Kiki Dee recounts her musical career spanning seven remarkable decades. Our exploration begins by delving into her remarkable 29-year collaboration with the gifted guitarist and producer, Carmelo Luggeri. We rewind the clock to Kiki’s formative years, Motown, and her iconic collaborations with Elton John. Along the way, we revisit her hit singles and enduring musical legacy. Kiki Dee’s story is a testament to the ever-evolving nature of music and the unyielding spirit of an artist. This is an extract of Kiki and Carmelo’s extensive interview with Jason Barnard.
Firstly, I wanted to talk to you about the title track of your latest album ‘The Long Ride Home‘ as that’s one of the highlights. In terms of the lyrics, is that about following your own path in life, really being conscious of being in the moment and where you’re going?
Kiki: Yeah, I suppose I’m the main lyricist, although we do collaborate together on music. I think it’s about sometimes you have to be independent. You have to do it for yourself. The long ride home is yours alone to find. It’s that kind of part of us that is alone, actually. And also there’s some references, although they’re very subtle, to think of what you’re saying, social media, the world as it is. So there’s hidden messages in there as well.
It’s quite a remarkable thing that you both do in that there is that diverse range of influences. But as you say, it does all hang together in your live performances as well. You tour a lot and it’s definitely worth mentioning that you’ve got quite a lot of UK dates coming up from September into November. But as well as pulling in influences for your own material live, you also, interestingly, pull in some great versions of other artists’ songs. And you were doing ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush long before, it came to prominence in recent years.
Kiki: We love that. We actually did send our version of it to Kate Bush. We got a lovely Christmas card back saying “I really like it.” And I think what she liked was that it wasn’t a copy. It was just taking this beautiful song she’d written and giving it a twist, if you like. And that was complementary, wasn’t it?
Carmelo: Very, yeah. Our shows these days, I’m often saying, you know, when we talk about it, I say this is a keeper because we have been doing it a while and we try lots of ideas and some of them might stay in the set for a while and then we move on to something else. We almost think we’ve written ourselves that one. I love that arrangement. And sometimes when we rehearse in our studio here, I might be set up and I’ll be playing and I’m waiting for Kiki to arrive, you know, when she comes in, as soon as she starts singing, it’s like, oh, yeah. It’s great. Oh, I have to point out what is remarkable about that arrangement, Kiki’s vocals, there’s hardly any lines that are exactly the same. Kiki’s messed about with that and she’s just done that spontaneously. I know she’s sat next to me, but one of her many gifts are her improvisational abilities which are astounding. She can really just twist a melody up down across, and I’m going, wow, that’s great. You know, so that one, that’s a keeper. [laughs]
It was quite apt being the Kiki Dee Band because it was by Bias Boshell who was your keyboardist, who wrote ‘I’ve Got The Music In Me’, didn’t he?
Kiki: Yeah, he did. He’s a lovely man and a great keyboard player. I asked him if he had any uptempo songs for one of the tours. ‘Music In Me’ had been on the shelf for a couple years at the publisher’s and we got it out. I was writing a lot of little slow songs, quite emotive songs and so this was a bit of a departure. But I think at that time because I was a young adult now I was quite influenced by the singer -songwriter scene that was going on in California with Joni Mitchell and people like that. By the way, Carmelo and I met Joni Mitchell last year. Much to our excitement I played Dodger Stadium with Elton on his last North American tour. We did ‘Don’t Could Breaking My Heart’. So that was a thrill. So I was influenced by singer-songwriters, Elton used to send me albums, he sent me a Jackson Browne album in the early 70s. So yeah he’s amazing.
‘Don’t Could Breaking My Heart’ was a huge hit with Elton. That showed another side to you so that kind of put an accelerator to your career. It must have been quite a shift.
Kiki: Thank goodness I’d had a couple of hits and I had the experience of celebrity. [laughs] It’s funny because it wasn’t going to be a duet. I was going to do a few backing vocals on the track and Gus Dudgeon said you know we should do this as a duet. The video was done in 20 minutes and it was all very random really and just a nice song. No one was attached at all and isn’t it funny that it became so global and everlasting. An interviewer once said to me in a questionnaire interview he said ‘Don’t Could Breaking My Heart’, milestone or millstone, and I think it’s a bit of both really.
