Chart entered : 31 October 1976
Chart peak : 9
Number of hits : 11
Bonnie's got a very modest hit total for someone who's been around so long; the Welsh warbler is much more appreciated on the Continent than she is here.
She was born Gaynor Hopkins in 1951 in South Wales; her father was a miner of course. She left school without qualifications and started working at a grocer's. She joined a local band as a backing vocalist in 1969 then formed her own band Imagination taking the stage name of Shereen Davies and found work in the clubs. She got married in 1973. The following year the band got on New Faces but didn't make a good impression. In 1975 she was spotted by A & R man Roger Bell who invited her to record some tracks solo in London. A few months later came the offer of a deal with RCA and another change of name..
Her first single was written by her producers Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe. and released in April 1976. "My My Honeycomb" is a plaintive plea from an abandoned one night stand with slightly risque lyrics - "leave my honey alone" - that marries Abba to a rock edge and ends up sounding like Belinda Carlisle a dozen years earl. Apart from some very dated synth sounds it's pretty good, one that got away.
"Lost In France" was the follow-up and like the previous single recorded before the throat operation which turned her slightly raspy voice into full-on Rod Stewart when she failed to rest it properly. It was quite a sleeper , released six weeks before it charted and I heard the song being performed by a girl at school in rehearsals for the Christmas concert before I heard the record itself. It was promoted with an elaborate stunt whereby RCA flew a party of journalists to meet Bonnie at a rented chateau in France. It's possible that the stunt informed the song rather than vice versa.
"Lost In France" probably isn't anyone's favourite record. Pinned to the And Then He Kissed Me riff, it reverses the storyline of Twenty Four Hours In Tulsa with Bonnie telling her guy back in the valleys he's been gazumped by some Euro-stud. Take out Bonnie's voice and it sounds like one of Smokie's strum-a-longs and the accordions are an obvious inclusion that give it a distinct whiff of cheese. Still enough people liked it to get her career off the ground.
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