Beverley Knight: Losing My Best Friend At The Worst Moment Of My Career & How I Found New Purpose!

34:10So pop is short for popular, you know. I wanted to be popular. So I, my North Star always prints. So I made music that, would I listen to it? Would I dig it? Yes. And it gave me, I mean, the success. It was amazing. Yeah. Once everything had exploded and was wonderful with the Who I Am album and Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. Then I went on and made Affirmation. Affirmation was such a successful album in terms of you look at chart positions and all of the, you know, you look at the data. But what that album cost me and what it did, because Come As You Are was the jump off single. So many people who were there at the beginning, you know, the kind of R &B purists, soul purists, all those guys were like, huh?

35:08You know what I mean? They were like, what is this? Can't vibe with this. And what was that like for you? It was tough because, again, even though I was three albums in, one first album on an independent, two albums with Parlophone. This was my third record with Parlophone by Fourth altogether there was still this belief in me childlike I'll always be childlike that because I believed so passionately in what I was doing I'd get other people to rally around me and I'd get other people just by so you were shocked the force of how good it was were, you know, they'd come on board. So I was shocked at the backlash.

35:59Yeah. It was, and that's how I'd describe it. It wasn't just a dislike, it was a backlash. So what happened was all the people who were writing about me and, you know, supporting me in the formative years turned. God, that's so hard. It's hard. It's hard. They turned and the wider mainstream who, I'll be real, they didn't come on board immediately in my career. That took a very long time because they were so enamored to Britpop and then became enamored of Pop Pop, you know, because the next wave came Spice Girls and the boy bands and all of that. We'd already had take that and that but you know that became the big thing.

36:48So again what I was doing wasn't the flavor of The month I was never part of a trend or a wave or anything I was always just me existing doing what I do to the best that I could do it So there wasn't a vested interest in what I was doing so when the Cool people kind of turned the mainstream became indifferent to me. I think that's the best way of saying it. There was a very, well, horrible trend back then of reviewers reviewing albums that they hadn't actually listened to. So they had catchphrases that they would use to, you know, review. Yeah. I mean, you literally, if an album arrived, you knew the name of the artist, you knew what the genre was, they'd write something.

37:48Whether it was positive or negative, they had just these little piffy little phrases that they would churn out. A smooth soul ride experience. Oh, right, yeah. Do you know what I mean? A pop treasure. Just these little phrases that they would use. and yeah, I was victim to that but they certainly weren't all positive. In fact, a lot of them were negative. So after that very buoyant start of your career, how hard was that? It was tough. You decided to change something, which is hard and scary. Because you're a creative, you want to change, you want to pivot. I thought, well, if they listened to the album and they heard the whole thing, that here it's not even, It's not like I'm going in a radical change.

38:36You're still you. I'm still me. There's still the soul. There's still the essence there. I'm just trying new things. I'm just trying to... No, not allowed. Thou must stay in one's lane. You know what I mean? Very interesting. And when, again, when you're a woman, it's really tough. when you're a black woman, this is where the stereotyping kicks in. You are expected to be this. And this, your lane is R &B. It's supposed to have some kind of street kind of sass to you. You certainly can't venture outside of that lane. Well, I was like, bollocks, I am. Bollocks, yeah. What are you going to do? I am.

39:24so yeah the backlash was swift I found myself thankfully being held together by people who saw what I did on a stage that was the difference between me and everybody else I delivered on a stage in a way that few Brits who were in my area of music broadly speaking could do Do you like playing live? I love playing live. I'm a very physical performer. Again, my North Star Prince. I look at Tina Turner. I look at physical performers, James Brown, people. Not that I dance like that, but I move. and I use my entire body and my entire being to convey whatever message it is I'm conveying in my songs, not just the vocal.

40:19So that meant that I had a hardcore dedicated live following, which I have to this day, which has grown exponentially year on year. Thank God I was lucky. But in terms of studio recording, I found myself being on less and less playlists, being in less and less DJs crates, old school, call them crates, you know, the vinyl crates. Just this rolling back, this falling away of people. and for a good eight, nine years, that was the state of play for me. And in that time, I lost my best friend. He died. Can you tell me about Tyrone? Tyrone was, oh my God. When you saw Bev, you saw Tyrone. We were inseparable.

