JOHN LEGEND JOINS LULU FOR THIRD EPISODE OF ‘TURNING POINTS’ PODCAST
For the third episode of ‘Turning Points’, Lulu sits down with multi-platinum, 12-time Grammy Award-winner John Legend. The pair discuss Legend’s upbringing, his mother’s addiction, and being a parent. You can listen to the full episode here.
On his mother’s addiction and forgiveness:
“It wasn’t always easy… we basically lost our mum for a while as she was struggling with addiction after her mother died. So she was really out of our lives for a while… it made us have to step up and be more independent and take care of ourselves… we were latchkey kids, and we would come home and we would cook and do the chores around the house to make up for mum being gone.”
“Forgiveness is big… once we grew up and started to realise the why behind what happened with my parents and my mother, eventually you get to a place of forgiveness… and it’s healing for both of you – the person you’re forgiving and for yourself… the best was for everybody to heal is for you to eventually forgive.”
On dealing with trauma and loss as a parent:
“As I have gotten older, as I have been a parent and a husband and also I’ve seen my wife go through difficult times, you know, after having our first two babies she was dealing with post-partum depression and seeing her after dealing with loss when we had a miscarriage, you just start to learn what trauma does to people and some of the challenges that we all go through. I think it taught me how to be a better partner to her and be more supportive and understanding with her as she was going through some of the most difficult times in her life, and really in our lives together.”
“I think we’ve had enough tough times – I think we’ve been tested very well and the fact that we’ve made it through all that together I think it bodes well for the future.”
“We expect our parents to be perfect and do all the right things, then once we grow up we start to realise they’re just human beings like us. They’re dealing with unprocessed trauma a lot of times and mental health issues just like every human being does and I think it gives us more perspective once we grow up and we understand how their minds work.”
On his artistry and working with Prince:
“Music opened me up socially – otherwise I don’t know if I would ever talk to anybody… music made it so that I felt comfortable talking to everyone else and interacting with everyone else as music was my way of introducing myself to people…”
“As songwriters that’s part of how we find what we want to sing about and what we want to write about because if life is too perfect the songs aren’t very interesting”
“We jammed together… he had would have those after-parties at his house in Los Angeles and he would bring me up to jam… it was just cool to be in his presence… he was very keen on making sure artists retained as much control as they could – his advice is always in my head about making sure you control as much as you can.”
More weekly episodes to come featuring guests of the likes of Kristin Scott Thomas, Richard E Grant, and more. Listen to episodes featuring Boy George and Brian Cox here.
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