Former manager Chris Herbert opens up on his time working with the pop band and reveals why they won't reunite.
As Wannabe turns 30, the Spice Girls’ former manager has opened up in a new interview about how he formed the band back in 1994.
Speaking to our online casino team, Chris Herbert – who was the man behind the group, consisting of Mel B, Mel C, Geri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, and Emma Bunton – shares his insights into working with the girls in their early days, including the very moment during the audition process when he knew he had found the first member, Mel B.
Herbert also shares who he clashed the most with back in the day, his initial thoughts on Victoria’s romance with David Beckham, and the reason as to why he can’t see the iconic group reuniting any time soon.
Working with the Spice Girls must be one of the biggest achievements of your career. Could you tell from the very beginning that they were going to be stars?
I actually met them all individually because I’d conducted nationwide auditions to find the members before bringing them together as a group. I can remember meeting each of them because they all made an impression on me. We held the auditions at Dance Attic, and there were literally hundreds of girls there. I remember coming out of one of the upstairs rooms, looking down the stairwell and seeing all these girls queuing. As I was looking around, there was one girl milling about downstairs. She was there to audition for an entertainment team on a cruise ship. I introduced myself to her, and she looked incredible. I thought, “She is exactly what we’re looking for.” That girl was Mel B.
What did you say to her?
“I know you’re not here for our audition, but you’re exactly the kind of person we’re looking for. We’d love you to come upstairs and audition.” She agreed, so I rushed upstairs and told everyone else, “I think I’ve found someone really special.”
What was her audition like?
She came in and auditioned, and she was exactly the same person then as she is now. She’s northern, brassy, full of character and completely filled the room with confidence. She sang a Whitney Houston song, and I remember thinking, “I think we’ve just found our first member.” That’s always an exciting point because once you’ve found one person, you’ve got something to build around. As the auditions continued, I met Mel C. She sang I’m So Excited by The Pointer Sisters. She had this huge Northern soul voice. She could really belt out a song, had a fantastic tone and was very confident.
Going back to Mel B, you said there were hundreds of girls there, all trying to make an impression. What was it about her specifically that stood out so immediately?
Initially, it was her look. She stood out in the crowd. She dressed the part, looked cool, looked confident and carried herself brilliantly. Then I started talking to her. The remarkable thing is that Mel B hasn’t really changed since the day I met her. Over the years, they’ve all naturally grown into their public personas, but Mel B has always been exactly who she is. She’s incredibly down-to-earth, says exactly what she thinks and never pulls any punches. People find that really appealing. She always knew who she was as a person and, later, as an artist. She was completely comfortable with herself and very confident.
Do you think that’s why she’s gone on to enjoy such a successful career, even beyond the Spice Girls?
Absolutely. We’ve seen so many bands come and go over the years. Usually, one or two members go on to have successful solo careers, but Mel B has been consistently successful for decades. Since the group’s main activities ended, she’s remained in the public eye, kept working and built a strong career. You can’t fake that for 30 years. Having said that, all five of them deserve enormous credit. There aren’t many bands where every member goes on to carve out successful individual careers in completely different areas. That really proves the original idea behind the group. From the very beginning, I wasn’t just looking for singers; I was looking for distinct personalities that, together, created the full picture. Collectively, they became greater than the sum of their parts. Over time, each of those individual parts has gone on to achieve success in its own right.
What was Victoria like?
She was completely different from everyone else. She carried herself differently. There was a grace and maturity about her that stood out immediately. She sang Mein Herr from Cabaret, which was a really unusual choice because everyone else was performing current pop songs. She felt comfortable singing something completely different. She was lovely, really charming, and I was very impressed.
Who else auditioned?
We also had a couple of other girls in the line-up at one stage, including Michelle Stevenson and another girl called Leanne, although I can’t remember her surname. Michelle actually made the final line-up. We started working with her as part of the band, but fairly quickly we all realised, mutually, that it wasn’t the right fit. She felt it wasn’t for her, and we also felt she didn’t quite fit the dynamic. That’s when we decided we needed a replacement.
