Adele

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  More candidly, she later added, ‘I was 13 or 14 and trying to be cool, only I wasn’t really cool at the time as I was pretending to be into Slipknot, Korn and Papa Roach. So there I was in my dog collar and baggy jeans and I saw this CD in the bargain bin. I’d only picked up the CD as I wanted to show my hairdresser the picture so she could do my hair the same.’

  She took both CDs home. There they sat on the side, untouched for some time. It was when she was clearing up her room one day that she rediscovered the abandoned discs, and gave them a try, and, once she did give them a spin, she loved what she heard. ‘When I heard the song “Fool That I Am”, everything changed for me. I never wanted to be a singer until I heard that.’

  The likes of Etta James became out-and-out favourites for Adele. More importantly, they set her on course to explore more jazz and easy-listening music. It was as she listened to these songs, luxuriating in their warm tones, that her own eventual musical quality developed.

  With Etta James, it was not only her music that appealed to Adele. She liked, she said, James’ ‘blonde weave and her catty eyes’ and her angry face. When she heard the music, she was struck powerfully by it, ‘fell in love – it was like she went in my chest and beat my heart up’. Adele has said of James’ singing: ‘She was the first time a voice made me stop what I was doing and sit down and listen. It took over my mind and body.’

  Etta James was a blues and R&B sensation in the 1950s and 1960s. She is best known musically for the songs ‘At Last’ and ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’. She has endured a torrid personal life which was complicated by her use of heroin. She spent time in a psychiatric hospital and continues to suffer physical health issues. For Adele, the brilliance of James’ music outshone all of this. James was just one of the artists that Adele sought to emulate as she taught herself how to sing. ‘I taught myself how to sing by listening to Ella Fitzgerald for acrobatics and scales, Etta James for passion and Roberta Flack for control,’ she said. Later in life, she would consider naming a dog Ella, after Ms Fitzgerald.

  It was not only British record shops that she visited in her teenage years. Adele vividly remembers an exciting holiday to America with her father when she was 15 and she went into a Virgin Records shop in Times Square, New York. As she browsed its aisles, she reflected on how ‘amazing’ it would be to one day have a record of her own on sale in a foreign country. It seemed an outrageous dream to have at the time – she could hardly even get her head around the prospect of recording a song and that song going on sale in the UK, let alone abroad. By the time she was in her early twenties, not only would she have her albums on sale in America, but she would also be the toast of New York.

  Meanwhile, her musical ambitions were given an extra shot by a new television series which kicked off a genre that would dominate for over a decade. As well as being allowed to stay up to watch Later with her mother on Friday evenings, Adele was a fan of reality television, including the musical programmes of that genre. One of her favourites was Pop Idol, first shown on ITV in 2001. With its memorable panel of judges, including the sharp-tongued Simon Cowell in his first significant public outing, the programme quickly captured the public’s imagination. The previous year, viewers had watched Popstars produce the pop band Hear’Say. Pop Idol took the genre to a whole new level. The fact that a solo artist was the focus gave the search an added intensity and personal dimension. Then there was the pivotal fact that, unlike Popstars, this show had a public vote. Rather than just watching a band being formed, the public was invited to phone in and vote for their favourite singer. And the presence of the brooding, blunt-speaking Cowell gave Pop Idol an edge. In recent years, Cowell has tempered his frank verdicts. Back in 2001, his judgements were often truly cutting.

  Adele loved Pop Idol and sat glued to it most weekends. As a girl in her early teens, she was bang inside one of the programme’s key demographics. She enjoyed hearing the contestants sing and getting to know their personalities, too. The singer she loved most on Pop Idol was the one that went on to win the show – Will Young. The posh, slightly awkward young man from Hungerford in Berkshire was an unlikely winner in some ways. He had a superb voice and the fact he was the only contestant to stand up to Cowell’s verdicts sealed his place in the public’s affections. In an exciting final which seemed to grip the nation, he beat the more polished but less charismatic Gareth Gates. Adele was delighted. She had picked up the phone to vote for Young many times. She later joked that she had voted ‘five thousand times’. An exaggeration, but one that reflects just how much she adored him. Certainly, among the 4.6 million votes that Young received on the final night there was more than one cast by Adele. ‘Will Young was my first proper love,’ she said. ‘I was obsessed.’ At school, she found that many of her fellow pupils were divided into fiercely partisan groups: the Young fans and the Gates fans.

