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Helen Shapiro interview June 2010

 

Helen about to jet off on a tour

 

 

Helen Shapiro's career started in 1961 when she was thrown into the spotlight of the burgeoning British pop scene at the age of 14 with a string of hits, including Walking Back To Happiness, Don't Treat Me Like A Child and You Don't Know.

Famously supported by The Beatles on one of her early headlining tours, they actually wrote a song for Helen, ('Misery') which was turned down by her management in her absence.

When Beat and Beatlemania took over, Helen's chart success diminished and she found a new career as a stage performer, appearing in numerous musicals and jazz concerts. 

Since the mid-eighties, Helen has been a committed believer in Jesus and these days records gospel albums and holds outreaches to spread the word about the Messiah. 

This is the interview that Helen kindly gave to Digger at www.retrosellers.com  

 

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Digger: Did you get my questions Helen?
 
Helen: Yes thanks.
 
Digger: I send them in advance because some people like to ponder and some don’t bother.
 
Helen: I can’t promise I won’t ponder because some of the questions are quite deep.
 
Digger: (Laughs) That must be a first for me, asking deep questions.
 
Helen: Well, we’ll see.
 
Digger: That was a very young age to achieve such fame. What do you think were the positives and negatives of your early success?
 
Helen: The positives, certainly of being fourteen when having such success, were that at that age you are not phased, or at least you don’t think you’re phased, by anything. You have a confidence and think you can do anything. All of these things, of course, are born of ignorance because you don’t know the pitfalls. But certainly at fourteen and fifteen it was just such a thrill. Had I known what it would be like then maybe I would have been scared of everything. Negatives - maybe you don’t find out until later, but I missed a certain amount of my 'teenage-hood' in terms of going out with my friends wherever they were going and that type of thing. I didn’t get to go out much when I was having the success but I did get to actually travel and see the world and meet the stars and all that kind of stuff. It was great.  I was at school for the first year of my success and my first three records.
 
Digger: I did read that you were at school with Marc Feld (later Marc Bolan.)
 
Helen: Yes, indeed, at primary school we had a little singing group. In fact, Marc was the added one. We were ten and he was nine and he asked to join us and he did. We sang Elvis Presley songs.

 

 

Marc Bolan

 

Digger: Was he a pretty boy even then?
 
Helen: No, he was a chubby kid. (Digger laughs) And he used to comb his hair in a quiff and his claim to fame was that he could comb his quiff down and cover his entire face. (Digger laughs) Later on, we all belonged to different youth clubs and he used to turn up occasionally dressed in his mod gear. And when I say mod, I don’t mean The Who type mod, I mean early mod like the early sixties bum freezer jackets and the Italian suits. He was very pretty by then with chiseled features and later on when he became famous he remembered our little group and we met up, which was great.

Digger: Do you think you’ve 'caught up' with your education since? TV and radio performances and press stuff must have been a drain on your education in some way?
 
Helen: In the first year I was very limited by law, thankfully, as to what I could do. I had a very understanding headmistress, though, who would let me have afternoons off occasionally to do radio shows. In those days it was the Light programme and there were live pop shows.
 
Digger: What did we used to have? Oh yes, the Light programme, the Home service and the Third. And we were lucky to have one hour’s pop music a week!
 
Helen: That’s right or it was Radio Luxembourg under the covers.
 
Digger: The signal came in for one minute and out for two. Amazing! Can you imagine kids today putting up with that?
 
Helen: It’s a different world.
 
Digger: They couldn’t imagine today how starved we were of music and TV. Everything’s so accessible these days.
 
Helen: Yes it is. Whether it loses value because of that…
 
Digger: I think it really does. I think you’re right.
 
Helen: So I was still a regular at school and I did my very best and I got reasonable marks at school.
 
Digger: Well done you. I didn’t have your excuse and I got terrible marks. (Both laugh)
 
Helen: Yeah, I must say, my attention was probably taken away sometimes. I mean, there’d be photographers climbing up the fire escape at school.
 
Digger: What did the other kids think?
 
Helen: They thought it was great.
 
Digger: They were protective of you?
 
Helen: Yes they were. And I was very popular because I could get autographs of people like Cliff Richard.
 
