Skye Edwards is best known as the singer in the UK band Morcheeba, which she left in 2003 before rejoining in 2009. The 53-year-old talks about the important men in her life, including her husband, Steve Gordon, with whom she shares two children.
I was fostered at six weeks old by Dennis and Doris Smith. I always called Dennis my dad but I wasn’t allowed to call Doris my mother. That’s because my biological mother, Beryl, still visited me in their east London home.
Beryl had a mental illness that wasn’t discussed in the ’70s, and being a black woman made it taboo. She was classed as schizophrenic and her children were taken away from her. She also had sons and I got to meet my older brothers later in life.
Dennis and Doris had four children of their own, and I grew up with my older biological sister, Monica. My foster parents were white – their friends stopped talking to them for taking in children with brown skin.
Dennis was a grumpy old sod, but I loved him and he loved me. I was the youngest in the family and became the favourite child, much to the displeasure of my sisters.
I remember a male geography teacher in my first year of high school. He was pointing to a map of England and said, “This is Sussex, Wessex and Essex – all of these places end in ‘sex’, just like the day should.” I didn’t really know about sex at that age, but instantly didn’t like this teacher.
In east London, there weren’t many girls who looked like me at that time. I remember playing spin the bottle at parties and, if it landed on me, the boy would kiss the girls on either side of me but never me.
I had a celebrity crush on Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid and loved Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future.
My foster mum taught me how to sew and inspired me to go to the London College of Fashion to do a bachelor of fashion technology. It’s where I met my best friend, Julie, who then got into Central Saint Martins [art school] and graduated with Stella McCartney in the mid-’90s.
My first boyfriend and I got together in 1994 and dated until 1998. Justin was a model who appeared on the runway at Stella McCartney’s shows with Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss. He was also in a band with brothers Ross and Paul Godfrey, and they recruited me into Morcheeba in 1995. Ross opened my ears to different types of music and we have a wonderful relationship. We are on the same wavelength.
Justin is the father of my two eldest children – son Jaega, 30, who is currently touring with Gorillaz, and daughter Kiki, 27. I bought a piano to console myself when we split.
I met my husband, Steve Gordon, at a gig in Brighton. He was playing with the opening band and at the end of the night he held the door open for me and my two kids. He joined Morcheeba in 2000.
We officially got together in 2001 and married in 2003. Steve had been through cancer before I knew him and we found it difficult to conceive. We went down the IVF route and have two children together, aged 17 and 11.
When my bandmate Paul found out that Steve and I were seeing each other, Steve was sacked. I didn’t really understand it. I told Paul, “You’ve got your brother in the band and I have nobody. What’s wrong if we’re dating?” I left Morcheeba in 2003.
George Michael was a huge Morcheeba fan – he recorded a version of Tape Loop with us. It never got released but did pop up on the internet for a while.
Steve is my best friend. I wouldn’t have rejoined Morcheeba if it wasn’t for him. I’d refused on several occasions to go back into the studio, thinking, “Why would I return to a toxic situation?” But it was Steve who said I owed it to the legacy I’d created, and to do it for the fans. I rejoined in 2009.
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Jane Rocca is a regular contributor to Sunday Life Magazine, Executive Style, The Age EG, columnist and features writer at Domain Review, Domain Living’s Personal Space page. She is a published author of four books.Connect via X or email.
