Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The Story about
Speaker 1: Adele is a story about fear, fear of performing on stage,
Speaker 1: fear of losing your voice, fear of dying young like
Speaker 1: two of your idols. It's also a story about con
Speaker 1: artists and concealed weapons, about Michael Corleone and Tony Montana
Speaker 1: and Dog Day Afternoons, and about how the criminal world
Speaker 1: has repeatedly tried to cash in on the universal appeal
Speaker 1: of Adele. And this is because Adele makes great music,
Speaker 1: Unlike that clip I played for you at the top
Speaker 1: of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a
Speaker 1: preset loop from my melotron called the Guns of Tottenham MK. One.
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
Speaker 1: rights to grenade by Bruno Mars. And why would I
Speaker 1: play you that specific slice of unrequited love cheese?
Speaker 2: Could I afford it?
Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
Speaker 1: January twenty fourth, twenty eleven, And that was the day
Speaker 1: that Adele released her sophomore album twenty one, a record
Speaker 1: so impactful that it made her a new musical favorite
Speaker 1: of millions around the world, not least of all the
Speaker 1: felons and con artists who appropriated her fame on this
Speaker 1: episode Felons, con artists, Corleone's Dead, Idols, Fear and Adele.
Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan.
Speaker 1: In this this Disgrace, I have Sydney Lumette's classic nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five film Dog Day Afternoon opens on a hot
Speaker 1: summer day in New York City. Construction workers talk shit
Speaker 1: while the sweat soaks through the backs of their t shirts.
Speaker 1: Neighborhood kids splash in a public pool. Fruit vendors, derelicts,
Speaker 1: and day traders all crowd the sidewalks, while stray dogs
Speaker 1: root through the garbage.
Speaker 2: In the street.
Speaker 1: But then a car pulls up against the curb outside
Speaker 1: the first Brooklyn Savings Bank, and inside the car are
Speaker 1: three men. The driver gets out, he paces nervously on
Speaker 1: the pavement nearby. The bank's one security guard takes down
Speaker 1: the American flag hanging outside the bank's door.
Speaker 2: It's closing time.
Speaker 1: The driver doubles back to the car. He leans into
Speaker 1: the passenger window, speaking to the man sitting there. And
Speaker 1: the man is Sonny played by al Pacino. And though
Speaker 1: we can't hear what the two are talking about, we
Speaker 1: can see the very clear emotion which takes over Paccino's eyes, fear.
Speaker 1: Pacino's character is dreading what he's about to do, but
Speaker 1: there's no turning back now. There are things he needs
Speaker 1: in this life, and he has no other way of
Speaker 1: getting them, or so he thinks. He's desperate, and he
Speaker 1: has to move fast before that security guard locks the
Speaker 1: front door behind him. So he exits the car along
Speaker 1: with his accomplice sal played by John Because, and they
Speaker 1: walk inside the bank and Pacino carries a long white
Speaker 1: box with a bow, and no one knows that inside
Speaker 1: that box is a rifle. He anxiously looks around and
Speaker 1: these employees, these tellers, the security guard, the manager, they're
Speaker 1: all innocent. Pacino's character means them no.
Speaker 2: Harm, and that's when the fear takes over.
Speaker 1: Watching this scene play out on our television in the
Speaker 1: comfort of her own home, Adele Lorie blue Atkins, otherwise
Speaker 1: known simply as Adele, felt her pulse quicken.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter that.
Speaker 1: She'd seen this film, one of her favorites, more times
Speaker 1: than she could remember. Her response was always the same,
Speaker 1: because Dog Day Afternoon or al Pacino's performance in particular,
Speaker 1: tapped into a universal fear that on some level is
Speaker 1: always present within all of us, no matter the scenario.
Speaker 1: It's the most primal of human and emotions. In fact,
Speaker 1: do not be afraid is the most common phrase found
Speaker 1: in the Bible, in one form or another. And though
Speaker 1: we've been told not to be afraid for centuries, we
Speaker 1: still are you Me Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon and Adele.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, Adele became a once in a generation
Speaker 1: phenomenon with the release of her sophomore album twenty one.
Speaker 1: It entered the Billboard Album Chart at number one, where
Speaker 1: it stayed for twenty four weeks, breaking the record set
Speaker 1: by Princess Purple Rain some twenty seven years prior. Now.
