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'80s star El DeBarge has a second chance at music and at life - but no one is sure if he can grab either
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In the mid-December show at the BWX Lounge, DeBarge plays to an intimate crowd. "We can't cry forever," he tells them. For five rows standing, there's nothing but women. They press against the velvet rope. "I love you, Eldra!" a woman in front yells. He sings, and the audience sings with him.
"They think I'm trying to bring light-skinned back, but I ain't trying to do that. I'm just trying to bring back the love, baby," he murmurs and the audience swoons. They hang on his joy at being onstage. "It's good to be back," he says, pausing to take it all in.
Two weeks later, he returns to perform for New Year's Eve. More than 1,000 people have packed the club, two radio programs are broadcasting live, and for two hours, Tanisha Williams has stood rooted in the same spot, waiting for him to appear.
"He's a legend. He would have been bigger than MJ" if the drugs hadn't gotten him, she says. She wants an autograph. But it's past 11:30, and though no time was specified for his appearance, he hasn't shown up and she's "not having fun."
A rumor is circulating that DeBarge is sick, but suddenly, five minutes into 2011, he appears , twirling on stage, smiling, posing for pictures. He jumps up on an end table to dance. His manager, Pete Farmer, says they drove from Philadelphia rather than fly because DeBarge had food poisoning and they didn't want him throwing up on the plane.
Onstage, the singer loses his cellphone and everyone up there stops partying to find it. DeBarge exits for a while, but comes back about an hour later to do four songs.
"He looked a little tired, a little overwhelmed," Williams says later. "He's trying to impress his fans. I know he loves us, but if it was up to me, I would want him to stay and home and rest and not come out."
"God knows, I'm so tired," DeBarge says by phone several days later. His voice is soft and flat. From July through New Year's Eve, he worked nonstop. There's "so much healing in the music that God has given me, but it pulls on me and sometimes it just drains me."
He bristles at a reporter's question about whether he's sober and how he manages his sobriety. "I've been sober for two years and the way I manage my sobriety is I don't have to. I don't concentrate. When you concentrate on trying to stay sober, I think you're empowering the devil to say hey, I have a power. . . . I don't say, 'I'm a drug addict and I'm fighting every day to stay sober.' I don't buy into that philosophy. Once God makes you new, old things pass away."
The next day, Farmer calls to cancel a photo shoot. DeBarge is sick, he says: "Food poisoning."
Chico DeBarge, who says he has been sober for a year and eight months, says he hopes that one day the family will sing together again. That they will all be a part of each other's salvation and stand in sobriety, together with their brother, without the addictions that have haunted "every single child of my mother."
Williams says she believes in El's music and his recovery. She's like legions of fans who are pulling for him, not just to win the Grammys, but, finally, to win at life: "He's got a second chance, and he's got to take advantage of it."
Like the old DeBarge song says, it's something only time will reveal.
Erin Williams contributed to this report.
