Sporty Spice looked back on performing at V99 Festival during her early years as a solo act in a new interview with 'The Guardian'
Credit: Roy Rochlin/Getty; James Arnold – PA Images/PA Images via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- In a new The Guardian interview, Melanie C recalled performing a Sex Pistols cover at V99 Festival in 1999 and facing a tough crowd response
- She shared how her fame with the Spice Girls made casual outings impossible due to intense tabloid and paparazzi scrutiny
- Melanie C is preparing to release her new album Sweat on Friday, May 1
Melanie C is looking back at the early years of her solo career.
In a new interview with The Guardian, Sporty Spice answered questions submitted by fans about her career and shared a wild anecdote from her experience performing at V99 Festival in Chelmsford, England, in 1999.
The topic arose as a fan asked about a memory of Melanie C (born Melanie Chisholm) performing a cover of the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." and changing the opening lyric to "I am an antichrist, I am a Sporty Spice."
Credit: John Nacion/Variety via Getty
"This happened. When I was in L.A. doing Northern Star, I met Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols," she recalled of her debut album era in 1999. "At the time, he was in a band called the Neurotic Outsiders and they had a residency at the Viper Room."
Melanie C, 52, continued, "They’d play every week and invite people to go on stage. People like Billy Idol would get up and one week they got me up and I did a couple of Sex Pistols songs. So I incorporated it in my set."
The Spice Girls alum performed the song at V99, which she described as "a baptism of fire."
"I went in completely and utterly naïvely and I did receive quite a few bottles," she said of the experience. "There might have been some urine."
Elsewhere in the interview, Melanie C spoke about realizing she could no longer go out casually after the Spice Girls formed in the mid-'90s and quickly found success.
"That was the thing, although all of my wildest dreams were coming true through being part of the Spice Girls, real life was put on hold," she explained. "The schedule was brutal. There was very little time for socializing."
Credit: Tim Roney/Getty
Melanie C added, "Also, you remember those times in the '90s, right? The tabloid media and paparazzi were on you like a hawk. So we were terrified. Anything we ever did was usually published in a newspaper, so in our downtime we tried to keep it low key."
The star is gearing up to release her new album, Sweat, on Friday, May 1.
Read the full article here
