by Sheila E.
Just as I was in the middle lane waiting to take a left across two lanes of traffic to turn into the parking lot, my single suddenly came on the radio. This was the first time I’d ever heard it played.
“What?” I cried. “Oh, my God!”
I started screaming. I turned the volume up to the max and started waving my arms in the air. I was so excited. I was yelling hysterically at fellow drivers, “This is my song!”
I couldn’t believe life was so good.
I had a hit single.
I was falling in love.
I was lemon-cake bound.
I was not paying attention.
The cars all stopped, and I crept into the third lane, still whooping and hollering and singing along to “The Glamorous Life.” I didn’t see a car coming up on the inside lane.
Bam!
Of all the times to be hit—while listening to my first single on the radio for the first time!
The other driver was coming fast, and he hit me right on the passenger side. My shiny red Mercedes was totaled, but all I could do was laugh. The driver was stunned and simply couldn’t understand why I was laughing so hard. The traffic backed up and everybody was leaning on their horns, but I just sat in the middle of the road listening to the end of the song and laughing my head off.
A while later I called up the guy who got me the car and, still giggling, I told him, “You know, Randy, I don’t think I like red cars after all. Can you get me a black one?”
22. Fulcrum Point
A fixed point of support on which a lever pivots
There’s a nasty rumor that’s goin’ round
People think that U and, U and I are goin’ down
They insist that we’re more, more than just friends
So I’m gonna stick around until this movie ends
“SISTER FATE”
SHEILA E
As if my life wasn’t crazy enough, Prince had asked me to open for him on his forthcoming Purple Rain tour, starting that November in Detroit. He could have asked just about anyone in the music business and they would have jumped at the chance.
Instead he picked me.
Prince was smart. He made sure that anyone he was producing stayed around him, as it made him and his company sell more records.
As soon as the Sheila E tour was over, I flew to the Bay Area to rehearse my band at SIR studios San Francisco. I wanted to add a few more players, so I made some calls.
Then Prince came up with the idea that I give my first performance as a solo artist in the US at the Purple Rain movie premiere party on July 26, 1984. Based loosely on his own life, the movie was to be shown at the famous Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
The after-show party was in the nearby Palace Theater—and the whole event (including my performance) was to be televised live on VH1 and MTV.
No pressure, right?
Purple Rain was one of the biggest movies to be released that year. For a few weeks that summer, the man I was falling for had the number-one album, the number-one single, and the number-one movie. Not bad for the kid from Minneapolis whose poster I’d drooled over six years earlier.
We both decided what we’d wear and how we’d behave that night. The planning helped me keep on top of my nerves. We even decided to match our clothes to the colors of our two stretch limos. Mine was turquoise, so my outfit was in sparkly turquoise with fuchsia. I had a designer make it for me, but it didn’t fit great, so instead I wore a jacket with massive shoulder pads (which I took off to play), a corset, and a V-neck top with only one sleeve.
Prince’s outfit matched his limo: purple. He wore a frilly white shirt and a piece of fabric—originally a belt I’d bought for him—around his head. “What if I wore it over one eye?” he asked me.
“Yes!” I told him, usually a bossy know-it-all when it comes to fashion (and a few other things too). “You have to do that!” So he did.
I was petrified that night at the Chinese Theatre; it was one of the most nerve-racking performances of my life. Even arriving at the premiere was scary. The limos were inching along Hollywood Boulevard, which was lined with screaming fans and news vans. I walked in on the arm of my makeup artist, James, trying to act like I was totally used to all the cameras.
Prince and I watched the movie, and then as soon as the final credits rolled we rushed around the corner to the Palace, where I was to start the after-party.
