SHEENA Easton claims her children wouldn’t be able to name her hits because she never played them when they were growing up.
The Morning Train, For Your Eyes Only and Sugar Walls singer who is currently starring in 42nd street in London’s West end revealed: “My kids don’t listen to any of my stuff. You’d be lucky if they could name you three of my hits. I don’t know if they listen to any of my hits. I made a point my whole life of just saying ‘mum is going to work’. There are no shrines to me in my house, no gold records on the wall or awards sitting around. It’s not one of those houses. The children grew up in a normal house.”
Bellshill born Sheena, 58, who now lives in Nevada, has never encouraged her two adopted kids Jake and Skylar to follow her into her profession after seeing friends in the business struggle.
She said: “Neither of my kids is in the business and I bless the day for that. I know I’m an anomaly in the sense I managed to make a living out of this, managed to support myself and had a career where I worked. I earned but worked always whereas so many friends struggled to put food on their tables and had to work two or three other jobs. As an industry there is not a lot of work from it on a steady basis and as a mum you want a job where your kids can afford to pay rent and fortunately my kids do. I have loved earning a living from it.”
Sheena also revealed she once hated hearing her hits but has now come to love them.
She said: “You have a hit and then you go ‘I never want to hear it again. Then the circle comes back around and I’m very fond of my hits because there is enough distance now.
I can look back on the early hits and think ‘wow’.
I also love when I start the intro to a song and I see peoples eyes light up or they nudge or grab one another and it’s their favourite song and it helps connect me with other people.”
Sheena also said she doesn’t envy the pressure now placed on young artists to keep in touch via social media preferring to stay low profile.
She said: “There was an isolation to a lot of the early years with the travelling and I took it for granted that was part of gig. When you went away you’d tell people you were going away and tell them ‘I’ll call you when I get back’. Now they expect to be connected to you no matter where you are and what you are doing.
In some ways it was beneficial because it kept me focused and centred on what I needed to do and today I’m grateful I’m not a young artist starting out today. They expect the younger kids to be on twitter and Instagram all the time and to document what they had for lunch that day. I’m a very private person and I don’t think I would have handled that well. I think that would have made me crazy. Isolation can be negative and hint at loneliness but it gives you the chance to focus what you’re doing and get the job done and then get back into the real world.”
Excerpts of this article have since appeared in the Scottish Mail on Sunday
From Scotland with Love theshowbizlion.com