Digger: Hey!

 

Helen with Cliff Richard at a Variety Club Dinner

 

 
Helen: The teachers didn’t really know what to do with me. (Laughs)
 
Digger: Well, as long as you behaved, and did alright in your lessons, I suppose they didn’t complain?
 
Helen: I suppose I sort of behaved. Then I left school at fifteen and was able to go, as it were, full time. And then that was it and the world was my oyster. But I was still very limited by law as a kid as to the things I could do and places I could go.
 
Digger: There’s that classic thing of you headlining a tour with The Beatles as support band.
 
Helen: Yes, that was a couple of years later, in 1963.
 
Digger: Nice to put on your C.V. though, wasn’t it?
 
Helen: I did dine out on that for quite a while, but it was a long time ago now. Indeed, that was one of many pop package tours that I embarked on starting in ’62.

 

 

Helen with The Beatles and  Dusty Springfield,
 talking to Keith Fordyce

 

 
Digger: Have you still got posters and memorabilia from that time?
 
Helen: I’ve got a bit but it’s very hard to get, actually. I’ve got a photocopy of one of the posters. They’re going for fortunes on eBay.
 
Digger: It’s quite strange because quite a few people I talk to – Bill Wyman is actually making quite a good sideline out of his big collection of stuff because he was one of the very few who kept memorabilia. He even had doubles of stuff. And people were saying he was daft and a bit sad collecting as he did, but now he’s had the last laugh as they’re all buying their memories back off of him.
 
Helen: I’ve got a couple of suitcases of bits and pieces, but at the time you don’t realise how important these things are going to be.
 
Digger: ...Okay, you were right Helen! This could be called a heavy question... What is your view on the trouble that is continually caused in the name of religion around the world?
 
Helen: See what I mean?
 
Digger: (Laughs) Yes, just give me a reply in a few words! I must have been in a funny mood when I posed these questions. Tell me to get out of here if it’s too hard. I’ll tell you where I’m coming from on this. I was brought up a catholic by Jesuits up until the age of sixteen and since then I see myself as a Christian but certainly not a Catholic. I didn’t like the impositions, the penitence, the guilt and all that stuff.
 
Helen: Quite.
 
Digger: So I still ‘do unto others.’
 
Helen: Do unto others isn’t necessarily a Christian thing. It is biblical, but it’s the Old Testament. If one’s definition of being a Christian is being a good person - well it’s not true actually. Because anybody can do good deeds and rites and rituals. Whether it gets them right with God, of course, is another question. My view is that, indeed, trouble is continually caused in the name of religion around the world. And I use the word 'religion' meaning something that is man-made. Because religion is man-made whereas God is not man-made. Devotion to him in a bible-based way is not religion. True faith in the God of the bible and in Jesus is nothing to do with religion. We don’t need sprinklings, rites of passage, good deeds.
 
Digger: Does that mean that you don’t need to formally go to church?
 
Helen: Not in the way people might think. When I became a believer in Jesus in 1987…

 

 

Helen with Adam Faith

 

 
Digger: That’s almost the same time that it happened to Paul Jones, you know?
 
Helen: Yes, I haven’t bumped into him for a while. I do my evenings and I tell my story of how I became a believer in Jesus and I also preach the gospel. And the fact that I am Jewish gets people’s heads a bit in a whirl, because the view is that this is a bit of a dichotomy. How can you be Jewish and believe in Jesus? The truth is, it’s the most Jewish thing you can do. In my case, reading the Messianic prophesies in the Old Testament about the coming of the Messiah in ’87 was an amazing thing for me – I didn’t know they existed. I was aware of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and those stories but I’d never read the New Testament. I’d never  heard of a New Testament; and I’d never heard of Jesus until I was six. I went to a school that was a state school, but we had so many Jewish kids that we had a separate assemblies and separate religious education classes. But I loved the Bible stories that I knew. In ’87 I not only discovered that the Jewish people were promised this Messiah but that there were these specific prophesies in the Old Testament. So I read them and they all seemed to point to Jesus. And then I read the New Testament and there he was, the fulfillment of the Messianic prophesies. It was a totally Jewish thing and a totally Jewish experience; it wasn’t alien. All the first Christians were Jewish – the Apostles and the Disciples.
 
