Deborah Conway: new challenges for a brave artist
A book review by Anne Sarzin
By now, there isn’t a Jewish person in Australia who hasn’t heard of the musician and singer Deborah Conway. In the past year, she has emerged as an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish community, bold, courageous and outspoken, pushing back against the upsurge in Jew-hatred and the demonising of Israel. As an ambassador for her besieged people, she has paid a heavy price; firstly, as one of 600 creatives from a Melbourne Whatsapp group who were ‘doxed’ in an infamous episode earlier this year; and, additionally, she has faced boycott threats and cancellations of her professional engagements and interviews.
So, it was with a keen sense of anticipation that I opened her autobiography, which she wrote during the covid lockdowns, and which was published before Israel’s Black Sabbath on 7 October 2023. Deborah Conway Book of life is a self-portrait of a headstrong, imaginative, creative and gifted artist, who shimmers and shines across the landscape of her life,
It is a searingly honest autobiography, replete with facts, fault lines and the frenzied lifestyle that all but consumed her youthful years, a frenetic pace she miraculously sustained for decades, both in and out of the public eye. Seemingly, her public and private personas fused in that pressured world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.
The book has me awestruck at Conway’s capacity not merely for living in the moment but for plunging, with head and heart, into the vortex that swirls around her. Her love and lust for life steams off every page that recounts stories of hedonistic decades. Fortunately for the reader, her song lyrics punctuate the text with interludes of relative serenity and peace, in which the reader can catch their breath before being catapulted once more into the dizzying round of professional and personal adventures, promises made and broken, stressful setbacks and then, finally, encountering the seductive success and the recognition she undoubtedly deserves.
It is clear that in writing this book, she trawled through painful family memories. She admires her loving and supportive mother; and explores ambivalent feelings about her father, a man who denies her the approval she craves and repeatedly accuses her of knocking nails in his coffin. Later, she grasps the psychological complexity and pressures that underpinned this abusive and dysfunctional family dynamic, when she learns, at long last, the truth of his gay identity, and the cost to him and others of hiding his sexual identity in order to conform to traditional societal expectations of a Jewish family man.
The focus of this book, however, is on Conway’s unfurling as an artist and her emergence into the national and international spotlight. She chronicles the ongoing financial struggles and hardships of living in share houses and depressing flats in Australia and abroad, which changed periodically when record companies lavished luxury accommodation and copious amounts of alcohol on her and her fellow musicians. Naïve and trusting, exhilarated and dazzled at being signed up by important companies, it took time to fathom their exploitation by the recording business, to grasp that the cost of all these luxuries were later deducted from their earnings, and to learn how to negotiate a better outcome for herself and others.
Conway’s meeting with Willy Zygier, whom she describes as the best guitar player she ever hired, marks a turning point in her life. Their musical partnership ripens into a personal relationship that others predicted would happen. It marks the beginning of meaningful and rewarding chapters in their lives and in the book, tracing the emergence and evolution of a family that produces three beautiful little girls, who restore and cement family ties with both sets of doting grandparents. There is a sense of a new equilibrium, new directions and renewed confidence, as Deborah and her ‘Mr Zygier’ bolster each other’s beliefs and complement each other’s skills. It’s all summed up in a final chapter that Deborah justifiably titles ‘Blessed’.
The wonderfully poetic and original lyrics add sheen to every chapter. They are redolent with liturgical references from the high holidays at this time of year. In words that reveal the sacred source of her title, Conway writes,
Blow the horn, blow the horn
Give a voice to all the mournful souls who search to be reborn tonight
Forgiveness like the sharpest knife
Oh G-d inscribe me in the Book of Life
I’ve been hungry since before the dawn.
There is much in this book to intrigue the reader—the underlying narrative of an artistic spirit breaking free and expressing her musicality and musings; as well as her heartfelt lyrics that sing on the page. But there are now new directions, too. Conway has shown consistently that she is up for a challenge. Today she is winning new admirers as an artist with strong convictions, integrity and courage.
Deborah Conway Book of Life
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2023
