Barbara Dickson

MUSIC: "Caravan Song"

# The early light is breaking

# The morning sun is waiting in the sky... #

'I always knew that I could sing

'better than most other people could sing..

I also knew that I could do it,

but I didn't want to be in show business particularly.

That was, that's a quandary and it still is a quandary -

how can you sing if you're not in show business?

I fancied her right when I first saw her.

I thought, "She's all right..."

But then, when she sang,

I thought, "Oh, my God! Out of my depth."

# Caravans

# Oh, my soul is on the run... #

She got onstage and she started to sing

and it was just the most fantastic...

A really, really thoroughbred voice just emanated from this girl.

It was absolutely sensational.

Barbara can take a straightforward pop song

and turn it into something that sucks you in,

even though it's only three minutes long.

I came from a family where my mother was desperate

to make an impact on the world,

but didn't really have the skills or the confidence

and my father was a very typical Scotsman of his generation,

who said, "Keep your head down.

"Don't put your head over the parapet. No, no, that's not...

"You shouldn't do that. Don't get noticed. It's bad. It's bad."

My mother used to play lots and lots of records in the house.

She had a radiogram, an old '50s radiogram.

Used to play everything, from classical music, via Frank Sinatra

to light opera and stuff like that,

so I've grown up with a fairly good working knowledge of classical music

from music that my mother played on 78s on that gramophone.

The famous story was me singing in a high pram

and the postman saying to somebody at my granny's back door,

"Where's that singing coming from?"

And my granny said, "Oh, that'll be the bairn!"

My mother believed in my ability

but would never have put me in for a talent competition.

My mother utterly despised that sort of thing.

She thought it was completely ghastly

so she was a terrible snob, musically.

It was when I got to secondary school

that I realised that other people were picking up on the fact

that I could sing really well,

one being, most importantly, being Sandy Saddler,

who was my music teacher at Woodmill School in Dunfermline.

The very first class I got was Barbara's class.

It was all very well having classical singing, et cetera,

but we had to have something for the mainstream of the school

who were really more interested in pop and that, and so forth

but I didn't want it to become known as a pop music school,

so I turned to folk, and I had a wee folk club

and then along she comes, dragging this massive guitar

and she started to play and sing with it as well.

And...then, before we realised,

other people were singing along while she was...

It was almost like a class. She was strumming away on the guitar.

# Hang down your head, Tom Dooley

# Hang down your head and cry... #

Sandy played me an album by the Kingston Trio.

The Kingston Trio were the first really massively kind of cross-over

folk music group.

So I was listening to that music via Sandy

and in the meantime, I was playing Shadows tunes with my friends,

who were all boys! It's not like I didn't have any girlfriends,

I had lots of girlfriends at school when I was 12

but none of them played the guitar!

I had the Nick Lucas Guitar Tutor. It was a book, I've still got it

and it had the spots on the diagram,

so you'd be going like this

and you could play these things, this was the beauty of it.

It wasn't like highly produced music.

You could play these things in your own bedroom.

MUSIC: "Bye Bye Love" by The Everly Brothers

We used to sit and harmonise

and sing the Everly Brothers songs and some folk songs.

We liked Peter, Paul and Mary and we used to have their LPs.

Barbara was in love with Don Everly.

She found this girl Sheila,

and their voices merged beautifully, really,

and they started singing solo

so of course, we have the school concert

and that's where I think they first appeared in public,

the two of them singing I Gave My Love A Cherry

and from then on, they just went from success to success.

And, of course, there was Cliff.

# See her home and I kiss her good night

# Turn me loose, turn me loose, turn me loose... #

GIRLS SCREAM

Most people either liked Cliff or liked Elvis.

We got into trouble for going to see Summer Holiday one evening

when we were supposed to be revising for our shorthand exam the next day

but we still went to the pictures to see the film instead.

I was lucky enough to be born in a place where

there was one of possibly the three best folk clubs in Scotland.

I've not been in this room since the 1960s.

I remember it being wide.

I think the stage was there

and I think the audience were there.

I seem to remember them being tiered, I remember sitting high up.

MUSIC, LAUGHTER

It was after hours, so it didn't start until late at night

and I was quite young then,

so it was quite difficult for me to come when it first started,

but I wanted to hear the music

because by that time, of course,

Sandy Saddler had encouraged me to listen to folk music.

I was playing folk music on my guitar.