Digger: It’s human nature for history to be…
 
Helen: Perverted.
 
Digger: That’s right. You see it all the time with wrong quotes and incorrect facts.
 
Helen: Exactly. It was actually a Jewish thing but gradually more Gentiles became Christians – Christ means Messiah. Obviously there were more Gentiles in the world so it became a more Gentile thing and it was, in fact, your Emperor Constantine who changed it into this false religion. He was the start of Roman Catholicism.
 
Digger: You say 'my Emperor', but being half Irish, that leads to what religion has done in Ireland, but don’t get me started on that!
 
Helen: He brought in the Mary worship and Saint worship and the rites and rituals. The Anglican thing that came after didn’t get rid of much of that. I became a Messianic Jew – I’m happy to call myself a Christian if people know what a Christian is. It means I’m a follower of Christ and I didn’t become a Gentile. I remain a Jew, like an Irishman can’t stop being an Irishman. But religion, the things that man has made out of the Bible, is man-made, it’s horrible and I hate it. True salvation is only to be found in Jesus.
 
Digger: My mum, who was very Irish Catholic, invited some Mormons into the house once because she felt sorry for them having doors slammed in their faces all the time. The two Americans made popcorn and showed us a film show. It was all a bit surreal and confusing – something about a man discovering something under a tree in the 1800s.
 
Helen: They believe some un-Biblical things about Jesus and there are lots of connections with outer space. It’s all a bit weird.
 
Digger: What have been your biggest achievements and what would you still like to achieve?
 
Helen: Ooh, I don’t know. I don’t think in terms of achievements. I’ve been very blessed with the things that have happened to me. I’ve been through good times and bad times, obviously with my career and in my personal life, but the best thing I ever did was to give my life to Jesus in 1987. I do gospel outreaches and would like to continue those. The best time I had in show business – there were several, but I think the year I played Nancy in Oliver in the West End was a lovely year for me and I had a great time. The last few years... I came out of the business at the end of 2002 because I wanted to and had wanted to for a long time before that. I was just fulfilling a particular ambition and that was all my jazz stuff with my band. And all the years I worked with Humphrey Lyttelton and his band. I don’t consider those to be achievements but, rather, blessings. I’m very thankful for them and glad they came my way.
 
Digger: Other people would see them as achievements.
 
Helen: That’s up to them.
 
Digger: What would you still like to achieve?
 
Helen: I have no regrets, I have no niggly things like going back in the business and doing this and doing that. I’m here to serve God and if I’m able to continue doing my evenings that I do, then that would be plenty for me. I know I will be sounding very religious to you.
 
Digger: If that’s what you are these days then that’s what you are. My next questions was going to be what is most important to you in life, but I think we know the answer to that.
 
Helen: Well, there we are!
 
Digger: What makes you angry and what makes you sad?
 
Helen: I can’t say that things get me angry. It takes a lot these days. I’m very, very different from what I was 23 years ago. I have a longer fuse. (Laughs)
 
Digger: Ah, but when it goes does it really go?
 
Helen: Oh, I don’t know.
 
Digger: I’m a naturally very impatient person and I fight against it. As I get older I’m doing better at that.
 
Helen: I think I’m like you really in that way. I hate false religion. I hate lies.
 
Digger: What makes you sad?
 
Helen: The same - lies and false religions. I’ll tell you what makes me irritated. It’s total trivia. Mispronunciation. I’ll tell you one of them. I hate ‘haitch.’ It was a minority thing for many years but now they all use it. I hate ‘sikth’ instead of sixth and that is used by lots of them, including Jeremy Paxman now. They all say 'deteriate' now, instead of ‘deteriorate’ -  including educated people. The apostrophe in all the wrong places.
 
Digger: Cat’s instead of Cats. Your instead of You’re. And people using commas in the wrong place and using them as a full stop.
 
Helen: They’re not important really, just niggles.
 
Digger: No, they’re not important but if you see them in an article or on a website it makes you wonder.
 
Helen: It makes you wonder what they’re teaching in schools.
 
