Liz Mitchell - Interview

by Adam Coxon

published: 17 / 4 / 2025

Liz Mitchell talks to Adam Coxon about her time as a vocalist in Boney M. being in the first Western band to perform in Russia and the down side of fame,

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Boney M is one of the most successful and most globally iconic groups of all time. The music of Boney M transcended the genres in a way that few groups have managed to achieve before or since. Funk, reggae, pop, disco, R&B, it was all in there. As well as music genres, their music also transcended politics and they were the first Western group to be invited to perform in Russia in 1978 by the president himself, at the height of communism. With hits such as, 'Baby Do You Wanna Bump', 'Daddy Cool', 'Rasputin', 'Mary's Boy Child', 'Rivers of Babylon', the list is endless. The group sold millions of records and their music has continued to enchant music lovers for over 50 years. To put it simply, and accurately, Liz Mitchell is the iconic, spiritual, soulful voice and the sound of Boney M. Along with Marcia Barrett, it is Liz's voice that is running through the core of every Boney M hit record. Liz has worked tirelessly for charity over the years and formed the 'Let It Be' foundation in 1989 to help support the education of Afro-Caribbean children. This vital work alongside her outstanding contributions to music, have finally been recognized after she was awarded with the MBE earlier this year. Liz continues to perform to her legions of fans all over the world and is as in demand as she has ever been. PB: It's an honour and a privilege to be here and to meet you, Liz, It really is and I want to thank you for agreeing to do this. Thank you to Thomas as well. It's so great to meet you both. How are you doing? LM: I'm doing okay. The news of Frank's (Farian) death was shocking but I'm holding on to myself. PB: Were you still in touch with Frank? LM: I was not, sadly. He had moved to Miami and lived there for several years. Our relationship fell into despair and was not good but I believe the love for each other was still there. PB: Well, you created magic together. You created history together. Taking you right back, Liz, you were born in Clarendon, Jamaica and you emigrated to Harlesden, London. LM: They said that Clarendon produced the most reggae artists ever. I don't know if that's true but I have heard that. So, Clarendonians like to think of ourselves as the music of Jamaica even though Kingston gets the credit. PB: What brought you to England in the '60s? LM: My parents. I was born in Jamaica and lived with my grandparents until the age of 11. They had to bring us here to England before I turned 11 because today the airlines charge you the full price for a baby, but in those days you got the ticket at half price. I mean, it sounds crazy that they would do that today, but they do. You have to pay the full price now. When I was 11, I came up early but if I'd come up when I was 12, I would have had to pay the full price. PB: Were you singing in the churches? LM: As a child, I sang in the churches. My grandmother was a strong believer. We went to church every Sunday. My grandfather too. I was only a child in the church, but, yes, we sang and praised God It was the thing to do on a Sunday. PB: And so are you from a musical family? LM: Yes, I would say I am even though as a child I didn't see it as much. My mother and my aunt were supposed to be the great singers. They harmonized and read music. I remember as a child people saying to me, 'Oh your parents are great. Your mother's a great singer'. So, I knew that music was very much a part of the family, even though no one played an instrument. They were singers. PB: Yeah, I see. So what was it that took you from there to auditioning for 'Hair'? LM: When I came to England in 1964, I went to school in Kensal Rise. My first year was not so easy, obviously trying to fit in, and trying to be a part of something that was strange to me. The Motown music was beginning to take over and about the time that The Supremes landed in the charts, I was making friends and showing people what I could do from what I couldn't do. The kids in school were singing in the cloakroom and I joined in with them. This is kind of how we ended up starting our little school group, which turned out to be the thing that propelled me into meeting other people. I was meeting a lot of people who were putting us in drama classes or trying to help us to stay off the streets, put it that way. Not that we were in any danger of being on the streets because our parents were really very strict. Anyway, my story is that that's how I more or less got into the music scene, from my school listening to 'Top of the Pops', watching and learning from the stars. I think that most artists end up as artists because they're fans themselves. PB: Was it ‘Hair’ that took you to Germany? LM: Yes. PB: Right, okay. Would you say that Motown was perhaps your biggest influence at that time? LM: Not only Motown but Stax, Aretha Franklin, all of those people who came. The '60s music was just everything, and the British artists, too. My story is that I am a child of the Caribbean trying to fit into the British system. Reggae music was blasting around the place but I was too young to be a part of that yet. PB: So, you got