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Article de l'an dernier "Singer Alexander O'Neal recalls hiring, firing by Prince"Alexander O'Neal talks Prince, Glasgow and his new book as he returns for anniversary show
The soul and RnB star will sign copies of his autobiography in Glasgow tomorrow ahead of a special anniversary performance at The Pavilion.
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ByGregor Kyle
18:42, 21 FEB 2017
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He is the Eighties soul survivor who, 40 years after taking his first baby steps in the music industry, is still going strong.
There have been knocks along the way and had Alexander O’Neal not shown the strength to come back from one early blow, delivered by none other than Prince, he would not have gone on to become one of the biggest soul and RnB singers of the Eighties and Nineties.
Tomorrow the 63-year-old rolls into Glasgow ahead of a live show at the Pavilion Theatre on Thursday night which celebrates the 30th anniversary of his biggest solo album Hearsay.
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The show includes some of his greatest hits, including Criticize and (What Can I Say) To Make You Love Me and will also see O’Neal take the stage with musicians who have been lifelong friends, dating back to his early years in Mississippi and Minneapolis.
It is a chance to reconnect with his fans, reunite with his friends and continue a trip down memory lane which began when he started work on his new book, All True, Man. Needless to say, O’Neal has pulled no punches, recounting the good days and bad.
“It was all new to me,” O’Neal told Glasgow Live. “It’s the first time I have done anything like this, but I worked with a great writer, Eugene Duffy and he made the process so simple.
“I still love doing what I do" (Photo: Jeff Atkinson)
“I didn’t find it hard, airing my dirty laundry so to speak. When you have had a career like mine you want to talk about it and tell as much of the truth as you can.
“This book really tells my story and I have read it and I am very pleased with it. I wanted to cover everything, I didn’t want to shy away from any subject. I said everything I wanted and laid it all out on the line.”
The book covers O’Neal’s life, in and out of the spotlight, his battle with drugs, racism and the impact that global fame had on him.
One chapter that fans will be particularly keen to read covers his shortlived stint in the band, The Time - a group formed by Prince and comprising of many musicians that the singer - and O’Neal - knew from the scene in Minneapolis.
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O’Neal was the lead singer and his surprise dismissal, years before he broke through as a solo artist, could have ended his career there and then. The reasons why remain shrouded in doubt with some saying O’Neal was too outspoken, others that Prince believed he was ‘too black’ to be the frontman.
“Good things come out of bad situations,” he said, looking back. “The most important thing that I learned from that situation, is that if you don’t have anything good to say about someone then you don’t say anything at all. That’s what I did, I kept my mouth shut.
“I didn’t go out there complaining and saying ‘poor me, poor Alex’. The band were my friends, so I was quiet and supportive of them making that move. Singers and musicians are different. That was their opportunity to move to another level. It wasn’t an opportunity for me.
Alexander O'Neal (Photo: Daily Mirror)
“After that experience I really decided to go for it. I wanted to be an international artist and nothing was going to stop me. Anyway, I realised then that if I was good enough to be fired by Prince, I was good enough for the music industry.”
Within four years of the split, O’Neal was making strides in his solo career and in 1987 brought out the album that included some of his best known tracks. One, ‘Fake’, flew to the top of the RnB charts in the States but the singer was already looking to new horizons and realised this was his chance to reach a global audience.
“When I released the Hearsay album I knew I had struck gold, I knew I’d hit pay dirt,” he said. “It was an international success and that was so important to me.
“Some American artists really don’t reach out to the world, but I have never accepted that way of thinking. I wanted to be a worldwide artist and the only way I was going to do that was breaking out of America.
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“There is a difference between the audiences, here people grow up with you and they grow old with you, they stay with you. I am just so thankful that I was playing the right kind of music that people held in their hearts.”
Tomorrow O’Neal returns to a city that has always held a special place in his heart and as he talks, the tone changes when Glasgow is mentioned.
“I love coming to Glasgow,” he said, “me and my wife both love it, it’s one of our favourite cities in the UK.
“I love the people, they are so real. Being a black American, it takes tenacity to overcome things. When we see something that has to be done, we go and do it. I see a lot of that attitude in people in Glasgow. When the tour was being arranged we had to come here.
“I am having a great time,” he added. “I still love doing what I do, just getting out, doing all the dates and travelling. I love being on tour and playing on stage with some of my oldest friends.
“There is a lot of satisfaction in that. Friendship is important and if you are lucky, you only have a few good friends in your whole life. We are like family, we are more family than friends.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/nati ... /83659926/
Le livre a pour titre All True, Man: Alexander O'Neal.Singer Alexander O'Neal recalls hiring, firing by Prince
USA Today Network Steven Ward, The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger 4:03 p.m. ET April 28, 2016
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(Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger)
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In 1981, music icon Prince hired Mississippi native Alexander O'Neal to be the lead singer of The Time.