At the time, we were working with a vocal coach called Pepi Limerick. I told her I was looking for someone to complete the group, and she introduced me to Emma. I went to meet her and her mum, and she was incredibly sweet and charming. She sang Right Here by SWV. She immediately felt like the missing piece of the puzzle. Each of the girls made a real impression on me.
What about Geri?
Geri’s story was quite different. I’d invited her to several auditions, but every single time she had an excuse at the last minute for why she couldn’t make it. Somehow, she managed to blag her way into the next stage every time. She’d say, “I can’t make this one, but can I come to the next?” We’d remind her she’d already missed a round, but she’d insist her reasons were genuine. Eventually, she made it through to our workshop stage, where we had around 11 or 12 girls. We split them into different groups and spent the day experimenting with different combinations to see who worked well together.
Then, suddenly, Geri burst into the room as if she’d stepped straight out of a Carry On film. She was loud, camp, bold and absolutely full of personality. She completely won me over on personality alone. At that stage, it wasn’t necessarily about her singing or dancing ability. It was about the fact that she brought something we didn’t already have. She turned out to be exactly that missing piece. In many ways, she became the glue that held the whole group together.
Each member has a very distinct identity. Was that always part of the strategy, and do you think it was one of the reasons for the band’s success?
Absolutely. It was very much part of the blueprint. At the time, the pop landscape was completely dominated by boy bands. Every record label was looking for its own version of a successful boy band, so the obvious route would have been to put one together and join the queue. I deliberately didn’t want to do that. I wanted to create a girl band because I looked at the market and thought boy bands really only appealed to around half of it. Their audience was predominantly female. I had a feeling that if you got a girl band right, with the right mix of personalities, girls that were sassy, cool, sexy, aspirational and relatable, you could appeal to everyone.
The idea was that girls could identify with each of them because they were all completely different characters. Individually, they were almost misfits, but when you put them together, somehow it worked. I actually created a large A4 mood board that identified each of the different personalities. They were loosely based on what we eventually came to know them as. From the outset, it was very much, “She’s this character. She’s that character.” One of my biggest influences at the time was Friends. Every character is completely different. You wouldn’t necessarily expect them to work together, but when you put them in the same room, something magical happens. Everyone watching identifies with one of those characters. That was exactly the approach with the Spice Girls.
When it came to introducing the Spice Girls to the world, how did you decide that Wannabe should be the debut single?
Before we ever approached a record company, I wanted the band to have a fully formed identity. My goal was to develop them properly, to establish their image, work out their sound and surround them with the right writers so that we could effectively create most of the album ourselves. That way, when we eventually walked into a record company, nobody could pull the project apart and say, “We think it should sound like this,” or, “We’d change that.” We wanted to arrive as a complete, finished package. I approached Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe, better known as Biffco. During their very first writing session with the girls, Wannabe was born. The brief for that song was simple: capture the energy of the Spice Girls. Whenever they walked into a room, it was absolute chaos.
They were loud, in your face, disruptive, in the best possible way. They completely filled every room they entered. The challenge was to bottle all of that energy into a song that lasted under three minutes. Richard and Matt did exactly that. I remember hearing the demo for the first time and thinking it was like energy in a bottle. Interestingly, that same writing period also produced what later became 2 Become 1. Those songs couldn’t have been more different, but they both came out of those first sessions. From the moment I heard Wannabe, I knew it was something special.
Tell me more about the process and your role in it all?
My role was creating the original concept, putting the group together, developing them, bringing in the writers and getting those first songs underway. Because I wanted them to be fully prepared before approaching record companies, I took my time. I wanted them to become a band that could perform live confidently and walk into a room full of record executives knowing they could impress them. That development process took almost a year. None of them had previously been recording artists, and although they all had performing backgrounds, most hadn’t seriously considered careers as pop singers. There was a huge amount of development that had to happen first, and I wasn’t prepared to rush it.