The small theater was packed with a thousand people: all the hottest celebrities, top record company executives, and industry insiders. Standing room only. Before I went on I had to answer rapid-fire questions from reporters and MTV VJs. My hands trembled, but I was well rehearsed: Don’t reveal too much. Keep them wanting more. When it was time to go on, there was nothing to do but take the ride. Looking across at my brother Juan, I nodded, and we started to make some music. We played about forty-five minutes straight. I don’t remember much about the show except not being able to hear that well over the monitors and sensing that it wasn’t my best performance. But we’d gotten through it, and the crowd was pumped. When applause replaced the final note, I scanned the crowd—all strangers clapping and cheering—and tried to catch my breath. I looked at Juan, who was taking in the applause himself. He must have felt my eyes on him—that special peripheral vision he has—because he turned to me almost instantly.
We were just a six-hour drive from Oakland’s Ninth Avenue and East Twenty-first Street, but on that stage, in that moment, we were worlds away.
For a moment I wanted to slip away somewhere quiet, far away from the noise in the theater and the noise in my head, but there was no chance of that. The crowd was pressing forward. More camera bulbs popped in my face, and bright television lights made it hard to see. Security was a little slow on the uptake, rushing over to block me from the crowd just a few seconds too late. Prince pushed through the melee to congratulate me, and suddenly the press was all over the both of us.
“Who is she?” people were asking. “Is she with him?”
When we left the party I heard fans screaming not only for Prince, but also for me. I was exhilarated, exhausted, and floating on air. Plus I was hungry. All I wanted to do was go back to the hotel, eat something, and take a bath. But police had shut down the streets, and crowds were still swarming.
“It’s Sheila E!” I heard people yelling. “Sheila E! Over here! Pose for the camera! Sheila E! Can I get your autograph?”
I knew it would be a while before I could get back to my room, get back to Oakland, and get back to being Sheila Escovedo.
That night marked the beginning of a decade of madness. Up until then I’d been happy to be in my father’s bands or to be a background percussionist, drummer, and vocalist for Billy, Herbie, Diana, George, Marvin, Lionel, and others. That night I felt a deep gratitude for where I’d been, and I knew the butterflies were telling me something good about where I was going. But I didn’t know yet how many true blessings were in store, or that I was one step closer to discovering my purpose.
After the Purple Rain premiere, I went straight into rehearsals with my band, and I was very demanding about what I wanted to achieve and how it should happen. This time I was the one in charge. We were going on a major tour with money in our pockets, and things would change. I needed to get new wardrobe and update the look of the band.
Once again, our rehearsals took a minimum of twelve hours a day for the tour. We’d have to be reminded to break for a meal. Each song had to be broken down to parts, vocals, and dance routines, and we had to place each member in position during each song. The staging was very important. I wasn’t playing around, and I whipped them and myself into shape by making them dance even if they didn’t know how.
I came up with a list of rules that applied to everyone involved—including me. No drinking, no smoking, and most of all, no being late. You were excused if you were late one time, but the second time you’d be fined. If you were late a third time, you’d be fired.
I di
dn’t play around. The final rule was about making mistakes that might complicate my tour. Being late three times meant that the musician was getting lazy, didn’t care, was drinking or taking drugs. My message was: if you are serious about your craft and give it all you’ve got, then there will be no mistakes.
Prince flew to the Bay Area to one of our rehearsals to see how we were coming along. Little did he know how serious I was about being a solo artist and putting together the best band. If you were going to open for him, better be good. In fact, we were so good that once he checked out my rehearsal and watched the show, he walked out to the car and called his tour manager to arrange an emergency meeting with the Revolution at his rehearsal spot.
When he got home four hours later, he apparently told them he was changing the entire show. “Ain’t no way Sheila’s gonna have a funkier band than me!” I heard he told them.
I gave him a run for his money. Bay Area musicians weren’t messing around. We meant business. Every single person in the band played their own instrument and would possibly play another as well as sing, dance, and look good.
I didn’t have a Hollywood clue about what was about to hit me.
