7. Dolores KeaneA Woman’s Heart
‘Caledonia’ was written by, I think, Don McLean and it’s a song about being homesick for the place you came from. Now, I’m not homesick for the place I came from – when I go back, I slip easily into sounding like an American, but England is my home.
I grew up in love with England from the time I was nearly 21. I came to live here when I was 24 and swore allegiance to the Queen in order to get my British passport, England is my home. When Ewan McColl died, I went back to America for 16 years and at one point, I just got this horrendous homesickness for my children who live in three corners of London, and for my late stepdaughter Kirsty McColl who then lived in the other corner.
I got this dreadful homesickness for England. Cold, grey, damp… So I returned. When I hear ‘Caledonia, Caledonia’ is calling me and also that feeling of disappearing, which I get regularly these days. Of course, I’m gonna disappear soon, into the minds of anybody who wants to remember me.
So that’s why I like ‘Caledonia’, Dolores Kane does not have a perfect voice and that’s what I love about it. She has an experienced voice; she’s had a hard life and she’s made a hard life for herself. I don’t understand that kind of hard life, but I can sympathise with anybody who has it and the difficulties of freeing yourself from it. I really love her voice. I love whatever she does with it.