  The rivalry quickly became quite vicious and Adele found herself right in the centre of it. She stood up for herself (and, by proxy, for Young) and paid the price for it. ‘The Gareth Gates fans were horrible to me and I wasn’t having any of it,’ she said. ‘We had a fight and I was called into the head-teacher’s office and sent home. It was serious.’ To be sent home from school over an argument about Pop Idol – Adele was a passionate fan for sure. Little could she know that in the coming years of her life she would meet Young and appear on the same bill as him, and her own music would become a mainstay of auditioning singers on reality music shows. This is an even bigger triumph than if she had gone from watching the show to winning it herself. She bypassed the whole public auditioning process and became the act that aspiring contestants wanted to emulate.

  When she and Penny had first watched Pop Idol together, her mother had suggested to Adele that she might like to audition. Adele was not so sure this was a good idea. She had seen how some parents put forward their completely untalented offspring. ‘You know you get these parents and they’re like, “She’s the next Whitney,” and then she sings and it’s awful,’ she said. Also, she had grown tired of the production line of female singer who attempted to copy the Mariah Carey style of vocal delivery but ended up fitting so many notes into one word of lyrics that they would sound like bleating lambs. ‘So many people sing like that now and I could do it if I wanted to… but the first time you hear it you’re like, “Wow!”, and by the fifth time, it’s like, “Fuck off, get something new”,’ said Adele. ‘It’s more impressive, somehow, if you don’t try to impress. Be natural with it. Say it straight.’ Therefore, she was not to audition on the second series of Pop Idol. That series was won, though, by a big girl with a big voice. Scot Michelle McManus became the somewhat unlikely frontrunner of the second series. With Cowell backing her throughout the competition, she won the public vote.

  Adele continued to follow the reality genre, replacing her love of Pop Idol with the show that succeeded it, the X Factor. ‘I’m a super, super fan,’ she said. ‘I think it’s amazing, it’s a great opportunity for people as well and it’s entertaining – I don’t want to go out on a Saturday night and get drunk and take pills with my friends, it’s just boring. All them indie kids, they’re the ones who are snobby about it, all them indie bands, and stuff, they can kiss my bum.’ The lack of musical snobbery inherent in these shows chimes with Adele’s down-to-earth heart. The appreciation is mutual: her songs are often attempted by young hopefuls auditioning for the X Factor and also American Idol in the US. This trend reached its highlight in the 2010 series of the X Factor, when popular finalist Rebecca Ferguson sang Adele’s version of ‘Make You Feel My Love’. Adele was so chuffed and impressed that she wrote Ferguson a letter complimenting her on the performance. However, as we shall see, Adele’s songs became so popular at auditions that the show’s judges and producers banned them for a while

  The young Adele also loved another celebrity who came to her attention on the small screen. Television presenter Zoë Ball was on the face of it perhaps a slightly unlikely candidate for Adele’s affections. Y
et, when one hears and considers the reasoning for Adele’s admiration, it makes more sense. One can see in the adult Adele the connection she felt with Ball as she watched her on television on Saturday mornings as a kid. ‘I used to watch Live and Kicking and love her,’ said Adele. ‘She wasn’t even beautiful, she was just brilliant. Real. When she got married and got out of that car in a wedding dress holding a bottle of Jack Daniels, that was it for me. That was how I wanted to be. And I was only little.’ The carefree hedonism of Ball was a worthy example for Adele. (And the compliment is in a sense returned by the fact that Ball now spins Adele tracks in her radio slots.) Adele also loved the Saturday-morning television show CD:UK and listening to the top 40 chart as it was announced on radio on Sundays.

