MARIE FINDLEY

Former vocalist with the Mediaeval Baebes

 

I then found a University in Leicester that had an experimental theatre course. The students were not regurgitating lines of Shakespeare and setting Much Ado About Nothing in Nazi Germany, or some such nonsense; they were creating their own work and performing it in challenging environments, like the university duck pond! My audition piece was from a play by Pinter, I was told to perform it as though I were a mad woman who’d escaped from a mental institution. I did a fine job and they accepted me on the course. At around the same time I started making Super 8 films with some friends of mine. We were the local oddballs, but that didn’t bother us, in fact we actively encouraged the image and adopted more appropriate personas – I was Tulip Junkie and my two friends were Cherry Muffin and Leggy Manana. Collectively, we called ourselves Lovely Movies but our movies were far from lovely. Inspired by John Waters, we made films about cross-dressing serial killers, socially stigmatised cannibals, inept psychic superheroes and bored, bitchy housewives.  Gratuitous blood, and vomit seeped out of every frame. We even developed our own puke recipe that would produce a long, firm, drawn out vomit, rather like a turd.

Ken Russell as Dr Calahari
with Marie Findley (alias:
Tulip Junkie), as Nurse ABC
 

 

Once I finished university I joined a small theatre company called Dogs In Honey with Stephen Jones, the man behind Baby Bird. Whilst we toured with a show called Aliens 4, I was also developing an ambitious plan for a movie called Blade Brothers. It was a to be a musical about Siamese Twins who were champion ice-skaters. Lovely Movies submitted the script to Channel 4 and it was short-listed for a late night show. It was then that I realised I might have a modicum of talent. After securing work as script writers for Ant and Dec – two lovable Geordies who have done very well for themselves in the UK, Cherry Muffin (AKA Emma Williams) and I decided to get an agent. We were signed to comedy agency Avalon, and wrote for various British programmes, including Smack the Pony. We also developed a film and comedy show called Afflicktion, which we took to the Edinburgh Festival. One of the films we were showcasing was called Our Honeymoon and contained 2 seconds of erect penis. Because we’d dared to show the sacred sausage at a public venue there was national uproar and we ended up on a radio show with a man who is no stranger to controversy – Mr Ken Russell. He has always been a massive hero of mine – Blade Brothers had been a rip off/homage to Tommy – and Ken responded well to the adoration (not like Tim Curry huh?!) He came to see our Edinburgh show and realised that he could make little underground films using a digital camera and his friends as actors, just like the moviemakers we were showcasing. I think he found the idea liberating. He wanted to be working but he was always waiting around for project approval and funding. And so we embarked on a number of projects together culminating in the feature length film, shot in Ken’s back garden – The Fall of the Louse of Usher, in which I played Nurse ABC Smith to Ken’s Doctor Calihari.

 

JL: Weren't you working as a model at some point, what was that experience like?

Marie Findley: I have never been a catwalk or editorial model, but I have been a hair model for most of my life and spent some time with professional models. It’s not a world I’d want to get into, ironically, I don’t think it’s very good for your self-confidence. Audrey Evans, one of the other Mediaeval Baebes, was a professional model for a while. Audrey is devastatingly beautiful – she just rolls out of bed looking gorgeous, while it takes me a solid hour of preening to get even close. Yet Audrey gave modelling up because she said she was the oldest, the fattest and the hairiest model on her agency’s books and she couldn’t live with that.

I have, however, been a life model. This I have done for many years, and this is great for your self-confidence. As a life model you pose naked for artists or art students. If you have any hang ups about your body, you soon lose them because, on the whole, artists think the human form, in every shape and size is beautiful. I am a great life model; I am very still, I can create imaginative poses and I take my work very seriously, because I feel I am collaborating with the artist.

. Audrey Evans

Katharine Blake

 

JL: How and when did you get into music?

