"John Kaneen introduced her, told us all that she had stopped off on her way home to Dunfermline and was going to give us a couple of songs. We all applauded politely, wondering just who the hell was hidden behind that tumbling, slightly tangled stack of auburn hair and the big black owlish glasses. We watched as the fingers fumbled with the capo on the neck of the guitar and listened as she quietly, almost apologetically told us that she was going to sing The Cruel Mother. I was beginning to wish I’d gone to Blackpool!
Then she began to sing! And one hundred and fifty spines began to tingle and one hundred and fifty necks began to feel the hair rising on them and one hundred and fifty privileged people in a room above Gregson’s Well heard a voice that touched them in places they didn’t know they had. Barbara got her booking at Gregson’s Well.
I was still writing songs and performing them on a semi-pro basis but I’d begun to write plays as well. In the do-it-yourself style I’d picked up from the folk clubs, we pulled together an acting company, booked a masonic hall in Edinburgh, begged, borrowed and stole some equipment and transport and headed north for the Edinburgh Fringe.
One of the plays I’d written contained a moment that needed underscoring with suitable music. We used a recording of Barbara singing an Archie Fisher song called The Climb. After the first performance we came out of the tiny kitchen, laughingly known as ‘backstage’ to find a group of the audience waiting for us. We thought they were going to ask for our autographs, we thought were famous, we thought we were it. Until one by one, each of them came up and asked where they could get a copy of the record we’d used!
I was driving Barbara to a gig she was playing in Rainford. I told her about the play I was writing. I said, “It’s about The Beatles. But when I finish this one, I want to write a play that features you singing.” She nodded politely and said, “ I think it’s the next turning on the left.”
Two weeks later I realised that I’d already written the play in which Barbara could feature. The voice at the other end of the telephone said,“ You mean....you mean, you want me to sing the Beatles songs?” I said, “Yes.” She said,“ You’re mad!” I said, “I know.” She said, “ But I do folk songs, acoustic guitar, no amplifiers or things like that.” I said, “ Don’t worry about that. The Everyman Theatre is a proper theatre. Their amplifiers never go up in flames!” There was a pause. “Oh well. I suppose that’s different,” she said.
The play began out on the street. As the audience arrived outside the theatre they were confronted by a group of buskers led by a girl with a tumbling mass of auburn hair. These opportunistic beggars had hurriedly half-learned some Beatles songs and were working the queue, obviously trying to cash in on the subject of the play the audience was about to see.
'Disgusted from Dingle’ pushed past the urchin with the auburn hair, complaining loudly that it was appalling having to tolerate these singers on the street. “Get a job!”, the disgruntled geezer from Greasby told the girl behind the owlish spectacles as she held out the hat towards him, all the time singing an awful renditon of Penny Lane. 'Tommy from Tuebrook' put twenty pence in the hat, patted the girl on the arm and said, “Don’t give up the day job will you love?”
And when the audience was seated waiting for this play about the Beatles to begin, the auditorium doors at the back of the theatre opened and those bloody awful buskers actually invaded the theatre itself. Then they walked along the aisle and up onto the stage and people were saying this is outrageous and this should be stopped and why isn’t anybody doing anything about this and look that girl with the auburn hair is actually sitting down at the piano!
And then they heard a voice singing, ‘Lift up your hearts and sing us a song that was a hit before your mother was born....’ And the audience turned in their seats and looked around the auditorium in the belief that somehow an angel had got into the theatre and started singing. She had.
Almost ten years later in a rehearsal room in a convereted warehouse in Matthew Street, I stood looking out of the window at the place where the entrance to the Cavern used to be. The buildings above ground had been flattened - the space turned into a car park and beneath it, subway trains now rumbled and roared over the very spot where I’d so often seen and heard the Beatles play. I was thinking about how things used to be, no doubt getting a little sentimental about things that change, things that pass.
Then, from behind me, I heard that voice. And I turned to see that Barbara Dickson had become Mrs Johnstone. And I thought about how some things change. And some things pass. And how some things just get better and better."
(Willy Russell)
