The Liona Boyd Interview is featured on The Paul Leslie Hour.
Are you here? I’m here, but you’re not. You’re a figment of my imagination. Or maybe I have that backwards? I’m only playing, welcome to The Paul Leslie Hour.
We have an interview from the archives with Liona Boyd, the “First Lady of the Guitar.” Miss Liona Boyd is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, performing and recording artist. Liona Boyd’s music a blend of folk, classical and world music. The latest single is entitled “Nocturne,” and was released on October 13th. It’s a tune that is worthy of your attention. Liona’s upcoming album “Once Upon a Time” will be released later this Fall.
The interview you’re about to hear is a peaceful, relaxing conversation Paul had with Liona Boyd that was originally broadcast over the radio in Charleston, South Carolina in 2017. We’re bringing it out to all of you. We’ve got many more interviews coming out this year, both new and from our extensive library. One of the best ways to stay up to date is to subscribe to Paul Leslie’s YouTube channel. It’s free to do so, all you have to do is hit the subscribe button and don’t forget to ring that bell.
And now, I think it’s time ladies and gentlemen, that we bring out the Liona Boyd interview. Let’s listen. Together.
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Transcript
Introduction of Liona Boyd and her artistic endeavors
[2:14] It’s a pleasure to be welcoming classical guitarist, singer, songwriter, author, Liona Boyd, often times referred to as the “First Lady of the Guitar,” it’s great to welcome you here.
Hi, Paul. Pleasure to meet you over the airwaves.
Oh, it’s our honor. You have this album out and autobiography, “No Remedy for Love.” We’re gonna be talking about a number of things. What has always been the purpose with the art you create?
Well, maybe as an artist you want to please yourself. I love the sound of the guitar, I love the feel of the guitar, I love being able to express myself. But then I also love people’s reactions and books are different than albums, but in a way writing songs is like a miniature little, It’s a little story, every time you write a song, it has to say in three or four minutes a whole story, right? So, I’ve loved the creative process for many years.
[3:21] Where does that come from, “No Remedy for Love”?
Oh, I’m glad you asked me that. I was walking along a street in Toronto, where I’m mostly based these days, and I saw a quote up on a local church. It said, “there is no remedy for love, but love more.”
I thought, wow, that is quite profound. I must find out who said that. So I used Google and it’s by Henry David Thoreau. It’s one of his most famous quotes. So I reduced it to, “There’s no remedy for love but to love more.” And I wrote a song by that title. Luckily it had not been taken before. And then the song came out a little bit cynical about love, which isn’t really my own perspective on love.
So I decided to send it to my friend Leonard Cohen. This was a few years ago before he passed. Because it’s a little bitter and it’s comparing love to a kind of traitorous, treacherous woman.
I thought he would like it and he did and he wrote me back a lovely letter and I said, could I dedicate it to him? And then as it was on the album, I thought, why not call the album “No Remedy for Love”?
And then when I was doing my autobiography, I thought, you know, it’s probably a pretty good title for the book, too.
Liona Boyd’s complex definition of love
[4:32] How does Liona Boyd define love?
Oh, that’s a very complicated word and there’s so many different types of love and, you know, I guess my whole life has been a search for love. Many people’s lives are. I don’t have children.
I had a cat at one point. At one point I had a wonderful husband and I’ve been blessed to have some great romantic love in my life even though I’m single now. But love is many more things. Love is compassion, it’s love. You could love a country, love a province, love a state. [5:12] You could love animals. I wrote a song called “People Who Care for the Animals” because I love the people that take care of the animals that I love.
I love nature. I did one called “A Prayer for Planet Earth” because I love nature and I’m very concerned what we’re doing to the environment. There’s many different manifestations of love, isn’t there? I mean, there’s spiritual love that many people feel. There’s motherly love that I guess I haven’t had that type of love in my life, but love of family, love of so many things. I don’t know. It’s impossible. It’s a very complicated word.
That’s the truth. I was watching an interview that you did online. It’s actually available on YouTube, and you were talking a little bit about Canada, and, And just a moment ago, you were talking about love for land and love for province. I was hoping you could speak a little bit about what makes Canada unique and what about Canada you identify with.