Speaker 1: While the album was at number one, three of its singles,
Speaker 1: Rolling in the Deep, Set, Fire to the Rain, and
Speaker 1: Someone Like You simultaneously topped the hot one hundred, the
Speaker 1: first time that had happened since the Saturday Night Fever
Speaker 1: soundtrack way back in nineteen seventy seven. The album twenty
Speaker 1: one has since become the longest charting album by any
Speaker 1: female artist, break the record held by Carol King's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one album Tapestry. To date, Adele's twenty one has
Speaker 1: shipped seventeen million copies, by far the most of any
Speaker 1: album released this century, and at the time of twenty
Speaker 1: one's initial release, you could not escape Adele. Her songs
Speaker 1: were the most requested songs at karaoke bars, they were
Speaker 1: the most played at funerals if you got scared to
Speaker 1: get onto a plane. One survey showed that Adele's songs
Speaker 1: were voted the best to calm your nerves and if
Speaker 1: you couldn't sleep. Another survey showed that those same songs
Speaker 1: could cure insomnia. In Leeds, England, a seven year old
Speaker 1: girl miraculously woke from a week long coma when Rolling
Speaker 1: in the Deep came on the radio. Adele's voice is
Speaker 1: there in life and in death, deep down in her subconscious,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because Beyonce once told.
Speaker 2: Her, when I listened to you, I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: listening to God.
Speaker 1: Adele has one hell of a voice, like three dusty
Speaker 1: Springfields all at once, a voice which Amanda Petrosich, writing
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker, once called perfectly imperfect and able
Speaker 1: to betray its host frailty and by extension, her humanity.
Speaker 1: But Adele's universal appeal is more than the sound of
Speaker 1: her voice, she is also incredibly relatable, and I'm not
Speaker 1: just talking about In her songs of heartbreak, defiance and empowerment,
Speaker 1: Adele has downright rejected the trappings of celebrity.
Speaker 2: As she put it in her own words.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be some skinny mini with my
Speaker 1: tits out. And she said this with a speaking voice
Speaker 1: that is the exact opposite of her perfectly imperfect singing voice.
Speaker 1: Her thick Cockney accent comically emphasizes some of her favorite words,
Speaker 1: like fucking kunt, many of which she repeated over and
Speaker 1: over again in between songs while performing in a Glastonbury
Speaker 1: after being sternly warned by festival organizers to not do so.
Speaker 2: But this is who she is. Adele speaks like a.
Speaker 1: Character in a Guy Ritchie film, and Ritchie's characters, like
Speaker 1: Adele's beloved Alpacino in Dog Day Afternoon, are singular characters
Speaker 1: in their own right, and they all share one common bond.
Speaker 2: With the rest of us.
Speaker 1: Fear two thousand and seven, London, nineteen year old Adele
Speaker 1: clenched her fist into a ball and drew her arm
Speaker 1: back and clocked her boyfriend in the face with a
Speaker 1: stiff right hook, everyone knocking back pints inside the pub.
Speaker 1: They were stunned, not least of which was the boyfriend,
Speaker 1: who is now reeling in pain and confusion. Adele, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, was not confused, nor was she concerned
Speaker 1: with keeping up appearances among a room full of buzz
Speaker 1: twenty somethings. She was seething over a relationship which I
Speaker 1: quickly deteriorated in to a living hell. She was catching
Speaker 1: unwanted attention from the pub's bouncers, and now she was
Speaker 1: running her feet slammed rhythmically on the sidewalk of Tottenham
Speaker 1: Court Road. She was sure the bouncers were hot on
Speaker 1: her trail. Any minute, they'd catch up to her and
Speaker 1: hold her till the cops came. She assaulted a man
Speaker 1: in front of a crowd, not that the guy wasn't
Speaker 1: an asshole and didn't have it coming, because.
Speaker 2: He was, and he did.
Speaker 1: But there was no reality in which Adele didn't punch him.
Speaker 1: She'd grown up tough, raised by a single mother, first
Speaker 1: in Tautenham, a London neighborhood with a high rate of poverty,
Speaker 1: gang violence and crime, and then in Brixton, the place
Speaker 1: the clash once told you about and when they kick
Speaker 1: at your front door, how you gonna come? Adele was
Speaker 1: going to come with a fist to the face, and
Speaker 1: somewhren't so lucky like Avril Johnson, sister of reggae star
Speaker 1: Tippa Irie, who was murdered inside her Brixton home in
Speaker 1: front of her children same year that Adele and her
Speaker 1: mother moved to town. The gangs of Adele's childhood would
Speaker 1: give her the idea for the song title rolling in
Speaker 1: the Deep. To roll deep, to roll with the crew,
Speaker 1: with people who have your back and your time of
Speaker 1: need was a necessity of London's criminal underworld. Tonight, however,
Speaker 1: Adele had no crew, just yourself, haul and ass down
Speaker 1: on London Street in the dark, and she soon realized
Speaker 1: that no one was chasing her after all, the no
Speaker 1: bouncers from the pub, no soon to be ex boyfriend.