All this time, I was still saying no to Prince as far as starting an intimate relationship was concerned. Even when I flew across the country and ended up staying with him in New York, I was trying to keep our friendship platonic. It wasn’t just about me trying to stay in control as far as men were concerned—something that dated back to my childhood—but wanting to keep my own power and identity now that I’d finally found it. Prince was a huge star, and had so many other women around him a lot of the time. I didn’t want to be part of a harem.
I also continued to fear that if we slept together, it would only mess up the great relationship we already had. Although I was crazy about him and amazed by his talents and his sexiness, I valued our friendship above all else. He definitely knew how to pursue me, though, and we both knew it was only a matter of time before I’d say yes.
The Purple Rain tour began, and so did our romantic relationship. It was as simple and as sudden as that. Thrown into close proximity with the man who’d been wooing me romantically for years, and in the high-octane environment of a world tour with all its attendant madness, my defenses were finally broken.
We were working hard and playing hard, throwing ourselves into a nonstop, exhausting, and creative explosion of living, loving, performing, and recording. Plus we were doing our best to keep our fledgling relationship a secret. There were many levels of secrecy here. We couldn’t hide it from those in our inner circle, but like any relationship that begins in the workplace (however untraditional our workplace might have been), we knew it was best to keep things private for professional reasons.
There was, of course, lots of speculation among the crew, the fans, and within the media. “Are they or aren’t they?” was a question floating in the background throughout the whole tour. He didn’t do interviews, but I did. And when asked about our relationship, I never verbally confirmed it, but you could tell by my smile, my avoidance of eye contact, and that twinkle in my eyes. I never did have much of a poker face.
Other people figured it out by finding out which hotel we were staying in and somehow which room too. It got to the point where our security guards had to make an extensive sweep of our room each night so that Prince and I wouldn’t be surprised if we found a fan or two hiding in our closet.
Even before we were famous, Prince and I had both been very private people. Back in my teens, I only told one friend about my first boyfriend—the one with whom I shared all those long telephone conversations watching Love, American Style. Having our most intimate moments scrutinized so closely by the media and fans was painful and awkward for us both.
Meanwhile, I was contending with an onslaught of media attention for breaking down assumptions about what it meant to be a woman and a percussionist. I was just being me, playing from my heart like Pops had taught me, but now, with a hit record, I was being asked to explain, defend, and make sense of something the public had never seen before—a woman leading her own band, singing, dancing, mixing musical genres, and playing an instrument lots of people had no clue about.
They were constantly pointing at my timbales and asking, “What are those things called?” (I still hear that.) This instrument had been a part of my life since forever. It’s an extension of both my father and my heritage. Timbales were a common fixture in the small, impoverished, mixed-race neighborhood around Ninth Avenue and East Twenty-first Street in Oakland—where I could jam for hours on end with friends and family, pounding out beats without my gender being a factor.
But now I was being asked to account for myself as a symbol of something, as a fixture within the context of the feminist movement and as a representative of something much larger than I could fathom at the time. I felt the responsibility to continue my father’s legacy through pop music without losing my integrity. It was a lot of pressure.
Getting through the concert and after-shows night after night, then the after-parties, the after-after parties, and the after-after- after-parties, was an ordeal. My body was bruised and aching and my mind foggy from jet lag, but that part was easy compared to managing this overlap of my public persona and my intensely private relationship.
I was fighting to keep control of the (good and bad) emotions while simultaneously adjusting to the (good and bad) implications of my increasing celebrity. All parts of my life were colliding. And they were colliding loudly—my career, my love life, my well-being, my spirituality, and my identity as a woman. My anonymity was gone. My heart was wide open. It was full exposure on every level.
Remaining sane required a lot of compartmentalization. I had to keep my vulnerabilities in check while simultaneously running the machine that was my life. On top of everything else, I was writing and recording my next album, Romance 1600. Sleep wasn’t a priority. Needless to say, over time I became exhausted. Learning to navigate the press machine and some unexpected aspects of celebrity was often exciting and certainly necessary, but it added to me feeling generally drained. My body was tired, of course, but it was the mental fatigue that was getting the best of me.
