The Wild Reed: Music Legend Kiki Dee: “I’m a Down-to-Earth Person”

Something very special this evening for “music night” at The Wild Reed: a wonderful 20-minute interview with music legend Kiki Dee, one of my favorite female singer-songwriters. Indeed, my favorite album of last year was The Long Ride Home by Kiki and her longtime music collaborator Carmello Luggeri. (You may recall that I shared this album’s title track as part of my 2022 birthday post, “Deeper Understandings.”)

The interview with Kiki I share this evening was recorded June 29 of this year. In it, Kiki chats with GB News host Angela Rippon about her iconic music career, a career that’s now covered over six decades. Throughout (both her career and this interview) Kiki lives up to her contention that at heart she’s a “down-to-earth person.” Just one more reason why I admire and respect her so much.

Kiki’s interview is followed by Great British Life’s June 20, 2023 feature article (with added images and links) on Kiki and her life in music. Enjoy!

Kiki Dee Looks Back on Her Career
and Forward to Touring

Great British Life
June 20, 2023

Say it quietly, but 2023 marks 60 years since 16-year-old Pauline Matthews left her native Bradford with her dad to go for an audition with London-based Fontana Records.

Now, following a string of solo hits, a number one record with Elton John, and an Olivier-nominated starring role in the West End, she’s back on the road with her musical partner of almost 30 years, Carmelo Luggeri, under her adopted stage name of Kiki Dee. “The name Kiki came from the idea of Kinky,” says Kiki today from her home in Ashwell. “I did think I wouldn’t be singing in five years time if they called me Kinky! Even then, when I got to Bradford they would say: ‘Kiki, what kind of name is that?’”

She sees her northern upbringing as an important part of her long career – particularly in that first decade when commercial success eluded her. “In the 1960s all I wanted was a hit record,” she recalls. “I started so early, and was so grateful for the opportunity. It would take five hours for me to go down on the train from Bradford and it was like going into another universe. I remember having a glass of wine in London as a teenager and feeling it was really special. People just didn’t drink wine in those days in the north. The 1960s was when people started travelling abroad. As a teenager I was influenced by the music – The Beatles, The Stones – and there were these gritty films and the art world taking off. I was so excited by it, I hated going home, but I could see the value of a solid background and loving family. Being a Yorkshire lass you don’t get a chance to lord it over everyone!”

As well as releasing singles with Fontana she performed backing vocals for Dusty Springfield on two of her early hits, “Little by Little” and “Some of Your Loving,” before becoming the first white female singer to be signed to Tamla Motown in 1970. “It’s only now through social media I’ve found out there were people, and still are people, interested in my 1960s stuff,” she says. “Because it wasn’t commercially successful I thought that nobody had heard it! One of my singles ‘On a Magic Carpet Ride’ [from 1968] sold recently for £450!”

It was Elton John and his record label Rocket Records, which was run by the creative mind of Steve Brown, which changed everything. She started a run of solo hits including breakthrough “Amoureuse,” “I’ve Got the Music In Me” and “Star,” as well as that famous duet. “It was the first time I’d worked with people my own age,” says Kiki, who was encouraged to start writing her own songs by Elton, as a reaction to the rise of the Californian singer songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne. “I wasn’t the kid down from the north anymore. Elton gave me that platform.”

Above: Kiki Dee performing her original composition “Sugar On the Floor,” from her 1973 album, Loving and Free. Music critic Alan Robinson describes “Sugar On the Floor” as a “ruminative ballad that perfectly triangulates between gospel, old school R&B and country, and rounds out an accomplished [album] in fine style.” The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Etta James and Elton John.

Kiki was with Elton when he played his legendary Dodgers Stadium gigs in LA in 1975 – and returned there last November to perform alongside him, Dua Lipa and Brandi Carlile as part of his farewell tour.

Above: Kiki with Elton and his two other guest vocalists – Dua Lipa (left) and Brandi Carlile – backstage at Elton’s final USA tour date at Dodgers Stadium, Los Angeles, November 20, 2022.

“I got to talk to him on the phone for half an hour and it was like catching up with an old pal,” says Kiki. “He lives this extraordinary busy life. His farewell tour has turned into a long goodbye thanks to COVID. He was in great voice in November. I can’t see him never playing live again once the tour is over – he loves it. I think he wants more freedom – I could see him doing twelve nights at the Hammersmith Odeon like Kate Bush.” Elton’s tour comes to the UK later this year, but as yet Kiki hasn’t heard anything about repeating their duet. “It wouldn’t matter if we didn’t,” she says. “To have had this chance to play Dodger Stadium again was amazing – anything else is a plus.”

Kiki’s entrance into Elton’s best-selling autobiography Me is pretty spectacular – she appears at a party walking into a glass door “carrying every Champagne glass we owned.”

It has been suggested she write her own autobiography, but it’s something she would only consider once she retires – which isn’t any time soon.

“I would like to do something a little bit original, on my own terms,” she says. “I’m quite a private person – I don’t want my interior life to be shared with the world. That’s the price of being famous – Elton has given up so much of his privacy. My music is as honest as I can be as a human being.”

In particular she finds her ongoing collaboration with Carmelo to be fulfilling – a collaboration which began through Elton’s former PA and head of Rocket Records, the late Steve Brown. He approached her in 1994 after she’d enjoyed a successful period working in musical theatre – including a stint with the West End hit Blood Brothers. “He said I’d reached my mid-40s and needed to find something that was about music, not being a pop star, if I was to have a musical future” recalls Kiki. “He put Carmelo and I together and said we should go off and do some acoustic gigs, as just the two of us. Carmelo came from a rock background so it was different for him too.”

Steve’s instincts were proved right. Kiki and Carmelo have spent almost 30 years working together now, penning six studio albums and two live collections, the most recent of which was last year’s The Long Ride Home, as well as playing acoustic shows across the country and beyond.

Kiki enjoys the freedom that the set-up provides. “There’s a lot of space in the music,” she says. “Whenever I work with a full band now it sounds so loud! There’s a lot of intimacy in our shows, although we can rock out too, Carmelo uses a lot of pedals and can layer his guitars up. It gets quite dynamic, we can go pin-drop quiet up to ‘I’ve Got The Music In Me.’ We have invested in our own monitoring system now for on stage, so we are much more self-contained – we’re a little travelling show! We both like the freedom we have – we don’t want to have to compromise what we’re trying to achieve.”

The title track of The Long Ride Home is a perfect example of that freedom – drawing on Kiki’s Americana influences, not unlike the legendary Dusty in Memphis album, while also giving Carmelo space to rock out. “It’s like a melting pot of our influences,” says Kiki. “We used Indian drones on some tracks and tablas - our most adventurous album was one called Where Rivers Meet. Working with Carmelo is a step away from being what I think people expect from me – although I find I’m not so worried about what people think.”

She describes standing on stage as “a bit like exhibitionism – I'm here, what do you think?!” but overall she’s grateful to still be here.

“I don’t plan ahead,” she says. “I’ve got a couple of ideas for shows and songs but I need to get myself match fit. I go to the gym two or three times a week – I don’t go crazy, just some cross-training and breathing exercises. It is an interesting world – it’s so different now from when I started. I’ve always had to work hard – I see myself as a working woman, and I’m grateful that I have to work and can be connected to people. There are days when I think: ‘What am I doing?’ but it’s what gets you up in the morning. I never got married, I never had kids, I’ve had a free life and I like that.”

– Great British Life
June 20, 2023

The Wild Reed

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Music Legend Kiki Dee: “I’m a Down-to-Earth Person”

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