Latest / DISGRACELAND / Adele: The Pop Star Repurposed by the Criminal Underworld
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The Story about
- 0:16Speaker 1: Adele is a story about fear, fear of performing on stage,
- 0:22Speaker 1: fear of losing your voice, fear of dying young like
- 0:26Speaker 1: two of your idols. It's also a story about con
- 0:31Speaker 1: artists and concealed weapons, about Michael Corleone and Tony Montana
- 0:35Speaker 1: and Dog Day Afternoons, and about how the criminal world
- 0:39Speaker 1: has repeatedly tried to cash in on the universal appeal
- 0:44Speaker 1: of Adele. And this is because Adele makes great music,
- 0:50Speaker 1: Unlike that clip I played for you at the top
- 0:52Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
- 0:55Speaker 1: preset loop from my melotron called the Guns of Tottenham MK. One.
- 1:01Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
- 1:03Speaker 1: rights to grenade by Bruno Mars. And why would I
- 1:07Speaker 1: play you that specific slice of unrequited love cheese?
- 1:12Speaker 2: Could I afford it?
- 1:13Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
- 1:17Speaker 1: January twenty fourth, twenty eleven, And that was the day
- 1:20Speaker 1: that Adele released her sophomore album twenty one, a record
- 1:25Speaker 1: so impactful that it made her a new musical favorite
- 1:28Speaker 1: of millions around the world, not least of all the
- 1:33Speaker 1: felons and con artists who appropriated her fame on this
- 1:39Speaker 1: episode Felons, con artists, Corleone's Dead, Idols, Fear and Adele.
- 1:47Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan.
- 1:49Speaker 1: In this this Disgrace, I have Sydney Lumette's classic nineteen
- 2:26Speaker 1: seventy five film Dog Day Afternoon opens on a hot
- 2:30Speaker 1: summer day in New York City. Construction workers talk shit
- 2:34Speaker 1: while the sweat soaks through the backs of their t shirts.
- 2:38Speaker 1: Neighborhood kids splash in a public pool. Fruit vendors, derelicts,
- 2:43Speaker 1: and day traders all crowd the sidewalks, while stray dogs
- 2:48Speaker 1: root through the garbage.
- 2:49Speaker 2: In the street.
- 2:51Speaker 1: But then a car pulls up against the curb outside
- 2:54Speaker 1: the first Brooklyn Savings Bank, and inside the car are
- 2:59Speaker 1: three men. The driver gets out, he paces nervously on
- 3:04Speaker 1: the pavement nearby. The bank's one security guard takes down
- 3:09Speaker 1: the American flag hanging outside the bank's door.
- 3:12Speaker 2: It's closing time.
- 3:14Speaker 1: The driver doubles back to the car. He leans into
- 3:17Speaker 1: the passenger window, speaking to the man sitting there. And
- 3:20Speaker 1: the man is Sonny played by al Pacino. And though
- 3:24Speaker 1: we can't hear what the two are talking about, we
- 3:28Speaker 1: can see the very clear emotion which takes over Paccino's eyes, fear.
- 3:35Speaker 1: Pacino's character is dreading what he's about to do, but
- 3:39Speaker 1: there's no turning back now. There are things he needs
- 3:43Speaker 1: in this life, and he has no other way of
- 3:45Speaker 1: getting them, or so he thinks. He's desperate, and he
- 3:49Speaker 1: has to move fast before that security guard locks the
- 3:53Speaker 1: front door behind him. So he exits the car along
- 3:57Speaker 1: with his accomplice sal played by John Because, and they
- 4:01Speaker 1: walk inside the bank and Pacino carries a long white
- 4:04Speaker 1: box with a bow, and no one knows that inside
- 4:07Speaker 1: that box is a rifle. He anxiously looks around and
- 4:12Speaker 1: these employees, these tellers, the security guard, the manager, they're
- 4:18Speaker 1: all innocent. Pacino's character means them no.
- 4:22Speaker 2: Harm, and that's when the fear takes over.
- 4:28Speaker 1: Watching this scene play out on our television in the
- 4:31Speaker 1: comfort of her own home, Adele Lorie blue Atkins, otherwise
- 4:34Speaker 1: known simply as Adele, felt her pulse quicken.
- 4:38Speaker 2: It didn't matter that.
- 4:40Speaker 1: She'd seen this film, one of her favorites, more times
- 4:42Speaker 1: than she could remember. Her response was always the same,
- 4:47Speaker 1: because Dog Day Afternoon or al Pacino's performance in particular,
- 4:51Speaker 1: tapped into a universal fear that on some level is
- 4:54Speaker 1: always present within all of us, no matter the scenario.
- 4:58Speaker 1: It's the most primal of human and emotions. In fact,
- 5:02Speaker 1: do not be afraid is the most common phrase found
- 5:05Speaker 1: in the Bible, in one form or another. And though
- 5:08Speaker 1: we've been told not to be afraid for centuries, we
- 5:11Speaker 1: still are you Me Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon and Adele.
- 5:19Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, Adele became a once in a generation
- 5:22Speaker 1: phenomenon with the release of her sophomore album twenty one.
- 5:26Speaker 1: It entered the Billboard Album Chart at number one, where
- 5:29Speaker 1: it stayed for twenty four weeks, breaking the record set
- 5:32Speaker 1: by Princess Purple Rain some twenty seven years prior. Now.
