Alison Clarkson, AKA Betty Boo, singer-songwriter
When I was 17, I was in a female rap trio called the She Rockers. We saw LL Cool J and Public Enemy play Hammersmith Odeon when the 1987 Def Jam tour came to London. Afterwards, we saw Public Enemy in McDonald’s. We went “Oi!” and told them we were rappers, so they filmed us doing a freestyle rap, right there in McDonald’s.
The next thing we knew, we were flying to New York to work with Public Enemy’s Professor Griff. After that, I did the rap on the Beatmasters hit Hey DJ! / I Can’t Dance (To That Music You’re Playing), which did so well that I got signed as a solo artist by Rhythm King records. With the money, I bought myself a keyboard, a sampler and a four-track tape machine and started writing songs in my bedroom, one of which was Doin’ the Do.
I looped a breakbeat and wrote a bassline, the clavinet/piano parts, then a verse and chorus. Betty Boo was my nickname, because people said I looked like the cartoon character Betty Boop – big eyes and short hair. There are a lot of lyrics. I was a bit of a blabbermouth and self-promoter, but that’s what rappers did then. So the lyrics mention Betty Boo throughout. Also, I’d been to a terrible school and the careers officer told me the best I could hope for was to be a secretary. There’s nothing wrong with that – my mum was a secretary – but I wanted something different, so I channelled my fury into a song of empowerment. “Doin’ the do” basically means I’m getting on and doing things. Much later, someone told me it was a slang expression for cunnilingus.
The song was a slow burner, then we got radio pluggers Ferret N Spanner on board and suddenly I was everywhere. I’d loved glam rock as a child so wanted to make an impact with colourful outfits, big silver boots and backing singers with purple hair. Apparently I was the first British female rapper to have a Top 10 hit. I still remember Capital Radio DJs Pat Sharp and Mick’s Brown review of Doin’ the Do in Smash Hits. They liked it but said: “This rap thing will never catch on.”
Rex Brough, co-producer
I met Alison when she was in a duo called Hit ’N’ Run. She didn’t have a demo: she just had the song in her head. So we worked on it in the box room of my house. Studios were like citadels then, with huge mixing desks and all that rubbish. They looked like something from Star Trek, so working at home was a nice change. Home-recording was new back then, but I had a sampler and a Commodore 64 computer. We took the first organ chord from the Monkees’ I’m a Believer for the intro. The drums were a mix of James Brown’s Funky Drummer, which was ubiquitous then, and our own stuff. We sampled Reperata and the Delrons’ Captain of Your Ship but sped it up. We also used the tambourine and drum break from Bobby Byrd’s Hot Pants (I’m Coming), which the Stone Roses used on Fool’s Gold.
As a young recording engineer, I’d seen producers and engineers make singers do take after take until they burst into tears, at which point they’d all high-five each other. I vowed that if I ever got to produce, I wouldn’t be like that. Alison was very involved in the process and we went with her instincts. We recorded the vocals with a cheap Tandy microphone attached to a broom handle which also recorded the sound of a motorbike going past the house, but we left it in. We redid the chorus in a studio – one of those citadels – but it sounded lifeless, so we brought back the broom handle recording.
Pop music at the time had been either really slick Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Jive Bunny or MOR stuff. There was a space for a big, colourful persona like Betty Boo’s and music that wasn’t made by grownups. I always remember a line she had that didn’t make it on the record: “I’ve got plenty and I’m not even 20.”
• Betty Boo is part of the Let’s Rock festival lineup, at various venues across the UK throughout the summer.
