Linda George Linda George made her name as a vocalist who came to notice singing in groups and then as a solo artist in the 70’s. Her pop, jazz, soul fusion singing attracted great critical acclaim. Linda appeared on television, sang at Sunbury and in Vietnam and represented Australia at the Budokan Concert Hall in Tokyo. Linda’s version of the Gladys Knight and the Pips song, Neither One Of Us, is considered by many to be the best version heard. Linda has retired from singing. TLP Editor, Greg T Ross recently caught up with Linda for a chat. The Last Post: Linda George. It’s my pleasure and privilege to welcome you to The Last Post Magazine and our podcast interview series. Thank you so much for joining us. Linda George: Thank you for inviting me Greg. TLP: Linda, my first memories of you go back to when my twin brother and I first moved to Melbourne. I was a teenager. And we heard you on the radio. I thought, “What a beautiful voice.” But can you take us back to what built up to that period of time when you first achieved commercial success? Because I believe you went to Vietnam at one stage, but take us back to ‘69 or when these things started to fall into place for you as a singer. LG: I did. In 1969, I had been in Melbourne nearly a year, and I’d cheekily put an ad in Go-Set, which was the music paper of the time saying, “Singer wants to join band. No rubbish.” Well, blow me down, about 30 bands gave me an interview and garage bands all over Melbourne. And finally I was lucky enough to hook up with a band called Nova Express, which was with wonderful musicians like Ken Schroder, Ken White on guitar, who’s a fine artist, Derek Capewell on bass. We’ve lost our first bass player, Ray Greenhorn to the Vietnam draft, Craig Forbes on drums and Peter Walsh on piano and we had Ken’s brother Jeff on tenor sax. And we had somebody called Dave Clark on tenor and Ian on trumpet. And we did well for about a few years and then after Nova Express, I was at a loose end and Derek, the bass player said, “Look, I work for the ABC and they’re looking for singers to go to Vietnam.” And I went to Vietnam in Christmas of 70, 71 and performed for the forces with the ABC show band, which was led by Brian May, who was an Adelaide chap. And after that, we were there for about two and a half weeks or something. And I came back and did nothing for the first
six months and then Ken Schroder approached me. He was putting together a band called Plant and that was another set of great musicians. Some of the original Nova Express, David Alardyce on piano, Eric on drums from Tasmania and Steve Miller on trombone. Really terrific people. And we worked around town for a few years and it was during that time that I was approached. I was also starting to do some sessions and Billy Green who worked with Doug Parkinson. He was the lead guitarist. Beautiful. And he did a lot of sessions and he had recommended me to, in fact it was Bruce Woodley from The Seekers to do a Peters Ice Cream commercial. That’s how long ago that was. And that started my session singing days. I did lots of voiceovers, lots of backups for many, many, many other Australian artists. And during that time I was approached by Image Records to record some of my own things. And so that’s how that all started. So from 1973 until really the late 70s early 80s I was with Image Records. And after we had things like Neither One of Us, Mama’s Little Girl, we did singles like Sitting in Limbo. I then went to Full Moon Records, which was a Mike Brady record label and we did a couple of things on Mike’s label and then basically I would freelance. I’d had three children by then and I didn’t really want to tour very much anymore. And I did a lot of sessions during that time during the 80s and also worked for the band called Voice, which was with Jeremy Alsop on base, David Jones on drums, Mark on guitar and I can’t remember who’s on keyboard. I’m sure somebody wonderful. And then I joined a band called WJAZ with Penny Dyer on vocals, Lindsay Field who works with Farnham on vocals. The three of us. And we worked with probably the finest band Alex Pertout on percussion, Colin Hopkins on keyboards, Peter Blick on drums, Craig Newman on bass, also Steven Hadley on bass for a time. And we had
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Hugh Paddle, a wonderful guitarist on guitar and later Ron Pierce also from Adelaide in the Elizabeth days. TLP: Oh okay. There are some good and respected names there. LG: Yes. And so I worked for them right the way through to the early 90s. In the early nineties I went to Russia with two of my brothers who were singers in London, Colin and Michael, and we did a concert for freedom from hunger. And that was a fabulous trip with some Australian musicians. George Grifsas on all of the stringed instruments, Colin Hopkins on keyboards, my two brothers, a couple of London musicians, and that was a remarkable experience because that was just at the period when Russia was opening up and that was in Omsk in Siberia. TLP: Oh, I see. Yes, yes. That must’ve been an amazing feeling being over there at that time. LG: Oh, it was. It was strange. You could really tell that the people were oppressed and yet wonderful. And shared many fabulous things with us. It was very hard to get things in shops. There was no green vegetables and fruit was certainly not in the shops at all. And this was at the height of summer. But very kind people might sell a bag of their apples from their garden to you. Wonderful things like that. One of my favourite stories from Russia is, we were on the bus going to a concert and there were about 20 of us and we stopped by a roadside store because it was very hot. We’re talking 40, 42 degrees. No air conditioning in the bus. And they were selling lemonade by the side of the road. And so we said, “We’d like to buy everything.” And they’re saying, “No, no, no, that’s not possible.” And I was saying, “Yes, we’d like to buy everything from you.” thinking the guy will be happy to go home. No. He let us buy some. But then we had to share it because the translator said he had said, “What would happen if other people came along in the heat and needed something to drink?”
