Pop legend so at home on stage with family

WHEN singer Liz Mitchell performs at the Henley Festival this year it will be something of a family affair.

She is the only one of the original members of Seventies pop stars Boney M who is still with the group that will play the “floating” stage on the final night of this year’s 41st annual festival.

Liz also appeared last year in the festival’s Big Top on the opening night and was such a hit that the organisers invited her back on the main stage.

Now a grandmother of four, the 70-year-old will have plenty of company in the form of fellow vocalists Felicia and Chinika and dancer Tony as well as 12 or 13 musicians including her son Twan and nieces Ishara, who plays drums, and Tahirah, who also sings.

Her daughter Adero, a singer, may also appear depending on how she feels having only given birth to a baby boy in January.

“His name is Akida,” says Liz. “We finished a tour of Canada last year, rested over Christmas and then flew to New York to wait for the baby.

“Adero now has three boys. She was on stage at last year’s festival, so the baby was being cooked, we just didn’t know it!

“She might be back, she is contemplating it, but the baby’s very young, so she’s not sure if she will make it.”

At least Liz won’t have far to come as she lives in Kidmore End, which makes a nice change from touring the world.

Liz says: “We tour in Europe, Asia, Canada… I’m doing America in August and South America’s constantly calling, so it’s the whole world really.”

The Jamaica-born singer, who came to the UK when she was 11, is thrilled to have been invited back to the festival.

“I have no idea what happened but they decided that I ought to come back,” she says. “It’s kind of the story of my life. I do something and then I get stuck in it. That’s what happened with Boney M.”

In fact, it was in the mid-Seventies that Liz was invited to try a career in music by the group’s founder, German record producer Frank Farian.

She recalls: “That was a point where I was a bit, not disappointed, but I could clearly see that showbusiness was not as simple as it seemed. I thought, ‘You know, a normal life may be really what I was running away from. I probably needed to get a job, you know?’

“Frank totally understood and said to me, ‘Give it a year and if it doesn’t work, then you can go back to college and get a job, but if it works...’ and it did work.”

Boney M, then also featuring Marcia Barrett, Maizie Williams and singer and dancer Bobby Farrell, had a string of hits with catchy songs such as Brown Girl in the Ring, Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin, Daddy Cool, Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday, Ma Baker and Mary’s Boy Child.

It was 20 years later that Liz and her husband, Thomas Pemberton, founded Dove House Records as well as raising their three children. Her sons went to The Oratory School in Woodcote.

Liz, who will celebrate her birthday three days after her appearance at the festival, is pleased to be performing so close to home.

She says: “When I was asked to do Henley, I was a little nervous at first but I have all these youngsters that went to school with my kids and they were all so excited to have me perform because they don’t get to see me like that.

“This was the message I was getting from everyone, so I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll do it’. Honestly, it’s like a big celebration because a lot of the kids used to hang out at ours. They would come when we had any kind of parties.

“They knew I was a singer but none of them, even my own children, understood to what extent until they got older and then realised, ‘Oh my god, she’s big’, you know?

“When Aaron went to university, he went, ‘Oh my god, Mum, they’re playing you in the canteen. We’re hearing Rasputin and Daddy Cool. Mum, they’re playing your songs’.

“Right now, my grandchildren have found me and they’re doing similar things.

“I took my little grandson to get a toy the other day but because now he knows I’m famous, he said to me, ‘Grandma, are they going to recognise you?’

“I said, ‘I don’t think so, baby. Your grandma’s a little older now, you know?’ I guess I could dress up Boney M-style but I’m very down to earth.”

• Boney M featuring Liz Mitchell will be performing at the Henley Festival on Sunday, July 9 at 9pm. For more information, call the box office on (01491) 843404 or visit henley-festival.co.uk