‘It’s a funny business’: Vika and Linda Bull get frank on the ups and downs of a life in music

‘I’m not fake, neither is Vik, and if you don’t like something you just say so’ … Vika and Linda Bull. Photograph: Brian Purnell/Mushroom Creative House

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.”