Fact #168235
When:
Short story:
Sydney Youngblood enters the UK singles chart with If Only I Could, which will peak at No3.
Full article:
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SIDNEY YOUNGBLOOD by Johnny Black
Sydney Youngblood : My grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee indian, but my mother married a black man, so I’m part Cherokee, part black.
I’d grown up in Texas, but I was huge Queen fan, and I noticed that they did a lot of recording at Wonderland in Munich. I decided to get myself over there and get into sound engineering, but the only way I could do it was to join the US Army for three years as a computer tech and get posted to Germany, Europe. My father was in the Air Force, but I knew that computer staff were needed by the army in Germany, so it was a fair bet I’d get sent out there.
I hated the army. You have to kiss too much ass to get anywhere, and I didn’t like that.
I saved my pay and, when I got out, I stayed on in Heidelberg. I had no intention of performing, just getting into a studio, but I did start a band, called SAS. It stood for Sydney and Shaw, and he was the guy who had done the rapping on the Milli Vanilli records. We were spotted in 1987 by Klaus Zundel, the producer behind Nena, Falco and other German new wave acts. He was most interested in me because I could play several instruments, and I wrote and sang, so I got a solo deal.
My first single was an updated version of Ain’t No Sunshine,and it was doing quite well until a re-mix of the Bill Withers original came out, very similar to the way we’d done it, and Bill just whipped my ass, which I can’t really complain about.
So then Klaus and I went down to Ibiza to find out what the kids were dancing to. We hung out a lot in the Pacha club, and that’s where we got into the idea of doing a dance thing with Spanish guitar in it. That was the key, and we did it with balearic beats and a bit of soul.
When we had the hit with If Only I Could from my first album, everything exploded for me, travelling all over the world, performing everywhere. I was on Virgin in Europe, but it was Arista in America, and their MD, Clive Davis, decided not to release If Only I Could over there. He went with a cover of I’d Rather Go Blind, which I think was a mistake, but he’s a powerful man and you don’t really argue with him. It only got into the lower reaches of the Billboard US Top 40, but that put pressure on me to get a second album out quickly, and that album wasn’t as good as it might have been, so things deteriorated. I moved to BMG for the third album, which sold a little better, but by then I was a father of two little girls. I was tired of the travelling, and decided it would be best to concentrate on my first love, sound engineering, so I opened my own studio under my apartment in Heidelberg.
Although I’ve since parted from their mother, I was determined to see my girls, Evelyn and Diane, grow up. Heidelberg is a lovely old town, and I walk my dog, a German Shepherd, every day along the banks of the Rhine.
In all, I took a break from performing for about five years, being with my girls, doing documentary soundtracks, jingles and so on, but people keep asking when I’m going to come back. Well, I am, but not as a solo act. I have a band, 305, which I’ve been flying out to record with regularly in Miami for the last year, although we’re still using a lot of Spanish guitar, which I record in Ibiza. We have a double album almost complete, which we hope to release in September of this year (2000).
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Sydney Youngblood : My grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee indian, but my mother married a black man, so I’m part Cherokee, part black.
I’d grown up in Texas, but I was huge Queen fan, and I noticed that they did a lot of recording at Wonderland in Munich. I decided to get myself over there and get into sound engineering, but the only way I could do it was to join the US Army for three years as a computer tech and get posted to Germany, Europe. My father was in the Air Force, but I knew that computer staff were needed by the army in Germany, so it was a fair bet I’d get sent out there.
I hated the army. You have to kiss too much ass to get anywhere, and I didn’t like that.
I saved my pay and, when I got out, I stayed on in Heidelberg. I had no intention of performing, just getting into a studio, but I did start a band, called SAS. It stood for Sydney and Shaw, and he was the guy who had done the rapping on the Milli Vanilli records. We were spotted in 1987 by Klaus Zundel, the producer behind Nena, Falco and other German new wave acts. He was most interested in me because I could play several instruments, and I wrote and sang, so I got a solo deal.
My first single was an updated version of Ain’t No Sunshine,and it was doing quite well until a re-mix of the Bill Withers original came out, very similar to the way we’d done it, and Bill just whipped my ass, which I can’t really complain about.
So then Klaus and I went down to Ibiza to find out what the kids were dancing to. We hung out a lot in the Pacha club, and that’s where we got into the idea of doing a dance thing with Spanish guitar in it. That was the key, and we did it with balearic beats and a bit of soul.
When we had the hit with If Only I Could from my first album, everything exploded for me, travelling all over the world, performing everywhere. I was on Virgin in Europe, but it was Arista in America, and their MD, Clive Davis, decided not to release If Only I Could over there. He went with a cover of I’d Rather Go Blind, which I think was a mistake, but he’s a powerful man and you don’t really argue with him. It only got into the lower reaches of the Billboard US Top 40, but that put pressure on me to get a second album out quickly, and that album wasn’t as good as it might have been, so things deteriorated. I moved to BMG for the third album, which sold a little better, but by then I was a father of two little girls. I was tired of the travelling, and decided it would be best to concentrate on my first love, sound engineering, so I opened my own studio under my apartment in Heidelberg.
Although I’ve since parted from their mother, I was determined to see my girls, Evelyn and Diane, grow up. Heidelberg is a lovely old town, and I walk my dog, a German Shepherd, every day along the banks of the Rhine.
In all, I took a break from performing for about five years, being with my girls, doing documentary soundtracks, jingles and so on, but people keep asking when I’m going to come back. Well, I am, but not as a solo act. I have a band, 305, which I’ve been flying out to record with regularly in Miami for the last year, although we’re still using a lot of Spanish guitar, which I record in Ibiza. We have a double album almost complete, which we hope to release in September of this year (2000).