While I was focusing on that, Geri, probably more than anyone else, wanted things to move much faster. She was slightly older than the others and had already spent more time trying to build a career in entertainment. I was deliberately holding the reins because I believed they needed more time, while Geri wanted to accelerate everything. That difference in opinion gradually created tension between us. Eventually, that became the point where we parted ways. So my involvement was really about creating the concept, finding the girls, developing them and getting the music together.
During those early days, were some naturally more confident than others, or did they all need coaching?
There were definitely front-runners. Mel B was naturally very confident; she’d done a lot of dance training, so performance came very naturally to her. She also had a fantastic tone to her voice and a real swagger. At that stage, I’d say she was one of the strongest performers in the group. Mel C was extremely confident vocally and in performance, although she was quieter and less outspoken than Mel B. Victoria was probably the shyest of the five. She lacked confidence, but I knew there was something there, we just needed to bring it out.
What about Emma?
Emma was naturally shy as well, although she had that lovely, sweet personality. She probably sat somewhere in the middle in terms of confidence. Geri had the least natural ability when it came to singing and dancing. However, she deserves enormous credit because she worked harder than anyone else. We’d spend six hours a day rehearsing together, and once everyone else had gone home, Geri would head to Pineapple Dance Studios and take extra dance classes. She knew she had to work harder, so she did. What she brought to the group wasn’t technical ability; it was leadership, creativity and vision. She really was the driving force behind ‘Girl Power’.
That energy spread through the whole group. Alongside Mel B, she was also one of the people who kept everyone motivated and pushed the others to keep going. What I witnessed over that year was fascinating. Although they all started at different levels in terms of confidence and ability, once they began spending every day together they gradually became like sisters. Their confidence grew collectively. They started believing in themselves and believing in each other. As the person developing them, I could actually see something special beginning to happen right in front of me. Originally, the objective had simply been to create a successful pop group. But as time went on, it became obvious that this was turning into something much bigger.
Did you ever imagine the Spice Girls would grow into the global phenomenon they are today?
No. I couldn’t have dreamed they would go on to sell 36 or 37 million records. What I did know was that they had a place in the market. Some of what we achieved came down to experience and knowing how to develop artists, but some of it was also about timing and a bit of luck. Anyone who tells you otherwise is kidding themselves. It’s about recognising an opportunity, identifying a gap in the market and then catching the wave just as it’s beginning to build. That’s exactly what happened with the Spice Girls. I stood back and watched it unfold, and I felt incredibly proud – not only because of the part I’d played, but because the vision I’d had right from the beginning was coming to life. It proved that I wasn’t wrong.
Did they ever argue or struggle to gel?
They were like sisters. They argued like sisters, and they made up like sisters. The funny thing was that, no matter how much they might have disagreed with one another, if anyone from the outside tried to get involved, they’d immediately unite against that person. Their bond was incredibly strong. One of the biggest things I did to speed up that process was move them into a house together very early on. I basically said, “Right, you work it out amongst yourselves.” There could easily have been casualties, but thankfully there weren’t. That little house became the breeding ground for everything that made the Spice Girls what they became. There was laughter, tears, drama, arguments, fallouts – everything you would expect when five young women live together while chasing the same dream. But they worked through it all. That’s where those lifelong friendships were forged.
I was also a very young manager. At the time, I didn’t really see any of it as a risk because I was fearless. If I were doing it today, with more than 30 years of experience in the music industry behind me, I’d probably analyse everything far more carefully. Back then, I was probably a bit bullish – maybe even mildly arrogant. I saw the opportunity, believed completely in what I was doing and accepted nothing less than success.
What was your reaction when Victoria started dating David Beckham? Did you think it helped the band’s image?
When Victoria and David got together, they were both at the top of their game. David was the biggest name in football, and the moment they became a couple, it was obvious they had the potential to become a real power couple. What they’ve gone on to build together – their brand, their businesses and everything else is incredibly impressive. Before David, though, Victoria had been engaged to someone else. As the band began gathering momentum, she realised this was the opportunity she wanted to pursue, so she ended that engagement, and I suppose that’s where history started to change.
