Barbara Dickson

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a singer and an actress. The daughter of a Resythe docker, she left school with three O levels and a beautiful voice. But it never occurred to her to use the voice rather than the O levels until she was offered a short singing engagement which forced her to abandon the day job.

Presenter0:44

She went on to play the lead vocal in Willie Russell's play John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert, and eight years later won an award for her performance in His Blood Brothers.

Presenter0:53

She's had hit singles, January, February, and I Know Him So Well among them and recently a leading role in ITV's Band of Gold. Sometimes she says, I can't believe I made it over the wall with the dogs barking at my heels and they still haven't caught me. She is Barbara Dixon. Does that mean Barbara that you don't feel you deserve your success or that you just still can't believe it's happened to you? I think a bit of both actually. I think that being Scots and with my mother having a Jewish background I've got this extraordinary dichotomy, you know, which is that in Scotland it's not encouraged for you to show off. You shouldn't show off and yet my mother's Liverpool background is if you've got it flaunt it, you know, so I'm stuck in the middle of that. But it's also that kind of feeling, is it that kind of girls from Dunfermline born in the baby boom just don't make it big? Well no, I mean I wanted to be a film star when I was seven and I thought I can't be a film star because I live in Dunfermline. But you always had the voice. Did that not mark you out from an early age? Yes, but I didn't use the voice. I used to sing in the bathroom with a sort of tube of toothpaste for a microphone.

Barbara Dickson1:35

Uh

Presenter1:59

But I didn't actually use it because I was very, very shy, and I still am actually.

Presenter2:04

I don't like showing off and I find it difficult to walk into a room full of people who turn round and say, Oh, look, there's Barbara Dixon. I just my my legs go. It's difficult when you're giving a concert in the Albert Hall. Well that's different because I'm working then and I've got my sort of Barbara Dixon hat on. But when I'm being myself, I find it quite difficult. I think a lot of people in my profession are like that. But the voice must have marked you out at school. Yes, it did. I mean, I had a music teacher when I got to secondary school, and everybody in my class knew I could sing really well, and I'd started to play the guitar then, and I'd given up piano lessons.

Presenter2:40

A music teacher said, Well, maybe which I thought in in retrospect is a bit a bit uh insulting, but he said, Well, maybe you haven't got the best voice in the school, Barbara, but you've certainly got the loudest. And I thought, charming.

Presenter2:52

But were you encouraged, I mean school and parents, did they say, look, you can really do something with this voice? Or was it just a little talent our Barbara had? I think it was a really a little talent. I think that because of my background, it was never

Barbara Dickson2:52

But were you in cut?

Presenter3:04

Even a possible that I would become a very famous person because of the way I could sing.

Presenter3:10

My music teacher used to encourage me to sing folk music. You know, he used to play Kingston trio and stuff like that. My love of folk music, I think, comes from that time, stems from them. But the idea that you'd make a living out of it was an idea. No, not at all. I at first I I wanted to be a school teacher and I and I didn't do well enough at school to be a teacher. And then I thought, oh, crap, I'm gonna have to do something else here. So I went into the civil service.

Barbara Dickson3:22

Oh, is it an animal?

Presenter3:36

We shall hear more about that in a minute. Tell me about your first record. Well, when I was very young, I went to see a a film at Resythe Picture House. My mum took me to see Doris Day and Calamity Jane, and because she was being such a tough, sort of spunky girl, I thought girls can do anything if they could just be like Doris Day.

Speaker 23:58

Oh, the dead wood stages are rolling out over the plains With the curtains flapping and the driver a slapping the reins A beautiful sky, a wonderful day Whip crack away, whip crack away, whip crack away

Presenter4:13

Doris Day and the Deadwood stage. The other part of the story of the early Barbara Dixon that's always stressed is that you were no great looker. But to my mind it was actually that absence of obvious glamour when you sat at the back of the stage in John Paul George Ringo and Burt with your glasses sliding off your nose. Don't you think that was the attraction, that you were what you were, which was a kind of original bit of casting? I think I looked like a bit of a sort of serious blue stocking-y folk singer type, which was precisely what I was, and therefore perfect casting. They couldn't have found anybody more suitable to look like that than me. But you did keep propping the glasses back up on your nose the whole time. I think it's something to do with my general kind of lack of confidence as a youngster. I mean, you know, that's I'm not pointing fingers at anybody, but because of my background and because of the sort of person I was, I think I've got a huge ego but was embarrassed about it.