Well, there’s a lot I don’t identify with. Like I’m not a big hockey fanatic, but I love the nature.
And when I was a little girl in England, we studied a poem called “Hiawatha,” the Song of Hiawatha.
Described as a native child growing up in, I guess it was northern Ontario. [6:30] And as I, we went back and forward three times between England and Canada.
So I was familiar with the Canadian landscape. And that inspired me to write a suite for classical guitar called “My Land of Hiawatha.”
The first movement is Spirit of the, what is it, Spirit of the Moving Waters, then Spirit of the Forest, and Spirit of the West Wind. I actually wrote it when I was living in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, trying to get whatever the status is to become an American citizen, because I’m American as well as Canadian.
And I had to be out of the country, so at that point I had met my future husband and we went and lived in Rosarito Beach for a little while. But I was waxing nostalgic, remembering my canoe trips and my many stays in Northern Ontario.
And then when I did an album called “The Return to Canada With Love,” which came out, let’s see, about 2011, it begins with an instrumental piece that I wrote called “Spirit of the Canadian Northlands.”
And I love to open concerts with that because it’s a very powerful piece and very descriptive of our natural beauty. And believe me, I’ve traveled everywhere in Canada, so we do have some spectacular scenery, as you do in the U.S. too.
For someone who is not familiar with your music, how would you define your music and how would you describe it?
[7:55] Well, my music when I started out was purely classical. I didn’t even compose my own pieces.
I started out playing a lot of Spanish music, Granados, De Falla, Albéniz, Tarraga, the standard kind of Spanish repertoire that a lot of classical guitarists play, and also a lot of Bach, and Fernando Sor. [8:20] Baroque pieces that I transcribed. I once did an album with the English Chamber Orchestra that was all Baroque music. But the beginning I didn’t do anything remotely popular.
Then getting into the, let’s see, was it early 80s, I did an album called “The Romantic Guitar of Liona Boyd,” and they were movie themes, and I loved doing that, and it sold like crazy, went platinum.
I also did a Christmas album called “A Guitar for Christmas” that broke all the records for a Canadian classical record. It was the first one ever to go platinum. And some of the pieces were a little more pop arrangements, but they were traditional Christmas carols nonetheless.
And I also, around that time, had the opportunity to work with Chet Atkins. So even though I was playing classical guitar, we did an album with two session players, and Chet and I, it’s called the First Nashville Guitar Quartet, and that sure wasn’t classical, and I’m sure some of the classical critics raised their eyebrows.
But I was brought up in the 60s listening to the music of Dylan and Joan Baez, and I I always loved folk music. [9:28] And the Rolling Stones, but I didn’t play that style. I was the opening act for Gordon Lightfoot, for a couple of years, and we did hundreds of concerts all over the US, all the big summer sheds and the LA Amphitheater, played New York and Tanglewood, and I was playing strictly classical.
I played Debussy and Bayonets, of course, and some wonderful South American music, and people loved it, and I’m amazed that they sat through a half an hour of classical guitar before Lightfoot shows, but the times were a little bit different and people were intrigued with the instrument and what I could do with it.
Opening for Gordon Lightfoot and their unique relationship
[10:06] Speaking of Gordon Lightfoot, he was a guest on this show. He gave a fantastic interview, and I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about him. What is he like, and what did you learn from opening for Gordon Lightfoot for those concerts?
[10:24] That was a very, very, very interesting experience for me because up until then, I had only played for little guitar societies and small groups of people scattered around North America at the beginning.
I saw a whole other side of the music world opening for Gordon. He’d heard me play and jokingly said, oh, I’ll take you on tour one day.
Anyway, as luck would have it, one of his opening acts canceled and he said, “how would you like to play in Minneapolis?” I was petrified because it was 5,000 people each show and back-to-back two shows.
But the audience was so receptive that he continued to use me as his opening act. So in between me touring, now I was doing more international concerts, I was touring with Gordon, and I did get to know him because we used to sit at the back of his Learjet.