I was listening to these albums by Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan and all those people

and it was THE folk club. There wasn't another place to go.

MUSIC: "Jock McGraw"

# The rain may rain and the snaw may snaw... #

I had been going to the folk club a couple of times.

I was with a group of school friends,

so it wasn't long after I'd left school.

John Watt got up, as was customary in folk clubs,

to say, "Would anybody like to get up and sing?"

Now, that happened every week

and that happened in every folk club as well.

This is why it was so all-inclusive and so...

I don't know, it's so wonderful.

When people talk to me about show business,

I always say, "What show business?" I was asked to get up and sing

in an environment where anybody could get up and sing and play.

That was how gentle and kind it was.

Anybody would have a go in those circumstances

but, even so, I was very nervous

when my friends all said, "She will! Why don't you get up?"

And I went, "Oh, I don't know."

Anyway, "She will," they said. And I did get up.

# Oh, please understand

# My love, what I say

# I am lonely

# I am lost

# And though I am a young man, my body does decay

# Like a wooden craft on a sandy bay

# Come, bring to me a basket

# Filled up to the brim

# With coloured shells

# And set it down That I may choose but one

# I am lonely... #

My parents were very upset,

but my mother most especially, because nobody did that.

Nobody just left home for no reason.

Remember, I was not going to university.

I was actually choosing to leave home

and my mother said, until the day she died, how hurt she was.

However, I wasn't going to live my life

according to how my mother felt.

I was a young woman.

I didn't want to be a young woman, like my mother's generation.

And we were politically very aware.

I remember we would be walking about in our duffle coats

and the difference between the boys and girls was the boys had beards.

That was the only difference!

Sometimes, the girls were shorter, sometimes they weren't.

But we were always wandering about in Edinburgh.

# Take a look at some other places... #

# ..branch away from here. #

Some friends and I went to the folk club in Ely

and Barbara and Jack - Jack Beck and Barbara Dickson -

were the guests that night

cos Barbara was out and about, doing that as a named artist

a couple of years before I was ever able to do that.

So that's when I first saw

'and heard Barbara, which was a most impressive thing.'

Then we met some time, not long after that, in Sandy Bell's pub.

At lunchtime. And somebody said, "This is Rab Noakes."

We were 17 when that happened.

Our parents had all fought or seen action in the Second World War

and we came along after that

-and I've always thought I grew up in a completely different world.

-Yeah!

Your folks couldnae tell you anything about this stuff!

-Cos they'd never been there!

-They'd never been!

Young people of our generation, born when they were born,

wanted to make the world a better place.

It was political, it was Scotland, playing up your own culture.

It's not to be underestimated, that.

-It's not at all.

-There were some remarkable people to meet.

# BOTH: Through the sleepless nights

# I cry for you

# And wonder who

# Is kissing you

# Oh, these sleepless nights will break my heart in two

# Somehow through the days

# I don't give in

# I hide the tears

# That wait within

# Ah, but then through sleepless nights, I cry again

# Why did you go?

# Why did you go?

# Don't you know, don't you know

# I need you?

# I keep hoping you'll come back to me

# Oh, let it be

# Please let it be

# Oh, my love, please end these sleepless nights for me

# Oh, my love, please end these sleepless nights for me. #

I'd like to say that this is 1964 we're talking about, or '65,

so it's a hell of a long time ago.

# There's three tae fry and three tae boil

# And three tae bait the line... #

# ..attend the boat, the marlin and the creel... #

You would have people kind of going between those bars.

Christy Moore would drop in to Sandy Bell's,

we would go over to Ireland,

you could have a session with Gerry Rafferty, Billy Connolly,

The Fureys, Roy Williamson would come, play flute.

I remember Finbar Furey and Roy Williamson always exchanging tunes.

I really don't know how it happened,

how this enigma of the folk scene happened.

Now, when I look at it, it's all fiddlers and tunes and stuff,

but then, it was the most colourful of people.

You came here to meet

and spontaneously, there would be singing and playing at the back.

So if Aly Bain arrived from Shetland, which I remember

when he did originally come here,

someone would say "Aly, give us a tune,"

so there'd be a tune at the back. The McCalmans would kick off a song,

500 people would join in.

Parties all the time, great parties.

