Hackney People
Leee John
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Bouncing balloons, pastel colours, Gary Davies, it seemed just another day on the set of 1980s ‘Top of the Pops’(TOTP). “Our manager said ‘you’ve got to be outrageous, really go for it’. So some designer friends helped us to buy Arabian Nights-type clothes and we worked out ways to look at the camera, and moves like ‘stroke the piano, stroke the piano’,” recalls Leee John, lead singer of 1980s soul band Imagination. |
And history was made – three men seductively shimmying in golden hot pants is difficult to forget.
As one commentator said about their first screen performance: “Imagination were here to stay and they hit their audience right between the thighs.”
Leee was born in Hackney Hospital, now Homerton. He moved to New York with his father aged seven after his parents split up, leaving behind family in Stoke Newington and Finsbury Park.
“I got my first recording contract at 12, and three years later I was on the same label as Irene Cara and Stephanie Mills.”
He returned in the mid-1970s to the UK older, wiser and full of funk.
Let loose on the UK music scene he met with Ashley Ingram and sang back up for bands.
“One of them was Errol (Kennedy)’s group at the time. Errol has a great feel of music: he wasn’t a singer but he understood how music combines with vocals perfectly.” The three formed Imagination.
“I was given a rough version of a demo and I went home, sat on my mum’s kitchen table and wrote the lyrics for ‘Body Talk’,” he explained.
Body Talk peaked at 44 in the charts – four outside the cut-off for a TOTP performance. “It almost didn’t happen, it was only because someone else dropped out we were called at the last minute.”
The next day ‘that performance’ was all the viewers were talking about; the single hit number four and the album stayed in the charts for more than 50 weeks.
Their career success through hits such as ‘Just an Illusion’ and ‘Flashback’ brought platinum discs, nine gold and more than a dozen silver internationally.
Known for infectious overdubs, spectacular shows and outlandish costumes:
“Our budgets were tight but we tried to make it look like a million dollars. It’s funny, when critics thought we were American we were cool, funky; when they found out we lived in North London, they said we were camp.” recalls Leee.
“For one ‘Just an Illusion’ performance, I’d developed an allergy and my face puffed up. So I just put one arm of my bodysuit over my head, put a cloak over me and asked them to use loads of smoke to hide my face.” No one was any the wiser and this classic performance from TOTP can be found on Youtube.
Over the next few years, Imagination continued apace making dance records and Leee branched out into TV. Nowadays, Ashley works with singer Des’ree and runs a music school in Canada, while Errol is with an Imagination tribute band. Leee looks back at their time together fondly. “It was a great period but I don’t dwell on it. I now do a lot of jazz, some club records and I’m working on a British soul documentary.
“For a while I couldn’t look at the videos: I thought ‘what is he wearing?’ But you do it, walk away and think about that next move.”
Curriculum Vitae
- 1957 Born in Homerton Hospital on 23 June
- 1981 Forms Imagination with Errol Kennedy and Ashley Ingram
- 1982 Second album ‘In the Heat of the Night’ goes double gold
- 1998 Becomes interviewer on VH1
- 2003 Appears in ITV programme ‘Reborn in the USA’
- 2006 Releases jazz album, ‘Feel My Soul’
Page updated: 15 Jun 2010
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