- 5:36Speaker 1: While the album was at number one, three of its singles,
- 5:39Speaker 1: Rolling in the Deep, Set, Fire to the Rain, and
- 5:42Speaker 1: Someone Like You simultaneously topped the hot one hundred, the
- 5:47Speaker 1: first time that had happened since the Saturday Night Fever
- 5:50Speaker 1: soundtrack way back in nineteen seventy seven. The album twenty
- 5:54Speaker 1: one has since become the longest charting album by any
- 5:58Speaker 1: female artist, break the record held by Carol King's nineteen
- 6:02Speaker 1: seventy one album Tapestry. To date, Adele's twenty one has
- 6:07Speaker 1: shipped seventeen million copies, by far the most of any
- 6:12Speaker 1: album released this century, and at the time of twenty
- 6:15Speaker 1: one's initial release, you could not escape Adele. Her songs
- 6:20Speaker 1: were the most requested songs at karaoke bars, they were
- 6:23Speaker 1: the most played at funerals if you got scared to
- 6:26Speaker 1: get onto a plane. One survey showed that Adele's songs
- 6:30Speaker 1: were voted the best to calm your nerves and if
- 6:33Speaker 1: you couldn't sleep. Another survey showed that those same songs
- 6:37Speaker 1: could cure insomnia. In Leeds, England, a seven year old
- 6:42Speaker 1: girl miraculously woke from a week long coma when Rolling
- 6:47Speaker 1: in the Deep came on the radio. Adele's voice is
- 6:51Speaker 1: there in life and in death, deep down in her subconscious,
- 6:55Speaker 1: which makes sense because Beyonce once told.
- 6:58Speaker 2: Her, when I listened to you, I feel like I'm
- 7:01Speaker 2: listening to God.
- 7:03Speaker 1: Adele has one hell of a voice, like three dusty
- 7:07Speaker 1: Springfields all at once, a voice which Amanda Petrosich, writing
- 7:12Speaker 1: in The New Yorker, once called perfectly imperfect and able
- 7:16Speaker 1: to betray its host frailty and by extension, her humanity.
- 7:21Speaker 1: But Adele's universal appeal is more than the sound of
- 7:24Speaker 1: her voice, she is also incredibly relatable, and I'm not
- 7:28Speaker 1: just talking about In her songs of heartbreak, defiance and empowerment,
- 7:32Speaker 1: Adele has downright rejected the trappings of celebrity.
- 7:36Speaker 2: As she put it in her own words.
- 7:38Speaker 1: I don't want to be some skinny mini with my
- 7:40Speaker 1: tits out. And she said this with a speaking voice
- 7:44Speaker 1: that is the exact opposite of her perfectly imperfect singing voice.
- 7:48Speaker 1: Her thick Cockney accent comically emphasizes some of her favorite words,
- 7:53Speaker 1: like fucking kunt, many of which she repeated over and
- 7:57Speaker 1: over again in between songs while performing in a Glastonbury
- 8:01Speaker 1: after being sternly warned by festival organizers to not do so.
- 8:07Speaker 2: But this is who she is. Adele speaks like a.
- 8:10Speaker 1: Character in a Guy Ritchie film, and Ritchie's characters, like
- 8:14Speaker 1: Adele's beloved Alpacino in Dog Day Afternoon, are singular characters
- 8:19Speaker 1: in their own right, and they all share one common bond.
- 8:23Speaker 2: With the rest of us.
- 8:25Speaker 1: Fear two thousand and seven, London, nineteen year old Adele
- 8:32Speaker 1: clenched her fist into a ball and drew her arm
- 8:34Speaker 1: back and clocked her boyfriend in the face with a
- 8:37Speaker 1: stiff right hook, everyone knocking back pints inside the pub.
- 8:42Speaker 1: They were stunned, not least of which was the boyfriend,
- 8:45Speaker 1: who is now reeling in pain and confusion. Adele, on
- 8:48Speaker 1: the other hand, was not confused, nor was she concerned
- 8:52Speaker 1: with keeping up appearances among a room full of buzz
- 8:54Speaker 1: twenty somethings. She was seething over a relationship which I
- 8:58Speaker 1: quickly deteriorated in to a living hell. She was catching
- 9:02Speaker 1: unwanted attention from the pub's bouncers, and now she was
- 9:06Speaker 1: running her feet slammed rhythmically on the sidewalk of Tottenham
- 9:10Speaker 1: Court Road. She was sure the bouncers were hot on
- 9:13Speaker 1: her trail. Any minute, they'd catch up to her and
- 9:16Speaker 1: hold her till the cops came. She assaulted a man
- 9:20Speaker 1: in front of a crowd, not that the guy wasn't
- 9:22Speaker 1: an asshole and didn't have it coming, because.
- 9:25Speaker 2: He was, and he did.
- 9:27Speaker 1: But there was no reality in which Adele didn't punch him.
- 9:31Speaker 1: She'd grown up tough, raised by a single mother, first
- 9:34Speaker 1: in Tautenham, a London neighborhood with a high rate of poverty,
- 9:37Speaker 1: gang violence and crime, and then in Brixton, the place
- 9:41Speaker 1: the clash once told you about and when they kick
- 9:44Speaker 1: at your front door, how you gonna come? Adele was
- 9:47Speaker 1: going to come with a fist to the face, and
- 9:50Speaker 1: somewhren't so lucky like Avril Johnson, sister of reggae star
- 9:54Speaker 1: Tippa Irie, who was murdered inside her Brixton home in
- 9:58Speaker 1: front of her children same year that Adele and her
- 10:01Speaker 1: mother moved to town. The gangs of Adele's childhood would
- 10:05Speaker 1: give her the idea for the song title rolling in
- 10:08Speaker 1: the Deep. To roll deep, to roll with the crew,
- 10:12Speaker 1: with people who have your back and your time of
- 10:14Speaker 1: need was a necessity of London's criminal underworld. Tonight, however,
- 10:20Speaker 1: Adele had no crew, just yourself, haul and ass down
- 10:24Speaker 1: on London Street in the dark, and she soon realized
- 10:27Speaker 1: that no one was chasing her after all, the no
- 10:29Speaker 1: bouncers from the pub, no soon to be ex boyfriend.