I remember going to a party in Fife

and Barbara and Archie were there,

and I came...I came back with a guy called George Craigie,

and Derek and Hamish,

and we had to walk ten miles to the nearest place,

and it was raining and in the middle of the night,

we were under this tree and singing Tom Paxton songs,

and we got to the main conurbation of these houses

and we had drinker's dreuth by this time

and this milkman was delivering milk.

This is how bad we were.

We were terrible people in those days.

We saw the milkman deliver milk and we nipped over,

and we took the milk and we left money.

Isn't that cute?

But I remember Barbara being at that party, with Archie

and an almighty session.

What happened at these parties,

there'd be a session happening in this room

and there'd be a session happening in that one,

and the great sessions were always in the bathroom

because of the acoustics,

and I walked past the bathroom and I heard this voice,

and it was Barbara singing with Jack Beck

and there was this voice that just soared

and seemed to have complete control and emotional contact.

It wasn't just a pretty noise,

it had a timbre to it

that spoke of understanding what they were singing about.

And so, I keeked in the door, and there was Barbara.

# The maid so rare

# And the flowers so fair

# Together they grew in the valley... #

Immediately you heard Barbara, in those days, it was quality.

It just came out that you were listening to a quality singer,

so she didn't really have to try to draw in a lot of people.

And she looked great as well,

lest we forget.

A lovely girl - still is, but in those days, obviously, younger

so you had a lot of guys going...

You know?

And she was great.

It was the making of you to get an album, but in those days

it was company-driven,

and they wouldn't do it without thinking there was a profit in it,

and Barbara got that on her own merits.

It was obvious that other people were going to notice this voice.

Archie - brilliant singer

and idiosyncratic in so many arrangements and influential,

but Archie was never going to make it on the big commercial scene

but you could hear that Barbara was.

# Come to me now, you know we are so alone

# And life is brief... #

We were all in Sandy Bell's one night and the door burst open,

and Barbara was there with her guitar case, and she said,

"I've got a gig in Linlithgow and I haven't got the train fare.

"I'll pay you back as soon as I get the fee." And we said, "Fine,"

so we all raked about for what change we had in the bar,

and she gathered it up, said, "Thanks, boys," and she dashed out.

Before the door swung flat closed, we heard her shouting, "Taxi!"

So, John de Barra turned to me and said,

"Bound for glory."

And she certainly was, and deserved it as well.

# Come boat me o'er

# Come row me o'er

# Come boat me o'er to Charlie

# I'll gie John Ross another bawbee

# Tae ferry me o'er to Charlie

# BOTH: We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea

# We'll o'er the water to Charlie

# Come weel, come woe, we'll gather and go

# And live or die wi' Charlie

# I swear by moon and stars so bright

# And sun that glances early

# If I had twenty thousand lives

# I'd lose them a' for Charlie

# We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea

# We'll o'er the water to Charlie

# Come weel, come woe, we'll gather and go

# And live or die wi' Charlie. #

There was all these people around, all doing different sorts of music,

but we all would, sometimes we would have a night off

or I would have a night off and I would go to a folk club

but I'd go to see someone play.

I was in Edinburgh a lot of that time,

so people like Billy would be coming through the city.

There was a great thing -

you'd get your fee plus expenses and accommodation,

which was a big lie, you know.

Accommodation was usually a couch in somebody's house

and I used to tell people I could tell the difference between Axminster and Wilton by the taste,

I'd slept on so many floors!

I remember, you liked to kind of be different with your clothing.

I did. I wore very gaudy, stripy clothes

and clothes with stars on them and all that,

and the reason was, when I was solo, that kind of behaviour started,

because I'd show up at a club in Bolton or Barnsley or something

and nobody would know I was the guest.

I was just another guy with Levis and a guitar case

and people would say to me, "Who's the guest tonight?"

"Me." "Oh, oh, fine." And...

And I thought, "I'm going to do something about this.

"When I walk in the door, they're going to know who the guest is."

So I'd just go, "B-vam!"

You'd see yellow stars and deckchair kind of trousers,

and it was good.

# I wud gie a' Knockhaspie's land

# For Highland Harry back again... #

Hamish Imlach helped me enormously

and he said, "If you go with me to the north of England,

"over a weekend, I'm playing Sunderland, Sheffield and Liverpool,"

and he said, "If you go to those folk clubs,

"which are great big folk clubs

"with lots of other folk club organisers attending them," he said,

"I bet you you'll get work."

