The following interview is taken from the Bristol Evening Post and was published on 24th March, 2005
A RELUCTANT CELEBRITY
Singer Barbara Dickson comes to Bristol to this week as part of the Fame musical tour. Richard Lowe talks to her about her role as Miss Sherman and how she feels about life in the spotlight
When I speak to Barbara Dickson on her mobile, the singer and actress is travelling on a train from Cardiff to Cornwall. Not a journey to relish, but Barbara seems pretty pleased with her current trajectory.
She is in the middle of a concert tour, taking her own brand of folk music, recently showcased by her new album Full Circle, to cities and towns across the country.
Of course, before Barbara made her name in music by singing chart hits in the 1970s and 80s - including I Know Him So Well, alongside Elaine Paige - the Dunfermline-born performer initially cut her teeth in the 1960s folk clubs of Fife.
The title Full Circle points to the all-encompassing sound that her concerts are now renowned for. "It refers to going back to my roots," she explains. "A lot of the material on the new album is traditional music which would tie-in with that.
"When I was doing tours in the early 1980s, obviously I was doing tracks from albums that were current at the time, which were more poppy in their approach. But now I just do what I want to do and the audience really seem to approve of that. I can sing I Know Him So Well and I can sing folk music - and they like that." Indeed, the tour is going so well that Barbara is looking into the possibility of extending it to satisfy demand and to reach areas of the country she has so far missed out.
"The audiences are great," she says. "It's really enjoyable. It's the kind of centre of my working life. It's what I like to do best of all." That's not all Barbara is currently involved with, however. This year she has also returned to the stage by taking part in the current UK tour of Fame.
This 10th anniversary tour launched last August and Barbara has joined the cast on a select number of dates. On March 28 she joins the production for its six-day run at the Bristol Hippodrome.
While the singer enjoys performing her own material, she is equally at home on stage, having launched her career on the musical stage.
In the early 1970s she sang at a Liverpool folk club run by a young student teacher called Willy Russell. He showed Barbara the first draft of what would later become the award-winning musical, John, Paul, George, Ringo ... And Bert, and asked her to perform the music.
Almost a decade later, Russell asked her to star in his new musical, Blood Brothers, in the pivotal role of the mother, Mrs Johnstone. Having never acted before, she was reluctant to take on the challenge, but fortunately for her career she did.
"I am basically a musician who acts, as opposed to an actress who sings. But it's quite nice to keep my hand in, acting-wise. I like acting, but I don't do that much of it, so it's quite nice.
"Miss Sherman's a good character. I quite like her, actually. She's the sensible one if you like. She is the voice of reason. She's got the best line in the play; she says to another teacher: 'You know that 90 per cent of these kids will never make a living in the arts - we have to prepare them for life.' "So, my whole raison d'etre in the show is to try to educate these kids. Although they are all dancers and singers and they're going to follow their dream, she wants them to have an education." And of course, unlike the characters in Fame, Barbara never went to drama school. "I didn't train for acting at all, actually. I was in Blood Brothers, but I was a famous singer at the time and I knew the director and the writer, Willy Russell.
"We go back a very long way. I had known him since I was in the show in 1974. I didn't act in that one, I only sang, but we had a great relationship, writer and artist. When he wrote Blood Brothers he asked me to be in it.
"I really had to seriously consider saying no. I didn't know I could do it - I'd never acted before - so I put myself in the hands of the director, who was called Chris Bond. Chris actually taught me how to do it and I didn't really look back.
"I've learned an enormous amount. I think, it doesn't matter how long you spend at drama school - they can't make you into a good actor. You're either a good actor when you walk through the door, or you're not. All they can do is teach you the nuts and bolts, and the technical side." It is this understanding of the realities of showbusiness that seems to make Barbara relate to Miss Sherman. It is perhaps also why she hasn't encouraged her sons to seek out fame, despite the musical abilities they apparently demonstrate.
In fact, fame is not something Barbara has ever sought in itself, seeing it more as a by-product of being successful at her work. Moreover, she is deeply cynical of society's current obsession with fame and celebrity.
