Adele

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  Initially, though, her dreams for the future were not musical ones. Instead, Adele dreamt of becoming a fashion reporter or a heart surgeon. Her journalistic ambitions again see her mirror Amy Winehouse, who was working in an entertainment reporting agency before musical fame swept her off her feet. The medical route, meanwhile, wouldn’t come as a surprise to astrologers. Her birthday means she was born under the star sign of Taurus. Considered one of the most distinctive of star signs, the typical Taurus is expected to be a calm, consistent person who rarely gets stressed or upset by life. Were Adele that level-headed, then her life and emotional feelings would have made for a set of pop songs with minimal drama, as opposed to the gut-wrenching themes she has written about. It is precisely her emotive nature and eventful life that have helped give her music and image so much edge. A Taurus is also expected to have a stubborn nature and here we have a trait it is much easier to identify in our heroine. This is a highly honest star sign, too, which chimes with the outspoken and forthright nature of Adele. In interviews she frequently gives explosive quotes, some of which have got her into trouble and, of course, her onstage banter is legendary.

  The neighbourhood Adele grew up in is a little over six miles north of central London, and lies in the borough of Haringey. Tottenham is a multi-cultural neighbourhood – researchers at the University College London have declared the southern end of it to be the most ethnically diverse area in Britain. Around 113 different ethnic groups live there, and between them they speak around 193 different languages. It all meant there was a rich, almost heady, variety of sights and sounds round about her.

  In 2010, Tottenham had the highest unemployment rate in the capital, and the eighth highest in the UK. There have often been tensions between the police and sections of the local community. These tensions were epitomised during the riots that took place on the Broadwater Farm housing estate in 1985. The trouble was sparked when a popular Afro-Caribbean woman, Cynthia Jarrett, died during a police search of her home. The following day, fighting broke out between police and local youths. This was the first time live fire was used by rioters in Britain. As the violence escalated, a policeman called Keith Blakelock was stabbed to death. Controversy then raged over who had committed the murder, and the three men convicted for the crime were later cleared on appeal. In August 2011, unrest again came to Tottenham, when the death of Mark Duggan in a police operation led to riots and looting which spread from Tottenham across the UK.

  Adele supports the local football team, Tottenham Hotspur, and insists that she is not merely another celebrity looking to boost their fame by declaring questionable support for a football club. ‘I’m a real Spurs fan,’ she said. She is already well on the way to becoming the most famous ever child of Tottenham and is happy enough about this. ‘I’m not a fake Tottenham girl, I was born there,’ she said proudly.

  Among those also born there who have found success and fun in the music industry are rapper and producer Rebel MC, Dave Clark of 1960s band the Dave Clark Five and pop singer Lemar.

  For Adele, one of the first singers she admired was Gabrielle, whose full name is Louisa Gabrielle Bobb. Born just a few miles away in Hackney, Gabrielle was discovered after a demo recording of her singing the Tracy Chapman hit ‘Fast Car’ was circulated. After she was signed up to a recording contract, Gabrielle quickly became a hit artist and a pop icon, thanks to her distinctive eye-patch. Her debut single ‘Dreams’ topped the charts when Adele was five and quickly became a firm favourite of the Tottenham youngster. By this stage, Adele had already become fascinated by music and, in particular, she was ‘obsessed with voices’. She noted the range of emotions that the human voice could express when set to music: ‘I used to listen to how the tones would change from angry to excited to joyful to upset.’ She was a truly precocious music fan: she understood music both emotionally and intellectually from a very early age.

  She was a pretty child: a photograph of her as a four-year-old on Christmas Day shows a well-dressed girl with neck-length, fair hair and a cute, slightly nervous expression on her face.

