She’s appeared alongside major artists including The Rolling Stone, Ike & Tina Turner, The Small Faces, Rod Stewart, Barry Gibb and Paul Weller and now she’s coming to The Apex next month

When PP Arnold (pictured above) arrived in London in September 1966 to support The Rolling Stones as one of Ike and Tina Turner’s backing singers, The Ikettes, little did she know that her world was about to be turned upside down.

The shy, but vivacious 19-year-old, caught the eye of Mick Jagger, who would persuade her to stay in London and record as a solo artist – ultimately leading to a five-decade career working with everyone from Jagger, the Small Faces, Rod Stewart, Barry Gibb and Eric Clapton, to Peter Gabriel, Roger Waters, the KLF, Paul Weller, Ocean Colour Scene and Primal Scream, to name a few. 

And she’s due to appear at The Apex, in Bury St Edmunds, on Sunday, May 15.

“I met Mick on a day-off at the end of that tour and we went for a walk in Regent’s Park,” explains PP (born Patricia Ann Cole and known off-stage as “Pat”).

“We’d become close friends. Mick told me that The Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, wanted to sign me as a solo artist to his label, Immediate Records.”

Within a few months, PP was at Number 18 in the UK charts with her first single, “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, written by Cat Stevens. “That song was my story, all my pain was in there,” she says. 

The “pain” in question relates to PP’s abusive teen marriage in Los Angeles, which – while being far from the last heartache she’d ever experience – was the catalyst for her joining The Ikettes.

“I never planned to be in the record industry,” she says. “I was just a young woman who sang gospel in church. God answered a prayer, and the next thing I knew, I was at Tina Turner’s house singing ‘Dancing In The Street’. I’d just gone there with a friend who was trying out for them. But Tina liked my voice and gave me a way out of the horrible life I was living. It gave me a way to support my two children.”

PP hit the road, playing 90-date tours with Ike and Tina.

“I was young and shy, and wasn’t very worldly. It was gruelling but I loved singing with Tina, who was such a strong inspiration for me. I always enjoyed the girly time with Tina and The Ikettes in the dressing room before the show. Performing on-stage with her was always exciting and exhilarating. The musical side of working with the entire Ike & Tina Turner Revue remains a dynamic highlight of my career.”

After careful consideration that the singer took up the invitation to sign with Immediate records, and a string of timeless singles followed, including “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, “(If You Think You’re) Groovy” and “Angel Of The Morning” and two albums, “The First Lady of Immediate” and “Kafunta”.

By this time, the singer had been taken under the wing of another black American artist who’d managed to bowl up in London at the height of the Swinging Sixties.

“I first met Jimi Hendrix at the Bag O’Nails club,” recalls PP. “My guitar player said there’s this American guy in the audience, he wants to come up and jam with you on-stage. I could see this brother, surrounded by women, wild hair (laughs). He came on for the second set and blew us away/” 

It was while PP was contracted to Immediate that she first encountered Rod Stewart, with whom she recorded the song “Come Home Baby”, with Mick Jagger producing.

“Mick thought Rod and I could be an Otis Redding-Carla Thomas type [soul duet] thing. That was Mick’s idea, Rod didn’t even have a deal then.”

But it was PP’s connection with the Small Faces, via a romance with vocalist Steve Marriott, that would truly enhance her already sizeable musical reputation, as backing vocalist on two of the group’s biggest hits, “Itchy Coo Park” and “Tin Soldier”.

When Immediate Records went bust in 1969, PP was left without a deal and manager, or the confidence to search for a new label.

She turned to theatre work, appearing in the West End musical “Catch My Soul, Starlight Express”, and also singing on the original album recording of “Jesus Christ Superstar”.

“I enjoyed doing something different, but [in the theatre] they want you to do the same thing every night,” she says. “I’m a soul singer, so I don’t sing a song the same way every time, or I get bored. So I was always getting notes from the producer… (laughs).”

PP returned to London in the early ’80s, where she recorded a version of The Staple Singers’ “Respect Yourself” with electro pop act the Kane Gang, which became a UK and Australian chart hit.

An invitation to sing backing vocals on Peter Gabriel’s worldwide smash “Sledgehammer” got PP’s voice back into the charts, after which she “ended up doing a lot of jingles – Alton Towers, Kellogg’s… that’s how I met The Beatmasters, because they were a jingle production company. Then they got into house music. I said, house music, what’s house music? As long as it’s funky. We collaborated on [the 1988 hit] ‘Burn It Up’. I was the only live thing on the track. We’d go and do gigs and everyone was miming except me.”

But by the ’90s, her star was in the ascendant again, thanks to the re-interest in the Small Faces and the Immediate catalogue, and she worked with KLF (“What Time Is Love?” “3 A.M Eternal”), Primal Scream and Ocean Colour Scene – whose duet with PP, “It’s A Beautiful Thing”, reached Number 12 in the UK charts in 1998.

For the first decade of the new century, PP was kept busy by Roger Waters’ “In The Flesh” and “Dark Side Of The Moon Live” world tours.

In 2017 PP Arnold finally released her album “The Turning Tide” – a collection of songs from that were recorded between ’68 and ’70.

Her blistering versions of Traffic’s “Medicated Goo” and the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” sit alongside tender ballads like the gospel song “Bury Me Down By the River”, “Give A Hand Take A Hand” and “Turning Tide”, the title track, all written and produced by Barry Gibb.

PP Arnold’s latest album “The New Adventures Of… P.P. Arnold” was released in 2019; a double-album of orchestral soul, sunshine pop and house music, it features contributions from Paul Weller, Ocean Colour Scene’s Steve Cradock, The Specials and PP’s songwriter son, Kodzo (musical director for Jessie J and Jess Glynne).

PP has written a memoir of her incredible story – “Soul Survivor: The Autobiography” will be released in July this year.

Call 01284 758000 or visit www.theapex.co.uk for more information and tickets.