Authors: John McShane
By that final weekend of November 2009, 700,000 copies of Susan’s album had been sold in one week in the US alone. In Britain it was an estimated 400,000.
‘I went to LA and there were great crowds waiting for us at the airport,’ she said. ‘It was quite something – nothing that a woman like me was used to, for heaven’s sake. But I found Americans to be incredibly warm and friendly.
‘It was quite something to be in Hollywood. The hotel I was staying in, apparently Frank Sinatra used to take
his women there. And I dipped my toes in the same pool Grace Kelly had been in.
‘This is a world I’d never seen before and never dreamt that I would get to see. I can’t wait to visit again.’
She repeated the fact that her one regret was that her parents were not alive to see her amazing transformation. Her father Patrick, a miner and pub singer, had died ten years earlier.
‘I think they would be very proud of me – I hope they would. I’ve done a lot of wrong with my parents. There’s no one around that hasn’t. But hopefully I’ve made up for that now and they’re smiling down on me. I can feel it sometimes. The only dream my dad had, of becoming a singer, is coming true through me – so I think he’d be proud!’
Brother Gerry had his views on Susan and the remarkable situation she was in, global superstar on one hand, middle-aged spinster in a council house on the other.
‘I worry Susan will become totally consumed by fame and lose touch with reality,’ he revealed. ‘If that happens the lid could come off at any moment. I need to protect her because she is still so insecure and vulnerable. Her family is her only anchor. Without us she could be cut adrift.
‘Susan said she was in great spirits but it was clear she had become totally overwhelmed by the reaction to her by the American public. I kept asking her, “Are you calm, are you happy?” and Susan replied that she’s
where she wants to be, which reassured me. I told Susan she needed to kick back quietly for a few days and spent time carefully telling her everyone loved her especially her family and of course her beloved cat Pebbles, which she always asks about.’
What worried him, he said, is that Susan was aware she can be the hottest thing around today and be gone tomorrow.
‘She talks to me regularly and calls at bizarre hours of the day and night. Immediately I have to bring her back down to earth doing the old brother-and-sister chat. Susan’s so huge but she is still coming to terms with it all even six months or so down the road. She pours out her heart to me all the time and can get into a groove of feeling sorry for herself. I spoke to Susan before she flew out to America and she knew this was really the start of the big time. But that also brings its problems if her head isn’t in the right place. She is so different to everyone else and the least thing can send her into a pit of depression.
‘It’s a phenomenon to Susan and what I do, deliberately, is let her talk about her career for a minute and then suddenly change the subject and inject a bit of normality. It’s the way forward for Susan,’ he told the
People
newspaper.
‘From June she’s been rocking up on TV all over the world and become a prisoner in her own home and hotel room.
‘She has an excellent management team but I’m there
for her emotional support. Of course the money is great for Susan, but she is happiest sitting at home by the fire with Pebbles.
‘I know Susan would give up the millions just to stay happy and normal.
‘The Priory was good for her but the battle against depression and stress is a day-to-day fight. In a strange way the more she is loved the more worried she becomes.’
Gerry added, ‘Simon Cowell has been a great support to Susan… But don’t forget Susan put herself up for the show – no one else. What Susan needs is a few days sitting alongside her fire with her phone off and Pebbles purring on her lap.’
The experienced publicist Max Clifford, who represented Simon Cowell, had his own verdict on the best way of helping Susan. ‘Back in the Sixties, we had The Beatles and that was astronomical. But it still took weeks and months for them to gain worldwide fame. For Susan, it was literally minutes. There’s never been anything quite like this before. She will have people there keeping an eye on her, protecting her from excess and her new band of over-enthusiastic admirers.
‘The important thing is to let her do it her way and then, in a few weeks or months, she might say “I can’t do this anymore” – but she has to make that decision. I think everyone has been taken a bit by surprise. Nobody in the industry has worked with a Susan Boyle before.
‘But they have learned and adjusted and Simon Cowell
has made sure that her family is kept very close and everything is done the way that is comfortable for her.
