What happened to Erroll Starr?
In 1989, Erroll Starr — the Kitchener musician who won the Juno Award for R&B/Soul Recording of the Year for his single “Angel” — did an unusual thing for someone at the top of his game.
He walked away. Disappeared. Vanished. Poof.
“I just shut everything down,” he told the Record a few days before a documentary about his life, “Temple of Love: The Erroll Starr Story” premieres at Waterloo’s Princess Twin Cinema.
“I didn’t tell anybody. There was no formal announcement. (TV personality) Master T summed it up pretty good — ‘He was there and then he was gone.’ ”
It may not have been a complete surprise to those around him.
Despite his acknowledged talent, the Jamaican-born singer who moved to Kitchener by way of England in the early ‘70s, had struggled to get radio play, venues to book him and — despite appearances to the contrary — money to live.
By the time of his Juno win, preceded by nominations in 1986 and 1987 and an award as Best Male Artist at the Black Music Association of Canada awards, he had also developed a drug problem.
“Everybody is presented as this media star,” he says from the distance of decades. “But there’s no substance in it.
“I was driving in a frickin’ limousine going to this gig and then, coming back, it was dropping me off at my rented apartment.
“It was a lot of hype and smoke and mirrors.”
Things came to a head when he found himself waiting for a streetcar not long after his Juno win, conflicted, lost, realizing he had a decision to make: home or hospital.
“It played out the way it was supposed to play out,” he reasons, having chosen the latter destination, which led to a happy post-fame career producing music for film, TV and commercials.
“In hindsight, you always go ‘Well, I could have done that better,’ but if I did, I wouldn’t be the person I am. I gained a lot of perspective of who I am and what I really wanted to do.
“One of the things I learned is that the fame part of the industry is bullsh-t.”
He sighs, a firm believer in listening to one’s inner voice. “Everything is not preplanned, but there’s a course and you can either choose left or right. And certainly that was the choice I had that evening, sitting there, waiting for a streetcar.”
“It was like ‘I have to get out of this, stop the train. I just need a break. Let me reassess.’ ”
Starr, formally known as Erroll Starr Francis, had grown up in Kitchener, attending King Edward and MacGregor public schools before moving on to Waterloo Collegiate, where his early musical leanings frequently got him in trouble.
“I was in music class, but I was more of a disrupter because I wanted to play rock and roll and they wanted to play classical,” he recalls.
“So when the teacher went out of the room, we jumped into ‘Smoke
On The Water.’ So she’s walking back down the hall, not hearing the classical stuff she was teaching. She’s hearing ‘Smoke on the water.’ ”
“Then she comes into the room and sees me and says ‘Mr. Francis, go see the principal!’ ”
He was also in a local band, Phaze, that’s main competition was future metalheads Helix.
“We did the Battle of the Bands at the Kitchener-Waterloo Auditorium,” says Starr, who also remembers playing Bingemans roller rink every two weeks.
“We were in it. Helix was in it. We had flash pods, our own lighting and brought our own dry ice machine. We got disqualified because we were too professional.
At night, he shifted gears, playing R&B, soul and reggae in his father’s band, People’s Choice, for an entirely different audience.
“Kitchener-Waterloo was a central hub for the Caribbean community coming from England and Jamaica,” he says.
“I’ve got three or four generations of relatives still living there.”
It’s all articulated in the 20-minute, two-years-in-the-making film doc — intended as part of a larger project, perhaps a streaming series — produced by his doting Kitchener nephew, Aaron Tyler Francis, who remembers Uncle Erroll pulling up for visits in a limo when he was a kid as “the coolest thing ever.”
“He’s been one of the most impressionable figures in my life,” says the University of Waterloo doctoral candidate, who serves as archivist and curator for Vintage Black Canada, which uses family photos to challenge stereotypes of the Black experience in Canada.
“I always looked up to him, and it’s always fun to tell people my uncle won a Juno in the ’80s, having witnessed it all growing up.”
Erroll Starr, with his satin jacket, flowing locks and whip smart dance moves, was the classic ’80s’ R&B star.
“I used to confuse him with Rick James,” confides his nephew. “I’d say ‘Hey mom, it’s Uncle Erroll!’ and she’s like ‘No, that’s Rick James.’ ”
He laughs. “I didn’t understand why she was lying to me. It didn’t make any sense.”
For his part, Starr is matter-of-fact about the edgy blend of funk-popsoul that landed him an elusive record contract and drove him up the Canadian charts.
“It had a rock flare to it, in the guise of Parliament-Funkadelic,” he says.
“It was wild. It was unhinged. It had rock guitar. It had beautiful, soulful vocals going on. And this was all original material. When the label saw this, they went ‘Wow, this is great!’ ”
That his label dropped him after one album — because it was hard to market — doesn’t faze him.
“I was always under the impression that thoughts held in mind, produce their kind,” says the devoted family man, now a grandfather, who recently took to the stage again with his new band, Tribz.
“It’s a chicken and egg and egg and chicken thing. And I held the thought that there was nothing stopping me. No colour was gonna stop me. I don’t see colour. That may be offensive to some people of colour, but we’re human. We have red blood. That’s all that matters.
“I put out what I want to put out because I feel it’s a good offering to humanity, not to one culture or another. That’s the way I’ve always lived my life.”
“Temple Of Love: The Erroll Starr Story” plays at the Princess Twin at 6 p.m. on Thursday. Erroll Starr will be in attendance with director Kyle Sawyer and producer/nephew Aaron Francis for a post-film Q&A. For tickets, go to princesscinemas.com/movie/screening-qatemple-of-love-the-erroll-starrstory.