'It's my home town, my inspiration and what made me who I am': Beverley Knight - The Queen of British Soul - on Wolverhampton life, influences and memories of performing with Prince
She’s sold millions of records, performed in front on huge crowds on a global stage and become a leading figure on the stage, but you’d never guess it from the way Beverley Knight carries herself.
To talk to her and look at her off the stage, you’d never guess she was the Queen of British Soul and a mainstay in big production musicals, more someone you could sit down with a cup of tea and chat about life, music and being a Wolverhampton girl born and bred.
The 52-year-old has packed a lot into her life, from hits like "Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda" and "Come as you are" and performing to one billion people at the 2012 Paralympics opening ceremony, and she admits that, even now, she still can’t believe that she’s got to where she’s gotten to.
She said: “I thought to myself recently, how have I got here? I’m just this kid from Wolverhampton who had a dream and I wouldn’t let go of it and I just kept pushing until I realised that dream.
“Also, because of that dream, all these other things have happened to me and I’ve been all over the world and I’ve done some many things that I would never have expected to do.
“There’s performing at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, the Paralympics in London, meeting Prince and David Bowie and I think, how has this happened to me, and yet it has and I absolutely thank God for every single second of it.”
The career Beverley Knight has had is one she’s very proud of and is the foundation for the upcoming Born to Perform tour, which will see her take to the stage across the country to perform what she said would be a different experience to what people would normally expect.
She said: “With the Born to Perform tour, it’s a little different to what people know when they come to see me as it’s going to have all the high energy as it always does, because that’s me, but I’m going to be putting a lot of music theatre songs into the set.
“That’s because it’s something of telling the story of how I came to be where I am, so born to perform, literally, from my beginnings right here in Wolverhampton, right through my career in musical theatre and the all the musical stops in between, from my hits, from other people’s hits, people who have inspired me and, all the way through to the musical theatre.
“It’s also a broader remit than just the greatest hits as it’s the hits and also the hits of other people in other circumstances that have contributed to me and my life and to who I am and why.
“There’s going to be songs that people don’t know and while there will be fan favourites, there’s also going to be songs where people go ‘oh wow, so she did this musical and sang this song’ and so I hope it encourages people to then go back and discover.”
The tour itself will take in cities such as Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester, and will culminate in what Beverley excited said is the big finale at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton on June 30.
She said she hadn’t had any say in where the tour ended but said her promoter Simon Moran knew that she would love to put on a huge show in her home city, hence being able to finish the tour and, in her words, “leave everything she has out on that stage” at the Civic Hall.
That link to Wolverhampton is still so important to Beverley, who went to school at Woodfield Infants and Juniors and Highfields Secondary School and who still has family living in the city.
While she now lives in London with her husband James, she still returns regular to Wolverhampton and said it was a huge part of her musical DNA and shaped who she was.
