Anne's Song (10 page)

I hardly saw anything of my new husband and I really minded. I longed to be with Brian, even though there were fun times to be had during those three months. On one occasion, the stage crew replaced our microphones with icecream cones, so that we swept on stage, reached out for our mikes and then discovered the awful truth. The only answer was to lick them as if this was part of the act, something that cracked up the audience and put them in the best of moods as the real microphones were then placed in our hands.

Sometimes, the mistakes were genuine. I remember when we were playing the Talk of the North in Charnock Richard there were several quick changes necessary, and we had to rush from the stage to our dressing room in the breaks between numbers to clamber quickly into matching outfits. On this particular night, we all arrived back on stage, slightly out of breath, me in a dress about four inches too short and baggy round the bosom and Linda (shorter than me but more generously endowed) with her hem round her ankles and busting out all over in the boob department.

That was the year, too, of our first
Top of the Pops
appearance. It was a big deal for us because here was a programme we'd all watched as we'd been growing up, but we'd never dared hope that one day we might actually perform on it. It was great: we could wear the type of clothes that girls of our age wore in real life, not the ageing costumes designed for us by wardrobe departments. If I see pictures of us now in our Spandex trousers, I cringe. They were very fashionable at the end of the seventies, but even so, surrounded by all those punk bands, we were like fish out of water. We didn't care. We had a great time.

Our eventual arrival on the national scene and particularly in the pop charts occurred well after the heyday of both The Beatles and The Stones. As luck would have it, the greatest success of the butter-wouldn't-melt-in-your-mouth Nolans coincided with the arrival of punk rock, and we'd be on
Top of the Pops
alongside the Sex Pistols, which must have seemed very incongruous at the time; one of them even spat on our dressing-room door, presumably because that's what he thought a punk ought to do. Bless!

Years later, we got a letter from Kevin Rowland, lead singer with Dexy's Midnight Runners. He was going through an intense counselling course at the time – for whatever reason – and he wrote to apologise for saying nasty things about us. This came as something of a surprise, since none of us could remember his ever saying anything unpleasant to our faces, but part of the recovery programme, apparently, was that you said sorry to anyone you'd insulted when you were in the grip of your demons.

On
Top of the Pops
each week, there was a live orchestra employed by the BBC. None of the punk groups performed live versions of their hits; they'd simply mime to whatever their record in the charts was at the time. However, we were long used to singing live so were asked to appear almost every week, and that justified the booking of the orchestra. It was rather unfair on us because the version we did in the TV studio, while musically note perfect, never sounded like the recorded version, whereas, when it came to the punks, the TV audience at home heard their records in exactly the same way as they did on the radio.

For our first performance on
Top of the Pops,
we sang 'Spirit, Body and Soul' written by Bruce Welch and Hank Marvin of The Shadows. Bruce, a really nice, down-to-earth chap and extremely talented, produced a lot of our records. That single managed to get into the lower reaches of the charts, our first, modest success. Never mind: a bigger one was just round the corner.

When I first heard 'I'm In The Mood For Dancing' written by Ben Findon and Mike Myers, I didn't like it at all, but then I was always hopeless at spotting a potential hit. On this occasion, though, none of my sisters liked it either. What did we know? It turned out to be the biggest single success of our entire career, spending sixteen weeks in the UK Top 20, three of them at Number 3 in the charts; it was also a hit all over Europe, and was Number One in Japan where our popularity not only rivalled that of The Beatles, it surpassed it! We were in demand as never before, touring the UK, Europe and our native Ireland. We also received an invitation to appear at the prestigious Montreux Song Festival where we met the distinguished violinist Stéfane Grappelli. At last the Nolans were enjoying the sort of success about which we'd always dreamed.

I still think 'I'm In the Mood For Dancing' sounds good today, but we didn't half get sick of singing it in 1980. We were invited on to every TV and radio show imaginable and there was only one song everyone wanted to hear. It's still played to this day. My daughters go out to discos and they come home and tell me they've been dancing to their mother's record. Even now I get cheques every so often for however many times it's been played on the radio, a hundred pounds or so once in a while and always very welcome, not least because it's unexpected.

