Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Singer and actress who rose from a Glasgow tenement to become a versatile star of stage, screen, and television.
On the island
Eight records
when I was about thirteen I really got into Ray Charles, especially when he was singing the blues and it was all moaning and wailing and all that sort of stuff.
the lead singer of the Doobie Brothers is a guy called Michael MacDonald, who is one of my all time favorites too.
Greatest Love of AllFavourite
Whitney Houston, I think, is one of the great, great new talented girl singers. I mean, I think she's not only gorgeous to look at, but just divine to listen to.
I am completely mental about Pavarotti. And it was difficult to choose uh one of his... but I chose your tiny hand. It frozen from Pujini's Laboe.
I think this is the sexiest, most sensual record I have ever heard. I just love it.
I've always admired Bowie, David Bowie, and I was fortunate to work with him once, and we had a great working relationship and became very good friends.
this record was in the film Flash Dance. But the whole album is brilliant, and it's one of my all time favorite albums.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:49Was there a lot of music in your life as a child?
Oh, a lot. I mean, where I come from they have parties at the weekends... Everybody would have to do their wee bay, have to do their ton... Most of my family thought they were Frank Sinatra wh whether they were male or female... My father particularly liked Perry Coma. But there was a lot of music.
Presenter asks
3:18Were [black American singers] your heroes, and did you model yourself on that?
Yes, I I think um I leaned towards preferring black American soul music to um anything else... I always went for American music and I never ever sung with a Scottish accent. Always sang with a with an American accent because I would mimic them, I suppose.
Presenter asks
3:52If you say of somebody that they were born in a tenement, immediately a sort of a grotty picture comes into mind. Was it like that at all?
It was a grey place, but when I was there, it didn't seem grey... we were lower working class and we didn't have much, but we didn't think we were poor. We would never have thought we were poor, you know, we had everything we needed... It was my whole world, and I didn't ever feel downtrodden or anything like that.
The keepsakes
The book
Swami Muktananda
I would still choose a book that really is on philosophy, and it's by a man called Swami Muktananda. And it's called Where Are You Going? … This book sort of changed my life in a way.
Presenter asks
5:25Was there a sense in this sort of background you came from that singing was a way of making it away from it?
I would never have imagined I would ever have made it. I mean, I never dreamed that I was going to have a hit record one day and be in an inverted commas show business... But singing was a way of expressing. Whatever it was that that we felt, that I felt. I just love music.
Presenter asks
8:13How did you first start singing in public?
I can't actually remember... but I've been told that it was during the Queen's Coronation. That was officially the first public appearance when I sang on a golden coach on my father's shoulders in the street... when we go on holiday to Rossi, I used to go up to the Punch and Judy man and ask him if I could sing.
Presenter asks
9:16When did the break occur then? When were you spotted by somebody?
When I was thirteen I was singing with a group... called the Glen Eagles... and they came to the little club where I was singing on a Sunday, saw me... and they said, you know, they'd like to try and do something... at fourteen I recorded Shout and it was released when I left school at fifteen and it was a hit and that was it.
“I always went for American music and I never ever sung with a Scottish accent. Always sang with a with an American accent because I would mimic them, I suppose.”
“I'm one of those those animals who works totally on instinct.”
“I find as I get older, the more discipline I have, freer I feel. I feel much freer. I feel like a bird if I really can discipline myself.”
“I believe that you come into this world on your own and you leave you go out on your own and really. You have to find satisfaction inside yourself, from yourself. Not from anything external.”