“It’s a long story, do you really want to know?” asks Marcia Hines. We are sitting down over coffee to discuss her mammoth career as a musician, performer and TV personality. I’ve asked how it all began.
There is a lengthier version that involves a fascination with the choir at her godmother’s Baptist church, the music school she briefly attended but hated and Donna Summer (a family friend who helped inspire her to start performing). But the short version goes like this: in 1970, Hines snagged a role in Hair, the anti-Vietnam war musical sweeping the globe. A friend had referred her when producers said they were looking to cast a “rough diamond” and Hines, who had always dreamed of being a singer but never done so professionally, auditioned. She was just 16 years old and living in her native Boston with her brother and West Indian-born mother, but this production of Hair was taking place in Sydney.
