Sade are an English band, formed in London in 1982 and named after their lead singer, Sade Adu. Three of their members were originally from Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Sade served a long apprenticeship on the road with Pride. For three years, from 1981, she and the other seven members of the band toured the UK, often with her driving. Pride’s shows featured a segment in which Sade fronted a quartet that played quieter, jazzier numbers. One of these, a song called Smooth Operator, which Sade had co-written herself, attracted the attention of record company talent scouts. Soon, everybody wanted to sign her, but not the rest of Pride. Obstinately loyal to her friends in the group, Sade refused to depart. 18 months later she relented and signed to Epic records — on condition that she took with her the three band mates who still comprise the entity known as Sade: saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, keyboard player Andrew Hale, and bassist Paul Spencer Denman.
Sade’s first single, Your Love Is King, became a top 10 British hit in February 1984, and with that her life, and that of the band, changed forever. The unstressed, understated elegance of the music in conjunction with her look — unspecifically exotic and effortlessly sophisticated — launched Sade as the female face of the style decade. Magazines queued to put her on the cover. “It wasn’t marketing,” she says, wearily. “It was just me. And I wasn’t trying to promote an image.”
At the time of the first album, Diamond Life, in 1984, Sade’s actual life was anything but diamond-like. She was living in a converted fire station in Finsbury Park, North London, with her then boyfriend, the style journalist Robert Elms. There was no heating, which meant that she had to get dressed in bed. The loo, which used to ice over in winter, was on the fire escape. The bath was in the kitchen: “We were freezing, basically”. For the remainder of the 1980’s, as the first three albums sold by the million around the world, Sade toured more or less constantly. For her this remains a point of principle. “If you just do TV or video then you become a tool of the record industry. All you’re doing is selling a product. It’s when I get on stage with the band and we play that I know that people love the music. I can feel it. Sometimes I yearn to be on the road. The feeling overwhelms me”.
Intrusive media interest in her private life has inspired a continuing reluctance on her part to participate in the promotional game. Having been travestied in print on many occasions, Sade rarely gives interviews. “It’s terrible this Fleet Street mentality that if something seems simple and easy, there must be something funny going on”.
