Читать книгу Adele - Sean Smith - Страница 10

Just a week before her fourth birthday, in the spring of 1992, Adele was hidden inside Penny’s trench coat and smuggled into the Brixton Academy in South London. They were there to watch The Beautiful South in concert. Looking back, Adele observed, ‘It was amazing – my clearest memory of when I was little.’

The Beautiful South were a wry and quirky, yet very popular band formed in 1988 by two former members of The Housemartins, Paul Heaton and David Hemingway, who were both from Hull in Yorkshire. Two years later, their best-known single, ‘A Little Time’, was their only number one, but it established them as one of the leading chart acts of the decade. It’s a feisty break-up song and easy to understand why it was a favourite of Penny’s, as it expresses the need for a little time to ‘find my freedom’.

Penny loved them and wanted her daughter to share the experience. The Academy is a standing venue, so Adele couldn’t see anything. That problem was solved when Penny asked a well-muscled, bodybuilder type if he wouldn’t mind putting her daughter on his shoulders. Adele now had the best view in the hall. The man also came to her rescue when a host of balloons were released and the little girl failed to grab one: ‘He walked through the crowd and knocked someone out who wouldn’t give me a balloon.’

When Paul Heaton finally met Adele in the autumn of 2015, he was flattered that she remembered the concert so well all those years later. ‘She owes me the price of a ticket,’ he joked. ‘Unfortunately, it was only about £2 then.’

Although there was no great musical heritage in the Adkins family, Adele’s home was always filled with music. Her mum would play guitar along with her favourite chart tracks and encourage Adele to get up on the sofa and sing.

It’s easy to forget how young Penny was and these were the years she might have been enjoying college if fate had dealt a different hand. Adele has always appreciated that: ‘She just thought I was amazing. She could have been at university but she chose to have me.’ She once described her as being a ‘hippy mum’.

Penny never treated Adele as an inconvenience but always as someone to be included in whatever was going on. She always had plenty of friends round to socialise into the night with music and good conversation, and she liked her daughter to be part of these happy times. Fortunately, Adele wasn’t shy and enjoyed staying up.

On Friday nights, that also meant letting her watch Later … with Jools Holland, which was broadcast at 11.15 p.m. The relaxed and informal mix of big names performing next to virtual unknowns would prove to be an enduring success. The Kinks, for instance, rubbed shoulders with cutting-edge rapper Neneh Cherry and La Polla Records, a Spanish Basque punk-rock band.

Mother and daughter forged a lifelong bond through sharing so many experiences, especially musical ones. Penny had no hesitation in loading up the Citroën and taking her daughter, then eight, to the Glastonbury Festival were they sat in the mud and watched Radiohead and The Prodigy on the main Pyramid Stage.

That was by no means Adele’s first experience of a festival. She was an old hand by then. Closer to home, just after her fifth birthday, in June 1993, Penny took her to a one-day pop festival, Great Xpectations, in Finsbury Park. The event was a benefit to support the campaign to grant a permanent radio licence to the XFM station.

Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon from Britpop darlings Blur sang an acoustic version of the band’s latest single ‘For Tomorrow’. Damon is one of those people who drift in and out of the Adele story, not necessarily in a good way, but this was the first time she came across him. He wasn’t top of the bill, however.

That honour fell to The Cure, led by the charismatic singer and songwriter Robert Smith. The band are one of the great survivors of British music, still hugely popular thirty-seven years after they began in the post-punk era of 1979. During Penny’s teenage years, they were renowned for their dark and gothic sound that culminated in their most successful recording, Disintegration. Penny went through a Goth stage and was a huge fan of the group. Adele was a little unsure: ‘I used to be really scared of Robert Smith because he looked like Edward Scissorhands.’

The album provided the soundtrack for Adele’s Tottenham years. In particular, her mother’s favourite track, ‘Lovesong’, stayed with her and reminded her of those days. Ironically, on that unseasonably cool June afternoon, The Cure didn’t perform it, although they did play probably their best-known hit, ‘Friday I’m in Love’, as an encore.