  Another musical hero, who was quite a contrast with Will Young, was The Streets, aka Mike Skinner. The Streets came to widespread attention in 2002 when Adele was 14. The debut album, Original Pirate Material, was an attention-grabbing garage affair in which Skinner’s sharp observations were delivered in a ‘geezer’ style. He sang and rapped about the lifestyles of those Brits who lived for the nightclub experience. It sold over a million copies and earned Skinner and his project respect, including from Adele. ‘I was so in love with Mike Skinner I wrote him a letter and when I told my friend about it she cussed me so I went and pretended to do the washing up and cried,’ she said. From fighting over the posh, cute-faced Will Young to arguing over the more rough-and-ready Skinner, Adele had varied tastes in men as her teenage hormones ran riot.

  In her pre-fame years, she had tried a few other ways of earning a living. It is these experiences that have helped form the Adele we love today. She was no pampered creature removed from the ups and downs of the lives of her fans. ‘I worked in a cafe for three years with my auntie and cousin. It was really shit pay and long hours but it was the most fun I’ve ever had,’ she said of the job that allowed her to listen to the Top 40 chart countdown as she worked on Sundays. Adele loved a good mooch around the shops as a teenager, so for her next job she thought she would take a job in retail, working on the basis that she would surely enjoy such an environment. It would not turn out to be as interesting as she hoped. ‘The worst job I ever had, though, was working for Gap,’ she said. ‘The money was great but I didn’t even end up collecting my pay cheque because I hated it so much. I love high street shops and I thought I’d be on the till or in the changing rooms helping people find their clothes. But all I did was fold jumpers for 12 hours a day. It was so boring I walked out after four days. If I wasn’t doing music, I’d probably still be folding jeans.’

  Soon, she would join a rather more prestigious establishment. Her education had rather gone off the rails while she was at the Chestnut Grove school in Balham, a place that might have been expected to have suited her better. It specialises in the visual arts and media, but she was not happy there and often bunked off classes. ‘I was really mouthy and ended up playing truant,’ she said. Part of her frustration was normal adolescent stuff. She did, though, feel that not enough support was being offered to her and her fellow pupils. ‘They didn’t really encourage me,’ she told The Times. ‘I knew I wanted to do music but even when I was in Year 7 and wanted to be a heart surgeon they didn’t encourage that … It was just, “Try and finish school and don’t get pregnant,” ha, ha, ha.’

  Speaking of music classes, she said, ‘They gave me a really hard time, trying to bribe me, saying that if I wanted to sing I had to play clarinet to sing in the choir. So I left.’ Summing up her mood immediately before she left, she shows how lacking in optimism she had been at that point in her life. ‘Things were looking quite bleak,’ she said. The only thing that kept her pecker up was music and her increasing interest in becoming a singer herself. ‘As soon as I got a microphone in my hand, when I was about 14, I realised I wanted to do this,’ she remembered. She was blissfully free of the problem that holds some people back: self-consciousness in hearing their own voice. ‘Most people don’t like the way their voice sounds when it’s recorded. I was just so excited by the whole thing that I wasn’t bothered what it sounded like.’

  Then she managed to get accepted at a new school. Here, she was in the sort of environment that would expertly nurture her burgeoning creative talent on a daily basis. It was an absolutely pivotal moment for her when she joined the BRIT School. ‘Everything changed when I went there,’ she said.

  As she first walked into the BRIT School, Adele took one huge step closer to international fame, huge success and a multi-million-pound fortune.

  chapter two

  brit pop

  when Adele was on tour in America in 2011, she was taken to one side and told she had made chart history. Her album 21 had topped the charts for a record-breaking 10 weeks. In celebrating this achievement, she immediately knew who she wanted to pay tribute to. ‘Thanks to the BRIT School,’ whispered Adele. ‘A wonderful place that I still miss a lot.’

  The BRIT Performing Arts and Technology school has sometimes been compared to the New York High School for the Performing Arts. Its US counterpart was the inspiration for the 1980s film and hit television series Fame, although the BRIT School is in Croydon, slightly less glamorous than the Manhattan location of the home of Fame. BRIT is funded by the government, but operates independently of the local education authority’s control. It was established in 1991 after Conservative minister Kenneth Baker had approached entrepreneur Richard Branson with a proposal. From its second year, it received sponsorship from the BRIT Trust, which is the body behind the music industry’s annual Brit awards ceremony.

