The Beat of My Own Drum (23 page)

“I want you to meet my new artist, Sheila E!” he’d announce. (Coming from Prince, that was some introduction!) The crowds seemed to like it.

So when he presented the final cut of my first album to Warner Brothers a couple of weeks after I’d agreed to make it, Sheila E was born.

Between us, we had come up with the concept of presenting me on the album cover as a glamorous Hollywood film star from a bygone era. We were both very visual people and wanted to make this album both different and entertaining. As far as we knew, there had never before been a woman who led a band playing timbales. The idea of a film star dressed in a mink coat singing about wanting a glamorous life seemed kinda cool.

“The Glamorous Life” was the last song we worked on. In fact, we weren’t even going to include it on the album. It started out as an instrumental, and I couldn’t think of any lyrics for it at first. Once I got started, though, the words came quickly.

She’s got big thoughts, big dreams, and a big brown Mercedes sedan. What I think this girl, she really wants is to be in love with a man. She wants to lead the glamorous life. She don’t need a man’s touch . . . Without love, it ain’t much.

After rearranging the music and adding other musicians to the song, we were really happy with it. It was very percussive and it had a catchy melody, incorporating all the black keys on the piano so that it almost sounded like a nursery rhyme. And the song was simple. Commercial music—even if it’s funky and soulful—sometimes needs to be simplified in order to appeal to a broader audience. Simple melodies and simple rhythms often create hits because they’re easy to remember.

When Warner Brothers heard the album, though, they weren’t
quite so enamored. They wanted “The Belle of St. Mark” to be the first single. Prince and I fought hard for it to be “The Glamorous Life,” which we also wanted as the title of the album.

We won.

On May 12, 1984, my single was released and became an almost immediate club hit. The album followed a few weeks later. “The Belle of St. Mark” (which I wrote about Prince) was released as a single in due course, along with “Oliver’s House.” To my amazement, my first album eventually reached number 28 on the pop chart, was nominated for a Grammy, and went gold.

In keeping with the cinematic theme, the liner notes said that the record was “directed” by Prince’s Starr Company and me. (Prince sometimes called himself Jamie Starr, along with Alexander Nevermind and other monikers.) It was Prince’s idea that his name didn’t appear at all, even though he’d coproduced the entire album, cowritten most of the songs, and performed on almost all of them.

Another song he and I cowrote was “Noon Rendezvous,” which was about our relationship at the time. The words included the lines:
I’ve been wondering what to wear. I love our noon rendezvous. I know you tell me you missed me, and I want to make love to you . . . The words are all over your face, my love. What shall you or shall I do? You could show me some new tricks, my love. I’d love to be taught by you
 . . . We started writing “Noon Rendezvous” when I let Prince listen to a ballad I’d written and played castanets on. We talked about it, and I told him my dream was to write a song commercial enough to be played on the radio, which was something totally different for me. I was hoping this one might make it.

Prince was excited by the idea. He loves being inspired by other people and opened up to things he might not have thought of on his own. I had always collaborated as part of a family band and was brought up to be a team player (despite my independent streak).

It was nice to see him influenced by my musicianship as well as
my family’s musical bond. Prince had begun spending more and more time with my family, and he remarked that he’d never seen a father and his children jamming together, exchanging competitive licks, and communicating seamlessly through melody and rhythm. We exposed him both to our music—a completely unique blend of percussion, Latin jazz, and melody with syncopated rhythms and different time signatures—and to our unabashed expression of family love. I think it was this latter aspect, the bond between us—onstage and off—that truly struck him. It was the joyful public affection between Moms and Pops and their children, as well as the family’s capacity to extend unconditional care and compassion to anyone, that Prince was especially moved by. He’s one of many who have responded to the warmth our family shows one another. It’s feedback we’re humbled to receive quite often—how refreshing and inspiring it is to see such a tight-knit family that makes their work and play one and the same.

