‘Eurovision ma
IT HAS been 37 years since singer Dana released an album, so no wonder the Eurovision Song Contest winner seems nervous about her new record. “You wonder what people will think and how they’ll react,” she confesses, in a voice so soft that I have to keep moving my recorder closer to her.
Although she’s been singing since her teens Dana, 68, still suffers from stage fright. “You just learn to control your nerves,” she says. “But I think if you don’t have them it shows that maybe you don’t care enough.”
The London-born Irish star tells me about the night 16 years ago when she appeared on Tonight Atthe London Palladium.tony Bennett was topping the bill and Dana went into the wings to watch him perform.
“He turned around and said ‘May I hold your hand?’ and I could feel how much he was shaking with nerves,” she recalls. “It gave me great comfort knowing that a man who had sung everywhere with everyone and who is acknowledged as one of the world’s greats was so nervous.”
She remembers trembling with fear when she entered the Irish National Song Contest in 1969. “I was 17, still at school and absolutely petrified,” she says. “I thought ‘I’m just gonna run’, but suddenly the camera was on me and I had to sing. I knew if I was to win I just couldn’t hack it so I was thinking ‘Please don’t let me win’.”
She came second and laughs about taking “a very early retirement” from the music business to concentrate on her A-levels instead, with her sights set on becoming a music and English literature teacher.
But she was contacted again by the producer asking her to sing All Kinds Of Everything on the following year’s Irish Eurovision selection show. “I thought it was a very honest, little song and I didn’t think I had anything to lose.” She smiles. “Then I won.”
Suddenly she was heading to Amsterdam for the 1970 Eurovision final, having never been abroad before. “I thought everywhere abroad was hot,” Dana laughs, “but Amsterdam was freezing.”
Mary Hopkin, for England, was the favourite with Knock, Knock,who’sthere; Ireland was very much an underdog.
“I was never followed by any European press, it was all very low-key.then when it came to the performance I remember thinking about family and friends who’d be watching back home and scalding myself with ‘You’ve got three minutes so don’t blow it’.”
She didn’t blow it. She won, recalling: “I was in total shock. It was all a bit of a blur.”
All Kinds Of Everything topped the UK charts and was a hit all over Europe. “I was under a lot of pressure,” she says. “The travelling was unbelievable. Some days we did three countries so it was physically hard and emotionally hard too because suddenly the whole direction of my life had changed. I missed my friends back home and I was lonely.”
But her follow-up flopped.a disappointment? “Quite the opposite because I’d always assumed I’d be one of those Eurovision one-hit wonders. My agent said ‘You can go back to everyday life or you can stay and fight’. For the first time I had a choice... and I decided to fight.”
The single Who Put The Lights Out was a top five hit in Ireland and made number 14 in the UK. Dana ended up loving being a pop star.
“I just love music and working with musicians and once I became more confident on stage I found there’s nothing that beats performing with a live band. It’s incredible.”
We meet at London’s Soho Housewhite City members’ club where she is tucking into smoked