25 years, 38million albums... and I STILL think of myself as a hairdresser
After a quarter of a century as the singer of Texas, Sharleen Spiteri remains driven and still feels need to prove herself despite her success
IT has been a very long time since Sharleen Spiteri last plied her trade as a salon stylist. In the intervening decades, there have been extraordinary transformations, both in the world of fashion and in the personal circumstances of the feisty Scot who began her working life cutting, crimping and curling.
Since her days of sculpting giant perms and high-volume bouffants, the 47-year-old has become a household name as the singer of Texas – one of the country’s most successful musical exports – and as a solo artist.
She has sold 38 million records, released multi-platinum selling albums and become a close friend of showbiz royalty. Yet despite all the wealth, fame and critical acclaim her musical career has brought her, she has now disclosed that, deep down, she still feels like a Glasgow hairdresser.
In a remarkably candid interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday to celebrate the band’s 25th anniversary, she explains how she still feels a pressing need to prove herself.
She also describes, in the bluntest terms, how she is driven by a hatred of mediocrity.
On her lifestyle, she speaks of the surreal encounters made possible by her celebrity status – meeting Bob Dylan and sitting around the kitchen table with Debbie Harry – versus her need for ‘ normality’, which leads her to relax by spending hours in the launderette.
The band is preparing to record a new album and its frontwoman will be making another bold move by taking on her first role as an actress.
Most striking of all, in spite of her enduring popularity and a worldwide fanbase, is the singer’s apparent refusal to accept that she has ‘made it’.
Miss Spiteri said: ‘I’ m almost waiting to get rumbled... In my mind I’m still a hairdresser, so that’s probably the push.’
With an admirable work ethic, she explained in her typical no-nonsense style how she approaches every task head-on.
The mother of one said: ‘I would d never dream of standing up on a stage e or making a record that’s f*****g g average, it’s never going to happen.
‘I will work my a*** off to make it right and that is why I have a good d night out with my mates and get t drunk and have a laugh but I’m just t like any other person in that way.
‘It doesn’t have to be excessive for r me because, normally, I need to go to o work the next day.
‘I wasn’t brought up in a way thatt if you do something, you do itt half-heartedly.
‘I hate wishy-washy, it’s just not t in me.’
Born in Glasgow, she was the firstt of two daughters for her Maltese- e- Italian father – a merchant navyy captain – and Irish-German mother, a window dresser and seamstress.
The family moved to Balloch, h, Dunbartonshire, and Spiteri has saidd she was bullied throughout her time at Vale of Leven Academy in nearby Alexandria because she felt she never ‘fitted in’.
However, when she went on to work k in an edgy city hairdresser, things s started to take shape.
It was at renowned Scottish salonn Irvine Rusk on Glasgow’s West Nilee Street that a teenage Spiteri learned d her craft in the days before she was s catapulted to stardom.
With an appetite for life that remains evident today, she soaked up the opportunities afforded her through working under the tutorship of an internationally-acclaimed stylist and made her forays into the music world.
‘I was having a ball, working in a very trendy, cool Glasgow hairdressers enjoying the life of getting dressed up on a Saturday night, clubbing and having a great time,’ she said. ‘I was young, I was 17 years old and it was a really exciting time.
‘Music was such a big part – it always has been – of Glasgow and I used to do a bit of DJ-ing or making up tapes for the salon.
‘But to be really honest I never imagined I would be in a band. I liked music but I never, ever really imagined that would be my future.’
Sharing a flat with a group who played football with Texas founder Johnny McElhone’s brother Gerard gave Miss Spiteri the introduction and opportunity she needed to make that unexpected break. With an una- shamed ‘brass neck’ she boldly, if a little untruthfully, claimed she already wrote songs and the pair penned the band’s hit debut single I Don’t Want A Lover.
Since then, Texas have recorded number one albums, won an Ivor Novello Award and seen their best-selling White On Blonde – which included Say What You Want and Black Eyed Boy – go six times platinum.
And with such accomplishments inevitably comes the chance to mingle with the rich and famous.
Last week, Miss Spiteri said: ‘There are unrealistic moments in your life when you’re standing there going, “Wow”.
‘I had one yesterday, it was very strange, I was walking though the village beside my house and I ran into Ewan McGregor’s uncle and he was with Frances de la Tour, who played Miss Jones in Rising Damp.
‘I grew up with Rising Damp when I was a kid. She turned to me and held
‘To be really honest, I never imagined I would
be in a band’
my head and said, “Gorgeous girl, I remember when you started, weren’t you wonderful?” For me, from a small child, that was a massive TV show.
‘This woman’s in her early seventies and I was like, bloody hell, she knows who I am.’
Miss Spiteri, mother to 13-year-old Misty Kyd, added: ‘There are so many different things.
‘You’re standing having conversations with Bob Dylan or there was one moment I was sitting in my kitchen and Debbie Harry was sitting at the end of my kitchen table with John Taylor from Duran Duran.
