Article from the Liverpool Echo newspaper from 23rd February 2007.
I'M ON THE ROAD AGAIN... HEADING BACK TO LIVERPOOL
Peter Grants meets Barbara Dickson as she celebrates 40 years in 'the biz'
"I am not a woman in a long dress who sings with an orchestra..."
Barbara Dickson is clearly focused on her career. And how she is perceived is important to her. Yet she's certainly a woman of many parts: a happily married mother of three teenage sons, award-winning actress, and one of the country's most successful singers.
She smiles when she says: "And I'm still putting in parts of the jigsaw."
The Dunfermline-born star is appearing at the Philharmonic Hall on Monday - one date on a lengthy UK tour celebrating her 40 years in music.
And what music she has made. She started in the folk clubs in her teens. But she made her name with Willy Russell's musical John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert at the Liverpool Everyman and the West End.
Liverpool and Barbara Dickson are very much linked: Her mother is from the city and Barbara's love of The Beatles is now well-documented. In fact, her latest album is a celebration of the Fab Four's collective talents.
She says: "I've worked on my interpretation of Beatle songs. It's has the umbrella title Nothing's Gonna Change my World - a line from John Lennon's Across The Universe.
"I haven't picked the normal hits like Day Tripper or delved back in to my involvement in John, Paul, George and Ringo and Bert," she says. "This is a Barbara Dickson album."
Barbara is one of an elite group to have won the Best Actress in a Musical Olivier Award - twice - as Mrs Johnstone in Russell's Blood Brothers and as pools winner Viv Nicholson in Spend Spend Spend.
She is also often recognised from the award-winning ITV drama Band Of Gold, where she played brothel-keeper Anita Braithwaite. She became a household name, too, after being resident star on the Two Ronnies.
Setting out from her home in Lincolnshire to hit the road, she says: "I love to go on tour because I don't consider performing to be a job. It's what I have been doing since I was in my teens; it is just part of me.
"But I couldn't go on stage and sing the exact same set as I did in the 70s; I'm always looking to challenge myself artistically in the same way that a painter or a writer does. I have to move on. "
In the early 1970s, I sang at a Liverpool folk club run by a young student teacher - Willy Russell. He showed me the first draft of what would later become the award-winning musical, John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert and asked me to perform the music."
Now she has gone back to the Beatles - but with an artistic purpose. She says: "The songs I've chosen are not the most well-known but the ones which I feel I can make my own and do a completely new take on such as Eleanor Rigby, Fool On The Hill, Across The Universe, I Will, Here, There And Everywhere and Rain.'
She is a perfectionist. "My concert at the Phil will feature me and five musicians. I play piano and acoustic guitar. I want it to be wonderful. I want it to be a show that people remember.
Plus it will be the anniversary of my first ever tour. I still have a photograph of myself and the band - I'm dressed in a bomber jacket outside the Philharmonic Hall and it makes me laugh."
Barbara, who has a slick new website says that the internet is a great way of keeping in touch with fans.
"It's good that the internet allows like-minded people - fans who, say, like me - to keep in touch. I am in regular contact with it and although I can't answer all the postings, I do like to hear feedback. What you read is ME.
"In the past if you had letters from fans it was impossible to write back. But the web makes you more accessible to so many people."
Barbara says she will be featuring numbers from her new album as well as songs from her repertoire - a large one that includes everything from pop classics to Vaughan Williams.
"Liverpool and I go back a long, long way. I am proud of my ECHO award for best actress in 1996 for Seven Ages of Woman. I shall be seeing some old friends and some new ones at the Phil.
"I will wave from the stage and sing my songs. It's only one night, sadly, but it's going to be a good night."
And from the passion in her voice, you just know that Barbara will give it her all ...
