Через 40 лет после дебюта музыканты группы Sade вспоминают рождение легенды и жизнь в сарае

Sade Adu was a stylist when she met London Latin ensemble Pride. Soon after she was a fronting a new, streamlined group playing soul, jazz and sophisticated pop. After Sade’s classic Diamond Life hit in the second half of 1984, West End clubland and squats with frozen pipes made way for international success. Four decades on from their moment-defining debut’s release, players and friends recall the moment of fusion. “It was all positivity and action stations,” they say, though “Sade took the full brunt of the fame...” Robert Elms (journalist): Sade had studied fashion design at St Martins and was working with Spandau Ballet when (in 1981) my mate Lee Barrett asked her if she could sing. She said yes, ‘How hard can it be?’ Lee was managing the group Pride and he wanted her to sing backing vocals and bring some glamour, because she had the look already. She joined and at some point they shrunk down to Sade, Stuart Matthewman (guitar, sax) and Paul Denman (bass), and they brought in Andrew Hale (keyboards) and they became Sade. Simon Booth (Working Week guitarist): I had seen Pride perform. They had a Latin feel and Sade was singing lead on a couple of tracks. Her father was Nigerian, her mother English, and she had grown up in Essex and had star quality. She was also incredibly nice and down to earth. I had been working with the producer Robin Millar on the first Working Week single, Venceremos (We Will Win). Stuart played on it and I mentioned the group to Robin. Robin Millar (producer): The day after we did it, Lee Barrett called. He had two tracks, Your Love Is King and Hang On To Your Love. They were good. Sade’s voice, even with just a mike in a rehearsal room, had that tone that you knew, if people heard it, it would affect them. But there was no structure really, her singing was like riffing. It was almost like hip hop over a repetitive funk groove, a solid bass and drums with keys and sax playing around it. RE: Sade was a soul girl. The first song I heard her sing in the shower was Minnie Riperton’s Lovin’ You. But she also knew about Fela Kuti before anyone else, and she knew about jazz. She also knew exactly what she wanted her records to sound like, look like, how they should be presented. Andrew Hale (keyboards): We bonded over US soul and jazz music but coming out of that time period of new romantic and post-punk, there was still this idea of the punk DIY aesthetic, and that was really important because we weren’t virtuosos. We were young, curious and played to our limitations. We didn’t try to emulate our heroes, we couldn’t have even if we’d tried. There’s a homemade feel to what we were doing. RM: I was nuts about classic soul arrangements, the horns and the strings and the percussion and the vocals. I had a meeting in the studio with Sade, Stuart, Paul and Andrew and I thought I was Quincy Jones. They had a singles deal with RCA but had never been in a recording studio and I said, ‘Here’s what we do.’ Martin Ditcham (percussion): The vibe in the studio was very creative but also very relaxed. They were incredibly tight, all working together, all listening to one another. RM: There was no money so we worked on the demos for a week in downtime, and we started working on Smooth Operator and another song they had in their live set, Your Love Is King. By the end of it we had six songs. AH: We were new to the studio environment, but Robin and Mike Pela, the engineer, were very good at guiding us. Basically we believed in the music we were making and it was exciting to translate that on to tape in the best way we could. RM: When we finished we played the songs to the 20 or so people in the studio. Everyone was beaming, nodding their heads. Then Lee took it to RCA, and remember this is 1983, you’ve got Depeche Mode and Duran Duran, and they were like, ‘Where are the drum machines and the synths? Why has it got sax on it?’ Lee then took it round all the other labels and they all rejected it. RE: I was working at The Face and I put Sade on the (April, 1984) cover of the magazine. It worked but it wouldn’t have worked if they weren’t good. RM: Robert said, ‘Have you got enough songs for a gig?’ Well we had six songs, so Sade and Lee secured a gig at Heaven (on February 27, 1984) and Robert got the word out to all his mates and pop journalists, and suddenly it was the hot gig of the week. Gary Crowley (Capital radio presenter): There was a real buzz and queues outside. She had this amazing poise and cool about her and carried herself like a film star. The band were serious, there was a real mood to it, a sense of drama and you knew these songs, Your Love Is King, Smooth Operator, their cover of Timmy Thomas’ Why Can’t We Live Together, were the business. She reminded me of George Michael, this new breed of pop star. RM: She was suddenly being hailed as the new Aretha. The deals came flooding in. I said, ‘Don’t take the deal with the most money but the deal that offers you the most support artistically.’ They went with CBS on that basis. PB: We did the album. We did 15 tracks and nine went on the album. It was an organic process, putting the guitar, drums, keys down together live first then solos and overdubs. Sade was learning on the job, some of the songs had only just been written and she was rewriting and rewriting and there was a lot of, ‘Let’s try this.’ SA: We didn’t go in for lots of effects and gimmicks. It’s more honest that way. And we can write proper songs, really simple songs. RM: She had a strategic wisdom. She listened to the tracks and she said, ‘We have built something with a mood here,’ which then made it easier to whittle down the tracks. We got rid of a dance track called Spirit and a Sam Cooke number called Mr. Wrong which she said was too jolly. (A&R) Muff Winwood knew once Sade did videos and the public saw her she’d be a superstar. Sade worked really hard on the presentation, met with the promotion and press teams, she spent hours on getting everything just right. We all knew it was going to be a hit. AH: Straight after recording we’d go to The Wag (Wardour St club). Just being there, it fed into the experience and sound of the record. Pete Brown (studio assistant): Sade was very hip, she was a girl about town, and I was 17 - what 17-year-old wouldn’t go out when asked? We’d get a cab from Willesden to the West End, go to the Wag club, we’d have a few beers to say the least. But it never distracted from the work. When we mixed the album, they’d be four of us, we’d be on the desk with little notepads and marks on the faders. Robin would listen back and then we’d make more changes. Lots of meticulous work went into getting that super clean sound. RE: Your Love Is King was the first single [in January 1984]. Sade and I were squatting in a disused fire station for the whole time this had been going on, and it was freezing. We only had one two bar electric fire to keep us warm and the bath was in the kitchen. The day she went to do Your Love Is King on Top Of The Pops, the toilet had frozen over. CBS sent a big black limousine to pick her up and by the time she came home that night, everything had changed. They had made it. AH: We were super nervous and super excited. It was a big deal. We’d all watched it growing up, we all remembered seeing Bowie doing Starman. PB: Your Love Is King was a hit [Number 6, March ‘84] then they put out When Am I Gonna Make A Living? [in May]. SA: I can remember in the Pride days walking from Turnpike Lane tube. It was pouring and I was soaking wet… I got my pen out and started to write When Am I Gonna Make A Living on a soggy envelope. I got halfway through and the pen stopped working. MD: The album came out in July and hit Number 2. We did the Diamond Life tour. It was all positivity and action stations. We’d rehearsed on Holloway Road and were really tight. When we did the Montreux Festival we missed the flight and had to get a helicopter, and arrived just as we were due to go on stage. It was one of the best shows we did at that time. We did Paris, this really old theatre. We soundchecked then Sade went to iron her blouse and the fuses blew and we were in darkness. There was also the Hammersmith Odeon which they broadcast on Radio 1 [In Concert]. That was a good one. But they all were. Dan Beck (US product manager): Breaking Sade in the States took time. English R&B and soul acts were not credible. We decided on Hold On To Your Love for the first single, and we aimed at the Urban chart. The thinking was that once it was a hit on Urban, we’d go to Adult Contemporary, then the Top 40. Sade were not happy at first. They thought it was a racial slight - Why weren’t we going straight to the Top 40? But if we hadn’t done it that way they might have had a pop hit but they wouldn’t have had the momentum for a second. They needed that credibility first. Then (in February 1986, second LP) Promise hit Number 1 on the US Billboard chart. She was soul royalty, and she made it on her own terms. SA: My priority isn’t to carry on getting richer. It’s to carry on getting better. That’s the enjoyment. Writing new songs, performing… RE: You’ve got to remember she was having huge success but the press were putting her through the ringer [there were untrue rumours of drug addiction and a nervous breakdown]. At some point she just said, ‘I’m not doing any more interviews.’ And she didn’t need to. AH: Sade took the full brunt of the fame and attention and recognition. Us three guys could still jump on a bus and no one would recognise us, so we were just enjoying the moment. We didn’t have to deal with the downside. RM: Diamond Life started Sade’s journey. It’s a one-of-a-kind record. It captured the time it was made in but in another sense it could have been made at any time. It launched her career, and is one of the best soul albums to ever come out of the UK. AH: There was a period where we were seen as an eighties band in the UK, but during the last five years we’ve seen a new generation discovering Diamond Life through TikTok, which has been lovely to see. DB: When I first met Sade, I thought, ‘this is an artist who could have a hit album at any age.’ I often liken her to (singer and Civil Rights activist) Lena Horne. She has a dignity that defies trends. This article originally appeared in MOJO 372. Sade quotes: Bill Holdship [Pulse!, December 1992]; Lesley White [The Face, April 1984]; Peter Martin [Smash Hits, May 23, 1984]; Number One, Oct 26, 1985. Simon Booth was speaking in 2012. Thanks to Jim Irvin.