When I left school, I got a job in a shoe shop and I used to save 15 quid a week and pay for my own singing and acting lessons.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Well, I actually first got into music as a small child, and as I became a teen, I sought out making money from music, weather that was singing lounge gigs, backup in studios, or weddings.
In my mid 30's, after a decade or so of giving full time to the music thing and finding myself with about $10 in the bank and no assets other than my musical equipment, I realized I needed to get serious about making a living.
I trained as a singer before I was an actor. I was a kid singer, I went to theater and choir school, and then I got music scholarships throughout my education. And that's what I was going to do. And then I took a left turn and went to drama school and became an actor.
Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.
At 17, I was working at Sprint in the Bronx so I could make money to fund my own music.
I worked in restaurants, bars, record stores; I did anything and everything to pay my way through university and LAMDA.
I took lessons since I was little; I used to pay for my own singing lessons and take myself. Just take the bus when I was a kid and go. But I'd been writing music for years, since the smallest age.
I never had huge amounts of money when I was young. I had huge amounts of fame, and I always had the sense of labor and recompense. I always said I don't want to work for pay, but I want to get paid for my song.
I couldn't live on the singing at first, so I worked as a cleaner, in a launderette, in a garage, face painting and doing the windows of shops at Christmas, 'cause I had been to art college.
The first job I ever had was singing in a jazz club when I was like 15 with my friend, and we earned like 70 bucks. We were like, 'Oh my God!'