It was an extraordinarily exciting time. After learning our craft with all those years spent on the working men's club circuit, we were now major stars, the most successful female band in Britain. Everything we did, it seemed, turned to gold. We were on a roll and it was difficult not to feel heady most of the time.

By now, we girls were travelling by luxurious coach complete with beds and TVs. We were touring, doing one-nighters in different towns and commanding as much as £10,000 for a single gig. That had to be split six ways, of course – my dad still took his cut – and you'd have to put a proportion of your earnings aside for tax, as well as making your contribution to the five crew members and five band members who travelled everywhere with us, so really our wages never properly reflected our success.

It was in 1980 that we landed a sixteen-week summer season at the Blackpool Opera House, with Mike Yarwood topping the bill. They always say that he was something of a tortured genius, but I never detected any of that. He was easy and relaxed in our company, with no airs and graces, but then I always thought he had a bit of a thing for Linda. 1 think she liked him, too, but he was married and nothing ever happened. He certainly had a twinkle in his eye, though, whenever he talked to her. It was no more than harmless flirting.

The Opera House holds more than 3,500 people and every performance was packed out. Nowadays, it's never full unless someone of the stature of Tom Jones or Shirley Bassey is topping the bill. I can't honestly say I felt nervous about singing in front of so vast a crowd. On the Sinatra tour, we'd sometimes played to houses of 10,000. People who hadn't seen us before assumed we were overnight successes, but we'd done ten years singing in working men's clubs. Don't let the figures fool you. Yes, the clubs might hold on average only about three hundred punters, but they're the most difficult audience in the world to win over. They want to chat and drink their beer. They don't want to be interrupted by a stage act. If they don't like you, they won't listen or, worse still, they walk out. In a theatre, people have paid for their seats; they've come to watch you perform; they start by being on your side. So it wasn't nerve-racking. You could feel the warmth of affection from the auditorium coming over the footlights.

I couldn't have been happier. We were earning good money, we were performing in our home town to appreciative audiences, and it meant, most importantly of all, that Brian and I could be with each other all the time, living in our own house. Life was good.

Nothing lasts for ever, however, and during that summer Brian's relationship with Blackpool FC in general, and its manager in particular, came to a head. He was put on the transfer list and was eventually sold to Torquay United. We didn't want to be apart, but there didn't seem much choice. So, in the September, Brian moved down to Devon and I carried on until the summer season ended the following month.

I longed to join him, and even more so now because I was pregnant. The show hadn't been running long when I'd started to feel unwell. It wasn't too difficult to diagnose the cause, a suspicion confirmed by a home pregnancy kit. This time I was married and I couldn't have been happier, even though I suffered from blinding headaches and sickness throughout the full nine months. I also developed an aversion to tea; I couldn't stand the smell of it. I didn't care. This was the realisation of a long-held dream.

The end of the season and my future commitments left me little choice but to tell my sisters I'd be leaving the group. To be honest, I'd been wanting to for some time, for the simple reason that I wanted to be with Brian. They understood completely, and I thought I'd be heading south without so much as a glance over my shoulder, but for nineteen years I'd rehearsed, performed, toured, eaten, slept, drunk and lived the life of my siblings, and now, almost suddenly, it was coming to an end. I felt such a mix of emotions. I longed to be a full-time wife and mother but, equally, I knew I'd miss singing with my sisters.

One of the best songs in our repertoire was an a cappella version of Cliff Richard's 'Miss You Nights'. The last time we sang it, during our final performance at the Opera House, I couldn't finish. I broke down in tears as young Coleen walked from the wings and took over my part. By the time she'd finished, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. It was the end of an era. Maureen, Linda, Bernie and Coleen then headed off to Japan where 'I'm In The Mood for Dancing' had become the first record ever to top the Japanese domestic and international charts at the same time.

Meanwhile, I headed off to Torquay–and a close brush with death.