41:18How old were you when you met? We were both in our late 20s. Where did you meet? At the old Astoria which is no longer there Love the Astoria I used to go there a lot Exactly We met there there was an R &B night called Off the Hook Yeah Big, queer, fabulous brilliant gay night and I'll always go there Brilliant music I love gay clubs Oh my god it was my life You're about the best right? The best The music is always so good Always good You know And I love I always say I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body That's how I feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Tyrone spotted me in the club. Big grin. I need your number.

42:01I'm the celebrity booker for the off-the-hook tent at Big Gay Out and I need you to perform. And you were like, I love him. I was like, oh, my God. I'm getting my number immediately. Can I just also say, he was so beautiful. He was beautiful. Oh, my God. His smile was easy. His smile. Beautiful. I just, I loved him And that day We went for lunch the next day And then that was it We were inseparable We were inseparable right until death So what happened? He, when I met him He was already quite a long way Into his fight with HIV He'd been hospitalised a few times Various things and in the final to cut a long story short in the Christmas of 2002 he got very ill I'd noticed his speech was slurring his vision was going we had to get him glasses he started to sound like he was drunk I knew he wasn't he started to shut down it seemed like his body was shutting down rushed him to hospital, literally jumped in my car, said goodbye to my parents.

43:23This was Christmas period. Jumped in my car, straight to the Chelsea Westminster Hospital in West London, admitted Professor Gozard, who was looking after him over his case, said, I'm afraid the prognosis is poor. He won't make it. We can extend his life for a couple of months, but without any treatment, you're looking at maybe a couple of weeks. Oh, God. Tyrone, what do you want to do? Tyrone said, I don't want any treatment. I had to accept that. It nearly killed me.

44:06It nearly killed me.

44:13and I was with him when he died. I was in the next room. I was promoting Affirmation, which was the album that everyone turned on me on. That was the album. That was the time. So all of this coincided, a very difficult point for me professionally, trying to promote an album, which was actively being rejected by people who I loved and cared about, who I thought would support and understand my creative journey and I didn't even have Tyrone there I had my other beautiful besties my friend Zaz and my friend Monroe and other great friends but you know Ty was physically there and um and he wasn't then he wasn't so I faced all of this like oh my god and then I felt like everything was spiraling um I had a parting of the ways with uh Parlophone Records a few years later right a lot of loss uh Ty died in um 2003 affirmation uh came out um you know the reviews were mixed I promised Tyrone at that time I would I describe it as take the baton from him he was such an activist for the LGBTQ community and their rights and their right to live peacefully and just to exist and you really didn't take that and I took that baton I had I was already doing it beforehand but when he died I redoubled my efforts and said I've got to do this because I've got to do this for my boy I've got to do this for my Tyrone and so it became more of a became more of a war a war on ignorance I tried to leave with lead with love but sometimes you have to face ignorance with hard words and hard truths well that got me into serious shit really yeah um i was speaking out about homophobic lyrics in dancehall music i love dancehall i love it i hated some of the homophobia that went with it it you know and especially because it was my heritage jamaica in my own heritage it was seen as being traitorous to my own heritage which it wasn't that at all it was just for me what was right was right yeah because obviously is racism is is picking on a minority and homophobia is picking on a minority it's like you're just trying to fight the same fight but for a different different collection of people but it's funny how people who are in that fight or in a different fight over here they can't see that we're all the same we're all in a we're all in the same boat trying to be accepted for who we are who you are yeah we are as we are as we're born a lot of loss a lot of loss um when uh parlour phone when that deal ended and it was not going to be renewed um and that just came to an end but I think isn't it it's a lot you know loss loss loss yeah um and I but I was tenacious you know when you've got that little idea in the back of your mind something that you think you know what I might do that one day and then life gets kind of busy and it just sort of stays there.

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51:10The script was for a musical called Memphis. Yeah. Now, I had acted, I'd done acting since I was about six. all the way through up until I signed my first deal when I was 21. I'd done acting. My minor in my degree was performance arts. So I studied Bertolt Brecht and John Cage and, you know, heavyweight. But I'd done all this Amdram stuff, Wolverhampton Youth Theatre, all the productions at school. People always remember me from school doing all the productions. and I had acted. But this script fell into my lap. Lisa Makin, who was a producer, whose partner was Sir Lenworth Henry. Lovely Lenny.