- 10:33Speaker 1: She was the one doing the chasing, although she was
- 10:36Speaker 1: chasing nothing, just the ground beneath her feet. The events
- 10:42Speaker 1: of that night became the inspiration for Chasing Pavements, Adele's
- 10:46Speaker 1: second single from her debut album nineteen, name for the
- 10:50Speaker 1: age she was when she made it. The song was
- 10:53Speaker 1: an unexpected success, leading to numerous Grammy nominations and her
- 10:58Speaker 1: performance on Saturday Night Line. Only years earlier, Adele had
- 11:03Speaker 1: been a student at London's Britz School, the same performing
- 11:06Speaker 1: arts high school attended by one of her many inspirations,
- 11:09Speaker 1: Amy Winehouse. From there it was a blur. Her songs
- 11:14Speaker 1: went up on MySpace, multiple record labels emailed. A record
- 11:18Speaker 1: deal with Excel Records soon followed, and suddenly Adele was
- 11:21Speaker 1: doing what she dreamed about doing since she was a kid.
- 11:25Speaker 1: But it didn't come easy from the jump. Adele was afraid.
- 11:29Speaker 1: For one, she had terrible stage frame. Projectile vomiting prior
- 11:33Speaker 1: to a show was not uncommon in Amsterdam. She once
- 11:37Speaker 1: tried to escape out of a fire exit just so
- 11:40Speaker 1: she could avoid facing the crowd she was to perform
- 11:43Speaker 1: in front of. And as she became more famous, however.
- 11:46Speaker 2: The fear evolved.
- 11:49Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, the year of twenty one, the year
- 11:52Speaker 1: she released what would become the biggest album of the
- 11:55Speaker 1: twenty first century, she was afraid of something much more profound,
- 12:00Speaker 1: worried that the more famous she got, the more out
- 12:02Speaker 1: of touch she would become, and thus her life experiences
- 12:08Speaker 1: would no longer be the life experiences of her audience.
- 12:12Speaker 1: She feared she would no longer be relatable, and that
- 12:15Speaker 1: wasn't all. Two things happened that year in quick succession.
- 12:21Speaker 1: The first led to the fear that she would never
- 12:23Speaker 1: be able to sing again, but the second that had
- 12:27Speaker 1: her fearing for her own life. Albat made it look easy,
- 13:02Speaker 1: sitting there in his brown college boy jacket, getting comfortable
- 13:06Speaker 1: in the black leather chair, beginning to understand the true
- 13:09Speaker 1: nature of his character, Michael Corleone. He wasn't a loud
- 13:13Speaker 1: mouth or a hothead like his brother's Sonny played by
- 13:16Speaker 1: Jimmy Kahn, and he wasn't as transparent as the Corleone's
- 13:19Speaker 1: family attorney Tom Hagen played by Robert Duval. But as
- 13:24Speaker 1: Cohn and Duval paced the dimly lit room, mahogany tables,
- 13:28Speaker 1: hardwood floors, and arguing about what to do with this
- 13:31Speaker 1: dirty cop McCluskey, protector of the narcotics man who had
- 13:34Speaker 1: put their pops in the hospital, Paccino was slowly methodically turning.
- 13:41Speaker 1: He was the dark horse, the silent type, the one
- 13:45Speaker 1: you never saw coming. Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone was
- 13:49Speaker 1: getting ready to push past his own fears such as
- 13:53Speaker 1: what would happen to him if he joined the family business,
- 13:56Speaker 1: how would change him? And what would he have to do?
- 14:00Speaker 1: And there was only one way to find out, only
- 14:02Speaker 1: one way through. Fear was not an option. Fear was
- 14:07Speaker 1: the mind killer. From a couch across the room facing
- 14:11Speaker 1: the television set, Adele leaned in the pivotal scene from
- 14:16Speaker 1: one of her favorite films, The Godfather, played out on
- 14:19Speaker 1: the screen. But Sheino was so good, so tough. He
- 14:24Speaker 1: was our guy, and the way he was able to
- 14:26Speaker 1: subtly show how his character conquered his fears was truly inspiring.
- 14:31Speaker 1: These crime films that Adele loved, the crime films that
- 14:35Speaker 1: were universally loved. They served more than one purpose. They
- 14:39Speaker 1: were a source of comfort when Adele wanted to curl
- 14:42Speaker 1: up and shout out the world and escape into great storytelling.
- 14:47Speaker 1: And that's something we can all relate to. But there
- 14:50Speaker 1: was something else as well these movies, especially when it
- 14:54Speaker 1: came to scenes like this. These films, these performances, could
- 14:59Speaker 1: give you the strength and the tools to overpower fear
- 15:03Speaker 1: before the world, with its teeth and its insatiable appetite,
- 15:08Speaker 1: overpowered you. July twenty third, twenty eleven, Andrew Marris, Amy
- 15:15Speaker 1: Winehouse's bodyguard, checked in on his employer at around ten
- 15:19Speaker 1: in the morning. He found her laying on her bed,
- 15:22Speaker 1: unconscious at her home in Camden, North London. She'd been
- 15:26Speaker 1: up late the night before drinking, and it wasn't unusual
- 15:30Speaker 1: for Amy to be passed out till midday, so Mars
- 15:33Speaker 1: let her sleep it off. Five hours later.
- 15:35Speaker 2: However, at three in the afternoon, he.
- 15:38Speaker 1: Decided to check in on her again, and there she
- 15:41Speaker 1: was still on the bed, still unconscious, still in the
- 15:46Speaker 1: same exact position as before. This now struck Mars as odd.
- 15:51Speaker 1: He ran to her side. She wasn't breathing, she had
- 15:55Speaker 1: no pulse. Mars picked up the phone and called for
- 15:58Speaker 1: an ambulance. Shortly thereafter, Amy Winehouse would be declared dead.
- 16:04Speaker 1: She was twenty seven years old. It would be months
- 16:08Speaker 1: before an official inquest would find that Amy Winehouse died
- 16:12Speaker 1: from misadventure caused by high alcohol consumption. But misadventure wasn't
- 16:17Speaker 1: the only.
- 16:18Speaker 2: Thing that killed Amy Winehouse.
- 16:20Speaker 1: Adele, for one, was well aware.
- 16:23Speaker 2: Of this fact.
- 16:24Speaker 1: News of Amy's death hit Adele particularly hard. She was sad,
- 16:29Speaker 1: and she was pissed, and she was as she.