[11:14] And in fact, it was Gordon who encouraged me to write my own music because he saw that I was always studying scores by classical composers. And so I started writing my own, of course, classical style, not singing, and Gordon is a kind of paradoxical character, I should say, but enigmatic. He has the most poetic lyrics, and yet I don’t see him as, well, he’s such a funny mix of personalities. He had all kinds of problems with the management back then, and of course, he was drinking a lot, and I don’t know, like everybody was except me, I didn’t drink apple juice, but he was doing drugs. Anyway, he finally got his life together. He married my manager’s secretary, but now he’s happily married to another woman, an American woman. [12:05] Kim. I just saw them quite recently because we did a concert where we were both on the billing just south of Ottawa. I think he’s coming. Ronnie Hawkins, who was a guest on a song I wrote for Lightfoot that’s on the new album, just simply titled Lightfoot. He’s selling his house and having a big farewell party.
In fact, after I finish talking to you, I’m going to give Gordon a call and see how he’s getting out there.
Because in Toronto, I don’t keep a car, so maybe I can ride out with him.
Influences and transition into singing
[12:36] But I always loved Gordon’s music and his beautiful, poetic, unique songs, that folk music that I loved. And I’m thrilled that now I’m singing in that style and writing in that song.
So he was an enormous influence. He and Leonard Cohen, and all the different folk artists of the day.
We’re joined by Liona Boyd. I was hoping you could speak about that, the transition that you made from playing instrumental music to singing yourself.
[13:07] Well, never in a million years, Paul, did I think I’d ever sing. I was actually asked to leave a little choir when I was eight years old, and they said, well, you can’t sing, but you can present the flowers.
And then when we went back to England, I had to sing “O Canada” in front of my music class, and I was just so mortified, my little weak voice trying to keep in tune, and I’m sure I wasn’t.
Then, when I was a teenager, I remember I had an attempt at “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and I thought, no, this isn’t working.
[13:40] Anyway, by that time, I’d fallen in love with classical guitar because my mother had taken, me to hear Julian Bream. But I did love writing little songs, but I never thought I would be singing them. When I was quite young, well I must have been about seven or eight, I won the best infant school story. So I was good at telling stories and my poems and writings were often published in the school yearbooks and newsletters. And even when I was little, I used to hum little songs myself, but I never ever could imagine actually being a singer because no one in my family sang and we didn’t go to church so I didn’t have much opportunity to sing really, but I did love the recorder and the melodica and my early concerts were actually carol, well carol playing, not singing I guess. I used to go around the neighborhood and collect money and half of it I’d give to the Humane Society, but singing now and songwriting has opened up a whole new world for me and I am just loving it.
Inspiration and learning from various musicians
[14:46] I take inspiration from everywhere, and it’s like a second phase of my career.
Who has taught you the most about music?
[14:55] Who has taught me the most? You know, I studied classical guitar technique with many wonderful teachers. I was very privileged because we had the Toronto Guitar Society, and all the different great guitarists came through. I would take private lessons. I got to study with André Segovia.
Then I spent two years studying with Alexandre Lagoya in Paris, and played for many different guitarists, John Williams and people that came to town. Or Segovia I met once in New York, and he gave me a lesson and then I started with Narciso Yepez, who was a great Spanish guitarist. So, that was the technique, but I was very self-motivated. I don’t think there was one specific person and you learn a lot just listening to records, going to other people’s concerts. It’s really hard to say. I think as an artist, I didn’t have one particular teacher. I learned from all of them.
I’d listen to Leonard Cohen’s albums and then got to know him and we’d have tea sometimes when I lived in Beverly Hills when I was married. He’d give me his latest record and I’d give him mine.
And I’m sure even unconsciously there was some influence there.
[16:05] And I’ve always loved poetry, so his music appealed to me a lot. It’s sad that he’s no longer around, but you know the one I loved the most I guess when I was a teenager was Bob Dylan.
I mean, just the lyrics of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Desolation Row,” and I wasn’t into the drug scene at all. I was not druggy even though people all around me were, and we used to live in, well, we lived in Mexico when I was a teenager, so I was surrounded by that, but it never really appealed to me.
