Magazine Archive

Home -> Magazines -> Issues -> Articles in this issue -> View

Girls Keep Swinging

Playing Keys With Shakespear's Sister | Carrie Booth

Article from Sound On Sound, December 1992


Carrie Booth graduated from Lee Fardon And The Legionnaires to Shakespear's Sister, and from being anti-synth to acquiring one of the first DX7s to hit these shores — and then told Derek Johnson all about it.


"That's how I got into electronic keyboards; I'd never used them before. It was a fluke." So speaks Carrie Booth of the lucky break that took her from a temporary job as a seamstress into the keyboard playing job in a band with a record contract, and from there to progressively more high-profile session work — from the Thompson Twins to Deborah Harry, from the rather fabulous, if now sadly forgotten, Monochrome Set, through Japan offshoot the Dolphin Brothers to her current gig providing keyboards with the flamboyant Shakespear's Sister.

It's on these kinds of breaks that many a career has been built, and Booth's break seems to have been up there with the luckiest.

"I had a year off after school, then I got a job to earn money — I wanted the money to go to America and be an actress. A friend of a friend was in a band that needed backing singers. I'd always been interested in music, though I'd never considered it as a career, but I said I'd have a go. It turned out that this band — Lee Fardon And The Legionnaires — had a deal with Arista records, and I got the job.

"To cut a long story short, there was another backing singer and a keyboard player, and they both left at the same time. Instead of getting another girl and a keyboard player, we decided to get a girl who sang and played keyboards. The drummer suggested that I do it."

Carrie was offered a choice of instrument; a liking for the Doors and Elvis Costello led to the choice of a Vox Continental, a hip instrument at the time, used by Steve Nieve in Elvis Costello's Attractions. She knew plenty of chords from juvenile piano lessons, and had a good sense of rhythm, so working out simple parts wasn't a problem, but she freely admits that improvising and jamming, such an important part of being a musician in contemporary music, were skills that came later.

"The guitarist in the band was really into jazz-rock, and he got me into improvising and learning about chords beyond major 7ths. I actually learned to improvise by making a complete idiot of myself, which I think was a good thing, because improvising is all about being 'free'. When you haven't got a clue how to do it, you're too scared to try things out in case you do it wrong. The first time I was invited to jam, I dragged along my Vox Continental and I didn't know the musicians had been in this group for years and knew all these numbers together. They'd say: 'This one starts in A', so I'd sort of play A, and they went off at speed. I didn't know what to do and ended up playing A a lot. I was so embarrassed, but that was it; it couldn't have gotten any worse. I learned how to improvise by reaching rock bottom. From then on everything was fine; I realised that you can play anything and just call it jazz!"

The next stop on the road to full-fledged pro musician status was the Monochrome Set — although this was preceded by a period of the proverbial 'paying your dues'. "Lee Fardon had a deal — I was getting paid for it, and it had happened so easily. After that band finished, I had to learn to live the real life of a professional musician, which means that you can go a long time without a deal. I played with bands that didn't have deals, and I wasn't earning any money. I don't actually remember making a conscious decision, but I just carried on doing it. At one point I was rehearsing with three different bands, as well as waitressing at night to earn money. It was quite a good discipline, learning pop and rock, playing three different styles."

By this time, the Vox Continental had been joined by a Fender Rhodes, which no self-respecting jazz-rock keyboard player could be without. As yet Carrie was anti-synth: "I didn't get excited by them at all." For a while, she used a Moog Opus III — more of a souped-up string machine than a synth — followed by a borrowed synth in the Monochrome Set.

"The Monochrome Set was the first group I'd joined cold, from an ad in the Melody Maker. They were a hard band to be in. I didn't know anybody, and apart from Lee Fardon it was the first time I'd worked with all boys. I was replacing their guitarist (the legendary Lester Square), and Bid (band leader) didn't tell anybody, so people turned up at gigs expecting Lester, and there was a keyboard player doing all the solos — not only that, but it was a girl keyboard player. But it was a good learning experience..."

THOMPSON TWINS



Carrie joined the Thompson Twins as the Monochrome Set broke up during an American tour. The new position came about partly as a result of a commendable bit of positive discrimination. "I'd heard they'd been asking after me, from someone I knew who was a friend of Alannah (Curry)'s. She was particularly interested in employing women. They tried to get hold of me while recording the first album, which I didn't find out till later.

I heard through the grapevine that they were still looking for a keyboard player, so I rang them up to see if the job was still open, and it was. They gave me my first taste of a really successful pop band, and it was brilliant. I was with them for about two years, during their peak period."