Speaker 24:19

Yeah.

Barbara Dickson4:53

I

Presenter5:11

So covered it up with all this sort of slightly namby-pambiness. And I denied the fact that I was a sort of sexual animal, I think. I mean, I certainly was a sexual animal, but I think I thought I you should never look like one. And also, there was all that stuff about, you know, if you look cheap, then you make the wrong kind of statements. And what was I didn't really know what looking cheap was, but too much leg and too much makeup and all that stuff. So I went completely the opposite way. But it was a great hit, the show, and it transferred from Liverpool. I think it was at the Everyman, wasn't it? And then it came into the West End.

Barbara Dickson5:43

Transferred.

Barbara Dickson5:47

The West End

Presenter5:48

But but was it a was it a calculation on your part? I mean was it something that you decided if I do this show I can transfer from folk into the mainstream? No, absolutely not. I had to be absolutely backed into a corner to do that show because I was so scared and nervous of being a failure in it. And my whole life, whenever any I've done anything important, I've had to be backed into a corner by whoever I really respect who's said to me, If you don't do this, you're a fool. Bernard Theobald has played a massive part in my working life and I've worked with him since 1972. He's your manager. He was the man, yes, who said, You've got to do this, you're mad if you don't do it. Willie Russell said, please, please, please do it. And this was because Willie Russell had heard you sing in in a lot of folk clubs, yeah, we knew each other somewhere. Well, he used to run his college folk club in Liverpool and he used to go to the mitre and I used to sing there. So he'd heard me sing folk songs. And he knew it was, again, it was this voice. He wanted the. That was a marvellous idea. I mean, I have to say, that's all that was a stroke of genius that Willie Russell said, I don't want to have.

Barbara Dickson6:25

He's your manager.

Barbara Dickson6:36

In the foot clubs, yeah, we're in the middle of the shop somewhere.

Barbara Dickson6:48

And he knew it was a

Barbara Dickson6:51

That was

Presenter6:58

A person who will be compared to the Beatles or a band of four guys sort of singing very adequately Beatles songs on the side of the stage. His idea was to if I did it, it would never be compared to the original. It would be like a sort of new approach. And it really paid off because all the audiences who ever saw that show in London and in Liverpool said, Isn't the music good? And it was so simple and direct because that's all I knew.

Presenter7:25

Record number two. Classical music hasn't played an enormous part in my life, but I do love Vaughan Williams because it it just strikes a chord. I think it's something to do with it being rather like folk music to me. It touches a chord with me, and I don't think he ever did anything better than the Fantasia on the theme by Thomas Talis.

Presenter8:24

Part of Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Talis, played by the new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt. Um I'd like to hear a bit more about your background before we trace more of the career, Barbara. Father was a docker and you began life in a prefab in something called Dollytown and the Estate, I think.

Presenter8:41

Lots of post-war flatroof prefabs. People remember them fifty years on with great fondness. What was the reality like? Well, I remember it being a very happy house, and I speak to my mother, and my mother said that she thought it was the happiest house that we ever lived in as a family, although it was very, very small. I left there when I was about seven and went to live in a modern council house, which was sort of upstairs and downstairs. But my mother, I remember, I think one absorbs stuff from one's parents and

Presenter9:12

So much of what my mother felt at the time I talk about as being my feelings. I don't know if everybody's like this, but I recall that she said she didn't like the new house.

Presenter9:24

In Oakle Terrace, which was brand spanking new. And I don't think I liked it because of that. And was there music in these houses? Absolutely. My mother had Beethoven's Fifth on 78. But she also had light music. She had a lot of Deanna Durban and film music and Bing Crosby and people like that. But she also listened to the light programme. So there was current music, light music popular in the 50s happening when I was a young child in that little house in Dollytown. So you in turn absorbed all of that? Absolutely. But you obviously had a natural talent for music. Didn't you play the piano at the age of four? Yes, well, I did. I used to go to piano lessons and I kept at piano lessons. When we moved to Dunferno when I was seven, I kept at them until I was about.

