this, I am
going to be the best and I want to be the best. I knew I could handle
four years and by 20 I’d be old enough and mature enough to get into
the music business.
It was a little bit of a hindrance really, especially in Britain. It
wasn’t like I was Madonna or Geri Halliwell who had done a few topless
things in their life and then it came out to haunt them. It was a
career because people saw me nearly everyday in the newspaper page 3.
So, when my song first played on the radio, DJ Chris Tarrant actually
went, ‘Oh, here we go, here’s Sam Fox with a song called Touch Me,
typical’, and he scratched it off the radio and I didn’t get on the
playlist at all. Then it went to number 1 in 17 countries where I
wasn’t known before (page 3 only happens in England) and then England
started to play it and it went to number 3.
M: Of all the tracks you have put together, do you have one that is an
anthem for you?
S: I love the title track from the album Angel with an Attitude. It’s
the first song that I wrote for the album and basically two years
previous to the release of the album in Canada I went through quite a
big court case with my father when I felt this business had wrecked my
family. My mom and dad were divorced. My dad and me were just not
seeing eye to eye anymore. He went down the road of alcohol and drugs.
It was just an awful time for me and I felt I couldn’t trust anybody.
Then I met my manager, who is a woman, and the first thing she said to
me was that she could see I was pretty down and didn’t really have the
enthusiasm I would normally have. It was so nice to hear somebody say
to me, look, I think you should take a couple years off. You have been
working hard since you were sixteen and your life has been a
rollercoaster and you’ve never actually sat down and taken a good look
at your life and where you want to go. I think you should sit and
write your book and your music, get it all out.
Normally a manager would say, ‘Ok, right, let’s get on with the work.
I want me percentage. Get out there girl.’ But she didn’t, and that
was wonderful. I travelled around the world and did all the things I
couldn’t do when I was a teenager. In those two years, I had a good
look at my life and I thought, ‘No, I’m worth more than that and I’m
going to make myself strong and get out there.’
M: What is going to be the biggest surprise for people reading your
upcoming book?
S: I’ve never talked a lot about my private life. There have been a
lot of misunderstandings. When people write things about you, I was
never one of those people to ring up the Courier and go, ‘Why have you
done that?’ I’ve always thought it’s tomorrow fish ‘n chip paper. It
will go away. And it does. So, this is going to be my side, my story,
how I felt about certain things in my life and how I was perceived. I
think people will realize I’m no dumb blonde, I’ll put it that way…
I’m not a real blonde anyway.
M: Was there a particular time, the media was way out of line or you
really struggled with the public spotlight and the media attention
that came with it?
S: When I broke America. The only way you can break America, really,
is to go and live there because that’s just what you have to do. And I
was willing to go to live there because I did want to break America.
It is a big market and it was something I was inspired as a kid
growing up and watching American shows and seeing how many artists in
Britain never made it in America. So, I was determined to do it. When
I went to live there, the press really alienated me for awhile and
they thought I had turned my back on Britain. That was awful, really
awful because I was just doing my job. I wasn’t leaving England
forever. I never would because of my family and I am British. That’s
my home.
Britain and I are a bit like that, we are a very small country, but we
have got a very big ego. [The media] helped me a lot and I never diss
the papers because as much as people think they may have exploited me,
I exploited them too.
M: What do you want people to take away from your songs?
S: Fight the fear and feel the love, you know.
M: Anything else you would like to say to the good people of Perth?
S: People of Perth, please go purchase the album because I want to be
back in the charts again so I can come back here and do my own tour
and give you all the hits and more.
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