  It is estimated that graduates of the school have sold more than 10 million albums in the UK and amassed 16 Brit award nominations and 14 Grammy nominations between them. Yet, even away from the performing focus, the school’s academic record is admirable: over 90 per cent of its pupils gain five or more GCSE passes. And, naturally, it has a glittering alumni. The list of those who have studied at the BRIT includes Leona Lewis, Amy Winehouse, Imogen Heap, Katie Melua, Katy B and members of the Kooks, the Feeling and the Noisettes. As we shall see, some of these coincided with Adele’s time at the school.

  The prevailing atmosphere and unofficial mission statement of the BRIT School, which mark it out from other arts establishments, very much suit Adele’s personality and approach. As one teacher put it, the BRIT School is designed for ‘the non-type. The school fits round their personality, rather than asking them to form their personality round the school.’ Few true talents would have it any other way but Adele more than any suited such an ethos. A promotional video the school put together speaks of the importance of dreaming. ‘The musician realises that they have more influence on the mindset of the world than politicians, parents or popes,’ it declares. Certainly, Adele’s influence has become immense as her accomplishments have mounted. One teacher, Dec Cunningham, is keen to emphasise that, though it is an arts school, BRIT still has the same responsibilities and issues to face as any other state school. ‘It’s important to remember that the BRIT School is basically a local comprehensive,’ he said.

  Adele said she stumbled into the school’s arms due to a crisis in her mind. ‘The only reason I ended up studying music at the BRIT School was because I knew I was going to fail all my GCSEs, so I panicked,’ she said. As her account has it, she was not joining the BRIT School to pursue a career as a music artist. Rather, she says, at this stage she expected to be involved in the music business in a behind-the-scenes capacity. This frame of mind proved helpful, as it meant she took the trouble to learn production skills, including how to soundcheck microphones, amplifiers and speaker systems. ‘It’s handy,’ she said later, ‘’cause you don’t have to pay people to do it for you.’

  But first she had to find her way to the school. To do so, it has been said, one should take the train from London Bridge, alight at Selhurst station and then ‘follow the teen wearing bright-yellow drainpipe jeans, a leather motorcycle jacket and bird’s nest hairstyle’. Adele followe
d such a trail – which still has some truth today, although fashions and trends change – and reached the school’s two main buildings. One is an oblong pavilion, the other a redbrick structure which was built over a hundred years ago. The structures sit, somewhat awkwardly, among typical Croydon terraced housing. This is the area that no less a critic than David Bowie (who spent his formative years in south London) had previously described as ‘concrete hell’. But Adele quickly grew to love life at BRIT. The discomfort and lack of motivation that she had felt in Balham seemed a long way away.

  Getting into the BRIT School as an enrolled pupil, though, was not as easy as finding the buildings themselves. As a state-funded, creative powerhouse of an institution, it attracts a lot of applicants, two-thirds of whom will be unsuccessful. The school has some 850 pupils at any given time, accepting youngsters from the age of 14 to 19. The success of its most famous students have further elevated its appeal. ‘The likes of the Kooks and Amy Winehouse have put Croydon on the map,’ said Adele. ‘Even though they’re not originally from Croydon, they’ve been nurtured here, which should make everyone proud – I certainly am.’

  Later, Adele herself would help to keep Croydon on the map with her debut album 19. BRIT’s location made it always seem to be a slightly more down-to-earth version of the Sylvia Young Theatre School, which has been housed in Drury Lane, Marylebone and now Westminster. Indeed, Adele had originally wanted to go to the fee-paying Sylvia Young, mostly because Spice Girl Emma Bunton had gone there – ‘but my mum couldn’t afford it,’ she said.

  It was fortunate then that BRIT was so suited to what she needed. ‘I could just listen to music every day for four years,’ she said. ‘A lot of people feel trapped by youth, but at BRIT I felt fucking alive. They taught us to be open-minded and we were really encouraged to write our own music – and some of us took that seriously and some of us didn’t. I took it very seriously.’ Having felt unsupported at her previous school, she now felt that she was in good hands.