The number one record that month was ‘Dreams’, the breakthrough hit for Gabrielle, a young black singer from Hackney with a silky smooth voice. Louise Gabrielle Bobb was refreshingly different. She wrote her own songs, had one of the most distinctive soulful voices in pop and was very much her own woman in a male-dominated industry – and she wore a sequinned eye patch to hide a drooping eyelid.

With her distinctive short black hair, she didn’t look like your average pop star. She built the foundation of her career by singing in nightclubs. She explains, ‘If there had been talent shows like The X Factor in the early 1990s, I would have done terribly! So, when success did come it was a real victory because I don’t think anybody really expected it.’

Adele loved Gabrielle’s eye patch so much that Penny knuckled down like any dutiful mother and made her daughter one of her own. Adele had a bout of conjunctivitis and when it was time for her to return to school once she was no longer infectious, Penny presented her with her custom-made patch. She had bought one in Boots and sewn on sequins. Adele would jump up onto the table wearing her eye patch and deliver her own version of ‘Dreams’.

Gabrielle wore her famous eye patch for eight months before abandoning it; Adele wore hers for even less time. Its appeal was greatly reduced when she was teased at school. At the earliest opportunity, it was put in a drawer, only to be worn for special performances at home. Penny encouraged her to sing in front of her friends, even arranging the lighting in the house so it would seem as if the spotlight was on Adele while she sang.

The story of Gabrielle’s life and career is fascinating, almost spookily so, when compared to Adele’s. Her Dominican-born mother raised her and her three younger half-brothers as a single mum and chose not to name Gabrielle’s father on the birth certificate. Gabrielle had regular contact with him when she was a child, but that dwindled as she grew older.

Gabrielle always had issues with her appearance, not just because of her eye, but also her weight. She was never a skinny, model type. She had a son in 1995 and subsequently regarded being a mum as more important than fame or fortune, although she is a multimillionaire and would never need to work again if she chose not to.

She wrote songs that reflected her mood, was discovered when an independent label heard her demo, released only three albums in the first six years of her career and liked to be in control of her own destiny, not at the beck and call of a record company. ‘I was notorious for taking three years between albums. I love making music, but not 365 days a year. I’m probably just lazy, but I can’t force myself to write songs. I have to long to be back in the studio and feel good vibes when I’m recording.’

Gabrielle never saw herself as a celebrity, preferring to slip quietly out of the limelight when she didn’t have a record to promote – in a fashion remarkably similar to Adele at a later date. Her ‘disappearance’ led to the public wanting her more, so when her third album, Rise, came out in 1999, it went straight to number one, as did the single of the same name. It is a break-up song tinged with sadness, but one that is ultimately uplifting, ‘… ready to rise again’. Most of her songs have an autobiographical edge – ‘diary entries’ as she calls them.

Adele went to the Coleraine Park Primary School, just round the corner in Halefield Road. She once said she was the only white face in her classroom of thirty local children. That may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much. She may well have been the sole white English child. It was a very diverse community. During Adele’s time in the 1990s, there were some eight major ethnic groups, but by the end of the following decade, there were forty-two ethnicities, with something like twenty-six different languages being spoken in the school.

Adele was popular, not least because she hated bullies. Marc recalled, ‘Tottenham is a rough place, but if another kid was being picked on, then she would be the one sticking up for them. She was also very protective of her friends.’

She didn’t stand out in class, and one talent her teachers may not have been aware of is that she wrote a lot, doodling little bits of rhyme and poetry, almost from the time she learned to write her own name. She was forever writing her mother little notes, especially if she had been told off for not tidying her room. Then she would shut herself away and push a note underneath the door to let her mum know that she wasn’t coming out for a year. From a very early age, she was putting her feelings down on paper.

Every couple of months, mainly in the school holidays, Penny would load up the boot of the Citroën and drive down the M4 so they could stay with Nana and Grampy in Penarth. If she needed a break, Penny always knew she could leave Adele there, and her daughter would be loved and well cared for by her grandparents, whom she adored.