At this point, it looked like time to buy a first synth, and though the obvious choice would have been an Oberheim, the basis of the Thompson Twins' sound, this wasn't to be — instead she picked an instrument few musicians would call the obvious choice as a first synth.

"I was just starting to get interested in sound, and someone told me how absolutely fantastic the new Yamaha DX7 was. So I checked one out. It was really exciting, because it was a digital instrument that was reasonably cheap for a professional musician. Although it sounds like a joke now, at the time it was brilliant because it had all these instrument-like sounds on it. There were only five in the country, and everybody wanted one. Argents had a waiting list, and I think I was one behind Thomas Dolby, who was number five. I remember pleading with the shop to let me have one. So I think I got his DX7 — sorry, Thomas! That's when I really got into a completely different side to keyboard playing."

Although the DX7 achieved a certain notoriety for being difficult to program, Carrie just dived straight into creating sounds: "But I've never been one to sit for hours reading manuals. My approach is pretty random; I just start mucking around and see what happens. If I have a sound in mind that I want to achieve and I get stuck and it won't happen, I find it very frustrating, but not quite frustrating enough to spend hours working it out! I'll give up and do something else. It is reasonably limiting, I just haven't got the patience. I tend to just go for it and see what happens. Everyone used to say the DX7 was hard to program, but I got interesting sounds out of it without having to go into it too deeply."

Her stint with the Thompson Twins over, Carrie made a move into a project of her own — Sing Market — which eventually ground to a halt: "We ended up being too poor, and spending all our money on shows and making records; eventually we just had to stop. Then I got asked to join the Neighbourhood. That was very good; they had the horn section from Dexy's Midnight Runners, and it was like Sly and the Family Stone or Parliament, very funky. But it didn't happen for us, which is a shame."

After the Neighbourhood, Carrie left music for a while, and worked in television, as a writer, presenter and interviewer for the Power Station. "I'd had my own band, I'd reached pop stardom with the Thompson Twins — I'm not saying it was my pop stardom, but I'd had a taste of that lifestyle — but it stopped being enjoyable. And I've never worked so hard in my life. Television is hard in a different way to the music business. It's more intense, although I enjoyed doing something completely different.

But I can remember sometimes I used to interview people at gigs and see the flightcases and the back stage vibe, and I'd get this little yearning. I'd start wishing I was in a band again. But there wasn't time to think. It was 12 hour days, six days a week."

It was during this period that Carrie was introduced to computers, and acquired an Atari ST with C-Lab Creator for writing at home. Carrie admits that she still isn't a manual-reading person, but knows enough about the software to make it work. "I couldn't bear not knowing the basics, that would be no good for my pride — I've got to know how something basically works."

The Power Station eventually went off air, leaving Carrie unemployed; once again fate lent her a hand, in the shape of the opportunity to play on last year's Deborah Harry tour, promoting the Very Best of Deborah Harry and Blondie album. "It was fantastic because I was wondering what to do, and the tour came up. I had to practice hard and I was a bit nervous, but it worked out brilliantly — it was a fantastic tour, and Debbie is such a brilliant performer. That was the great thing of having a year off: coming back to playing and touring was just a joy."

SISTER ACT



The next step in her career, and that which is now occupying her full-time, was as part of Shakespear's Sister: "I was told they were looking for a keyboard player, and I auditioned. I joined after the last album (Hormonally Yours) was finished, so I had to learn the songs before the tour, although I think some of the songs have developed from the way they were on the album. Because we've been together as a band for over a year, we've taken the songs a little bit further. It does help if you can record as a band [Carrie was in on the re-recording of the single versions of 'I Don't Care' and 'Hello'], it cements the relationship. I think they want to have a band in the old-fashioned sense rather than session players. I don't think of myself as a session player, session work doesn't really excite me. I love being with a band and performing on stage."

EFFECTS



Effects have always been a part of Carrie's sound — the DX7 used to run through an old Yamaha echo unit, and is now treated by a Digitech DSP128, chosen for its comprehensive MIDI spec. She welcomes the effects found on modern synths, such as her JD800, and used effects from quite early on in her career. "I used to experiment and put my Vox Continental through an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress pedal. I started because of the weird organ noises I heard on Soft Machine albums, and also because I got a review once where my Continental was described as a bleating sheep. I immediately went out and got a flanger to try and soften it up. I like effects, but you have to be careful when playing in big places, since adding too much echo and reverb can end up sounding mushy."

