The following article appeared in "The Sunday Times" newspaper in November 1989.
VARIETY KEEPS VERSATILE STAGE SINGER IN TUNE WITH THE TIMES
Those of you who are going to see Barbara Dickson's concerts in Scotland this week will be, by her own admission, people who already like what she does.
Those who are not have perhaps made the mistake of writing her off, somewhat condescendingly, as a middle-of-the-road balladeer. So you would be surprised to find, in among the hits which an artist is more or less obliged to include in a live show, a traditional song from Orkney and a protest about toxic waste (she has been a member of Greenpeace for 12 years) among a lot of other material, including her own compositions.
At the ripe old age of 42 Dickson has been around long enough to hear most of what music has to offer, and with her big, versatile voice, she is good enough to be able to take her pick.
She started off singing Beatles' songs around the house, deliberately plunged into the radical folk music of the 1960s, and took a detour, via the theatre, in the early 1970s before bursting onto the popular music scene more recently.
'I think underneath everything I am trying to prove how clever I am, so I do some things that nobody's ever heard of.' A throaty laugh quickly dispels any sense of vaingloriousness which such a statement might suggest.
There is a warmth about her which enables her to assert, as if she needed to, that she has become a consummate performer without sounding arrogant. It enables her to talk about her two young sons, Colm and Gabriel, with passionate maternal pride without sounding sentimental.
Yet, at the same time, she gives the distinct impression that she does not suffer fools gladly, not least in her professional entourage. She was
certainly tough enough to take on the mighty Robert Stigwood organisation in the courts when she thought she was not getting her share of royalties. And she now controls her career through her own management agency.
Is it naive to trace that toughness to her Dunfermline roots? Probably; because, although her family were not musicians, hers was not a story of a valiant struggle against all the odds.
In fact, family and friends supported her all the way, without actually pushing her into music professionally. She recalls Sandy Sadler, her music teacher at Woodmill High School, encouraging her by judging that she had 'not the best voice in the school, but definitely the loudest'.
And while she was eking out a living around the folk clubs of central Scotland smokey back rooms in pubs for the most part the parents were there to keep body and soul together.
'There were a few backhanders and nothing was ever said about contributions for food in the house, ' she remembers. She has been glad to be able to repay the compliment recently to her now widowed mother.
She did have a real job for almost four years as a clerk in the registrar-general's office in Edinburgh. But the offer of a six-week contract in Denmark, that well-known springboard to fame and fortune, was enough to make her chuck in the day job and turn to singing professionally. To understand why in the early 1960s with rock-and-roll erupting all around her a singer should head for the folk clubs with her acoustic guitar, you have to remember that folk music then was not just about, in Billy Connolly's immortal phrase, 'four men in Arran jumpers singing about dead sailors'.
Dickson remembers simply learning her craft by watching and listening at the feet of artists like Archie Fisher. 'He was a great inspiration to me, as he was to many people. When I listened to him singing folk music it melted my kneecaps.'
Fisher repays the curious compliment by describing her as 'probably the best folk singer in the folk tradition at the time. I would welcome her back anytime'. He produced her last 'folk' album and remembers her being very ill just before the recording session. 'But she's a real trooper she battled on and it turned the best album she'd ever done.'
It was Willie Russell, the playwright, who rescued her from yet another chorus of Fiddlers Green as the folk revival faltered. He wanted her for his show John, Paul, George, Ringo ..and Bert at the Liverpool Everyman in 1974 which turned into a big success and transferred to London for a year.
Success in that led to a guest slot on the Two Ronnies, then at the height of their powers. Ronnie Corbett still considers himself a great fan and describes her as 'a wonderful live performer and a good Fife girl'. But nearly 10 years later Russell turned up in her life once again to give Dickson another great opportunity in his musical, Blood Brothers.
Dickson won rave notices and an award for it, which set her up for recording I Know Him So Well from Tim Rice's musical, Chess, which is perhaps her best-known recording to date even if it was shared with Elaine Page.
Rather surprisingly the Russell shows are the only two theatre pieces she has done. She explains that Broadway-style shows are not for her.
'If I do a musical I want it to owe rather more to Brecht than Rogers and Hammerstein. The thing about Blood Brothers is that it was so tough, it had something to say.'
Dickson is, however, contemplating a one-woman show which is more theatrically-oriented than the concerts she gives on her tours at the moment.
The tour started in the bright lights of Ashton-under-Lyme a fortnight ago and will play an odd selection of venues, from the relative grandeur of the Theatre Royal in Glasgow to the Gloucester Leisure Centre.
Dickson makes a point of playing more than just the big city-centre venues, because, as she waspishly observes, 'not everybody lives in the big cities'. She even played Lerwick in Shetland a few years ago.
The three dates in Scotland this week will be important. She has not been back to Dunfermline for many a year but cannot, even if she wanted to, deny her Scottishness.
'I enjoy being Scottish because if you live in the south of England (she lives in Richmond, Surrey) it's nice to be different and foreign. You're allowed to be slightly eccentric, as if that sort of behaviour is accepted in Scotland.'