your start in the musicals with 'Hair'. I read that you were replaced by Donna Summer in ‘Hair’. LM: No! It's the other way round! This story with Donna Summer and me in 'Hair'' is so good. I love all the variations of it and I'm thinking, 'Wow, how do we come to this?!' When I was in 'Hair', yes, Donna Summer was in 'Hair'. I came to Berlin to do 'Hair', Donna moved to Munich. The first 'Hair' show in Berlin was then expanded to Munich and the interesting thing is Donna's name was Donna. Her name was Donna Gaines at the time, She got the role to play Donna. So, Donna moved to Munich and did the show there. I came from England and became the understudy for the Donna that was in Berlin but because Donna Summer and myself then both went and had really successful careers in 1976, the mix up of the Donna name got really interesting. So. we have all these variations of stories that are so interesting. PB: But we're putting the record straight now, so that's good! LM: Yeah, she was a lovely lady. PB: So, February 76, you had a call from Katja Wolf Agency, asking you to take part in this new group. What were you actually told about it? LM: Nothing at all. There was no plan for me to take part in this group as to be a part of this group. That was not the query. The query was they had three shows to do, and the singer that would have done the show resigned at the last minute, and they needed a replacement. PB: So, it was just for three shows? LM: It was just for three shows. They offered me a fee, because I was not going back to Germany. This was the stage in my life that I had said I had seen, heard, felt enough. I was never going back to Germany. It sounds sad, but that's where I was at. There was a return flight ticket and I did not go there under the impression of a stay. I was going to do three shows and I was going home. PB: What was the group at that time, though? LM: The group was, or the idea behind the group was, it is Boney M, that was the name, and the song was 'Baby. Do You Want to Bump', which is known in Jamaica as 'Al Capone'. Frank had re-recorded it and retitled it as 'Baby Do You Want to Bump'. The group was not in existence as yet. It was an idea that was being born. I saw Marcia Barrett in the clubs but I did not know Maisie Williams and I did not know Bobby Farrell. I did these three shows. On the third show, Frank flies from Saarbrücken to Berlin, so he could meet me and ask me if I would work with him for one year. And that was the beginning of what we now have. PB: Is there any reason why Frank didn't actually want to be in the group? LM: Yes, as an image. This is a good question. And I think it's a question that is really valid and valuable to our story. I was saying earlier that I don't think he had a big budget and he was still hoping to get support from the record company to allow this idea to become realistic. A real thing. So, I demoed 'Sunny' and 'Fever', and the record company liked them, so he got some more money to continue the production. Then, I came over and we made 'Daddy Cool', and we did the other songs that are on the album, 'No Woman, No Cry' etc. Then we have a test to see which song is going to be released, or which song we thought was going to be good to release. Up until then, nobody knew if we were going left or right. Nobody had any clue of what was actually going to happen. If there was going to be success, or if there's going to be no success. 'Daddy Cool' becoming a hit was marvelous. We could not have expected it and 'No Woman, No Cry' was the B-side that became an A-side in a lot of countries. A double A-side. We made Bob Marley famous in Europe before Bob Marley was famous in Europe because it was after our 'No Woman, No Cry' hit that his hit took off. We were number one in Italy with 'No Woman, No Cry' in 1976. PB: It's incredible, isn't it? LM: Yes, and that was reggae. I tell you who we met that had the Top 10 hit before us that was, Bob and Marcia, 'Young, Gifted and Black'. They did have top ten hits which was great. I remember working with them when I was with the Les Humphreys Singers. We did a television show together and they were topping the charts with their song. It's so funny how life is. PB: Yeah, absolutely. LM: Hans-Jorg Mayer, the visionary, went to Jamaica in the late 60s and brought back all of these reggae records and said to Frank, 'This is where we need to go with the music'. Mayer, or Reyam as he was credited on the records, co-wrote some of our biggest hits. PB: I guess he brought back 'Rivers of Babylon'? LM: He brought 'Babylon' and 'Baby, Do You Wanna Bump' which Frank then recorded. He brought all of these songs but he got no credit. There was a lot of people helping Frank in the background. PB: And you were in the front running the machine! At the beginning of your career it seems you were just touring non-stop. You were doing clubs, discotheques, everything. So how difficult was that? Were you under a lot of pressure with the schedules? LM: Wow, that's a good question because that's a key part of the 'Daddy Cool' story because that's where we started. ''Daddy Cool' was the song that opened the doors for us to have, the journey we had with 'No Woman, No Cry', of course. And how that happened was before we did anything, we did nightclubs. We went on a promotional tour with this Katja Wolf lady, who