Grampy John became a father figure in Adele’s life, simply by giving her so much time and attention. He doted on her. Marc explained, ‘Adele would spend much of the summer with my parents and most of that time my dad would be playing with her, talking to her, showing her the sights.’

John was only in his mid-forties when Adele was born. Fit and energetic, he was a big man with a darker, more Celtic appearance than his two sons. He may not have looked like a traditional grandfather figure, but he held conventional values: ‘He was a very hard-working man, my father – a very honest, straight-up sort of chap. He really was a lovely guy.’

John was also very fond of Penny. ‘He just loved my mum,’ recalled Adele. John and Rose didn’t always wait for them to visit Penarth. Sometimes the proud grandparents would travel up to London and stay in a local B&B so they could see them both.

Adele was very fond of her mother’s big family, but in Tottenham she was one of many, while in Penarth she was the centre of attention. Sometimes Adele would come down to visit with her best friend, her cousin Cema, who was Aunt Kim’s daughter. Kim had married a Turkish man called Ahmet in 1982 and subsequently had four children, Bren, Cema-Filiz, Erol and Erden.

Occasionally, Penny and Adele would spend Christmas in South Wales, where the young girl was spoiled rotten. One of her earliest Christmas presents from her father was a red toy guitar, which she loved. She would often try to play Penny’s grown-up guitar, but she was too little for that; here was something of her own.

These were happy times that Penny, in particular, always made fun for her daughter. One Christmas Eve, when Adele was asleep and Nana and Grampy had gone to bed, she carefully cut up a newspaper in the shape of feet and placed them on the stairs. When her daughter awoke in the morning, she said, ‘Look, Adele, it’s Santa’s footprints. He’s been.’

The great treat for Adele was in summer, when her grandparents would leave Penarth in their caravan. Marc, who would go too if he wasn’t working, recalled, ‘My mum and dad were very keen caravaners. They had a close group of friends. They were all caravaners and always had a laugh and a sing-song. My dad could be the life and soul. Adele loved it. She was a kid, wasn’t she, and it was an adventure.’

They didn’t go far, but it seemed like the open road to a girl from Tottenham. They would drive down the coast to stay at Three Cliffs Bay in the beautiful Gower peninsula or further along the coast at the Kiln Park camp in Tenby, one of the loveliest resorts in Pembrokeshire.

Adele was a kind and pretty, blonde-haired little girl with green eyes, and she made friends easily in South Wales. Many of the men and women that Marc had known all his life now had young families and they were very welcoming to the youngster from London. Her proud father observed, ‘She was a lovely kid. She was one of those kids who, if she had a bag of sweets, would give them all away and keep one for herself.’

She tended to be on the skinny side, even though she wasn’t sporty. She was not a girly girl. ‘She was funny and very sociable,’ said Marc. ‘She was more of a tomboy type than a girl with dolls. She was a scruffy yo-yo.’

Not everything was idyllic. On one memorable day in Tenby, Adele went missing. One moment, she was bouncing away on a trampoline; the next, nobody could see her, which prompted a frantic search. Marc had been windsurfing at the top of the beach. When he got back to his parents and his girlfriend, he asked, ‘Where’s Adele?’ She had vanished.

Marc panicked. ‘Imagine your child has gone missing on a packed beach. It’s terrifying, isn’t it? My mum is crying and screaming. There were sand dunes behind us and there were two old winos there and so I marched straight over and demanded to know where my daughter was. It was mayhem. So then I went straight to the nearest chip bar and I said, “Can I use your phone?” So I dialled 999 and fair dos to the police, they were there in five minutes.

‘Everybody was panicking now. So I sat down, took a deep breath and I thought, “Where is the little bugger?” Then I remembered the boat. We were on a boat trip the day before, so I made my way towards there. This woman came up to me and said, “Are you looking for a little girl in a yellow and pink dress?” She pointed me towards the landing point for the boat and there was Adele, just playing by the seaside. I picked her up and as you do out of fear and relief, I smacked her arse for her. And she cried and cried. She didn’t speak to me for days.’

