What is really unbelievable is that with so little encouragement, other than from her mother, Susan had the drive and ambition to battle on. Much has been made of her learning difficulties, but what really stands out is her determination and self-belief. Simon Cowell might have been the man to finally put her on the global map, but it was Susan herself who embarked on the journey.
But before she got there, there was to be even more pain and heartbreak.
Tragedy and Triumph
By her late thirties, it was beginning to seem as if Susan’s big break would never happen. She appeared to have tried all the avenues of opportunity open to her, and had got nowhere. In the late 1990s, she made what must have seemed like her last big effort, using all her savings to record a demo tape, on which she sang ‘Cry Me A River’ and Roberta Flack’s hit ‘Killing Me Softly’. She distributed this CD to a handful of friends, but if it was meant to break down barriers, it didn’t do the trick. Like the Millennium Celebration CD, it is now, of course, a collector’s item, but at the time it didn’t help her make inroads into the record business.
And so began a very difficult time for Susan. In 1999 she lost her father, and 18 months later her sister Kathleen, to whom Susan had been very close, also passed away. It shook Susan badly. ‘Kathleen’s death hit Susan very hard,’ her brother Gerard told the Sunday Mirror. ‘Susan was very close to her and Kathleen doted on Susan. Kathleen suffered an asthma attack at home in 2000. Obviously losing Dad was hard, but at least he was older and he’d lived his life.’
It must have felt like the end of an era as Susan’s world contracted around her rather than expanded. To lose two people who had been so close to her in such a short period of time was devastating, not least because they were both her protectors. In her early years, Susan might have had her problems, but at least she had a family who protected her; now that was less and less the case. While Susan’s other siblings loved and cared about their sister, they were getting married and having families of their own - they had other concerns at the centre of their lives.
Susan lived a quiet life, caring for her mother and working as a volunteer at Our Lady of Lourdes, where she would visit older members of the congregation several times a week. ‘I wasn’t working, so we scraped by on mum’s pension and my benefits,’ she told the Daily Record. ‘It was a sad time, but I was happy at home. My parents always thought it was better I lived with them so they could keep me safe. That’s why I’ve never been on a date or met a man. My mum and dad didn’t want me to have boyfriends because they were worried they would try and take advantage of me. Time went on and I just accepted it was never going to happen.’
It was a frugal existence, though. Susan and her mother had always been close, but now circumstances were such that the bond between them grew stronger still. With just the two of them living in what had once been home to a family of twelve, increasingly the two had only each other for emotional comfort. It must have been extremely worrying for Bridget, who knew that no one would be there to look after Susan once she had gone. Susan had never left home, never lived on her own and never, apart from a brief six months in her teens, had a job of any description. Her siblings were around to keep an eye out for her, of course, and the local church would always be there, but Bridget must have been concerned. Consequently, she did as much as she could during the last few years of her life to ensure her daughter would be materially comfortable. She did the house up as much as possible, knowing, perhaps, that Susan would have less interest in looking after her surroundings, and prepared for what was to come.
‘Before she got very ill, she began putting money aside for me, and got nice carpets for the house and stuff like that,’ Susan later recalled. ‘I’d ask her what she was buying it for and she said, “Susan, I’m not going to be with you much longer. I’m getting old.” I still couldn’t follow her. It wasn’t until she went that it sunk in.’
Bridget died in 2007, leading to the darkest time in Susan’s life. She was forty-five and had formed an intensely strong bond with her mother, without having created a family of her own, like her siblings. After all those decades of struggling to get noticed, Susan found herself totally alone, with no husband, no career, and seemingly nothing to look forward to. The future must have looked bleak indeed.
It took Susan a while for the full implications of what had happened to sink in, and she recalled how it was at the very end: ‘In February 2007, [Mum] was taken into hospital suffering from dehydration,’ Susan told the Daily Mail. ‘Obviously she was dying. She wasn’t aware of her surroundings. She looked completely different. I couldn’t imagine that shell of a woman was my mother. She was a beautiful person, very warm and kind and very articulate.
‘It’s a very unusual experience, watching someone you love go. When people die, they just go to sleep. I held her hand and, a few minutes before she went, I don’t know what it was, but she smiled at something she saw. I don’t know whether it was Our Lady or my dad, but whoever it was, it was as if she was saying, “It’s all right.” She was in bliss, in a kind of limbo, a wee world of her own. I can talk about it now, but I couldn’t have done a year or so ago. I’d have been too emotional.’
It took Susan a long time to come to terms with the loss of her mother. The comfort of Bridget’s final moments, in which she appeared to be in a state of bliss, did not last, for now Susan was well and truly alone. Her faith helped her to find what consolation she could, and she still had her cat Pebbles, but however much you love a pet, it cannot make up for the loss of a parent, particularly one with whom you share such a strong bond. Susan was devastated. Now there was no one to come home to and no one to ward off the more unpleasant elements of the village, who used to make life difficult for Susan.