- 16:32Speaker 2: Put it, offended. Amy had gone to the brit school,
- 16:36Speaker 2: just like Adele.
- 16:37Speaker 1: She was the reason Adele began to play guitar in
- 16:39Speaker 1: the first place, the reason why Adele found the courage
- 16:42Speaker 1: to write and sing her own songs, and now, ironically,
- 16:47Speaker 1: Amy was gone in the exact same year that Adele
- 16:51Speaker 1: was breaking records and dominating the charts with her album
- 16:54Speaker 1: twenty one. The reason that Adele was offended by Amy's
- 16:58Speaker 1: death was because the public had done their part to
- 17:01Speaker 1: do her in Amy's drinking, her drug use, her erratic behavior.
- 17:06Speaker 1: It all played out in slow motion in the pages
- 17:08Speaker 1: of the press and in posts on social media, like
- 17:12Speaker 1: a car wreck that everyone pumped the brakes to watch
- 17:15Speaker 1: as they passed by. If the public hadn't been given
- 17:18Speaker 1: such intimate, always on access to every single choice, Amy
- 17:22Speaker 1: Winehouse made every mistake. If there wasn't this collective need
- 17:27Speaker 1: to watch a celebrity struggle and to comment on it,
- 17:30Speaker 1: to share it, to retweet it, well, it begged the
- 17:33Speaker 1: question would Amy still be alive? It was impossible for
- 17:38Speaker 1: Adele not to imagine that she was next, That fame
- 17:42Speaker 1: and fate were nothing but a pattern in search of
- 17:45Speaker 1: the next tragic figure to fit their mold. Paris, the
- 17:51Speaker 1: massive world tour for twenty one had just begune when
- 17:54Speaker 1: Adele felt something in her throat pop. She ended the
- 17:59Speaker 1: show that night more than a little concerned. She'd been
- 18:02Speaker 1: singing for nearly a decade since she was fourteen years
- 18:05Speaker 1: old and had never experienced anything like this before. She
- 18:10Speaker 1: hopped the plane to London, where the next day her
- 18:13Speaker 1: doctor told her it was a cute laryngitis and she
- 18:16Speaker 1: needed rest. Two weeks later she resumed the tour, which
- 18:20Speaker 1: eventually made its way to the United States. And then
- 18:23Speaker 1: it happened again, only this time it wasn't laryngitis. This
- 18:28Speaker 1: time a blood vessel on her vocal cord burst. She
- 18:32Speaker 1: gave it another couple of weeks and let the hemorrhage heal,
- 18:36Speaker 1: and then went back at it.
- 18:38Speaker 2: But it kept happening.
- 18:40Speaker 1: Her voice, that incredible voice, it kept giving out. The
- 18:45Speaker 1: media and the internet took notice and sharpened their knives.
- 18:49Speaker 1: She was a smoker, She was a drinker. She was
- 18:52Speaker 1: a loud talker and even a loud cackler. We've seen
- 18:56Speaker 1: this one before. It's Amy two point zero, another wildly
- 19:00Speaker 1: talented British singer running her god given instrument ragged. Adele
- 19:05Speaker 1: wasn't listening to what was being said about her online. Instead,
- 19:09Speaker 1: she was listening to the advice of other singers who
- 19:11Speaker 1: had gone through similar problems, veterans like Roger Daltrey, Stephen Tyler,
- 19:16Speaker 1: and Elton John, even younger singers like John Mayer, all
- 19:20Speaker 1: of whom had undergone cutting edge throat surgery to salvage
- 19:23Speaker 1: their voices and keep their jobs and so. On November three,
- 19:27Speaker 1: twenty eleven, coincidentally, the same week the twenty one returned
- 19:32Speaker 1: to the number one spot on the Billboard album chart,
- 19:35Speaker 1: Adele canceled all performances and went under the knife at
- 19:39Speaker 1: mass General Hospital in Boston.
- 19:42Speaker 2: Actually it was a.
- 19:43Speaker 1: Laser, not a knife, which the world renowned throat surgeon
- 19:47Speaker 1: Steven's I tells used to remove a polyop that had
- 19:50Speaker 1: been plaguing Adele's vocal cord and then for months after,
- 19:54Speaker 1: Adele's future was uncertain. For five weeks she was unable
- 19:59Speaker 1: to talk, five long weeks in which she wondered what
- 20:02Speaker 1: her voice would sound like when it returned, what if
- 20:06Speaker 1: she would never be able to sing like she used to,
- 20:08Speaker 1: or if she couldn't sing at all, but every inkling
- 20:12Speaker 1: of self doubt melted away. Months later, on February twelve,
- 20:16Speaker 1: twenty twelve, when Adele made her long away to return
- 20:20Speaker 1: to performing at the fifty fourth Annual Grammy Awards ceremony.
- 20:23Speaker 2: In Los Angeles.
- 20:25Speaker 1: Not only did she take home seven awards that night,
- 20:28Speaker 1: including Album of the Year, but she performed Rolling in
- 20:31Speaker 1: the Deep, and she killed it. Her post surgery voice
- 20:35Speaker 1: was not only strong, it had actually gained some upper range.
- 20:40Speaker 1: It was like the Adele everyone already knew, only better.
- 20:44Speaker 1: But despite her rousing performance in all her trophies, Adele
- 20:49Speaker 1: was upstaged that night by tragedy. The price of fame,
- 20:53Speaker 1: which Amy Weinhouse had so sorely paid the previous year,
- 20:58Speaker 1: was now hanging over the Staples Center like a ghost.
- 21:04Speaker 1: The Beverly Hilton Hotel Sweet four thirty four, the portraits
- 21:09Speaker 1: of Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando hanging on the walls,
- 21:12Speaker 1: surveyed the room in silence. Trays of uneaten food, opened
- 21:17Speaker 1: bottles of champagne, the remaining contents now warm and flat.