In almost every big English kind of city, conurbation,

there was some kind of folk circuit,

I don't know if it was as big as Liverpool,

Birmingham had a very flourishing one, so did Manchester,

there was a very flourishing circuit in Yorkshire,

so when I first started going to these clubs,

I'd see singers who were doing a British tour or a regional tour.

At the time, I was just doing a floor spot

and I did the same little set of three songs

in each of those folk clubs,

and I think Hamish, being Hamish, must have said,

"You know, she's come a long way, see what you can do for her,"

and it is absolutely true that from those three floor spots

I had a career in the north of England

and that also blossomed into a career in other places.

When Barbara started playing down here,

she'd already developed a repertoire that was not exclusively Scots,

she had a very good repertoire of Scots songs,

English traditional songs

and she was a great ambassador for Scots writers,

she was a great, you know... proselytiser for Rab Noakes

and for Archie Fisher as a writer,

as well as doing songs by James Taylor, who wasn't that widely known,

so I think it was much easier for Barbara to play the English scene.

It's all about the takeover by Londoners of the north-east.

You could do a little tour of about eight to ten days,

which, in those days, was quite decent money.

It was well paid, when I think that my dad used to get £9 a week.

I could get virtually that for one night.

# What can the old customs... #

We ran a successful club, The Ford Arms, in Byker, part of Newcastle,

and Barbara was staying at my house because I'd got her a week's work

and she didn't have a gig that night,

the Tuesday night.

"Can you get me on?"

And so we said, "Yes, of course we'll get you on."

Sandy Denny was our guest.

# With your eyes on the moon

# You're a crazy lady... #

A lot of people knew Barbara because she'd worked the clubs around

and it was terrific, she went down a storm.

Sandy Denny and her manager were peering down

with this volume of applause for Barbara,

and as I walked past, she turned to her manager

-and said, "Who the

-BLEEP

-is she?"

Barbara didn't want to outdo anybody, she just wanted to play.

# ..And temptation strong

# A woman's only human

# This you must understand

# BOTH: She's not just a plaything

# She expects love, just like her man

# And if you want a do-right all-day woman

# You've got to be a do-right all-night man... #

'I learned my craft. I learned how to play the guitar,

'I learned how to get better at that,

'and I learned it for myself, I didn't learn it for the audience.

'I knew that I was good and I could do it.'

# As long as we're together, baby

# You got to show some respect for me

# So if you want a do-right... #

We look at people like Barbara nowadays,

it's like she's been sprinkled with magic dust

that suddenly produced this star.

She's walked the board, she's done the folk clubs,

she's been in back rooms on damp mattresses

in someone's place with a party going on next door.

She's done all that.

The fact that her voice was undoubtedly better than most of her contemporaries,

I think, escalated her into a different sphere.

# You've got to be a do-right all-night man. #

WILLY RUSSELL: By this time, a couple of years after I first met Barbara,

I'd gone back to college, and of course, I started a folk club there.

I remember booking Barbara, 15 quid,

and about a week before, I got a call from this guy called Bernard Theobald

and he said, "About this booking for Barbara Dickson," he said,

"I'm calling you to tell you that the booking has gone up to 19 quid."

"What?!" I was incensed,

but, you know, it was Barbara

and being a teacher training college folk club, we could afford it,

so we swallowed it and we paid,

but a lot of clubs were really, really upset about that.

It was a difficult thing having that kind of management,

it was like Bob Dylan suddenly appearing with Albert Grossman

saying, you know, "You're not giving the kid 5,

"you're giving him 5,000 or he doesn't play."

It was that kind of thing.

# We can work it out

# We can work it out. #

With me is Willy Russell, who wrote the musical.

Look, for Christ's sake, Linda, you got to stretch...

When I went to do John, Paul, George, Ringo...And Bert in Liverpool,

that's when everything changed

because I had Willy Russell asking me to sing the Beatles songs

and I think, prior to having a manager, I would have said,

"Oh, I don't know if I can do that,"

but the manager said, "You've got to do that show

"because that is a very good thing for you to do."

And that is what managers do.

You need somebody to kind of give you a kick in the arse.

# I'm not half the man I used to be

# There's a shadow hanging over me... #

I first met Barbara backstage at the theatre,

she was in John, Paul, George, Ringo...And Bert.

I think the thing that you came away with from that show

was the wonderful interpretation of the Beatles songs by Barbara.

Obviously, by then, 1974, Beatles songs had been done by everybody,

but this was a beautiful, clear, simple interpretation

of just a great voice and piano.

