Victoria Perks On Fuzzbox Fame And The Book That Sparked A New Era

My career in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent.
Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects.
Industry professionals, whether famous stars or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell.
Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories.
This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information on how they evolved into their chosen career.
We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals.
Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment.
Hi, I'm Tony Mantor.
Welcome to Almost Live Nashville.
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Thanks for being here.
Joining us today is Victoria Perks of the band Fuzzbox, an artist whose journey goes far beyond the music.
She's built something real, something raw, and something that speaks to people in a way that sticks with you.
Today she will take us behind the scenes, sharing her story, the inspiration and heart behind her book, and what's coming next for her and the band as they continue to evolve and push forward.
This is one of those conversations that go deeper than the surface.
She has a great story to tell us.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
Appreciate you, having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure.
Let's give the listeners a little background on your journey and what's coming up next for you.
Okay, well, my sort of main background that people might know was obviously FuzzBox.
We've got FuzzBots and we're going to use an all-girl band from Birmingham, England that we did really well, so formed for a bit of a laugh and ended up having chart hits and touring a lot of the world.
So that was really great.
Fuzzbox is a funny thing.
It just keeps sort of popping up every few years and things happen again.
Yeah.
We've had a few reunions, which have all been fantastic.
Nice.
Latest exciting.
I've got my book here.
Is the the book, the biography, which is very, very bright and colourful.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, that's kind of kicked off a whole new, maybe an era.
A lot of things are falling into play at the moment for live shows.
We've done a fuzz cast, which is like a podcast, but we've called it a fuzz cast in front of a live audience.
Those are already up on Spotify.
Um, yeah, some exciting.
And then I'll do still doing all my own well-being stuff, which is happy like oh nice.
Um solo music.
I'm always curious when a band has a very unique name, which of course yours does.
Now I know the history behind it, but if you would tell our listening audience exactly how that name came to be.
Okay, so it's just a it was a statement about a fuzzbox.
So we've got a fuzzbox and we're going to use it.
But a fuzzbox is a pedal for a guitar or a bass, and it makes you go fuzzy, obviously.
I will say that in America they have particular problems with that, and so that's kind of why our name was never officially changed to fuzzbox.
Okay.
It was cut down a lot, and particularly they would not have the full name as time went on, maybe like early days, but then no, you cannot be called we've got a fuzzbox, we're gonna use it as an all-female band.
They thought that was great, but we were only schoolgirls, we we knew nothing.
It became one of those things that we like thought it was quite cool once we realized, but it was just an innocent comment because every trap in the early days had a fuzzbox on it, the guitar or the bass, everything had a fuzzbox on.
Yeah, take us back there.
There weren't many all-female bands at that time, especially in the UK and the US.
What was that experience like for you?
And you did that journey because you wound up here in the US as well.
Yeah.
We hadn't intended to be in all-girl bands.
Okay.
So it was never, you know, we weren't manufactured, it wasn't considered, there was no plan.
We were just like mates.
Three of us were at school together, so we were friends, and then two of sisters.
It was just a really organic thing that we thought would be really fun to pretend we had a band, volunteered to support a friend's band, and then before we knew it, we were like signed up at the second gig by a local label, and and off we went.
So, you know, that wasn't intentional, but once we realized we were an all-girl band, we felt really, you know, we kind of felt like we were holding this torch or banner, you know, and and and ran with it.
Sure.
We did get treated very differently.
I mean, the interview questions, I'm sure, were extremely yeah, it was just like really banal.
It was always about how do you decide who wears which colour lipstick?
You argue over boyfriends.
Yeah, it's just like, oh my gosh, really?
Mind a little bit of that, but then it's like talk the music, how about that?
So the songs and how we write the songs or who plays what, you know.
Sure.
And it was uh quite misogynistic.
I don't know how much it's changed if I'm honest.
When you look back at your journey and the legacy you and the band created, especially breaking through the way you did at that time, what kind of feeling does that give you today?
I f I do feel really, really proud, actually, Tony.
I it's like not only an all-girl band who played instruments, and we always wanted to distinguish ourselves from vocal groups.
Not that there's anything wrong with it, but we were not a vocal group.
We were a band who played instruments, and that was what a real distinguishing thing.
But also the fact that we were from Birmingham because it's a second city in England, it's always sort of demoted.
Even now, it's kind of people laugh about the accent, they put you down, they think you might be a bit thick, they think you're not very cultured.
You know, other cities such as Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, they're always put above Birmingham.
Right.
But Birmingham for us has such a rich and still has a rich cultural heritage and amazing place to grow up in.
Sure.