- 21:23Speaker 1: In the bathroom, prescription bottles of Xanax and muscle relaxes
- 21:27Speaker 1: on the counter next to them a spoon for cocaine,
- 21:32Speaker 1: and there in the bathtub, submerged under six inches of water,
- 21:37Speaker 1: the body a forty eight year old Whitney Houston. Whitney
- 21:43Speaker 1: never made it to the Grammys that night. She didn't
- 21:45Speaker 1: even make it to the pre party thrown by her
- 21:47Speaker 1: mentor arist the Records founder Clive Davis, the day before
- 21:51Speaker 1: the Grammys. It was on that day that a combination
- 21:55Speaker 1: of cocaine, prescription drugs, and heart disease contributed to Whitney
- 21:59Speaker 1: Houston and sudden death. The Grammy Awards became a more
- 22:04Speaker 1: solemn affair. The bright victories were tinted with a touch
- 22:07Speaker 1: of darkness, and Adele's incredible performance took on greater meaning.
- 22:14Speaker 1: Rolling in the Deep wasn't just a kiss off to
- 22:16Speaker 1: an ex. It was a kiss off to the mold,
- 22:20Speaker 1: the press, the public. They weren't going to run her
- 22:23Speaker 1: into the ground like they did.
- 22:24Speaker 2: Whitney or Amy.
- 22:26Speaker 1: Soon, Adele would give birth to her son, who she
- 22:30Speaker 1: had with her boyfriend at the time, an investment banker
- 22:33Speaker 1: turned charity CEO named Simon Kanecki, and she had a
- 22:37Speaker 1: family to protect, so she shifted into paccino mode. Imagine
- 22:44Speaker 1: if you will, Adele sitting in that black leather chair
- 22:49Speaker 1: in that dimly lit room with its mahogany tables and
- 22:53Speaker 1: hardwood floors, And just like al Pacino, just like Michael Corleone,
- 22:58Speaker 1: Adele pushed through the fear. She locked down her private life.
- 23:04Speaker 1: She locked herself in her house so that the paparazzi
- 23:07Speaker 1: couldn't reach her, and she became her own unreliable narrator.
- 23:11Speaker 1: She did this by feeding little lies to those in
- 23:14Speaker 1: her inner circle on purpose, in order to see who
- 23:18Speaker 1: was talking to the press. It's a gangster move, and
- 23:22Speaker 1: the gangster knows that if she tells one person a
- 23:25Speaker 1: lie and that lie ends up in the papers, then
- 23:28Speaker 1: that gangster knows exactly who betrayed her, And so then
- 23:33Speaker 1: Adele would unceremoniously cut them loose from her life. It
- 23:38Speaker 1: wasn't easy watching someone you thought you trusted to go
- 23:40Speaker 1: off behind your back like that, but it made it
- 23:43Speaker 1: a lot easier to let them go, knowing that by
- 23:46Speaker 1: doing so, you added one more additional layer of protection,
- 23:50Speaker 1: more protection than Amy Winehouse or Whitney Houston had. But
- 23:56Speaker 1: the more those layers of protection were applied, harder it
- 24:00Speaker 1: was to be in the outside world the less relatable
- 24:05Speaker 1: Adele feared she would become, and that was the fear
- 24:09Speaker 1: that was it. That fear remained after all these years
- 24:13Speaker 1: as one of Adele's greatest fears, that she would become unrelatable.
- 24:18Speaker 1: The grandiose houses, the multiple awards, the money, the fame.
- 24:23Speaker 1: Adele was a long way from the mean streets of Taughtenham,
- 24:26Speaker 1: and she knew it. The challenge now was to remain
- 24:29Speaker 1: relatable with those streets, with any street anywhere in the world.
- 24:35Speaker 1: And after four years of working on new music, after
- 24:38Speaker 1: much anticipation from her fans after the smashing success of
- 24:43Speaker 1: twenty one, Adele returned at last with a song that
- 24:47Speaker 1: was so authentic and so relatable that it was downright criminal.
- 24:58Speaker 1: We'll be right back, We're.
- 25:00Speaker 2: We're, We're okay.
- 25:09Speaker 1: This next line, it's just begging me to do a
- 25:13Speaker 1: cheap Tony Montana from Scarface impersonation. But I'm not gonna
- 25:18Speaker 1: do that. Okay. Just picture picture Al Pacino as Tony Montana,
- 25:24Speaker 1: and he's sitting there and he gives you the line
- 25:26Speaker 1: you want to fuck with me?
- 25:28Speaker 2: Okay, you cockroaches?
- 25:31Speaker 1: And now picture Tony Montana high on cocaine and sweating
- 25:35Speaker 1: through his black soup with trembling hands. He's hastily assembling
- 25:40Speaker 1: his grenade launcher inside his office suite, his bugged out eyes.
- 25:44Speaker 1: They're alternating between the weapons intricate design and a series
- 25:48Speaker 1: of closed circuit television sets, and they play out a
- 25:52Speaker 1: disturbing scene these TVs. It's armed men. They've invaded Tony's
- 25:58Speaker 1: mansion and they're coming up up the blood red staircase
- 26:01Speaker 1: where they're now waiting on the other side of the door.
- 26:04Speaker 1: And that door, that door is the only thing separating
- 26:08Speaker 1: Tony Montana between life and here and death out there.
- 26:13Speaker 1: And so he says, you want to play games, okay.
- 26:18Speaker 1: Tony's now facing the door in a battle stance with
- 26:21Speaker 1: his knees bent and the fear it's inverted.
- 26:27Speaker 2: He was fear.
- 26:28Speaker 1: Now Tony Montana. He's holding the grenade launcher in his
- 26:33Speaker 1: very capable hands, slung down low at hip level, and
- 26:38Speaker 1: he's ready to fire off at anyone who dares step
- 26:41Speaker 1: inside his private residence. And with a roar, he shouts,
- 26:46Speaker 1: you guys know the line, say hello to my little friend.
