17.

IN THE DEEP END

The Grammy Awards were a mere six weeks away. Adele was champing at the bit to make her singing comeback at the ceremonies, which would be televised worldwide. But she was not sure if she could do it.

One person who was pretty sure she could was Dr. Steven Zeitels. The doctor who operated on Adele and who had examined her several times during the intervening months told the Los Angeles Times that she was definitely on schedule.

“When I do that kind of operation, the typical time someone starts singing again is three and a half to five weeks (after surgery).”

Not everybody else in Adele’s camp was quite as certain. Her manager, Jonathan Dickins, offered in a Perez Hilton column that “Adele was obviously nervous” and that she was “showing great character by considering going into the deep end by making her comeback in front of the largest audience in the world.”

Worst-case scenarios were most likely as prevalent in Adele’s thoughts as were the possibilities of a comeback of classic proportions. Adele was probably feeling the pressure of coming back at full strength and knew that half stepping her vocals just would not do. But, she must have felt, what would happen if she went for her trademark powerful voice and came up short? Sleepless nights were probably in order for the singer in the days leading up to a final decision whether or not to make a very public comeback and sing at the Grammys.

After much thought, Adele contacted the Grammy producers and said that yes, she would sing. And she would be quick in letting her legions of fans know that she was, indeed, back.

“I’m a being singing at the Grammys,” she said in a blog. “It’s been so long that I started to forget that I was a singer.”

Her songwriting partner, Dan Wilson, told PopMatters he was confident in Adele’s decision to sing at the Grammy show. “Adele does not put herself in dumb situations. She’s got really impeccable judgment when it comes to her artistry.”

Adele had much to distract her in her postsurgery months. Her love life for one thing. The recovery process which, in interviews, she often played for laughs. But as the Grammys grew ever closer, she began to take the prospect of singing and then touring seriously. The singer was definitely concerned about very long tours and had remarked at one point in the healing process that two-hundred-date tours would definitely be out of the question in the foreseeable future and most likely forever.

There had been hints of a mid-May 2012 return to the studio but, to everyone’s knowledge, Adele had not been actively writing and, even if she had, who knew if she could sing any new songs?

Into late January, Adele knew it was finally time to test the waters. And that opportunity arose with a request by the venerable television talk show 60 Minutes to do a major piece that would encompass a tour of her grounds and estate in Sussex, questions outlining her recovery from the surgery, and some rather easy softball questions about celebrity and such. But the clincher was that, for the first time since her surgery, the piece would end with Adele singing “Rolling In The Deep.”

Adele’s handlers were excited and nervous. If she could pull it off on 60 Minutes, there would be no question that she could sing at the Grammys. Adele was convinced that her voice was back and that she could do an intimate concert-for-one with interviewer Anderson Cooper and the millions who would, doubtless, be tuning in.

True to the prediction of a monster audience, millions tuned in for the airing of Adele’s 60 Minutes segment, which aired less than a week before the February 12 awards show. Everybody with even a passing interest in the singer was holding their breath. Adele’s had been a fairy-tale story to this point.

It would be nice to have a happy ending.

Anderson Cooper was a polished interviewer with a knack for putting even the most reluctant subject at ease. And in the early elements of the piece, Adele seemed relaxed.

As the segment neared its end, Cooper almost matter-of-factly suggested that Adele might sing something. Adele sang for the first time in five months. Her voice, presented in simple a cappella fashion, was as haunting and emotional as it had ever been. She hit all the right notes and was not out of tune. The sheer joy on her face was unmistakable. Adele’s return to center stage found the singer singing as well, if not better, than she had before the polyp was found. Adele heaved a sigh of relief.

Her world was back where it should be.

Adele knew things would be different as Simon and she winged across the waters to Los Angeles for the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony. The last time Adele took home top Grammy honors, in 2009, she was the new kid on the block, totally mesmerized by the glitz, glamour, and the literal wave of musical icons she had brushed shoulders with and was much in awe of.

Three years later, the only difference was that she was now a peer among the great musicians and performers of the day, and one that the oddsmakers felt would walk off with all the top prizes of the evening.

The Grammys would also be the big coming-out party for the couple. As they went from airport to limo to hotel and finally to the red carpet, Adele and Simon were arm in arm and displaying their affections for the paparazzi and the world to see. Adele was truly happy and was now glad to share her joy with the world.

Sadly, the celebratory nature of The Grammys would be dashed twenty-four hours earlier with the sudden, unexpected death of legendary singer Whitney Houston. Houston’s death cast a cloud over the proceedings as arrivals for the pre-Grammy parties and those on their way down the red carpet were bombarded with questions about Houston. The show’s producers would spend a chaotic night trying to fine-tune the evening’s proceedings to include recognition of the singer’s life and their sadness at her passing.

Adele’s guitarist, Tim van der Kuil, recalled in a feature in The Juice what it was like when Adele and the band came in for the sound check mere hours before the ceremonies were set to begin.

