"We always had a running joke that men took over when you work with them, but I'm certainly not trying to prove any great feminist point"
(VA, NME 10-9-83)
"My first group, The Ravishing Beauties, was formed to promote Virginia Astley's
first record"
( Kate St John )
"I had done the record and I was really bored and me and Nicky went up to
Liverpool to see the Club Zoo that the Teardrop Explodes were running there"
(Virginia Astley, Walters Weekly BBC Radio one, March 1982)
"Virginia had always wanted to have a synthesiser group called The Raving
Beauties,but this was years ago and had been totally dropped. And when Bill Drummond,
who's the Teardrops manager said,"You can play in Liverpool if you've got a name",
Gini said as a big joke "The Raving Beauties"and he misheard it and he went back
to the record company and said "Oh yes,these 3 girls are going to come up called
The Ravishing Beauties" and it just sort of stuck"
(Nicky Holland,Walters Weekly BBC Radio one, March 1982)
"The Club Zoo, that really cold winter in Liverpool"
(VA, Melody Maker 14-9-85)
"I was set for a classical
career on the oboe,but knew deep down I wasn't cut out for it. So when I was asked
to join the Ravishing Beauties, dump the frumpy clothes and go on tour, I was
hooked"
(KSJ, Telegraph magazine 1997)
"Because of the way we started,going live and doing that tour,I never really
thought about the way I'd be on stage or the way I'd appear"
(VA, NME 21-8-82)
"We got drunk a lot and I loved being on stage and improvising"
(KSJ, Telegraph magazine 1997)
"We became very close with the Teardrop Explodes and supported them on tour,
just the three of us and a Revox with the backing tracks on it, which were usually
cued up wrong"
(NH, Epic Records Press Release 1992)
"We wore identical suede dresses with holes in them,known
as teabags, and sang terribly sad songs. Between the songs was complete chaos
and embarrassed laughter,mainly from the three of us"
(NH, Epic Records Press Release 1992)
"It became a comedy act you know" (KSJ, Telegraph magazine 1997)
"If the Ravishing Beauties had been three blokes, we'd have had it. It was
totally to our advantage that we've been three girls"
(VA, Melody Maker 8-1-83)
"We're not degrading ourselves. If we were going for the sex symbol market,
we could dress up in split skirts and stockings. Alternatively,we could dress
up in boiler suits and then be labelled feminists. Why do women in groups have
to be labelled?. The name of the group itself is meant to show up the stupidity
of labels"
(NH, NME Feb 82 )
"The beauty of the Ravishing Beauties was that we didn't know what we were
doing. A lot of things just happened, and we developed quite a cult following
playing everywhere from punk clubs to classical recital halls"
(NH, Epic Records Press Release 1992)
"The Purcell Room's was bad in that way because we started to get a very cliquey
little audience and I don't like that at all"
(VA, Melody Maker 8-1-83 )
"It's
horrible to think that people might think that you're being twee when you're not
at all"
(VA, NME 21-8-82)
"It was great fun at first but then we got branded with this tag of mixing
classical and pop and we never really lived it down"
(VA, NME 10-9-83)
"We were very natural at first and it just seemed to get more and more contrived
as it went along"
(VA, Melody Maker 8-1-83)
"We never had time to find an identity of our own, so we just became what
we were labelled. We began to pander to this awful thing that the Ravishing Beauties
had become and it totally depressed me"
(VA, NME 10-9-83)
"We could never really take the group anywhere because I was signed to Why-Fi,
and neither Kate nor Nicola were prepared to sign with them"
(VA, NME 10-9-83)
"It got unpleasant and we'd be rowing beforehand and then go out and smile
on stage"
(VA, Melody Maker 8-1-83)
"The whole thing had reached a gloomy stalemate. We just use to argue and
sulk all the time and it just became impossible to go on"
(VA, NME 10-9-83)
"It was good that we went out and played live, but we could never really have
taken it any further than we did in those six months"
(VA, NME 10-9-83)
"It was quite short really,but it was quite good. Thinking back, I think of
it nicely"
(VA, Melody Maker 14-9-85)