Were there any funny moments that really summed up those early days?
There were loads. Geri drove this battered old Fiat Uno that I used to call ‘the battle bus ‘, and somehow all five of them would pile into it. Every time I saw that car, it seemed to have another dent in it. There were occasions when they’d turn up somewhere having had another little accident, or someone had clipped the side of the car. Chaos just seemed to follow them everywhere. The funny thing is that, financially, they had almost nothing. People forget that, so for that entire year, they were literally living hand to mouth. It really was a genuine rags-to-riches story.
Were they all working before they joined the group?
Yes, they were all jobbing performers. If they weren’t dancing in a chorus line, they might have been acting, singing on cruise ships or taking whatever performing work they could find. We made it very clear from the beginning that this had to be an all-or-nothing commitment. We said, “You’re either in, or you’re out.” This wasn’t something that would simply be handed to them. They were going to have to work incredibly hard – every day consisted of rehearsals, choreography, vocal coaching and constant repetition. It was repetitive. It was often boring, but it was absolutely necessary. By the end of that year, when they performed at the showcase, they were more polished than I’d ever heard them. Their harmonies, their discipline and the way they performed as a unit were exceptional because we’d had the time to develop them properly. The training was almost military in its discipline, and it paid off.
Did any of the girls ever struggle with the training? Did anyone ever threaten to quit before everything took off?
I think they all had moments where they struggled. As I said before, Geri probably had to work the hardest because she didn’t have the same natural singing and dancing ability as some of the others. But she embraced that challenge. She doubled down on everything and put the work in. Each of them had moments where they wobbled. They were young girls doing the same routines over and over again, day after day, in what was a very disciplined environment. But the important thing was that they pulled each other through. That was one of the greatest strengths of the Spice Girls.
Over the years, I’ve put together other bands, and sometimes we’ve tried to speed up that development process. Looking back, I don’t think you can fast-track it. Whenever we’ve skipped that groundwork, it’s caused problems further down the line because the group hasn’t had the time to become a proper unit. Eventually, cracks started to appear because the foundations were never properly built. With the Spice Girls, that year of development was absolutely fundamental to the success they went on to achieve.
Do you think there’s any chance the Spice Girls could reunite?
Personally, I’d only want to see it if all five of them were on stage together. I wouldn’t want to see four of them or three of them; their legacy deserves all five members. Looking at what Victoria has achieved, though, she’s done something remarkable. She’s managed to establish herself in the fashion industry, which is notoriously difficult. People don’t usually take pop stars seriously when they move into luxury fashion, but she’s proved everyone wrong. She’s built a hugely respected business. I honestly don’t know why she’d want to put that at risk for a reunion. As much as I’d love to see all five of them together again, I struggle to see it happening. I’d be delighted to be proved wrong, but I just can’t see it.
Do you think Victoria is the reason a reunion hasn’t happened?
Victoria was always interested in fashion. She’d always arrive beautifully dressed in branded clothes, while the others were putting together outfits from charity shops or second-hand stores. She’d turn up wearing Russell & Bromley boots or something similar. That interest in fashion was always there. What I never saw, though, was any sign that she was using the Spice Girls as a stepping stone before leaving to pursue fashion. I don’t think that was ever part of some grand plan. Life has simply taken her in that direction. She’s built an incredible career doing something she’s genuinely passionate about, and you could see that passion from the very beginning. The same is true of all the girls.
Each of them has found their own lane after the band, and they all deserve enormous credit for that. As for whether Victoria is stopping a reunion, I honestly don’t know. I’ve worked with bands before. Five, for example, have spent more than 20 years barely speaking to one another. For a long time, I thought they’d never reunite. Then, eventually, the stars aligned. They all found themselves in the same place mentally at the same time, and suddenly it happened. Now they’re enjoying themselves more than they ever did the first time around.
