| 'I hadn't discovered that I had a singing voice until that date. I
learned the songs first from him and not from Billie Holiday. It's
quite bizarre and maybe that explains why I don't sound like her. A lot
of people end up sounding like the first person that sort of influenced
them and somehow fell into singing. I found out that people would come
back and seeing us perform at pop clubs, northern clubs, you name it,
every dodgy venue in the country I probably played at some point or
other.' |
The next stage saw Sarah Jane working as a paste-up artist for a graphic design company and answering an ad in
Melody Maker for a singer with an Italian group which had an American deal and needed either an English or American singer to front the band. At the
time it was a Blues/Blues-Rock band called Panama but by the time she
arrived in Italy it had become a Heavy-Rock band and changed its name to
Wop Avenue. She lived in an apartment attached to the drummer's
incredible architect-designed house built into the rock overlooking
Florence.
| 'He was a hermit; he came out at night; he didn't really surface in the
daytime. It was miles from anywhere, and I didn't speak any Italian.
They would come for me when we had a concert, and I would be forgotten
in-between. It was a strange arrangement, but I had an Italian
boyfriend and that seemed to rescue me a little. It got worse when I
tripped up the iron staircase going to my apartment one day and broke
all the tendons around my kneecap just before we were about to start a
tour. So, they whipped me off to this private hospital. They plastered
me up rather than operate - I should have been operated on, and I did
this tour with plaster from my ankle to above my knee and developed a
very, very peculiar dance which has stayed with me ever since. When I
dance today my band calls me a "constipated octopus." After about
six months I was very, very homesick, hadn't learned any Italian and
really wanted to get back home, partly to get my visa because the band
were signing a deal with Atlantic Records in America.' |
She returned home and did a runner:
| 'I moved many, many times and never went back to Wop Avenue, so to
speak. There are these tapes around somewhere. One was called Peaches in My Pockets…' |
