In Conversation with Colin: Never The Bride

The sheer power of the female duo that makes up the legendary UK band Never The Bride was a first of its kind in the 1990’s. The strong powerful vocals of Nikki Lamborn demonstrated that women can rock just as hard as men, combined with Catherine (Been) Feeney on keyboards the effect was unyielding. As they arrived headlong into the music scene, the pair stood for female empowerment across the board.

Nikki, with a voice that could move mountains, also holds a successful reputation as a vocal coach; described as “the best I have ever known” by Beverley Knight and has appeared on national television as a vocal coach on BBC’s Just The Two Of Us and Channel 4’s Faking It series. 

As well as undertaking numerous worldwide tours and recording and performing with the likes of Shirley Bassey, Elton John, Beth Hart, Robert Plant, ZZ Top, The Who and Alice Cooper they are currently busy preparing for the final dates in 2025, including a rare visit to Newport’s Le Pub.

Ahead of their performance in Newport on October 2nd where they are joined by world class percussionist Fergus Gerrand, Newport City Radio’s Colin Palmer caught up with the duo from their home in London.

The global pandemic, when it arrived in all of our lives six years ago affected the world of music in basically the same way it did everything else. Musicians had their lives frozen and retreated into quarantine and cancelled live performances. To compound matters further, musicians across the globe have had streaming and Spotify to contemplate, a subject that Nikki and Been have had to come to terms with.

“There’s a demographic that buys physical hard copies,” says Nikki. “I think the good news is that the younger people of today are jumping on the fact that they can earn money if they press vinyl. The kids today are tired of not getting any money from their Spotify plays and we’ve always said the only way you’re going to make any money is to sell physical. If they’ve got the money to put in they’ll make money at gigs, there is no other incentive.”

All around the world Nikki and Been have impressed the wealthy and famous including Robert Plant, they performed their own arrangement of Led Zeppelin’s Going To California on the Zeppelin tribute album ‘Encomium’ which earned Never The Bride their first gold disc. They also toured the world with The British Rock Symphony. 

“That was an amazing series of shows,” says Nikki. “We started in the UK and on that leg of it there was Paul Young, Gary Brooker, Paul Rodgers and Roger Daltrey, we had a thirty-piece orchestra and we played The Royal Albert Hall and stately homes, we were paying tribute to British rock music.

“So Roger might do some Who tunes but he might also do Let It Be or something by The Beatles. Paul Rodgers would sing Bad Company and Free but then he would also do something by The Stones. By the time we got to Australia it was absolutely bonkers, Alice Cooper, Peter Frampton and Jimmy Barnes were in and Been and myself got to perform the Led Zeppelin tracks.”

Been and Nikki made their way through the deep dark waters of the music industry and swam with the sharks in the male dominated rock n’ roll world, never flinching regardless of the situation, though Nikki laughs in-between sentences as she reminisces about the past. “I used to play all the working men’s clubs up in Treforest Estate and the valleys”, she says. “I remember when Live Aid was on, we had a little black and white television that we took with us to the gig because we didn’t want to miss it, and we were chasing goats to try and get through to this working men’s club, God knows where it was. You cut your teeth when you do that pub gig stuff, you get the hecklers and it teaches you to have conversations with audiences, it’s just not a show if you’re aren’t connecting with the audience, and if you don’t say a word it’s really rude.”

Never The Bride’s signature song is the anthem The Living Tree, famously covered by Shirley Bassey. “Everywhere we go we have to play it,” explains Been. “We wrote that song a long time ago, we had a publishing deal with a big company in London and it was the end of their financial year and they had some money to spare and they said we can put an orchestra on some of our songs. So we were really excited about that but they gave us the order of the songs that we could use and they said we can do The Living Tree only if there’s enough time left, it was a three hour recording session.

“So in comes all the classical musicians in Sony studios in Soho, and two songs have gone really well and there was literally ten minutes left and the orchestra and conductor just went for it in one take. And the minute they finished the last note they knew they weren’t going to have time to do it again, they just stood up and walked out leaving their newspapers and coffee cups as if they were never there, about sixty musicians got up and off they went.”

Newport’s music fans quite simply have to find a way to listen to this band, just make sure you don’t go to that great rock ‘n’ roll party in the sky without having experienced them live. Never The Bride seriously is that good.

Excerpts of this interview were broadcast on ‘The Rock Vault’ Tuesday September 23^rd 2025. Listen here:

https://player.autopod.xyz/1030435

By Colin Palmer

Photo Credit:

John Bull -RockrPix