52:02Lisa was an early doors producer of this musical Memphis, which had had huge success in the US and was coming over. And she said, Beverly Knight would be the right person to play Felicia Farrell, the lead female because it requires a big voice big thing I saw this script and thought I haven't done any acting for years but this script is brilliant oh my god this is amazing they didn't have a theatre but they just wanted to gauge my interest I was interested this was at a time when to be a music artist and then to pivot into musical theatre meant you had failed yeah and also it meant that you could never go back to being a musical artist.

52:48You could never be a musical artist. You're allowed to go one way but you're not allowed to go back. You can't because you had failed. What on earth made you go with that because you certainly knew you wanted to carry on doing music. Oh yeah I was determined to keep making music. The music in that musical was not what MT people call legit. It wasn't all this kind of singing, very Julie Andrews. It wasn't that. It was music that I... It was music I could relate to. Yeah. It was old school blues and gospel because it was set in 1955. a white DJ falls in love with an aspiring black singer in Memphis.

53:39It is literally against the law, anti-miscegenation laws. And we see their love blossom at the time. This is 1955, where teenagers, this new social category called teenagers, were discovering this new explosion of this music called rock and roll. So this play, like I said, they hadn't had the theatre or anything. So I had that in my back pocket. At the same time, a lovely young woman called Scarlet, who I didn't know from a tree but was a musical theatre fanatic, had tweeted, and I just happened to see this tweet when Twitter was wonderful. Not so much now. The bodyguard is having a cast change.

54:30She had retweeted it. I had seen it. It had come up on my feed. The Bodyguard. Oh, there's a musical called The Bodyguard. I mean, it passed me. I hadn't even realised they'd made a musical of The Bodyguard. They're doing a cast change. I know those songs like I know myself. Yeah, right, OK. I mean, talk about my lane. Talk about what I knew. I knew I could act. I knew I had the vocal chops. to sing those songs because I'd sung them, sung them at school. I'd sung them my whole, you know, existence since Whitney came out. I knew the film. I went to the cinema to watch the film. I loved it. I thought, I can do this.

55:18I know I can do this. It's the West End. I've never been on a West End stage before, but I know I have the ability. and if there is any gaps in my ability, I'll work so hard until I cover those gaps. I knew what I was like. You know, thank God I had two grafting parents who would instilled ethic into me, that work ethic. I asked management, my then management, get me an audition, how do I do this? You just got to make this work. Were they a bit like, oh, Beverly, it's not a good idea because it looks like you failed at music? They liked Memphis. they were quite surprised when I talked about bodyguard but they understood because Whitney.

56:01Right, right. You can count the people on one hand who were going to be able to do it and tick all the right boxes, right age, you know, the whole, everything. So I said, just sort it, just get me in the room. Three weeks after seeing that tweet, I got the role of Rachel Maron. Yes! And then the West End were like raised eyebrows. Okay, because this thing of stunt casting, putting a celeb in a role to get bums on seats. People were like, I get it. She can sing it. Can she act? Can she do any of those things? You like that. And I was like, just see, just come and see. It took about a week. It took about a week and all of that went out the window.

56:59The narrative changed inside of a week. What did that feel like? It felt wonderful. It felt wonderful. And everybody in the cast knew that I was prepared to put the work in. Right. Because the area that I didn't have, that didn't come naturally to me, was the choreography, all the dance stuff. I'd never trained a step. I wasn't that person. That was not me. And I didn't have it. I was a mover, what we call a strong mover. So, you know, I could pick up things if I drilled them. And if you spend hours with me. But it took me ages. I wasn't I didn't have that natural ability it was amazing amazing when you show them something and you show it to them once and they've done it and they've got it now my brain worked like that with music I can hear a song once my brain immediately identifies the patterns and I can go to it and I'm there I didn't have that at all in my body not at all so I really had to work hard to get all the because you don't have to work hard at anything else that's good It was good.

58:13I found it challenging. My husband, James, really was my biggest cheerleader when it came to all of that. He got right behind me and said, Bev, you can do this. You know, don't worry about this. I was worrying about the dancing. He was like, Bev, I'm telling you, you're going to go out there. You're going to smash the dancing. You're going to be great. You're a show off. You can show off whatever technical stuff isn't brilliantly correct. You can style it out. And I styled it out. He understood the power of pivoting and he knew that this could be the beginning of something else. I felt like I was starting again in many ways, even though I'd had all the skills.

