Fiona Russell Powell

Fiona Russell Powell (born 2 April 1962)[citation needed] is a British journalist. She is best known for her series of interviews throughout the 1980s in The Face magazine. For a brief period in the mid-1980s, she performed as a member of pop group ABC in videos and onstage to support their cartoon-synth album How to Be a … Zillionaire! (1985). She was credited originally as “Fiona” in early recordings of material for this album,[1] but eventually performed under the stage name “Eden”.

After the success of ABC’s debut album The Lexicon of Love and the disappointing reception to their follow up Beauty Stab, ABC’s Martin Fry and Mark White decided they wanted a completely new image for ABC. To that end, they asked Powell to join the band as well as American David Yarritu.

Neither Powell nor Yarritu were allowed to contribute musically. When Powell admitted she couldn’t play any instruments, ABC frontman Martin Fry replied “It doesn’t matter. You can pretend. We want you because you’ve got a great look”.[2] Vocals attributed to Powell as Eden on the album How to Be a Zillionaire were not performed by her either – for example, in the song “A to Z”, the words “Hi, I’m Eden, and I want you to kiss my snatch” was actually Martin Fry’s voice sped up and was recorded entirely without Powell’s knowledge