I was the most excited girl to be interviewing Stedman of the legendary 80′s group Five Star for Phoenix FM, regarding his first solo single ‘Love U more’ which is released on the 8th July and his previous fashion background. Stedman is back performing, doing what he loves best.

As we likely all know, Five Star were the most beautiful family on our tv screens in the 80’s. Stedman, along with, Denise, Doris, Lorraine and Delory, were managed by their dad Buster Pearson, and officially formed Five Star in 1983 which led to a string of hits with their look and sound drawing comparisons with the Jacksons.

Elle: Stedman when is your new single out, tell us a bit about it?

Stedman: It’s coming out on the 8th of July. It had to be moved back, we needed just a bit more time and what with iTunes delaying the release we had to put it back but it gives us a bit more time to work on preparing it for the public.

Elle: You have finished the video already, I have been looking at it on youtube and you’ve still got the moves Stedman. When you were in Five Star the choreography was always something else.

Stedman: Thank you, thank you. Even though I have the dance training background, I kind of stepped aside and sort of let Doris, well I didn’t let Doris, Doris was just brilliant at putting movements together and when I went to college I lost my natural sense of rhythm because you are trained a certain way and your body is moving to a certain kind of typical, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1,2,3,4 where as Doris was just all over the place. What ever she heard she moved to, rhythmically. So I kind of stepped back and let her choreograph. She’d come to me and say ‘Sted, what do you think about this’. We’d do a few little adjustments but that was it. I learnt my natural rhythm again by working closely with Doris.

Elle: What made you decide to now go solo?

Stedman: To be honest Elle, I’ve been trying to go solo for some time and going through different managements. I couldn’t find the right manager. I couldn’t find this comfort zone that I was searching for to kind of unleash the real me. When I wrote the album I wrote it with one of my ex-managers who was just great at composing the music and he actually forced me to write.

He just said to me ‘alright, you are gonna sit there and write. Don’t come out the room. You sit there and you write’. and I looked at him and said ‘Dude, seriously I’ve never done this’. So I sat there and I listened to this track and I prayed really hard in the room and I was getting very tearful at the time. I had so much bottled up inside, and I didn’t know how to let it out. Then all of a sudden, I tried writing and it just flowed. From there on, it took me about an hour to write this song, to get the feeling out on paper. Then one song let to another, and another till before I knew it I had more than two albums worth of material. So I compiled the whole thing together and I am grateful to him for pushing me, in doing this. It’s just things in my life that I wrote about basically which I think people can relate to.

Elle: So It must be kind of therapeutic?

Stedman: Definitely, definitely! I had many break throughs about issues I had with myself during my life and got it all down on paper and actually sang it the way I thought it should be, and everything that was going on in my life I simply sat down and wrote. Theres three albums worth of stuff at the moment. So I’ve written the first album, just compiling the second album with all the songs that I’ve got, and the third album I’m still working on. I wanna meet people, like David Bernardi. Oh my god this man is amazing. Awesome guy. I haven’t met him yet but I’ve spoken to him on Facebook thanks to my manager Wayne. Wayne was the one who got hold of the track and said ‘look here are the parts. Give me something. Give me a David Bernardi remix’.

Played ‘Love you more’ and David Bernardi Remix

Elle: Ok, I’m loving that. You should be proud.

Stedman: I really am, I really am, it is my first single. Not the first I wrote, in fact I think it was one of the last. A buddy of mine Blake Stone, I took it to him and he said ‘Steddy, leave it with me, I’ll give it to some people’, and this is how it came back. A young producer named Neil Barratt, and this is the result.

Elle: So where is home theses days?

Stedman: Home is California though I’ve been back in England for 12 years.

Elle: You have a fashion background?

Stedman: Yes I took up, Fashion amongst other studies. So basically when the group started, my dad said seeing as you are studying fashion do you want to design the costumes but we got a designer in at first, he designed the first costumes and they were crazy so from then on I designed everything for the group. Which was really difficult, three girls two guys, you had to look the same but still look individual. The girls had to look like girls and the guys look like guys yet be wearing the same. It was a challenge. It really was but it worked. It was something that was needed in the music industry. No one was doing it. I fell into designing, Denise the vocal abilities, Lorraine writing, Del producing and Doris choreographing. It was a win win situation and a natural package. It just worked.

Elle: You have obviously heard it before, but you look so similar to Michael Jackson.

Stedman: Well no offence to the Jackson’s but I just have to correct this. Michael looked similar to me. I have always looked like this. I have my mothers features, as my mother is Indian and my dad is black and Indian as well. I think I have more of the indian features, and the black mixed together just compliments.

Stedman: One other thing, I have my charity. Water for Life Straw. It’s a straw like devise has seven filters in it and basically you pop the bottom, pop the top, put it in the most contaminated water as you suck up the water, it hits all seven filters. No matter how infected the water is it by the time it touches your lips it is 99.9% pure fresh clean water. Cleaner than the water we take for granted for out the taps. I have just got my charity number and I am really really excited about. We have always wanted to give back and this is my way. This will save a persons life this filters a 1000 litres of water every year. It’s not just about countries that are the most devastated without water it’s also about water being infected all around the world.

I am trying to get support to raise awareness so we can buy a ton of these straws. Its waterforlifestraw.co.uk. Help us support it. Please.