Susan recalls a very black time: ‘I was very lonely and very upset,’ she remembered afterwards, explaining that it took quite a while before she felt strong enough even to talk about it. ‘There was a kind of numbness to begin with, because you don’t know what’s happening, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks. My health went down. I had panic attacks and felt I couldn’t cope. I didn’t eat or sleep properly. I’d had everything done for me. But the rest of my family helped pull me through. I think I still struggle with my independence a bit, because I depended on my mother so much - although I have a lot more help nowadays.’
It was Susan’s dependence on her mother that made the loss so hard to deal with. Essentially, in many ways, Susan had never been allowed to grow up. Because she’d never gone through the stage that most adults do of breaking away to find a life of their own, she had never established an identity as an independent grown-up, and now she was being called upon to do so for the first time in the most painful circumstances. Her Catholicism helped, but even so the loss was keenly felt.
‘When I walk into the house now, I’m lonely,’ she said in the aftermath of the audition. ‘But this is where my faith comes in. Her physical presence is no longer here, but her spirit is. She’s still very much a part of me - she’s in my heart. To hang on to her memory is good, in a way, but in another way it’s not so good, because you don’t get on with your own life, and my mother wouldn’t have wanted that.’
In the immediate aftermath of Bridget’s death, Susan went into a state of shock, and so it took some time for the loss to sink in. It is common in the immediate aftermath of a death for it to take some time before the reality of what has happened to set in, and so it was to prove with Susan. Initially, of course, there was the funeral to organize, arrangements to be made and the house to sort out: the sheer weight of duty and protocol that must be adhered to after someone has died. In the aftermath of her loss, Susan was left on her own to brood about what had happened and where her life was going. Real feelings of isolation set in.
‘After mum died it didn’t fully register until maybe six months after, when the loneliness set in and there was nobody except my cat,’ she told the Daily Record. ‘When you lose someone as powerful as your mum, yo
u feel as if a part of you is taken away and it does things to your confidence. My confidence was pretty down at that time. I told myself that, though she’s not here physically, mentally and spiritually she is. That’s what keeps you going. I have my faith, which is the backbone of who I am.’
In the immediate aftermath of Bridget’s death, on top of everything she’d had to deal with, something else catastrophic happened. For the first time in her life, Susan lost her voice. The combined results of shock and grief meant that Susan’s best way of communicating with the outside world was closed to her. Just as her neighbours would later testify that they saw very little of Susan during this dark time, because she couldn’t bear to see people, so it seems she could no longer bear to use the great gift that would one day bring her so much. Bridget had always encouraged Susan to sing, all the way back to when she was a little girl, and to engage in an activity so closely associated with her mother now that she had passed away made it even more painful. ‘For a while after my mother’s death I wasn’t able to sing,’ said Susan. ‘I was too upset. I stayed at home, did the housework, day-to-day tasks.’
Ultimately, though, Susan came to see the gift that she’d been given - her beautiful voice - as a way of reconnecting with her mother and, eventually, fulfilling the dreams her mother had had for her . . . but not yet. The rawness of the emotions she was feeling was too much to bear, silencing her temporarily. And it wasn’t just grief she was feeling - although that was a huge part of it - it was isolation too. At the time, Susan must have felt as if she would never be free of the burden of unhappiness she was carrying, and as though she had reached the limit of what life had to offer her.
Her family was aware of what she was going through. ‘It was easier for the rest of us because we had husbands, wives and partners, but Susan was on her own,’ said Gerard. ‘It was just her left in the family home, which had gone from a hive of activity over the years down to just her. But as time has gone on Susan has got stronger. She realizes Mum has gone now and has come to terms with it and taken strength from that.’
The despair Susan felt in the wake of her mother’s death combined with the despair she felt about where her life was going. It was not just a case of not being able to sing: she didn’t want to sing, either. All those dreams of being another Elaine Paige had come to nothing - Susan had done as much as she could, and she didn’t have the energy to try any more. There was a feeling that this was it: this was what her life had amounted to. All the promise of youth and her beautiful voice had come to nothing. There was nothing to hope for any more.
This was confirmed by those who knew her. ‘She always had a vision of herself as a singer, but last year she told me she wasn’t going to sing any more,’ her voice coach Fred O’Neil told the Sunday Times in the wake of Susan’s triumph on Britain’s Got Talent. ‘I remember a phone call late last year when she said she was too old and that it was a young person’s game.’ But Fred had been training her for the longer term: ‘When I first heard her sing, it was obvious she had a naturally good voice and our work was to make sure it lasted a lifetime and that it was extended to its full capacity,’ he continued. ‘That [the audition] was her just gearing up, she can sing better than that.’
She was in no state to do so back then, though; as far as Susan was concerned, it was all over. But into even the blackest grief and despair, some light eventually shines, and so it was with Susan. After a period of intense suffering, she began to look at life in a different way. The raw grief was mellowing into acceptance, and Susan was beginning to think about what her mother had really meant to her, and what Bridget had encouraged her to do. And what Bridget had wanted was for Susan to sing.