The tour ended in Miami after a full year on the road, and all I wanted to do was lie on a beach and do nothing before I had to go out and promote Romance 1600, which was set to be released in August of 1985. So I took my first week off in over a year.
I had worked so hard to be successful, and suddenly I had the financial means to not only give myself a little vacation at a luxurious five-star hotel, but to also do those things I’d always dreamed of doing. So the band and I flew to Florida and rented speedboats and motorcycles, went deep-sea fishing and parasailing. When I had time to myself, I made sure to savor those delicious moments of quiet and calm—enjoying the feeling of my feet in the hot sand and the soothing sounds of the ocean waves.
During one of those blissful vacation days in Miami, a friend dared me to cut my hair. Of course the Gardere in me said yes—never one to shy away from a dare, and knowing I needed a new look for the next album anyway. And, as usual, I took it to the extreme—telling my hairstylist to cut it real short. It was a cool, asymmetrical cut, but it really threw me off for a minute. Once again I had leapt before I looked. The Glamorous Life image was now gone. I suddenly had to re-create my entire wardrobe to match both my new cut and my new album.
I looked less feminine, which made me feel like I wasn’t sexy anymore. I was used to flipping, teasing, and twirling my hair. All men say they love women with long hair, especially seeing it strewn across their pillow. So were they still going to see me as sexy? When I walked into a nightclub a few days after the big chop, the owners recognized me and led us to our table. I could tell that heads were turning. I wondered, Are they looking at me because I’m Sheila E, or because they still see me as sexy, short hair and all? I found myself trying to act even sexier, strutting harder toward the VIP booth, swishing my hips to compensa
te for the fact that I had no hair to flip.
It was during my much-needed mini-vacation and this haircut meltdown that I got the call to audition for a movie called Krush Groove. Designed as a vehicle for some of the new young talent coming out of New York and based loosely on the early days of Def Jam Recordings, Krush Groove was produced by Warner Brothers and went on to become one of hip-hop music’s most iconic films. If I got the part, my costars would include Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Fat Boys, New Edition, Kurtis Blow, and the Beastie Boys.
This would be my second movie audition—the first being for the film Cocoon, which I’d sabotaged because I was too nervous about my reading comprehension and didn’t have enough time to prepare my lines. I talked myself into a panic. Also, I was auditioning opposite the actor Steve Guttenberg and knew I had to wear a bathing suit and shorts for most of the movie. That freaked me out, since I had bad eczema at the time—red and white spots all over my body, most likely a stress breakout.
When it was time to read with Steve, I didn’t really read my lines at all. Instead, acting silly and unprofessional, I tried to distract everyone from my insecurity. Needless to say, I didn’t get the part. So when the Krush Groove offer came up, I was anxious to redeem myself. While they had me in mind for the lead female role, before officially offering me the part they wanted to make sure I had chemistry with the male lead, the up-and-coming actor Blair Underwood.
At first I was pretty hesitant about the whole thing. It was an exciting offer, but I was unfamiliar with auditions of any kind. Flying to New York for a screen test felt really strange. Even the word test made me uncomfortable. Having to prove my talent in a whole new realm made me pretty nervous.
On the day of the screen test, my hands were shaking and my heart was beating out of my chest. This was a huge career opportunity, yet I was terrified because it was all so new. While I was totally cool with my hair by now, I woke up that morning with a new problem: a huge pimple on the tip of my nose. I guess all the stress and fatigue were showing up in my complexion. This pimple had a life of its own. It looked like a thumb, or a third elbow. I told Connie that they’d be expecting a glamorous Sheila E but they’d be getting an unglamorous unicorn instead. I didn’t realize that I could have visited a dermatologist for a cyst injection, so I did it the ghetto way—by putting a big glob of toothpaste on it. Of all days to do a screen test. I couldn’t have felt more self-conscious.