‘I was thinking, f****** hell, if anybody in the early Eighties had said when I was growing up that I would know these people… because I was such a big Duran Duran fan and Blondie’s Parallel Lines was the first album I ever bought.
‘There’s those really surreal moments when you’re sitting talk- ing about making records, performing, doing whatever with people that’s just a completely different world.’
Miss Spiteri counts vegetarian cookery writer and photographer Mary McCartney as well as her fashion designer sister Stella among her close friends and opened for their father Sir Paul when he played at Hampden five years ago.
And while her mobile phone contacts list has been said to include numbers for Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow, she stressed it was never celebrity that drove her and her bandmates to their own prominence.
When asked what was behind the band’s longevity, the Summer Son singer said: ‘The songs and our albums are always number one. We’re a band that can tour and what you heard on the record – we could do that on stage, sometimes we could even do it better live.
‘We’ve always had such a good reputation as a live band. Probably the love that we have for it, when that’s what you want to do. It wasn’t about being famous, it wasn’t about being a celebrity – none of that was important.
‘Elements of that come along with the success of your music because then what happens is you get known, so then people recognise you when you’re on TV and stuff.
‘But that continues to be so unimportant to us, if nobody recognised me another day in my life I would be fine.
‘That’s what some people build a career on, that was never what our career was built on. Our career was always built on the music and we continue to do so.’
Indeed, while Miss Spiteri, who lives in London, can be photographed rubbing shoulders with fellow stars, she is as likely to be found spending time with people from her adolescence.
She explained: ‘Stella and Mary are my mates, they’re my friends that I see regularly all the time, they’re my girlfriends.
‘My best friend Gillian down here is from Glasgow, I’ve known her since I was 14 years old.
‘That was a friendship that was from way back, from really early on and we’re still best pals. People maybe think it’s all separated, that you have your famous friends and your non-famous friends, but my friends are all mixed.
‘They’re all very strong, successful women in whatever they do. They’re just good, honest people and that’s it. I don’t see them in any other way and they don’t see any of us in any other way – we’re mates and that’s it.’
However, the shearer turned songstress does not forget how privileged her life has become and said it is the chores many people loathe that she turns to for relaxation.
Miss Spiteri, whose long-term partner is 38-year-old high-profile chef Bryn Williams, said: ‘I love movies, I love cooking.
‘I have those moments where walking round a supermarket with a trolley, because I don’t have to do it day in, day out, sometimes just that thing of walking round, looking at shelves is a way of relaxing.
‘I love going to launderettes – that sounds insane. When we’re on tour, that’s my thing, I’m like “f*** this, I’ve had enough, I’m away to the laundry”.
‘I’ll go and sit in a laundry for an
‘I’ll sit in a laundry, I need that connection with normality’
hour and wash my clothes. I’ve got to have that connection with normality sometimes just to function.’
The band this year released Texas 25 – a combination of new tracks and reworked hits with a soul twist – to mark the quarter-century since their first album was released.
They are touring the UK and Europe to perform and share their experiences from over the years.
It hasn’t always been a smooth run for the group, which luckily fared well overseas, as their second and third albums failed to make great waves in this country, allowing them to come back to glory with White On Blonde.
And at the most serious end of the scale, guitarist Ally McErlaine nearly died when he suffered a massive brain aneurysm aged only 40 in 2009.
At the encouragement of his ‘remarkable’ wife, singer Shelly Poole, his bandmates rallied round to talk about their shared memories as part of the process towards his incredible recovery.
Now, with the tour winding up in Aberdeen on December 19, the Texas members are working on an album of new tracks, which is likely to be released in 2017.
For Miss Spiteri, another exciting project is waiting in the wings, as she is to make her acting debut in I Feel Fine, a film about the turbulent teenage years of Des Hamilton – now a casting director – as he grew up in Glasgow’s Govanhill neighbourhood. With leading Scottish film-maker Lynne Ramsay on board and other parts to be played by David Tennant and Dominic West, the gritty drama – in which she will play Hamilton’s mother – is expected to be intense viewing.
However, it has yet to start shooting, despite its initial scheduled production date in 2010 and the latest prospect of filming this month being dashed once again.
As she crosses her fingers for the cameras to roll soon, Miss Spiteri has yet to determine if her acting skills will be a match for her musical talent.
She said: ‘The story’s great. I’ve known Des since I was 13, 14 years old and I know the story. I know the real visual of it, so when he asked me if I would play the part of his mum I was so proud, considering I’m not an actress.
‘I might be crap at it. I hope I’m not crap but it’s an unknown territory.
‘I had my doubts and I spoke to Des about that – what makes you think I can do this?
‘Give me a song, I’ll sing it, no problem but when it comes to dialogue I don’t know… I’m not short on having anything to say but they’re normally my own words, so it’s a bit different.
‘I hope I do him proud and it’s something that I hope is going to work.’
Considering the fervour she applies to everything else in life, it is hard to imagine that her first film appearance will be anything other than a triumph.