What KT did next

AT THE age of 17, and on a scholarship to an American high school, KT Tunstall would often take out her guitar and her busking licence and sing in the streets.

"He said, 'I've been suicidal, I've had this horrible life, all these things have happened to me, and I was really considering taking my life today. But then I heard you play and you made me feel happy, and I haven't felt happy for months.' I just thought, 'Oh my God...'"

Fast forward 13 years and Tunstall's circumstances have changed. As recently as last year, the Scottish singer-songwriter was still clambering slowly on to the fame ladder, when an appearance on Later with Jools Holland booted her swiftly to the top. Since then, she has had two top-ten singles and is about to release a third track, all taken from her highly acclaimed debut album Eye to the Telescope, which has seen her nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize. But something of that 17-year-old busker remains; in the intervening years of struggle, Tunstall always kept the sense of perspective that suicidal fan gave her. "It wasn't that I was standing there thinking, 'Oh my God, I can save lives with music,'" she explains. "It wasn't, 'Chord-change to G... don't kill yourself today.' But it was knowing that I could effectively communicate something with music. I just get a really basic sense of purpose when I'm on stage. All the guys I play with feel the same. We've come off stage and had a whisky and talked about it. You just don't need to wonder why you're on the planet after a good gig. You get this absolute sense that this is why you are here - to go on and entertain people while having the time of your life."

That desire to communicate led to her setting up a website to talk to supporters, long before she became famous. She answers e-mails and writes a chatty, informative diary. But will she keep this up now that she has made it? "Definitely. It's a really important part of it for me. That's where I get feedback. Two people have told me my music stops them having panic attacks. I got an e-mail from a 13-year-old who was upset because she was too young to get into the gigs, and one from a 70-year-old trombone player who thought all new music was crap and who said thanks for restoring his faith that people are still making good stuff.

"It's not just an ego boost for me, it's affirming what I wanted to do with music - which was somehow to make it important, to make it have a meaning for people other than myself."

There is something very natural about Tunstall, both in looks and personality. She has that sexy, tousled, thrown-together, don't-give-a-damn kind of look, with long dark hair and big, doe eyes. She's wearing jeans, boots and a rumpled, floral, chiffony-looking shirt that might have faded a bit in the wash. Her looks are very definitely on the feminine side of beauty, and yet there is an almost masculine approach in her lack of adornment. Her music has the same feel; her voice can be very beautiful, yet it retains a rough, ragged note of aggression, which is the source of its excitement. "Scruffy," she laughs. "It has a rawness."

She has said in the past that women who succeed in music are often bland. Who was she thinking of? "Dido. Katie Melua," she says instantly. "Basically, it's music that for me sounds very, very safe. And there's nothing wrong with that. It sounds very pleasant and I can completely acknowledge that for some people this is important, and they are attached to the music, and the lyrics mean something. It can sound very beautiful, but it doesn't do anything for me. I'm excited by music that explores."

Surprisingly, given Tunstall's clarity of vision about her music and her deep-seated sense of purpose about it, she grew up in a house where music really didn't feature at all. Born in Edinburgh and adopted at just 18 days old, she lived in St Andrews with her physics-lecturer father, primary-teacher mother and two brothers, and the family were more into outdoor pursuits than music.

But the really striking thing about Tunstall's upbringing is how early she was independent, both physically and emotionally. At 17 she spent her year in America. When she returned, she set up a band with some local musicians and ended up living in a cottage with one of them. They spent their time writing and playing music, and stealing vegetables from a local field when the sound of rumbling stomachs got louder than the sound of guitars.

Was independence a driving force early on? "That's really interesting," she says, "and something has just clicked. Although my parents are academics, they met as rock climbers and had a pretty exciting younger life. My dad had a motorbike and they travelled around. They lived in Zurich and in Israel, and we lived in LA for a year as a family when I was about four. They did a lot of travelling and I think that really made a difference to their attitude in bringing us up. When I was 16, I went inter-railing with another girl. I didn't even know her very well, but she was the only other girl in the school whose parents would let her go. Looking back, I'm amazed that my parents were that liberal, that trusting of my ability to look after myself."

