Sister Sledge's Kathy Sledge: "I had to fight for the right to sing"

Kathy Sledge, the youngest and founding member of iconic family group Sister Sledge, is performing at Indigo at The O2 in London this year, although until recently she was barred from using the band’s name alongside her own. She explains who sued whom and reveals how the sisters are forging a path ahead, together, for fans old and new.

Kathy keeps hearing about a new Sister Sledge song that was released during the pandemic.

“My daughter’s friends have been saying, ‘I hear your mom has a new record out’. I'm like, ‘Yo, that's Thinking of You. That's been out; we’ve been singing this all around the world, forever!’” she laughs warmly.

From her home located somewhere between New York and Philadelphia, in a soothing voice Kathy explains that DJ D-Nice (Harlem-born Derrick Jones) became something of a beacon of hope during the depths of the pandemic for founding what the digital media-verse knows as Club Quarantine, a series of Instagram live DJ sets that rapidly snowballed, before long welcoming over 100,000 locked-down viewers to the virtual party. 

Special guests included Oprah, Michelle Obama, Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez, Steph Curry and Joe Biden, and the club’s theme tune, says Kathy, was Sister Sledge’s 1984 single, Thinking of You.

“What's interesting is that it’s still the original recording, and it's still working,” she says fondly – still excited by the twists and turns that her career continues to take since hitting the big time with her sisters Debbie, Joni and Kim in 1979 when they released their breakthrough album, We Are Family.

“It's funny because it wasn't remixed or anything, although there have been remixes of it,” she considers, “but the one that everyone's loving is the one that was out years ago. It goes to show that the music is timeless. 

"Disco / dance music, or however you want to refer to it – it's feel-good music, and I think it’s one reason it's working so well now. I love seeing this resurgence of a whole new generation of kids thinking it's brand new and knowing every word.”

Thinking of You also happens to be Kathy’s favourite Sister Sledge song.

“I love We Are Family, who doesn't? But Thinking of You is sexy. It's fun. It's a real sing-along song, and it makes you feel good. What happened here in the United States is, when the world shut down, people wanted to hear it.”

The Philadelphia-based sisters formed the group in 1971 and although they were steadily releasing music, they didn’t find breakthrough success until 1979 when Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards revamped their sound and image with the release of We Are Family, which featured hit songs, He's the Greatest Dancer, Lost in Music, Thinking of You and We Are Family.

Keen to capture a spontaneous vibe, Rodgers had a 16-year old Kathy record the lead vocals to We Are Family line by line, having never heard the song before.

“I was never allowed to hear anything before it was time to record it in the studio,” she remembers. 

“They believed in spontaneity, so it would be one take, a line at a time. He would go, ‘Okay sing: ‘Everyone can see we're together’, and I’d repeat, ‘Everyone can see we're together’, ‘Okay, cut; ‘And we fly just like birds of a feather’, and it was like that. I had braces and I used to follow Nile around the studio like a little nerd,” she chuckles. 

“I’d ask, ‘Are they even going to play this record?’ Nile and I laugh about that to this day. He said, ‘Not only are they going to play it, it’s going to be huge’. I just loved their confidence and I trusted Nile and Bernard – they were only in their 20s at the time and they were geniuses with their music. To be able to sing these songs and not ever have heard them, it showed the trust there.”

That reminds Kathy of another story involving Rodgers:

“Here’s something really crazy,” she discloses, suddenly singing the opening line to Chic’s I Want Your Love. 

“That was our song, and He’s the Greatest Dancer was their song, and at the last minute they flipped it. I think that was more Bernard's call. What I've learned is they were both pillars in their band, but I think Bernard was more of the lyricist, and he felt like this song would be better for these girls to sing, and he was right.”

This seems as good a time as any to address the rumour that the young sisters weren’t fans of He’s the Greatest Dancer’s suggestive lyrics, ‘My crème de la crème please take me home’, asking for them to be changed to something more wholesome.

“I want to clear this up too,” Kathy volunteers. “There’s always this thing where they say I had a problem singing that line; I've never had a problem… I think my sisters had a problem with that line! I was very naive. I felt like, ‘Yeah, take me home – you're gonna marry me’,” she laughs, shaking her head. “I was 16! I made it make sense to me. 

"I Want Your Love was a little more mature, and a better fit for the Chic singers. They knew exactly what they were doing. I mean, we're still playing their music now. Our music now,” she corrects herself.

Like any family, the Sledge sisters have had their ups and downs over the years. Kathy left the group to pursue a solo career in 1989, while her three sisters continued to perform as Sister Sledge. After this, various lawsuits restricted her from using the name Sister Sledge at all.