“It was amazing,” he said. “There was Paul McCartney rehearsing the last four songs from Abbey Road. We looked around the auditorium’s seating plan and we saw the names Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, and Alicia Keyes.”

Inside the theater, waiting for the show to begin, Adele was once again a bundle of nerves as she sat with her man. Adele had been scheduled to sing early in the show and she had to wonder how her emotional rendition of “Rolling In The Deep” would resonate with the now largely somber proceedings.

She would not have long to wait. Shortly after an emotional opening monologue by the evening’s host, L.L. Cool J, and a few awards, Adele walked out on stage to thunderous applause. Adele looked at the audience, smiled, and started to sing.

Her sound man, Zavaglia, remembered the moment with We Out Here. “She was very nervous going into this. She ended up nailing it. You can even see it. As soon as she got through the first chorus she was confident and really enjoying herself.”

Adele’s vocals were nearly spiritual as she rolled easily into the now-familiar tale of the obstacles one faces when love dies. Adele delved within for the emotion, the pain, the hope, and the strength to move on that the lyrics spoke of. You could see it in Adele’s eyes. She had reached down deep for her first time back in the spotlight. The standing ovation and the thunderous applause from some of the biggest names in the music industry that greeted the conclusion of “Rolling In The Deep” was real.

As were the tears.

Zavaglia recalled what happened next. “Ordinarily she would have been whisked back to her dressing room to change and then brought back to her seat. But she waited backstage for us so she could hug every member of the band and crew and say thank you. It was really beautiful. I got a little choked up.”

It would be Adele’s night, a night that grew more gratifying as Adele returned again and again to the stage to accept all six of her Grammys. Adele could not hold back her enthusiasm as she finally stepped up to accept the Grammy for Best Album Of The Year—she thanked the one person who had been there from the beginning. “First of all I want to say, ‘Mum … girl done good.’

“This record is inspired by something that is really normal, and everyone’s been through it … a rubbish relationship,” she continued in her acceptance speech. “It’s gone on to do things that … I can’t tell you how I feel about it. It has been the most life-changing year.”

The inevitable post-Grammy press conference question was what was next. Adele excitedly told reporters that she was “Going to take some time off to be happy and then to write a happy record.”

As if to punctuate the point, the singer and her beau, after appearances at post-Grammy parties, took off for Big Sur for what the anxious press was describing as “some private time.”

In the hours and days that followed her Grammy triumph, Adele was a rush of emotions as she dealt with the press and the seemingly never-ending adulation. There was the infamous quote, said in the emotion of her Grammy wins, that she was going to take “four or five years off” because if she was constantly working her relationships inevitably failed. Her record company and management must have inwardly winced at the prospect of no new product. They would acknowledge that they would give Adele all the time she needed to get back to recording and touring. But there was an audible sigh of relief when Adele quickly backtracked on the statement and indicated any break from the business would not last that long.

“Four or five years?” she joked. “It’s more like four or five days.”

“I’m in it for the long run,” she said in a Postnoon feature. “I don’t want to be disposable. I’m not scared of losing this. I won’t come out with new music until it is better than 21.

“I don’t want to release any shit.”

For now Adele was young, successful beyond words, and head over heels in love, and she was going to experience it all on her terms.

How powerful a force Adele had become was evident in the week following the Grammys when a bounce in the sales of 21 resulted in 730,000 copies sold in that seven-day span.

Adele’s run-around awards season would make one final lap two weeks after the Grammys, and it was an honor that Adele was particularly keen on. The 2012 BRIT Awards had nominated the singer for honors for Best British Female Solo Artist and British Album of the Year. Adele must have felt her hometown attitudes in these nominations and was nearly as excited at her prospects as she had been for her Grammy awards.

Then tragedy struck.

Mere days before the ceremony, Adele’s grandmother Rose had a heart attack. Adele was distraught at the news and raced to the hospital to be at her grandmother’s side. At one point, she was ready to cancel her BRIT Awards appearance. But when her grandmother’s prognosis for recovery improved, she carried on.

The February 21 televised live BRIT Awards went well, with Adele winning the Best British Female Artist award. But as live events often do, the BRIT Awards were running long by the time Adele returned to the stage to accept the evening’s coveted British Album Of The Year. As she began her acceptance speech, the show’s host, comedian James Corden, stepped in and indelicately waved Adele off so that the band Blur could perform the show’s closing song.

Adele was incensed. In a spontaneous show of defiance, she raised her middle finger in the classic “up yours” salute and walked indignantly off the stage. The incident instantly became the “news” of the event and Adele would later be mobbed by reporters.

“I got cut off during my speech and flung the middle finger. But that finger was to the ‘suits’ of the BRIT Awards, not to my fans.”

There were immediate and heartfelt apologies from the producers of the show. But the one thing that would be most remembered was that Adele had made her point …

As only Adele could.