Bernadette Nolan, who has died aged 52, was the lead vocalist with The Nolans, a group of Irish singing sisters and one of the original girl bands; their 1979 hit I’m In The Mood For Dancing became a classic in the disco boom of the early 1980s.
Renowned for their spangled flares, platform shoes, big hair and perky wholesomeness, The Nolans began performing together in 1974 and had a string of hits between 1978 and 1984. At the outset they formed a quintet comprising Anne, Linda, Denise, Maureen and Bernadette, but in 1980 they became a quartet when Anne and Denise stood down and their youngest sister, Coleen, joined the group.
Originally billed as The Nolan Sisters, they were rebranded The Nolans and sold 25 million records worldwide (12 million in Japan, where they outsold The Beatles) and earned more than 20 gold, silver and platinum discs with albums and singles including Gotta Pull Myself Together and Attention To Me.
They toured with Frank Sinatra in 1975 and performed with artists such as Tom Jones, Cliff Richard, Stevie Wonder and Andy Williams. But when Denise left and Anne took a two-year break to have a family, the remaining four sisters were stricken with a series of misfortunes — sickness, infidelities, bitter feuds and bereavements — which played out in the tabloid press and several tell-all autobiographies. They toured for the last time in 1984, and although they continued to sing and perform they also pursued successful careers in television and on stage.
The rift endured, in one form or another, for more than three decades. Bernie, as she was always known, finally left the group in 1994 to launch an acting career following her success in the stage play The Devil Rides Out a year earlier.
“I am the nutter of the family,” she told an interviewer. “We’re all quite funny, but I’m loud and funny. I do everything the others don’t — I drink, I smoke (well, I’m trying to give up), I stay out late, I have sex. So what? Of course I don’t like the idea of one-night stands, but I’ve got no ties, so I can do what I like. I get really infuriated with the goody-goody Catholic girls image.”
She maintained that the group was not as wealthy as it should have been because they had signed a bad record deal. “It was very hard to accept our decline. We’ve done shows where they’ve said: 'Glad you came — we couldn’t get the group we really wanted.’ I wish things were still the way they used to be.” To try to replicate their explosion on to the pop scene more than a quarter of a century earlier, she and her sisters Maureen, Linda and Coleen signed up in 2008 for a lucrative reunion tour.
The eldest sister, Anne, was excluded by the tour’s producers, prompting her to accuse her siblings of “stabbing me in the back”.
“They could have had five of us on stage. They have had in the past,” Anne complained. “And let’s face it, even Nolans fans don’t know what sister sang on what hit. No one has a clue.”
Relations between the sisters deteriorated still further in 2010 after Bernie Nolan was diagnosed with breast cancer. The disease returned in 2012 and she was told that it was incurable. In her autobiography, Now And Forever, published in May this year , she admitted that the rift between the sisters was deeper then ever. Although she claimed to have made her peace with all five of her sisters before her death, it was clear that Anne and Denise remained estranged from Coleen and Linda, with Maureen apparently caught in the middle.
Bernadette Therese Nolan, always known as Bernie, was born on October 17 1960 in Dublin. Her parents, Tommy and Maureen Nolan, a husband and wife singing duo, would have two sons and five other daughters – Anne, Denise, Maureen, Linda and Coleen. “It got to the stage,” Bernie, the second youngest, once said, “where they didn’t talk about whether the new baby was going to be a boy or a girl but whether they could sing.”
The girls were still young when the family moved to Blackpool and they started singing together professionally as a family troupe, performing in pubs and clubs and on television. Their 1979 hit I’m In The Mood For Dancing epitomised their feel-good brand of music and brought them enormous chart success.
But beneath the upbeat image, the Nolan family was a troubled one. Although none of the other sisters knew it, throughout their early years their violent, drunken father had sexually abused Anne. When she was 16 he suggested they run away and live as man and wife.
Anne told the others only after Tommy Nolan’s death in 1998. She later recounted her experiences in a book, Anne’s Song (2008); but although Coleen had found her a publisher Anne maintained that — apart from Denise — her other sisters were not supportive. Bernie, in particular, did not approve of her sister’s decision to parade the family’s scandal. “I personally wouldn’t have made that public,” she argued, “I’d have kept it private.”
Anne’s marriage ended in 1997, and in the same year Coleen split from the EastEnders actor Shane Richie. Soon afterwards Anne was diagnosed with breast cancer. Having been cleaning and child-minding for Coleen to make ends meet, she believed her exclusion from the 2008 comeback tour was the result of a petty argument she had had with Coleen’s husband, Ray Fensome. In the resulting family meltdown, Bernie asserted that Anne would have retained more self-esteem had she kept her troubles to herself.
By then Bernie Nolan’s acting career was well under way. In 2000 She had joined the cast of the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside as Diane Murray, having starred to critical acclaim in a West End revival of Willy Russell’s musical Blood Brothers. Two years later she left Brookside to play Sgt Sheelagh Murphy in ITV’s police drama series The Bill. In 2005 she released her debut solo album of power ballads, All By Myself.
In 2006 she took part in Channel 4’s series The Games, returning to the live stage in 2009 to play the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella at the Manchester Opera House.
In 2007 three of the Nolans were included in the Guinness Book of Records for each playing the lead role in Blood Brothers (Bernie in 1999, Linda in 2000 and Denise in 2003, all at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh). Bernie also starred as Mama Morton in a touring version of the musical Chicago in 2012, and later that year announced the Nolans’ farewell tour.
Bernie Nolan married, in 1996, the drummer Steve Doneathy, who survives her with their 14 -year-old daughter, Erin.
Bernadette Nolan, born October 17 1960, died July 4 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment