Great Moments In Pop – The 80s Part 13.

Here’s another rather curious pop music story from the 80s. As I have said before, because I wanted to find out more about pop music from the 80s that might interest me, I looked online for weekly music magazine covers. There a few people I noticed that I wasn’t familiar with, so I thought that I would try and find out more about them, and this is one of them.

London-born Honey Bane (although her first name is actually Donna) came on to the punk music scene in the late-70s, when she was barely into her teens, never mind coming out of them, as a member of The Fatal Microbes, who gained some publicity. By the early-80s, Honey worked with Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69, and launched a solo career which would be briefly successful.

In January 1981 “Turn Me On Turn Me Off” was released, and this would become her first and only Top 40 hit single. She then performed this on Top Of The Pops, where she delighted the crowd with her bright pink hair. Honey was interviewed in Smash Hits, and she also appeared on the covers of Record Mirror and Sounds (where she was captioned as “Madonna Bane” curiously, long before that other woman became famous in this country).

Next in April 1981 was “Baby Love”, a rather straight cover of The Supremes song, and a lot of people seemed to be surprised by this, and were insistent that she had betrayed her punk roots. This reached no. 58, to become her final hit single. Some thought there was some record label interference creeping into her career. Honey did go on to release further singles until 1983, including “Jimmy… (Listen To Me)” and “Wish I Could Be Me”.

Also around this time, Honey went on to become an actress, appearing in various films, and also the first episode of Hazel O’Connor’s ITV series Jangles. I don’t know why she didn’t return for the rest of the series, maybe that was always the plan, or something happened behind the scenes, meaning that it’s now just a television memory (sorry). And she later became a glamour model. In more recent years, Honey has continued to be an actress and singer.