  There was always music in the household, even after her father moved out. Adele grew up listening to a more hip, varied and relevant soundtrack than she might have done with an older mum. Penny loved music with the intensity of a teenager well into her twenties. Among her favourite acts were 10,000 Maniacs, the Cure and Jeff Buckley – Penny played their music night and day in the home. Indeed, when Adele was just three years of age, her mother took her to her first concert. They saw the Cure at Finsbury Park. Adele would later record a cover of the band’s ‘Lovesong’. Penny also allowed her daughter to stay up late on Friday nights, to watch the BBC’s live music programme Later, presented by the baron of boogie-woogie pianists himself, Jools Holland. Each week, Adele’s musical knowledge and tastes swelled. Soon, she could add the likes of Destiny’s Child, Lauryn Hill and Mary J Blige to the list of acts she followed.

  No wonder Adele quickly grew to love music, not just at an emotional level but an intellectual one as well. Hers was a considered love. ‘Cheesy as it sounds, I was sitting in Tottenham, had never left the UK, but felt I could go anywhere in the world and meet another eight-year-old and have something to talk about,’ she said. ‘I remember noticing that music united people and I loved the feeling of that and found a massive comfort in it. A euphoric feeling, even.’ She also found that music could give her an entirely contrasting emotion. The first song that ever made her cry was ‘Troy’, by Sinead O’Connor. This had long been a favourite song of her mother’s. Adele cried when she first heard it and was shocked by how powerfully it moved her. It has a sparse production until towards its climax but it is O’Connor’s powerful and emotional delivery that stirs the soul when listening to it. In this regard, it is quite in keeping with the music that Adele would one day make herself. Little could she have known when she first heard ‘Troy’ that her own music would one day provoke similar storms of emotions in her own fans. Indeed, she would one day turn many of the millions watching her sing on the Brit awards into blubbering observers shaken by the raw power of her lyrics and her delivery.

  However, Adele was not content just to listen to pop songs over and over merely as a fan. She began to sing along with them, particularly Gabrielle’s ‘Dreams’. Of course, she wasn’t alone in that as a youngster, but even then it became clear that Adele had vocal talent. When Penny heard her daughter’s voice, she noticed there was something genuinely special about it. Most parents would send a child of that age to bed when they were having friends round for dinner but Penny was too proud of her girl not to show off her already impressive musical ways. She would sometimes arrange for her daughter to give an intimate performance for the guests. More than once she would stand the five-year-old on the dinner table and invite her to sing songs, including ‘Dreams’. Adele was never in much doubt about how proud her mother was. ‘She just thought I was amazing,’ she said. There were other domestic concerts in Adele’s bedroom, too. Here, the creative skills of Penny came to the fore. ‘My mum’s quite arty – she’d get all these lamps and shine them up to make one big spotlight,’ said Adele. Penny’s friends would cram into the room and sit on the bed to hear the young girl’s impressive voice. No wonder Penny was so proud. Later, Adele also sang songs by the Spice Girls on such occasions. The British girl band became a firm favourite from their earliest hits, the lyrics of which made her giggle. ‘[They were] all sexual innuendos – I love it,’ she told Q.

  The Spice Girls are not a guilty pleasure for Adele. She is proud to be a fan of the Girl Power combo. ‘Even though some people think they’re uncool, I’ll never be ashamed to say I love the Spice Girls because they made me who I am,’ she said. ‘I’m deadly serious about that. I got into music right in their prime when they were huge.’ Her original favourite Spice Girl was Geri, but when the ginger-haired minx left the band Adele turned her affections to Mel B. ‘When I was young, I was planning to go to their show at Wembley as Geri, but, just befo
re I went, she left,’ she told Now. ‘I had to go as Mel C and I was never that sporty. I haven’t forgiven Geri for that. Geri was my favourite Spice Girl, but she left and broke my heart, so I’m a Scary Spice girl now.’ The very fact that the identity of her favourite band member is so important to her shows how much Adele loved the 1990s girl band sensation.

