W L INTERVIEW
song that he ' s got . And Trevor would be like , what about this “ Rose ” song , anyway , long story short ; finally , Trevor kept on pestering me , and I said , OK , look , it goes like this , right . And I played him this demo , and his eyes got , you know Trevor , I could always see whenever his eyes got really huge , that he was on to something , so he said why don ' t you just like step into the into the vocal booth and just put that thing down .
So I went in there for an hour , back in those days , before auto-tune and all that , he ' d put me to work , and he ' d get me to keep singing it until I got one really good track , and we ’ d build up each harmony like that , then he finished it and we released the album after that . I think “ Prayer for the Dying ” was the first single and did alright , and then couple of others I can ' t remember what it was . “ Kiss from a Rose ” was the fourth single to be released from that album . I always remember it went into the charts at # 63 , dropped to 80 something the next week , and was done . It was all over . Finished .
Amazingly the Batman movie changed that dramatically , what happened ?
So Hollywood director Joel Schumacher , called me up , and he said , Seal , I ' m a big fan of yours . I ' m making this movie called Batman Forever , and I need something for the love scene , and I said well , Joel , thanks for thinking of me , but I don ' t have anything . You know , I ' ve just finished promoting the second album . I ' m back in the studio making the third album , and I don ' t really have anything . Bob Cavallo used to be Prince ’ s manager , was also my manager , was on a phone call to him at the time , and he said don ' t worry , I ' ll send you something . And Cavallo sends a copy of my second album to Joel and puts an asterisk next to “ Kiss from a Rose ,” he says listen to this song .
And so , Schumacher calls back the next day ; he goes I tried the song in the scene , it doesn ' t work . But I just love the song so much I ' m gonna stick it on the end credits , right . And so , the movie came out , and U2 had their hit on the end credits , and after that came “ Kiss from a Rose .” It was the last thing that people heard when they were coming out of the movie theatre . It was resurrected . So , wow , four Grammys and 8,000,000 albums later … no one knew ; no one knew . It was always a good song . It didn ' t quite sound like anything else you ' d ever heard before , and a lot of that can be attributed to Trevor ' s genius . You know , he saw the record where no one else did .
You famously have no regrets ?
Considering how difficult it was in the early part of my life , I ’ ve done well , wherever it is we go to in the ether , I ’ ll look back with zero regrets .
I ’ m not just talking career-wise , but everything : kids , divorce , loves lost and found , how active I am physically and emotionally – all of that .
At 60 , I find myself in a position where , if I got hit by a bus tomorrow , I ’ d think : ‘ You could probably have done one or two things better . But bloody hell , what a run !
22 wirrallife . com