We'd sold our little house in Blackpool and eventually bought a semi in Roselands Drive, Paignton, a small town just along the coast from Torquay. It was a lovely spot and our back garden overlooked the bay. However, when I first arrived in Devon in the November, nearly six months pregnant, Brian and I shared a house with another footballer, Tommy Sermanni, who'd played alongside him in Blackpool and also been transferred to Torquay, although a month earlier. This was a stopgap until we found our own place. Tommy was fabulous: he couldn't have been more welcoming or friendly. Never once did he make us feel we were invading his space or getting in his way.

For years and years, I'd yearned for a normal life. My ambitions may sound modest, but I longed for a husband to love, a baby to cherish and a home of our own. Now it was about to happen. It's impossible to exaggerate my feeling of joy, but don't misunderstand me. I wouldn't have missed the richness of my show business experiences and achievements for the world. No one could take awav from me the successes I'd had with my sisters. These were mine to savour for ever. I considered myself privileged. We all felt like that. It almost beggars belief that five girls from a council estate in Dublin should have become major stars in Britain and beyond. We'd shared a stage with incredible entertainers, international icons like Frank Sinatra, Engelbert Humperdinck, Cliff Richard, Morecambe and Wise and Tommy Cooper, but we'd never got too big for our boots. If ever any one of us started putting on airs and graces, the rest of us would be down on her like a ton of bricks.

It had been an incredible life, comfortably exceeding our most far-fetched fantasies, but it had effectively robbed me of my teenage years and dominated most of my twenties. Now, though, I was embarking on a new life, a world away from suitcases and aeroplanes, anonymous hotel rooms and tour buses, cameras and lights and TV studios. To anyone else, what lay ahead might have seemed mundane. To me, it was the beginning of my greatest adventure ever. I was about to have a family of my own. Nothing and no one – not even my father – could taint it or take it away from me.

As anyone who knows it will tell you, Torquay is built on a series of hills. Brian would take the car to work and I'd be climbing up and down those hills on foot, carrying home heavy bags of shopping. It was good exercise but, as my pregnancy progressed, it became too strenuous for my condition. Still, I felt healthy and I was happy, so I carried on regardless. Brian could not have been more attentive. He was as excited as me about the imminent birth of our first child.

Towards the end of my pregnancy, and before my mother came to stay in preparation for the baby's birth, my sisters embarked on a UK tour which brought them to Paignton. Naturally, I was in the audience with Brian, and with Jean Lane, a friend I'd made locally. I can't say I was too surprised when the girls announced to the audience my presence in the theatre, but I admit to feeling a bit self-conscious when they insisted I join them on stage. Maureen, Linda, Bernie and Coleen looked so slim and sleek, kitted out in their beautiful dresses, whereas I felt rather a frump in my maternity smock, but I knew I couldn't refuse. When the applause died down, the girls gathered round me. 'Anne,' said Maureen, 'we have a surprise for you,' and so saying, they presented me with a platinum disc of 'I'm In The Mood For Dancing', awarded for sales in excess of over half a million copies in the UK alone. I shall never forget the feeling of euphoria that swept over me. However, it didn't make me feel I wanted to be back in the group. My ambitions now were firmly rooted in domesticity.

The day of the baby's expected birth was fast approaching. My due date was 17 March 1981, St Patrick's Day, but in the meantime Brian had travelled with the team on Friday, 6 March to play against Halifax the following day. My last antenatal check at my doctor's had revealed a trace of protein in my urine and my blood pressure had risen, both common occurrences in heavily pregnant women. The doctor also noticed that my fingers and ankles were a little swollen. I was advised to go home and take it easy, advice that I stupidly ignored as I carried on cleaning and shopping and all the rest. My ankles were a bit swollen. So what? Life has to go on.

My next check on 6 March was at the hospital and the story could not have been more different. By now, my blood pressure had shot up so alarmingly, I was told I must be admitted immediately and they weren't taking no for an answer. I must say, I didn't feel especially unwell. Still, my mother was now with me, so she was sent home for my overnight things and I was put straight to bed. I was in the grip, I subsequently discovered, of eclampsia, a potentially fatal toxic condition.