Without that support locally and the diversity that comes from Birmingham, we wouldn't have been who we were.
So I think it's the fact that we were not only an all-girl band, you played instruments.
You know, we were from Birmingham, it was a disadvantage in that way.
Without even meaning to, we did rather well.
In a time when music had a pretty clear identity, you were doing something that stood out.
Did you run into resistance from labels of the industry trying to shape you into something more commercial?
Did that affect you at all?
Not so much in the early days because it was an indie label.
Okay.
We're an indie band, we were just kind of going with it, really.
So I don't remember there being any major sort of artistic or creative differences there.
They got us, you know, and we we got them, so we all got on really well.
When it went over to a major, part of it was absolutely fine.
I mean, obviously it's wonderful because you've got suddenly all of these designers and clothes designers and video makers and money, you know, that's sort of their producers that's there for you to use, but obviously.
At the end of the day, they're basically spending your money and you've got to pay it back at some point.
Right, exactly.
Well, it was so extravagant, terrible, really.
There was a lot of that because people's vision of us then, yeah, mainly over things like costumes and stuff.
I always really enjoyed dressing up.
I loved just, you know, I love the kind of the fittings and like when we were having shoulder pads in, I was like, can it fit any more?
If I'm gonna have shoulder pads, I want eight shoulder pads in each.
And I found it really fun.
And whilst I think we all found it fun, the others didn't like that as much, perhaps.
And I love being in the studio, I loved the photo sessions, I I really enjoyed a lot of it.
But some of the clothes that the record company would want us to wear were just absolutely horrific.
It was like there was this one, it was known as Roncho Deluxe, and that we were going to launch this range, and it was like awful, kind of like leather secretarial cowgirl.
Yeah.
It was really stiff and really like probably about 20 years too old for us at least.
There were issues like that, and also one of the main things is that we really wanted to tour with the second album when we were on a major and we we'd gone much more poppy because we still wanted to go out and prove actually, we could really play now.
When we first started, we literally picked up the instruments and just had a go, learned on stage mainly, like a lot of boy bands did though.
Loads of male bands weren't great when they started playing, that was okay, right?
You know, you you get that moniker as an all-girl band, can't sing, can't play.
But we wanted to go out and prove that actually we can all really play and sing really well now, and that never happened with the second album because the record company were always wanting us to do more and more promo.
We did go to the Farries, which was fantastic, but that was PAs.
I mean, I absolutely insisted on singing live.
I thought, at least let me sing live.
But the rest of the band had to like mime to backing track.
So that was never what we really wanted to be.
You just mentioned how you evolved.
Take us through that evolution.
How did your creative mindset shift from the early days of the band to when you were reaching a much bigger audience?
Yeah, I mean, the three of us were 15 when we start.
So the difference, even to when you're like 18, is massive.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, it really is.
And we were all changing a lot, you know, going in sort of different directions musically and our lives, you know, outside of us was were changing a lot.
So that was quite getting harder and harder to be a cohesive unit, you know, in terms of songwriting and style and so on.
There was a lot to learn from all these, you know, wonderful people that we work with, like the producers or the photographers.
And I suppose you learn that you have to think about it.
Sure.
It does become something that's not necessarily contrived, but I mean branding is just I think it's taken for red now, isn't it?
At one point, branding seemed to be a really like dirty word.
Yeah.
Only businesses and you know, products are like toothpaste that you thought about branding.
I think it's kind of accepted in a way now that we all have to think about, you know, we all have our own brand, I suppose.
You could put it that way.
So I think we had to think more about how we looked, how we sounded, you know, what we did, da da da.
So it'd be all become it takes some of the fun out of it.
Yeah, the business side certainly can change things for sure.
When you went from just enjoying it to realizing you had fans, hit records, and something real building, how did that shift your mindset and how did you approach it moving forward?
You had to go through more people.
Certainly couldn't be spontaneous.
Do that and pulling different, you know, like a friend who could take a few photos in, or my mum used to help me with make my clone in the early days.
So it's a l a lot more to think about and to plan.
As I said, a l I did enjoy a lot of it.
I thought it was really interesting and fun, and I didn't mind like doing like an eight-hour photo shoot, you know.
I just thought, well, this is how it is, and I kind of enjoyed the art of it.
Or sitting in a studio endlessly, you know, day after day, just listening to them sort of editing hi-hats.
I thought it was all really quite fascinating, but I did think more about like when you went out, how you looked, how you behave, and the other three really particularly didn't like that at all, didn't enjoy the fame part of it.
I mean, I'd never like sort of sought fame, but I'd always loved performing.
I think obviously it was more a natural fit for me.
