SUZANNE INTERVIEWED

Rip It Up, Issue 11, 1 May 1978, Page 5

SUZANNE INTERVIEWED

Alastair Dougal

Suzanne and her husband, bassist Bruce Lynch, left New Zealand for Britain for six months. That was five years ago and they’re still there. There was no conscious decision to stay so long but success, albeit on a limited scale, has kept the Lynch’s very firmly in London. In Auckland recently on a visit home Suzanne explained how it had occurred. “At first all the session work was coming Bruce's way,’’ Suzanne recalls. “We knew producer Tony Visconti and his wife Mary Hopkin when they toured here, and Tony got Bruce his first sessions and from then on he was working‘every day.” Suzanne was not to find getting a break quite so easy. “I found it difficult getting work as a soloist. And once I got there I realized how much I still had to learn. So I started to do vocal backings.” The work was soon pouring in. Suzanne recalls tours with the Walker Brothers and Neil Sedaka, but remarks, “it sounds awfully like name dropping but I worked with millions of unknowns as well." • It was on one of these sessions that Suzanne and Bruce met Cat Stevens. They’ve now been working with him for three years and Bruce does much of the arranging for his band. More recently Suzanne has made a partial break away from her career as a backing singer. The change came in a strange way: “I’d just finished a tour with Cat Stevens. I was working on a musical and I was having trouble singing a whole song. After

all, it was years since I’d sung a song from start to finish. I could do a verse and then I’d need a breather. I couldn’t for the life of me do the whole thing. “Cat Stevens went berserk. He said, That’s terrible. You’ve got so out of practice. It's time you got yourself together. 1 ’’ Suzanne took the advice to heart and recorded some demos. The tapes came to the attention of Ringo Starr, a died in the wool country music freak, who liked them. Suzanne was signed to Ring o Records and sent off to Nashville to record. Her first success has come with the release of her second single, a country-pop version of Smokey Robinson’s “You Got a Hold On Me’’. A couple of weeks ago it was bubbling under the British Top 30. The single, Suzanne admits, is unabashedly aimed at the top 10. She believes once some commercial success is attained then a firmer, more individual direction can be established. She modestly attributes it’s success to the fact that it’s an old song. “The DJs could look at it and say ‘I remember that. Let’s see how she’s murdered it’. They’d put it on, so at least they’d play it once.’’ The success of the single may not be huge but it is none the less surprising in the competitive British scene. Suzanne’s happy to have done so well. “Micky Most once said you had one chance in 20,000 of getting a world-wide hit. So it really is a miracle to break through at all.”