Digger: Yes. What makes you laugh and what makes you hopeful?
 
Helen: Jesus is my hope. Oh heck, there are funny people. The thing that annoys me about so many of these comedians is that they resort to foul language, blasphemy and filth, whereas you don’t have to. A lot of these people are naturally very funny and then they come out with something and that’s it, switch off and it’s such a shame because they don’t need it. Yes, good question! There have been some Soap Operas that make me laugh.
 
Digger: Oh, you like Soaps?
 
Helen: No, not Soaps, what am I talking about?! I mean Sitcoms!
 
Digger: (Laughs) Well, some Soaps, like Coronation Street, can be very funny. I refuse to watch Eastenders because it’s so depressing.
 
Helen: I agree.
 
Digger: And what a way for children to grow up, watching that instead of the children’s TV we used to watch.
 
Helen: I know, it’s not good. I used to like Frasier and Seinfeld.
 
Digger: Any Britcoms?
 
Helen: Not really. I do love American humour and Jewish humour.
 
Digger: Like Rhoda?
 
Helen: I loved Rhoda and Mel Brooks, Neil Simon.
 
Digger: I love Neil Simon – The Odd Couple is fantastic. Barefoot In The Park.
 
Helen: Not only Jewish humour, all sorts. I love all nonsensical things.
 
Digger: Jewish humour – I was showing a seven year-old the other day two clips of The Marx Brothers on YouTube. The mirror scene.
 
Helen: The scene with Harpo? I love The Marx Brothers.
 
Digger: Yes, and the one where they’re all in the cabin and it gets steadily more crowded. There’s a knock at the door and Groucho opens the door of the already full cabin. “Would you like a manicure?” says the girl. “No, come on in!” says Groucho. Priceless. (Both laugh)
 
Helen: I think the funniest British thing I have ever seen is Two Soups. Julie Waters with Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston.
 
Digger: Yes, he’s good. The old lady with the soups that spill before they arrive at the table? How did they keep straight faces?
 
Helen: It’s one of the funniest things ever. It goes right across the board really. There’s no need for all the other rude stuff.
 

 

 

 

 
Digger: I agree. Whether you’re looking at it from a very religious point of view or not, come nine o’clock you get all these F's and C’s and you think “What is that all about?”
 
Helen: I didn’t like it before. I did use bad language before I became a believer but I’ve never liked it. And on the stage it was unheard of.
 
Digger: Who have been your biggest inspirations and heroes over the course of your life and career?
 
Helen: At the very beginning, it was my brother who first introduced me to jazz when I was a kid. He was four years older than me and he introduced me to people like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and the Big Bands and people like that. And then a little later he took up the ukulele – we were kids still, and so I started practicing the chords and then he graduated to a banjo and had a little trad band. Before that he had a little skiffle group and occasionally they’d let me sing. Then he graduated to a jazz guitar. So, because of him, I took an interest in playing instruments and loving jazz music. Obviously you know who my hero is! Singers – I’ve always enjoyed Ella  and Frank, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Torme,. I’ve never been into heroes, although I used to like certain film stars. I wouldn’t say they were my inspiration though.

 

 

Ella Fitzgerald 

 Frank Sinatra

 

Digger: Are you nostalgic?
 
Helen: Yes, sometimes. Like anyone, when a song comes on the radio and you think “Ah yeah!” and immediately you’re taken back to where you were at the time.
 
Digger: Do you get that thing where it’s a certain time of year and you can remember the same smells and atmosphere and how you were feeling in previous years?
 
Helen: Not necessarily the time of year, but certainly with smells, yes, and a certain something that will spark a memory. A street or even the position of a tree or something. But music, of course, is the biggest one always, isn’t it?
 
Digger: A friend of mine only ever remembers the last time he heard a song and not the first time. I think that’s a shame because I can often remember the first time.
 
Helen: Yes, I think I can too. My musical nostalgia ended, I suppose, in 1960 in terms of what I, as a punter, enjoyed pop-wise. In 1961, I came into the pop business and so it’s not nostalgia for me in that way. But my youth and the musical accompaniment to it – the nostalgia ended at the end of the fifties and I love all that stuff right up until the sixties. Roy Orbison and Del Shannon and Elvis.
 