Barbara Dickson9:59

Uh

Barbara Dickson10:00

But you obviously had a

Presenter10:13

12. But I really, my heart was never in piano lessons. I just didn't like that. I thought you played piano at Sunday school. Well, I played the piano for the Sunday school in St. Ninian's Church, yes, but I think we all went to Sunday school and I could play the piano, so I was the one designated to play for the hymns. I was about.

Presenter10:34

Probably between twelve and fourteen. The little feather strip hat that we all wore and a sort of high little round collared coat, very long, and nylon stockings and fairly respectable low shoes. I just thought I was so grown up going to church on a Sunday. So when did you switch to the guitar? About that time, actually. I got a guitar from somebody I knew locally, which cost virtually nothing. And then I went on a school trip when I was fourteen to Spain and I bought a guitar for three pounds in La Corona.

Presenter11:08

And brought it back, and it was a proper Spanish guitar, you know, with a wide neck. So I used to play that. And basically, I never really put a guitar down from then on. But no lessons? You just I did try lessons for a while, but I didn't really want to learn to play satin d'ole when I was twenty-five, you know. I mean, that wasn't quite what I wanted to do. I wanted to accompany songs. So at what point did you sit down in front of a an audience, a very discerning audience, in a folk club and perform to them? And what did you play? I think I was seventeen. I was definitely underage and I was in the folk club in the local pub with some of my friends.

Barbara Dickson11:27

But it

Presenter11:44

It's emblazoned on my brain forever. I I just remember the man at the front, whose name was John Watt, standing up and saying, Does anybody want to sing?

Presenter11:53

Because that's what they did. I mean, you were encouraged to join in, and it was so informal. And my friend said, Yes, she will.

Presenter12:01

And they volunteered me to go up, and I went up, because I felt too much of a fool not to. I wasn't quite smart enough to get out of it.

Presenter12:10

and I wanted deeply to do it, but I was so

Presenter12:15

Tremendously nervous. I got up and I I had to sit on a stool. I borrowed a guitar and I sang a song called The Cruel War. It was off a Peter Paul and Mary album. And I crossed my legs. And because of where my legs were crossed, my bottom leg holding the guitar was shaking so much that I just, you know, that the guitar was sort of virtually falling out of my hands with nerves and fear and embarrassment. Echo number three. Well, all during this time in my life, I used to go to festivals and listen to a lot of singers. And there were still in the early sixties some of the great traditional singers in Scotland were still alive.

Presenter12:54

Jimmy Macbeth was a brilliant sort of slightly music hall orientated traditional singer who used to sing loads and loads of funny songs, but I've chosen a song of his that's not funny, called Tramps and Hawkers.

Barbara Dickson13:08

Come I yet rums and hawkers ye gatherers applaud.

Barbara Dickson13:15

The tramse country run and run, come less and in and all. I'll tell to you a roban tale, and sights that I have seen. It's far up and to the snowy north, and south by great negreen.

Barbara Dickson13:36

Oft times I've locked into my sill, when trudging on the road, Wi' a barger blow upon my back, Ma pieces bruins a toad, Wi' lumps a cakes, and tatty scorns, and cheese and broxy hum, It's ne thinking whar um come and fee, Nor whar I'm gone to gone.

Presenter14:02

Jimmy Macbeth and Tramps and Hawkers. So folk singing by night, Barbara Dixon, but clerking by day in the local registrar's office. What did you do? I started off in the Resythe Dockyard, working in the Naval Stores Department, then in the Personnel Department.

Presenter14:17

And then I asked for a transfer to Edinburgh. And that's where I was, of course, when Denmark loomed large. Now tell me about Denmark. This is the big break, the big offer.

Presenter14:26

Well, what happened was there was a a pla there is a place in the Tivoli Gardens called the Visa Versajus, and it's a musical venue. And all through the sixties they used to have foreign acts would come and sing for maybe a season of one or two weeks in the summer.

Presenter14:44

And I was invited to go there, and I thought, brilliant idea But but I was it is extraordinary really I was very cautious. I thought, now, if I go to Denmark, I'm going to come back, I'm going to have no money, I'm going to have to be on the door. And in fact that happened.

Presenter15:02

But I asked the civil service if they would let me go for something like four weeks, five weeks, and they said no. You I said, can I have unpaid leave? No, there's no such thing.

