The following article appeared in the "Music Week" trade journal in 1987.
OWN-LABEL BRAND
Chris White discovers why Barbara Dickson chose to release her latest album on a self-financed label
After a string of gold albums for CBS Records, K-Tel and most recently Telstar, Barbara Dickson has taken the somewhat unusual step of releasing her new LP "After Dark" on a label which is a joint enterprise between herself and her long-time manager Bernard Theobald.
Putting her money where her mouth is - Barbara Dickson's move to release an album on a self-financed label is guaranteed to raise the eyebrows of many observers in the music business. Yet for Dickson it is a deliberate strategy designed to hit back at what she describes as "the discrimination shown by the record business against artists like myself. Because we are not always in the Top 20 they don't believe we have a following, so the result is a lot of good artists ignored by the major record companies."
Dickson herself has been without a major hit single since the number one duet with Elaine Paige of "I Know Him So Well", the song from "Chess" which sold some 950,000 copies before being pipped to the one million mark by Jennifer Rush's "The Power Of Love". Nonetheless, her albums have continued to sell in the tens of thousands and she has just completed 40 sell-out concert dates around the UK. These have included a performance at the Royal Albert Hall which has been filmed for Boxing Day transmission on ITV. In the New Year BBC2 will be transmitting "Barbara Dickson in...", a TV series she recorded earlier in 1987.
Barbara admits that she had a very good relationship with K-Tel Records, to whom she was a direct signing. "They were wanting to get away from the image of being a TV company just releasing compilations, and it worked well for both of us. A lot of the people who like me are TV viewers, so the fact that the albums were TV-advertised was ideal."
Since leaving K-Tel however Barbara has found hat "the problem is that someone like me isn't fashionable, but on the other hand I don't consider myself to be MOR. There is no importance given in the UK to AOR (adult-oriented rock) music, unlike the US where there is a huge market for it. There is a huge section of artists in the middle of the music business who get no attention at all from the record industry and I find that insulting.
"I don't consider myself a boring artist even though I have been performing professionally for some 19 years now - I'm certainly not cabaret either. My live act draws on experience in the theatre (she starred in the West End hit production of Willy Russell's "Blood Brothers") and includes musical influences like jazz, and the work of such names as Bertolt Brecht."
So, having "learnt the hard way", Dickson and manager Theobald decided to launch Theobald-Dickson Records with distribution of the album, and single (a version of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going To Rain Today"), going through Pinnacle. Apart from her autumn concert tour, Dickson has also supported the release with visits to local radio stations
in all the relevant towns and cities. "Short of going to each record shop and standing there with a notice saying 'Buy my record' I don't think that there's much more I could do to promote it," she says.
Dickson is not the only music business personality to sound off about the seeming apathy shown towards artists who are not necessarily Top 20 regulars. Composer Mike Batt has pleaded for such artists and music to be taken more seriously, while Tim Rice has also expressed concern that names like Dickson and Elaine Paige have so far not been nominated in any of the BPI awards categories.
"It's really a case of attitude," Dickson argues. "If Alison Moyet records a Thirties standard, the chances are that it will go in to the chart, but someone like myself would find it much more difficult. Maybe it's a question of image, but I've done all that travelling between gigs in a transit van and playing in obscure places, too."
It was almost 12 years ago that Barbara Dickson had her first hit, "Answer Me", for RSO Records after years of playing the folk club circuit in her native Scotland. Since then her hit songs have included "Another Suitcase In Another Hall", "January February" and "Caravan Song", while gold albums have included "All For A Song", "The Barbara Dickson Songbook", "The Right Moment" and the appropriately named "Gold".
After taking several months off last year following the birth of her son Barbara returned to work with a vengeance. Apart from the usual TV appearances, she was also the subject of a LWT "South Bank Show" in which she sang classical music for the first time in public. She has done both a spring and autumn tour of the UK, and on completion of the latter flew to Eire for a series of concerts, followed by shows in the Middle East.
Barbara has also been writing with Charlie Dore, the singer who enjoyed international success several years ago with "Pilot Of The Airwaves". Royalties from their song "Precious Cargo", about ocean pollution, have been given to Greenpeace, and Dickson is hopeful of recording the song soon. "I'm looking for a male artist of stature to record it with - we've made approaches to people like Paul McCartney and Phil Collins, but there's nothing definite so far. I'd love to do it with someone like James Taylor, but on the other hand it would probably be more appropriate to do the song with a UK artist, as sea pollution is something that is very close to home."
She'd also like to do another musical, but admits that "Blood Brothers" would be a hard act to follow. "To be honest, that was such a good production that I wouldn't want to settle for anything less. Willy Russell came up with a classic and the role I played covered the whole gamut of emotions. Yes, I'd like to do something else but it's obviously going to have to be something very special."
In the meantime, she intends to have a well-deserved break at the end of her tour before starting to record her next album early in 1988.
She hopes her personal stand against industry apathy towards artists like herself will in the end benefit them all. "Do you realise that "I Know Him So Well" didn't go on the Radio One airplay list until it actually reached number one, and Capital Radio hardly played it even then?" Dickson adds.
"More than 900,000 people bought that record and it doesn't seem right that Radio One should dictate to the public what they should hear, rather than what the listeners would like to hear."