  That said, she was not always quite so proud of her Spice Girls fixation as she is now. ‘I was a real indie kid,’ she told the Observer. ‘But I’d secretly go home and listen to Celine Dion.’ Later in life, she attended one of the Spice Girls reunion shows and felt transported back to her childhood years. ‘I loved it!’ she said. ‘Seeing them was just like being a little kid again.’ She also attended a reunion concert of another pop band of her childhood – boy band East 17. ‘I used to love them,’ she said. Other acts she has name-checked as teenage influences include the Pussycat Dolls and Britney Spears.

  Soon Adele was not only listening to such singers but also trying to emulate them in real life. Not for her the miming with a hairbrush in front of the mirror pastime of so many teenage girls; Adele was trying out singing for real and found some willing audiences for her earliest performances.

  Penny wasn’t well off but she gave her daughter lots of emotional support and encouragement. ‘I was one of those kids that was like… “I want to be a ballet dancer” … “No, a saxophone player” … “No, a weather girl”,’ said Adele. ‘And my mum would run me to all these classes. She has always said, “Do what you want and, if you’re happy, I’m happy.”’ When Adele asked her mother to buy her a sequin eye-patch like the one sported by her hero Gabrielle, Penny lovingly obliged the request. The accessory did not last long in the child’s favour. The day after she received it, Adele was teased about it at school and cast it to one side. In some interviews since, Adele has claimed that she had only ever worn it reluctantly, at the behest of Penny.

  There was some of the expected and perfectly normal friction between mother and daughter in Adele’s childhood. Although they have always had a strong, close bond, Adele did have moments when she wanted to rebel against her mother. This showed itself partly when it came to Penny’s musical tastes, and Adele’s reaction to them. ‘Even when I was 10 and 11, I knew my mum had brilliant taste in music – I just wasn’t ready to embrace it,’ she admitted. ‘Now they’re my favourite artists.’

  Of course, many people in their twenties will look back at how they once rebelled against their parents’ tastes and ways, and then admit that they have grown to see the merit and wisdom of them.

  As for Penny, she paused to wonder, as she listened to the childhood Adele sing, how connected her young daughter was with some of the very adult themes of the music. One day, she heard Adele singing along to the Lauryn Hill song ‘Ex-Factor’. Given that her daughter was some years away from becoming a teenager, Penny asked her how many of the song’s lyrics – which cover the trauma of a relationship breakup – she really understood. The passion Adele was singing with had sparked Penny’s curiosity. ‘Do you know what this song is about?’ she asked her daughter, who had to admit that she did not. But she wanted to.

  ‘I remember having the sleeve notes,’ said Adele, ‘no one has sleeve notes any more – and reading every lyric and not understanding half of them and just thinking, When am I going to feel like this? When am I going to be able to write and sing like this?’

  As for her education, the choice of school would have further influence on her growing passion for music and creativity. Adele stood out at her primary school for one particular reason: she was almost the only white face to be seen in the place. This was not a big deal at all for her. ‘I stopped noticing after a while,’ she said. Instead of being a problem for Adele, she actually considered this factor a positive one. It meant she got introduced to the finest soul music early in life. ‘Through my friend’s mum is how I found out about Mary J Blige and the Fugees and stuff like that,’ she said. ‘I guess, without that, I probably wouldn’t be into R&B that wasn’t only in the charts.’

  What a musical education she was getting in the early years of her life: at home her mother played her indie tunes, she listened to pop on the radio and thanks to her classmates she learned lots about soul music. Her musical knowledge became more refined and she started to listen to the sort of music she would later write and record herself. ‘When I was a girl, I loved love songs,’ she said. ‘And I always loved the ones about horrible relationships. Ones that you could really relate to and made you cry.’

  It was only when the family left Tottenham that Adele realised how much the neighbourhood’s ethnic mix had suited her. When she was nine, they moved to Brighton where Penny hoped she could better immerse herself in creative ventures. Some children would have loved life in an exciting seaside town like Brighton, but not Adele. ‘The people seemed really pretentious and posh, and there were no black people there,’ she recalled with disdain. ‘I was used to being the only white kid in my class in Tottenham.’ She would insist she was never one for the finer points of academia. ‘I’m not, and never have been, very academic – it was always music for me,’ she said. ‘My first school was great but I’d have a kid by now if I hadn’t left.’