Speaker 1: She was the one doing the chasing, although she was
Speaker 1: chasing nothing, just the ground beneath her feet. The events
Speaker 1: of that night became the inspiration for Chasing Pavements, Adele's
Speaker 1: second single from her debut album nineteen, name for the
Speaker 1: age she was when she made it. The song was
Speaker 1: an unexpected success, leading to numerous Grammy nominations and her
Speaker 1: performance on Saturday Night Line. Only years earlier, Adele had
Speaker 1: been a student at London's Britz School, the same performing
Speaker 1: arts high school attended by one of her many inspirations,
Speaker 1: Amy Winehouse. From there it was a blur. Her songs
Speaker 1: went up on MySpace, multiple record labels emailed. A record
Speaker 1: deal with Excel Records soon followed, and suddenly Adele was
Speaker 1: doing what she dreamed about doing since she was a kid.
Speaker 1: But it didn't come easy from the jump. Adele was afraid.
Speaker 1: For one, she had terrible stage frame. Projectile vomiting prior
Speaker 1: to a show was not uncommon in Amsterdam. She once
Speaker 1: tried to escape out of a fire exit just so
Speaker 1: she could avoid facing the crowd she was to perform
Speaker 1: in front of. And as she became more famous, however.
Speaker 2: The fear evolved.
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, the year of twenty one, the year
Speaker 1: she released what would become the biggest album of the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, she was afraid of something much more profound,
Speaker 1: worried that the more famous she got, the more out
Speaker 1: of touch she would become, and thus her life experiences
Speaker 1: would no longer be the life experiences of her audience.
Speaker 1: She feared she would no longer be relatable, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't all. Two things happened that year in quick succession.
Speaker 1: The first led to the fear that she would never
Speaker 1: be able to sing again, but the second that had
Speaker 1: her fearing for her own life. Albat made it look easy,
Speaker 1: sitting there in his brown college boy jacket, getting comfortable
Speaker 1: in the black leather chair, beginning to understand the true
Speaker 1: nature of his character, Michael Corleone. He wasn't a loud
Speaker 1: mouth or a hothead like his brother's Sonny played by
Speaker 1: Jimmy Kahn, and he wasn't as transparent as the Corleone's
Speaker 1: family attorney Tom Hagen played by Robert Duval. But as
Speaker 1: Cohn and Duval paced the dimly lit room, mahogany tables,
Speaker 1: hardwood floors, and arguing about what to do with this
Speaker 1: dirty cop McCluskey, protector of the narcotics man who had
Speaker 1: put their pops in the hospital, Paccino was slowly methodically turning.
Speaker 1: He was the dark horse, the silent type, the one
Speaker 1: you never saw coming. Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone was
Speaker 1: getting ready to push past his own fears such as
Speaker 1: what would happen to him if he joined the family business,
Speaker 1: how would change him? And what would he have to do?
Speaker 1: And there was only one way to find out, only
Speaker 1: one way through. Fear was not an option. Fear was
Speaker 1: the mind killer. From a couch across the room facing
Speaker 1: the television set, Adele leaned in the pivotal scene from
Speaker 1: one of her favorite films, The Godfather, played out on
Speaker 1: the screen. But Sheino was so good, so tough. He
Speaker 1: was our guy, and the way he was able to
Speaker 1: subtly show how his character conquered his fears was truly inspiring.
Speaker 1: These crime films that Adele loved, the crime films that
Speaker 1: were universally loved. They served more than one purpose. They
Speaker 1: were a source of comfort when Adele wanted to curl
Speaker 1: up and shout out the world and escape into great storytelling.
Speaker 1: And that's something we can all relate to. But there
Speaker 1: was something else as well these movies, especially when it
Speaker 1: came to scenes like this. These films, these performances, could
Speaker 1: give you the strength and the tools to overpower fear
Speaker 1: before the world, with its teeth and its insatiable appetite,
Speaker 1: overpowered you. July twenty third, twenty eleven, Andrew Marris, Amy
Speaker 1: Winehouse's bodyguard, checked in on his employer at around ten
Speaker 1: in the morning. He found her laying on her bed,
Speaker 1: unconscious at her home in Camden, North London. She'd been
Speaker 1: up late the night before drinking, and it wasn't unusual
Speaker 1: for Amy to be passed out till midday, so Mars
Speaker 1: let her sleep it off. Five hours later.
Speaker 2: However, at three in the afternoon, he.
Speaker 1: Decided to check in on her again, and there she
Speaker 1: was still on the bed, still unconscious, still in the
Speaker 1: same exact position as before. This now struck Mars as odd.
Speaker 1: He ran to her side. She wasn't breathing, she had
Speaker 1: no pulse. Mars picked up the phone and called for
Speaker 1: an ambulance. Shortly thereafter, Amy Winehouse would be declared dead.
Speaker 1: She was twenty seven years old. It would be months
Speaker 1: before an official inquest would find that Amy Winehouse died
Speaker 1: from misadventure caused by high alcohol consumption. But misadventure wasn't
Speaker 1: the only.
Speaker 2: Thing that killed Amy Winehouse.
Speaker 1: Adele, for one, was well aware.
Speaker 2: Of this fact.
Speaker 1: News of Amy's death hit Adele particularly hard. She was sad,
Speaker 1: and she was pissed, and she was as she.