Digger: Some pretty big names there.
 

 

Del Shannon

Elvis

Roy Orbison

 

 
Helen: I was also into the jazz and the blues.
 
Digger: I know it’s a cliché but I feel sorry for today’s kids because I can’t see them saying in forty years’ time “Do you remember such and such a rap song?” It’s all the same stuff and horrible.
 
Helen: No, but maybe our parents felt the same way about us.
 
Digger: There’s an argument that says each generation’s music and behaviour is disliked by the previous generation, but I think in this case it’s a quality issue too. Because of technology and The Internet and the accessibility to music we were talking about earlier and the instant fame thing that’s going on, I just think it’s all instant and disposable and throw-away and not memorable.
 
Helen: When I came into the music business it was comparatively small. It’s a small country and I turned up and the songs were written for me and I didn’t have to turn up as this polished act – they helped me. And everybody was really nice and lovely and it was a big deal to make a record. Now anyone can make a record. Again, is it something that’s lost its value? There’s a lot of talent out there, most certainly. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be starting out today, that’s for sure.
 
Digger: What do you think caused the British musical and cultural explosion of the sixties? And what are your happiest memories of that time?
 
Helen: (Laughs) What do I think caused it? Well, I’m a baby boomer. Are you?
 
Digger: Yes, you’re actually only six years or so older than me, I believe.
 
Helen: (Laughs) That’s actually quite a bit.
 
Digger: (Laughs) But when I was watching people in the sixties and seventies I always assumed that they were so much older then me, but they were not. They were just kids too.
 
Helen: I started at fourteen.
 
Digger: Lulu was another early starter, like you.
 
Helen: Yes.
 
Digger: But even the Glam Rockers. They were relatively young - they were only in their early twenties.
 
Helen: That’s right. I’m 63, I’ll be 64 in September.
 
Digger: Okay, well let’s call it ten year’s difference between us then Helen!
 
Helen: That’s very nice of you! Well, then there is a bit of a difference. I am a baby boomer – you know, I was born in ’46, so as we grew up and went through the fifties and rock and roll started and then the sixties came along. I think there was a certain deliberate effort on the part of the powers that be and I can’t get too deeply into it.
 
Digger: A merchandising opportunity?
 
Helen: (Laughs) Yes, a merchandising opportunity. That was part of it for sure.
 
Digger: It was the men in suits, wasn’t it?
 
Helen: The men in suits - I very much think so and other things like that going on. I never felt part of it, particularly, because I was pre-Beatles even though I was younger than them by four, five or even six years in the case of Ringo. But by the time they really became ginormous, I wasn’t having the hits anymore. So I wasn’t really part of that thing which really didn’t start until The Beatles. And then, of course, it was all the British thing – “England swings”. My happiest memories of that time? – I don’t mind the sixties – I get a bit fed up with people with their rose tinted specs’ view of them. But I was so busy touring I don’t remember a lot of it. People were going out and doing… I mean, I never got involved in the drugs and all that. I’m not saying I lived a pristine life but I never got involved in all those things. I was never a hippy. I think because I lived at home until I was twenty, although I was away most of the time on tour, that probably kept me fairly stable. I enjoyed certain musical aspects of it. I wasn’t a big fan of the British thing, frankly. I was always into the American music.
 
Digger: Yes, I gathered that – funnily enough all the names you’ve mentioned up to now and you’d be struggling to find one Brit in there.
 
Helen: Yes, I don’t put that down and there’s a lot of talent here. But my musical inspirations have all been American. As a kid, the jazz, the blues, the black music, the Big Bands. All my favourite music is Gershwin and Kern and Porter. All the great writers from the golden age of the American songbook.
 
Digger: There’s a good Jewish connection with a lot of those songwriters.
 
Helen: Some of them, yes. One of the things I really enjoyed in the eighties was touring a show with Benny Green called The Quality Of Mercer – Johnny Mercer was a (American accent) southern gentleman, from Georgia, and one of the greatest lyricists of all time.   I suppose out of the pop stuff that was coming out of the sixties, I loved Tamla Motown.