Instead of being confined to bed, or maybe because I wilfully disobeyed instructions, I made it my business to try and track down Brian in Yorkshire. He'd left me the number of the hotel where he was staying, but it was now the middle of the night and I couldn't get through. These were the days before mobiles. I was the only patient on this large ward, and the two nurses on duty were sitting in the kitchen chatting to each other rather than keeping an eye on me. I must have spent an hour standing in the corner, on the phone, becoming more and more frustrated as my efforts failed to produce results. My legs started to ache and I developed a blinding headache. I went to see the nurses who ticked me off, gave me some tablets and put me back to bed. Then all I remember is drifting in and out of consciousness.

The next four days were a complete blank. I had two fits, apparently, before Amy was delivered by emergency Caesarean section – the only option left open to the doctors if my life was to be saved – at around three o'clock in the morning of 7 March. One piece of good fortune, though, was that John McPherson, the consultant on duty that night, specialised in obstetrics and he took the decision to take me straight into the operating theatre, rather than waiting to see what happened. I'm convinced to this day that he saved my life.

As it was, I had a third, more serious fit after the babv had been delivered. 1 was quite unaware of all this, of course, or of Amy's removal to a specialist care unit in Exeter. The medication I'd been prescribed to reduce my blood pressure had been absorbed through the umbilical cord by my precious daughter. She needed urgent monitoring.

Brian was eventually alerted and was driven by taxi through the night from Halifax to Torquay, the football club generously picking up the bill. On arrival at the hospital, he was greeted with the news that the baby was fine, but in Exeter, and that the doctors rated my chances of survival at no better than 50:50. His first sight of me, he later told me, stopped him in his tracks. I'd blown up like a balloon and had tubes coming out of me everywhere. The next few hours were to prove crucial. If I had another fit or my kidneys failed, I'd almost certainly die.

My first memory, after I regained consciousness four days later, is of being shown a Polaroid photograph of my baby, and being told it was a girl. 'Oh, but it should have been a boy,' I blurted out, but only because I was convinced I'd been carrying a boy and that a son would be nice for Brian; they could have played football together. That same day, Amy was returned to the hospital in Torbay, although she was still in an incubator because she'd developed jaundice. I loved her straightaway, but I was still very weak and I hadn't the energy somehow to feel that fierce, instantaneous bond that's meant to take place between mother and child.

My first image of her will never fade. She looked just like me. Her hair, sparse as it was, might have been strawberry blonde – much more like her father's colouring – but her features were mine; they are to this day. Because of her Caesarean birth, she wasn't in the least wrinkly like most babies. She weighed just under six pounds, and when I held her in my arms, she seemed to me just beautiful, perfectly formed.

I was in hospital ten days in all and my father and sisters came to see me. Amy was his first grandchild and their first niece. Everyone was thrilled with her, even my father. The story made the TV news bulletins and the front page of the newspapers. I've still got all the cuttings. Then Amy and I were allowed home. I tried breastfeeding her for about two weeks, but it was hopeless, so I gave up and expressed my milk into a bottle. She cried all the time and then developed colic, screaming non-stop from six to nine every evening without fail. That went on for the first three months of her life! For the first few weeks, though, I had my mother with me, so I was able to get some rest through the night when she or Brian would feed Amy. He was fabulous from the start, a real hands-on dad, and vet he was onluy twenty-three when she was born. He was always taking her off me so I could have a rest and begin to regain my strength.

Amy was a shocking baby! She didn't sleep through the night until she was two, but I had the constant support of a loving husband and that made all the difference in the world, and when she wasn't crying she was smiling at everyone and was a total delight.