Speaker 2: Put it, offended. Amy had gone to the brit school,
Speaker 2: just like Adele.
Speaker 1: She was the reason Adele began to play guitar in
Speaker 1: the first place, the reason why Adele found the courage
Speaker 1: to write and sing her own songs, and now, ironically,
Speaker 1: Amy was gone in the exact same year that Adele
Speaker 1: was breaking records and dominating the charts with her album
Speaker 1: twenty one. The reason that Adele was offended by Amy's
Speaker 1: death was because the public had done their part to
Speaker 1: do her in Amy's drinking, her drug use, her erratic behavior.
Speaker 1: It all played out in slow motion in the pages
Speaker 1: of the press and in posts on social media, like
Speaker 1: a car wreck that everyone pumped the brakes to watch
Speaker 1: as they passed by. If the public hadn't been given
Speaker 1: such intimate, always on access to every single choice, Amy
Speaker 1: Winehouse made every mistake. If there wasn't this collective need
Speaker 1: to watch a celebrity struggle and to comment on it,
Speaker 1: to share it, to retweet it, well, it begged the
Speaker 1: question would Amy still be alive? It was impossible for
Speaker 1: Adele not to imagine that she was next, That fame
Speaker 1: and fate were nothing but a pattern in search of
Speaker 1: the next tragic figure to fit their mold. Paris, the
Speaker 1: massive world tour for twenty one had just begune when
Speaker 1: Adele felt something in her throat pop. She ended the
Speaker 1: show that night more than a little concerned. She'd been
Speaker 1: singing for nearly a decade since she was fourteen years
Speaker 1: old and had never experienced anything like this before. She
Speaker 1: hopped the plane to London, where the next day her
Speaker 1: doctor told her it was a cute laryngitis and she
Speaker 1: needed rest. Two weeks later she resumed the tour, which
Speaker 1: eventually made its way to the United States. And then
Speaker 1: it happened again, only this time it wasn't laryngitis. This
Speaker 1: time a blood vessel on her vocal cord burst. She
Speaker 1: gave it another couple of weeks and let the hemorrhage heal,
Speaker 1: and then went back at it.
Speaker 2: But it kept happening.
Speaker 1: Her voice, that incredible voice, it kept giving out. The
Speaker 1: media and the internet took notice and sharpened their knives.
Speaker 1: She was a smoker, She was a drinker. She was
Speaker 1: a loud talker and even a loud cackler. We've seen
Speaker 1: this one before. It's Amy two point zero, another wildly
Speaker 1: talented British singer running her god given instrument ragged. Adele
Speaker 1: wasn't listening to what was being said about her online. Instead,
Speaker 1: she was listening to the advice of other singers who
Speaker 1: had gone through similar problems, veterans like Roger Daltrey, Stephen Tyler,
Speaker 1: and Elton John, even younger singers like John Mayer, all
Speaker 1: of whom had undergone cutting edge throat surgery to salvage
Speaker 1: their voices and keep their jobs and so. On November three,
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, coincidentally, the same week the twenty one returned
Speaker 1: to the number one spot on the Billboard album chart,
Speaker 1: Adele canceled all performances and went under the knife at
Speaker 1: mass General Hospital in Boston.
Speaker 2: Actually it was a.
Speaker 1: Laser, not a knife, which the world renowned throat surgeon
Speaker 1: Steven's I tells used to remove a polyop that had
Speaker 1: been plaguing Adele's vocal cord and then for months after,
Speaker 1: Adele's future was uncertain. For five weeks she was unable
Speaker 1: to talk, five long weeks in which she wondered what
Speaker 1: her voice would sound like when it returned, what if
Speaker 1: she would never be able to sing like she used to,
Speaker 1: or if she couldn't sing at all, but every inkling
Speaker 1: of self doubt melted away. Months later, on February twelve,
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, when Adele made her long away to return
Speaker 1: to performing at the fifty fourth Annual Grammy Awards ceremony.
Speaker 2: In Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Not only did she take home seven awards that night,
Speaker 1: including Album of the Year, but she performed Rolling in
Speaker 1: the Deep, and she killed it. Her post surgery voice
Speaker 1: was not only strong, it had actually gained some upper range.
Speaker 1: It was like the Adele everyone already knew, only better.
Speaker 1: But despite her rousing performance in all her trophies, Adele
Speaker 1: was upstaged that night by tragedy. The price of fame,
Speaker 1: which Amy Weinhouse had so sorely paid the previous year,
Speaker 1: was now hanging over the Staples Center like a ghost.
Speaker 1: The Beverly Hilton Hotel Sweet four thirty four, the portraits
Speaker 1: of Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando hanging on the walls,
Speaker 1: surveyed the room in silence. Trays of uneaten food, opened
Speaker 1: bottles of champagne, the remaining contents now warm and flat.
