Shona Laing "Roadworks" 1997

...Among the backing vocals are Nigel Lee and Bunny Walters. “Bunny did some scat stuff on ‘Bishop’ which was really lovely. We just played him the track and he said, ‘I’ve got an idea’, and just went out and did it. It was just amazing. He said it was the way he sings to his baby. It was really lovely. They gave so much.”
“The Māori on ‘Bishop’ is sung by Temuera Morrison. That started out as a haka, which was completely the wrong idea, because the haka is a threatening thing. It’s a song of solidarity, the power of positive thinking and all that. Even if New Zealanders can’t actually do anything, they can think positively about South Africa.”
Do you find that songs with a political message sit uneasily in the pop world?...
...“In New Zealand it seems that something with political comment isn’t going to be played, but in Australia with ‘Kennedy’ that was probably the reason it attracted people’s attention. Midnight Oil’s new album entered the charts at No.1, and there isn’t a non-political song on it. It’s all about Australia, race relations, and western attitudes to the land. I think Australia and New Zealand differ quite radically as to what gets played, which is a shame.”
‘Kennedy’ is a sympathetic song, about the price of fame. Have you had to pay a price for being in the public eye so long?
“I suppose in a personal sense I have – it’s very hard to actually meet people on an equal level. The name is known: ‘Are you Shona Laing?’ is the question I’m immediately asked. It’s very difficult to stay in touch with who you really are, from the other part which is performing and writing. But I suppose that’s become what I am anyway. My whole life is music – everything I look at, everything I do, I somehow related back to a writing perspective.”
Shona Laing became household name in New Zealand in 1972, when she came second (to Steve Gilpin, later of Mi-Sex) in the NZBC talent show Studio One. Before she’d even appeared on television, Laing was offered a recording contract after local record executive John McCready was shown advance tapes. With a hit song in ‘1905’, she was suddenly a professional musician at the age of 15.
Your television success set into place music as your vocation very early. Did you have any doubts?
“No, I think that it did make my decision for me, though. Throughout my whole life decisions have been made by circumstance. Before then I probably had thought of doing other things, and I suppose in the tough times there have been the odd regrets, but that’s just been from a financial point of view really. Being on the bones of one’s bottom, one thinks if I’d gone to university, or learnt to teach, I could have kept the bank manager happier.”
“The first two years in England were really tough. It was a bit of a blow to the old ego, because the ego had been pretty inflated in New Zealand, but then the anonymity was in some ways quite refreshing. I was nothing special at that time, it was just like I’d come in from Swansea or somewhere, and the fact that I’d been successful in New Zealand meant nothing.”
During her seven years away, Laing recorded two albums in Britain, one of which wasn’t released, though the other, Tied to the Tracks, received quite a bit of airplay. She also spent two years singing backing vocals in Manfred Mann’s band.
“Whenever things looked really bad something would come up. In lots of ways I think the reason things didn’t happen was timing – I’ve always done pretty much the same kind of music, and in England I think musical fashion is much more important than it is in New Zealand. We get a bit of everything, whereas in England there was always some trend happening that decided what the chart was made up of.”...to be continued... - Murray Cammick and AudioCulture

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01 Freedom 02 White Colonial Middle-Class Anarc 03 Welcome To The Whirlwind 04 Should Have Been For You 05 Highway Warriors 06 Across The Irish Sea 07 The Mercy Of Love 08 It's True 09 I Don't 10 The Buller To The Grey 11 Four Days In Delhi 2 By Design 13 I Love My Feet
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