I’m an alcoholic. I kept it from a lot of people

“My name is lulu. I am alcoholic.”

Even if you know it’s coming, it is an amazing way to open an interview.

The 76 -year -old pop star, which lasted for decades since their first hits in the 1960s, sat down to discuss his new memories if you only know. It opens for the first time about historical drinking problems.

An early preview, Times interview This month, he found headlines around the world and was revived with reply.

“Savior,” he says. “It is nice to share difficulties, because too much [alcoholics] Don’t come here. I’m really lucky. “

Today, lulu almost 12 years. 65. After opening to his family at his birthday party, he asked for help in 2013.

While cleaning the plates, his nephew was talking about a friend fighting alcohol.

Lulu, “I think it is only attached by his nails, ‘he said.

“And I said, ‘He’s not the only person’.”

“I just got out of my mouth. I didn’t even think about it. But the table became silent.

“Then my sister looked at me and said, ‘I know … I have known for a while.’

Initially, Lulu could not believe that he blurred his biggest secret.

“I felt ashamed, fear, worry, or he says. “And then, ‘Oh, the angels went down to save me’.”

He was going to America within 24 hours, where he entered rehabilitation for six weeks and was bound to anonymous alcoholics for “two meetings every day for five years”.

He called his son Jordan on his way to the airport. He was confused.

“He said, ‘Whoa Mom, a minute. Are you sure?’ ‘He says.

“I held this from many people.”

In fact, he was so resourceful to hiding the problem that he joined the 2011 series Stricly Come Dancing series while secretly drinking every night.

Im I could fall on my drunk bed – but then the alarm would go, I would get up, I would bring myself together and go to work, or he says.

“I was a highly functioning alcoholic.

He never talked before, he was concerned about damaging the “squeaky clean” image. But when he wrote his memories, he wanted to straighten the story.

“As they say in AA, you are just as sick as your secrets, or he says.

The secrets for Lulu began as a child.

Growing up in Glasgow’s rents – then he lived in a “war zone”, named after Marie McDonald McDonald McLughlin Lawrie.

His father, Eddie, was also an alcoholic that hit his mother regularly and left him with black eyes and divided lips.

“When they were going to fight at home, they were going to throw something, and the noise was alive.

“But we’re going out the next morning and my mother warned us not to talk about it.

“Oh, this is a glow you have, Betty. What happened? ‘

“Oh, he’d stand on a brush, but my father shot him.”

Isley Brothers ‘Shout’ s cover was famous at the age of 15, already interested in hiding his past.

Scrappy Marie from Glasgow went out by Lulu with its squirrel smile, sculpture hair and bobby socks.

The name chosen by the director Marion Massey was a slang term, which means “a remarkable person” – but that wasn’t the only thing that changed.

Marie was told to “straighten” the Glaswegian accent and keep her hot temperament secret.

“I gave the opportunity to leave behind the pain and shame of my past, so I stepped into the character created for me happily.”

However, he lost himself in the process of becoming lulu.

“A person is confused with being satisfied,” he says, “but I was just a human draft.”

He continued his eraser music. As a child, Lulu modeled himself to the brave R&B singers who loaned James Brown and Big Mama Thornton – Grits to the Shout version of Lulu.

Instead of taking advantage of it, he was pushed to make light pop songs like Boom Bang-A-Bang, who won Eurovision, and a slightly ridiculous II tiger, a confectionery about the sexual skills of the 60s.

Orum I like to squeeze a song dry, but I couldn’t put my teeth into a tiger, “he says.

“I returned home from recording it and wore Ray Charles. Ray was my man. I couldn’t stand it because he was so talented.”

Sometimes he was given a more robust material. In 1971, the drummer John Bonham, who raised Led Zeppelin’s hell, a fantastic Glam march named Everybody Clap with a crack team such as the cream bassist Jack Bruce and then her husband Arı Gee Maurice Gibb.

There is Images that perform on PopsWhat looks like a scene from hippie musical hair.

“This was fun,” Lulu rays exploded in the choir.

“You know, does Christmas from Oasis love this track?”

But the people had already decided what they wanted from Lulu – and the last was not pop. Not everyone applauded.

A person who noticed his potential was David Bowie.

Lulu, “Plaque companies do not take you and do not hear your voice,” he said.

In 1974, they recorded a lid of the man who sold Bowie’s The World, and after a five -year gap, Lulu returned to the top 10.

The singer said to me, ‘I will record a hit with you’ and then told other people that we would make an album.

They gathered again in New York and cut two more songs – Dodo and I can hear me – but according to Lulu’s account, Bowie “disappeared in drugs” and their plans were torn apart.

However, cooperation was not only professional. After the end of his marriage with Gibb, the couple had a short jump.

“I was ready to dive into the magic that was David Bowie,” he writes in his book.

“[He was] A minute, a minute, a minute, ambitious and masculine. He felt exciting, unpredictable. “

“I have never talked about before, because ‘Oh, my God, people can be very predictable. They will want to know all the details’.

Then a laugh, “So, it would probably be the same.”

Lulu’s graphic career decreased in the 1980s, but it was never far from being the center of attention.

He performed in West End productions of the song of Guys and Dolls and Andrew Lloyd Webber and dance; and the TV series Adrian Mole’s Secret Diary.

His return to music came in the 1990s with the independence of the Lite-House anthem; And a star is about my fire. He would then participate in the tour and will make a solo in a red lace coefficient every night.

He was always a social drinking, but he carefully watched alcohol intake.

“I would say to myself quietly, ‘I don’t want to be like my father’.

The loss of control came during a large uprising in his 50s.

Hair stylist John Freida ended his second marriage; And soon later, he separated his ways with Massey, who has been with him since the 1960s.

His young son was increasingly lonely at home while he was attending a boarding school in New York and with the loss of both parents; And it flocks professionally.

“If you’re honest with yourself, you know that record companies are looking for fresh meat.

“New energy, something different. So always, ‘Well, what am I going to do now?’

Slowly, in an unethical way, he would be dependent on drink in his 50s.

“This accumulated, or he says. “Everything in the dark becomes fermentation and toxic.

“But with alcoholism, you just can’t control it. You should stop. And you have a chance to die if you don’t.”

Today, Lulu is approaching the 12th anniversary of obedience. And he decided to share his story in the hope that he could change their lives. Not only for other alcoholics, but for his family.

“This is a family disease,” he says, “but they say you break the pattern when you start healing, so I have hope for my grandchildren.

“And I think I’m lucky to be here, I’m talking about it.

“There are many people who don’t come here – but there is a perseverance.