Almost every review talked about this stunning girl at the piano

whom we couldn't see because she was hiding behind goggles and hair,

I mean, it was almost as though she hid herself, and I know,

you know, she found it difficult,

the transition from hiding folky to pop queen,

I think she found it difficult to stand in the limelight.

# Answer me, oh, my love

# Just what sin have I been guilty of? #

'Immediately Answer Me was a hit, which was at the beginning of 1976,

'people started to talk to me in the street

'and run after me and ask for autographs.

'I thought that was really weird.'

I couldn't quite understand what that was about,

cos I'd never been at the receiving end of it and it embarrassed me.

I thought, "I am not deserving of this kind of adulation,"

and I still think that, I still think that's all a load of rubbish.

Ladies and gentlemen, Barbara Dickson.

'Just after that was this huge series of The Two Ronnies that I did

'every single week for eight weeks.'

# The one with the eyes that could capture my soul

# But you just want a heart to borrow... #

'15 million people watching The Two Ronnies

'and I pop up in the middle of every show

'and everybody's going, "Who's this?"'

-# So what happens now?

-Another suitcase in another hall

-# So what happens now?

-Take your picture off another wall

# Where am I going to?

# You'll get by, you always have before

# Where am I going to? #

I mean, I was aware of her pop career and we stayed in touch.

We didn't see as much of her because it was the whole rock entourage,

it was the backstage pass now.

Look, Barbara was always fantastically welcoming

and made sure we were included in everything,

but it just wasn't the same scene, you know.

People were staying in hotels and there were tons of people around

and I didn't spend any real time with Barbara again

until, it would have been '82,

when we started to talk about doing Blood Brothers.

We couldn't have somebody who couldn't quite get the notes

and all that sort of business, and by the time we wrote the final song,

which has a huge range in it, I thought,

"We've just got to go for Barbara and try and persuade her to do it."

I remember being absolutely terrified

and standing and there was a sort of flat mic

taped to one of the uprights in the wings

and I sang, "Tell me it's not true..."

# Say it's just a story

# Something on the news... #

'When I look back on it now,

'all the things that I considered to be milestones,'

like Blood Brothers

and before that, John, Paul, George, Ringo...And Bert

were... I think were very important to me

and if I'd felt, "I don't want to do anything different,"

I wouldn't have done Blood Brothers.

Of course, what I'd forgotten

is that Barbara's mother Ruth was from Liverpool

and so Barbara actually cut a really good Liverpool accent.

-You didn't notify me!

-Well, I...just...

Couldn't I keep him for a few more days, please?

Please? They're a pair. They go together.

What happened then, of course, was throughout rehearsals,

Barbara went from a very tentative actress

to being better and better and better

and people thinking, "My God,

"I'm going to have to flex my muscles to keep up with her here."

Don't tell me which one. Just take him. Take him.

I was a lowly assistant stage manager.

Do you remember what you first said to me?

"Would you like to join our tea kitty?"

-Tea club.

-Tea club.

You did.

What an opening line!

BARBARA LAUGHS

I sort of went off the rails twice in Blood Brothers,

once in Liverpool and then in London.

Every week, we had four shows back to back.

You have eight shows a week and four of them are on two days.

There was a Friday matinee and a Saturday matinee.

I used to keep saying, "Right, just think of it as..."

-Four quarters.

-"Four quarters."

I seem to remember we were watching, I was into American football,

so you'd go, "Right, that's one quarter out of the way,

"we'll get through the next one and then there's the third one,"

and then Saturday evening came - end of the fourth quarter, into the pub.

I didn't really prosper being in long runs in the theatre,

and every time I've done it, I've become ill.

There'd be people there who'd maybe travelled from Stornoway

to see me in a show, you know, and you can't be rubbish,

you've got to be good all the time.

That is terrible, terrible pressure for somebody like me.

But I know people who are trained in the theatre who can't do it either.

If your name's above the title, it's a terrible responsibility.

# Freedom

# I know him so well... #

OLIVER: We got the word it went up to seven in one week,

so that was a guaranteed, you'd be on Top Of The Pops

and then the next week it went from seven to number one

and it stayed there for four weeks.

# And though I'd move my world to be with him... #

I'd just started work at the BBC, having left the theatre as a runner

and I was a runner on Top Of The Pops looking after Barbara and Elaine,

but I don't think a lot of people knew we were together,

so it was quite fun that I was, "This is your call..."