Less than a month later, my sisters went on a promotional tour of Japan where the Nolans were riding high. At one stage, they were more successful there than The Beatles, selling over nine million records throughout our career. Each sister, Coleen included, came back and banked a royalty cheque of £50,000 for Japanese sales, a great deal of money in those days and something, I must admit, that made me a bit jealous. I'd sung on 'I'm In The Mood For Dancing' and 'Don't Make Waves' but I'd missed out on this major payday, and Coleen hadn't even sung on those two big hits. On the other hand, that Japanese tour was gruesome, I'm told. There'd be five or six TV appearances a day and then live shows at night. I hadn't been involved in the hard graft of making those records such big hits in Japan. Anyway, I had my prize and it was something on which you couldn't place a price. I could hold my own precious baby in my arms. I happily settled down to longed-for motherhood.

Amy was a year and a half when a travelling fair came to town and we decided to take her. I was trying out my shooting prowess at one stage with Brian standing behind me, Amy in his arms. As I fired the gun, a tiny piece of metal flew out of the rifle and straight into Amy's eye. She screamed – and so did I. Luckily, Brian took control of the situation and drove us to the hospital in Paignton as I nursed a sobbing Amy in my arms.

The doctor did his best to remove the fragment of metal from her eye, but she was crying so hard and wriggling around so much, he had next to no chance of success. It was decided she'd have to have an anaesthetic which immediately panicked me, but it was the right decision. The metal was removed without any lasting damage.

Unfortunately for my sister Maureen, though, she saw a news report before she heard the happy outcome from us. Maureen is Amy's godmother so, when she arrived at Heathrow, having been on holiday, the newspaper hoarding proclaiming: 'Nolan baby shot in eye' sent her running to the nearest phone. By the time I picked up the receiver in Torquay, she was in floods of tears. I'll never forget her relief when she discovered that all was well.

On another occasion, when we were still living in Paignton, I had taken Amy to the football; we went every Saturday to watch Brian play. At the end of the match, I strapped her into her car seat and joined the queue to leave the car park. Some youths from the opposing team – they'd lost the game – spotted Amy with her little Torquay United hat and scarf. I don't suppose it was any more than a bit of mischief, but they suddenly started rocking the car from side to side. It must have seemed funny to them, but it felt very frightening being inside the car and especially with a vulnerable toddler. I was shouting for them to stop. Amy was crying. It was scary, especially when they started banging on the windows. Then a policeman spotted what was happening and told them to move on. That incident also got into the papers.

The Nolans, meanwhile, were given four TV specials, which I used to watch with a whole swirl of different emotions. I loved Brian and I'd have laid down my life for Amy, but I'd look at the screen and think that it could have been me up there singing along with them. But the mood would quickly pass. I couldn't have been happier playing the role of wife and mother.

Their musical director by this stage was a chap called Robin Smith. He and Coleen were living together although she was still only sixteen and he was only a few years older. I didn't disapprove, but I couldn't help feeling that her life, the freedom she had, was very different from when I was her age. The fact that she had independent money, of course, meant that our father had no real control over her. She could afford to do what she wanted and that's exactly what she did. I kept in constant contact with all my sisters by phone and they with me; they were all mad about Amy and would ring for almost daily bulletins on her. Whenever they had a free day, they'd come and visit me.

Unbeknown to me, Robin had written a song called 'Amy', inspired by my daughter, and the girls had included it on their latest album. I switched on one of their TV specials one evening and the girls started singing the song, accompanied by a succession of photographs of me and Amy on the screen. I still remember some of the words:

I don't think that anyone could ever know
The happiness you brought when you came into our lives
Amy has a thousand words she wants to say
And maybe Amy knows we love her as she plays
As the years go by
I hope she realises
There is no need to ever be sad
'Cos Amy will give you all the love we have

I sat there, crying my eyes out. I didn't want to be back with them full-time, but I wished I'd been there for that special song.

Then they appeared at the theatre in Paignton and I took Amy along. She can't have yet been two at the time but, at the end of one of their songs, they invited me to bring her up on stage. I also went to see them with Amy when they were appearing in Fowey in Cornwall. I walked into their dressing room and they all stripped off naked in front of me as they changed into their stage outfits. It took me by surprise. When I'd been part of the group, we'd never have done that! But now they seemed completely natural about it. They were living life at a faster pace and they had to change at high speed between songs.