58:57Those skills that I had from a tiny child, all of them kicked in. I don't know why the universe gave me all of that stuff when I was a kid. They wanted you here. But they wanted me, clearly, to be in this position at this point in my life. And it all kicked in. It worked. The bodyguard had been struggling, apparently. It was, you know, due to close a musical called Made in Dagenham starring Gemma Arterton was going to come into the Adelphi Theatre where the bodyguard was. And that had been agreed. So the bodyguard's time was limited. But before it was going to run out altogether, they wanted to do a cast change, a complete cast change, because Michael Harrison just believed in the piece and thought, there's more to this.

59:54We just need the right bodies in the building. It just worked. All of us, us humans working together, that was the right combo. That was the spark. The bodyguard turned around and is now this huge success around the world. And I'm so glad. You should be proud too. That's Megan. I am proud. You turned it around. I am proud. And then I left the bodyguard because the theatre also wanted you. All this was ready. So it was like, Bev, we need you. Remember that script. So I left, come to the end of my contract. I'd extended my bodyguard contract, but then I had the ability to just go. So I left. That launched Alexandra Burke's career.

1:00:44So it was wonderful. Yeah. for her and she's gone on to great success. And I went into Memphis, which earned me my first Olivier nomination. Yeah, and you've had three, right? And I've had three and I won on the third time. Supporting actress, right? Best supporting actress for Sylvia. I want to finish on a bit of your story where you kind of amplify women's health. And obviously, because I'm so into that. And I love what you do and around black women and their health, because as we know, black women can enter menopause early. Yep. And also the fibroid situation. Absolutely. Can you just tell me what happened to you?

1:01:36So not long after the bodyguard and this beginning again and me getting my new lease of life and I'm in my 40s now, my hair started to just drop, you know, started to break up the hair shaft. And I was like, oh, you know, what's going on? What have I put in my hair? What have I, I've ruined my hair. What have I done to my hair? I couldn't think what it was, but anyway. Then I had terrible cystic acne broke out of nowhere, it would appear. I didn't know it was periorenopause. It was beginning. And then in around 2014, 2015, I noticed a lump here in my abdomen. and I'll be honest I ignored it because I was doing the bodyguard for the second time and I thought it's probably it's probably a hernia but I've got this contract to do if it's a hernia I'll get the contract done and then we'll get it sorted and we'll sort it out at first I thought I was pregnant did pregnancy tests I was like oh Jesus I can't be pregnant 40 how much I can't be pregnant and I never wanted to have children it just wasn't something I wanted for myself pregnancy says negative negative what the hell is this but it was raised on one side it wasn't like it was a uniform right bulge you know I'll sort it after the contract I started to feel not right not queasy not unwell yeah it was I started to have weird headaches started to feel like I wasn't in control of my own body.

1:03:34Long story short, while I was in Canada doing the bodyguard again, went to the hospital just to see what was going on. I hadn't connected any dots. First thing they do is take your blood pressure. It was through the roof. No, I didn't know that was a symptom. through the roof. Wow. What had happened was I had fibroids. That was the lump. So how many fibroids did you have? I had six fibroids. Wow. One of them was a large, a very large orange. Wow. That one sat there saying hello to me every day that I was ignoring. And the fact that I was feeling unwell and not right was because my blood pressure was so high.

1:04:22When they kept me in hospital, I said, I'm on stage later. You're not. We're keeping you in. They couldn't believe I hadn't had a stroke. They were stunned. That's how bad my blood pressure was. So that's what it can do to you, fibroids? Because it was squeezing on my urethra, which was sending the wrong signals to the kidney and the brain, saying, pump more blood, pump more blood. I feel like not enough women know about fibroids. No, they don't. and it it was threatening my vital organs I had an episode when um I was doing children in need where I was singing I will always love you packed Albert Hall and I fainted in front of five and a half thousand people for children in need fainted god to stop everything um all of this was symptomatic of what was going on inside of me but I didn't know it was going on inside of me.

1:05:20It was only when I went to that hospital because I didn't feel right. And I thought it was some little, something in something. Yeah. So I was on a battery of drugs to get me through, to bring my blood pressure down. Nevermind the fibroids. The big thing at that time was we've got to get your blood pressure under control. You could have a stroke. It's serious. I cried, I cried, I cried. They got me under control. where I could just exist normally. Couple of scares. I got home and my womb was so misshapen and I was in perimenopause. So this is all compacted. Yes. One thing on top of the other. They said, we can't do keyhole because we've got to open you up.

