Writer in it for the Laing haul

By MIKE HOULAHAN

Try as she might to escape, Shona Laing is still at the mercy of her love for music.

Laing has been in the spotlight since 1973, when her song 1905 charmed its way into the public's hearts.

There have been many triumphs since, but also moments when she has wanted to walk away from music.

"Sure, there are regrets," she says. "It would be unrealistic to say I have no regrets: then I would have made no mistakes, breezed through everything and had endless top 40 successes in the States - that was probably the aim, if one is honest. In the process of getting closer and closer to that end I had a few revelations - like I didn't even want to be doing that.

"Even though I sort of withdrew from the music industry, that became impossible because the songs keep coming.

"It's just in me, it's not something I can exorcise, and I'm not much good at anything else."

Her new anthology, The Essential Shona Laing, highlights a 30-year career in which she has racked up several chart hits - and also several worthy songs that did not achieve the profile they deserved.

It is a retrospective which also highlights the sporadic nature of Laing's career, which has been punctuated with long absences from the stage. This release comes after a long period of comparative inactivity.

"For a while there it was good," she says of the past decade. "I was gigging a lot in the provinces - I could spend the week at home getting my head together and then spend the weekends out playing.

"You can only do that for so long on every level - you can only do the small towns once or twice a year, and from a personal perspective doing the same gigs - it's easy to keep on doing that, but I felt I had to take a step away from it."

The Essential Shona Laing is the third glance back through Laing's back catalogue, but is not a reworking of previous collections. The first retrospective examined her singles while the second, Roadworks, saw many of those songs recreated live in an acoustic setting.

The new collection came at the suggestion of Sony Music NZ head Michael Glading, a long-time Laing fan. His suggestion that the best examples of her songwriting - as opposed to her most successful songs - be assembled was one she admits hadn't entered her head.

"I considered it and thought it really wasn't a bad idea, so I went away and came up with a rough running order. It made me sit down and think about it, and it started to have a life of its own, as if all these songs had been written to end up at this point."

One song Laing was keen not to include was 1905, arguably her best-known work, but also one with which she has had a love-hate relationship.

She finally agreed that you could hardly have the essential Shona Laing and not include it - but it has been relegated to the back of the second disc. "When I first came back from England in the early 80s I refused to play it," she recalls.

"I came around to it again though, and it wasn't hard to re-incorporate it in the set. It's an easy song to do, probably because it has a life of its own.

"There's a kind of mystical aspect about 1905 which I think comes both from the fact that I was so young and didn't really know what I was doing, so musically it has a kind of innocence I'm never going to be able to recreate."

She agrees it remains a song she is still judged by, but feels her biggest hit, Glad I'm Not A Kennedy, is the one people are most likely to recall when they think of Shona Laing.

She didn't think it would be a hit, but says other people had faith in it. It was artfully marketed - "blatant" is the word Laing uses - and sold strongly both in New Zealand and Australia.

Glad I'm Not A Kennedy and Soviet Snow ushered in her greatest period of commercial success, but wasn't enough to make Laing happy.

Her guitar became a work tool rather than a source of enjoyment and music had become a grind, leading to her most recent step back from the industry.

The break has been good, she says. New songs have been written and she has formed another band to tour in support of The Essential Shona Laing. Most importantly, her love of music is back.

"I had to find out what it was all about rather than constantly thinking in commercial terms.

"I couldn't listen to music without analysing it in commercial terms, trying to figure out what it was that would make it a hit.

"You can drive yourself crazy doing that, because no matter how organised and sorted out it is, it is still quite random."

* Shona Laing is playing at the Temple, Auckland, tomorrow and Friday. The Essential Shona Laing is out now.