- 26:55Speaker 1: Watching this all unfold on the television, adele Letlosa laugh
- 26:58Speaker 1: as explosively as one of Tony Montana's grenades as she
- 27:02Speaker 1: watched Al Pacino as the Cuban drug lord in Brian
- 27:05Speaker 1: De Palma's film Scarface. It was twenty fifteen, and Adele
- 27:10Speaker 1: was doing what she did every time she was overwhelmed
- 27:13Speaker 1: in what she called a tsunami of emotions. She was
- 27:17Speaker 1: binging her favorite crime films, something to soothe the anxiety
- 27:21Speaker 1: surrounding the impending release of her third studio album, twenty five.
- 27:26Speaker 1: The process to follow up the smash hit twenty one
- 27:29Speaker 1: had been a labored one, beset with writer's block and
- 27:33Speaker 1: crushing doubts. Though, when Adele began to collaborate with producer
- 27:38Speaker 1: Greg Kursten, known at the time for his work with Sea,
- 27:41Speaker 1: Kelly Clarkson and Lily Allen, among others, the creative floodgates opened.
- 27:47Speaker 1: Writing the perfect Adell song, however, proved harder.
- 27:49Speaker 2: Than it had been before.
- 27:51Speaker 1: The music had to feel as authentic and direct as
- 27:54Speaker 1: it had in the past. A full six months passed
- 27:57Speaker 1: between when Adele and Kirsten wrote the verses for twenty
- 28:01Speaker 1: five's lead single.
- 28:02Speaker 2: Hello and when they wrote it's.
- 28:04Speaker 1: Cathartic chorus, but their patients paid off, as did the
- 28:08Speaker 1: patients of Adele's fans, because when the song Hello was
- 28:12Speaker 1: released in October of twenty fifteen, the world starved for
- 28:17Speaker 1: new Adele material for years. Ate it up and the
- 28:21Speaker 1: single went to number one in one hundred and two countries,
- 28:24Speaker 1: setting an iTunes record. Its videos set a record on
- 28:27Speaker 1: YouTube as well, where it amassed fifty million views in
- 28:31Speaker 1: just forty eight hours. Once again, audiences connected with Adele,
- 28:36Speaker 1: and audiences could relate to Adele because she was offering
- 28:40Speaker 1: a different side of herself, which in turn gave listeners
- 28:44Speaker 1: the opportunity to recognize the same different side in themselves.
- 28:49Speaker 1: Hello wasn't just another kiss off to an X or
- 28:53Speaker 1: a rally cry to stay strong in the face of
- 28:55Speaker 1: great adversity. It was a ballot about forgiveness and about
- 28:59Speaker 1: moving on. It was about closure and about growing up.
- 29:04Speaker 1: It was the definition of a universal hit, and it
- 29:07Speaker 1: hit everyone everywhere, all at once. November ninth, twenty fifteen,
- 29:15Speaker 1: the Iplante Michigan, six point forty pm, the police squad
- 29:20Speaker 1: car tore down Railroad Street, coming to a dramatic stop
- 29:23Speaker 1: outside an apartment complex in the nine hundred block. Two
- 29:27Speaker 1: officers emerged from the car. The pulsing blue lights, illuminating
- 29:30Speaker 1: their every movement. As dust crept in. They led with
- 29:34Speaker 1: their service weapons, creeping swiftly with purpose, towards the apartment
- 29:37Speaker 1: building's front door. Kidnapping in progress. That was the call
- 29:41Speaker 1: they received from dispatch, something about someone being dragged against
- 29:46Speaker 1: their will inside. The cops did their sweep, the coast
- 29:50Speaker 1: was clear and the door was unlocked, and they were
- 29:53Speaker 1: inside there. Halfway up the stairs, two men, arms twisted
- 29:58Speaker 1: and bent like a mall pretzel. They wrestled, they struggled,
- 30:01Speaker 1: and then the cops saw it. The purp was pressing
- 30:04Speaker 1: the muzzle of a handgun into the other guy's abdomen,
- 30:06Speaker 1: and the cops were yelling, now drop it on your knees,
- 30:09Speaker 1: I said, on your fucking knees. The purp froze, dropped
- 30:14Speaker 1: the piece, and seconds later he was in police custody,
- 30:17Speaker 1: riding in the back of the squad car on his
- 30:19Speaker 1: way to county jail. Twenty one year old Brian Earl
- 30:25Speaker 1: Taylor had multiple felony warrants and was out on parole
- 30:28Speaker 1: when he was arrested in charged with unlawful imprisonment and
- 30:31Speaker 1: carrying a concealed weapon. Allegedly, he had been in the
- 30:35Speaker 1: process of forcing the other man in the stairwell to
- 30:38Speaker 1: take him to his apartment.
- 30:39Speaker 2: Where he planned to rob him.
- 30:41Speaker 1: At the time of the arrest, Adele's Hello was the
- 30:44Speaker 1: number one song in the country.
- 30:46Speaker 2: It was like.
- 30:47Speaker 1: Air or water, gas station clerks, retail store workers, bank tellers,
- 30:52Speaker 1: jim rats, dental hygienis. It didn't matter who you were
- 30:56Speaker 1: or what you did. You heard that song, and you
- 30:59Speaker 1: heard it often. Even the purpse heard it. And we
- 31:03Speaker 1: know this because four months later, at his sentencing in
- 31:06Speaker 1: March of twenty twelve, when it came time to plead
- 31:10Speaker 1: his case, Brian Earl Taylor didn't just ask for forgiveness
- 31:14Speaker 1: for what he'd done.
- 31:16Speaker 2: He sang it.
- 31:18Speaker 1: Brian Earl Taylor sang a personalized version of Adele's Hello
- 31:22Speaker 1: to the judge on the day of his sentencing. And
- 31:25Speaker 1: I got to think that the thought process here was
- 31:28Speaker 1: that he, the criminal, was hoping to find some common
- 31:31Speaker 1: ground with the judge, with the law, and that common
- 31:34Speaker 1: ground being Adele, the common ground of the biggest song
- 31:38Speaker 1: in the world, the common ground of Adele's universal relatability.