Then, before the band could play a show or record a note, Prince fired him.
O'Neal, born and raised in Natchez, believes it was because he asked too many questions about the band's finances.
Still, because of Prince and O'Neal's former band mates in The Time, O'Neal went on to record some of the best, most lush R&B dance albums of the 1980s.
O'Neal, 62, learned of Prince's death last week from the TV news while at his home in London.
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"My first reaction was, 'What?' I was devastated. It floored me. But when it sunk in, I wished him a good journey. His work must have been done at age 57. It was his time," O'Neal told The Clarion-Ledger this week.
Even though Prince fired O'Neal as the lead singer of The Time, O'Neal said he never harbored any ill feelings.
"He is responsible for my career and a lot of the careers of folks that were in Minneapolis at the time," O'Neal said.
Way before O'Neal was singing in Minnesota, girls in Mississippi were giving him dimes when he was 9 to sing songs.
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But O'Neal said he refused to sing in the choir as a child because of shyness. And he really wanted to be become a pro football player. A linebacker, O'Neal played football at North Natchez High School and then went to Alcorn State University from 1972 to 1973.
His football dreams died after he dropped out.
"Academics were not my thing. I didn't really know how to study," O'Neal said. Following a short stint at Copiah-Lincoln Community College, O'Neal moved to Chicago, where he worked at a factory. Later, O' Neal moved to Minneapolis to be near a cousin.
That's when O'Neal, then about 24, started singing in local cover bands such as The Black Market Band and The Mystics.
The cover of R&B singer Alexander O'Neal's 2011 greatest
(Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger)
O'Neal met Prince for the first time when Prince was still in a band called Champagne, later to become Grand Central. Before long, Prince got a record deal and became a solo star with the song "I Wanna Be Your Lover" in 1979.
Just before 1980, O'Neal became the lead singer in Minneapolis band Flyte Tyme, which featured Jimmy Jam on keyboards, Terry Lewis on bass, Monte Moir on keyboards, Jellybean Johnson on drums and Jesse Johnson on guitar.
Prince, now famous and signed to Warner Brothers Records, told childhood friend and former Grand Central bandmate Morris Day that he could get a new band with a record deal. Day and Prince decided the band would be Flyte Tyme and they would kick out Jellybean Johnson and Day could play drums.
That changed after a fateful dinner with O'Neal, the new band's singer.
Jam told Blues and Soul magazine in 1992 that Prince got angry with O'Neal when he started asking questions about money.
"Alex wanted a bunch of money and a new car and new clothes. He was outrageous, and we're all sitting there telling him to shut up," Jam told the magazine.
So Prince kicked out O'Neal and made Day the singer. The rest is history.
"It was hard to be back home in Minneapolis and watch all these guys, your friends and bandmates, on national television becoming so famous," O'Neal said.
But O'Neal's career took off a few years later after Prince fired Jam and Lewis from The Time because the duo missed a concert. They missed The Time show because they were in Atlanta producing the S.O.S. Band.
Now successful songwriters and producers in their own right, Jam and Lewis wanted to work with O'Neal again.
"The thing about Alex is that he can do both uptempo and ballad songs really well. A lot of singers can't do both. Another thing about Alex which is so cool is that he has this voice that sounds like he's been through a lot," Jam told Blues and Soul.
For about 10 years beginning in 1985, Jam and Lewis wrote and produced a group of solo records by O'Neal that yielded R&B hits such as What's Missing, If You Were Here Tonight, Fake, Criticize and Never Knew Love Like This with singer Cherrelle.
"We knew Alex from way back, and he was there struggling with us in Flyte Tyme. We knew he'd been promised a lot in his life and when things didn't work out, when The Time thing didn't happen for him, we told him that if we ever had the opportunity to get him a deal, we would," Jam told Blues and Soul.
Today, O'Neal still records and performs all over the world and spends a lot of time in England, where his brand of smooth and silky dance music still has an audience.
He also still visits Mississippi every year.
"My mother is there and three sisters. I love Mississippi. When I go, it's hard to get me to leave. I will never forget my Southern roots," O'Neal said.
Still, he doesn't perform live in the American South much anymore.
"My music is a little too uptown for folks in the South these days. Doesn't have that gut-bucket soul sound. My music never got the respect there like other places. In England, people still go out to see live music. When people in America get older, they stop going out. They opt for a six pack and remote control instead. But here (In England), my audience still wants to see me," O'Neal said.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-True-Man-A ... r+O%27Neal
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