Right.
And as things got more and more, you know, it kind of sometimes felt more like a job, I suppose, and we were tired, it could be really tiring and poor girls together, you know, hormonal and strong-minded.
It could be quite hard work.
Music sticks with people in a very personal way.
A lot of people tie music to moments in their lives, which we all do.
Have you ever had a fan share a story about how your music affected them in a very meaningful way?
A lot of times, actually.
I mean, people have actually said, your band, you know, made me go and do this, your band or that song.
I remember one time I was had another band, I think it was had an Americana band for a while called um Vixin' Her Mischiefs, which is absolutely a lovely band.
All girl band as well.
And we were doing a gig.
I was looking on this lovely jewellery stand and I was going to buy some of the jewelry.
And the chat went, hold on a minute, you're a singer from BuzzBots, are you?
Yeah, actually.
And he said, God, he said, your band made me want to completely change my life.
I was really unhappy, I was really depressed.
I was doing a really boring office job that I absolutely hated.
I was in an awful relationship, had no dreams or anything, and then I saw you girls, and I thought, God, I could get out and do something I really want to do.
And he learned how to do glass blowing.
Yeah, wow.
Making jewellery.
And it was exquisite, honestly.
It gave me some actually, which was really, really kind.
Yeah.
You know, it's like it's not life world-changing, but it's life-changing for someone.
Sometimes if you can just inspire somebody to do something that they really love.
I mean, I guess that's why I've gone on to do a lot of the things I do in my little business happy life, right?
As mentor, particularly a lot of teenagers, actually, because I remember that so well myself and how you need guidance.
Yeah, I just want to bring the best out in other people and help support them to try to follow their dreams, you know?
Sure.
Be as strong and resilient in yourself as you possibly can.
If someone was just discovering your band for the first time, what would you want them to listen to first?
Oh, do you know?
I think that the first album, Boston Steve Austin, I would go for rules and regulations.
Okay.
It's our first single, and it's I I wrote it, it's like my little rebellious anthem.
Yeah, there must be more to life, there must be more than this.
Then rules and regulations to command and obey.
And it's got lots of whimps and actually, I'm still a massive fan of a good week.
Yeah, it says a lot about exactly what we were doing, what we were thinking, and our attitude at the time.
So I think go for that.
And it's really fuzzy and it's nicely produced, although, like at the time we'd only just started like picking up instruments and playing, but it still sounds great, I think.
Did you ever have that we made it moment where it went from just playing shows to realizing you were actually living the dream?
What was that like for you?
Yeah, because the charts used to be a really, really big thing.
You'd listen to the chart rundown.
I don't know if it was as that as big over there in like mid-80s.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Like my whole family, if we were driving back from somewhere, you'd put the chart show on.
And it was just always really interesting.
And to listen to that, and the only way we would find out what position we were in the chart was by listening.
Okay.
You might have had a midweek like guesstimate, you never knew where you were gonna be.
Like if you were gonna be, you didn't know that.
So in those days, even being top 40 was phenomenal.
Remember listening, and we'd just snuck into thirty 39.
I thought even that was really exciting.
And for all my family, because we were all listening.
Oh my gosh, you got into the we weren't really even expecting to be.
We were just listening to the chart run das.
That was really like a little moment of oh we're we're something's happening.
I think the biggest biggest sort of moment probably was um top of the pops.
I don't know how aware like people are over there.
Top of the pops is pretty legendary.
Yeah, it is.
You know, the the reruns are on a lot of the time.
You know, we're gonna be on top of the pops.
Are you kidding?
This is this is nuts.
Like, how do we from here to here?
You know, and you're on the same sort of bill as people like Bobby Brown, simply red, you know, the cults, all sorts of massive people.
And so that was cool.
That was cool.
Yeah, it was.
Now, what's your favorite song to perform?
Oh, we're actually putting together new set lists at the moment, and it's quite difficult to decide which songs are we gonna do and which which aren't we?
Do you know Pink Sunshine is really lovely to perform because it really uplifts people's spirits and people if they don't know it, and a lot of people who'll come to our gigs will know it, but if they don't, it's really easy to sing along to.
It's just Pink Pink Sunshine.
So that is a really lovely, especially for things like all these retro festivals, and it's a sunny day and you're outdoors, and it's like that's pretty lovely.
I'll go with that.
What's one of your favorite songs that you'll love to listen to when you hear it?
You've just got to turn that volume up.
Love Shack.
I'd be 52s.
Okay, yeah.
Great song.
I mean, it doesn't even you don't even need the singing, it just starts and the beat.
I'm like, I'm there.