What can I say?
I loved the music of Donovan, too, and all those early folky people, but then I was also, I did a degree in music, so four years of university in classical music, and I must say I wasn’t that into the really contemporary avant-garde classical music, but I loved melody. The pieces that I chose were always the ones that had beautiful melodies and that were very expressive emotionally, not just intellectually, which a lot of the avant-garde music that. [17:05] they made us study at university was. I’ve always loved great melodies and I love writing them too.
Exchanging albums and discussions with Leonard Cohen
When you would exchange these albums with Leonard Cohen, would he provide feedback and vice versa?
[17:19] Well, Leonard didn’t really analyze or critique, he’d just pay me compliments. But, you know, we got together and discussed a translation he’d made of a poem by García Lorca. [17:31] And I was working on an album of poetry and music using poetry of García Lorca and Pablo Neruda.
Now, I was very lucky, I actually met Pablo Neruda, he’s a great Chilean poet, and García Lorca still remains my favorite Spanish poet, and Leonard loved him, too. I told him I was really lucky I got to play on his guitar when I was in Granada. His grandniece allowed me to hold his guitar because Lorca used to use the guitar when he wrote his amazing poetry. He was shot by firing squad in the Civil War, which is just terrible, for being gay. I think that was the main reason, but he used such fantastic imagery, and Leonard, for instance, in a song called “Take This Waltz,” it’s basically a translation of that Lorca poem, but I think Leonard actually made it better.
I was just doing an interview the other day, and they wanted me to talk about Leonard Cohen, and you compare the two, and the imagery that Leonard came up with is, and I speak fluent Spanish, so I know about the translation.
Leonard actually improved it, which is interesting, isn’t it?
[18:38] Very, it occurs to me with your two books, you enjoy writing a lot.
Yeah.
Do you find that writing autobiography is a soothing or a therapeutic experience?
[18:52] Yes, I think writing is something that you get in the zone and it just flows. By the way, the question before you had asked me what I talked about with Leonard, we talked a lot about Buddhism and about life in Los Angeles. It wasn’t just about music, about who he was dating.
He was dating Rebecca de Mornay, and then we talked nostalgically about Montreal that I knew well when I was dating Pierre Trudeau for eight years. So we had lots of reminiscences about life in Canada.
Anyway, sorry, I digress, but you wanted me to talk about how writing affects me. [19:29] It’s different experience. When I’m writing something, I find I can always go back and somehow make it better.
You know, it’s frustrating when you’re writing an autobiography and then you read it later, you think, oh, I could have added this or I could have added that. But when you write a song, it’s pretty much done. You have to get every word perfectly in place. Every rhyme just has to work. Or, I mean, I can stay up at night being tortured if I don’t get the right word. So it’s a struggle sometimes. And other times it just naturally falls into place. But once it’s done, it’s done. Rarely ever go back and tweak anything. And same with writing a classical piece. I’ve written dozens and dozens of pieces for classical guitar and I don’t go back and refine them.
Writing a book, there’s always more that I can add, so it’s a never-ending process.
My new book, it took me four years: :The New Remedy for Love,” and then the other one: “In My Own Key: My Life and Love and Music.:
I basically took eight years and I wrote a lot of it while I was on planes and I was traveling like crazy all over the world. I don’t even know how I had time to write that first book.
I packed so much into my life and… It starts with my childhood and then was right up to 1998.
A Life of Luxury and Unexpected Challenges
[20:45] But I thought, well I must do a new autobiography because people will wonder what happened.
And I was, at that point, 1998, happily living in Beverly Hills, across from Ozzy Osbourne in a beautiful mansion with a husband who adored me and a beautiful cat and everything was all rosy.
But then something happened. Do you want me to talk about that?
Sure, absolutely.
Yes, well, when musicians overplay and do a lot of practice, which I did, because my teacher, Segovia, said “five hours of practice a day,” and I kind of took that to heart, and I love the guitar so much, so I usually did do three, four, sometimes five. In fact, when I was a student, sometimes up to eight hours.
