Chart entered : 21 November 1981
Chart peak : 39
After epic success in the late seventies with two million sellers in 1978, the new decade saw a rapid decline in the fortunes of Bobby and the girls with their latter singles struggling to make the Top 40.
They signed off in style with this six-minute anti-pollution epic which throws in everything but the kitchen sink and is a lot more fun than Michael Jackson's Earth Song. It starts out with explosions then an ominous piano figure before Bobby Farrell , finally allowed to do the spoken parts himself , starts intoning about atomic mushrooms ( I think perhaps Trevor Horn was listening ) . Marcia Barrett then takes over for a fairly standard Eurodisco tune with lyrics that come across like a ten year old attempting to rewrite Big Yellow Taxi - "New factory towers tall, farmhouse had to fall". Then after three and a half minutes ,pp without warning the song turns into a nursery rhyme led by school boy Brian Paul with The Boneys eventually joining in as it tries to turn into Abba's I Have A Dream. Throw in a Dave Gilmour-esque guitar solo towards the end and you have the whole package. It's terrible but gloriously so. Radio One ignored it except in the chart rundowns so it quickly disappeared here but it was a number one in Spain and South Africa.
By the time the single was released Bobby had actually left the group after a number of arguments with Farian and was replaced by the rather more talented Reggie Tsiboe. He first appeared on their next single in 1982, a dreadful version of The Seekers' classic The Carnival Is Over which is cheesily over-produced and loses all the pathos in the original . It did nothing here and only moderately well in Switzerland and Germany , adding to the impression that the group was past its prime.
The next single ( in the UK ) was "Jambo -Hakuna Matata" ( a Swahili phrase meaning "no worries " ) which is basically "Hooray It's A Holi-Holiday" set to modern electrodance beats. It's entirely vacuous and only reached number 48 in the German charts leading to the scrapping of their intended album that year.
Farian now suggested that Reggie do a solo single and recorded a quick fire cover of Tony Esposito's Italian hit "Kalimba da Luna" with some session singers. The girls objected and at the eleventh hour it became a Boney M single, the only one with a male lead vocal. It's a likeable enough Eurodisco number which restored them to the German Top 20 although neither version made any impact in the UK.
Bobby in the meantime had put out a couple of solo singles . The self-written German-language "Polizei" sounds like Falco doing a reggae number and is interminable. It didn't sell well and two years later Bobby and Farian patched up their differences and put out another cover of an Italian hit Baby's Gang's "Happy Song" . It was variously credited ( in the UK it was "Bobby Farrell & the School Rebel featuring Boney M" ) but only Bobby ( with a brief rap ) and Tsiboe actually featured on the recording. The backing track sounds identical to You Spin Me Round ( Like A Record ).It was their last visit to the German top 10.
After another hopeless solo single "King of Dancin" on which he growls out some approximation of a rap Bobby agreed to rejoin the group for their final album "Eye Dance " in 1985. The only single that appears to have been released in the UK was "Young Free And Single " ( nothing to do with the Sunfire hit a couple of years earlier ) a novelty single that sets a number of Boney M trademarks to a Hi-NRG backing track and throws in a Peter Gunn surf guitar riff. The single limped to 49 in the German charts and the album bombed. After a TV special to mark their tenth anniversary the group was officially disbanded.
It's quite hard to track what happened over the next few years. Bobby retreated to Amsterdam and his wife discovered that Farian had not trademarked the Boney M name everywhere so that Bobby could still use it in certain countries. Bobby invited the others to record a new album in Belgium. Liz Mitchell and Maizie Williams accepted, Marcia who had long harboured solo ambitions, declined. However Bobby did not show up for rehearsals and the project went ahead as a solo album for Liz called "No One Will Force You" though she found it difficult to get it released. At the same time Liz and Maizie recruited two new singers for a tour as Boney M. Bobby released a solo single "Hoppa Hoppa" an utterly vacuous piece of Euro-bombast.
In 1988 Simon Napier-Bell did some remixing of the Boney M catalogue with Farian's blessing and the classic line up was persuaded to reunite to promote it. The album only made the charts in Sweden but the single "Megamix" made number one in France ( number 52 in the UK ). It was enough for Liz to get deals to release her album in certain territories and she left the group in 1989 to pursue her solo career. The single "Mandela" a well-intentioned but bland bit of synth-pop with melodic similarities to Fernando was released in Spain and Holland to little effect and "Ninos De La Playa" a pale imitation of her old group was released in Denmark.
In the meantime the remaining trio and Liz's replacement went to the UK to record a new single "Everyone Wants To Dance Like Josephine Baker " as Boney M with Barry Blue. With Marcia doing the lead vocal it's a decent attempt at marrying a classic Boney M historical song to a Hi-NRG backing track. However Farian was incensed at their temerity in recording something without him , went to court and got the single pulled. The group dissolved once more.
Further, he persuaded Liz to front a new Boney M line up featuring Tsiboe with the offer of a new single "Stories" which came out under the name Boney M featuring Liz Mitchell. It sounds suspiciously like a Milli Vanilli outtake tarted up with orgasmic moans. It was a moderate hit in Switzerland at the beginning of 1990 but ignored everywhere else. A dance version of the old James Taylor / Carly Simon hit "Mocking Bird" the following year didn't do any better.
Marcia went to Munich to record but was diagnosed with ovarian cancer which put her out of action for most of the next decade. Bobby returned to Amsterdam and formed his own version of the group to work where he owned the trademark. He released his own version of the Josephine Baker song in 1991 , his last recording for over a decade.
The following year another "Megamix" did well reaching the Top 10 in the UK which propelled a compilation into the album charts. Farian continued to back Liz's version of the group and tested the water in 1994 with a new single "Papa Chico" a passable pop reggae tune which failed to chart anywhere. Around this time Maizie Williams popped up again with her own version of the group.
In 1999 Marcia re-emerged with a new LP "Survival" It's a modern dance album , pretty generic in parts but it has its moments particularly " Hello Friends" where she quotes all the hits and namechecks her old bandmates. Unfortunately no one was very interested in new material from the ex-members and it got minimal attention. Liz too put out another album "Share The World" that year.
In the noughties Bobby was content to churn out half a dozen CDs of re-recordings of Boney M material with his ever-changing line up while constantly touring. Liz divided her time between touring and putting out Christian albums though she too revisited the old songs in 2005, her last recordings to date. Maizie also got into the Christian scene with her only solo LP "Call Upon Jesus " in 2006. Marcia started adding "of Boney M" to her name in 2003 when she recorded an anti-Iraq war EP that raised a princely $295 for charity. She released another LP "Come Into My Life " in 2005 including covers of Hey Joe and Albatross for which she received permission from Peter Green to add lyrics. She then started touring as Boney M featuring Marcia Barrett. A third album , which would include some work with Eddy Grant, was put back as Marcia battled another bout of cancer and has yet to see the light of day.
Marcia did join Liz and Farian at the London and Berlin premieres of the Daddy Cool musical which ran in 2006-07 . In 2009 Maizie won a court case against Farian over royalties. The following year promoters mulling over which Boney M to book had one less option when Bobby died in a St Petersburg hotel room while on tour in Russia. The three girls were reunited at his funeral; I don't think Farian was there.
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