KEY POINTS:
People have epiphanies in unusual situations, but you'd think you'd have enough on your mind if you were swapping verses with Gladys Knight in front of a television audience of millions.
Not Joss Stone. There she was in 2004, 17 years old, done up to the nines with
her trademark bare feet, trading tonsil stretches with one of the legends of the business. And the whole time she's thinking how Ms Knight puts her knickers on one leg at a time like everyone else.
"That changed everything for me," says Stone as she talks up a storm in her Munich hotel room, midway through a tour that will hit Auckland in December.
"Confidence had always been a problem for me. I'd never even been OK showing my face, I'd just cover it with my hair, then stand in the middle of the stage with my eyes shut for pretty much the whole gig.
"But I was on stage with Gladys Knight, I mean I'm singing with Gladys Knight, you know? And I finally realised that these people are just as normal as the rest of us. It's just down to how musicians and celebrities are portrayed in the media. These people aren't supposed to be human, they're a cut above, something a little different to human.
"And I used to think that as well. I read the magazines, watched the television, and like all girls I was like 'Why don't I look like that?' Well, now I know you don't look like that because you haven't had two and a half hours of make-up, hair extensions, boob-lifts and all the rest."
All good personal growth and such, but it was an important realisation because of the stage her career had reached.
Publicly, she was still the hippie teen with a successful debut album. She was being touted as a young, white Aretha Franklin, and got to bang elbows on stage with her idols. But off-stage she had been at war with her record label, her management, herself and her reasons for doing what she was doing. A confidence booster was very timely because that breakthrough Soul Sessions album had achieved more than her label realised.
She had been nowhere - well, Devon - when she appeared on television as a 14-year-old. She wanted the money to buy a pony.
The subsequent raves over this soulful, mature voice trapped inside a young body encouraged Stone's family to fly her to New York to audition for the S-Curve record label's chief executive, Steve Greenberg. Soon afterwards, and still only 16, she's in Miami, Florida, laying down an album of soul covers with a who's who of black American music while soaking up the cautionary tales of veterans such as Betty Wright and Little Beaver, who had taken time off from his day job as a train driver.
"Being around those people, legends really, was a blessing. I just sat back and watched and listened and learned. I hadn't wanted to do an album of covers - I was writing my own songs - but the label controlled everything. They owned me. Literally. I was signed because they loved my voice, the way I sang and the way I looked. Then they said 'this is what you will do' and at that point I didn't have any right to say anything, I hadn't sold a single album.
"If I'd fought them then they could have just said, 'Peace and love, now go away'. It was do this or do nothing, and under my contract they could keep saying that for years and years. Or they just put you on what they call the backburner and stop you doing anything with anyone. It's very frustrating. But I was a baby, and I'm lucky, that album put me where I am today. I've never said I hated it, but I've never said I loved it either. There are a couple of tracks that I do hate, but, whatever, it taught me so much."
After Soul Sessions went top five in Britain, Stone flexed some new-found muscle and demanded that her own material feature on the follow-up Mind, Body and Soul, in late 2004.
"That was, 'Oh my God'. It was a massive fight. They don't allow artists to be artists, they just want them to be what they tell them to be. It was crazy. But I needed to know it was me doing it. Up till then I'd been leaning on other people, I was dependent on them. So I needed to know."
MBS didn't fare as well as her debut, but it sold enough to encourage Stone to keep pushing, and she quickly earned a reputation as a "difficult" artist. Over the past five years she has sacked four managers, including her dear old mum. Then, in January this year, she'd had enough and decided to manage herself.
Despite some titters and predictions of career suicide, Stone now dictates everything - what she plays, who she plays with, where she appears, and what promotional work she does. She's making a documentary of her efforts, hoping it will inspire others: "I'm going to get in so much trouble, but it'll be worth it."
To understand how little the industry cares, she suggests, check out the woes of another British soulstress, Amy Winehouse. "She's amazing and I love what she does, but we can all see that something's wrong. You can't deny it now - and I was for a long time. So, if I can see what's happening and you can see what's happening, then so can the record company, her manager, and her boyfriend. But what do they do? They put her on the MTV awards, they put her on tour, they put her in the media.
"They're promoting what's going on her life. That's disgusting. I'm managing myself now, so I know how it works. Those people will be booking her, making all those decisions, everything. It's not Amy. She's not in the right mind for it anyway. They shouldn't be allowed to do that to her. I just want to kill them. Sorry, I just feel I have to vent right now. It's not right."
But Stone is thrilled with where she's at after album number three, Introducing Joss Stone, her musical mission statement. "I've been through enormous changes, but it's not scary or uncomfortable, it's fun. This is an album I can love, the music's changed, and this time I did it. Me and my co-writer Raphael Saadiq, a wonderful musician, an amazing writer, and a man with a great spirit."
But if you're a Stone fan, enjoy it, because she doesn't plan on doing it forever. "I couldn't imagine just doing this - music is my air, but that would be really boring. I have a whole life ahead, and I'm not going to die and just have been a singer.
"Midwife, yeah, I'd like to do that. And animals, I love dogs. And babies. My friends breed dogs and there was a rottweiler giving birth last time I went home. I helped out and I thought I'd so love to do this. I just love looking after things, it keeps me sane."
Who: Joss Stone.
Born: Joscelyn Eve Stoker on April 11, 1987 in Dover, England.
Albums: The Soul Sessions (September 2003); Mind, Body and Soul (September 2004); Introducing Joss Stone (March 2007)
Performing: Auckland's ASB Theatre (Aotea Centre),
December 2.