But when you do the same repetitive motion as I did using tremolo or certain arpeggios, and your mind is not completely focused and the hand isn’t always relaxed. And in my case, I was often watching television and just by rote doing exercises, thinking it was good for my hands.
You can develop a condition. It’s not a sickness, not an illness. It’s simply a condition from over practice called musician’s focal dystonia. [21:58] And there was a lot of misinformation about it. I didn’t even know what it was at the beginning, but for six years, I had to quit playing guitar.
[22:06] Leon Fleischer quit for something like 30 years, and it has devastated the careers of many, many musicians. So I was searching, I tell the story in this new book of all the different crazy therapies I went to, really misdirected, not knowing what was wrong with my hands thinking it was physical, and it really wasn’t. It was that the neuroreceptors in the brain actually fired so many times, and they start to give the wrong message, and the brain maps can get smudged, but it only is in relation to one specific motion.
In my case, it was my middle finger, so it’s not like my whole hand was out, and there’s nothing physically wrong with a hand. People to this day keep thinking there was something, you know, they don’t understand musicians’ vocal dystonia, but it’s a very complicated thing, because the more you practice, the worse it gets.
So I had to reinvent my technique completely. And at that time I thought, I want to keep music in my life and my former husband wanted me to quit altogether, which was the reason we ended up getting divorced and luckily we’re still friends and I’m friends with his new wife and it worked out well for them.
Reinventing Herself as a Singer-Songwriter
[23:17] And for me, I got my freedom and I went to reinvent myself as a singer-songwriter. But I had a lot of struggles. It was very lonely. I cried many times thinking my career was over.
[23:29] At the beginning, I had just finished a very successful album and tour called “Camino Latino,” and I had all these amazing guitarists guest with me, from Al Di Meola, Steve Morse from Deep Purple.
I mean, in my life, I’ve been lucky to work with so many musicians, and suddenly, I was off the stage, my own decision, because I knew I wasn’t playing up to my own standards. And this musician’s focal dystonia can really wreak havoc with your life. Thank goodness I was able to reinvent and one door closed but another has opened and I’m still very much playing classical guitar, but I don’t do the really tough pieces. I don’t play concertos. [24:08] But I now record, as you’ll hear on the new album. I have a wonderful duo partner who accompanies me.
I’ve written some beautiful pieces, if I say so myself. I’m very, very proud of all the albums I’ve done. I did five new albums, which I never would have done that type of music. I’d probably still be playing strictly classical and “Malaganya” for the millionth time. So I’m quite delighted that this opened a new pathway for me. I did an album called “Seven Journeys: Music for the Soul and the Imagination,” which didn’t really require any virtuoso technique, But I wrote some beautiful melodies and I found a wonderful producer in Toronto called Peter Bond, who had actually engineered the Camino Latino album.
We’ve worked together on the last five albums and it’s just very ethereal, it takes you into another dimension, as it took me into another dimension writing that music.
My newer Christmas album, the third of the Christmas albums called “A Winter Fantasy,” has a lot of that quality. It’s very relaxing, very transcendental, shall we say, and people just say it has a magic.
I wouldn’t have done albums like that had I not had this condition.
[25:24] When someone is facing something like that, what would you say to them? What was it that kept your spirits up?
Well, I’m a very determined person, and even though I was heartbroken, I felt as though my best friend had betrayed me, the guitar.
I’m always adventurous, and I knew that somehow I’d find a solution.
I left Beverly Hills. I moved to Miami. I have a whole chapter describing, or maybe a couple of chapters describing all the craziness that I went through in Miami and all. I love the Spanish language, of course, so I was entranced with the Latin culture.
And at the same time as I was desperately searching for a solution to focal dystonia, I was also loving “La Vida Loca,” being part of the Latin culture, speaking the language, getting to know all the different musicians, because I was a fan of so many Latin artists, and I got to meet just about every single one.
[26:23] And what kept me going? Well, I just kept struggling on and then I met a wonderful Croatian guitarist, finally. He told me he loved the color of my voice, which surprised me because I thought, oh, I’m the world’s worst singer. But then I heard my voice recorded and I thought, well, there is a quality and it’s perfect for the type of romantic songs that I want to write. So I started writing songs and he showed me some of the folky techniques.