It’s no wonder there are a gazillion honorary Escovedos. In a world of broken homes, family grudges, and tragic disconnects between relatives, I suppose a family that plays, prays, and stays together provides something much needed. Since I’ve always been in the middle of it, I didn’t always realize what a God-given blessing it was to be in a family so overflowing with love.

Now, thankfully, I’m well aware.

Once my album was made, I then had to focus on the video to promote it. I knew from my time with Lionel Richie that music videos were becoming a major part of popular culture in the eighties and one of the best ways to promote a song, album, and persona. So when it was time to shoot the footage for “The Glamorous Life,” I wanted to approach it strategically. It would, after all, be the first image people would put to my music and my debut exposure as a solo artist. Like everything else within my career, I took it very seriously.

As I didn’t have an official band by the time we were ready to shoot, I held auditions. Ever-inclusive Moms suggested (i.e.,
commanded 
) that Zina, still a teenager and to me always the baby, had to be in the video. I told her, “Moms, I’d love to have her, but she doesn’t play any instrument, and I need real musicians that can actually play so it looks totally realistic.”

Moms, who lives by the all-for-one-and-one-for-all principle, pointed out that Zina already had experience being in Lionel’s video with me. I tried to convince her that this was different—I needed a musician front and center, not a background dancer. But more important, if I was going to use my sister, I needed to prove to the record company that she was as capable of doing the video as any professional. I couldn’t just hire her because she was my sister.

Moms didn’t take no for an answer (see where I get it from?), so I agreed to let Zina audition just like everyone else. Since she was an Escovedo, we were pretty sure she’d come through.

Zina, meanwhile, wasn’t too happy about having to audition. She had to get up on the stage in front of me, Moms, and the rest of the musicians who’d already been hired—including Juan and Peter Michael—as well as some serious record company executives. But then she did such a good job faking the guitar playing, and her dancing skills have always been ridiculously good. She didn’t look as young as she really was because she assumed her role with such conviction. She also dressed the part. After she did her audition, everyone applauded.

I couldn’t deny it—my sister turned it out. “You’re hired!” I cried.

Now I had Juan, Peter Michael, and Zina by my side. And while I was playing it cool about the whole video shoot, it was something new, and the stakes felt high. Having my siblings with me would make a world of difference.

The final band lineup was Benny Rietveld on bass, Juan on keys (which he really didn’t play), Lee Williams Jr. (Zina’s boyfriend at the time) on keys—which he didn’t play, either—Scott Roberts (an ex-boyfriend of mine) on drums, Zina on guitar, and Peter Michael on soprano sax (which wasn’t even an instrument in the song, but he said he could dance better with a straight sax).

We were all nervous and excited. How were we going to make this work? The answer was practice, practice, and practice. And then some more practice. That’s how I roll. The band rehearsed a couple days in advance, because I wasn’t taking any chances. Zina needed to practice holding her guitar in a way that looked like she was really playing it. She then played the parts that sounded like guitars but actually weren’t (they were keyboard parts that Prince had recorded). We were going to have it down solid before anyone from production even got a first glimpse.

When we showed up and presented our routine for the director, he was pretty impressed. (I guess he didn’t know about all our years of dance routines and band-formation practice on our back porch and in our front room. We had this thing locked down!)

The director had some great ideas, like putting glitter on the head of the low drum for a shot. They also poured water onto the glitter, so when I kicked the cymbal there was a cool effect—magic drums with a splash of glitter straight into the camera.

Someone in production created the story line of the video, inspired by the lyrics. We filmed it at the Wiltern Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Instead of doing the band shots on the actual stage, we ended up doing them in the lobby, with its great colors and amazing architecture, which came across even bigger and more impressive on film. While most of the video was shot in LA, there were a few San Francisco shots as well.

As the music blasted out of the speakers, I lip-synced to my own voice, which was easy for me because I’d grown up lip-syncing
to all my favorite artists like Sammy Davis Jr. and every Motown artist under the sun. As a young girl I loved to practice mouthing the words just right, trying even then to be convincing.