While Penny was filling her home with the cool sounds of the time – 10,000 Maniacs and Jeff Buckley, as well as The Cure – the young Adele was falling for the acts that were causing a ripple in the playground. In the summer of 1996 that meant only one group for young girls: the Spice Girls.

Adele was soon dancing around the bedroom singing ‘Wannabe’, the band’s first record-breaking number one in July. Adele was among the millions around the world who could sing the song word perfectly without having any idea what ‘zig-a-zig-ah’ meant. She proved the point nearly twenty years later when she sang a spontaneous version with James Corden for his chat show’s ‘Carpool Karaoke’ feature.

For a while, the Spice Girls were the biggest band in the world, effortlessly breaking America with their energy, pin-sharp image and consumer-friendly brand of Girl Power. In Geri Halliwell, they found someone with a drive and flair for publicity that was completely new for female pop stars. Adele was transfixed by her fire and energy: ‘I just remember seeing Geri and being like, “Fuck it, I’m going to do that. I want to be Ginger Spice.”’

Ginger was Adele’s favourite, although, when she left the group, Adele switched her allegiance to Mel B (Scary Spice), who was equally mouthy and in your face. Despite being so young, Adele was inspired by the whole ‘Girl Power’ movement. The Golden Rules of Girl Power as defined by the Spice Girls were:

Be positive.

Be strong!

Don’t let anyone put you down.

Be in control of your own life and your destiny.

Support your girlfriends, and let them support you too.

Say what’s on your mind.

Approach life with attitude.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can never do something because you’re a girl.

Have fun.

They could easily be the principles of Adele’s own life. To this day, the Spice Girls remain Adele’s favourite group. They did shape their own destiny, wrote their songs – or at least had important co-writing credits – and earned a huge amount of money very quickly. ‘Wannabe’ remains the biggest-selling single ever by a girl group, shifting more than seven million copies. It was number one in twenty-two countries, including the US, where it was top of the charts for four weeks.

The Spice Girls were a manufactured group, however, in much the same way as Girls Aloud and, more recently, Little Mix and One Direction, except for the fact that their audition process wasn’t televised for a TV talent show. There was another aspect that would catch the attention of Adele: three of them went to stage schools or ‘fame academies’, as they were popularly known. Before she became Posh Spice, Victoria Adams had attended Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom. Melanie Chisholm (Mel C/Sporty Spice) was sixteen when she was accepted at the Doreen Bird School of Performing Arts in Sidcup. Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) was given a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone. They would probably have all ended up at the BRIT School if it had existed in 1990.

Her father was unimpressed when Adele visited South Wales and told him of her enthusiasm for the Spice Girls: ‘They were her heroes but I used to take the mickey out of her about it. I used to say they were terrible, bloody awful.’ Fortunately, his lack of enthusiasm for Girl Power didn’t discourage his daughter.

By this time, the dynamic of Adele’s visits to Penarth had changed. Her grandparents were still there to fuss over her, but her father had a son, her half-brother Cameron. This time Marc was included on the birth certificate, although subsequently Cameron took the surname of his mother, Siobhan O’Sullivan. Marc set up home with them in Llantwit Major, a small resort seventeen miles west of Penarth.

Adele was thrilled to meet her little brother and, despite an age gap of seven years, has always been fond of Cameron in the manner of a big sister who’s the boss. ‘He looks like my twin,’ she happily observed. ‘We’re identical, same hair and everything. It’s bizarre growing up in a completely different city but then, when you see each other, it’s as if you’ve spent every day of your lives together.’

Adele got on fine with her father’s new family and occasionally would stay with them, but more usually she remained in Penarth with Nana and Grampy. Her legion of cousins grew even larger when Uncle Richard, who was still in London, started a family and had a son called Jasper, whom she also saw from time to time.

Marc, meanwhile, flitted from job to job. He worked another season in Barry before setting up a flower stall in Penarth. He subsequently went back to plumbing – this time on his own in Llantwit Major, not the family business.

