How would you recover from a gruelling US tour? Goldfish’s David Poole went surfing in the Maldives. Dom Peters, the Cape Town electronic duo’s other half, attended a music festival just outside his home town.
“That was probably the wrong thing to do,” Peters laughs on the line from the group’s studio. “I wore a hoodie, which helped, because everybody kept asking me what time I was playing.”
Paul McCartney’s been at it for over half a century. He’s long since lost the element of surprise – yet tonight, during what’s billed as his 50th London show, that’s exactly what he delivers.
Dan Patlansky won’t soon forget 1 February 2014. It’s the day he opened for Bruce Springsteen at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium.
“That was fantastic, even though it was one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done,” he remembers. “The scary part wasn’t the actual number of people, it was that none of those 80 000 people were there to see me,” he chuckles.
London in January is cold, dark, and miserable. Yet Arno Carstens is excited to be back in the city he called home while making his third solo album.
“My memories of recording ‘Wonderful Wild’ are that there was a lot of serious thinking and kind of hard work but amongst the angst was just great fun and partying,” he says, thinking back to 2009. “Most memorable was all the good friends I made.
The last time éVoid had done a full South African tour, PW Botha was president. The brothers Erik and Lucien Windrich were 20-somethings with a thing for beads and face paint. And their politically charged, African-flavoured ethnotronic songs were considered subversive enough to warrant police attention – and popular enough for jumping fans to cave in the floor of Stellenbosch Town Hall.
That was 30 years ago – an eternity in the music scene. So the siblings were understandably a little worried about doing it all over again to celebrate their self-titled debut album’s anniversary. No need: all 10 of their August homecoming shows were sell-out successes.
Family first. A simple philosophy, sure, but one that makes perfects sense if your professional life’s as packed as ProVerb’s, the rapper/’Idols SA’ host and co-producer/TV presenter/voice over artist/radio DJ/master of ceremonies/amateur cap collector.
“I have no problem turning down a job completely because I need to be with my family. I think you have to be able to draw that line – it’s impossible to balance the two equally,” says Ona’s husband and Ditshupo and Kgosietsile’s dad.
Candice Heyns is hooked on music.
‘When I search for music on the net, I’m like an addict – I can literally sit for hours,’ she laughs. ‘I’m constantly looking for new artists and new sounds.’ It’s not surprising, then, that Candice has forged a career in the music industry, first working behind the scenes in promotion and management before she launched her career as a solo DJ, one half of electronic duo Blush n Bass, a radio and TV presenter, and a budding businesswoman.
‘You never stop learning,’ says Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse, a few days after his 60th birthday. ‘You learn from the past, the present and the future, which keeps your mind evolving and helps you discover a new person in yourself.’
He should know. His insatiable curiosity is behind a music career that, over the course of five decades, has seen him be a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, industry commentator, arts and culture advocate, jazz club owner, 46664 ambassador and even Eighties pop pin-up (complete with prerequisite Afro and black leather garb).
Can’t tell Nik Kershaw and Howard Jones apart?
Don’t worry — nor can Kershaw’s infant son.
The affable singer chuckles as he tells the story: “I’ve got the CD of the 25th anniversary gig Howard did because I played on it. The front cover is a picture of Howard, and my son pointed at it and said: ‘daddy’.”
He may have lost the big hair, but Howard Jones has lost none of his passion for music.
“I still really love to play live and I’m touring constantly,” he says on the phone from England. “As long as I can get up on stage, I’ll be doing it,” he laughs.
“It really is good for me because I have this heritage of hit songs that people know and it’s such a pleasure then to play them for people so they can join in, sing along, and recall a part of their life with the songs.”
Nils van der Linden