Beauty And The Beat: Sheila E.'s Memoir Is A Real Page-Turner

I've been a Sheila E. fan since she burst onto the scene in 1984 with The Glamorous Life. I just finished reading her new autobiography, To the Beat of My Own Drum, and found it fascinating. 

Sheila's story is a true page-turner, taking you behind the lacy veil of mystery surrounding Prince, her longtime musical collaborator, friend and - as she reveals in the memoir - former fiancé (more on that later).

Even as a longtime fan, I discovered many things about this phenomenally talented and beautiful woman that I never knew. (Read my review of her excellent new album, Icon, by clicking this link: http://chrisbournea.blogspot.com/2014/08/icon-sheila-e-releases-new-album-memoir.html)

Faded Photographs - Me, Sheila and her dad, Pete, at the Conga Room
nightclub in Los Angeles in 2002. I'm holding one of her drumsticks.

Some things that surprised me most that I discovered by reading To the Beat of My Own Drum:

Sheila had romantic relationships with Prince and Carlos Santana. Perhaps the most surprising revelations in Sheila's candid memoir is that she was romantically involved with both Prince and Carlos Santana.

Sheila met Santana as a teen when her father, legendary bandleader Pete Escovedo, and her Uncle Coke played percussion in his band. Since she was only 18 at the time and Santana was 10 years older, she hid the relationship from nearly everyone, including her parents.

And when it comes to Prince, I had always assumed that the Minneapolis genius and Sheila E. were too much like brother and sister to have dated. Turns out I was wrong.

As Sheila confesses in her juicy memoir, they were indeed a couple at one time and were so close that he proposed. 

You'll have to read her book to find out how both of these relationships ended (but, thankfully, they're all friends now).

She lived a very Glamorous Life, indeed. Those elaborate, lacy costumes that she donned on the album covers and tours for The Glamorous Life and Romance 1600 cost thousands of dollars.

We fans would have loved her just the same if she would have come onstage in nothing but a halter top and cut-off jeans. (In fact, there's a video from a nightclub appearance in the early '90s to promote her Sex Cymbal album in which she's wearing what I just described. Sorry, I couldn't find the link.)

At the height of her fame, she was a demanding diva. The Sheila E. of today seems like a sweet, approachable, considerate person. But as she confesses in her memoir, as her fame grew in the '80s, she became a demanding diva who yelled at people when they failed to respond quickly enough to her every whim.

As Sheila relates in the book, re-commiting herself to her Christian faith and addressing her childhood abuse in the '90s helped her to shed the diva alter ego.

She's not bilingual. In her book, Sheila talks about her identity crisis growing up as the oldest of two girls and two boys born to a Mexican American father, the aforementioned Pete Escovedo, and a black Creole mother, Juanita Gardere. She never felt fully black or fully Mexican and never picked up Spanish since her father spoke English around the house. 

The fact that Sheila's not bilingual surprised me. She's always struck me as someone who is a bridge between cultures, seamlessly blending Latin jazz , salsa, funk and R&B. I had assumed that she and her brothers Juan and Peter Michael and sister Zina grew up speaking "Spanglish" and that Sheila knew enough Spanish to get by.

When Sheila occasionally incorporates Spanish phrases into her lyrics, such as the dance jam "Private Party (Tu Para Mi)," she sounds totally natural.  

She was bullied growing up. In her memoir, Sheila describes being severely bullied by neighborhood kids growing up in rough-and-tumble Oakland. This surprised me because I guess I'd mistakenly assumed that most kids who are bullied are "nerds." And Sheila E. is the opposite of nerdy and awkward. She's always exuded that funky-sexy-cool musician vibe.

But this just goes to show that anyone can be a victim of bullying. There is no "type."

She suffered repeated abuse as a child. I'd previously heard Sheila talk about being sexually abused by a babysitter at the age of 5. But in her memoir, she relates that she suffered repeated abuse from older male cousins who were charged with babysitting her and her brothers.

She writes movingly about the enormous amount of courage it took as an adult to confront her abusers. And it took even more courage to forgive them.

Sheila's childhood experiences are part of the reason she has a passion for helping abused and abandoned children heal through the power of music. This is the mission of her Elevate Hope Foundation, which she operates with Lynn Mabry, her longtime friend, business partner and manager.

For this reason, and so many others, Sheila is an inspiration.

She's an unintentional feminist.  Growing up playing percussion with her father, brothers and her father's famous friends like Tito Puente, it never occurred to Sheila to attach a gender to a musical instrument. Until people started commenting on the fact that "a girl playing the drums" was unusual. 

As Sheila states in her memoir, she's always prided herself on being able to do what any man can do, and do it better - in six-inch heels!

She can't read music and "plays by heart." Sheila is one of those people who is so naturally gifted that she received very little formal music instruction, but she's had a four-decade career that has far surpassed many musicians who trained at Julliard. She's worked with the best in the business, long before Prince, including the late Marvin Gaye, George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross (in the book, she shares a funny story about how she quit Ross' band after the musical director asked Sheila to wear less provocative clothing). 

Sheila also gives some excellent tips on how to succeed as a drummer, and how to succeed in the music business, in general. One of my favorite quotes is about how mistakes sometimes turn into the best experiences: "It's okay to make a mistake. Sometimes a mistake is far more interesting than perfection."

I highly recommend picking up To The Beat of My Own Drum (for more info, check out her website, http://www.sheilae.com/). It's so refreshing to read an autobiography by a music star in which a descent into drug and alcohol addiction is not a factor. Perhaps because of the firm foundation her close-knit family provided, Sheila relates that she never became a regular drug user and is not much of a drinker.

Her clean living probably explains, in part, why she can still bang a gong like nobody's business.