"I first glimpsed Siobhan Fahey at my publisher's offices. Later that day, when I was being interviewed by Smash Hits, I told the interviewer: I really fancy Siobhan from Bananarama. The next night, she was at our concert, at the front. I remember saying to my bandmates Ken and Dave McCluskey: I'm gonna get off with her. We met in the car park and liked each other."
"One night, we were lying in bed watching the Frank Sinatra film Young at Heart, one of my dad's favourites, and talking about our backgrounds. Siobhan is Irish but her father was in the British army, so she'd moved around and changed schools a lot. I think she had just wanted to escape, so we started writing lyrics about how her parents had got married young to have sex and have kids, because that's what people did then."
"It was the first time since I'd left home that I also realised what our parents had done for us, which fed into the line: How come I love them now? How come I love them more? / When all I wanted to do when I was old was to walk out the door? Bananarama recorded Young at Heart, but their version didn't quite have whatever their big hits had at the time. Our record company boss Roger Ames suggested the Bluebells record it."
A chance encounter with Siobhan Fahey led to a romantic relationship and close living arrangements with Bananarama. Conversations and a shared viewing of Young at Heart inspired lyrics about parents marrying young and the songwriter's changing feelings toward his parents. Bananarama recorded the song but did not achieve major success with it. The record company suggested the Bluebells record the track, with session fiddler Bobby Valentino and Lawrence Donegan providing a standout bassline. The song reached No 8 in 1984 and, after use in a car advert nine years later, spent four weeks at No 1; the pope criticized the lyrics as promoting divorce.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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