Original Bananarama line-up announces first US tour

LONDON — It took a kitchen sing-song to get ’80s British pop group Bananarama back together and out on the road after 30 years.

The girl group’s original members — Sarah Dallin, Keren Woodward and Siobhan Fahey — say they are touring the U.S. for the first time in February.

Fahey left the band in 1988 to form Shakespears Sister, and Dallin and Woodward have been performing as a duo in recent years. They were joined briefly by Jacquie O’Sullivan, who took part in a 1989 world tour but left in 1991.

“We were having a dance around Siobhan’s kitchen a few years ago,” Woodward told The Associated Press in an interview. “And I said to her, ‘you just don’t understand the love and how it feels when you are getting your songs sung’ and I just thought it was such a shame she had never experienced it with us and it just seemed like such a crying shame really.”

Fahey, who now lives in Los Angeles, said she was excited to perform the band’s songs live.

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“I am re-familiarizing myself with our body of work over the summer,” she said. “I was so proud, it is really something to celebrate.”

Rehearsals began this week and tickets go on sale Friday. Some British tour dates have already sold out.

“It has been a constant love wave actually this time around. Times have changed and people seem to appreciate us a lot more this time,” says Fahey.

Bananarama’s stateside success began with “Cruel Summer” of 1983, which became a hit after the track was picked to appear on the soundtrack for “Karate Kid.”

The group said it realized how big the song had become when Mike Tyson once sang the lyrics to them as they walked past him in his limo.

Further hits included “Venus,” ”I Heard A Rumor” and “Robert DeNiro’s Waiting,” which led to a London meeting with the Oscar-winning actor.

The group was once named by the Guinness World Records as the most successful girl group of all time.

The group’s North American tour begins in Los Angeles on 20 February, taking in San Francisco, New York and Toronto, Canada.

Hilary Fox, The Associated Press