I've been in love with music for as long as I can remember! I mean DEEEEP in love. The kind of love that Jennifer Holliday sang with on “And I Am Telling You” that said no matter what you say or do…….. you will NEVER, EVER stop me from loving you and wanting to be loved by you!
I can recall many defining moments in my life that music provided the soundtrack for. As a young aspiring baller age 11 I would put all of my change in the jukebox at the post-match hangout and play Stevie’s ‘Sir Duke’ over and over again. And then there’s the day my foster brother let me listen to his LP of ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’……. That shit changed my life. I was a black kid growing up with a white family in a white town and no knowledge of who I was or the struggle my skin colour represented. ‘Village Ghetto Land’, ‘I Wish’, ‘As’ and ‘Sir Duke’ spoke to me in a way that got inside of me, made me know that I wasn’t alone and taught how to be proud of my blackness.
Age 14 I went from being the next Pelé to being Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard and Mohamed Ali all rolled up into 1, my trainer christened me Sugar Boy Lalu and I was a contender! I got to travel all over the country and represented the Southern Counties at national level, along the way I turned into a young man. Then one day age 19ish I’m sitting in my training partners beat up ford escort van watching him sign-write in Gosport High St. and he plays a song with an opening line that goes “Don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby? You said you’d be coming back again baby”……….. I was hooked! Luther became my benchmark and I discovered LOVE songs!
Singing along to Luther’s ‘A House is Not a Home’ got me props back home, got me noticed by girls and set me on the road to London to seek my fame and fortune. I was gonna be the next BIG THING and sing sell-out concerts at Wembley. I was hook line and sinker in love with music back then, still am now and will be ‘til the day the fat lady sings! (continue...)