Oh yeah.
I always have to dance into all the you know, sort of sixties, kind of.
Yeah, love it.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Now you said you love to be in the studio.
You also said you love performing.
When you're in front of the fans and all that energy, it doesn't get much better than that.
Pretty sweet.
It is, and that's the sort of the fruits of your labour, isn't it?
Yeah.
That's when it all comes to fruition, and you, you know, that the rapport that you can build with people and have a good laugh with them as well.
But I do love the whole creative process.
I love thinking about like photos and imagery, planning all that stuff.
I really love collaborating with people who are good at what they do.
I can give them lots of ideas like I thought this and this and these colours and that imagery, and they're like, well, how about that?
I do enjoy creative process a lot.
You just brought up collaboration.
So who is that one singer that you would just love to sing with?
I suppose I can't have Elvis Presley, can I?
Sure.
I'm absolutely mad on Elvis Presley.
Yeah, he's the best.
He was absolutely fantastic.
That would be great.
There's gotta be other people.
I mean Bowie.
I would I would absolutely I think I could struggle with Bowie.
So after all these years, you've built quite a legacy.
In 10, 15, 20 years from now, someone listens to your music.
What do you hope that they take from it?
Anyone can do it.
I could do that.
Yeah, that's good.
I like that.
Yeah, I mean, I really hope now that I would love, like, particularly say like teenage girls, but also just anyone who doesn't know what to do in the music business, you know, who should we be?
What should we sound like?
Be really, just be really true to yourself, you know, and think, well, I'll give it a go.
Do it for a bit of fun, see what happens, but be yourself, don't be trying to craft yourself on the next, you know.
At one point everyone wanted to be the next Adele.
Yeah.
You know, or next whoever.
That's done.
Just be who you are and you know, make the most of that.
With everything that you've done, hit records, videos, what was it like when you turned on the TV and then all of a sudden there you are?
Really fun, but you know what?
When we used to watch any live performances back, because we did a lot of um like kids' TV, Saturday morning breakfast TV, we did ever such a lot of stuff.
And we would just be laughing at each other.
Look what you did then.
Oh my god, you you said that, oh you fell over, because we did especially Joe the guitarist, you quite frequently fell over or like string would break or something, you know, an app would blow up.
Right.
Um so we although it was really fun, it was like watching a home movie to us.
Nice.
Yeah, it was never gonna oh my god, look at us.
We were on television.
How many people were viewing us?
There's never that That's a really great way to look at that.
One of the great things about performing live is sharing the stage with other artists.
Were there any bands or artists you played with that really stood out to you?
Aerosmith was quite a cool one.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Um actually we weren't on a show with them, but we were touring America.
We did the East and the West Coast, and we were in Hollywood, I believe.
They were at the same hotel, and we were in the foyer, and we had these um makeup boxes that were actually tool boxes.
Okay.
And it's funny because I I'm sure we I I reckon we were the first people to use it because makeup artists now use a similar thing, don't they?
We thought it was a really cool idea.
We used to go down to it's still going actually, a famous bar shop called Halford's.
And um Stephen Tyler came in with all his band.
He's like, oh my god, what you got there?
Actually, it's a makeup box.
He wanted what we had in it.
So he opened it up and there's all these makeup brushes and blushes and lips, it's everything beautifully all lined up.
And he was like, it was absolutely fantastic.
And he's telling his, you know, his crew, I I'm having one of the where'd you get what's that Halford?
That's sweet.
There's often a perception from the outside.
People see you on TV, hear you on the radio, or watch you live, and it all looks glamorous.
But the reality of it, it's a lot of hard work.
How did you handle that difference between fame and reality?
Yeah, but I mean, I don't know whether we ever, as I said, ever really got madly into the whole kind of fame thing.
I get that.
You didn't get into the whole fame thing.
Ultimately, the fans did.
That's part of it too.
People will see you and create their own perception of who you are, whether it's accurate or not.
How did you balance that side of the fame with the reality of what your day-to-day life was really like?
Yeah, I mean it it is true, isn't it?
Like someone will see a photo of band or a model or uh who whatever, and it's like, oh my god, that is that's great.
And it looks like it's just a split moment, doesn't it?
But it could have been eight hours.
Yeah.
That shoot.
Right.
And there's so much that's been thrown away, probably as well, whilst that was happening.
So there is a lot of hard work that goes in.
I mean, nobody wants to hear like bands or actors, famous people, successful people moaning about how difficult their life is, and you know, and how they struggle.
Nobody wants to hear that, do they?
Yeah.
A lot that goes into the scenes, and I think that's part of when it does become is does start to feel a bit more like a job when some of it is quite tedious as such, but you know, it can be quite monotonous.