I’d love to see the same thing happen with the Spice Girls. The difficulty is that they’re all incredibly busy. They’re not sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. Just organising a meeting between five people with careers and families is a challenge, never mind planning a world tour. People talk about the 30th anniversary as though these things happen overnight, but they don’t. A reunion like that requires years of planning.
Do you think the Spice Girls are more valuable now than they were at their peak?
Absolutely. The fact that people are still asking, “Will they? Won’t they?” only builds anticipation. Oasis has shown exactly how powerful that can be. The longer people wait for something they desperately want, the greater the demand becomes. I think the Spice Girls have exactly the same potential. Even if nothing happened for another ten years and they reunited for the 40th anniversary, I still think they’d sell out stadiums all over the world.
People want to be transported back to a particular time in their lives. They want to remember dancing around their bedrooms to Wannabe, dressing up as their favourite Spice Girl and reliving those memories. As time goes on, those feelings only become stronger. So yes, I genuinely believe they could be even bigger now than they were then if they got it right. I think we’ll probably have similar conversations one day about One Direction.
How did working with the Spice Girls change things for you professionally?
At the time, I was a very young manager. If I’m honest, my ambition wasn’t necessarily to be an artist manager forever, and I really wanted to work in A&R at a record company. I couldn’t get that opportunity, so I thought, ‘I’ll put a group together, hopefully they’ll get some attention, and maybe that will open some doors for me.’ The Spice Girls did exactly that. Suddenly, every door in the music industry opened. Everyone I wanted to meet wanted to meet me. One of the first people I ended up meeting was Simon Cowell through a mutual friend. Simon had actually tried to sign the Spice Girls but missed out; he’d also tried to sign Take That a few years earlier and missed out on them as well. Our mutual friend suggested we should meet, and Simon said, ‘I absolutely want to meet Chris. I don’t want another Spice Girls, but I want to meet the person who put them together.’
I remember sitting down with him, and his opening words were, ‘Is it congratulations or commiserations?’ At that point, Wannabe had gone to number one in around 37 countries. I said, ‘It’s both.’ ‘I couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve achieved, but I also want to go again.’ Simon smiled and said, ‘That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. So what do you want to do next?’ I told him I thought it was possible to create a boy band that could appeal to boys as well as girls. I said, ‘It can’t just be another boy band – it needs to be a lad band.’ I wanted it to reflect lad culture a bit more, musically lean towards rap and urban pop, and have a very different identity. That’s where the idea for Five came from. Simon backed me to put the group together.
We went on to sell around 15 million albums worldwide and had a fantastic career. After that, things really snowballed. One project led to another. I worked with Hearsay and a number of other acts from that late 1990s and early 2000s golden era of pop, including B*Witched and Honeyz. I went on a real run during that period and have stayed in the music industry ever since.
You’re still managing artists today. What are you working on now?
I’m currently managing Remember Monday. They’re hugely talented, but more importantly, they’re genuinely lovely people. Just like the Spice Girls in those early days, they have a real sisterhood. Their whole brand is built around friendship. They’ve been best friends for 14 years, and you can’t fake that. When you watch them perform, you don’t just see talented singers; you see three people who genuinely love performing together. That authenticity is impossible to manufacture. They’re doing brilliantly.
Since Eurovision, they’ve continued playing festivals, they’re out on the road with McFly this summer, they’ve got another single on the radio, another one coming next month, and their album is due early next year. It’s a really exciting time for them.
From discovering the Spice Girls through to where you are now, what makes you most proud?
I’m incredibly proud that the vision worked. When I first started putting the Spice Girls together, I wasn’t just looking for five good singers. I was looking for five completely different personalities that, together, could create something people hadn’t seen before. Watching that vision become reality and seeing what all five of them have gone on to achieve individually is something I’ll always be proud of. They’ve all carved out successful careers in completely different ways, and I think that’s a testament to who they are as people. For me, that’s probably the greatest achievement. The band changed all of our lives. It certainly changed mine.