communicated with a lot of different clubs and booked us from Munich to the North. We were in this little Ford van, up and down in Germany. It was that kind of life. Musicians were living that life in England, going from the North doing shows. We were doing it in Germany and the gigs were horrible for me. I came from the church to 'Hair'. One year I played the musical 'Hair', into the Les Humphries Singers, which was a gospel choir. So we only did concerts. We had a very clean image, all the way. And then suddenly I landed in the nightclubs and I did not know anything about this lifestyle and being on stage at 10 o 'clock in the night, people puffing away until two o 'clock in the morning. So, imagine this is the room where you're performing and everybody in there is lighting a cigarette. PB: Not good for a singer! LM: Then you are having to go into a little back room close to the loo that has no air and you have to wait there for three hours before you do the next gig because they want you to stay there because that's how they run the club. To keep the people because they're saying to the audience that you're coming back on stage. So this was the hardest year for me ever, I lost my voice. By October/November I could not speak, I sounded like a frog. I met a friend of mine who said to me she knew a lady who was a singing teacher and maybe she could help me, because it was really bad. I went to her and her husband said to her, 'What in God's name are you going to do for her?!' Because she's an opera singer. And I told her I'd lost my voice and this lady did help me very much. She told me that I needed to whisper a little bit, then a lot. Whispering was good. And she also told me to pitch in my head, even though I was having this problem and that if I pitched in my head high, that it would help. All psychological, you see. By January, I was able to sing the Love For Sale album. I was sure I was not going to be able to record that album because I had no voice. PB: Is it fair to say the big break for the band really came with the appearance on Musik Laden? LM: I think Musik Laden would like to take the credit. PB: That's very diplomatic, Liz! LM: It was important. It was the first TV appearance where people saw us in our gold outfits and we looked amazing. It was a big show. With each single, we did Musik Laden. We did 'Daddy Cool' there, and then we did 'Sunny'. Musik Laden became famous for being able to produce such great artists for the first time. They even brought the Jacksons to Germany, when they became the Jacksons, rather than the Jackson Five. PB: I know your original conversation with Frank Farian had been that he wanted to work with you for a year. As the whole thing blew up, I think it was probably pretty clear that the year was going to have an extension. LM: Where the business was concerned, I was not a business woman. I was an artist. Somewhere in the business area, I fell down and I could not have failed more. I should have been able to say to Frank Farian at this point, 'Okay. We've done the year. We have a success. We need a new contract.' but there was no space or opportunity for me to do this at this time due to how heavy our work schedule was. As artists we were vulnerable and needed care but we had no management to look after us. At that time I could have done with my husband who came two years too late! Anyway, I had no-one with me at the time. I was just happy that I was doing good work. PB: You find that a lot of creatives aren't business-minded in the slightest. LM: Which is correct, it should be so. I had no one. I am a young girl in Germany. I don't speak German. I did not do a new contract. I didn't even mention it. We had 'Daddy Cool', 'Sunny'. I was just so glad that my parents were going to see me on 'Top of the Pops' singing 'Sunny', that I completely forgot that Frank was going to ask me to do another album. Also losing my voice, being scared that I'm not going to be able to record again. I was just so happy that I was able to record. The people managing us had no shame in abusing us. So, we did the second album under the same agreement as the first, and then we did the third album, which you know blew up with 'Rivers of Babylon', five top 10 hits on that album, and the story is what it is today. Despite this, we were also ignored by the press. It was the system that was treating us badly, certainly not the fans. I have often said to people that I am alive and that I am not suicidal and that I am not any of the things that I ought to be is through the grace of God. And then people say to me, why do you talk about God? Well, I have to because I have found that if I did not have an anchor, something that was stronger than everything else, I would not be here because of the pressure on an innocent young woman who came out of the church. I am not of show business. I do not know how to ill treat people. I'm not a liar. I'm not a cheat. I'm not a robber. I'm not a killer. I'm not any of these things. I'm not a racist. I just love people. And then here I am having to understand the stuff that I don't understand. That's what it boiled down to. PB: Is it true that whilst the other members didn't sing in the studio, they did sing live on stage? LM: Yes, of course but they did not sing in the studio. They never sang on any records. So, the success