Presenter15:13

So I thought I've got to resign. And that was a bold move, really. Your parents must have thought you were mad. My father thought I was mental.

Barbara Dickson15:19

My f

Presenter15:22

He really did. He said, giving up that pension and of course he's completely right. Now I could have done with it. But

Presenter15:28

He said giving up a pension for something, you know, as flagrantly stupid as being a singer for a couple of years, he thought, was madness. And I did it anyway. But after that, after you came back, you were then cut loose. You were on to singing as a career. And I know you went off to England, which must have seemed like a long, long way away. But for five years, really, you toured the northern clubs in you and your guitar and your suitcase. That's correct. It must have been a pretty lonely, miserable business on occasions. Well, yes, that.

Barbara Dickson15:55

It must have

Presenter16:00

I do have happy memories of the music I was singing and playing, and I was gaining confidence all the time, and I had to do about an hour and ten minutes of music each night whenever I was playing, so I had to learn a lot of songs, and I had come on enormously. But I have to give credit for an awful lot of influence over the way I developed as a singer during those years. Was really down to a friend of mine called Archie Fisher, who's a very well-known and respected, and rather eclectic songwriter and singer of traditional songs in Scotland. And he kind of took me under his wing and helped me enormously. But what folk clubs taught me was the ability to communicate with an audience. People say to me, Could you talk to people as if you're in a little room? And I say, Yes, I think I think I am.

Presenter16:49

Because of folk clubs. If I'm in the Albert Hole, I do links into songs like I'm in a folk club. Because it's what I learned to do.

Presenter17:01

Well, when I was in John Paul, George Ringo and Bert, somebody told me there was this American band called

Presenter17:06

Little Feet had emerged and people were and read great reviews, and I went round the corner to the record store in Shaftesbury Avenue and bought this record, and I took it home and I put the record on, and this is what I heard.

Presenter17:23

There was a woman in Georgia didn't feel just right, she had fever all day

Barbara Dickson17:28

Uh

Presenter17:28

Uh Uh

Barbara Dickson17:29

And chill the night

Barbara Dickson17:33

Now things gotten worse, yes a serious fine In times like this, it takes a man, that's a style like getting all of them fine A doctor of the heart and a doctor of the mind

Presenter17:45

Little Feet and Rock and Roll Doctor. Now something happened to Barbara Dixon, the bespectacled folk singer, when she came down to London in the mid mid seventies. A metamorphosis took place and she turned into a different person overnight. Tell me about that. I became a beautiful swan, hadn't you noticed?

Barbara Dickson17:57

I've been

Presenter18:00

I made an album while I was in Jumpo George Ringo and Burt.

Presenter18:05

And it was to be the first pop album I'd really done, and it was going to be called Answer Me, and the single of Answer Me had been done.

Presenter18:13

and I had to do the cover. I'd never had a posh record cover done.

Presenter18:17

And

Presenter18:18

I

Presenter18:19

went along to a studio in South Kensington.

Presenter18:23

And Laurence Zatecki was the photographer, and I went into this rather lovely studio, and there was a bloke in the corner who was a very, very interesting little Frenchman called Regis, and Regisse did a massive makeover on me, lasting about two hours.

Presenter18:41

He cut my hair, which was sort of long and sort of not quite wavy, not quite straight.

Presenter18:46

He permed it into a sort of elliptical kind of shape, so it looked rather kind of Art Nouveau.

Presenter18:54

And he made up my face. I got dressed up in these rather lovely nineteen twenties kind of diaphanous frocks and went out there with little snakeskin shoes on and had my picture taken and left the studio a different woman. Without the glasses. Yes, I'd already got contact lenses about two weeks before this, but with the contact lenses and the the face and the hair, I was I suddenly thought that I was

Presenter19:26

whoever was currently the sex symbol at at the time. But this was more than a makeover for the day. You you you hung on to this, you knew then how to makeover. Oh, yes, yes. Well, of course I had the p the hairstyle was permanent. There it was. It had come out of a bottle, but it was there.

Barbara Dickson19:29

But this

Barbara Dickson19:33

Oh yes

Presenter19:40

And it made a fantastic difference to the way I looked as well as the way I felt. And it it gave me a a physical confidence which I think I'd never ever had. And then you became a pop star because you had this hit Answer Me which you'd had done the cover for in 76. And then there was another suitcase in another hall, I think the year after, 77. That's right.

