The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Dreaming of Dunfermline
A BBC Radio Scotland show sees singer Barbara Dickson return to Dunfermline where she reminisces about childhood influences. Michael Alexander reports
She is Scotland’s biggest selling female artist of all time who is remembered by many as the curly-haired woman who sang with Elaine Paige on the 1985 hit song I Know Him So Well.
But as Dunfermline-raised singer Barbara Dickson takes a slow walk down memory lane on the BBC Radio Scotland series Somewhere Only We Know, which airs tomorrow, she reveals it’s the “deep connection” with the history of her home town that drew her to folk music and inspired her to become what she would describe first and foremost as a storyteller.
The programme hears Barbara invite Nicola Meighan on a walk through the beautiful pathways of Dunfermline’s Pittencrieff Park, known locally as The Glen.
Surrounded by beautiful birdsong, they go in search of the park’s famous peacocks and explore the wilderness where Barbara would play as a child.
But it’s when they visit Dunfermline Abbey – one of the most important buildings in medieval Scotland – that Barbara reveals how personally significant the place has been in her life.
As well as her parents being married there and her being baptised there, she’s always felt a strong emotional connection to the “unbroken” history of the abbey which still fires the imagination and which was also felt by her Liverpudlian mother who, as an outsider, could see the “beauty and majesty” of the place.
“Dunfermline Abbey is absolutely the most important building ever for me,” explains Barbara, who is fascinated by the near 1,000-year history of the abbey dating back to Queen Margaret, and who talks about the importance of her faith.
“Because my mother had such respect for it and she wasn’t even from here, she had this thing about steps that had grooves in them worn away.
“She was the first person to say ‘imagine all the feet that have stood on that step and walked up and down those stairs’.
Hardly anyone would notice that, but she was very sensitive to the lives of people going back hundreds of years and kind of felt in touch with them, like an unbroken line. I think I’ve inherited it – and it could be their prayers are all stuck in the wall.”
Born in 1947, and attracting praise over the years from the likes of John Lennon, Ray Charles and Bjorn from Abba, Barbara describes herself as a “Scottish folk musician turned popstar actress and back again”.
Her lifelong friend Billy Connolly describes her as a “one off”.
But despite having moved away to Edinburgh as a teenager and then later to London, the singer reveals how she would often return to Dunfermline and reminisce with her brother.
She recalls how The Glen is “part public park and part wilderness”. And she remembers how, as a youngster, she would come to look at the squirrels and, of course, the peacocks which would stand in the middle of the paths and display their tail feathers.
She also talks about the indoor and outdoor stage at the pavilion and reminisces about talent competitions in the 1950s. She didn’t take part because people “didn’t show off” in her family.
She reveals another family connection when she reaches the aviary, because it’s here that her grandfather James Dickson used to assist as a volunteer.
She would visit in the 1950s to see Billy the Cockatoo. “He collected money for charity,” she laughs. “He had a little slot on the front of the cage and all the children would put pennies in. Billy would pick up the penny with his beak and he would put them in a pile.”
If there’s one thing that does sadden her, however, it’s that Dunfermline has not been recognised in the same way as St Andrews – despite being a site of similar significance in Scottish history.
“My mother was from Liverpool so I didn’t have a particularly Scottish background,” she says when asked about her early musical influences, and revealing the pressures of appearing in the West End.
“My father was a Scot but my mother loved all sorts of music and used to play music on her radiogram. I do remember her singing along to stuff. She could sing harmony without any difficulty.
“My brother and myself were brought up with music in the house.
“My brother’s a great musician. He’s actually a sculptor by profession. The three of my sons can all plan and sing. One is a professional musician. The others aren’t. They can just do it because it’s always been around.”
● Somewhere Only We Know featuring Barbara Dickson airs on BBC Radio Scotland at 1.30pm tomorrow.