‘There’s a very good chance she will be around for a while because she has a lovely voice and a wonderful story that has captured the hearts of millions. But she is the most unlikely star I think we’ll ever see.’
Susan’s record sales were astounding. When the official figures were released, in its first week in the UK the album sold 410,000 – the best first week figure for an album since records began. She took the record for the best first week’s sale for a debut album from another reality TV star –
The X Factor
winner Leona Lewis whose album,
Spirit
, sold more than 375,000 copies in its first week in November 2007.
She in turn had beaten the previous record set by the Arctic Monkeys in 2006 for their debut
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
.
Martin Talbot, of the Official Charts Company, said: ‘Susan Boyle’s achievement is quite phenomenal. After all of the excitement surrounding her appearance on
Britain’s Got Talent
, everyone expected her to make a big impact when she released her first music. But to arrive with such a bang is exceptional.’
It was a similar story in the States where the album soared to No. 1 in the US charts. Her CD sold a record 701,000 copies in its first week across the Atlantic – over three times that of nearest rival, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
That meant it was the fastest-selling female debut album ever – with two million copies shifted worldwide. In the States, her CD was the fastest selling by a female artist ever. Only US male rapper Snoop Dogg had sold more in a debut week. The album was also No. 1 in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada and many other countries around the world.
Simon Cowell said, ‘She’s like a great underdog story – it’s like a Hollywood movie. It’s this lonely lady living in her little house in this little village in Scotland who for all her life had dreamt of becoming a star.
‘Nobody had ever taken her seriously and her last attempt was to come on
Britain’s Got Talent
. The minute she starts singing her life changes forever.
‘I’m incredibly proud of Susan as well as being delighted for her,’ he said. ‘The success could not have happened to a lovelier person. She did it her way and made a dream come true. In
Britain’s Got Talent
, she opened her mouth and the world fell in love with her, which is why her album has been the fastest-selling of anyone making their debut.’
Such was Susan’s fame by now that the smallest remark by her was likely to be given space in the newspapers and on websites. So when she said meeting
Baywatch
star David Hasselhoff, now one of the judges on
America’s Got Talent
, was one of the highlights of her rise to fame, the news travelled around the world. ‘The most memorable moment has been on
America’s
Got Talent
when I met Piers, Sharon Osbourne and The Hoff – he’s a nice wee hunk,’ Susan quipped.
The favour had been repaid by ‘The Hoff’, who had said Susan was responsible for ‘bringing the world together.’
In one radio interview she said, as an aside, that when she died she would like to have the children’s song ‘Nellie The Elephant’ by Mandy Miller played at her funeral. That news too spread like wildfire.
Amid all this frenzy, it is interesting to analysis what a fellow singer thought of her. Bette Midler – the Divine Miss M – had been at the top of the tree for three decades and so was in a unique position to comment on both Susan and her success. Being Midler, she would not come out with platitudes either; she wasn’t that kind person.
‘I think the choice of material is very bright because a lot of it is faith-based and there is a large part of the population who are attracted to the church. She is an act whose time has come,’ said the star. ‘People love that kind of voice. She sings straight. She does not do a lot of riffing. There are no trills, no thrills. It’s straight singing and it comes from the heart.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
P
iers Morgan looked straight at the camera and announced: ‘Together for the very first time… please welcome Elaine Paige and Susan Boyle!’
It was the evening of 13 December 2009, just eight months after that
Britain’s Got Talent
audition in Glasgow had been screened, and Susan Boyle’s world had changed forever.
At the audition, there had been laughter and eyebrows raised in surprise that this unknown woman had even dared to mention her wish to emulate Elaine Paige. Yet here they were, about to share a stage together. And it was on a show devoted to Susan, not Elaine Paige!
Morgan was right; it was the first and long-awaited teaming of the two – one an iconic figure, a living-legend of the musical stage, the other a woman who had brought a new meaning to the phrase ‘ Showbiz Sensation’.