Marie Findley:  When I first met Katharine Blake – the founding member of the Mediaeval Baebes, she was seeing a friend of mine. I hadn’t spoken to her very much until I found myself sitting next to her in the middle of a field at the Phoenix Music Festival. Katharine had a bottle of cider, and because we are both partial to the odd drink, we soon bonded over the booze. Katharine was singing to herself (something that she still does often), it was a beautiful song and I asked her what it was. She told me it was mediaeval. Now, this was very exciting news. Apart from wanting to be an actress I’d also toyed with the idea of becoming an archaeologist (must be something about the letter ‘a’). I’d always had this strong feeling that I’d been a peasant, in a former life, maybe a mediaeval serf toiling the land and pulling up turnips, and somehow I felt if I took up archaeology, I’d get nearer to my past. I also have a great deal of patience for menial tasks – and I imagined scraping away at the earth for hours on end to find a piece of broken pottery would satisfy my diligent disposition. In the end, I decided against it – probably because glamour is pretty high on my agenda, and I couldn’t see myself spending my entire working life in dungarees. I expressed my interest in the Mediaeval period and, without attempting to discover whether I was tone deaf or not, Katharine asked if I wanted to join her band. Here was the chance to get closer to my past but in a glamorous way. I said yes immediately.

JL: I mean leaving the Baebes?

Marie Findley: When you leave the Baebes there is naturally a gaping hole in your life but the band itself adjusts to losing a member very quickly. You are either replaced, or the other girls sing your parts. This can be quite hurtful, like one of the other Baebes, Maple Bee, said to me, it's like breaking up with a boyfriend and you're suffering terribly and then you see your old boyfriend and he's got a new girl and he doesn't seem to miss you at all. The Mediaeval Baebes has a life of it's own and it seems to go on, no matter what. The band would not be efficient and effective if it caved in every time someone departed. And, I think that fact it carries on regardless helps individual members to move on too.

The Mediaeval Baebes have always embraced change and that's an important thing - as long as the original essence is not lost in the process - the longevity of the project relies on the ability to adapt. It's too soon for me to know how much I will miss the Mediaeval Baebes but I will certainly miss singing on a regular basis, so perhaps I'll find an outlet for this in the future. Adjusting to life in the US has been simpler. I have lived in London for 15 years and I see myself as a city girl. I'm living in the lower east side which is incredibly cool, so it's very easy to be excited about being here. I was forced to leave behind my collection of stuffed animals (not fluffy toys, but taxidermy) which was a real wrench, but I've discovered a shop called Evolution which caters to all my needs. My husband just bought me the perfect Easter gift - a stuffed chick, accompanied by a mother hen in skeletal form, which I think represents the death of Christ and his rebirth very succinctly! The only real issue I'm having is with mobile phones - or as you say - cell phones. The UK is way ahead of you guys, you need to catch up!

 Songs of the Flesh

 

JL: What about the photographic book. Songs of The Flesh that you modeled in and how this idea came about?
 
Marie Findley:  In all honesty, I can't remember how the idea for the book came about. I know that the Mediaeval Baebes were very keen to work with Vania (can't remember the actual spelling of his complicated Russian surname). His illustration work was particularly interesting to us. He did a mock album cover for the Baebes, but the record company rejected his initial work because they wanted something more colourful (eventually he designed the artwork for The Rose but we didn't know that was going to happen at the time). Meanwhile, I had commissioned him to do an illustration of me and we became friends. He was working for a company called The Erotic Print Society who put out a monthly magazine which included his illustrations. We still wanted to do something with him, so I think he asked the publishing company he was working for whether they would fund a book that contained tasteful nude and semi-nude pictures of the Mediaeval Baebes. And, I think it was at that point we discussed the idea of me writing some text for it. Of course, we knew that a book that contained nude photos would appeal to some of our male fans, and might bring us new ones, but that wasn't the main motivation.

 

We were desperate to work with Vania and he knew the Erotic Print Society would publish a book that contained nude photos. I wanted to give the book a vaguely serious slant also and, inspired by Vania's hazy , dreamy photographic style, I researched Mediaeval attitudes to dreams and attempted to interpret our own in a Mediaeval light.

JL: Do you find photographic modeling different from life drawing, painting, modeling for artists?

Marie Findley: Modeling for a photographic artist is not so different. It is still a collaboration and you have to interpret what the photographer wants to say, but you can be more expressive because you don't have to hold that look for an hour. Ultimately the big difference for me, was knowing that I had a reputation to uphold, and that made me more self-conscious. As a life model, nobody is interested in whether I am attractive in a conventional sense, but the photographic evidence in Songs of The Flesh had to prove I was a Baebe!

For more info visit about the Mediaeval Baebes visit

www.mediaevalbaebes.com

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Delerium video of the song Aria sung in 'Middle-English' language.