The first thing Claire Johnston does when she welcomes me into her Parkhurst home is apologise for the state of her house. She says it's a mess because she's been consumed with rehearsals for this weekend's Mango Groove 30th anniversary concert at Montecasino.
"This is a bit of a crazy house; sometimes I see it through a new person's eyes and I think, they must think I'm nuts," she says.
She's referring to the plethora of skulls, flamingos, hats and rhino paraphernalia that occupy almost every available spot in the home she shares with her partner and two rescue dogs. She describes her collection of skulls as a fairly recent "obsession". With the pleasantries out of the way, we sit down at the vintage oak table she inherited from her mother. Unlike most artists, Johnston doesn't need an exchange of social niceties to get right to the point.
"In this industry everyone can get oversensitive and too touchy, and that's something I have in me. I take things to heart and too personally, so I've really had to learn that actually it's not all about you. It's still a journey and with this 30th anniversary concert and looking back at things, I've been reliving old feelings and I've had to talk to myself again. That for me is going to be a lesson for as long as I'm here," she says.
Having joined the marabi and kwela group when she was 17, back in the days when VHS and Walkmans were fashionable, Johnston essentially grew up in the 11-piece band. She reckons she survived the pressure because her first stint on the stage was when she scored a role in the musical, Annie, at the age of 10.
"I'll never forget sitting at this very table, because I inherited this from my mom when she died. She used to get the newspaper every day when she came home from work. There was an ad for little girls between the age of 6 and 14 years old to be in a musical. I was 10 and my parents had recently divorced. I was coming out of a fair bit of sadness and confusion but I always loved music and I was always in my nursery school plays. I begged my mom to audition; she was very wary but she still took me to the audition and I got in. She was ecstatic for me and very proud."
Her role as Mango Groove's lead vocalist started when singing coach Eve Boswell got a call from John Leyden, founding member of the band, in 1985. He asked Boswell for the "best female singer" in her programme. Johnston, still in high school, met Leyden and listened to their songs in his VW Beetle. A month went by and Johnston hadn't heard anything, until Leyden called her and asked if she could join them for a rehearsal. She did her first show that weekend. She married Leyden in 1999.
Johnston has dealt with her fair share of setbacks. Last year she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and was cleared of cancer in January.
Back in the '80s, just when things with Mango Groove were taking off, she lost her voice.
"We'd just come off touring and it was smoky clubs until three in the morning and not enough sleep. For a whole year I lost my voice. The band went back to playing instrumentally. It was very weird for me. I saw numerous specialists and nobody knew what was wrong. I eventually saw someone in Pretoria and he said my tonsils had to go. During that procedure they lasered off a couple of nodules on my vocal cords," she says.
Six weeks after the surgery she was back in the studio with the band recording their debut album.
"It put the fear of everything into me. That sense of losing your voice and not being able to sing again. I knew all my life that I was going to be a singer so that was very devastating."
She shares another traumatic experience which devastated her in the months before she and Leyden divorced. She asks for the details of the story to remain off the record, but confides the details to me.
To add to her pain around the time that she was going through her divorce, her mother passed away.
Admitting that she's been through "phases of very bad depression", Johnston has since been determined not to go there. With the help of therapy and walks in the park, she's found practical tools to help her navigate her emotions.
"But you've also got to let the sadness in sometimes, like with all of us, otherwise it blindsides you. I think it's about managing your emotions because they really do govern us. I remember when I was younger, having this absolutely terrifying feeling of insecurity and not knowing what was going on and then handing myself over to it and having almost a panic attack. Now that doesn't happen any more. I still have funny feelings but I'm able to manage it. That's how you start to like yourself and gain some control, but it's an ongoing journey."
It helps that her divorce, though painful, wasn't acrimonious and that she and Leyden are still friends. Johnston may never get married again because she has since come to understand that the institution isn't for everyone, but she's adamant that she's not a cynic.
"The nature of the relationship changes but the relationship remains incredibly important and that's where we are now. That's why I make the joke about how John has been upgraded from husband to best friend. It sounds corny but there's truth in it because we started as friends and you don't just throw that away," Johnston laughs.
She believes Mango Groove made an impact on South Africans because of the unifying power of music.
As a little boy Leyden grew up with marabi and kwela music. He formed a punk band called Pett Frog but it wasn't until he met Big Voice Jack Lerole, a leading voice in the kwela music of the '50s, that his passion for marabi and kwela was reignited and that's where the idea for Mango Groove came from.
"John named the band. It's such a bizarre story. Pett Frog was becoming something different and the question was asked, what should we call this because it can't be Pett Frog any more? The family got involved and I think it was possibly a drunken lunch and all sorts of tropical fruity things came up, they eventually settled on Mango Groove. I wasn't there but this is what I've been told. Of course it's also a sexist pun. Man go groove. It's a play on words. I know mango is probably John's favourite fruit and his mother used to make an amazing dessert called a mango fool."
With pass laws and the Group Areas Act still being enforced, the band faced some difficulties during their early years. Johnston tells of a night when Leyden was arrested after dropping off Big Voice Jack Lerole in Diepsloot. He was violating the pass laws by being in the township after 9pm.
"It was a trial by fire for all of us. For me I really did have my eyes opened when I joined Mango Groove, I realised what life was like for people. At one point we were being tracked by the security police and our phones were being bugged, this was in the late '80s and early '90s, just pre the release of Nelson Mandela. They viewed us as a potential threat; we were subversive because we were black and white South Africans hanging out together," she says.
Johnston laughs as she also recalls the fun the band members had together.
"There were lots of pranks and lots of fun, basically musicians on the road, which is always a little bit crazy. I also remember a fruit fight involving paw paws. We got up to all sorts of things. I was 17 when I joined the band and Mickey Vilakazi was 64. Mickey was always full of fun," she says.
Vilakazi, a renowned jazz musician and World War 2 veteran, died before they released their debut album.
With the memories of tomfoolery also come the memories of being part of some of SA's greatest moments. One of the highlights was performing at the 1994 inauguration of Mandela.
As a self-confessed people pleaser, Johnston's only regret is not taking in more of the precious moments she experienced.
"When I was younger I always wanted to be liked. I spent a lot of my time being self-conscious, hoping everyone liked me. Instead of going, 'whoa this is amazing' and just letting myself feel it. I look back and I think, silly girl, you could've sucked the marrow out of it a bit more."
Now, 30 years later, Johnston has faced sadness, insecurity and loss. It's a battle and not a war, but when she gets on stage this weekend and sings Special Star it will be with the wisdom of experience...