Barbara Dickson19:53

Consumer

Barbara Dickson20:00

That's

Presenter20:01

Um, so you transferred into Pop?

Presenter20:04

Is it true tell me this is it true that you turned down the lead role in Yvita about then?

Presenter20:09

No, I didn't turn it down. I went to see Tim and Andrew and we sang I remember singing Rice and Lloyd Webb. Um yes. And I went to sing one of the Uptemple songs from Evita in Andrew's flat.

Presenter20:22

in um uh Eaton Square.

Presenter20:26

And

Presenter20:27

I knew, and they knew, that this was not for me. It's too big. I'm not that sort of singer, really. I'm not really a a show singer. And I knew, as I was trying to sing it or doing it, that

Presenter20:39

It wasn't for me actually.

Barbara Dickson20:41

That's almost

Presenter20:42

I can't remember which song. It was one of the big belty things, but I'm no Ethel Merman. That's not my kind of thing. And I.

Presenter20:50

I wasn't happy with it, and they weren't happy with what I was doing wi with it. But the song, the Mistress's song, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, was of course ideal and it proved to be a great success. It was a big hit. And Elaine Page, of course, became Evita. You did, though, turn down chess, didn't you, some years later, after you'd recorded I Know Him So Well with Elaine? Yes. Well, I mean, the part of The Russian's Wife is very small, and I'm not being an egomaniac here, but I didn't think at that point in my life, having done Blood Brothers and won an Olivier Award for it, there was any point in me going in.

Barbara Dickson21:12

Yeah.

Presenter21:25

Although I would have spent a lot of time with Elaine, which would have been great. But I wouldn't have liked to have been there to sing a couple of songs. It would not have given me enough to do. So I didn't want to do it. But that was no reflection on the piece, because I just love chess. I love the music from chess. More music.

Presenter21:44

I have been deeply in love with James Taylor since about nineteen sixty seven. When I went to Denmark I stole a friend's album, Sweet Baby James, and put it in the bottom of my my guitar case so the corners were all sort of curled up.

Presenter21:56

and gave it back to him about two months later. So it was so difficult for me to go to a desert island and not take something of James Taylor's. And I just because it's so this is so sexy and so appealing, this song, I just thought this had to be the one. It's called Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.

Presenter22:15

Do me wrong.

Presenter22:18

Yeah.

Barbara Dickson22:18

To me right

Barbara Dickson22:23

Tell me lies but hold me tight.

Barbara Dickson22:30

Save your goodbyes for the morning light.

Barbara Dickson22:36

But don't let me

Presenter22:37

Be lonely tonight. James Taylor and Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.

Presenter22:44

Blood Brothers was a great West End success in the early eighties. You played misses Johnston, the poverty stricken mother who's forced to give away one of her sons. That was really your first acting role, wasn't it? Although you sang as well.

Presenter22:56

Yes, it was absolutely my first acting role. And once again I had to be sort of, you know, stood up against a wall and threatened with a lingering death if I didn't do it. This is what I'm like. But it was Willie Russell doing the bullying again? Willie Russell and Chris Bond, who is a wonderful theatre director and writer, he was going to direct Blood Brothers and

Barbara Dickson23:06

That's not doing

Presenter23:14

After Bernard saying to them, I give up, you know, if you can get her to do it, you know, all that stuff, and they both came to London to see me and I said, Oh, I don't think I can do it, I don't know. And they sat down and I read a bit of it. And Chris Bourne said, Yeah, you can do it. I'll make sure you do it. I can see that that's a big jump though, because suddenly you don't have the piano or the guitar between you and the audio. I mean, you are actually on there alone with your hands free, moving about, aren't you? It's a very different experience. And it's performance. It's very, very different acting to singing. A lot of actors can sing because they can sell a song in the performance.

Barbara Dickson23:42

Makes sense.

Barbara Dickson23:44

And it's performance.

Presenter23:53

But hardly any singers can act.

Presenter23:56

I wanted to get it right so much because it was such a good piece of theatre and I believed completely in the story.