Because he was a classical guitarist and he was known as the Simon and Garfunkel duo back in the day in Dubrovnik. I went to Dubrovnik, I met a composer who he introduced me to who was like the Beethoven of Croatia, who’d written all kinds of music from folk music to symphonies to operas to a guitar concerto.
Djello Iusek and I was given the rights to his music to translate, not translate actually, do new lyrics to his music. And they’re beautiful. It’s sort of a mixture of Russian and Italian beauty. That’s how I hear it.
[27:29] It’s a language that is kind of hard when you hear it, but when you hear it sung, it’s absolutely exquisite. And so I just fell in love with some of these melodies, and that got me on my way.
I began touring with Serge and Gervoisier, and we did some concerts here in Canada, some in the US.
Then, let’s see, I moved back to L.A. I moved to Santa Monica. Could not find the right person to play with, and it became, it was just not practical to continue with someone living in New Jersey, a surgeon. His family lived in New Jersey.
Anyway, it’s a whole long story I’ve gone through. I guess I’m on my third duo partner now, who’s a young 26-year-old, who’s absolutely fantastic. Wonderful baritone voice, and sometimes in the course of the concerts, he does some solos, and he accompanies me, and he also has a degree in classical guitar. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he’s 6’4″, and a wonderful model. And we’ve loved touring together, and we have some concerts coming up that are getting put together and a Christmas tour. So it’s great to be making music with someone of a total different generation, who is wonderful to tour with, and I still love composing music.
[28:42] And also doing this book has been keeping me busy day and night. I read an audio book too, so it’ll be out sometime next year. I read the whole first biography and I thought, how did I write such a long book? But looking back, I pinch myself all the amazing adventures I had.
[29:00] What is the best thing about being Liona Boyd?
The best thing about being me is that I can do so many different things, I guess. I can play guitar, I can sing, I can write songs, I can paint, I can travel the world. I just live with great gratitude these days that I have had and continue to have a life.
I still hope my soulmate will come one of these days. I have a musical soulmate in Peter, that’s for sure, but there are lonely times too. Everything isn’t always perfect.
I’m very grateful for the fans that I’ve had that support me by buying my music and coming to concerts and enjoying my books. I’m thrilled now that all the albums, going back to the 70s, are all up on iTunes and people all over the world send me messages, saying how certain pieces moved them or maybe they’re practicing a certain piece and they ask for advice, and I can be contacted through my website, classicalguitar.com or lionaboyd.com.
And I’m very honored that I’ve been awarded different awards and still want to keep touring, hopefully do more international concerts. I guess I’m very grateful to my parents because they always encourage creativity in their kids, no matter what form it takes, what manifestation.
But when I was about to, well, when I told my husband that I wanted to get divorced, he said, I said, “but you could just paint, my darling.”
[30:28] I said, it’s not the same, I have music, I have a gift of music. [30:31] And now I’m going to do this crazy thing called singing and songwriting.
And I somehow pulled it off, so I’m very proud. And my songs are like my children, Everyone has a story, and everyone is…
[30:44] Become a part of me and I love performing them on the stage. I hope you get to hear me one of these days.
Oh, I do too.
Sharing the Love of Music and Performing
Well, speaking of the fact that you tour all over the place, and again people can visit the website, it’s lionaboyd.com Liona is L-I-O-N-A. This interview is going to be heard by people, no doubt, all over the world. What would you say to anyone who’s tuned in?
Wow, well, thank you for listening to my story and I know, Paul, you have interviewed so many interesting people of the whole spectrum. I mean, kudos to you for going after people like me. [31:27] And allowing us to tell our stories and share our careers and our interests and hobbies and passions.
What would I say to people? Well, I mean, music really has enriched my life. I think no matter what level you play on what instrument, I mean, I’m a little prejudiced, I think classical guitar is the most beautiful instrument in the world, but even just strumming a guitar simply to accompany yourself or just a simple little piece, the sound is beautiful.