Speaker 1: In the bathroom, prescription bottles of Xanax and muscle relaxes
Speaker 1: on the counter next to them a spoon for cocaine,
Speaker 1: and there in the bathtub, submerged under six inches of water,
Speaker 1: the body a forty eight year old Whitney Houston. Whitney
Speaker 1: never made it to the Grammys that night. She didn't
Speaker 1: even make it to the pre party thrown by her
Speaker 1: mentor arist the Records founder Clive Davis, the day before
Speaker 1: the Grammys. It was on that day that a combination
Speaker 1: of cocaine, prescription drugs, and heart disease contributed to Whitney
Speaker 1: Houston and sudden death. The Grammy Awards became a more
Speaker 1: solemn affair. The bright victories were tinted with a touch
Speaker 1: of darkness, and Adele's incredible performance took on greater meaning.
Speaker 1: Rolling in the Deep wasn't just a kiss off to
Speaker 1: an ex. It was a kiss off to the mold,
Speaker 1: the press, the public. They weren't going to run her
Speaker 1: into the ground like they did.
Speaker 2: Whitney or Amy.
Speaker 1: Soon, Adele would give birth to her son, who she
Speaker 1: had with her boyfriend at the time, an investment banker
Speaker 1: turned charity CEO named Simon Kanecki, and she had a
Speaker 1: family to protect, so she shifted into paccino mode. Imagine
Speaker 1: if you will, Adele sitting in that black leather chair
Speaker 1: in that dimly lit room with its mahogany tables and
Speaker 1: hardwood floors, And just like al Pacino, just like Michael Corleone,
Speaker 1: Adele pushed through the fear. She locked down her private life.
Speaker 1: She locked herself in her house so that the paparazzi
Speaker 1: couldn't reach her, and she became her own unreliable narrator.
Speaker 1: She did this by feeding little lies to those in
Speaker 1: her inner circle on purpose, in order to see who
Speaker 1: was talking to the press. It's a gangster move, and
Speaker 1: the gangster knows that if she tells one person a
Speaker 1: lie and that lie ends up in the papers, then
Speaker 1: that gangster knows exactly who betrayed her, And so then
Speaker 1: Adele would unceremoniously cut them loose from her life. It
Speaker 1: wasn't easy watching someone you thought you trusted to go
Speaker 1: off behind your back like that, but it made it
Speaker 1: a lot easier to let them go, knowing that by
Speaker 1: doing so, you added one more additional layer of protection,
Speaker 1: more protection than Amy Winehouse or Whitney Houston had. But
Speaker 1: the more those layers of protection were applied, harder it
Speaker 1: was to be in the outside world the less relatable
Speaker 1: Adele feared she would become, and that was the fear
Speaker 1: that was it. That fear remained after all these years
Speaker 1: as one of Adele's greatest fears, that she would become unrelatable.
Speaker 1: The grandiose houses, the multiple awards, the money, the fame.
Speaker 1: Adele was a long way from the mean streets of Taughtenham,
Speaker 1: and she knew it. The challenge now was to remain
Speaker 1: relatable with those streets, with any street anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: And after four years of working on new music, after
Speaker 1: much anticipation from her fans after the smashing success of
Speaker 1: twenty one, Adele returned at last with a song that
Speaker 1: was so authentic and so relatable that it was downright criminal.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, We're.
Speaker 2: We're, We're okay.
Speaker 1: This next line, it's just begging me to do a
Speaker 1: cheap Tony Montana from Scarface impersonation. But I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do that. Okay. Just picture picture Al Pacino as Tony Montana,
Speaker 1: and he's sitting there and he gives you the line
Speaker 1: you want to fuck with me?
Speaker 2: Okay, you cockroaches?
Speaker 1: And now picture Tony Montana high on cocaine and sweating
Speaker 1: through his black soup with trembling hands. He's hastily assembling
Speaker 1: his grenade launcher inside his office suite, his bugged out eyes.
Speaker 1: They're alternating between the weapons intricate design and a series
Speaker 1: of closed circuit television sets, and they play out a
Speaker 1: disturbing scene these TVs. It's armed men. They've invaded Tony's
Speaker 1: mansion and they're coming up up the blood red staircase
Speaker 1: where they're now waiting on the other side of the door.
Speaker 1: And that door, that door is the only thing separating
Speaker 1: Tony Montana between life and here and death out there.
Speaker 1: And so he says, you want to play games, okay.
Speaker 1: Tony's now facing the door in a battle stance with
Speaker 1: his knees bent and the fear it's inverted.
Speaker 2: He was fear.
Speaker 1: Now Tony Montana. He's holding the grenade launcher in his
Speaker 1: very capable hands, slung down low at hip level, and
Speaker 1: he's ready to fire off at anyone who dares step
Speaker 1: inside his private residence. And with a roar, he shouts,
Speaker 1: you guys know the line, say hello to my little friend.