 

Johnny Mercer

George Gershwin

 

 
Digger: As did The Beatles and Dusty, of course. Big supporters of Motown.
 
Helen: Exactly - Stevie Wonder, The Miracles, The Temptations. I enjoyed all that. But happiest memories?...      I don’t know. I’ll leave that open.
 
Digger: Do you believe we live on in some form after we die physically?
 
Helen: Well obviously I do. I’m a Jewish Christian.
 
Digger: What have we got to look forward to?
 
Helen: It depends. I talk about this in my outreaches. I’m used to being controversial. If we give our hearts to Jesus and repent of our sins and receive him as our Lord and Saviour - and so be born again ( which is something that Jesus said, not something the press made up - He said "Unless a man is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God."  - which is a spiritual rebirth) -   if we do that, we’re going to be with him in heaven.
 
Digger: I was uncomfortable as a young teenager going to this confessional and talking to this guy who is kneeling in the other half of this tiny confessional box. Even then, I thought it was a bit weird and creepy.
 
Helen: Totally unbiblical.
 
Digger: Undignified as well.
 
Helen: Undignified yes.
 
Digger: I almost felt as if he was getting excited at people’s confessions.
 
Helen: Some of them have done. Only God can forgive.
 
Digger: So it’s a one-to-one?
 
Helen: That’s what it is, a one-to-one. God says “Come let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.” It’s between us and him, and not about doing good deeds or attending this or that – you know what I mean? When I became a believer, I wanted to go and be with other believers and worship with them. You don’t become a Christian by going to church, any more than you become a hamburger by going to McDonalds.
 
Digger: I don’t go to McDonalds.
 
Helen: Neither do I. So, yes, if we don’t have that relationship with Jesus and get born again, wherever we’re from and whatever our background, we will be separated from God for eternity.  Some people preach the gospel and some become missionaries and, of course, God knows all humanity.

Digger: What are your plans and projects for the future?
 
Helen: I’ve just released a new gospel CD. It came out about two or three months ago and was my first one for twelve years because I was waiting to get the right thing together on that.

 

 

The Temptations

Cole Porter

Smokey Robinson and The Miracles

 

 
Digger: Is there a big backing group?
 
Helen: The backing - I was involved in that and yes, when you count all the musicians involved I suppose there were quite a few. It’s my fifth gospel album.
I’ve also been thinking of forming a little singing group; a Messianic one. I don’t quite know what form it’s going to take or how and where we’re going to do things. But it’s something that’s been in my heart for a long, long time and so I think we’ll be … it’ still practically a twinkle in our eye.  I might even play the Uke.

Digger: It’s funny that you mentioned the ukulele earlier on because George Harrison was big on the uke as well, wasn’t he?
 
Helen: About a year ago I rediscovered it. I had laid that aside for many years because (laughs) it wasn’t a cool thing.
 
Digger: It was George Formby and your parents’ generation.
 
Helen: Exactly. Which is alright because when you’re a kid it’s not cool, but I discovered that the uke has become very cool and very in and I’ve got three now. I’ve got the little, classic soprano, a tenor one and a baritone one and I’ve been taking it up again.
 
Digger: Have you seen and heard Andy Eastwood playing it?
 
Helen: No.
 
Digger: He’s the guy who does the We’ll Meet Again Show and who taught Frank Skinner to play. Andy’s probably the best in the country – he’s fantastic.
 
Helen: If you go on YouTube there’s some people playing jazz, classical, there’s all kinds of stuff going on and I don’t profess to be like that but I am taking it up again and I am going to try and get a little bit more proficient on it and if I do maybe I’ll use it in the group.
 
Digger: Excellent, that will be good. Paul McCartney does that as a little tribute to George during his concerts.
 
Helen: Yes, I saw that one of his shows.
 
Digger: Well, that’s been great Helen. I’ll type it all up in the next couple of days and let you have a look. Thanks a lot.
 
Helen: I’ll send you an up-to-date photo from the new CD.
 
Digger: Thanks for your time, Helen, and good talking to you.
 
Helen: Lovely talking to you David.
 
Digger: Take care.
 
Helen: Bye bye.