- 31:43Speaker 1: Relatable or not. Adele couldn't help with Brian Earl Taylor's plate.
- 31:47Speaker 1: That day, he was sentenced up to seventeen years in prison.
- 31:52Speaker 1: It was then that Brian was driven to change. He
- 31:55Speaker 1: worked in the prison system's palliative care program, helping other
- 31:59Speaker 1: inmates who were sick or dying. He taught himself piano
- 32:02Speaker 1: on the prison's keyboard and began to write his own songs,
- 32:06Speaker 1: and in the fall of twenty nineteen, after serving a
- 32:09Speaker 1: little over seventy years of his sentence, Brian Earl Taylor
- 32:12Speaker 1: was released on parole. It was only then that he
- 32:16Speaker 1: revealed to the press when he had heard Hello for
- 32:18Speaker 1: the first time and what inspired him to sing it
- 32:21Speaker 1: to the judge. He was locked up awaiting trial, sent
- 32:26Speaker 1: to solitary after getting into it with another inmate. That's
- 32:29Speaker 1: when he heard Adele's voice. He was alone and afraid
- 32:33Speaker 1: when Hello wafted in from somewhere, and it was then
- 32:37Speaker 1: that something clicked for Brian Earld Taylor. He could feel
- 32:41Speaker 1: the fear that had driven his young criminal life start
- 32:44Speaker 1: to fade away, and in its place, something else was
- 32:48Speaker 1: taking root. Call it hope, call it wisdom, call it clarity.
- 32:54Speaker 1: Whatever it was, Adele could relate. Justin Jackson walked out
- 33:29Speaker 1: of prison and into the warm Florida sunshine. After two
- 33:34Speaker 1: long years he was a freeman. What was he a
- 33:37Speaker 1: changed man? And did he regret the things he'd done?
- 33:41Speaker 1: When he came to regret, there was the hole getting caught.
- 33:44Speaker 2: Of it all.
- 33:45Speaker 1: And you always regretted that because it was so ballsy
- 33:48Speaker 1: what he done, and he'd almost pulled it off, pretending
- 33:51Speaker 1: to be a member of Madonna's entourage, sweet talking of
- 33:55Speaker 1: boutique in New York to lend him two point four
- 33:58Speaker 1: million dollars injewelry for a photo shoot. Air quotes around
- 34:03Speaker 1: lend and photo shoot. There was no photo shoot and
- 34:07Speaker 1: there was no lending, and there was no Madonna, not really.
- 34:11Speaker 1: There was just Justin Jackson and over two million dollars
- 34:14Speaker 1: worth of Swiss luxury jewelry weighing heavy in his thieving
- 34:17Speaker 1: hands from the Florida pawnshop. May have paid pennies on
- 34:21Speaker 1: the dollar for the stuff, but when you're talking millions
- 34:23Speaker 1: of dollars, that's a lot of fucking pennies. So that
- 34:27Speaker 1: question again, Was he a changed man?
- 34:30Speaker 2: Nah?
- 34:31Speaker 1: He was merely a man with a strengthened resolve and
- 34:34Speaker 1: the desire to get it right the next time. But
- 34:37Speaker 1: a fresh scam needed a fresh celebrity and a fresh mark.
- 34:41Speaker 1: This time, the mark wouldn't be high end jewelry would
- 34:44Speaker 1: be high end sneakers. Sneakers with serious resale value, the
- 34:49Speaker 1: sneakers of NBA players, and the celebrity through which he
- 34:53Speaker 1: could work this scam had to be God Tear, someone
- 34:57Speaker 1: who commanded respect and awe from just about anyone. In
- 35:02Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, as Justin Jackson put his new scam in place,
- 35:07Speaker 1: that celebrity was Adele. Justin Jackson created an email address
- 35:12Speaker 1: that appeared to belong to Adele's manager, Jonathan Dickens. He
- 35:15Speaker 1: then began to email the representatives of NBA players, offering
- 35:19Speaker 1: tickets to Adele's concerts in exchange for their sneakers, which
- 35:23Speaker 1: he said would be donated to a charity auction. Of course,
- 35:26Speaker 1: just like there had been no Madonna and no photo shoot,
- 35:29Speaker 1: there was no Adele, and there was no charity auction,
- 35:31Speaker 1: and there were no concert tickets. But not everyone that
- 35:35Speaker 1: Justin Jackson contacted could easily sniff that out. Paul George,
- 35:39Speaker 1: Victor Rolattopo, and Richard Hamilton were among the pro ballplayers
- 35:42Speaker 1: who actually sent their sneakers as requested. This mild success
- 35:47Speaker 1: made Jackson greedy. He wanted to attend the Rolling Loud
- 35:51Speaker 1: Hip hop festival in Miami, where Kendrick Lamar was headlining,
- 35:54Speaker 1: but he didn't want to pay for it. Then why
- 35:56Speaker 1: should he when he could pretend to be Adele's manager
- 35:58Speaker 1: and get tickets free. When festival organizers received a suspicious
- 36:03Speaker 1: email from someone claiming to be Adele's manager, the red
- 36:06Speaker 1: flags he immediately went up. They contacted Miami Dade Pde,
- 36:11Speaker 1: who in turn contacted the fake Jonathan Dickens Justin Jackson,
- 36:16Speaker 1: posing as the festival's production manager. A meetup was set
- 36:20Speaker 1: in downtown Miami, and in May of twenty seventeen, days
- 36:23Speaker 1: before the Rolling Loud Festival, Justin Jackson and his wife
- 36:27Speaker 1: angel Lee rolled into Bayfront Park thinking they were really
- 36:31Speaker 1: pulling it off, only to be immediately arrested and charged
- 36:35Speaker 1: with over a dozen felonies, including grand theft, identity theft,
- 36:40Speaker 1: and organizing a scheme to defraud. Adele's songs are one
- 36:47Speaker 1: of a kind currency, her identity is another kind, and
- 36:51Speaker 1: her manager's identity is yet another. My point is even
- 36:55Speaker 1: those in Adele's orbit have value on the black market
- 36:59Speaker 1: and Jackson's brazen but ultimately dumb crime was the criminal
- 37:04Speaker 1: world's proof of and co sign on Adele's cultural value.