Speaker 1: Watching this all unfold on the television, adele Letlosa laugh
Speaker 1: as explosively as one of Tony Montana's grenades as she
Speaker 1: watched Al Pacino as the Cuban drug lord in Brian
Speaker 1: De Palma's film Scarface. It was twenty fifteen, and Adele
Speaker 1: was doing what she did every time she was overwhelmed
Speaker 1: in what she called a tsunami of emotions. She was
Speaker 1: binging her favorite crime films, something to soothe the anxiety
Speaker 1: surrounding the impending release of her third studio album, twenty five.
Speaker 1: The process to follow up the smash hit twenty one
Speaker 1: had been a labored one, beset with writer's block and
Speaker 1: crushing doubts. Though, when Adele began to collaborate with producer
Speaker 1: Greg Kursten, known at the time for his work with Sea,
Speaker 1: Kelly Clarkson and Lily Allen, among others, the creative floodgates opened.
Speaker 1: Writing the perfect Adell song, however, proved harder.
Speaker 2: Than it had been before.
Speaker 1: The music had to feel as authentic and direct as
Speaker 1: it had in the past. A full six months passed
Speaker 1: between when Adele and Kirsten wrote the verses for twenty
Speaker 1: five's lead single.
Speaker 2: Hello and when they wrote it's.
Speaker 1: Cathartic chorus, but their patients paid off, as did the
Speaker 1: patients of Adele's fans, because when the song Hello was
Speaker 1: released in October of twenty fifteen, the world starved for
Speaker 1: new Adele material for years. Ate it up and the
Speaker 1: single went to number one in one hundred and two countries,
Speaker 1: setting an iTunes record. Its videos set a record on
Speaker 1: YouTube as well, where it amassed fifty million views in
Speaker 1: just forty eight hours. Once again, audiences connected with Adele,
Speaker 1: and audiences could relate to Adele because she was offering
Speaker 1: a different side of herself, which in turn gave listeners
Speaker 1: the opportunity to recognize the same different side in themselves.
Speaker 1: Hello wasn't just another kiss off to an X or
Speaker 1: a rally cry to stay strong in the face of
Speaker 1: great adversity. It was a ballot about forgiveness and about
Speaker 1: moving on. It was about closure and about growing up.
Speaker 1: It was the definition of a universal hit, and it
Speaker 1: hit everyone everywhere, all at once. November ninth, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: the Iplante Michigan, six point forty pm, the police squad
Speaker 1: car tore down Railroad Street, coming to a dramatic stop
Speaker 1: outside an apartment complex in the nine hundred block. Two
Speaker 1: officers emerged from the car. The pulsing blue lights, illuminating
Speaker 1: their every movement. As dust crept in. They led with
Speaker 1: their service weapons, creeping swiftly with purpose, towards the apartment
Speaker 1: building's front door. Kidnapping in progress. That was the call
Speaker 1: they received from dispatch, something about someone being dragged against
Speaker 1: their will inside. The cops did their sweep, the coast
Speaker 1: was clear and the door was unlocked, and they were
Speaker 1: inside there. Halfway up the stairs, two men, arms twisted
Speaker 1: and bent like a mall pretzel. They wrestled, they struggled,
Speaker 1: and then the cops saw it. The purp was pressing
Speaker 1: the muzzle of a handgun into the other guy's abdomen,
Speaker 1: and the cops were yelling, now drop it on your knees,
Speaker 1: I said, on your fucking knees. The purp froze, dropped
Speaker 1: the piece, and seconds later he was in police custody,
Speaker 1: riding in the back of the squad car on his
Speaker 1: way to county jail. Twenty one year old Brian Earl
Speaker 1: Taylor had multiple felony warrants and was out on parole
Speaker 1: when he was arrested in charged with unlawful imprisonment and
Speaker 1: carrying a concealed weapon. Allegedly, he had been in the
Speaker 1: process of forcing the other man in the stairwell to
Speaker 1: take him to his apartment.
Speaker 2: Where he planned to rob him.
Speaker 1: At the time of the arrest, Adele's Hello was the
Speaker 1: number one song in the country.
Speaker 2: It was like.
Speaker 1: Air or water, gas station clerks, retail store workers, bank tellers,
Speaker 1: jim rats, dental hygienis. It didn't matter who you were
Speaker 1: or what you did. You heard that song, and you
Speaker 1: heard it often. Even the purpse heard it. And we
Speaker 1: know this because four months later, at his sentencing in
Speaker 1: March of twenty twelve, when it came time to plead
Speaker 1: his case, Brian Earl Taylor didn't just ask for forgiveness
Speaker 1: for what he'd done.
Speaker 2: He sang it.
Speaker 1: Brian Earl Taylor sang a personalized version of Adele's Hello
Speaker 1: to the judge on the day of his sentencing. And
Speaker 1: I got to think that the thought process here was
Speaker 1: that he, the criminal, was hoping to find some common
Speaker 1: ground with the judge, with the law, and that common
Speaker 1: ground being Adele, the common ground of the biggest song
Speaker 1: in the world, the common ground of Adele's universal relatability.