You know, when you’re learning to play the guitar, even, it’s a beautiful feeling to caress a guitar in your arms. It’s not a struggle. I mean, I’m sure learning some instruments, like if you’re starting to learn the violin, it’s probably torturous for your parents or neighbors, right? But it’s just a very simple instrument.
It’s very, very complicated to get to the top of the world in the classical guitar world. Boy, I was one of only five signed artists around the world when I was with CBS Masterworks for quite a few years. So I was a real virtuoso. I’m not now, but that was then and this is now. You just got how to find what.
[32:41] What resonates with you, which instrument appeals to you, what you want to do, that’s what I would say.
I’m one of the lucky ones, really, that got to do my thing, as the slogan of the 60s goes, and it’s actually the title of one of my songs. So, yes, life is too short not to do something that you love, and love with a passion, and a passion for something can develop, and you meet people around that, and it sustains you.
Also, it’s very good to have an inner life and an inner creativity because without that, songs sometimes you pluck from your imagination. They’re not always autobiographical. I mean, some of my songs are, but some aren’t.
And now I’m able to do something like the tribute I wrote for Gordon Lightfoot.
I’m very happy that I was able to do a special song for him and he told me how thrilled he was when he heard the demo. So, when I see him soon, I’m going to send him the actual album, so I’m going to give him the actual album, I haven’t sent it to him yet, very bad of me, because it’s just come out, and someone that I got to know over 30 years ago, Prince Philip, who is 96 now, married to the Queen of England, he has been my pen pal. We have written letters back and forth, and it’s just platonic.
We’re both fans of each other’s.
He loves my music and…
[34:00] We have love of the horse and earlier this year I was very lucky he invited me to go to Windsor Castle. I had been there before in the 90s and this time I spent the afternoon with him and I sang the song along with a few others. We talked about life and poetry and his life and how he was retiring, from public life and I saw some of the paintings he did a lot painted at Balmoral and you know I I was a little English immigrant on a ship many years ago, never thought that I would have this privileged, pen pal relationship with Prince Philip. Back in the 90s, he and the Queen invited me to stay at Windsor Castle and give a private concert for them and their friends. At that time, the Queen’s mother was alive. I got to chat with her and stroke the corgi dogs and stay overnight, have our own butler. It was such a thrill to do something like that. You know, some of the tours I’ve done can be really grueling, but then you get some gigs like that. Playing at Windsor Castle is pretty special, I think. And also I played for the Summit Conference, all the different leaders of the Western world.
It was Margaret Thatcher back in the day, and Ronald Reagan, and of course Pierre Trudeau, who I knew well.
[35:16] And music has always led me to all kinds of interesting experiences.
And some crazy experiences, too. Like playing for the O.J. Simpson Jury, or playing for the Cree Native people up in a place called Moose Factory that you’ve probably never heard of, or flying with Comandante Zeroover the stormy skies of Costa Rica and hanging out with his gorillas on the beach, and going looking for dolphins. I mean, I really have packed a lot into my life.
Well, that’s very well put, to pack a lot into your life. It’s very inspiring.
Thank you. I want to inspire people. I mean, I’m not that young anymore, but at middle age you can still reinvent yourself and keep being productive and creative and enjoying life. It’s never too late.
Developing a Friendship with Prince Philip
[36:08] I kind of want to backtrack a little bit. I’m hoping you can tell us about how you developed this friendship. How did you come to begin corresponding with Prince Philip?
Oh, well, it goes back to the 70s, I suppose, when Pierre Trudeau, who was our Prime Minister, invited me to play a concert, well not a full concert, but a few pieces in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre. And it was a private dinner that he was holding for the Queen and Prince Philip. I know I met them afterwards, and then I was able to give them one of my early LPs and I got a thank you letter from his office, I think it was, probably not him at the beginning, that I wrote back and sent when the next LP came out.
And then I got a request to do some charity and some Royal Command performances over the years. He, as you probably know, was very involved with the World Wildlife Fund, also the Duke of Edinburgh Award, which is very important in Britain. So I performed a lot of these charities, and we just hit it off, I don’t know, maybe because I’m a Cancer, he’s a Gemini. It’s never ever been romantic, but he’s a big, big fan of my music.