of our music is not their credit. I did all of the work in the studio. It was me, Marcia and Frank Farian. So, even though it was put out to the press as a four person group, it was only ever myself and Marcia in the studio with Frank. Bobby and Maisie would get a tape of what was recorded and they would hear the song for the first time in their hotel room and have to learn it by the end of the week. That's why sometimes their miming was off. You need to understand this. I don't want to be mean to anybody. We hired three or sometimes four backing vocalists for the live shows. On our records, I am tracking myself four or five times, for stereo, etc. This is how we recorded in the old days. Nowadays you just sing it one time and the computer can do the work. But in the old days we didn't have that. We had to work and do it and lay each track. PB But you should have been paid for each one of those tracks as well. LM: No, I was not. This is a hustle. And I tell you the God truth. When you make these kind of records, which takes so much out of you, because you are vocally expressing, you're breathing it out. It's interpretation of vocal poetry. PB: You're singing the parts for the whole group. LM: Yes, I am. Exactly. I did it with Marcia. PB: Also, the point that I was trying to get to as well, is that that must have also put huge pressure on you when you were on stage because they cannot even sing. You are the singer. LM: Even the backing singers that came in who were good singers didn't understand the technique of how the music of Boney M was made. Though there may be good singers and we're getting them to do backing vocals which was necessary was for them to be able to blend with me to try to create a close sound to the record, I was the only one of the sound of the record doing the live shows. PB: It sounds like there was a phenomenal amount of pressure on you both in the studio and live. LM: The fight, the struggle to be. I said to Frank years ago, I don't want to do any songs that I cannot reproduce, because that was always important to me. To be a singer, a good singer or not but don't put me in a position where I am not able to reproduce what I sang on the records. He understood that. So most of the songs that I have sung, I can sing acapella by myself, if needs be. So, when the argument started that Boney M didn't sing, because Milli Vanilli's situation exploded, I was in a terrible state. People didn't even want to give me a soundcheck but I was able to sing songs acapella that forced people to recognise me as the voice of Boney M. PB: This is the misinformation that gets put out there which is damaging. LM: I was insulted by people who are not worthy to insult me. I asked myself how was I gonna rise above this negative spirit? So, I started doing 'Amazing Grace' acapella. There's a few of my versions 'Amazing Grace' online. Also, when I was on my own and didn't have any backing vocals with me, I would open the show with 'It's a Holiday' or 'Brown Girl in the Ting', and I would just sing them a capella. Then when I had the girls with me in the middle of the show, I would break it down and do three or four a capella songs, where the harmonies were really beautiful, people were just amazed. I remember the first time I did the a capella thing, we were in Germany, it was a park gig. Normally in this park gig, maybe about 5,000 people would turn up to these things. And I had no good reputation because the stories were that Boney M didn't sing. So, people came, but they only came for the dancing, not for anything else. And on this gig, it was me, Carol and Lorna (Patricia). We sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and then in the middle we broke it down and we did a few Bob Marley songs a capella. They wrote in the newspaper, 'Oh my God, oh my God, Boney M singing a capella!' It was such a humongous headline. The next day, because it was like a festival, there's a hundred and ten thousand people that came out to hear. Seriously, it was incredible. When I came to do the show that next day, I was like, what happened?! Apparently, they came to hear us sing a capella because the newspaper said, ‘unglaubish’. Unglaubish in English means unbelievable. That's how bad and how good. It's like, let me witness this. They all came. How bad can that be? And how good can that be? PB: It's a double-edged sword, isn't it? LM: It's really wicked. So in the end, it was good because they came to hear us sing a cappella. Then after that, I got so many bookings, everybody wanted to book me for the a cappella. So we worked for about ten years where if I didn't do a cappella, it was no gig. PB: Which era would this be? LM: This is the 90s. I worked out the whole 90s doing a cappella. PB: In 1978, President Brezhnev himself invited you to perform in Moscow. This was at the height of communism. You were the first Western group to perform in Russia. But you didn't sing’ Rasputin’, did you? LM: No, we didn't. Oh, you know! We didn't sing it out of respect. Hans-Jorg Mayer and people like that have their own theory but I learned later from the Russian people that the song that actually influenced President Brezhnev and the Russian people was not ‘Rasputin’ because ‘Rasputin’ came out the year we went there. It was actually 'Sunny'. And the Russian people say the song 'Sunny' brought