Joe Camilleri

There’s a moment in the 2013 music documentary 20 Feet From Stardom where legendary singer Darlene Love reflects on the time when she was working as a maid, cleaning other people’s houses while her festive classic Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) would be playing on the radio. It was a small but powerful reminder for Love that her true vocation was singing.

For years, Linda Bull – the younger half of Australia’s singing sisters Vika and Linda – has taken the lead singing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) in Paul Kelly’s band around Yuletide. Every time she does, she thinks of Love. “The good thing that I took from that movie was look where Darlene is now,” Linda says. “She had the last laugh over Phil Spector.”

In No Bull, the new memoir co-written by the two sisters, they tell of the times when they too went back to day jobs after being dropped by their record label in 2001. Not that they were scrubbing floors: with no previous retail experience, Linda founded a kids’ clothing store, Hoochie Coochie, while Vika took catering and secretarial work between her own gigs.

Nothing in the music business can be taken for granted.… Read more..