From the first moment Susan had captured the
imagination of the world, Paige had expressed an interest in singing with her. And now, at last, it was to happen. The song they were to sing was ‘I Know Him So Well’, a number that Paige had had a massive hit with years before when she recorded it with Barbara Dickson.
From the musical
Chess
, the song had a superb pedigree. Not only were Paige and Dickson two of the most respected women singers in the business, the number was written by Tim Rice and the Abba pair Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, men with impeccable track-records of creating popular music masterpieces. Many stars had performed it in the past, including Barbra Streisand and Whitney Houston, and it had even been the subject of a merciless spoof by comediennes Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
This was no tongue-in-cheek approach, of course, as Elaine Paige, looking stunning on television that Sunday evening in a shimmering blue dress, began singing the opening verse of the bittersweet song, a dialogue between the estranged wife and the mistress of a chess champion. As Susan, looking chic in a full-length rich-brown dress, began to take part in the song and walked across the stage to join her, the audience at the London Studios applauded instinctively. For over three minutes the pair harmonised, the song’s Abba roots showing strongly, and when it ended they embraced each other. As Susan looked downwards, Paige whispered comfortingly in her ear as the audience cheered. Susan blew her a little kiss.
Piers Morgan was moved to say, ‘I am not actually sure who was the most excited there, but it was probably me.’
Susan sang two other solo songs, ‘Who I Was Born To Be’ and ‘Cry Me A River’ that evening, before finishing, inevitably, with ‘I Dreamed A Dream’. Unlike that day in Glasgow a lifetime earlier, she was not alone on stage this time. Around her she had the cast from
Les Misérables
and there she stood, centre-stage of this massive production, the centrepiece of the most successful musical of all time.
Ten million viewers tuned in to watch the hour-long special on ITV and when the show aired in the US, on the TV Guide Network, it became the highest rated television special in its history.
Given the millions of words that had been written about her and the countless hours of radio and television air time she’d had, it seemed unlikely that there would be anything new that could be said about her. Nevertheless, there was some intriguing information aired that night about how she had been received and perceived that day in Glasgow.
Declan Donnelly said, ‘We first saw Susan up in Glasgow, she kind of wasn’t really chatting to anybody just sitting alone in a corner. So we didn’t really take that much notice of her. We kind of sent her on stage and then if I’m honest with you our thoughts turned to what we were going to have for lunch.’
Anthony McPartlin had a similar memory. ‘We
thought, “Ah here we go, another one of those. We’ve got another one of those.” Susan was nervous, she was definitely nervous.’
During the show, in which Morgan presented Susan with a triple platinum record for selling over a million copies of her album, Simon Cowell also discussed his feelings that day. ‘I could actually feel the audience behind me, beginning to get restless, you feel it. They smelled blood, seriously. Within about five seconds of her singing I felt this unbelievable change.
‘That was the moment where I thought if she can hit the chorus, this song is going to change her life forever. I could feel it. What I felt during and after the song I don’t think I’ve ever felt at any audition in my life. There was something magical about that audition.’
Talking about her semi-final appearance, with its faltering start, he said, ‘She couldn’t quite get the top of the song right and for any singer, particularly somebody like her without any experience of live shows, it throws you. Then the first crack appeared. I asked to see her before the final went out. I just cleared the dressing room and said, “I want to talk to you Susan. You don’t have to do this.” She said, “Simon I’ve lived all my life on my own, I’ve dreamed all my life about being a singer this is the one shot and I want to do this.” I said, “You’re the red hot favourite, which for me means there is a chance you may not win. How are you going to deal with that?” She said, “I still want to enter.”’
And when Diversity were announced as the winner? ‘Normally I’d look at the winners, this time I’m looking over to my right and I saw a glimmer of fear there: “no one’s gonna want me anymore.” This was the lowest point we’d ever reached. Where suddenly you go we have a responsibility here, and that’s the point where you question yourself, the show and “have we ruined this person’s life?”’ he said.