Music really was my first love.

And sometimes it’s the only thing that pulls you through.

25 years ago, I lived in a freezing cold artists studio up in the South Downs behind Newhaven. It was winter, and I had no heating, no hot water,and no way to cook anything. The studio was in the garden of a beautiful and isolated old house called Hunters Moon, which was being squatted by a load of Seaford junkies.

I had, for entertainment, an old mono tape recorder, and one C60 tape. On it, there was the first Jesus and Mary Chain album, and, because it was a short album, I had room for Teena Marie’s epic ‘Portugese Love’ taped off the radio on the end.

Believe it or not, I still love them both, and I was really sad to hear that Teena had died today. She was one of the first white artists to be signed to Motown, and, at least at the beginning of her career, her ethnicity was shielded from the R’n’B buying public. The JMC always claimed to have been influenced by The Shangri-La’s, another band who also  suffered from the inexcusable apartheid of the US Chart system.

Pete Townshend once claimed that this song  is in fact, the Greatest Pop Single Ever, and I think the lass in the video gets it beautifully. For Teena, yeah…