Speaker 1: Relatable or not. Adele couldn't help with Brian Earl Taylor's plate.
Speaker 1: That day, he was sentenced up to seventeen years in prison.
Speaker 1: It was then that Brian was driven to change. He
Speaker 1: worked in the prison system's palliative care program, helping other
Speaker 1: inmates who were sick or dying. He taught himself piano
Speaker 1: on the prison's keyboard and began to write his own songs,
Speaker 1: and in the fall of twenty nineteen, after serving a
Speaker 1: little over seventy years of his sentence, Brian Earl Taylor
Speaker 1: was released on parole. It was only then that he
Speaker 1: revealed to the press when he had heard Hello for
Speaker 1: the first time and what inspired him to sing it
Speaker 1: to the judge. He was locked up awaiting trial, sent
Speaker 1: to solitary after getting into it with another inmate. That's
Speaker 1: when he heard Adele's voice. He was alone and afraid
Speaker 1: when Hello wafted in from somewhere, and it was then
Speaker 1: that something clicked for Brian Earld Taylor. He could feel
Speaker 1: the fear that had driven his young criminal life start
Speaker 1: to fade away, and in its place, something else was
Speaker 1: taking root. Call it hope, call it wisdom, call it clarity.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, Adele could relate. Justin Jackson walked out
Speaker 1: of prison and into the warm Florida sunshine. After two
Speaker 1: long years he was a freeman. What was he a
Speaker 1: changed man? And did he regret the things he'd done?
Speaker 1: When he came to regret, there was the hole getting caught.
Speaker 2: Of it all.
Speaker 1: And you always regretted that because it was so ballsy
Speaker 1: what he done, and he'd almost pulled it off, pretending
Speaker 1: to be a member of Madonna's entourage, sweet talking of
Speaker 1: boutique in New York to lend him two point four
Speaker 1: million dollars injewelry for a photo shoot. Air quotes around
Speaker 1: lend and photo shoot. There was no photo shoot and
Speaker 1: there was no lending, and there was no Madonna, not really.
Speaker 1: There was just Justin Jackson and over two million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of Swiss luxury jewelry weighing heavy in his thieving
Speaker 1: hands from the Florida pawnshop. May have paid pennies on
Speaker 1: the dollar for the stuff, but when you're talking millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, that's a lot of fucking pennies. So that
Speaker 1: question again, Was he a changed man?
Speaker 2: Nah?
Speaker 1: He was merely a man with a strengthened resolve and
Speaker 1: the desire to get it right the next time. But
Speaker 1: a fresh scam needed a fresh celebrity and a fresh mark.
Speaker 1: This time, the mark wouldn't be high end jewelry would
Speaker 1: be high end sneakers. Sneakers with serious resale value, the
Speaker 1: sneakers of NBA players, and the celebrity through which he
Speaker 1: could work this scam had to be God Tear, someone
Speaker 1: who commanded respect and awe from just about anyone. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, as Justin Jackson put his new scam in place,
Speaker 1: that celebrity was Adele. Justin Jackson created an email address
Speaker 1: that appeared to belong to Adele's manager, Jonathan Dickens. He
Speaker 1: then began to email the representatives of NBA players, offering
Speaker 1: tickets to Adele's concerts in exchange for their sneakers, which
Speaker 1: he said would be donated to a charity auction. Of course,
Speaker 1: just like there had been no Madonna and no photo shoot,
Speaker 1: there was no Adele, and there was no charity auction,
Speaker 1: and there were no concert tickets. But not everyone that
Speaker 1: Justin Jackson contacted could easily sniff that out. Paul George,
Speaker 1: Victor Rolattopo, and Richard Hamilton were among the pro ballplayers
Speaker 1: who actually sent their sneakers as requested. This mild success
Speaker 1: made Jackson greedy. He wanted to attend the Rolling Loud
Speaker 1: Hip hop festival in Miami, where Kendrick Lamar was headlining,
Speaker 1: but he didn't want to pay for it. Then why
Speaker 1: should he when he could pretend to be Adele's manager
Speaker 1: and get tickets free. When festival organizers received a suspicious
Speaker 1: email from someone claiming to be Adele's manager, the red
Speaker 1: flags he immediately went up. They contacted Miami Dade Pde,
Speaker 1: who in turn contacted the fake Jonathan Dickens Justin Jackson,
Speaker 1: posing as the festival's production manager. A meetup was set
Speaker 1: in downtown Miami, and in May of twenty seventeen, days
Speaker 1: before the Rolling Loud Festival, Justin Jackson and his wife
Speaker 1: angel Lee rolled into Bayfront Park thinking they were really
Speaker 1: pulling it off, only to be immediately arrested and charged
Speaker 1: with over a dozen felonies, including grand theft, identity theft,
Speaker 1: and organizing a scheme to defraud. Adele's songs are one
Speaker 1: of a kind currency, her identity is another kind, and
Speaker 1: her manager's identity is yet another. My point is even
Speaker 1: those in Adele's orbit have value on the black market
Speaker 1: and Jackson's brazen but ultimately dumb crime was the criminal
Speaker 1: world's proof of and co sign on Adele's cultural value.
