Scottish singer Lulu has said that her first two relationships didn’t progress past kissing after the way she was raised made her see sex as ‘shameful’
Lulu has opened up about her complicated relationship with intimacy, admitting she was “afraid of sex” while rising to fame in the 1960s.
The singer, now 76, looks back on her early years in a candid extract from her upcoming memoir If Only You Knew, which will be released on September 25 to coincide with her latest tour.
In it, she explains how her upbringing and family dynamics left her uncomfortable around the subject of sex around the time when she became a household name after the success of her 1964 hit Shout.
“I wasn’t a fan. I was a musician. But, the truth is, I was also afraid of sex,” she wrote. “It had never been openly discussed in my home and Betty [her mother] had made it seem almost shameful, one of the many threads that coursed through the black rage between my parents.
“I wanted love, I wanted romance. I was just scared of the reality, so I spent my time wrapped up in fantasy, in love with the idea of love.”
Despite her fears, Lulu makes it clear she never went through negative experiences in the bedroom. She says her fear stemmed from the taboo surrounding sex during her teenage years.
She wrote: “There was one area in particular which made me feel very self-conscious: sex. It felt like a black hole pulling every-one around me in while I floated around in deep space watching them get swallowed up, which fed my feeling of being a step apart.”
She added that while she had boyfriends – including Alex Bell from her band The Luvvers and Herman’s Hermits frontman Peter Noone – she kept things PG.
“None of it went much further than a goodnight kiss because I’d skipped so much school that human biology had completely passed me by,” she said.
“And, in those days, we didn’t do the teenage conversations that you see in Hollywood films today which might have started to reveal its secrets. I didn’t have a clue.”
Her memoir also touches on her youthful crush on Eric Clapton, admitting she once threw a party for the chance to see him. “My crush on Eric, however, still burned strong and I remained desperate to see him.
“So, one night, I threw a party and invited everyone – the Beatles, the Who, the Animals and Cat Stevens – hoping he’d come too,” she confessed.
“Nervously waiting for him to arrive, I kept an eye on the door until he finally walked in… But, late that night, we ended up outside smoking and, heart palpitating, I tried to act cool.”
On a professional level, Lulu has recently been busy championing mental health awareness. Earlier this year she launched Lulu’s Mental Health Trust, which recently held its first sponsored walk.
She told The Mirror: “The process of writing my memoir opened my eyes to the role that mental health has played in my life. When I was first coming into the industry we didn’t talk about it! But it’s so important, and I want to give back.”
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