In Australia for the Countdown tour, which is pulling together an impressive line up of 80’s artists, Samantha Fox is in her hotel room in Sydney getting used to the country she hasn’t visited for ten years. Now on a flashback tour with her contemporaries, she wonders whether Australia will take Sam Fox back into our hearts again like in the mid ‘80s and early ‘90s. “Hopefully this album (Angel With An Attitude) will become a hit and then I’ll come back and do my own tour,” she says with hope.
Sam will only perform two hit singles during the Countdown tour, which had only happened in Newcastle as we spoke. One is Touch Me (I Want Your Body), the song that launched her to the top of the charts right around the world in ’86 when she was just 20, the other is Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me), a follow-up single released the same year. “I come off after Touch Me and I’m just warming up!” she says, slightly despairingly. “I’m like, oooh, I wanna go back! I just love performing.”
Sam says she won’t ever get tired of singing Touch Me though, which featured her looking very foxy in a video wearing ripped jeans, a denim jacket with sleeves rolled up and big, blow-waved hair. “It’s my first number one, and I can’t ever forget that time,” she says. “I’ll never get bored with singing it. The fans absolutely love it.” In fact, with the song turning 20 last year, Sam has personally commissioned a range of producers to remix it to new form: “There’s all sorts being done,” she says. “There’s one real naughty one coming out which we’ll call the Blue Mix,” (a reference to blue videos, which in ‘80s video stores meant R- or X-rated sex videos). She has also commissioned versions from uber club brands Hed Kandi and Ministry of Sound, and young Latino-Swiss talent Santiago Cortes: “I liked his the best,” she says.
But Sam has come a long way since the raunchy yet innocent days of Touch Me and the page three modeling in The Sun tabloid which preceded it. There have been many bust ups with men, including her father and two fiancées, but apart from a two year break urged on by her manager turned lesbian lover, Myra Stratton, Sam has never been far from music. In fact, she arrives in Australia armed with a new album, Angel With An Attitude, which was released in England in 2005, but re-released this year with Santiago’s Touch Me remix and a bonus track called Time.
“Angel With An Attitude was the first song I wrote and that was because I went through a really bad court case with my father,” she admits. “I just felt like I couldn’t trust anybody and I felt quite paranoid. I met my manager, Myra, and she saw a lot of sadness in me. She said, ‘You should take two years off’ which was great because managers usually say, ‘Right, get out there, let’s make some money’, but she really cared about me. That’s when I really started to write these lyrics for Angel With An Attitude – she’s like my angel, really. She really helped me spread my wings again and be the person that I was.” Sam admits to writing lyrics every day, even while she’s in Australia on the Countdown tour. “I’m a mature woman and I’ve had a past, and all the experiences that I’ve had have made me grow up,” she says. “I started writing my autobiography about 10 years ago and I was writing with a ghost writer, and it was like writing it with a counselor,” she laughs, “Not that I’ve ever sat with one, touch wood! But as I was talking to him the lyrics for the album came very easy. I wanted it to be truthful, and I wanted people to know the real me.”
The publicist for the Countdown tour said not to ask Sam about her private life, but when Sam finally does open up about being a lesbian she talks beautifully about discovering true love with Myra. She also offers advice for other bisexuals who might find themselves loving someone of the same sex. “When I met Myra I just knew – the love was overwhelming, you know?” she admits. “It was a love that I’ve never felt before. I’ve never wanted to be labeled. My love life and my private life have always been quite personal to me. The only advice I can give to anyone out there is when you feel like that, take it and make it happen and don’t lose it. Don’t think you’re going through a phase”.
Sam also offers advice for girls who want to get into the modeling or music business, at a time of constant dramas starring IT-girls Paris, Britney or Lindsay Lohan. “I remember when I first got on the scene, if I was in a club and I had a glass of champagne and the paparazzi came over, I would put it behind my back,” she laughs, “There are a lot of pictures of me with me hands behind me back! If you want to look good at 41 you’ve got to look after yourself: you need to exercise, you need to have a nutricious diet. Yeah, I like to party, but I party when I’m not working, everything in moderation. Just steer clear of drugs and be careful with alcohol, because I saw my dad go down that route,” she warns.
The results can be very rewarding, if Sam’s own career is anything to go by: “I used to get a lot of underpants thrown at me,” she says. “These days I’m getting a lot of bras!”
At 41, what’s not to love about Samantha Fox?
Download the audio interview here [5MB].
Angel With An Attitude is out now on Liberation.
Countdown Tour dates are as follows:
Tuesday 21 August – Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Friday 24 August – Sydney Acer Arena
Tuesday 28 August – Hobart Derwent Entertainment Centre
Thursday 30 August – Melbourne Rod Laver Arena
Sunday 2 September – Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Wednesday 5 September – Perth Burswood Dome
Tickets through Ticketek.
Watch the clip for Touch Me here.
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