the sunshine in their lives. They say to me, it crept through their windows because they were not allowed to have any light. PB: Wow. That's very beautiful but quite sad too. LM: Yes, because at that time it was the red iron curtain and they weren't allowed to travel. They weren't allowed. Russia was dark at that time. No Western music was allowed to be played in Russia. So, when 'Sunny' as a Western song was allowed to be played by the government for them, that was when the sunshine came through. PB: Wow. What a great testament to your music. LM: And the other song that broke the Iron Curtain was 'Mary's Boy Child'. PB: Which is still one of the greatest and biggest Christmas songs of all time. LM: A lot of people don't know how powerful, spiritually, this song is. The Basilica, the church in Red Square, had chains around Red Square that was bigger than my hand. Have you ever seen those kind of chains? PB: No, I haven't. LM: It was wrapped about ten times around the church. Now, for a Christian, this is deep, because it meant that the system insisted that no one was going in that church. This is the church that is supposed to support the Parliament. It's in Red Square where the House of Parliament is and there was this chain wrapped all the way around, about six times. And in each corner, they had different padlocks, because some of the chains were probably not long enough. So, they had these massive padlocks on it. We were not allowed in. We didn't go in. What was interesting was we went over to Russia in a Russian airplane with maybe about 200 or maybe even more press people from around the world. Everybody wanting to be able to go to Russia but not able to and for the first time Boney M was going, and everybody applied to try to travel with us because the Russian government was sending an airplane that was going to allow us to go to Russia. So the people from America, people from Germany, from France, press people who normally would never be able to go to Russia were and arrived in Moscow with us. We had dinners with every ambassador that had an office in Moscow. French, German, I think we might have done the Brits, I can't remember, but I definitely remember them pushing the Germans and Frank Farian had them film us in the Red Square. So, we froze in front of the Red Square, in front of the Basilica. This is a famous Boney M video which I have to give Frank the credit for. It took us maybe three quarters of the day to do because it was so cold, it was 32 below zero. We had to go out, every two or three minutes and then we had to go back inside and wash our hands with vodka, to try and warm up our hands because we couldn't wear gloves while we were trying to perform. Our hands were frozen and we're black people. We're not used to this! We filmed 'Mary's Boy Child'. I can't even imagine how many times we did it but I said to Thomas, it feels to me like every time they play the song for the three or four minutes that song lasted, in my spiritual mind, that a chain broke. PB:That's really special. LM: That's how I felt. I felt like the chain just kept breaking so there's no chains. There's no more chains around that church. So, my feeling is that we are ambassadors of heaven that couldn't have done that job if people had known we were the ambassadors. PB: That's a beautiful way of putting it. It really is. I think you have the public perception of Boney M, which is one of huge success and that's obviously true, but it's been really fascinating to hear this other side of it with all of the trauma, the pressure and the exploitation that you've suffered. I hope you won't mind me saying but I think it's a real testament to your strength of character that you are still as lovely as you are to be perfectly honest. You're a survivor! LM: Thank you! It's been a journey. I think that's a really nice way to round it up. PB: I did want to ask about your songwriting. LM: I still write and I wrote something the other day. I said to Thomas, 'Oh, my God. Itt's been so long since I felt this inspired to write,' So, I wrote something the other day, so maybe it's not all to an end yet. I have five solo albums. It was a struggle that I came up against where the solo albums were concerned which was totally based on the fact that Frank Farian and the record company would not allow my voice to be released or to be free other than for Boney M. I found that a lot of people said to me that I sounded like Boney M and I sounded like I was trying to be Boney M and I'm thinking but how can I try to be Boney M? It is me! It's so weird so I'm trapped in this thing where people are not wanting me to be me. What I think is so sad for artists is that we're like the angels that fell from Heaven to give people love and the devils collect the gift. You can't fight them because it's not your duty to fight them because you don't belong in that realm. PB: I was so pleased to hear that you've finally been recognized and been awarded the MBE. LM: I am very very grateful that it has happened for me at this time. Nothing has happens before it's time. So this is the best time. My late father also received the MBE for his community work. I received mine for my contributions to charity and music. PB: Thank you, Liz, for your time. Photos by P & P Music Very special thanks and gratitude to Mr Thomas Pemberton.