And your bird can sing

Once half of The Chicks, Suzanne Lynch marks 60 years in the music biz with a memoir that touches on the big names she's backed.

- BY RUSSELL BAILLIE

Suzanne Lynch doesn't like to brag. But the last time she was in hospital with a suspected concussion – worryingly, there have been a few over the years – a doctor told her: “Suzanne, you have a beautiful brain.” Which might sound like a Leonard Cohen song. But no, it seems learning all those lyrics and all those harmonies to all those songs has given the 74-year-old a cerebrum she can be proud of. That's whether it was on her mid-70s stint backing Cat Stevens with then-husband and bassist Bruce Lynch, or her tours with Neil Sedaka and Charles Aznavour – the man who wrote Yesterday, When I Was Young, which gave her an early solo NZ hit and her new autobiography's title. Or it could have been her more recent decades performing with her music mates on her cover band, corporate, cruise-ship circuit.

All of which, she thinks, is why a doctor at North Shore Hospital said he was impressed with her head scan. “He said, ‘You’ve been using both sides of your brain all your life,’” she laughs over a coffee. “Yeah, so there’s nothing wrong up there.”

The Listener has met Lynch in a Devonport cafe where the staff know her well. If you didn’t know Lynch was a singer, her velvet boots with the embossed musical notes might give it away. They have heels not quite high enough to lift her to 1.5m in height.

Like her book is to read, she’s good fun to talk to. Especially when you focus on her years outside New Zealand, a period that also saw her singing with Irish crooner Val Doonican to millions on British television, and with R’n’B great Luther Vandross.

But back to her brain and medical history. She explains she ended up in A&E after faceplanting on the footpath outside her Bayswater home while checking on her cat (Buddy, who gets his own chapter, one of two dedicated to felines she has known) in the middle of the night.