Although it hasn't been used for a long time, the Vox Continental is still around. "I also have a Korg BX3. I love the sound of an organ, and I'd never get rid of them. In fact, I've just hired in a Dynacord CLS222 rotary speaker simulator for the BX3, which makes the organ sound fantastic; the trouble is that once you've hired one in, you don't want to do without because it makes the organ sound really chunky and satisfying."

The current keyboard rig sees the trusty DX7 still in evidence, although now in heavily modified form — it's covered in mirror tiles, and is enhanced internally with a SuperMax chip, which speeds up program changes and allows the synth to transmit on MIDI channels other than 1. The ST/Creator pairing is still sequencing central, although an Alesis Datadisk goes out on tour — "It's completely reliable. The only problem is that you can't edit sequences once you're on the road. Ideally, you'd take along a flightcased computer so you could work in hotel rooms or something." The Datadisk is also used to store banks of synth patches. "It's a definite policy that there isn't much sequencing in Shakespear's Sister. We like to keep everything quite live-sounding. The touring group is six altogether; four women, two men. I like playing with women, but I'd hate having to play with all women. It's nice having a couple of boys around."

New equipment includes a Roland JD800, chosen both for its sounds and its control surface: "I was very excited by it, and I liked the knobs! I spent a long time thinking about what I should get, and I wanted something to complement my DX7. It's silly to have a load of keyboards all by the same company, because all companies have their own character. As a generalisation, the JD800 has a soft sound while the DX7 is quite spikey. I loved the slight analogueness of the JD800. I wasn't looking for a synth that had a great string section — I wanted a synth! It's also much more immediate to program. The way I program is to just go for it and see what happens, and the JD800 is perfect for working like that because of the way it's laid out."

Chosen for its large palette of accessible high quality sounds, Emu's Proteus 1 module also makes an appearance. "It's a boring machine in the sense that you can't really make interesting sounds with it, but its a brilliant work tool, full of sounds that would otherwise tie up my S900. Although it doesn't particularly inspire me creatively, I would recommend it, particularly to the gigging musician. It's very reliable and quick — and it doesn't glitch when you can change a sound while still holding a chord, which is very useful live." Also in use is an Akai ME30PII MIDI patchbay and an S900 sampler.

And sounds for the future? "I've had my first taster of Yamaha's new SY35, but I will probably be replacing the DX7 with an SY85 — I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on one. I'm still looking for the perfect piano, that's the one area that I haven't quite cracked yet in the setup. I don't know if a sample can ever do justice to an acoustic piano, because there's so much feel involved."

THE BIG ONE



There's one question you just don't ask a female musician — but I asked it anyway. What's it like being a female keyboard player in contemporary pop music?

"I wondered whether you were going to ask me that one! It's one of those questions, isn't it? Some people get really upset by it, but I think the best answer I can give is that it's a slightly irrelevant question — I think it's a bit of an old chestnut. All I can say is how I've found it... There are plenty of female singers who do well, but not that many female musicians.

"We could do with a few more women crew and technicians, but the difficulty there is that there are so many men, and you've got to go and sleep on the crew bus. Not that many women would want to spend three months on a bus with 11 sweaty men. Last tour, we had this great woman truck driver called Rebecca — she gave us a go in her truck!"



Previous Article in this issue

Behringer Rack Effects

Next article in this issue

Zoom At The Top?


Publisher: Sound On Sound - SOS Publications Ltd.
The contents of this magazine are re-published here with the kind permission of SOS Publications Ltd.


The current copyright owner/s of this content may differ from the originally published copyright notice.
More details on copyright ownership...

 

Sound On Sound - Dec 1992

Interview by Derek Johnson

Previous article in this issue:

> Behringer Rack Effects

Next article in this issue:

> Zoom At The Top?


Help Support The Things You Love

mu:zines is the result of thousands of hours of effort, and will require many thousands more going forward to reach our goals of getting all this content online.

If you value this resource, you can support this project - it really helps!

Donations for March 2024

Please note: Our yearly hosting fees are due every March, so monetary donations are especially appreciated to help meet this cost. Thank you for your support!

Issues donated this month: 0

New issues that have been donated or scanned for us this month.

Funds donated this month: £208.00

All donations and support are gratefully appreciated - thank you.


Magazines Needed - Can You Help?

Do you have any of these magazine issues?

> See all issues we need

If so, and you can donate, lend or scan them to help complete our archive, please get in touch via the Contribute page - thanks!

Please Contribute to mu:zines by supplying magazines, scanning or donating funds. Thanks!

Monetary donations go towards site running costs, and the occasional coffee for me if there's anything left over!
muzines_logo_02

Small Print

Terms of usePrivacy