"What I think is interesting about Fame, is that it's almost been superseded by events. It started in the 1970s when there were a lot of very talented children out there trying to get noticed. And I'm sure that there are more children getting noticed than are talented these days.
"You know, everybody wants to get on television and I think Fame has been superseded by life, as it were. Everybody in the audience wants to get on television, probably.
"The school that it was based on taught kids who were fairly dysfunctional elsewhere. It gave them a chance to be really good at something. I'm not sure if that goes on these days. Kids love this show, because it lets them see that they too could become famous." For Barbara, her celebrity status in the 1980s wasn't something that sat easily with her. "I don't really like fame or celebrity life. I don't enjoy that. What I like is to act and sing. I like the work and I like the audience to clap and say 'you're very good at what you do,' but I don't like celebrity - I don't want to be in the papers.
"I never enjoyed that. I never liked talking about my private life. I never liked my children having their photographs in the papers. I'm a naturally cautious person and it was quite difficult for me to tap into that - I don't really like it.
"I'm fine when I'm doing interviews when we're talking about the work, but I couldn't bear living a life like Victoria Beckham. That would just be ghastly.
"And I don't read celebrity magazines, because I find it quite strange in a way. I'm not like that - I'm much more private and careful in my life.
"If you've got fame, I think it's got to be married together with something strong. You've got to have some fantastic ability in something. Which is why I think someone like David Beckham will get away with it, because he is a very good footballer who happens to be like a film star. If you are not very good at anything and you're famous, that's like a recipe for disaster, I think." As to the reason behind the current climate of celebrity culture, from Fame Academy to Heat magazine, Barbara is hard pushed for an explanation.
"I don't really know. I wish I did know, because I think it's true - people are obsessed with fame. But I don't know why. I think it's a very hollow kind of dream. It's a bit like winning the lottery. I was in a show called Spend, Spend, Spend and it was all to do with does winning money make you happy? "I think it's an ephemeral thing. People think that if only I could win the lottery everything would be all right. But actually it's not all right at all, and people who do win the lottery are the first to admit it.
"It's like women who want massive breasts. You know? They get the breasts and things aren't all right and they don't know why. It's not the breasts, it's the brain, you know? There's a lot of that - if only I could have a bigger, better something than the man next door. We are a deeply dissatisfied society. I don't know what that is and where it comes from." Today, Barbara keeps out of the celebrity spotlight, so to speak. Even with her music she has no intentions to carve out a new pop career.
"It's got nothing to do with pop music and I don't go near pop these days, because I think there's something undignified about an artist of my age and experience trying to get a record at the top of the charts.
"The fact that I've had hit records has just made my audience bigger. They've noticed me because of hit records, but the music is, in the main, a fusion of theatre and world music, more than anything else. I'm not trying to get a hit single, let's put it like that." As for theatre, Barbara is keen to do more, although she is always careful to agree to work on her own terms.
"I would like to do more theatre. I find it quite arduous, actually. It's all right doing a week here and there, but for somebody like me, if I'm headlining in a show in the theatre they expect me to stay for nine months, and nine months is an awful long time with eight shows a week and two matinees. I find it quite tough," she admits.
"It's one of those things I take into account when I agree to do stuff in the theatre. What I'm doing at the moment is what I really like doing best." The invitation to perform in only a number of select dates on the Fame tour suited Barbara perfectly. "Basically, because they didn't want to do that much. A short run is absolutely fine for me. Occasionally I go back to Blood Brothers and maybe do a week or two weeks in Liverpool. That's fair enough, because it is very short and it's a show with which I have a great history.
"But I have a bit of a history with Fame now, because I've done it in Edinburgh and Liverpool and Nottingham, and I think people know I have a slight association with it. I hope I've done my best for it while I've been there." Being able to be very choosy about what she does and doesn't do must be a great position to be in. "Well, that's right. It is a fantastic position to be in. You always have to remind yourself of that."
