Legendary singer-songwriter Dana Gillespie has a storied career spanning over six decades and a discography of more than seventy albums to her name.
During the sixties Dana with friends and musical companions with many of the era’s most iconic characters including the likes of David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Page, to name but a few. With her new album, the esteemed artist has recorded a collection of cover songs that highlight the names with which she has been associated throughout her career.
Following last year’s appearance at the prestigious SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas alongside the industry’s current crop of buzz bands, and peers like The Zombies, Dana is getting ready to release her new album in May. “It’s actually been a very good and interesting year,” said Dana. “This new album, although I co-wrote the title track First Love, Last Love. I mean, it’s not the title, the title of the album First Love. Everything else is, I suppose one could call it cover songs.”
The artist’s work ethic has been prolific throughout her career. “I always do gigs. I’m 75 now and I’ve been working since I was 15 professionally. So, this is now my 60th year in the music business. And this is my 74th album. Most people can’t believe I’ve made so many albums, but they don’t know where some of them are,” explains Dana. “For example, when I ran the Mustique Blues Festival. It’s been running for 30 years, but for the first 20 years when I founded it with another guy, I made albums of every year which were sold as a charity thing. And I made 10 albums in Sanskrit, it’s a type of music called Bhajans. And because, since the 60s, all of us musicians in the 60s, like Jimmy Page and everything, we used to go and listen to Indian gigs. Getting a stick of incense was almost a red-letter day because you couldn’t find it in those days. So, my life has been recording since 1973 when Weren’t Born A Man the album came out – which is also the title of my memoirs.”
Dana is keen to correct a misconception about the aforementioned album release. “Most people assume that Bowie and Mick Ronson produced it, but they are wrong. I produced it with a guy called Robin Cable, although Bowie was very involved in the Andy Warhol track because he wrote it for me. And if you listen carefully, you can hear him singing as my backing singer, which is why I reciprocated to sing on the Ziggy Stardust album. So, I’ve always produced myself and written most of my material, and especially if it’s blues stuff, because, I’m now known as a blues singer,” she says. “After the Bowie breakup with our manager, the company was called Main Man, I knew that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life looking glamorous with necklines plunging to here, and high heels up to here and skirts around the neck. So that’s why I went to Blues. So that’s what I’d always did.”
The artist’s new album was catalysed by a couple of Dana’s esteemed friends. “Marc Almond and Tris Penna are old mates of mine. And they said last year, why don’t we produce an album for you and let us choose the songs? Well, I’ve got to ok the songs, but they choose the songs. And I thought, well, these are two old hands in the business. I mean, they know the business, I could say as well as me, but I’ve been around for longer so probably I could say I know it even better,” said Dana. “So, I said, yeah, okay. We rehearsed in this place called the Temple of Art and Music, where I play quite often in London. And my musicians are actually part of my group called the London Blues Band. But not a blues note is actually on this album.”
The album may not feature blues songs per se, but the title of one of the tracks implies that beloved style of music. “Marc Almond wrote one song for it called Brewer Street Blues, but it’s not technically a blues. It’s blues not as a style of music but blues as an emotion. Because both of us are sad at the way that Soho is now modernised, and everything is being ripped down. And all the old days where I spent in the 60s sitting with Bowie in the famous Cafe Gioconda, which doesn’t exist anymore, waiting for people who wanted singers or bass players or anything. This was in 1963. He was still Jones then,” said Dana. “When I was young in 63, the red-light district was happening. Guys in the doorways were trying to reel you in. But it was a fun place. And what’s more, it was a safe place. There were no stabbings. Nobody cared that I was so young because, in those days, nobody had passports.”
Collectively they got to work on a list of songs for the album. “We sat down – Marc, Tris, and I to discuss what songs we should do. So, for example, Boulevard of Broken Dreams is one I suggested, because I didn’t realise that Green Day was so famous in England, but it turns out they were. But we’ve taken the song and I like to make music a little bit different. There’s no point in copying something because that’s just boring,” explains Dana. “The second song is Spent The Day In Bed, which of course is the single. And the moment I heard these lyrics – I thought, this is me. Because first of all, when I was younger, I did used to spend quite a few days in bed. When I’m 75, I’m just happy to get up and out of swimming every morning and have done for 40 years. That’s my routine. And the fact that the chorus is stop watching the news. Well, the news is so awful. I mean, why should anyone want to put on the news? It’s been appalling for three or four years; before the Covid madness it was ok. But now it’s just gone to wars and sickness, it’s just horrible. So, I like Morrissey’s song. And Tris is a good friend of Morrissey. So, he said yeah, I think Morrissey would like this. And Morrissey has actually said he finds this version better than his – thank you, Morrissey. And he designed the single cover because he likes to do things like that.”
The album also allowed Dana to do something which she doesn’t do too often. “Marc and I sing a duet on a Leonard Cohen song that Mark chose – Dance Me to The End of Love, which is nice to do a duet with him. I’ve not done enough duets in my life. I’d like to do more because they’re kind of fun.” She adds: “The whole album was basically based on men or people I have known in my life.”
On the album, Dana delivers a wonderful rendition of Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet. “The Dylan song was chosen because of course I had toured with him, and I did meet him in 1965,” she says. “So, I thought it was nice to put a Dylan song in and I’ve always liked It’s Not Dark Yet, but it’s getting there.” She adds: “I do a Bowie song called Can You Hear Me? It’s from the original demo that he did. It’s very simple because he did it in a much fancier version on his Young Americans album. And so, every song has a reason why it’s there.”
Dana’s storied career and the tales of her life in the music industry have been captured in her memoir Weren’t Born A Man. “It came out during the pandemic and bookshops weren’t open. I mean, nobody knew how long this lockdown was going to be. So, the publishers thought, we’ll just put it out. And people might like to read, or in my case, I read the thing for Audible, so they get to hear me reading it. And I’ve got loads of stories,” she says. “I deposited 500 pages on the poor publisher, and he said that people are going to lose the will to live. So, he cut out 150 pages. I’ll have to do Volume Two,” concludes Dana.
First Love, the new album from Dana Gillespie, will be released on the 31st of May.
Interview by Adam Kennedy
Photo Credit: Christina Jansen
