Deniece Pearson: 'I feel life couldn’t better'

The project might not have come to fruition, but she seems to feel it was time well spent. “I really enjoyed singing Ella Fitzgerald and Hazel Scott,” the former Five Star singer tells The Yorkshire Post via video call. “Hazel was a huge jazz singer and she played three pianos at the same time back in the 1930s.

“She was an absolutely brilliant, phenomenal talent, so (the show) was kind of based around her because her father was from Liverpool. She studied at Juilliard. It’s a phenomenal show, I’d love to take that further.”

While progress on the stage show might have stalled, Pearson has turned her attention to a solo album Free-Queen-See, the first taste of which is an EP whose lead track Forever Young is accompanied by re-recordings of two of Five Star’s best-known singles, System Addict and Rain or Shine.

“It’s a great way of reminding people, it’s nostalgic, but also a new avenue,” says the 55-year-old. “It’s like ‘do you remember?’ and here I am with Forever Young, so I think it was a great little strategy.”

The reggae-fied groove of Forever Young signifies a new chapter in her musical journey which began in 1983. “It’s a nice, feelgood summer song,” Pearson says. “That’s how life should should be. Don’t stress it, don’t overthink it, just (live a) bespoke life the way that you want life to be and enjoy it.”

The album Free-Queen-See should be out in “spring/summer of next year”, she says. “I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve tapped into my Jamaican heritage. It’s a different angle from me as the lead singer of Five Star. Also, there’s a Christmas single – I’ve never recorded a Christmas song before, so that’s another angle, but it’s all coming together.”

Forty years into her career, she says: “I think I’m at the top of my game because I’ve got nobody to answer to. I’m putting my campaign together, I’m writing and producing my songs, so I feel life couldn’t better.”

Pearson was 15 years old when she formed Five Star with her siblings Stedman, Lorraine, Doris and Delroy. They were guided by their father Buster, who’d been a working musician with the likes of Wilson Pickett.

“Daddy was always in the music business, he played on The Midnight Hour tour with Wilson Pickett, and also with Desmond Dekker and Otis Redding, so he brought his legacy to our table,” Pearson says. “Music was always in our household. My dad distributed records, he was a guitarist and he was a songwriter also. He used to wake us up to get out of bed when we were younger and put on a reel to reel and play us what he’d written in the studio. It was kind of inevitable that we would go into music.”

As for their early influences, Pearson says: “Definitely The Jackons, and I think Smokey (Robinson) for me, Crystal Gayle and Randy Crawford.”

The band had 15 top 40 singles and four top 20 albums, including the multi-million seller Silk & Steel. Pearson fondly recalls the first time that their debut hit, All Fall Down, was played on BBC Radio 1. “I remember Tony Blackburn saying, ‘Watch out for these guys, they’re going to be huge,’” she says.

From early on, Buster Pearson had long-term view for the family group, working with top class musicians such as Carl McIntosh and Steve Nichol of Loose Ends, Paul Jackson Jr and Luis Jardim and “a lot of American engineers and producers that were brought into the mix”.

Pearson says: “It was a masterplan that my dad put together for us, which enabled me to be sitting here 40 years later talking about our legacy.”

The band broke up in 1995, after seven albums. “I think we all grew and were kind of like, ‘Where are we?’,” she remembers. “I got married and had my children and then came back to England (from the US) for sentimental reasons.”

In 2009, Pearson diversified into musical theatre, appearing in the West End show Thriller Live. She says it was nice to honour Michael Jackson’s musical legacy. “Adrian Grant, who’s the producer of Thriller Live, contacted me on MySpace at the time,” she says. “He was a huge Five Star fan so he got in contact and asked me to come down and audition. I think I did three auditions and then they said, ‘Yes, we want you for the part’, and then I started learning Michael’s moonwalks and his songs, how he sang, it was just phenomenal. The press night was absolutely amazing, they gave me a standing ovation.”

Looking back, Pearson thinks her 15-year-old self would be proud of the fact that she’s managed to maintain a 40-year career. “She’d be absolutely delighted – and she’d probably think, ‘Wow, I’ve really grown into my face,’” she chuckles. “You know at that age when you’re 14, 15 and you’ve got this chubby look going on and then you get to 19, 20 and then 30 and you kind of settle into your face.”

Forever Young is out now. Deniece Pearson plays a Five Star 40th Anniversary Special at Pizza Express Live in London on September 30, followed by two Absolute 80s Weekenders at Butlins Bognor Regis on November 3 and Butlins Skegness on November 25. https://www.facebook.com/MsDeniecePearson/