Fife folk legend Barbara Dickson reveals how Edinburgh has become her home and inspiration

“Edinburgh is the greatest city in the world,” says folk singer Barbara Dickson, declaring love for her adopted home. The Capital had played such an important part in her life that, when the Eighties’ chart-topper began thinking of settling down, the city where she first explored her love of music and turned professional was top of her list.

Barbara Dickson

Time is going faster for Dickson, who has just turned 73. It’s a fact reflected in the title of her new album, due out later this month, and the Fife-born star who moved back to Edinburgh six years ago with husband Oliver is in a reflective mood, not least because lockdown, which she “loathed” afforded her the time to update her autobiography, A Shirt Box Full of Songs.

It was at the age of 17, in the late-60s, that Dickson first came to live in the Capital, working as a civil servant by day, singing on the city's burgeoning folk scene by night. It was an exciting time she recalls. “As soon as I could escape Fife, I did. The lure of Edinburgh was enormous. It seemed much more exciting, there were folk clubs, there were gathering places, the culture was very strong and we had a great wave of interest in traditional music as well as many international influences.”

She continues, “That was it. I’d begun to sing at the folk club in Dunfermline but I knew I could learn more in Edinburgh so I took a room in Northumberland Street from where I walked to work every day and then, in the evening, I would meet the people I knew and loved in the folk clubs and we all learned together.”

Barbara Dickson

At the time, Dickson was working in New Register House at the east end of Princes Street and it was while there that she accepted the opportunity to turn professional.

“I resigned because I was given a job in Denmark for six weeks. I couldn’t envisage not doing it, so that turned me professional. I left the civil service and became a professional musician in 1968.”

It was the culmination of three years spent learning and performing in Edinburgh’s many folk clubs.

“Archie Fisher ran a fantastic folk club at The Crown,’ she recalls. “It was at the back of the museum, in the part that was demolished between Chambers Street an Bristo Place. I sang there and did floor spots.”

Barbara Dickson at the STV Gateway studios in Edinburgh in June 1972.

Another place you would find the young Dickson was Sandy Bell’s, a pub that to this day proves a draw for folk music fans, although back then things were a bit different.

“Of course, the gathering place was Sandy Bell’s but, as I have to tell a lot of young people nowadays, Sandy Bell’s was never a folk club, it was just a gathering place for people to meet friends. They would stand up at the back and sing, there was no sitting down playing instruments. Most of the music in Sandy Bell’s in those days was vocal, very little was instrumental.”

The Buffs folk club on Albany Street and The Police Club were Dickson’s other haunts in those days where she mixed with the likes of Mike Heron of the legendary Incredible String Band, “There were some very fine musicians, really high quality people playing in Edinburgh and many originated here,” she says.

Dickson left the Capital for London in 1972... seemingly never to return.

Barbara Dickson's new album, Time Is Going Faster

"At the time, many in Scotland thought that if you became successful and moved away, that was some sort of negative point against you,” she says candidly. “Actually, it was nothing to do with preference for me. Very often your record company was in London, all the media was there as was your management. Very often your musicians too were in London, so it was very difficult to not be there.”

The mother of three lived in the English capital for 15 years, until she married and started a family, at which time they moved to a new rural home in the East Midlands. Two decades on, with their sons grown up, the couple started thinking about one last move.

“I said to my husband that I thought I'd like to come back to Edinburgh. It was fantastic when we did. I'm from Dunfermline and I love Fife but it never occurred to me to settle back there because I wanted to be in the city, that was most important to me having lived for almost 20 years in the wilds of the country. That is why we now live in the centre of Edinburgh.”

The move proved the change the performer needed, rekindling her creative spirit – three of the songs on the new LP, Time Is Going Faster, are written by Dickson herself and showcase the inspiration she draws from being in the Capital.

Modestly, the singer who scored chart success in the 1980’s with songs like I Know Him So Well, Answer Me and January February, reflects, "I had been a not very good songwriter when I was a pop star all those years ago. I stopped being a pop star in 1985 but before that, between 1975 and 1985, on albums were songs written by me but I was never that profoundly attached to them in any kind of way.

“What has happened to me since moving back to Edinburgh is that I have found I have something to say. The first song I wrote, which isn’t on the album, was called The Hill. It is a song about Arthur's Seat, although you wouldn't know it to listen to it. I’d tell audiences, ‘This is about Arthur's Seat which seems to protect Edinburgh’. Philosophically we have this wild space in the middle of the city that we are protected by. The idea of it almost putting its arms around the city and guarding it from harm may seem rather romantic but it’s justifiable to feel that way about it.”

After a moment in thought, Dickson adds, “The reason Edinburgh has inspired me since coming back is because I am in a different place psychologically, I have really settled here. I’ve never been settled before. About 10 years ago I started to study the place I was in and what is very important about Edinburgh for me is that wherever I look it is fantastic. I'm very lucky and having been through this lockdown process I’m more engaged with the seasons than ever before; I’ve started to run every day and so I’ve seen them change. I live in a beautiful part of the New Town where I am surrounded by lovliness.”

With a new album and updated autobiography, Dickson has certainly been busy since before and during the pandemic, but it hasn’t been easy.

“I loathed the lockdown,” she confesses. “I have a coterie of friends who I love and adore and I have been unable to see and I just don’t like that at all. That has been very difficult. As far as being grown up about what is going on, I’ve used the time and the energy from the running, which clears my head, to allow me to concentrate on the song-writing and updating my book with the last 11 years. The new album was not recorded in lockdown, although some of it was - by remote recording, which is nothing like the old days of sitting in Abbey Road Studios with 25 other people.”

She adds with a smile, “There's lot of people who look at me and think, ‘That's the woman with the big hair from the Eighties,’ but they have no idea what happened for 20 years before that in my life.”

Barbara Dickson’s new album Time Is Going Faster is released on October 30

Barbara Dickson: A Shirt Box Full of Songs: The Autobiography, priced £14.99 is available here

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