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Rip It Up, Issue 32, 1 March 1980, Page 8

Louise Chunn

There’s no denying it, Sharon O’Neill is “making it big’’ this time. She’s got a second album released, a television special just screened and her face on the cover of the Listener. There’s a trip to Australia coming up too. But after ten years in the entertainment business, O’Neill seems unsusceptible to hype. She takes the latest batch of praise and press coverage in her tiny stride (“Petite” is the appropriate physical description) and toddles foward to do battle. At 27, O’Neill is not playing around.

Her attitude to live work is an example. Her musical standards are such that she demands highly capable backing musicians when playing live. In a concert situation she aims at giving the audience as good a version of what they've bought on record as she possibly can. The obvious answer is to take her session musicians out from the studio and onto the stage, but as this is often impossible they have other commitments she’d rather stay away from live work altogether than play with some garage outfit. “I like working things out with a band and the longer you work together,~the tighter it becomes. I’d like to work with my band like Debbie Harry does with Blondie. And I know I’d never be able to go on stage on my own.” This month’s 17-stop national tour, with Jon

Stevens, is O’Neill’s first opportunity in over a year to take her- musicians on the road. Her choice is Clinton Brown (bass), Denis Mason (percussion and sax), Brent Thomas (guitar), Ross Burge (drums) and Wayne Mason (keyboards). These are the same musicians used on both her albums This Heart, This Song and, Sharon O'Neill. But, she acknowledges, there’s quite a difference between the two records. This Heart This Song was O’Neill's first album, released in 1979. It was produced by Dick Le Fort in Wellington and, says O'Neill, was a "rush job, though I’m still pleased with it, for what I was working on at the time." The new album, Sharon O'Neill, is however, the meisterwerk of which O'Neill is justly proud. This time the producer was American Jay Lewis, a factor which, says O'Neill, made all the difference. "Jay’s musical tastes fitted in exactly with what I was writing then. He also introduced some foreign blood which is a good thing too,” she said. The album took two weeks to record in August last year. Jay Lewis took the tapes to Los Angeles where he did the final mixing. He also brought O’Neill in on Jon Steven’s album, recording their duet of a Brian and Brenda Russell song, "Don’t Let Love Go”, which is newly released as a single. To promote the album, O’Neill at the instigation of manager and boyfriend Brent Thomas co-produced her own television special. She’d been less than happy with the "soft show" TVI had filmed of her in 1978, so with substantial backing from her recording company CBS, she worked with independent film-makers, Concept Video in Wellington. O’Neill is most pleased with the results, screened late last month on Television New Zealand. And, although she's miscast in some of the “scenes", it looks perfect for overseas sales, which is at least a part of the reason the programme was made. That's where the plans for 1980 fit in. CBS is pushing release of her album it’s already out in Japan and is right behind a trip to Australia, with her backing band. She hopes to establish a base in New Zealand, find the right sort of work in Sydney, and her biggest hope get to the United States. For there, she says, is where her influences are, with the West Coast rock musicians; The Eagles and Marc Jordan are named as favourites. Meanwhile, Wellington is O’Neill’s home and with no interest in pub touring she spends most of her time there. Marmalade Studios the venue for both albums provides her with ample session work and jingle singing. But by the looks of the charts and the interest the woman has engendered lately, she may have put an end to such necessities. Then she can spend all day and night doing just what she likes singing and writing with a band of top-knotch musicians in support of her considerable talent.