Viv Hardwick speaks to Eighties punk rock icon Hazel O’Connor about going her own way as an artist and coming to the North-East on tour.

MY mobile rings in the middle of my family’s annual Guy Fawkes’ Night party and, to my astonishment, I find myself talking to Hazel O’Connor, the still-touring Eighties icon of punk rock.

She’d missed an interview earlier in the day, to mark her visit to The Sage, Gateshead, and Pocklington Arts Centre, near York, next week, and was calling from Ireland to apologise.

“I was busy with a water leak near my house and didn’t realise the time,” explains the 54-year-old singer-songwriter and actress.

As I am chief fuse-lighter on November 5, Hazel agrees to answer a few questions by email – only the second, I’m told by her tour publicity manager, Maureen Simpson, that she’s ever sent.

So on the subject of her visit to the North-East and Yorkshire on Tuesday and Wednesday, she says: “What I find ironical about going on tour is that most of my audience think I have money to, for instance, afford a plumber today when a torrent of high pressure water flooded into my yard.

“I had to fix it myself and over the years of having to do all things myself I’ve learnt so many skills because I had to. The show, Beyond Breaking Glass, that we bring north next week, came about due to the same reasoning. I wanted to continue to sing but couldn’t afford to run an entire band.

“I wanted simplicity, hence I got together with Cormac de Barra and his trusty Irish harp and we developed a show that tells my story, covers a huge amount of my songs and pokes fun at some of the crap side of music industry and the idiots with whom it has been my misfortune to be involved with.”

HAZEL’S individuality saw her leave her Coventry home at 16 and survive a period abroad that included joining a dance troupe in Tokyo, leaving Beirut just before civil war struck and crossing the Sahara.

A return to the UK brought the award-winning appearance in the Eighties movie Breaking Glass, for which Hazel created the soundtrack.

In spite of legal battles, which took her to the brink of bankruptcy, with her first record company, she released one of the most memorable singles of the decade, the haunting Will You.

Hazel switched back to acting to stay afloat financially and headed for Los Angeles, where, in addition to marrying, she looked certain of further success. Sadly, a skin cancer scare made her decide to set up home in Ireland, the land of her Galwayborn father.

“I can’t wait to play in the new super-dooper Sage Gateshead, but I am equally as happy to be in Pocklington,” she says. “I am always excited to be in Yorkshire, as I lived on a hippy farm, near Pickering, as a teenager.

Gateshead is tops as well for me as my goddaughter and very close friends live there.”

Hazel is admired in the industry for being an artist who decided to take control of her career, right down to the artwork, CD sales, booking gigs and driving the tour van.

She says: “When I first got famous, I always said music and performers should not be boxed in by fashions of the time. A good song should live forever and should cut the mustard whether it’s performed by a big band or one acoustic instrument.

“A performer should be able to move an audience with or without all the trappings.

So I’m happy singing on the pavement or at Wembley Arena, as long as I’m singing and the audience are moved that’s what it’s all about.”

■ Hazel O’Connor’s Beyond Breaking Glass, The Sage Gateshead, 8pm, Tuesday. Box office: 0191-443-4661, Wednesday, Pocklington Arts Centre, 8pm. Box office: 01759-301-547