Love, peace, and harmony _{by Madelaine Empson}

Suzanne Lynch MNZM is nothing short of New Zealand pop royalty. From spending her teenage years on our prime-time screens as the blonde half of 60s band The Chicks with her sister Judy Donaldson to travelling the world with Cat Stevens – and even providing backing vocals on the original recording of Kung Fu Fighting – the much-loved singer has seen and done it all.

With major milestones to mark just around the corner, Suzanne lists performing with Jackie Clarke MNZM and Tina Cross ONZM as one third of The Lady Killers among her career highlights. The leading Aotearoa entertainers will embark on a national tour of DIVAS! this spring, performing all your favourite hits from powerhouse singers spanning Aretha to Adele, Shania to Whitney on the 5^th of October at St James Theatre. I caught up with Suzanne on the morning of a rehearsal for DIVAS! as she was combing through the Dolly Parton medley the gang will sing at the spectacular show. 

How did you come together as The Lady Killers, and what happens when you get on stage?

I was a vocal coach for New Zealand Idol, the very first one in 2004 – in fact I did all three. In that series, Jackie Clarke was one of the judges. That’s where I first met Jackie. Tina had met Jackie earlier than that, and I’d of course known Tina for years. When the tsunami hit in Bali and there was a fundraiser down in Christchurch, Frankie Stevens flew Tina, Jackie, and me down to do a little solo spot each. At the end of the show, he said, ‘Let’s do With a Little Help from My Friends’. We said sure and fell into a natural place that we go for harmony. Honestly, through the song, we kept looking at each other thinking, wow – this really sounds good. Although our voices are so different, when we sing together, it just makes this enormous, whole thing. It’s fantastic. So, on the way home on the plane, on our one day off from New Zealand Idol, we made a plan. Let’s get together and do some of the songs we’ve always wanted to sing that you need harmony for. Next year is our 20^th year of singing together. Jackie and Tina are just my besties. We’ve always got each other’s back. It’s very unusual for three women to get on so well for 20 years – I think we’re doing really well!

Absolutely! Have you got anything special planned for that?

We’ll have to do something! And I’ve got my 60^th year of singing professionally too next year.

Wow, huge milestones.

I can’t believe it myself. I’m still 29 and holding. 29 and a little bit of GST [laughs].

What a great segue into your career milestones. I think it would be remiss of me not to start with The Chicks. What were some of the highlights of that time for you?

Gosh, I was only 14. In fact, I was 13 when we were discovered by Peter Posa. We just asked him for his autograph and he said, ‘Not unless you sing a song’. Judy and I lived in the country, so we’d always sung at home on the piano. We sang a couple of songs – Tobacco Road was one, complete with dance routine [chuckles]. His manager was there and was looking for a new act here in New Zealand. He just said, ‘Oh, one blonde one dark’, and wrote our names down on the back of a cigarette packet. We raced home to tell our mother, all excited of course, and she just said, ‘Oh yeah, dry the dishes – I don’t think that’s going to happen’. Two weeks later, he rang, and we went into the studio and recorded The Hucklebuck.

You released five singles, three EPS, and two albums, all while at school. What are your retrospective thoughts about such a whirlwind time?

At first I described myself as a kid doing what it was told. Judy was older than me by two and a half years, so she was much more into it all. She used to teach me all the dance moves, they were her thing. Then I got into designing the clothes. By the time I was 16, I’d been on C’mon for a year or two, and I was having the time of my life. Basically, it was wonderful fun. Everything was brand new. Television was black and white for a start. It was all terribly exciting. But the best thing about that time was the camaraderie: I’ve still got all the friends I made on C’mon.

You pursued your solo career from there and then wound up in Cat Stevens’ band for five years! How did that come about?

I was doing session work in London at the time, which is when you go in and do vocal backing for an artist. The two girls I sang with – one was a New Zealander, Joy Yates, the other was an American girl, Jackie Sullivan – we became a vocal group in England called Bones. We walked into the recording studio, and it was a Cat Stevens session. After that session, Cat Stevens asked us to go on tour; I went because my husband was in the band going on tour and it was nine months long. The other girls didn’t go.

We came back to London after the tour, and I went back to singing with Joy and Jackie. He asked us to do some other things on another album, and then he asked us to do a 13-month-long tour, which, of course, I did. This time he got two girls from New York to sing with me. We were young – Yusuf was only 27 himself and I was 25 at that point. We were away for 13 months and went everywhere but New Zealand – they couldn’t quite afford to bring us over the ditch, which was very sad. We went to Australia and recorded Another Saturday Night there actually. We had a day off and went down to the recording studio just for something to do. That was just a crazy time. It was a great trip.

Looking back over the last 60 years, what would you call your career highlights?

A career highlight is definitely performing on C’mon with Judy, you can’t beat two sisters singing together. Sibling harmony always works very well. Our voices blended so well, which is what I then found with The Lady Killers. And it was much the same with Joy and Jackie in England, actually: we sang together on one session over there, and our voices blended so well. Because I love singing in harmony, I’ve always been attracted to a group, rather than being a soloist.

Back to highlights, I think it was singing Something Here in My Heart (Keeps A Tellin’ Me No) on C’mon. I’d sort of grown up at that point – it was one of the last songs we did on the show. At Madison Square Garden with Cat Stevens when they all held their cigarette lighters up, and Joni Mitchell was in the third row. My idol at the time. And singing with The Lady Killers – Bohemian Rhapsody.

What are DIVAS! audiences in for?

I think they’ll be open-mouthed. I think if people see us having a ball on stage, they can’t help but enjoy themselves as well.

It’s that sort of infectious joy, isn’t it?

That’s exactly what it is.

If you had a decal above your bed, what would it say?

Love, peace, and harmony.