Page 11 - David Burr Rooftops Winter/Spring 2021/2022

Carmelo Luggeri and Kiki Dee Image: Chris Frazer Smith
“I’ve still
got the
music
in me”
Ahead of some winter dates in East Anglia, Kim Smith talks to Kiki Dee about surviving the music industry – and cancer.
Kiki Dee may be a seasoned shot to number one across the world, charts. Returning home without a
topped the UK chart for six weeks and the Billboard Hot 100 in America for four weeks. It also won an Ivor Novello award.”
Memorably, the pair performed the song at Live Aid in 1985. The gargantuan size of its global TV audience did not faze her. “I wasn’t worried as we’d sung it so many times before,” she says. “For me it was just a fun day which I could really enjoy as I didn’t have a manager breathing down my neck.”
Kiki is still the same down-to-earth Yorkshire lass she was when she started her career singing with dance bands in her native Bradford an amazing 57 years ago. Spotted by a talent scout, she was signed to the Fontana label and released her first single aged just 16. She also built a solid reputation as a backing singer, performing on hits by the likes of Dusty Springfield.
Producer Mitch Murray did not consider her birth name, Pauline Matthews, to be very showbiz and advised her to change it to the rather bizarre Kinky Dee. “I was so keen to get into the business I agreed, but I soon shortened it to Kiki,” she remembers.
Kiki became the first female UK artist to be signed by Motown and her sessions led to a 1970 album called Great Expectations. Sadly, her own great expectations did not pan out as the album failed to trouble the
performer, but she cannot contain her excitement at getting back on the road after the pandemic claimed
live entertainment as one of its victims. She and her long-time musical partner,
Carmelo Luggeri, did not waste the enforced break, though – using it to complete the writing and recording of their seventh album, The Long Way Home.
“We’re grateful to have been able to keep busy, being as creative as possible,” Kiki (now aged 74) tells me. She is due to play dates in Sudbury, Norwich and Chelmsford this autumn and winter.
The versatile vocalist will, of course, hold a place in the nation’s collective consciousness as one half of another pop pairing. But when she was asked to join old pal Elton John on 1976 classic Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, she initially didn’t realise how big her role would be.
“His producer told me I’d just be needed for a bit of backing,” she reveals. “The duet was like a lot of major things in life – it happened organically.
“When I went along to the studio, Elton wasn’t there as he did his vocal in America. He sent the demo over and sang my parts in a high voice, so I knew which bits to sing.
“We had no idea it was going to be such a huge hit and still around today. It
masterplan, she rang John Reid, the feisty Glaswegian record plugger who got her the Motown deal. He had begun managing Elton John and introduced them. The rest, as they say, is history. She was signed to Elton’s Rocket Records and scored her first big hit, the atmospheric Amoureuse, in 1973.
I’ve Got the Music in Me, a bona fide banger of a tune, followed in 1974, then Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. The West End came calling in 1984 and she starred in Pump Boys and Dinettes. Blood Brothers followed in 1987, which earned her an Olivier Award nomination. However, a health scare overshadowed her success when a routine smear test revealed cancer of the womb. “I was very lucky as they caught it early, but it was like the world slowed down when I received the diagnosis,” says Kiki.
In common with most survivors, she re-evaluated her life and decided musical theatre wasn’t for her. It was in 1994, when guitarist and composer Carmelo produced some of the tracks on her Very Best of Kiki Dee album, that she realised her future lay with him.
Renowned for his work with big names from Bill Wyman to Paul Rodgers, the pair hit it off so well they decided to take their studio synergy on the road and have been out there playing acoustic sets ever since.
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