RADIO-FRIENDLY REBEL
Pink receives star on Hollywood Walk of Fame after storied and often tumultuous career
LOS ANGELES If you’ve ever wondered how Alecia Beth Moore became Pink, look no further than her backside. That’s right, her rosy butt cheeks inspired the moniker, which came into existence when the singer was known at LaFace Records — home to Toni Braxton, TLC and OutKast — as the “token white girl” (her words). Now, nearly two decades after she released her debut solo album, Can’t Take Me Home, on the Atlanta-based label founded by Antonio (L.A.) Reid and Kenneth (Babyface) Edmonds, the name remains just as fitting since she continues to kick ass.
This all makes for an amusing location to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right near Jackie Chan and Dwayne Johnson in front of the Dolby Theater. She received the honour on Feb. 5.
If there’s a superhero version of a pop star, it would be Pink, who not only had sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and won three Grammys (out of 20 nominations, including best pop vocal album this year for her seventh and latest release, Beautiful Trauma), but has also raked in average box office receipts of more than $3.6 million per stop on her most recent tour, Pollstar says. (Figures in U.S. dollars.) In March, she heads out on the road for three more months, two countries and 37 shows of an extended North American leg.
But not before the “really special” star dedication.
Her journey to stardom has taken some detours. “I moved to Venice Beach when I was 19, and I didn’t know anybody or anything,” Pink says. “I came out here by myself, and I used to go to Hollywood Boulevard to buy stripper heels. I just remember seeing all those stars and thinking: ‘God, I hope this happens for me.’ And here we are.”
But how did she — a former runaway, high school dropout and homeless drug dealer — get here? “I started singing when I was nine,” Pink says of her early days. “I told my mom that if I didn’t get on Star Search by then, I wasn’t going to be cute anymore and I would never be successful.”
While reality TV wasn’t in the cards, she soon found other outlets for her creative energy. “I did talent shows, I started punk-rock bands, I sang in church, I did everything you could do musically, and I played allages clubs when I was 13,” she says. “I was also on a lot of drugs, and a lot of my friends were overdosing around me — I sold drugs, I took drugs and I went to friends’ funerals, so I knew I had to get out.”
So Pink left home at 15. Her big break — or so she thought — would come a year later when she found the support of Reid, who signed her in 1995 at 16 as part of the girl group R&B trio Choice. “We got shelved,” she recalls. “And it was left up to me to go solo or to stay on the shelf for the rest of my life, so I had to break two girls’ hearts.”
In one of her earliest lessons, she learned the intricacies of contracts. “I had to be the one to decide to go solo and not L.A. Reid, my record company president, because that would be him interfering in a (pre-existing ) contract,” Pink says. “He told me behind the scenes: ‘If you don’t go solo, I’m never going to support you — however, it has to be your idea.’
“So that was the first tricky part. It took me a long time to figure out ... and I felt like I was (horrible). I threw up for a week thinking about these girls and what we had been through together and how unfair that was to them and just how absurd it all was. And I remember talking about it on the phone and he said: ‘Babe, when you pictured yourself as a little girl up on stage, did you picture yourself in a group or did you picture yourself ramming your (stubborn) head through the world by yourself?’ And I was like: ‘That.’ And he was like: ‘Then, don’t waste the rest of your life because of guilt.’”
Then “everybody around me disappeared because nobody wants to get sued,” says Pink. “So I no longer have a record contract, I no longer have managers, and since they were paying for us to live (in Atlanta), I no longer had a place to live. I’m 17 years old and I’m homeless. What do I do? I know these guys in the Bronx who were writers-producers, so I’m going to move up there and sleep on their floor. I’m going to smoke weed, and I’m going to write songs because when the dust settles, I want to put a record out.”
But Pink happened to be in the right studio at the right time when a publishing executive took notice. Says Pink: “This publisher walked in and said: ‘What would it take to get you to sign a publishing deal?’ I’m broke at this point — I have like $20. And I go: ‘One million dollars!’ I was joking. And he goes: ‘OK, I’ll see you on Monday.’ I was like: ‘Huh? … I should have said two!’ And right as I was signing, my managers (of Choice) that I haven’t seen in like six months walked in, and I said: ‘ What (are) you guys doing here?’ And they go: ‘You never fired us. By the way, little girl, when you want to fire people, you have to put it in writing. So we’re taking this advance.’ And they took all my money.”
Reid has only fond memories of his former protege: “Alecia is arguably the smartest, most acrobatic, charismatic and superbly talented artist to ever hit the music scene,” he says.
Pink credits a new manager, Roger Davies, with helping to turn her career around, and not just financially. “I had been screwed, blued and tattooed by every person I came across,” she says of her early experiences. “I had sold 15 million records, and I was penniless.
“It was a lot of lessons at a really young age, but I paid attention because I don’t like to make the same mistake twice,” she says. “And then I found Roger when I was 21 right before Get the Party Started came out. I had made that entire record on my own without the blessing of my record company.”
But perhaps her best decision was in refusing to be pigeonholed creatively. “I just needed to be who I was at that moment. I need to be who I am. I need to be authentic, and I’ve always been a kid who has been a lot of everything. I don’t think that you should just have to be one thing. … I didn’t want to be stuck in a box because there’s nowhere to go.”