Penny and Adele were on the move too: they relocated to Brighton. Adele still refers to herself as a Tottenham girl, but she hasn’t lived there since she was nine years old. Leaving Tottenham was one of two important events in Adele’s young life that would spell the end of her childhood. She commented, ‘I had a great childhood. I was very loved.’

Bizarrely, they cleared out of the flat in Shelbourne Road so abruptly that they left all sorts of possessions stashed away in the loft, including Adele’s electric guitar, suitable for ages six and up, which had a ‘special singalong head microphone for a really professional performance’, a keyboard, her tricycle and her birth card from the National Childbirth Trust.

It was a dramatic move for them both, leaving behind the security of close family in Tottenham. It meant an end to whiling away afternoons strolling on the banks of the River Lea to visit cousins. The river, which rises in the Chiltern Hills near Luton and flows through Tottenham on its way to the Thames, figured large in Adele’s childhood memories and is the title of one of the songs on the album 25. ‘It’s a filthy river,’ she once said with some affection.

Penny thought they would be happier in the trendy coastal town, which enjoyed a reputation as a centre for artistic pursuits. She had met an older man who owned a furniture shop and she went to work there, not only serving customers, but also taking a keen interest in furniture design.

Mother and daughter settled into a large flat in a Georgian house in East Drive, right next to the agreeable Queen’s Park, which boasts a large pond, ideal for feeding ducks, and a ten-minute walk from the seafront. Brighton should have been ideal for Adele, especially as she was so fond of Penarth. She hated it, however, complaining, ‘The people seemed really pretentious and posh, and there were no black people there.’

She was delighted when her mother embarked on a much more serious relationship and moved back to London. They settled in Brixton, near the border with Streatham in Cotherstone Road, an unpretentious urban street. They moved in with Penny’s new boyfriend, Simon, who worked as a computer programmer and became the stepfather in Adele’s life. He had been brought up in the Home Counties before starting his career in London.

Penny took him and Adele to meet the Welsh side of her daughter’s family and he impressed everyone with his easy-going, friendly nature. Marc Evans thought he was ‘a lovely, lovely chap’. He observed, ‘He was a really mellow guy. Nothing would faze him. He would just let it go over his head – he was that type of fellow.’

Adele was much happier back in the city until a second significant event occurred that was the most traumatic of her young life to date.

John Evans, her beloved Grampy, had been diagnosed with bowel cancer and the prognosis was poor. He was admitted to the Velindre Cancer Centre in Whitchurch, Cardiff, just before her eleventh birthday in May 1999.

Penny drove Adele up to see him several times during the last weeks as he slipped away. It was very hard for the young girl to cope. She recalled, ‘I was so uncomfortable with it that I nicked his wheelchair and was just going up and down the hospital corridors because I couldn’t face the fact that the love of my life, my granddad, was dying. I wish that I’d sat with him on the bed and given him a cuddle and told him how much I loved him, but I was just too overwhelmed.’

He died, aged fifty-seven, on 23 May and Adele was absolutely devastated. She said, movingly, ‘I painted him as this Jesus figure in my life. I loved him so much, more than the world.’

Despite being so grief-stricken, Adele bravely went with Penny to the funeral at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Penarth. She wanted to be there not just for herself but also for her grandmother: ‘My grampy and my nana had always been my ideal relationship – ideal friendship, companionship, everything. Even though I’m sure there’s loads of shit I don’t know about, as their granddaughter it was bliss, just heaven. I was so, so sad.’

Even though she coped well on the day, Adele didn’t seem to be able to get over her sense of desolation. After a few weeks, her worried mother decided to seek professional help and took Adele to see a counsellor experienced in dealing with bereavement in children. Adele, it became clear, was a far more sensitive girl than people realised. She needed time to work through her feelings. It perhaps goes some way to explaining her heartfelt and intense response to the trauma of breaking up with people she loved – a mixture of anger and regret at being left and a heightened sense of loss.

Seeking something positive from her unhappiness, Adele told her mother that she was going to be a heart surgeon. She revealed her ambition: ‘I wanted to fix people’s hearts.’