Portal Melanie C || www.melaniec.com.br ||

Melanie’s mom, Joan, always wanted to be a singer. From ever since she was 14 she became a member of bands such as Exemption, Petticoat and Vine and The Ken Phillips New Era Dance Band. She even formed the band Love Potion with Stan Alexander who got to record two CDs under Polydor.

According to a few sources Joan met Alan Chisholm during a Beatle’s concert at the Cavern Club. They got married and in 1973 Joan found out she was pregnant, so she had to put her singing career on hold for a bit.

On January 12th 1974 on a Saturday, Joan gave birth to a beautiful girl at Whiston Hospital in Liverpool. The city is located at Lanchashire County, by the Mersey river, England. The baby was named Melanie Jayne Chisholm and the name "Melanie" has Greek origin and means “black”.

When she was 3 years old, someone pulled a chair near little Mel’s crib and she knocked her forehead. That left a cut that needed stitches. Social services were called to investigate what happened afraid that Joan and Alan might have beaten Melanie up.

In 1977 Melanie got on stage for the first time singing "Oh I Like To Be Beside The Seaside" with a lot of dancing.

Unfortunately, Alan Chisholm wanted Joan to stop singing so she could be at home full time what made both of them decide to get divorced. Joan moved to Widnes taking her daughter with her.

Joan got a job as a secretary at the City Hall. Unfortunately Widnes wasn’t a pleasant place for a child to grow, as it was the typical industrial city in England: brown, full of industries and powerhouses.

Joan rented a council state apartment and met Dennis O’Neill, a taxi driver that also loves to write and sing rock songs. Whereas Alan used to go out with Melanie and take her to several countries through Europe as he worked in a travel agency.

Joan married Dennis O’Neill who already had a son called Jarrod. They all went to live in a new house, including Melanie.

In 1979 on Melanie’s first day of school at Southgates Infant School she had to be taken to the nursery. A few days before she’d fallen off Jarrod’s bike (he was older than her), and bruised her knee. The bruise got worse when she was at school.

Also in 1979 Joan got pregnant again. On December 31st that year Paul O’Neill was born. Paul is Dennis' son and Melanie’s half-brother.

Melanie started taking dance classes in 1982 with the teacher Olwen Grounds. She also began to dedicate to gymnastics.

At that time Melanie didn’t have much friends because most of the girls were mad at her for doing ballet and saying that she would like to be famous when she’d grow up. That’s why her most favourite thing was to play with her cats. One day Joan found her daughter in the garage sharing the cats’ meal with them: Whiskas! One of those cats was a female called Snow, Melanie’s favourite.

Melanie used to play soccer and with her Sindy dolls and started to get compliments for her hard work at school. At the ballet classes she made 2 friends called Rachel and Alison and the friendship exists until today.

When they were kids Paul used to give Melanie nicknames, and fight with her a lot. But he was never a bad brother: “I remember, once, at the end of her fifth year at school, when she’d just been made a prefect, she came home crying. She’d been beaten up by some silly girls who were jealous of her because she was so talented. It happened in the field near our house, so I went over there

on my bike, looking for them, but I didn’t find them. I was fuming.”

Melanie already thought Paul had talent to be a pilot from early age: she encouraged him to get behind a car wheel when he was 8! And at Paul’s 11th birthday Mel gave him a racing calendar. Today he is a famous pilot on British Touring Cars Championship!

Melanie became Madonna’s and Neneh Chery’s fan. She got a permanent in her hair and began to use the dollar symbol hanging on her neck just like Neneh Cherry.

Mel also started a serious relationship with her friend Ryan Wilson.

At age 16 Melanie finished her studies and got a scholarship to graduate in dancing at Doreen Bird Performing Arts College in Kent. In order to do so, Melanie moved to Kent and left her family in Widnes.

After she graduated Melanie started to work as a backing vocal and in other jobs such as sheets collector in hotels and as waitress in a fish-and-chips store.

In September 1993 Melanie watched her first big concert: Madonna with The Girlie Show tour in England.

Melanie was 20, had just finished college in London and was unemployed. A lot of times Mel had to take food from the supermarket without paying for them. She told The Observer: "I took the ones almost out of date".

Melanie enrolled to auditions for the cast of Heathcliff and Cats. The last one was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber who also created Jesus Christ Superstar and Phantom of The Opera.

One day walking by the streets Melanie saw a flyer with an ad for the creation of a band with only girl members. The ad was originally published on The Stage magazine on February 24th 1994 by the managers Bob and Chris Herbert. The original said:

"Wannabe starlets? Ru 18-23 with the ability to sing/dance? Ru streetwise, outgoing, ambitious and dedicated? Heart Management Ltd. are currently forming a choreographed, singing/dancing all female pop act for a recording act. Open audition, dance works, 16 Balderton Street, friday 4th march."

She didn’t second guess and went to the auditions at Balderton Street.

Melanie already was one of the five finalists to the musical Cats but couldn’t attend the final auditions because of a tonsillitis that left her without any voice.

She was dismissed from Heathcliff and Cats, and Bob and Chris Herbert had already formed the girl group with Lianne Morgan, Michelle Stephenson, Melanie Brown, Geri Halliwell e Victoria Adams.

Bob and Chris decided to take Lianne off the group as she looked older against the other girls.

Then, Bob and Chris Herbert gave Mel a second chance after her mother Joan called them and asked for it. So they gathered her with Michelle Stephenson, Melanie Brown, Geri Halliwell and Victoria Adams to form the group Touch.

Michelle decided to leave the group due to her mother’s illness. She was replaced with one of their vocal coach's (Pepi Lemer) pupils and friend of Victoria, Emma Bunton.

On June 6th 1994 Bob and Chris took the girls to a hotel.

They moved to a simple house in Maidenhead, a suburb in London. There they wrote 35 songs and trained to their own choreographies. Unhappy with the ideas and authority behaviors from the Herberts they cut relationship with them. They were now 5 girls without any manager.

At that time the girls got warnings concerning their weight from several people from the music industry. Geri, Mel C and Victoria started dieting and overdoing exercises.

It was in a gym session that Geri and Mel C realised that Spice would be a much more appropriate name for the group than Touch. As a rapper at the time was already using the name they added the “Girls”. Touch became Spice Girls.

The Spice Girls didn’t have neither managers nor contacts in the music industry, which meant they had to play the artist, marketing and press parts themselves. For a long time the girls literally had to run after journalists in an attempt to show to the media that their work was something good.

The biggest challenge for the Spice Girls at the time was to prove that there was space in the showbiz for different things besides boy bands that ruled the pop scenery. Several recording companies rejected the band’s songs.

Noticing that they would never achieve their goals without the help of a manager the 5 girls made a deal with Simon Fuller, the boss of 19 Management.

In May 1995 they made a demo tape with their recordings at Trinity Studio get to Fuller’s hands. Next they broke into the manager’s office saying that he was the right guy to make them stars. By getting together with the Spice Girls Simon didn’t make the same mistake as Bob and Chris Herbert. The new deal would be more like a partnership than the military scheme adopted by Bob and Chris.