In the next six weeks Kiki Dee will be playing three intimate acoustic shows across Hampshire alongside guitarist Carmelo Luggeri – continuing a satisfying coda to a long musical career which has taken in London in the swinging sixties, a Motown contract, a run on the West End, an appearance at Live Aid and her famous chart-topping duet with Elton John: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
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, playing three Hampshire dates in the course of six weeks, under her adopted stage name of Kiki Dee. ‘The name Kiki came from the idea of Kinky,’ says Kiki today from her home in Hertfordshire. ‘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.’
She 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.
‘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 12 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 pindrop 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’s looking forward to playing shows in Hampshire: ‘Standing on stage is 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.’
Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri play the Spring Arts and Heritage Centre in Havant on Friday March 17, 8pm, £24, thespring.co.uk; the Plaza Theatre, Romsey on Friday March 31, 7.30pm, £22.50, plazatheatre.com; and the Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham, on Friday, April 28, 7.30pm, £24, ashcroft.org.uk
Kiki and International Women’s Day
‘I think equality is so important,’ says Kiki when considering the upcoming International Women’s Day. ‘I remember doing photo sessions in the 1960s where they were saying: “Pull your skirt up a little” but I never suffered from that kind of inequality. You can only go through your own experiences, but I feel for anyone who has suffered from harassment.
‘The most important women to me were my mum, who was so beautiful, and my sister who I lost last year. I loved Dusty Springfield and Katherine Hepburn, but I’m more about people than women or men in particular. I’m not particularly a feminist, but I do believe totally in equality on both sides.’
