Pride (band)

Pride was a music group formed in 1981 by manager Lee Barrett out of the remnants of a band called The Germans, a school band from Barnet featuring Ray St John and Nick Moxham. Lee Barrett discovered Helen Adu on a bus in London and asked her if she would sing for Pride as a backing singer. The band initially rejected her but finally took her back to perform with the band. The other backing singer hired was Barbara Robinson. The band started to play Latin style pop music until they auditioned for a new bass and drum team. Stuart Mathewman, Paul Anthony Cooke and Paul Denman all auditioned for Pride and replaced the old Pride members in 1981. The advent of the new band members, all from the City of Hull in England, saw a harder funk and dance feel evolve in the band’s music along with a breakaway group headed by the band’s backing singer Helen Adu (Sade). Eventually Pride failed to secure a recording contract even though it had performed on the BBC Oxford Road Show [1] and was championed by BBC DJ at the time Peter Powell. The demise of Pride in late 1982 saw the formation of the new group Sade as suggested at the time by Jack Stevens, A&R at RCA Records, who wanted Helen Adu to be pulled out of Pride. RCA went on to sponsor the band’s first recordings with producer Robin Millar. Sade was formed and featured Stuart Mathewman (Sade), Paul Anthony Cooke (Sade) and Paul Denman (Sade) and Helen Adu (Sade). A song from Pride written by Ray St John originally called Diamond Life (maximum joy) went on to be Sade’s biggest hit in 1984 when she adapted it and called the new song Smooth Operator as changed by her on the release of her first album called Diamond Life in June 1984.

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