Presenter24:04

And you see, if it's too show-busy, it doesn't work for me. It has to be bleak and liverpuddling, and to do justice to the sadness and the toughness of what Willie actually wrote in that script. He's a wonderful writer. Now, these days it's Taggart and Band of Gold, but they were a long time coming, really, those parts, weren't they, for somebody who'd won a sweat award for Best Actress. Why do you think it took so long? I mean, nearly ten years, really. Well, I haven't a coffers game.

Barbara Dickson24:26

Somebody

Barbara Dickson24:31

Well, I haven't took the office.

Presenter24:34

I haven't a clue. I really I was desperate to do more acting. But I think, you know, if people think of you as being a singer.

Barbara Dickson24:41

And you can't do that.

Presenter24:41

I need cat, yes.

Presenter24:43

But they're tough parts that you get tough c characters. I mean, from Mrs Johnson to certainly Anita in the band of gold kind of tart with a heart. Well, she she keeps the brothel, doesn't she, for the for the prostitutes. Um it's very interesting that you get cast in those sorts of roles when your image, your recording image is one, is very sort of middle of the road, girl next door, gentle.

Presenter25:01

But I'm not really like that, you see. I'd much rather do the sort of tough things.

Presenter25:07

The press and television, certainly light entertainment, just emasculates everybody.

Presenter25:13

So you are tend tended to be seen as a rather anodyne character. I've never been

Presenter25:20

Quite as much the girl next door as people have thought of me as being. Record number six.

Presenter25:27

My children have become devoted to an album that we have at home, which is a collection of the old BBC children's favourites.

Presenter25:36

And this, politically incorrect as it could ever be and we couldn't find a more politically incorrect song than this is Charlie Drake singing My Boomerang Won't Come Back.

Barbara Dickson25:47

My boomerang won't come back. My boomerang won't come back. I've waved the thing all over the place. Practiced till I was black in the face. I'm a big disgrace, the Aborigine race. My boomerang won't come back. I can ride a kangaroo. Make kinka juice still. But I'm a big disgrace, the Aborigines race. My boomerang won't come back.

Speaker 226:02

Uh

Presenter26:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 226:04

Uh

Presenter26:05

Yeah yeah

Presenter26:10

Charlie Drake and my boomerang won't come back. The other important transition you've made in your life, Barbara, and you did it relatively late, is from single woman to uh wife and mother. You married at thirty-six. Why did you leave it so late? Because I just never really found anybody that was a suitable husband and father. I mean it's as simple as that.

Presenter26:30

I didn't really want to get married. I wanted to get married when I was very, very young a couple of times, but fortunately I didn't do it. I say fortunately because I really mean that.

Presenter26:40

And when I met my husband it was in uh when I was started in Blood Brothers, and I didn't really when I met him, I didn't think of him as being immediately as being a sort of pu suitable partner for me, because he's eleven years younger than me.

Presenter26:54

And I thought, well, that that'll never work. But I mean, we've been married eleven years and we're still together, so it's worked so far. And you've had three babies, Colum, who's now eight, Gabriel, six, and Archie, four.

Presenter27:06

Which is a lot to produce and manage in the second half of your thirties and your early forties. What's been the effect of all that domesticity on your professional life? It's been a very broadening experience. Having children is a very broadening experience. You as a person, you grow. I mean, some people don't want to have children. That's their decision. But I did want to have children, and my life has been changed forever. Me, the person, Barbara Dixon, the private citizen.

Presenter27:35

As an artist, I'm not sure whether I've changed that much, or whether I would have been much the same as an artist if I'd had no children. All it does mean is, of course, I'm a lot more worried all the time, because I'm worried about whether everybody's okay if I'm not there.

Presenter27:53

And that has been s I suppose a negative influence, because I tend to be more concerned about things that have nothing to do with my work when I'm not at home. Has it made you less ambitious, perhaps?

Presenter28:05

It's easy to think that children would rob you of your ambition because your ambitions would be fulfilled by children, but I think basically I'm a rather dissatisfied customer.

Presenter28:18

And I have itchy feet.

Presenter28:20

and my feet itch so much that I have to be doing something that satisfies my ego as well as my biological clock.

Presenter28:29

Record number seven.

