Liz Mitchell: I went from £7 a week to £10k dresses in Boney M

Liz Mitchell was the original lead singer with the pop group Boney M whose No 1 hits include Rivers of Babylon/Brown Girl in the Ring and Mary’s Boy Child. The group, whose classic line-up played together from 1976-86, has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Now 72, she tours as Liz Mitchell, Boney M, and was appointed MBE in the King’s birthday honours for services to music and charity. “I’m just sorry that my father Norman [MBE for community service], who died in May aged 103, won’t be around to see me receive it at Windsor Castle.” She has three grown-up children and lives in Caversham, Reading, with her husband and manager, Thomas Pemberton.
About a fiver. I like paying with cash, but sadly a lot of places don’t accept it any more.
I have no preference so long as my card works.
I’m somewhere in between — I’m not a huge saver and I’m not a huge spender. I used to go a bit mad in boutiques as a young woman, and during my Boney M days I’d always be looking for something that was going to make us look good. In 1979 we received a last-minute request to take part in a Royal Variety Performance for the Queen so we headed to South Kensington and bought four lovely outfits, along with beautiful shoes and jewellery, costing £10,000 each — but it was a glamorous occasion so we had to look our best. Yes, we were reimbursed by management, but ultimately the money came out of our royalties. My last big-ticket buy was paying to go to Jamaica for my father’s funeral, but we gave him a wonderful send-off.
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Yes, a comfortable detached family home which we call “the Cottage”, in Caversham, Reading, which my husband, Thomas, and I bought more than 30 years ago for about £400,000 — a big number for us at the time. My children are grown up now, but they, and their children, are always popping round so it’s nice to have lots of space. My childhood home in Harlesden now has a blue plaque outside.
Good question. I was one of six and spent my earliest years in Jamaica. My father moved to England to work as a labourer after I was born, initially earning £6-7 a week, and my mother Lowess, now 95, joined him shortly afterwards. They were part of the Windrush generation. When I was 11, I was reunited with my parents — my grandparents had looked after me in the meantime — and siblings in Harlesden, London, where my dad had bought a house for around £2,000. In some ways though, I think my parents were better off because they knew what they had to spend so lived within their means, whereas nowadays so many people live off their credit cards and buy things they can’t really afford.
Dear God, I’ve got no idea — I leave that sort of thing to my husband [chuckles].
My first job, in a Lyons office, paid £7 a week. But after successfully auditioning to join the cast of the musical Hair in West Berlin — I joined the Berlin cast because I had a friend on the show — I got a pay rise to around £10 a week. I subsequently joined a German pop group, the Les Humphries Singers, before in 1976 being invited to join a new pop group, Boney M, being put together by the German record producer Frank Farian, whose funeral I went to earlier this year. We scored our first big hit with Daddy Cool in 1976 and life was never quite the same again.
I’m not sure. I might have earned more in my Boney M days, but I paid out more in those days too, so in a way I’m better off now. I’ve been a born-again Christian since the early Seventies, though, so the riches of life for me are about having security, a home and a family who love me.
The rest of the [Berlin] cast of Hair and I were constantly broke because we got paid so little, but the London cast had it just as hard too. But has anything changed? It you work in the theatre, you’re never going to make big money unless you’re the star of a show.
No, that’s of no real interest to me.
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I’m not sure, but when you’re in showbusiness you have to organise your own pension — no one else is going to do it for you. But I still get fan letters from around the world asking me to perform, so while I might be slowing down a bit, I have no plans to retire in the foreseeable future — I enjoy performing too much to give it up just yet.
Joining Boney M, even if I wasn’t always treated correctly by the record company. In the band’s heyday I never had time to count the pennies — as soon as we finished one show, we were off to perform the next. I wasn’t always happy with some of the poses we had to take in promotional photos at the time, fearing we were being manipulated — but after a lot of tears, Frank promised us that the shots wouldn’t be “vulgar”.
It’s wonderful to have sung on songs which have brought so much joy to so many people, and continue to do so today — if I chose to, I could perform anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, some Boney M tribute bands, who perform live, don’t really admit to being a tribute band, which can be embarrassing.
Buying our home was the best thing my husband and I ever did financially. I’m a family person and have so many happy memories linked to our house. Thankfully, I’ve never needed to pay for things like singing lessons. I was born with “a voice” and have been using it since I was a child — and if I’m not performing live, which is unusual, I’ll be singing at my church.
I’ve bought a few dresses — I’ll spend up to £600-£700 on a dress for personal use — that I’ve only worn once because, after buying them, I’ve realised that they weren’t my style so they weren’t a great investment. My mother was a dressmaker and actually made a couple of my early stage outfits, while some of the Boney M outfits were based on my ideas.
I love soft leather Italian shoes, which can cost anything from £150 to £1,000, and have them in all sorts of colours, to match whatever outfit I’m wearing on stage. I don’t see why I should be stingy on myself.
My only real extravagance these days is holidays, which can be expensive when you have a big family, like I do, and you like to take them to places like Disneyworld, which I’ve visited a couple of times. By the time you’ve paid for the flights, hotel and entry fee you could be looking at a bill of a few thousand pounds.
Just to keep on singing as long as I can. It’s taken me a while to recover from a car crash last year in which I broke my wrist — I was playing two or three gigs a month until then — so my live work has been on a bit of a hiatus. I’m looking forward to playing some gigs next year once I’m 100 per cent again. The last year has been tough on me mentally.
I’d donate all of it to my Let It Be charitable foundation. It educates black British children to be proud of their African or Caribbean heritage, which can benefit them as individuals and make them better people.
The need to choose your friends carefully when you’ve made money. Because as Sam Cooke sang on Nobody Knows When You’re Down and Out, just as soon as his “money got low”, he “couldn’t find no friends”.
boneym-lizmitchell.com, letitbefoundation.co.uk