Sex Appealor Soul

Rip It Up, Issue 8, 1 February 1978, Page 4

Sex Appealor Soul

Louise Chunn

When Renee Geyer last toured New Zealand (in July/August 1976) I was asked to review her Auckland concert. Now, I’d never even heard of the lady before, but that was the whole idea, the music ed. told me. The other half of his brainwave was to send another woman (female singer-female critic) too and print both reviews. I really enjoyed the concert, in fact I even went so far as to buy a Renee Geyer Band album the next day. I thought Ms Geyer had a powerful, expressive voice and her backing band was excellent. My colleague however, did not agree. Ms Geyer was accused of "fitting admirably into the Barbarella syndrome” and perpetuating the "stereotyped picture of women as sex objects”. Chacun a son gout I guess, but since then I’ve often wondered whose interpretation was right; Renee Geyer super singer or Renee Geyer sexist sell-out.

But since her last visit there’s been little heard of Renee Geyer although several albums have been released in those eighteen months. Her most recent release, Movin' Along, produced by Frank Wilson, an alumnae of Motown who has produced albums for Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Eddie Kendricks and the like, was recorded in Los Angeles early last year. Since then she has made two extensive tours of Australia plus several return visits to California.

During that time her band line-up has changed frequently, in what she calls a “big recycling thing" using almost all the musicians who have backed her at one time or another in the last seven or eight years. Renee took Mel Logan (keyboards) and Barry Sullivan (bass) with her to record Movin' Along; this year when she returns to L.A. to record another album Mark Punch, her guitarist, will go too. Renee’s decision to record in Los Angeles was prompted by finding a producer “more sympathetic to my type of music than anyone I could find in Australia.” Frank Wilson will also be producing the second L.A. album which will be released shortly before Renee's New Zealand tour, scheduled for April of this year. Even though the lady’s only 24 years old she’s been around long enough to have already recorded six albums in Australia. In 1976 the Renee Geyer Band virtually cleaned up the Australian Soul Appreciation Society awards with Best Album (Ready to Deal), Best Performance, Best Blues Performance and Best Songwriter (Mark Punch for "Heading in the Right Direction”). Even in New Zealand after only one tour her latest album, Movin' Along has already sold over 5,000 copies. The great coup however is still to come. Renee’s contract with Polydor demands two albums a year and if, as the American radio station bible, Cashbox, proclaimed, she is ripe for the American market, it will be the next couple of years that will bring her into international prominence. The price is high, however; Movin' Along cost her record company SBO,OOO in recording costs, with an additional $15,000 for trips to and from

the States for Renee and her Australian , backing musicians. But the quest for suc- ' cess doesn’t seem to bother her a great deal: "It would be nice if I could get to that level. But all I basically want to do is to

keep making good music and getting some sort of recognition for it ... anything else would be a bonus.”

Having extracted the above info’ I felt it was time to confront Ms Geyer with my conflict. The trick, I thought, was to ease it into the conversation gently and see if any sparks flew. In the media blurb I’d been given Renee was quoted as saying, "If you go on your own if you’re a woman there’s no way you can progress. You can only go down. You progress only if you have a unit behind you.” Renee still agreed with that which moved us onto the question of the role of her sex in her success. “I don't regard it as being important to me as a woman; it’s just important to me full stop. *Td even say that my being a woman has helped me because with so many more male singers in the rock scene, a female

singer with a voice like mine is a novelty.” What about the stories of innocent young ladies being taken for a ride by big bad wolf promoters, producers and whatever else the music industry can churn out? Renee has met other female singers who’ve come across deals and disadvantages such as this "but with me it’s never happened. No-one’s ever offered to do something for me if I sleep with them or anything like that. No way, because they know me and if they don’t they soon find out.”

Into the deep end now. I explained the dichotomy in the responses to her stage presence. Laughter and then, “I’ve got big boobs maybe, and I wear low-cut tqps because I like the fact that I maybe look nice to men. Why not? I like men. But if I’m on stage I’m there to sing and all the rest? If it’s good I’m grateful. But I don’t go out there to go "Come on, guys!” and then sing. I can’t sing and do that at the same time

It seemed I’d struck gold with the question of singer/performer, and Renee continued “I’m not talented enough as a performer to do all that cabaret stuff to carry an audience through a performance by my personality, body and dancing, because I haven’t got that much performing talent. All I know that I’ve got is my voice. I’ve got a loud voice and it’s strong and I know it’s all right and I know my singing is better than anything else J could do on stage.”

So we had another glass of beer and she chatted about her dog in Vaucluse in Sydney and her suntan and how she got homesick only when she’d been away for a long time. And that was it really. I came away having solved the problem of her attitude towards her profession her heart was definitely in her larynx and not, contrary to scientific belief, hiding behind her rather large left breast.