On video shoots they want you to really sing and play your instruments so that it looks real. To complicate matters, I had to do all that while dancing. This was a challenge, but I wanted to show people that it was possible to do all three things at the same time. I wanted to be a
triple
threat.

So at the film studio on the lot with a background similar to my album cover, we worked hard replicating everything as best we could; doing the same thing over and over and over and practicing our dance steps for hours on end—the same way we had done since we could walk.

I didn’t want a choreographer, because I didn’t think we needed one. I told the record company, “Why would you want to hire someone else when I know what needs to be done? Plus, there isn’t a woman in the world who’s doing all this at once and who can do what I do.”

There still isn’t.

I knew instinctively that I’d be the best one to choreograph my own video, since it was my song and I knew better than anyone the kinds of steps my feet could do while my arms were drumming. Later on I saw people in the clubs, even in cities where I didn’t speak the language, not only singing along to my words of “The Glamorous Life” but also mimicking those very steps. They had taken on a life of their own. Who knew that the little girl who loved to imitate other artists would one day be imitated herself?

Despite my insistence that she wouldn’t be needed, a professional choreographer was brought in for some additional exterior pickup shots. She had the extras do a small part in the beginning where they’re kind of tripping over each other as they run down the sidewalk. Imagine my surprise when she got an MTV Music
Video Award nomination for Best Choreography. I found out the night of the awards show. When her name was called I thought,
Who is that?

My managers should’ve informed me who’d been nominated, not to mention the fact that they should’ve submitted my name in the first place. That was a trip, and one of many music-business lessons learned about making sure management does what they’re supposed to.

It was a given that I’d wear my long mink coat to match the story line and the lyrics, as well as the covers for the album and the 45. The off-white-and-gray mink was perfect for the black-and-white sequences. But what would I wear for the color shots? I worked closely with the design team, creating items that would be different, provocative, but also movable. We came up with reddish-pink satin culottes with pockets long enough to accommodate the sticks for my timbales.

I wore a revealing leopard-print bustier underneath a jacket, which I eventually threw off. It was
very
revealing, and my brothers—who always kept it real for me—gave me a hard time about it. “Sheila, you’re going to wear
that
?” they cried. “Are you serious?”

I liked my outfit, and they weren’t my personal stylists. I was playing a role and feeling more and more comfortable in sexy clothes. But the only problem with my less-is-more outfit was that whenever we filmed the outdoor scenes, I was freezing. I had to keep warm by running through our dance moves. We practiced dozens of shots of me throwing my timbale stick in the air and then catching it behind my back. Sadly, they didn’t make it into the final cut, although they did keep one of me bouncing the stick on the ground and catching it midair. And there were also lots of shots of me kicking the cymbal, which became a signature move.

To provide moral support (even though he was so busy), Prince
came by during rehearsals and dropped in one day of shooting. He liked what we were doing; he thought we had our own very sexy look.

In a few shots, Peter Michael played my love interest, which was kinda weird. He and I were cracking up during those scenes. My brother as my lover? Oh, my God! Talk about low-budget restrictions. And on the second day of shooting, which Peter Michael couldn’t make, they had to shave the head of the stand-in so he could wear a wig that would better resemble Peter Michael’s hair. He’s the one who pulls my hair back in a quick shot. I felt bad—that guy had a beautiful head of long black hair, but he said he was okay with it. I wonder how long it took to grow back. Zina appeared in the black-and-white segment as a young girl selling flowers. They had to reshoot the scene over and over again because she kept making me laugh. The camera was behind her, and she was making crazy faces—sticking her tongue out, going cross-eyed—anything to make me lose it. It didn’t take much for any of us to break character. We didn’t even quite understand what her character was all about, since it sure wasn’t a part of the lyrical content. Why was the guitar player selling flowers to me? Fortunately, it looked cool in the video, thanks to the magic of editing.