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LEEE JOHN once appeared on Top Of The Pops wearing what looked like a Roman tunic that had shrunk in the wash. “It became a thing for me to have my legs on show,” the Imagination frontman tells me with a grin. “Everybody wanted to know what I’d be wearing next week. Sometimes I just felt like pulling on a pair of jeans but we had to keep it theatrical.”
The flamboyant soul trio changed their look every time they appeared, promoting unforgettable Top Ten hits like Just An Illusion and Music & Lights.
“One week our costumes didn’t arrive so we draped ourselves in white sheets. Another week, I was sick and had to cover my face – I’d had a bad reaction to something and was bloated. So I ripped off part of my costume and used the arm as a balaclava.
“People just assumed it was a new image.
“The producers gave us carte blanche, and we kind of revolutionised the show. I remember looking at the audience and everybody on the floor looked like Imagination, including the dancers, Ruby Flipper, who were friends of ours from the clubs.”
Once they opted for harem chic, but hallucinogenic drugs were not involved.
“I love champagne, red wine, but I’ve never done drugs,” says Leee. “I’m a vaudevillian! I’m passionate about the craft. When I was 14 I saw Lady Sings The Blues with Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, and I read books about Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Janis Joplin...all that talent ruined by drugs.
“I never wanted to end up like that. It was tragic. I’d drink once a week. I’d have been like a kangaroo if I’d done cocaine.”
Open and honest, the likeable Londoner had just turned 24 when Imagination went Top Ten with their debut single Body Talk, peaking at number 4 in July 1981. But his first brush with showbusiness had come years earlier.
Born Leslie Mcgregor in Hackney to parents from St Lucia, Leee was growing up happily in Finsbury Park, north London, until his folks split up.
“My father took me to live in New York when Jacksons mania was raging,” he recalls. “Any little black kid who could sing and dance was getting snapped up.”
Aged 11 he signed to Worldwide Records who coached youngsters in singing, acting and stage craft.
In 1970 he landed a part in off-broadway musical
The Me Nobody Knows. “But by then my father didn’t want me to do it,” says Leee. “He sent me home because he was splitting up with his other wife…”
Back in London, he and classmate Russell Fraser skipped off school to go to afternoon funk and soul clubs like Crackers in Soho.
“At 14, 15 we started writing songs, we formed a group and went to record companies. Roy Fisher at EMI said, ‘Send me your demo’. I said, ‘We’ll do it now’. And we auditioned in the EMI reception there and then.
“All the secretaries came out to watch and he signed us to his subsidiary label, Snazz Records. We thought we’d made it.”
They released one single. “It got to number ten in Finsbury Park,” he laughs. “I realised I had a lot to learn.”
Leee schooled himself in music – “jazz, classical, Caribbean, Motown…” and fashion, frequenting hip boutiques, and studied acting at the Anna Scher Theatre School.
He learned his craft performing in the George Canning pub in Brixton with the Sun Valley Serenaders.
“We played calypso, reggae, soul and funk. As punk was happening, we’d play bingo halls to 2,000 people.
“We backed all the American artists who came over, so I’d be doing backing vocals for the Delfonics and Chairmen Of The Board.”
Leee worked as a singing waiter at Encore in Mayfair to secure an Equity card – “One night the electricity went down so I had to sing in the dark – ‘Everything’s coming up roses…’”
In 1980 he teamed up with Ashley Ingram to form short-lived duo Fizzz. In ’81 they met Jamaican-born Errol Kennedy, the drummer with soul-funk band Midnight Express. Together they formed “slinky, sexy and erotic” trio Imagination – the name inspired by
John Lennon’s Imagine. Morgan Khan’s R&B Label snapped them up. Body Talk – co-written with songwriters and producers Jolley & Swain – opened the door to fame. “I remember sitting at my mum’s table writing the lyrics,” says Lee. “My proudest moment.”
After the rage of punk and 2-Tone’s stark black-andwhite image, the 80s soul revivalists and the New Romantics brought colour back to the charts.
Imagination went on to sell more than 30 million records. Their first three albums went gold.
The single In The Heat Of The Night, a UK Top 3, was their first US Dance and R&B hit.
Burnin’ Up was a US Dance Top Ten, widely credited as being one of the first house records.
Fans included soul giant Marvin Gaye. “Our dancer Winette became good friends with him and played him our music. When we did Soul Train in Los Angeles, the host, Don Cornelius, introduced us saying, ‘This is the group Marvin Gaye gave his approval to.’
“We performed Changes and Illusion. I was really giving it, in a very heavy outfit. It weighed a ton!
“As I was leaving, Marvin was going into make-up. “I don’t know what possessed me, but I asked him, ‘Why didn’t Motown release Keep A Light In My Window?’ It was a duet he’d done with Diana Ross, but he couldn’t remember it. So he asked me to sing it and there I am singing to Marvin Gaye and holding up production…”
Imagination split in ’87. Leee’s second line-up lasted till ’92, but the songs lived on, copied or borrowed by Destiny’s Child, Lady Gaga and the Scissor Sisters. The David Morales 1998 remix of Instinctual was their first US Dance number one.
More recently Leee’s work with the
When we did Soul Train in Los Angeles, the host introduced us saying, “This is the group Marvin Gaye gave his approval to
Gorillaz on 2020’s The Lost Chord boasts 10.8 million views on Youtube; his smooth pop-jazz album Intimate Glow with Shakatak’s Bill Sharpe was released last month.
“I’ve always been very grounded,” he says. “My family keep my feet on the ground. I’d get the star treatment on Top Of The Pops, come home and my sister would say ‘Okay, put the kettle on then’, bringing me back down to earth.
“My mother says, ‘Feel lucky you still have a job’. “I don’t see myself as a celebrity. I see myself as a creative artist. I don’t know what celebrities do.” His
IF HE HADN’T made it in music, acting was Leee’s Plan B. His first TV role, in The Chinese Detective, aired the evening after his first TOTPS. In 1983, he played Mansell, an eternal, on Doctor Who and he has a creative side-line as a documentary maker. He’s currently shooting Flashback, a star-studded film about the proud history of black British musicians.
In the 90s, Leee worked for Nelson Mandela’s Operation Hunger and won a humanitarian award for his work helping orphans as patron of the charity
SOS Children.
He relaxes with morning swims and yoga, but always makes sure he has evening family time.
He’s also proud that “I can’t ever go anywhere abroad without hearing one of our records – especially in Spain, that’s not too bad!”
He has a new Leee John of Imagination live album, recorded at the Paris Olympia, and his greatest hits UK tour starts on May 3.
Leee’s smile widens as he says, “If we don’t play what you want to hear, shout it out and I’ll sing it a capella.”
Leee John’s Flashback Greatest Hits Tour runs during May. Tickets from Leeejohn.com & ticketmaster.co.uk. His album Intimate Glow with Bill Sharpe is out now.