Speaker 1: Once Hello Hit, Adele was no longer relatable, she was exploitable.
Speaker 1: Thus the counterfeit Adele was born. But scammers, moles in
Speaker 1: her inner circle, or felons who sang her songs in court,
Speaker 1: none of these had anything to do with her divorce
Speaker 1: from Simon Kanecki. The two had married shortly after the
Speaker 1: birth of their son, but the end of that marriage
Speaker 1: came just a year or so later. There was nothing
Speaker 1: as dramatic as an Adele lyric that had led them.
Speaker 2: To this point.
Speaker 1: It was simply the organic path that their union had taken.
Speaker 1: They would remain close friends and continue to co parent
Speaker 1: their son, and of course Adele wanted to keep the
Speaker 1: whole thing on a down low, like she always did.
Speaker 2: When the paparazzi had.
Speaker 1: Come to understand that, like her beloved Michael Corleone, Adele controlled.
Speaker 2: What the world saw of her.
Speaker 1: No one had even seen a picture of her wedding,
Speaker 1: and when photos of her son were taken in secret
Speaker 1: and then sold, she sued and won five figures in damages.
Speaker 1: It's like Tony Montana said, you want to fuck with me? Okay,
Speaker 1: you cockroaches, But there was no keeping the divorce the secret.
Speaker 1: On Good Friday twenty nineteen, news of Adele's divorce got out.
Speaker 2: It was all over the.
Speaker 1: Internet, memed on social media, everywhere you turned. Adele's personal
Speaker 1: life was suddenly under a microscope. The fear was creeping
Speaker 1: back in Fear that the public would do her dirty
Speaker 1: like they did to Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston. Fear
Speaker 1: that her life would begin to spin out of control
Speaker 1: from this point forward. Fear of all the moments she'd
Speaker 1: have alone, missing those can't miss milestones, now that her
Speaker 1: son was splitting time between her and Simon. So she
Speaker 1: did what she always did when fear reared its ugly head.
Speaker 1: She crawled into her bed and turned on the television.
Speaker 1: The screen flickered to life. The Sopranos was halfway through
Speaker 1: an old episode, Season two, Tony and the boys in
Speaker 1: the back room at the bottom Bank, shooting dirty pool.
Speaker 1: And there's Big Pussy already a snitch for the Feds,
Speaker 1: but no one can prove it just yet. Fewer still
Speaker 1: want to believe it. Hey, Syl Pussy says to Silvio
Speaker 1: Docte played with Gusto and Grease by Little Stephen van
Speaker 1: zand have been gone a long time, let me hear it.
Speaker 1: Syll's mouth contorts like it's preparing to crush gravel. His
Speaker 1: head bobs slightly, he gestures sharply with his hand, and
Speaker 1: he does his best paccino.
Speaker 2: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me
Speaker 2: back in.
Speaker 1: Two years later, in twenty twenty one, Adele was pulled
Speaker 1: back in, back into the spotlight, back onto the charts,
Speaker 1: back to her original fear of performing on stage, in
Speaker 1: order to promote her a fourth album, thirty. These are
Speaker 1: fears that will never go away. You can't outrun them,
Speaker 1: you can't kill them. But Adele turned them into songs
Speaker 1: everyone else could relate to, and in turn helped her
Speaker 1: survive a tabloid fate of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in
Speaker 1: This is Disgrace slammed all right, everybody, thanks for checking
Speaker 1: out this episode on Adele. Listen. Adele's sophomore album twenty one,
Speaker 1: it sold something like seventeen million copies. Seventeen million, meaning
Speaker 1: that I don't know everybody's got a copy of this album.
Speaker 1: But I don't and curious which blockbuster album that are
Speaker 1: beloved by millions of people that sold you know, tons
Speaker 1: of records?
Speaker 2: Do you not own that this might not do anything
Speaker 2: for you or moms?
Speaker 1: Never mind Happy Road by the Beatles, albums I Love
Speaker 1: by the Way, Let Me Know six one, seven, nine,
Speaker 1: six sixty six three eight, voicemail and text hitting up
Speaker 1: at disgrace lampod on the socials. Make sure you get
Speaker 1: automatic downloads turned on on Apple podcast so you never
Speaker 1: miss an episode of disgrace Land.
Speaker 2: Here comes some credits.
Speaker 1: Disgracelaand was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis, The Exactly Right Network and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
Speaker 1: notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If you're listening as
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Speaker 1: pod Rock a Roller.
Speaker 2: He's a bad down man.