Photography: Amalia Osborne
Jackie Clarke has been performing music since she was in the sixth form at Gisborne Girls’ High, and the guidance counsellor set her up with his son’s band, Marching Orders. She is a driving force within several all-female groups, including When the Cat’s Been Spayed and The Lady Killers with Tina Cross and Suzanne Lynch. Jackie is also a sought-after actor and a self-confessed girlie swot with an incredible ability to sleep, even during the nasty night sweats of menopause.
We moved to Gisborne after Mum and Dad split up.
Mum returned to the bosom of her family – to her sister and mother – and we got a house from State Advances when I was three. It was a big pink two-storey duplex. One of my earliest memories is of pressing my nose up against the window and watching our older sister Tracey walking to school. I’d be thinking, “Wow, that’s cool. Where’s she going? What’s she doing?”
We were a DPB family, but Mum made sure we always had decent clothes, proper shoes and a good lunch.
When Mum told us about her younger years, she spoke of her gang of girls that went to dances. She knew she wasn’t the pretty one, but she was funny and could make people laugh. Mum was always bursting into song right up until the day she died.
My all-time favourite teacher was Mrs Woodford in standard two.
She was an inspirational Māori goddess. Larger than life, she was like Mary Tyler Moore in her A-line skirts and glamorous scarves. Intelligent and independent, Mrs Woodford was the boss of every room she was in. We’re friends on Facebook now, and she’s still amazing and vital.
I started singing at high school.
The counsellor at Gisborne Girls, Peter Kirk, told me his son Martin was looking for a girl singer for his band, which is how Marching Orders was born. I took to performing like a duck to water. I absolutely loved making pop music. Dressing up and being the centre of attention, talking to people on a microphone. Until then, I’d never taken singing seriously, but once I started, I knew it was what I loved.
After school, I did a journalism course in Rotorua and spent a short time working in Invercargill.
The only Samoan in Southland, I then went to Victoria University of Wellington to do a history degree. I joined various bands there, including Putty in Her Hands and The Laundrettes. That led to session recordings, including one at Marmalade with Charlotte Yates, who’d written a song for an ad campaign. I had to sing “Check it out, check it out, now, now, now!” and the sound engineer, Nigel Stone – he’s a really flash film guy in London now – loved my singing.
At the time, Annie Crummer was floating off to be in When the Cat’s Away, so the Netherworld Dancing Toys were looking for a new singer.
Nigel was a great buddy of the Netherworld Dancing Toys – he produced their hit For Today – so he suggested me to them. I didn’t even audition and the next thing you know, I’m flying to Dunedin to rehearse with the band. But nobody was there to meet me at the airport, so I took the bus into town, which is miles away. Unbeknownst to me, the bass player Graham Cockcroft was meant to pick me up. He was panicking about being late, following the bus, sweating buckets that he’d lost their new backing vocalist.
A few years of summer tours of the South Island followed.
We’d turn up somewhere like Haast where there’d be one dog and two people outside the dairy. Then we’d set up in the garden bar at the local tavern and a thousand people would appear out
of the woodwork.
I’ve been with Grant [Lahood] for more than 30 years, although I don’t remember the first time we met, which he’s still outraged about.
He was making short films and apparently his composer had me sing something for one of them. I have no memory of that, but I do remember being in a Lotto commercial he was directing.
When he made a video for When the Cat’s Been Spayed, I kept saying to the girls, “I’ll talk to Grant” about this or that and we’d have these lovely long conversations. Soon after, I was walking down Manners Mall in Wellington and he was headed the other way. We stopped to chat, but I had to keep going, and he turned and said, “I’m going that way too.” But he hadn’t been. We walked all the way up Cuba Mall together and I realised he definitely liked me.
Our first proper date was this big gay dance party called Devotion and we’ve been thick as thieves ever since.
He sees Devotion as our anniversary and he lands on that particular date, which I never remember, as I see our coming together as a cloud of activity.
Grant used to ask me to marry him all the time.
But with my dad being married four times, I couldn’t see the point of the paper. In between his marriages, Dad was quite active and I have 11 half-siblings that I know of. But I feel very married to Grant. We’ve built this life and we couldn’t be more connected.
I was never baby hungry, although Grant was always keen, but it wasn’t till my twin sister Robyn called to say she was pregnant that I thought I might do it too.
So I went off contraception and two minutes later, we were on the journey. Stan is now 26, Ernie is 23, and being a parent is the best thing I’ve ever done.
My twin sister, Robyn and I are indivisible.
But it wasn’t until [Dame] Jools Topp passed away that it dawned on me that one of us would go first. Because it’s impossible to think there’ll ever be just one of us. Even though we’ve lived on different sides of the world, we’ve always felt joined. Like there’s this very long umbilical cord because Robyn is my other half. We get on so well. When we turned 60 in March, we took a holiday to Europe with our partners to celebrate.
Not that my sister and I live in each other’s pockets, but we do live together now.
When Grant and I downsized a few years ago, we looked for that unicorn property with two houses on one section. Now we live happily ever after in the Clarke Twin Family Compound in Te Atatu. Robyn and her partner are in the back, with Grant and me in the front. I just wish we’d done it sooner, when our children were small. The only downside is that Robyn bakes a lot, and she’s always knocking on our door with cakes and puddings because she’s made a bit extra.
I’ve never felt a need to hide my age, and being 60 is business as usual, because it’s grand to be 60.
Like a new era, although I’m aware I need to exercise more or I may atrophy. Whenever you go to the doctor at this stage, they do tend to use hideous words that imply irreversible decline. But things are good and inside I feel 26.
I like being busy because I’m an old-fashioned model with two settings.
On or off, and on is running, feet not touching the ground, doing a million things at once, multitasking like crazy. And off is completely horizontal on the couch, maybe with a glass of wine in my hand.
The Lady Killers is me, Tina Cross and Suzanne Lynch.
We got together at a benefit concert in 2005, doing backing vocals for Frankie Stephens, who was singing With a Little Help From My Friends. The moment we sang “do you need anybody”, sky rockets went off and we decided to do something together. I booked us a gig and off we went, having built this repertoire with intricate harmonies. We have rocked and rolled on cruise ships and dry land. Through the changes in our lives, from being healthy to unhealthy. Busy and not busy, married and not. We know each other so well, and it’s the most beautiful long-term relationship imaginable.
I’m ready to do Songs for Nobodies.
I almost did it 20 years ago, but we couldn’t get the rights and I was relieved it all fell apart. But now I’ve got more miles on the clock, I’m ready to step into those great singers’ shoes. Because in each story, a “nobody”, an ordinary woman, meets a “somebody”like Judy Garland, Édith Piaf and Billie Holiday. It’s a reminder to never judge a book by its cover as the happiest of all the characters is the most ordinary and the unhappiest is one of the somebodies. Being successful, beautiful and glamorous is no indicator of inner peace.
Perhaps I’ll retire when I run out of steam, but right now I’m still steamy.
I’m a virtual water feature some days! But in terms of health, I do nothing about those symptoms because menopause is nothing I can’t live with. I don’t fly into a ball of rage, my brain is no more foggy than it’s ever been and I’ve become used to the heat. But at night, when the night sweat tap turns on, I just say “yuck”, then roll over and go back to sleep.
Songs for Nobodies is on at Auckland’s Q Theatre, October 28-November 1. For tickets, visit qtheatre.co.nz/shows/songs-nobodies