BOTH: "Miss Dickson!"

-# Wasn't it good?

-Oh, so good

-# Wasn't he fine?

-Oh, so fine

# Isn't it madness?

BOTH: # He won't be mine...

I remember my manager saying to me,

"Put the guitar down and do a sort of Tina Turner

"along the front of the stage," which is completely laughable now

because I could never do something like that,

it's just a ridiculous kind of way to see me being marketed,

and you can't do stuff like that if you don't want to do it,

you just look really stupid.

I became more...I suppose, more worried about myself,

more intransigent,

really believed that everything Gerry Rafferty thought about the music business was right,

that they were out to get you and you just had to be very careful.

I met Barbara and we worked on that Dylan track.

You know, it was nice, so I think for the two of us, there was, like,

a hope there would be another opportunity,

because the other sad thing in our profession is,

we're together with different line-ups doing different projects

and then you move on to somewhere else,

and you think, "Aw, I'd love to see them again." Of course...

You may see them in two years, and that makes it extra special.

And there's a beautiful Bedouin saying, which is

"We pitch our tents far apart so our hearts remain closer."

And I think that's very appropriate to our music.

'It was like 17-year-olds in the garage

'working out tunes again, you know.'

# Hush-a-bye

# Don't you cry

# Go to sleep, little baby

# When you awake, you will have cake

# And all the pretty little horses

# Dapple grey, black and bay

# Coach and six little horses

# Hush-a-bye, don't you cry

# Go to sleep, little baby

# When you awake, you will have cake

# And all the pretty little horses

# Way down yonder, down in the meadow

# There's a poor little lamby

# The bees and the butterflies pecking out its eyes

# The poor little thing cried mammy

# Hush-a-bye, don't you cry

# Go to sleep, little baby

# When you awake, you will have cake

# And all the pretty little horses. #

I haven't had much experience as an actress.

I'd done television, just one television production

with Taggart just before this,

and the rest of my work was in the theatre.

I didn't really, I didn't know how to hit a mark, really.

It was in Taggart that I learned how to do that

and learned all sorts of things.

It's an utterly different animal,

working on television or film, to working in the theatre.

I made a huge lifelong friend in Geraldine James.

She is still... I look up to her enormously

and she's got this sort of character that she's like the head girl.

'There's a lot of hysteria in night shoots

'because you're just so tired,

'and what we were doing was walking down a road in film rain,

'and I had never been anything other than professional to my fingertips

'in the whole of the shoot. I just couldn't stop laughing.'

Cos you're just a tart, like the rest of us!

I kind of sank to the floor without saying a word,

but just completely hysterical!

I put my head down and went into the foetal position on the ground,

you know, with the bin bags.

I just remember Geraldine saying, "Pull yourself together, Dickson!

"Come on! Pull yourself together!"

And I said, "I'm so sorry, Geraldine."

Cos I was wasting, not just their time,

but our time as well, which was just absolutely unforgivable.

There's an old kind of Hollywood story about these guys

who are trying to cast for a film

and they're wandering about, saying,

"You know, for this role we need somebody like...

"We need a Richard Widmark kind of, someone like Richard Widmark.

"Who can we get who's like Richard Widmark?"

And eventually, someone says, "Why don't you call Richard Widmark?"

So you kind of think, "I probably need someone like Barbara Dickson,

"you know, well, who can you get?"

Barbara Dickson!

Sorry to interrupt you, but I'm here to present

this year's Laurence Olivier award for Best Actress in a Musical.

And...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The winner...

One of our finest, most accomplished actresses and singers,

Miss Barbara Dickson!

STEVE BROWN: The way it's written, she's onstage all the time

but she's not necessarily doing stuff. That makes it a tough role.

She's kind of standing there,

watching everybody else have fun quite a lot of the time.

I remember watching Band of Gold and I remember seeing Barbara,

like most people, thought, "Isn't that the singer?"

And she was absolutely amazing,

so obviously, meeting her for the first time,

all the cast were really nervous,

as you are when, I suppose, "the name" comes to rehearsal

but from the moment I met her, I knew we were going to get on.

# No-one to share the fun

# You were my special one... #

'I loved Spend Spend Spend. I knew, also,'

that I'd probably get ill because of the way I am,

but I wanted to do it because the opening line of that show was,

I just stood there, the music stopped and I said to the audience,

"I know what you're thinking.