  The family were to return to London, but not before fate intervened cruelly in the life of Adele and her father. A photograph from around this time shows father and daughter looking close and happy. They are sitting at the base of a tree on a warm day, Evans is shirtless and looks in good health. Adele is kitted out in some sporty gear and has her hand resting on her father’s knee. Soon, this picture of domestic bliss would give way to a more strained relationship between Adele and her dad. Evans would face a double tragedy in his life, the knock-on effect of which would be an increased estrangement from his daughter. His father John died at the age of 57, having been struck by bowel cancer. In the wake of his loss, Evans split from his new girlfriend. Then came the second blow – his best friend dropped dead after suffering a heart attack. In the face of the bereavements, Evans turned to alcohol for comfort. He has quipped that he made notorious boozer Oliver Reed seem a teetotaller in comparison. ‘I barely knew my own name,’ he added.

  Adele herself was said to be ‘utterly distraught’ when she learned of her grandfather’s passing, but Evans was too upset to help her. ‘I was a rotten father at a time when she really needed me,’ said Evans. ‘I was deeply ashamed of what I’d become and I knew the kindest thing I could do for Adele was to make sure she never saw me in that state … I was in the darkest place you can imagine. I saw no way out. I didn’t really care whether I lived or died.’ He found himself asking harsh questions of himself and his relationship with Adele. ‘I knew she’d be missing her granddad just as much as I was because they had such a close bond,’ he said. ‘She adored him … I was not there for my daughter when I should have been and I have regretted that every second of every day to this moment now.’

  Adele has since said that she more or less completely cut off contact with her father around this time. Evans, by contrast, has spoken of more regular meetings with his daughter, sparked by a healing chat they had in London’s Camden market after he had kicked the alcohol. What is certain is that Penny and Adele moved from Brighton back to London, but settled this time in the southern half of the capital. Adele was 11 when she and Penny arrived and she started in what she thought was ‘a crap comprehensive’. Initially, they settled in Lambeth. Within walking distance of their new home was the sort of multiculturalism that Adele had been familiar with in Tottenham. There were also record stores and concert venues, including the legendary Brixton Academy, which interested her and captured her imagination. Her musical dreams were continuing to grow in intensity, but, while Penny was proud and encouraging of her daughter’s creative aspirations, not everyone was quite so positive. Indeed, her hopes and dreams were sometimes dismissed by various adults in her life. ‘I had to bear the brunt of negative attitudes from authority figures, such as teachers, who led me to beli
eve that success was unrealistic,’ she said.

  The musical development continued, as did Adele’s dreams. ‘I remember when I was ten, I nicked my mum’s Lauryn Hill album and listened to it every day after school in my bedroom, sitting on my little sofa bed and hoping to God that one day I’d be a singer,’ she said. ‘But it was never something I purposely pursued. Me and my friends at the time all had dreams and none of theirs were coming true, so I thought, Why the hell will mine?’

  Adele became even more open-minded in her musical tastes, which had grown to encompass more R&B acts and metal bands such as Aerosmith. She was no snob or partisan. As she entered her teenage years, she was ready to explore some of the more mature aisles of the record stores. One day, in the Oxford Street branch of HMV, she saw greatest hits albums from Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald on special offer – ‘two for a fiver, in the jazz section’. How had such a young girl ended up in, as she emphasised, the jazz section? She said, having already got into modern R&B acts, ‘from that it was like a natural progression for me to get into the more classic soul artists. Because, while I always knew who Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye were – I think they’re part of everyone’s DNA, really – it was when I first went to the jazz section of HMV in Oxford Street that I became more seriously interested. You know, it’s this glass room a bit like your grandparents’ room that kids aren’t allowed in.’