She's currently reading psychologist Oliver James's book They F*** You Up, which examines the whole nature-versus-nurture argument. "He says boys are actively encouraged to go out of the house, while girls, because of the dangers of our society, are kept closer to home. And when I read that, it really struck a chord about why there are so few girls and women in music. Doing what I do is a pretty independent and rebellious path to take. I don't think it's a coincidence that I've ended up doing this."

Her musicality may have made her feel different from the rest of her family, but it didn't make her feel alienated. "My parents always made me feel that being adopted was something special. They would say, 'Everyone else gets what they are given, but we actually chose you.' I always felt it was quite a magical, special thing. It has just always been a source of romance. It's quite a sensitive issue to decide to talk about, but it felt too much a part of me not to mention it, especially because nobody else in my family played music. And I was really sort of enchanted by the fact that I have this Chinese heritage I knew nothing about. It's a little exotic streak - especially when you are from Fife!"

She is quarter-Cantonese. Her grandmother was Chinese, but her mother, a dancer, was born in Edinburgh and has lived there all her life. Seven years ago, Tunstall tracked her down, after having seen Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies. "It's such an outrageously awful, brilliant film, the story of a black woman who discovers her mother is white. I watched it and thought, 'I could handle that. And if I could handle that, I could surely handle anything.'"

Her father is Irish and worked in a bar, but despite trying, she has never found him. In any case, it seemed natural to trace her mother first. "Your mother is a woman who could have had a termination and didn't," she says. "Your father could have been a one-night-stand who hasn't been seen since."

She is intrigued by the 18 days before she was adopted. "I find it fascinating to think that for two weeks I didn't have a mother. You have this short time when you have no idea what this baby's future is going to be."

Did she ever feel abandoned? "No, but there have been moments... I met her seven years ago, and that was a strange process. You go through moments of thinking, 'Actually, how does that work, and what was she feeling?' But you just have to keep asking questions. At the end of the day, you are meeting a stranger. I've known her seven years, but that's not long. I have to be slightly protective of the relationship, because we still have a long way to go."

Meeting her birth mother didn't in any way complicate her feelings about who her parents were, and she is very close to her adoptive family. As a child, her natural theatrical tendencies were encouraged. While they knew little about music, her parents arranged piano lessons and flute lessons and took her to drama clubs. They even backed her decision to take a degree in performing arts. "But at the end of university," she laughs, "I said, 'Guess what I'm going to be? A performer!' And they were like, 'Oh my God, you're joking. What did we do wrong?' I was confused. Why were they so shocked? But my mother was a teacher, so she possibly expected me to teach rather than do it for myself."

By the time she was 27, her parents were seriously questioning her future. The relationship became strained, but her mum told her recently they would never have allowed her to break the links with them completely. Tunstall herself never lost faith. "You have to have a certain amount of self-confidence to spend seven years on the dole believing that one day you're actually going to get there. It was blind faith and a complete compulsion to do this with my time. And also a real stubbornness. I just refused to do anything else, because it made me really happy, and also it felt like a calling."

In truth, she also thrives on having something to kick against. "My determination to prove them wrong was a factor. They are the two people I want to impress most in the world. You want your mum and dad to be proud of you and think that you're great. They were often the only two people who weren't telling me to go for it - because they were the two people who cared the most, really. It wasn't going to matter as much to anyone else."

Now, naturally, they are thrilled for her. But what finally won through, luck or talent? Tunstall thinks carefully. "Both those things, plus you've got to be proactive. You've got to try to make it happen. You can't just sit there and expect it to come to you."

For years she resisted moving to London. She had also been advised to ditch her band, and refused. But, at 27, she had to make the break. She saved for several weeks to buy a cheap return ticket to London. "I remember really clearly getting on the train at Leuchars with my guitar and my bag, ready to sleep on my friend's floor for a month. The train pulled in and I thought, 'I wonder if my life will be different when I get back off this train.' I had this very romantic moment when I thought, 'Come on, come back with a different situation.'"