Presenter28:30

Well, my favourite songwriter, and I've got a lot of favourite songwriters, is Randy Newman, who's an American and a brilliant lyricist, very important lyrics. But I've chosen a tune of his which doesn't say anything very important at all. It's about when he was sent to New Orleans from Los Angeles as a little child and his o observations are fantastic. It's called The Dixie Flyer.

Barbara Dickson28:53

I know the dicks and fly

Barbara Dickson28:57

I forgot

Barbara Dickson29:02

Cross the speed of the taxi

Barbara Dickson29:04

The land of freedom

Speaker 329:09

Uh

Barbara Dickson29:10

Flower

Barbara Dickson29:13

Now can you all this?

Barbara Dickson29:17

Back to a friend and a family, yeah

Presenter29:22

Randy Newman and Dixie Flyer. You say, Barbara, that acting is now important to you, but I still have the impression that you're most at home with an audience really, singing whether it's at the Albert Hall or in the Cafe Royal or in a provincial leisure centre. There's a sense of comfort when you do that. Is that what you feel? That you're at home at one, you're where you began and where you belong. It's also where you find out if it works. If you go to somewhere and sing and play a concert with a really good band and the audience think it's fantastic and you've done really challenging material, which I do.

Presenter29:57

And sing everything from sort of theatre songs to folk music in my show, and the people have enjoyed it.

Presenter30:03

then I know it works, and I might as well keep doing it as long as I can sing and get away with it. What would you rather have next? Would you rather be offered, you know, a really big musical, the equivalent of Evita? Or would you like a a you know, a good, solid, down to earth cameo role, maybe, in a play?

Presenter30:23

I like television because every day is something different, and I know that's a very undisciplined thing to say, but that really does affect me.

Presenter30:31

And I am going to do a musical in the West End next year, but it's totally different again because I don't want to do a big production musical. It's not what I like.

Presenter30:43

I'm not that kind of artist. I'm more sort of

Presenter30:46

sort of Brecht and Broadway, I think.

Presenter30:50

I like more sort of tough.

Presenter30:53

things and

Presenter30:54

with sadness in them.

Presenter30:56

Because that's my vocal style. I mean, I I am still, basically, a singer of folk songs who just sings theatre songs in a kind of, I suppose, distinctive but unknowing way.

Presenter31:10

Last record.

Presenter31:12

Well

Presenter31:13

Because I'm going to be on my own on this island and I'm going to want to make some sort of, I think, some alcohol out of the coconuts, I'm going to have to ferment something because I wouldn't be able to stand it and I want to escape in in my own head for a little while. I'm going to have to get something wild to dance to, because I want to dance on the shore.

Presenter31:34

And I thought I would take um the Poles and the Dubliners.

Barbara Dickson31:39

On the phone.

Speaker 231:39

Fourth of July 1806 we set sail from the sweet home of Car.

Speaker 231:46

We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks for the Grand City Hall in New York.

Speaker 231:53

Was a wonderful craft, she was ranked for the last And know how the wild winds know her, she's got several blasts, she

Barbara Dickson32:01

Time for seven masks and I call her the Iron Win

Presenter32:06

The Pogues and the Dubliners and the Irish Rover, good for a laugh on your desert island, but what's the one if you could only take one that you choose?

Presenter32:13

Um I've got to take James Taylor because I am deeply in love with James Taylor. And it's good for a cry, isn't it? God, it's so sad. I'm going to be so lonely with that. Don't let me be lonely tonight and I'm just going to be sitting there with the sound of the waves. What about your book?

Presenter32:29

There's a very big collection of English and Scottish popular ballads collected by F J. Child.

Presenter32:36

He's long dead, sadly.

Presenter32:38

But it was the most wonderful and definitive collection of the ballads of England and Scotland. And some American, I think in the sixties or seventies,

Presenter32:48

Found all the tunes that go with all the ballads and put them together. And what I'd like to do is just to have that collection so that I could learn these fantastic ballads like Long Lankin, so that when I come back, if I am rescued, I would know all of that stuff. I'd be like Professor Dixon of the School of Scottish Studies.

Presenter33:11

And what about your luxury? Can I have a very large set of heated rollers?

Presenter33:18

Can I have solar power?

Barbara Dickson33:19

Mm-hmm.

Presenter33:20

Yeah, and it must have heated rollers. My hair is like the bane of my life.

Presenter33:24

Barbara Dixon, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 333:36

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.