On Saturday February 24, Barbara Dickson and her band (see footnote) play the final date of their current tour.
The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, seating almost 2,400 people, is likely to be sold out – there is only limited availability left for those dates not already full – and there will be tears of sadness as well as joy. For this is the final date of Dickson’s farewell tour after five decades of often divine music making.
Photo: Brian Aris
My own acquaintance with this outstanding singer and actress dates from well before her first headline tour with band in 1977. I knew her as one of the leading products of the 1970s Scottish folk scene. And I paid her a forgotten but almost certainly paltry fee for singing at one of the folk clubs I ran at the end of that decade in North Eastern England.
Such was her star quality that we might have guessed she was heading for much grander things.
But as she moved away from folk, she never turned her back on the genre and would return to it with great affection and enthusiasm despite her successes in more popular spheres.
The Scotsman has called her Scotland’s best-selling female singer for hit singles. These include Anothet Suitcase, Another’s Hall from the musical Evita, Answer Me, Caravan Song and, with Elaine Paige, the chart-topper I Know Him So Well.
The shift towards mainstream acceptance dates from 1974 when another northern folk club organiser, Willy Russell, asked her to perform the music in his Beatles stage production, the award-winning John, Paul, George, Ringo. They would team up again later for Blood Brothers, her first acting role. She won an Olivier award for that and for her performance in Spend, Spend, Spend. An OBE followed in 2002, for services to music and drama..
Like many 60s folkies, I understood but regretted her popward drift and was delighted when she rediscovered her roots with her 1994 album, Parcel of Rogues, with its terrific tracklist of traditional songs:
Concert-goers lucky enough to have tickets for the farewell tour are hearing examples form the full range of Dickson’s material including reminders of her folk roots.
Barbara Dickson and I are in contact and I am hoping that once the rigours of one final tour allow, I will be able to present her thoughts on her decision to call it a day.
SEE ALSO:
* Barbara Dickson: The Big Interview – hating lockdown, rejecting celebrity, loving her music
** Barbara Dickson briefly: Scottish independence, Marcus & Rishi and a question of pride
*** Barbara Dickson‘s cure for lockdown blues: Time is Going Faster reviewed
**** Barbara Dickson solves a question of mistaken identity
But I shall leave you for now with this delicious piece of retrospection, Barbara Dickson’s vocal strength and charm shining brightly on Someone Counts on Me, from her album with Archie Fisher Thro’ The Reeent Years, released in 1971
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***** The band comprises Troy Donockley, Terl Bryant, Nick Holland and Phil Barker
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