1:06:10We've got to open you up. You're going to have to have pretty major surgery. We can try drugs, we can try other things, we can try and shrink them. The choice is yours. And I had a choice. Do I pump myself full of more drugs? Yes. Which I didn't want to do because... No, and if you've been pretty clean, it's not a very nice feeling. That's it. I think to do that. Again, James was right there holding my hand through all these choices. I'm so clean. Health and wellness is so important to me. do I do this, try and take a battery of drugs to shrink the thing and it probably come back? Or do I say, okay, we have made a decision we're not going to have children anyway.

1:07:01Let me just have this total abdominal hysterectomy. I chose the hysterectomy. Can I ask you something? Yeah. Because I felt like when I hit menopause, I didn't want to have any more children. Yeah. But when I couldn't, I was gutted. And I didn't want any more. No. But it's this idea. It's this loss. Yes. It's the idea of loss. And I knew it was going to save my life. You, yeah. Save me so that I could be me and carry on and have a life. Have a life. But at the same time, I mourned the loss of this part of me. That totally relates to that. I know. I know. Because you've been one of the biggest advocates.

1:07:52You're not just of this country, but anywhere in the world of what it is to go through menopause. But I mean, researching and I have to credit you with a lot of this because you'd spoken up so fervently. and so comprehensively about the experience of menopause and fibroids and, you know, hysterectomy and all of that, because you had spoken, it gave me something to research, to look into what is this going to be like? How am I going to feel? How is menopause going to affect me? Because it will come very early, you know, the full menopausal. Yeah, no periods. You don't get the slowdown. I didn't get any slowdown.

1:08:37It was, here we go. Yeah, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was tough going. Tough going. I had no idea. I had no idea. It's terrible, right? Like, we should all know this stuff because it's not like it's not going to happen to anyone. It's going to happen to every single woman. We don't know about it. Right. Whatever it is, 52 % of the world's population or whatever the stat is, is us. we're gonna face this we're gonna face this and the worst symptom the anxiety yes I am if you've learned anything from this it's that I'm confident confident woman confident in myself, in my abilities and what I do anxiety out of nowhere and ridiculous anxiety over nonsense Over nonsense.

1:09:36Yeah. I had the same thing. I didn't want to drive to the supermarket because I would have to drive back in the dark. I mean, me driving in the dark, I've jumped out of a helicopter over the Grand Canyon. Like, who was I? You know. Oh, my God. Awful. I thought, up with this I will not put. So I really started to look into. Up with this I will not put. I started to look into, you know, the whole thing of HRT and all that stuff. All I'd ever heard was horror stories. All I'd ever heard was horror stories. And then I found a podcast, a doctor who, a female doctor, who had bought into the whole HRT is terrible until she went through it herself and turned to HRT and realised, huh?

1:10:26and then did loads of research. And then now her specialist subject, if you like, is treating women who are menopausal and giving them the best advice she can and to guide them through HRT and to disprove a lot of the flawed studies that happened ages ago on HRT because not enough money and research is done on women's health and especially older women. it's not just crazy it's actually disgusting it's disgusting and I heard that podcast that changed everything for me and I said I'm gonna I'm gonna look into HRT it gave me me back yeah so many women say I I just don't feel like myself anymore and I think that's such a brilliant description of it i just feel out of sorts i'm not yeah i'm not who i was and it is like coming back i think yeah i came back and so my 50s have been great because i came back i made it back i am gonna finish i will let you go in a minute that's okay but i want to quickly finish on your tour born to perform right so you're gonna be doing like you are blending you're doing the unthinkable.

1:11:50You're blending your music career and your musical career. Little bit of everything. Yeah. I want people to understand what has gotten me to this point in my life. So I'm going back to the beginning with my earliest influences. Who influenced me? Who was on this journey? Who supported me? You know, celebrity endorsements and all the rest of it. the hit records the bit in the middle where I pivoted to musical theatre and how it gave me another chance at life and now to where I am now You're going to see me a lot this year I just want to let you know I'm coming to all of it Me and Michael Good But I just want to thank you for coming on You've been very inspiring Thank you You're such a positive light in the world.

1:12:50It's really... And I've always loved you. We've always got on whenever we've seen each other. Over the years and years. I knew this would be this. Yeah. So I just want to say thank you. It's a pleasure. Beverly Knight, everyone. Thank you for having me. I love you. I love you. Your energy is just so beautiful. Thank you. So just in case you missed this episode here, if you love this episode, I know you're going to love that.