An interview with Marcella Puppini

Here is an interview with the lovely Marcella Puppini that I wrote for 3Sixty magazine in 2008.

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After two albums, a world tour and a Gold Disc with her 1940s-style harmony group The Puppini Sisters, Marcella Puppini is (temporarily) taking a radical new direction. With the eight-piece Forget-Me-Nots Orchestra, Marcella is currently writing Chelsea Songs for the Chelsea Theatre’s experimental Sacred season: a fascinating fusion of music and theatre, where her love of showbiz legend meets ‘ordinary’ London life head-on.

“The Forget Me Nots was an idea I had three years ago,” says Marcella. “I wanted a group that allowed me to write more operatic, melodramatic songs, which the Puppini Sisters didn’t. We performed at [burlesque venue] The Whoopee Club and it worked perfectly. About a year ago, Francis from the Chelsea Theatre approached me, which inspired me to revive the Forget-Me-Nots to create Chelsea Songs.”

The songs are based on stories Marcella is still collecting from Chelsea residents, past and present, set to music with influences ranging from Jacques Brel and Kurt Weill via Pedro Almodóvar’s Talk to Her soundtrack to Tom Waits and Nick Cave.

“What I love about Cave and Waits is that their songs are stories – they could be prose and they would be just as interesting,” says Marcella. “The Puppini Sisters have a song, And She Sang, which is like a mini-novel. So I decided to collect stories from people connected to the area – the Chelsea theatre commissioned me to create a piece of performance art, which I’ve never done before, which they wanted to include the Chelsea community. I really wanted to do a show like this – and I’m glad it’s about Chelsea because it’s an amazing area.”

Chelsea was crucial to the hippy and punk movements – British punk was born at the Sex boutique, run by Malcolm McLaren and Marcella’s former employer Vivienne Westwood at 430 King’s Road. Adam Ant, Chrissie Hynde and the Sex Pistols frequented the shop – alongside no end of fashion victims (parodied in The Television Personalities’ ingenious song, Part-Time Punks).

However, the King’s Road subcultures aren’t featuring strongly at the moment, says Marcella. “I tried to get Vivienne to speak to me but she has her manifesto and wouldn’t give me the time. I’ve not given up. I’m also speaking to Marco Pirroni from Adam and the Ants and Seventies and Eighties teens.

“Not all the stories I’ve gathered would make good songs. I heard some terrible stories: a Russian lady told me stories I couldn’t repeat. It’s still in progress, though, so it may be very different by early May. I entered the project with a completely open mind, so whatever comes to me will come.”

The Puppini Sisters have a huge gay following, even inspiring a transgender tribute act – surely Chelsea Songs will feature plenty of sexually diverse people? After all, Marc Almond, Quentin Crisp and Neil Tennant all hung out in West London, and gay, lesbian and transgender people were far more involved in London’s early punk scene than you might think – one interviewee in Jon Savage’s punk history, England’s Dreaming, said that for her, the movement was about “camping it up down Park Lane with a bunch of trannies”.

“Actually, there are no LGBT people in the show as yet!” laments Marcella. “I don’t know anyone who’s gay in Chelsea right now! I was really heartbroken to see my favourite shop in the King’s Road, Steinberg and Tolkien, had closed – the owners were a gay couple, who’d been going to the Chelsea Theatre for years. It was the best vintage clothes shop in London.

“It’s hard to get people to give up their stories. I’m scared – time is flying! The show is by no means finished, but I’m really excited about what I have, especially the song I wrote after reading Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. That struck me, because the Puppini Sisters are so immersed in Hollywood culture, past and present. I was captivated by the stories of girls going to Hollywood to make a fortune and it ending horribly – I was moved by the story of a girl who killed herself by throwing herself off a ‘HOLLYWOOD’ letter.

“Monster Mae is named after a chapter in Anger’s book about Mae West – the song’s not about her but I loved the title. It’s about a girl who gets sucked in and used, and becomes a raging murderer. I don’t know what it’s got to do with Chelsea, but I love it and it’s going in!”

However, Marcella has found one strong link between Chelsea and Hollywood that she hopes will become an important number. “I was told Ingrid Bergman died alone in Chelsea, and I’m trying to discover more – there’s something fascinating about her spending her last days alone here.”

Marcella hopes to involve another actress: Anita Pallenberg, who studied with her years after playing The Great Tyrant in Barbarella – and her love of fashion, classic Hollywood and performance art will produce a truly eclectic show, constantly evolving until its opening night.

“Salvatore Ferrino, a talented opera costume designer and artist, made the costumes. I wanted a cross between Miss Faresham, from Great Expectations, and a futuristic warrior – he said he had just the thing! The Orchestra look like beautiful corpses – like those in my favourite novel, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

“I’ve asked Marisa Carnesky, who started with Duckie, to narrate,” says Marcella, who played several parts in Carnesky’s Ghost Train ride, which took people through performances of stories from Eastern Europe migrants. “There were some horrific stories – people hiding in mattresses, or disappearing.”

Like The Ghost Train, Chelsea Songs will feature some thought-provoking tales. “One of the most interesting stories came from a girl at the Women’s Refuge. She was a 26-year-old Ghanaian, who’d come to London as a teenager, having been abused by her father. She worked as a lapdancer for years, but she still resembled a dreamy 16-year-old. She said, “I love Chelsea because it’s so rich.” Which is what I hate about it! The opulence gave her security, which I found fascinating.”

So whose stories will become the Chelsea Songs? To find out, you’ll just have to see Marcella at the Chelsea Theatre on the King’s Road, London, on 1-2 May. See www.chelseatheatre.org.uk for more details.