“I was actually sued by my sisters,” she clarifies. “I'd like to really make this clear: I never sued anyone, I never would. And I never left the band. I did a solo project and I was asked to leave the band. I was sued so that I couldn't perform as or from Sister Sledge, and that was frustrating to me. I like singing with a group! I'm not fighting my sisters, but I had to fight for the right to sing. 

"I'm finally having a voice because the truth is I missed out on having any kind of vote in our corporation and in our company. We all built it in our own lives, and I would never have stopped anyone from using [the name] but I had been stopped for years from using it. If you knew me, I'm just a happy person – and that's the truth. At the end of the day, the truth rises to the top.”

Kathy shares that she and Kim made up fairly recently, and that she is now allowed to use the name Sister Sledge again.

“Kim lives around the corner from me, and she actually knocked on my door right before the pandemic and she apologised. She said, ‘I'm sorry that we've been so mean to you throughout the years’. I was like, ‘You know what? Let's just fix it. Let's not make it nebulous anymore to the market out there’.”

She’s got good reason (aside from legally being allowed to) to want to clarify who Sister Sledge are these days, as fans wanting to see “the authentic sisters”, as Kathy calls them, might be confused when turning up for a live show. 

Check out their live tour dates and the line up is not Debbie, Kim, and Kathy (Joni passed away in 2017), but Debbie alongside family members Camille Sledge, Thaddeus Sledge, David Sledge, and Tanya Tiet.

“My sister Debbie is out there touring with her kids as our band, and we're fixing that because I think that people need to know who we are. I think that's fair and it's right. Debbie, Kim and I – the remaining sisters – are really trying to make sure that you are seeing the authentic sisters. You will never see…well, unless we decide to do something together…” she trails off.

“Kim and I are working on fixing the website so that it represents the authentic, real sisters, and not Deb and her kids,” she clarifies, not unkindly. “That is something we're sorting out, but it will be sorted. Maybe you might see us together, but right now, when you see Sister Sledge performing, you have to be sure that’s what you're getting. As long as it’s the truth, you can't go wrong. I'm making sure that that happens.”

Sister Sledge ft Kathy Sledge are performing at Indigo at The O2 in London on May 14 2022, and as well as performing all the group’s biggest hits, Kathy will use her experience in producing festivals and concerts to make sure that the production feels fresh for modern audiences.

“It’s important to make sure you stay relevant as an artist. I'm loving that the music is new to a whole lot of people, so when this new market comes out and sees the show, I like to make sure that they see something relevant. I remember when Destiny's Child presented an awards show years ago and Sister Sledge was named something like the fifth all time greatest girl group. 

"One of the things they talked about was that we were the first girl band to ever dance, full on. So for the newcomers that come to see the show, I like to show what we brought to the feast in the industry.”

Kathy’s daughter helps out with the design of the sets and what the dancers wear, which she stresses has to be very “Sister Sledgy”, and ticket-holders concerned about the songs being updated with modern remixes they can’t sing along to needn’t worry – Kathy sticks faithfully to the melodies that the fans come to hear, ad-libs and all.

“You’ll hear Lost in Music, and by the time I step out on stage, you're already on this all time high. It starts up there and it stays there. I remember watching Queen, and I loved the heck out of Freddie Mercury because he was his authentic self. He was uninhibited and he knew he had a gift. I was kind of the opposite growing up – I was almost shy that I sang all the leads on most of the songs, and now I'm like, ‘Yo, I'm proud to sing these songs!’ Anyway, I remember Queen saying, ‘We will start with We Will Rock You. We start with our strongest song’, and I'm like, ‘That's it. We're gonna start with Lost in Music’. From the minute that show starts, it's just hit after hit after hit.

“And I sing my records like I sing them. I don't deviate from the ad-libs. When I go to a concert, I want to sing it just like the record; I want to hear the words I know. If I go to hear Chaka Khan sing Sweet Thing, I want to sing every line, and it’s the same thing with Thinking of You. I'm a real stickler for that.”

“It's gonna be such a party,” she smiles, warming to the idea of performing live again using the Sister Sledge name. “It's almost like when we came out of the Great Depression in the ‘40s or the Roaring Twenties and they all wanted to have entertainment and to dance – we're living that now coming out of this pandemic. People want to feel good and they want to sing along, and the music that I recorded years ago is resurfacing…”

While she might not quite have all of her sisters with her with regards to touring as Sister Sledge, for now Kathy is happy for the family to turn a new page.

“I feel like I've been given the opportunity to carry the torch of what our family is. The world has to understand that, A: No pun intended, we are a family, B: Do we have challenges? Yes. C: Are we under a magnifying glass? Yes. But at the end of the day, We Are Family was written about us and that's who we are, and we'll get it all fixed. 

"It's been hard trying to navigate that while the world watches. We all are allowed to use a platform that we build all our lives. Will we ever do something together? Maybe. Are we allowed to grow? Of course. And that's where we are. It's that simple.”