Slow and steady Sade performs first Las Vegas show in 10 years

Sade is the name of a beautiful singer and also of the band in which she sings. But Stuart Matthewman gave up on people understanding that a long time ago.

"We maybe had some egos back in 1984," he says of the debut album, "Diamond Life." Matthewman co-wrote the first single, "Your Love is King," even though it didn't turn out to be the defining one, "Smooth Operator."

But it was Sade Adu on the album cover and all the magazines as well. "They weren't particularly interested in having pictures of skinny white boys," the guitarist-saxophonist says with a laugh. Sade thought of itself as collectively as Depeche Mode or Duran Duran, "and we were thinking, 'They're getting all the girls and no one knows about us.'

"We soon got over that. It's pretty obvious she's the one everyone's going to focus on," he says.

And they've been over it a long time. Matthewman, keyboardist Andrew Hale and bassist Paul Denman have been onboard since the first album. Matthewman remembers his brother calling up from Miami to say he heard "Operator" on three different radio stations at the same time.

And he remembers going off on his own for a holiday in Ibiza, Spain -- "trying to get away from the whole thing" -- and falling asleep on a beach at 5 a.m. He woke up midmorning, sunburned, to a DJ playing the song.

Sade's longevity is impressive, even if the definition of a working band might be challenged by how spread out its work has been over the years.

Saturday's concert with John Legend is the first Las Vegas show in 10 years. The last one was so long ago, Matthewman notes, people did not film the concerts on their cellphones to upload the clips.

Last year's "Soldier of Love" also was only Sade's sixth album in all its years. "We just have different concepts of time than the rest of the (music) industry does," says Matthewman, who has spent at least some of the downtime scoring films such as "The Astronaut Farmer."

Fans seem to jump right back in where they left off. Perhaps it's the remarkable consistency of the group's cocktail-cool sound, or absence building anticipation. But "Soldier" topped Billboard's album chart, and Sade is playing the same MGM Grand Garden arena it did in 2001.

"Whatever she does in her life, she puts 100 percent into it," Matthewman explains of the British singer's slow career pace. "She has to be ready to do whatever that is. (It may be) having a gorgeous teenaged daughter and helping her through school and being there for her. Or working on a house, building the bathroom.

"The idea of just doing music and tours I don't think would work for her. She's a home girl. She didn't start this to be famous, she just liked writing songs. It was a bit of fun. And then it just roller-coastered to where we are now. But fame wasn't the most important thing for her. She didn't have this competitive edge of 'Who's out there now? I've got to get a record on now and sell more!' "

If that sounds like the opposite of a certain fame monster, Matthewman adds with a laugh that Sade also "has the incredible advantage that she doesn't have to look any different. In fact, she gets more beautiful as the years go by.

"It's quite amazing, you see her onstage now and she just looks so incredible. She's so sexy, and everyone just loses their mind when they see her." At 52, "She's grown more confident onstage. She's actually kind of loving it, and that really comes across."

For years, Sade collectively labored under the categorization of "smooth jazz." That radio format ignored the band's reggae, hip-hop and old-school soul influences, as well as the fact that they are not prone to much jazz improvising.

"It wasn't about showing off. It wasn't about trying to impress people with your technique. It was about trying to hit people with a lyric that would resonate, or a melody that would resonate," he says.

Matthewman says Sade has that in common with obvious influences such as Nina Simone or Astrud Gilberto's work with Stan Getz. "They just drew you into the lyrics," he says.

"That's the most important thing. You can actually hear the lyrics and they resonate with you. That can be very rare. There can be amazing lyrics out there, but if you don't sing them simply, they don't resonate with you."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.