FAMILY
suddenly, after a few weeks of crazy travelling – America, a double headline with Ray Davies in Denmark, TV shows here and just partying – suddenly I had an acute psychotic breakdown.
“It came out of the blue. I’d never suffered from depression before and we don’t have a history of it in the family. But I was completely out of it. Not unconscious, but having really terrible paranoia. I couldn’t sleep for I don’t know how many days and was having chronic nightmares, like you’re in an apocalyptic film.”
Deeply unwell, she was admitted to the Nightingale Hospital in Paddington for two weeks. Katie remembers: “When I was coming out of it, one of my night-shift nurses said: ‘Jesus, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.’”
Does she view her mental breakdown as a function of the treadmill, and the success, the relentless pace of it?
“Hmm…” she begins. “There was that. Having that in your early twenties, trying to figure out who you are, I experimented – the partying, not wanting to have a conventional family… I just wanted to try everything. I think it’s what most twentysomethings do. Then, as I was turning 26, it dawned on me: actually I love family life, and I do want to get married and have kids one day, I’m not this crazy rebel.”
She was put on anti-psychotics for four months, and the anti-depressant citalopram for two years. “And I’m really proud of the fact that I weaned off them.” She admits to a slight apprehension about returning to work, wondering whether resuming singing and performing might trigger another breakdown.
“Did my job do this to me?” she wonders rhetorically. “I wouldn’t want to pin it just to that. Recreational drugs and partying and drinking – that doesn’t help.
“It taught me just what the mind can do,” she continues. “And since then, I have been very clean living. I don’t really drink, I don’t do any recreational drugs – because the human mind is extraordinary in terms of the chemicals in there. Because mine just went,” she smiles, pointing to the ceiling.
Now signed with new management and a new label, Melua is more in charge of the business side. “I’ll go through the budgets for tours and recordings, royalty statements… You have to wise up about it a bit more. I can do my own hair and make-up. I don’t need an entourage. Maybe when you’re 18, 19, 20, you could have a bit of a wobble if you’re going on live TV and playing guitar. But in your thirties you’ve got to just grow up about it.
“Plus, I married a Yorkshireman. I think you probably know what I mean by that – financial sensibility!” she laughs.
Even with her spell of ill-health in 2010 and 2011, Melua largely kept up her work rate. She released albums in 2012, 2013 and, in 2016, In Winter, recorded with Georgia’s Gori Women’s Choir. The latter is a reflection of a still-deep attachment to her homeland. When we meet she’s just back from a weekend visit, where she performed in Tbilisi and was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the Georgian capital. She’ll be spending much of the rest of this year on an extensive European tour. Toseland is also busy. Now retired from competitive racing through injury, he’s a sports pundit, and a musician, too. But will the couple pause their careers to have a family, I wonder?
“Totally. That’s the biggest thing with women in our industry: our courage to go, ‘OK, I’m in my midthirties and I want to have family.’ But just finding that moment to say, ‘OK, this is it,’ is the biggest struggle. And then praying and hoping that nature will be kind to me…”
As for that forthcoming two-month run of concerts, Melua is determined to do it sensibly. She’s been thinking about adding extracurricular activities for the touring party, to break the cycle of gig, hotel bar, party, tour bus. “Takeaway night? Cinema night? Game of netball backstage? Just to add something.”
Spoken like a true grown-up.
‘It dawned on me… I do want to get married and have kids one day. I’m not this crazy rebel’