Over the years she had gathered the phone numbers of people who might one day help her. "I just called them all up. I have my diary from those two weeks and it's just crammed with meetings with as many people as possible. I can hardly remember now how I did it, but I just picked up the phone and got stuck in."

One of her contacts advised her to get a publishing deal for her songwriting before she got a recording contract. "That way you don't have to sign the recording deal for money," she says. "You can sign the right deal so that you get a decent contract and are not desperate for the advance - which can often mean you are tied up in a situation you wouldn't want, contractually or creatively."

Tunstall secured a small publishing deal and phoned a London agent who had been encouraging in the past. He agreed to manage her. "He told me the same week that he was going to pack in music because he was so disenchanted with it. He just felt that good music wasn't getting through. So we saved each other, really, and he has become a very good friend."

A record deal with Sony followed, and then that fateful, last-minute appearance on Jools Holland, when another artist pulled out. Tunstall sang 'Black Horse and the Cherry Tree' and wowed viewers, who voted hers the top performance of the evening. Does she worry that the success genie will disappear back into the lamp as quickly as it appeared? "No, not at all. The great thing is that I've got into this situation where, wherever I go, I could do a gig and have 100 people turn up. That, to me, is success. It's just brilliant. If it all falls to pieces, and I don't have a record deal, it could end up being a pretty frugal lifestyle, but I don't mind that. I've been there before and I've been very happy doing that."

It strikes me that Tunstall has two important attributes in life: sense of purpose and lack of fear. In the happiness stakes, that's pretty much the winning lottery line. She knows what she wants to do and is not frightened to reach for it. She also has a partner: her band's drummer. "The emotional side doesn't obstruct us working together. It's very important for me to be in a relationship where both of you understand what you do. And my friends too. That's the one down side of all this, if there can be one. I haven't seen my friends this year. But, you know, I spent ten years hanging out with them!"

Tunstall is now 30 in a youth-dominated industry. Before she got her break, she was told she was on the wrong side of 25. "I just found it incredible. I thought, 'What do you want? You want a singer-songwriter, but you want someone who doesn't have very much... not so much life experience, because I thoroughly believe that you have enough experience at 20 to write five albums. It's working out how to express that in an original way, in your own voice and your own words. People like Bob Dylan and Kate Bush managed it as teenagers, but there are so few people on the planet who are capable of that. It is a very special person who can go out and be original and sincere at 20."

She is quite sunny. Angst-ridden music that is simply 'airing laundry' doesn't appeal. "I like a balance. I don't think anyone is depressed all the time, and if they are then maybe it's time to talk to someone."

But she is also sassy. "Attitude problem," she jokes. "I seem to have a reputation for being fiery in interviews, but I wouldn't call myself fiery. Creatively, really, is where you will see the beast in me raise its head. If there's a battle I've got to fight, I will fight, no problem."

She has a temper? "If I feel creatively that I'm being backed into a corner, where I am being expected to do something I don't want to do, that will not happen. If temper is required, then temper will arrive. I'm 30. I don't have enough time left to arse around doing things I don't want to do. I would rather not do it at all than do it in a way I'm not proud of."

Good for her. But what effect will this 'late' fame have on her personal life? People who are adopted tend to think very carefully about parenthood. Has she? "I would love to have a family, definitely, which is the one really annoying thing about this happening now and not five years ago. I don't want to be thinking about having kids when I'm not healthy enough agewise to have them. But if I do have children, they'll be coming on the tour bus. They're going to be feral children with no shoes, encouraged to wear their hair exactly as they want."

Not for her, then, the lure of a more conventional lifestyle as she gets older. "I look to a more eccentric life, absolutely," she laughs. "If I make it to 70, I want to be in a young boy-band. I set that as my goal. I'm going to find a wicked little indie boy-band and they'll have a granny drummer." n

'Suddenly I See' is released tomorrow