- 37:09Speaker 1: Once Hello Hit, Adele was no longer relatable, she was exploitable.
- 37:14Speaker 1: Thus the counterfeit Adele was born. But scammers, moles in
- 37:19Speaker 1: her inner circle, or felons who sang her songs in court,
- 37:23Speaker 1: none of these had anything to do with her divorce
- 37:25Speaker 1: from Simon Kanecki. The two had married shortly after the
- 37:28Speaker 1: birth of their son, but the end of that marriage
- 37:31Speaker 1: came just a year or so later. There was nothing
- 37:34Speaker 1: as dramatic as an Adele lyric that had led them.
- 37:36Speaker 2: To this point.
- 37:37Speaker 1: It was simply the organic path that their union had taken.
- 37:41Speaker 1: They would remain close friends and continue to co parent
- 37:44Speaker 1: their son, and of course Adele wanted to keep the
- 37:47Speaker 1: whole thing on a down low, like she always did.
- 37:49Speaker 2: When the paparazzi had.
- 37:51Speaker 1: Come to understand that, like her beloved Michael Corleone, Adele controlled.
- 37:55Speaker 2: What the world saw of her.
- 37:57Speaker 1: No one had even seen a picture of her wedding,
- 38:00Speaker 1: and when photos of her son were taken in secret
- 38:02Speaker 1: and then sold, she sued and won five figures in damages.
- 38:07Speaker 1: It's like Tony Montana said, you want to fuck with me? Okay,
- 38:11Speaker 1: you cockroaches, But there was no keeping the divorce the secret.
- 38:16Speaker 1: On Good Friday twenty nineteen, news of Adele's divorce got out.
- 38:21Speaker 2: It was all over the.
- 38:22Speaker 1: Internet, memed on social media, everywhere you turned. Adele's personal
- 38:26Speaker 1: life was suddenly under a microscope. The fear was creeping
- 38:30Speaker 1: back in Fear that the public would do her dirty
- 38:33Speaker 1: like they did to Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston. Fear
- 38:36Speaker 1: that her life would begin to spin out of control
- 38:39Speaker 1: from this point forward. Fear of all the moments she'd
- 38:42Speaker 1: have alone, missing those can't miss milestones, now that her
- 38:47Speaker 1: son was splitting time between her and Simon. So she
- 38:51Speaker 1: did what she always did when fear reared its ugly head.
- 38:55Speaker 1: She crawled into her bed and turned on the television.
- 38:58Speaker 1: The screen flickered to life. The Sopranos was halfway through
- 39:02Speaker 1: an old episode, Season two, Tony and the boys in
- 39:06Speaker 1: the back room at the bottom Bank, shooting dirty pool.
- 39:09Speaker 1: And there's Big Pussy already a snitch for the Feds,
- 39:13Speaker 1: but no one can prove it just yet. Fewer still
- 39:16Speaker 1: want to believe it. Hey, Syl Pussy says to Silvio
- 39:20Speaker 1: Docte played with Gusto and Grease by Little Stephen van
- 39:24Speaker 1: zand have been gone a long time, let me hear it.
- 39:28Speaker 1: Syll's mouth contorts like it's preparing to crush gravel. His
- 39:33Speaker 1: head bobs slightly, he gestures sharply with his hand, and
- 39:37Speaker 1: he does his best paccino.
- 39:40Speaker 2: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me
- 39:43Speaker 2: back in.
- 39:47Speaker 1: Two years later, in twenty twenty one, Adele was pulled
- 39:52Speaker 1: back in, back into the spotlight, back onto the charts,
- 39:56Speaker 1: back to her original fear of performing on stage, in
- 40:00Speaker 1: order to promote her a fourth album, thirty. These are
- 40:04Speaker 1: fears that will never go away. You can't outrun them,
- 40:08Speaker 1: you can't kill them. But Adele turned them into songs
- 40:12Speaker 1: everyone else could relate to, and in turn helped her
- 40:17Speaker 1: survive a tabloid fate of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in
- 40:24Speaker 1: This is Disgrace slammed all right, everybody, thanks for checking
- 40:40Speaker 1: out this episode on Adele. Listen. Adele's sophomore album twenty one,
- 40:45Speaker 1: it sold something like seventeen million copies. Seventeen million, meaning
- 40:51Speaker 1: that I don't know everybody's got a copy of this album.
- 40:55Speaker 1: But I don't and curious which blockbuster album that are
- 41:00Speaker 1: beloved by millions of people that sold you know, tons
- 41:03Speaker 1: of records?
- 41:04Speaker 2: Do you not own that this might not do anything
- 41:07Speaker 2: for you or moms?
- 41:08Speaker 1: Never mind Happy Road by the Beatles, albums I Love
- 41:11Speaker 1: by the Way, Let Me Know six one, seven, nine,
- 41:14Speaker 1: six sixty six three eight, voicemail and text hitting up
- 41:16Speaker 1: at disgrace lampod on the socials. Make sure you get
- 41:19Speaker 1: automatic downloads turned on on Apple podcast so you never
- 41:21Speaker 1: miss an episode of disgrace Land.
- 41:23Speaker 2: Here comes some credits.
- 41:25Speaker 1: Disgracelaand was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
- 41:28Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network and iHeart Podcasts.
- 41:34Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
- 41:36Speaker 1: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
- 41:40Speaker 1: a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.
- 41:43Speaker 1: We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
- 41:46Speaker 1: a member right now by going to disgrace lampod dot
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- 42:00Speaker 1: and on YouTube at YouTube dot com, slash at Disgraceland
- 42:04Speaker 1: pod Rock a Roller.
- 42:10Speaker 2: He's a bad down man.