Not only that, she wanted Susan to get out there and show the world what she could do. Yes, Susan had made some earlier attempts to get noticed, but Bridget didn’t want her to give up. She didn’t think Susan was too old, and she believed she had a good chance of arousing people’s interest. In addition, Bridget was a great fan of talent shows such as The X Factor - Britain’s Got Talent aired for the first time shortly after her death - and she thought her daughter should give it a go.
‘Mum loved the show and used to tell me I should put my name down and that I’d win it if I did,’ Susan told the Daily Mail. ‘But I never thought I was good enough. It was only after she died that I plucked up the courage to enter. It was a very dark time and I suffered depression and anxiety. But out of the darkness came light. I realized I wanted to make her proud of me, and the only way to do that was to take the risk and enter the show.’
By entering the show - although it would be Britain’s Got Talent, rather than The X Factor - Susan would be re-establishing a relationship with her mother and fulfilling Bridget’s ambitions for her. And so from the depths of despair arose new drive and determination. If Bridget had thought she was good enough to be on the programme then, as an act of love for her mother, Susan would prove her right.
Something else had happened to give her some encouragement. Earlier in the book it’s stated that all reality-TV talent show winners are young and pretty, including the boys, but there had, in fact, been one exception to that rule: Paul Potts - he of the interesting dentistry, who had won the first series of Britain’s Got Talent when it aired in June 2007. Susan had seen the show and realized that despite Potts not being conventionally handsome, he’d still managed to win. An idea began to form in her mind.
‘I had a bit of a rest after my mum died, but I had seen Britain’s Got Talent on TV and thought I would have a go,’ was how she summed it up. ‘Paul Potts was really good. He was an inspiration to a lot of people and I thought I would take my chances.’
It was a good call, so Susan got in touch with the makers of Britain’s Got Talent - there were rumours that, after hearing about her remarkable voice, they got in touch with her, but there doesn’t appear to be any truth in the story - and began to prepare for her performance. It was a brave thing to do. Susan was aware by then that she wasn’t conventionally pretty (although she had been when she was younger), and she’d had to endure Michael Barrymore clowning around and mocking her in his usual tasteless way. She’d also put up with being taunted by certain people in her village, and throughout her life she’d had to cope with the fact that many people thought she’d never amount to anything. She was also, whether she realized it or not, setting herself up for potential humiliation. The judges on Britain’s Got Talent, Simon Cowell in particular, were not known for their gentle demeanour, and the audience could be pretty brutal, too. For a gentle, vulnerable woman like Susan, it was tantamount to entering a bear pit. But she wanted to do it for her mother all the same.
‘I realized I wanted to make my mum proud of me, and the only way to do that was to take the risk and enter the show,’ she said. In time-honoured fashion, Susan started rehearsing for her appearance by singing while looking in a mirror, holding a hairbrush as the microphone, ‘Well, that’s what everyone does,’ she explained. ‘I practised for a couple of weeks before the show, at least an hour a day.’
That in itself was a major breakthrough: not only was Susan singing again, she was doing so at length, fine-tuning her voice and getting it back up to scratch. Susan was reconnecting with something right at the very heart of her. Her ability to sing not only enabled her to communicate, but to prove her worth to the rest of the world.
Susan had already established something of a repertoire, including ‘Memories’, ‘Cry Me A River’ and ‘Killing Me Softly’, but it was with ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ that she decided to wow the programme makers. And what an appropriate title it was. Although the song itself deals with a woman whose illusions have been shattered, it couldn’t have summed up Susan’s situation better: a woman closer to fifty than forty, devastated by the loss of her mother and the failure of her many attempts to establish a singing career. Yet still she allowed herself to hope and dream, when a lesser individual would have given up years ago.
The audition for Britain’s Got
Talent was in January, although it was to be months before it hit the screens in May. Susan selected a gold dress to wear, which she had bought for a nephew’s wedding - ‘I bought it at a local shop,’ she said - and travelled by bus to Glasgow, where she was due to perform. ‘I was very nervous before I went on. I had a sandwich and then I went out there. The response from the judges really blew me away - it was a knockout. I was shocked by their reaction actually. My mouth was just wide open when they said all the nice things they did. It was the best feeling, being in front of that panel. I loved it.’
It was not, however, all plain sailing. Susan had to win her audience around, and for the first few minutes it was touch and go. ‘I walked on stage and was jittery,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘One of the questions they asked was, “What singer do you model yourself on?” A smart alec from the audience said Elvis Presley. I said, “He’s dead but I’m not. Elaine Paige.” There was some sniggering, but then the music came on and I just did my song. It felt bloody fantastic. I think I shocked a few people.’
Of course Susan knew what was going to happen when she opened her mouth, whereas the rest of the audience did not. If you view the clip - the most downloaded clip of 2009 - it’s possible to see Susan smiling just a moment before she starts singing, and while she might have been feeling nervous, that smile is the smile of a woman who knows exactly what she’s about to do. She might not have had the opportunities, but she certainly had the talent, and at long last, a lifetime of trying to get her beautiful voice noticed was about to pay off.
Susan Boyle Page 11