It's often a good idea for a member of a band (usually the frontman) to try out a solo career. We've covered this in the section “Gone solo in the game”, and to some extent in the recent “Rock and roll I gave you the best years of my life”. There can be many reasons why one would go solo, but then again, there are often just as many not to. The music world is full of people who tried a solo career and did, or do, very well, but littering those gold-paved streets they walk are another breed, the men and women who thought a solo career was a good idea, and found to their cost that it was not.
Would anyone like to guess which of the two we're focussing on in this section? The artistes featured here will not always be nobodies. Sometimes really famous or successful people go solo and yet find they're not able to crack it. Future stars of this slot include the likes of Bob Geldof, Richard Ashcroft and (sign to ward off evil!) Gary Barlow, to mention a few. In this section we'll try to deconstruct the artist's solo career as separate from his or her band, and discover or hypothesise
why they failed to set the world alight when out on their own (we will NOT be using the catchall explanation “Cos they were sh1t!”), and why they thought they would.
The first of our “career overboard” stars is El DeBarge. You remember DeBarge. They were huge in the eighties. Well, big. Well, sort of. Well, they had one decent song that I remember, that being “Rhythm of the night”. They were moderately successful, until they all got drug addictions, some ended up in prison and one sadly died. But the mogul behind Motown records, one Berry Gordy, thought he saw something in the lead singer, and eldest boy, Eldra Patrick, known as “El”, and he decided that a solo career for this guy was the way to go.
He began pushing El's star up into the heavens, proclaiming that DeBarge (the band) had been nothing more than a “vehicle to launch the solo career of lead singer El” (quote remembered, but not its source: some music magazine from years back, maybe a radio show), and after he convinced a star-struck El to leave the band, they more or less withered away; though they released two more albums after his departure, neither successful.
Ah, but El's rise to fame! Meteoric, eh? Well, no. He released his first solo album the next year, 1986, and was in fact quite lucky really that the single from it, “Who's Johnny”, was chosen to feature in the sci-fi/comedy film “Short circuit”, netting him a number three hit single and sudden international fame. It was, however, not to last. His next album took three years to produce, but despite all the care and time he put into it, “Gemini” was absent from the charts.
DeBarge by now having faded away, and El's one and only hit single now three years old, people were not really interested anymore, and other things were happening. In a very real way, the world had moved on while El DeBarge tinkered away in his studio. Nothing wrong with taking your time on a project, of course, but you have to have your timing right or it's all for nothing. Which it was.
Between this time and the release of his third solo album, El collaborated with music producer supremo Quincy Jones on a single that also featured Barry White and James Ingram, 1990's “The secret garden”, then in 1992 he unleashed “In the storm”. The world however was underwhelmed, and the album again failed to chart. This despite the fact that it received critical acclaim; plaudits though do not equal record sales, and “In the storm” was another commercial failure for the “superstar” from DeBarge.
It was two years later when he released his fourth, “Heart mind and soul”, which again, despite the input of Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, and the legendary Stevie Wonder, failed to set the charts alight. His next appearance was in 1998, when he sung with the reunited members of DeBarge in concerts off the back of renewed popularity due to DeBarge's records being sampled by rap artistes. However, after that he more or less hit the slide, being arrested and then jailed for drug possession --- as indeed had most of the band by then --- and while in jail he found God (not sure why God is always spending time in jail, but so many people have found him there...)
2010 saw the “rebirth” of El DeBarge, as he signed to a new label and released his fifth solo album, “Second chance”. It appears to have been very successful, with the first single taken from it, the title track, having been nominated for two Grammys this year. El's past has come back to haunt him, though, as he suffered a relapse this year and checked himself into rehab, cancelling all appearances and his forthcoming tour. He expects to head out on the road later in the year.
With a total of five albums, four of which failed to chart in the US (his latest got in at 57) and fifteen singles, of which only three charted in the US and two in the UK, one could hardly describe El DeBarge's solo career as being that of a superstar, or even moderately successful. And yet, he struggled against the odds and managed to link himself with some big names in rap and R&B --- 50 cent, Mary J. Blige --- worked with big-name producers and even musical legends like Stevie Wonder. He refused to let his drug addiction drag him down, fought it and struggled through his own heart of darkness to emerge on the other side, a changed man.
On the face of it, the decision to branch out on his own seems to have been an ill-advised one in the case of El DeBarge, but who knows? He's just hitting fifty, and although this may seem a little old to try to reinvent himself, others have done just that when much older. So although he's not exactly had a stellar career so far, perhaps the best is yet to come.