"What's it like having all that money?"

It was just, like, wry,

really wry, so I thought, "OK, this is a great show,"

and the whole idea of a life going into a wall at 60 miles an hour,

that really intrigued me as well.

For me, it's not what the person is giving onstage,

it's what they're giving off-stage as well, you know,

because without that, you haven't got a happy company

and she was a major part of that being a really happy company

that felt like, "Yeah, this is going to be good,

"we're big hitters, you know, we've got... We've got her!"

People in the theatre are very loving

and kind and close and supportive,

but for me, my personality was such that I didn't...

I couldn't handle long runs.

You know, no shrinking violet ever survived in this lark.

It takes a lot of will, a lot of determination

and, you know, for a woman, it's an added struggle,

so you need that backbone,

and you need it to survive, you know, that lonely business

of being on the road. I couldn't do it.

I loved her voice.

I knew that we were destined.

It was really close, to the pair of us, to our hearts.

Artistically, it's a wonderful thing to be let loose,

you know, with arrangements and production with that voice

and with those songs.

Her archives are fabulous, you know, for songs,

so I'm absolutely privileged, really,

to be just allowed to do whatever I want, which is what I do.

# The lassie's courage began to fail

# And her rosy cheeks, they grew wan and pale

# And the tears came tricklin' doon like hail

# Or a heavy shower in summer. #

'The first time I sang it was probably about 1965.

'It was one of the songs that John Watt suggested that I sing.

'It was on that list with I Once Loved A Lad, so it was

'one of the first Scottish songs as a young singer that I learned.'

# Saying, "Lassie, lassie, ye shall be mine,

# "I said it all tae try thee." #

The way that Troy and I work is extraordinary.

I just come here with songs and I sit at the table

and I just sing in his ear.

I sing the song unadorned, no guitar, no nothing,

because I think I know he knows what to do,

and he always knows what to do, and he goes, "Wow,"

-and that happen with Rigs o' Rye.

-It certainly did.

I just would have gone, "'Twas in the month of sweet July..."

-"We'll have that."

-And he said...

-And that was it.

He just knows where to place it, you know, so it kind of...

It's such a beautiful song and it's quite, you know,

some of the verses are really quite prosaic, you know,

and you think, "Oh, yeah,"

but there's such a beautiful scope for arrangement within the song

because it just cycles round and round like all great traditional songs do,

but we just expanded on it and it came out just the way we wanted it.

# And they live in Brechin the winter through

# And in Montrose in summer. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

What you will get from Barbara

is an honest song, sung perfectly, delivered perfectly,

and it will sound just like somebody in your own front room,

not a massive sound where the voices are all over the place

and synthesisers or whatever,

so it's honesty, I think, is what you're looking for there.

She is an honest interpreter of good songs.

Sadly, for me,

her contribution to the folk scene won't be what she's remembered for.

It'll be for, you know, duets on Top Of The Pops

and Caravan and stuff like that,

which is absolutely fair enough,

but there were lots of good albums that came out,

and lots of good songs.

That's more what I think of her contribution,

the fact that people would look at Barbara and say,

"I want to sing like that," or, "I want to be where she is."

# It only rains when clouds bang together

-# BOTH:

-But everybody knows that

# And it's rockets and missiles that are causing this bad weather

# But everybody knows that

# Everybody knows that... #

I didn't write that many songs,

but of the ones I did, that was my favourite.

'I had a girlfriend

'and her parents were on holiday in Ayrshire in a caravan

'and I took her down to meet them

'and there was two clouds, I'll never forget it,

'just two wee white, fluffy clouds'

and her mother said, "Well, I hope those clouds don't bang together."

I found it really endearing that her world was so lovely,

simple, she had it sorted out - they bang together, it rains.

# But does everybody know

# The way that things are going to go for them tomorrow?

# What will they do if they turn round

# And find that they have no time left to borrow?

-# BOTH:

-Zsa Zsa Gabor is the world's greatest actress

# But everybody knows that

# And the sex bomb of the '50s got her first break on a mattress

# But everybody knows that

# Everybody knows that

# But does everybody know

# The way that things are going to go for them tomorrow?

# What will they do if they turn round

# And find that they have no time left to borrow?

# It only rains when clouds bang together

# But everybody knows that

# And it's rockets and missiles that are causing this bad weather

# But everybody knows that

# Everybody knows that. #

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