Lulu

Lulu (Kennedy-Cairns) is a Scottish singer, entertainer and actress. Born Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie in Lennoxtown, East Dumbartonshire in 1948, she became a fixture in the UK charts at the age of 15, when her cover of the Isley Brothers' Shout (backed by her band The Luvvers) reached no. 7 (it would resurface in the top 10 in 1986). It became her best-known recording, and she went on to have 17 top 40 hits over a 36-year period without ever having a number 1. Her biggest hit was her Eurovision entry. However, she contributed guest vocals to Take That's Relight My Fire in 1993, which did hit pole position. Her film career received a boost after her appearance in To Sir With Love (1967): the title track earned her the top spot in the US. AllMusic says of her musical style, "her mid-'60s recordings (which included a version of "Here Comes the Night" that preceded Them's hit rendition) were often surprisingly rowdy and R&B-influenced. Although she didn't match Dusty Springfield, her Brenda Lee-like rasp could be quite gutsy and soulful."
Lulu toured with the Monkees in 1967 and was briefly linked romantically with Davy Jones. She then moved into television and was ubiquitous on the BBC during the late 60s and early 70s: one of her shows, Happening For Lulu, featured a controversial appearance by Jimi Hendrix, who stopped his planned set to launch into a tribute to the recently defunct Cream. In 1969, the song Boom Bang A Bang was selected by BBC viewers for Lulu to sing at the Eurovision Song Contest: in a controversial win, it tied with three other songs.
Around this time, she married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, divorcing him four years later in part due to his heavy drinking. 1974 proved to be a commercially successful year, as Lulu provided the title song to the James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun and her cover of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World, co-produced by and featuring Bowie himself, made the top ten. Since this golden period, her recording career has hit peaks and troughs, although her on-screen work has continued unabated (including an appearance in the video for Adam & The Ants' Ant Rap). She survived a near-fatal car accident in 1979 and surgery on her vocal cords in the 1980s, and has vowed that she will never retire from performing.
==Links to Peel==
Peel admitted in his foreword to Ken Garner's In Session Tonight (1993) that he had been lying for years when he said the very first session broadcast on Top Gear was by Lulu. The fact that she recorded for the show at all may at first appear to be an anomaly, but Bernie Andrews booked her partly at the insistence of Donald MacLean in order to prove that the programme was open-minded and partly because she was going through a phase of recording in an R&B style: he said, "it was actually a bloody good, ballsy session" (The Peel Sessions, BBC Books 2007, p.48). Garner added, when interviewed for John Peel's Scottish Sessions in 2009:
"The reason why Lulu was on was very simple. Peel's producer, Bernie Andrews, had been absolutely rusticated by the BBC management for putting on Tyrannosaurus Rex, in fact, he'd been threatened with dismissal and things like this, and when he booked Peel again for another few weeks, management were furious: they really didn't want Peel in those early months of '67. And so Bernie did a political decision and had a little phase of booking more acceptable, middle-of-the-road bands, and I think a senior manager said, 'Why didn't you get someone on like Lulu?,' and Bernie said, 'Great idea!,' and so he booked Lulu."
In 1968, the newsreel cameras of British Pathé captured Peel and Lulu together on the same stage; both were among the winners of that year's Melody Maker Pop Awards. Following her 1969 Eurovision success, she allegedly told Peel backstage: From what Peel said in his Radio Times column in 2002, this would appear to be the only time they ever met.
"I know it's a rotten song, but I won, so who cares? I'd have sung 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' standing on my head if that's what it took to win.... I am just so glad I didn't finish second like all the other Brits before me, that would have been awful."Her remark is not entirely correct: the UK finished 4th in 1962 and 1963, 9th in 1966, and Sandie Shaw had secured 1st place by some considerable margin in 1967.
== Festive Fifty Entries ==
*None
== Sessions ==
*One session, no known commercial release. On John Peel's Scottish Sessions, his son Tom stated that it had long since been wiped, and the recording played of Love Loves To Love Love was a studio version.
1. Recorded: 1967-11-14. First broadcast: 19 November 1967. No repeats.
*Higher And Higher / Love Loves To Love Love / To Love Somebody
== Other Shows Played ==
* 29 October 1967: Love Loves To Love, Love (7") Columbia
*05 January 1984 (TOTP): 'Love Loves To Love Love (clip from 26/12/1967)'
*Douze Points: 'Boom Bang-A-Bang'
*The Dansette Story: 'Shout'
== See Also ==
*Singles Reviews
*Disc & Music Echo: Peel Columns
*Dusty Springfield
== External Links ==
*Wikipedia
*Official site
*AllMusic
;Footnotes
Category:Artists