[37:25] I think he’s a wonderful human being with a great sense of humor.
He’s very caring, I mean, when we had the earthquake in LA, this was many years ago, he sent a telegram hoping our house was all right. And just whenever I was traveling some exotic place in the world, I’d send him postcards and he’d write back and tell me what his life was like and it’s such a treasure to me that I have all these different letters over the years. And this last, well this year, I was able to go back and play a song for him, one that I had written called “Love of the Horse,” and he and the queen both love horses, so I just feel very privileged that I’ve had this wonderful correspondence.
And I asked if he wouldn’t mind if I shared this, you know, in writing the book, because he has been an important part of my life. And who would have thought me, the little English immigrant who came on a boat three times, I crossed the Atlantic with my parents. Didn’t realize I’d be playing in Windsor Castle and getting regular letters from Buckingham Palace and Balmoral and Sandringham.
Yeah, I’m a very lucky lady.
It’s just wonderful. Tell me, is there anything about him that has surprised you?
[38:40] Well, everybody knows he has a great sense of humor. It surprised me how much he knew about classical music and history. He was intrigued with the technique that I did, and I was really quite a master at this, called tremolo, where you make both, well, you make the guitar sound like it’s two instruments. The thumb is playing the harmony, and the fingers very rapidly are playing the melody all on one string. And he was intrigued. He said, now, how do you play this tremolo technique?
I remember explaining it to him at a Royal Command performance in Edinburgh.
And he’s always interested in gadgets and technology, although he’s frustrated just as I am too.
[39:22] What surprised me about him is that he had the time to write to me, and what really surprised me this year, he said he wrote all the letters himself. He typed them on a typewriter.
I mean, he always writes, you know, “Dear Liona, Love, Philip,” in longhand, cursive, but he actually types the letters, and I imagined he’d probably just dictate something to one of his aquaries or pages.
But no, he takes the time. So I was very touched.
And my handwriting isn’t quite as good as it used to be, so I’ve actually resorted to typing letters and just putting, Dear Prince Philip, love, Liona, and actual handwriting somehow makes it easier.
But it was very nice to know that he actually has typed every one of these letters.
Prince Philip has always seemed to find the time to write these letters to me, which is amazing, because he keeps such a busy schedule. He’s done thousands, I think it was something like 22,000 public appearances, that’s what I read. He didn’t boast about that, I read that just recently, you know, because he’s retired.
Also, I think he’s been the most wonderful consort to the queen, I mean, he’s her constant companion.
Admiring Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth’s Relationship
[40:32] He told me they have such a wonderful relationship.
[40:35] That’s so much to be admired. He’s 96 years old and, you know, fell in love with, they were both very young and I’m sure it’s not an easy role and yet he’s just been the perfect husband to our wonderful queen who again I feel very lucky that I’ve played for for her a few times.
[40:54] But it’s somehow her husband who’s found the time to correspond with me. And he just loves music so much. I don’t know whether people realize that. He’s actually quite knowledgeable about music, too. And critical. Sometimes he’ll say, yes, he likes these lyrics.
But I remember once he told me that my footstool was a bit shabby. It needed a new coat of paint.
And he complained that I was using the same letterhead. When I left California, I still was using that letterhead even though I was living somewhere else. But he always does it in a very kindly, funny, humorous way, so I just love getting letters from him. It’s really special.
A Pleasurable Conversation
[41:36] Thank you so much for sharing with us. It’s been a great pleasure.
Thank you very much, Paul. I enjoyed chatting with you and hope our paths cross.
Indeed, I hope so.
And thank you for reading my books. I think, well, the first one is a long book.
Thank you for, I know you read through that and got to know me, so I almost feel that I know you a little bit, because I read a lot about you too online. So the joys of the internet, we can all know each other through the internet these days.
Well thanks again, and for everyone out there, please check out the website, lionaboyd.com, In the book, it’s “No Remedy for Love,” there’s an album of the same title.