I mean, being on tour is really quite gruelling.
Just trying to get some sleep, and then you're going from one venue to another, and then you're gonna have to get up really early to either get up and travel or get to a few different radio stations.
The toll on your voice is hard going.
It is in there.
And in the early days, I did struggle a lot with that, and then I got myself super, super healthy.
Make sure I get all my my eight hours sleep and local exercises and that.
It was a hard Lesson for me to kind of learn.
Yeah.
But it did mean that it wasn't as fun because the others could stay up and they'd be like, you know, partying, and I think, nope, I'm going to go to bed and be boring and look after my throat and be professional.
Yeah.
So what do you have coming up?
You mentioned reunion.
Is there anything on the horizon for that?
Yeah, I yeah, I'm sure we are.
So we're just talking to a new agent right now, which is really cool.
Yeah.
Kind of deciding where to go gig-wise.
I think there will be some um shows and festivals.
I love festivals.
So hopefully some of that over the summer and definitely towards the end of the year, we've got some plans there.
Because it's the 40th anniversary of when we first released our album.
Nice.
So it's quite an exciting and big year for us.
So we want to get out and celebrate that.
Plus, promoting the book, really.
We've been doing some really nice events around the book.
It's fun because it's a bit different from just doing a straight gig.
You can do all the QA's with the audience, read out little sections, you know, live performance.
I really enjoyed that actually.
I like the variety of it as well.
And the close interaction with your audience.
That was that was fab.
Maybe new music, who knows?
Yeah, that would be great.
Now it's time to put on your thinking cap.
What would you use as a description to describe your band and what you've done?
I was just looking at my book, thinking, is there anything and come up with a s a snappy description?
You know, four schoolgirls from Birmingham, they form for a laugh, end up having, you know, international success.
Hopefully inspire others to get up and do the same.
Yeah.
Like something like that.
You know.
We thought that more there would be more women like and girls outdoing it.
We were surprised that we kind of weren't surrounded by loads and loads of other female musicians and bands that were doing the same.
And by now, 40 years.
What the heck?
I've spoken with some all-female bands here in the US, and there really aren't many that have had that kind of success.
When you look at what you and the band accomplished, what does it mean to be part of that legacy?
Do you know what?
I mean, it's it's really great because we're actually Fuzbox are still the UK's most successful all-girl band.
Eight instruments.
Wow, that's great.
Something to shout about.
But it annoys me as well because you know, we kind of thought when we realized, oh, actually we're an all-girl band, like because we just formed organically, and they were like, it's gonna be loads of us.
This is gonna be brilliant.
We'll be, you know, this is gonna be a thing.
We had so many girls writing to us saying, Oh, I've picked up a guitar because of you, or I'm starting an all-girl band.
We're like, yeah, nice, you know.
Uh and it didn't really happen.
I mean, nine nineties over here was quite good.
You did have some bands that had uh some strong female lead singers, but also musicians in them.
And there are a few around now.
Well, why is it like still so rare?
Yeah, I know.
What would you like to leave our listeners with that you would like them to know about you, what you've done, and of course, what you're going to be doing moving forward?
I'm more than happy to keep kind of celebrating Fuzzbooks.
I think that it was a really exciting way to spend my teenage years and beyond.
And so I'm more than happy to keep dipping back into that.
I'm also really passionate about like music and well-being, so that's what I do.
A lot of my work is in mental health hospitals or work with a lot of disadvantaged groups and so on.
So that's really important to me.
I've always got some other project going on.
I've currently got a really exciting solo project called BuzzFox.
See what I did there?
It's really fun because I just started to sort of sneakily release songs without making a big song and dance about it, not saying the connection.
Yeah.
I just wanted to go back to that sounds a bit geeky, but like the art of it, just doing it for the fun of it, like thinking, how do you how do I want to dress?
How do I want to sound?
I loved that.
I mean, it did sort of come out a little bit, people like, hold on a minute, it's like, isn't that you here and sharing it on?
Oh, okay.
So it's sort of slightly out there, but it's really fun.
It's almost like my alter ego who doesn't care at all about, you know, age and style and what I should be doing, yeah, because of like my age or because of my musical history.
Right, exactly.
Well, this has been really nice.
I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Got some great questions.
A couple of them had to really get the brain working, uh, thank you so much.
Really nice to speak to you.
Thank you, Tony.
It's really, really, really interesting, really cool.
It's been my pleasure.
Thanks again.
Thanks for joining us today.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
This has been a Tony Mantor production.
For more information, contact media at plateau music.com.