Lulu Reveals Alcoholism Battle in Memoir, ‘If Only You Knew’

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She presented her farewell tour in 2024 with sold-out concerts throughout the U.K. And Lulu, the 76 year-old star from Scotland whose outstanding career spans seven decades with such highlights as “Shout,” “To Sir With Love” (as singer and actress) and her recording of the theme song of the 1974 James Bond film, The Man With the Golden Gun, has returned in 2025 with her memoir, If Only You Knew. [She also did an accompanying U.K. tour, “An Intimate Conversation of Stories and Songs.”] The book, via Hodder & Stoughton, arrived September 25 and is available in the U.K. here, in the U.S. here and in Canada here.

In the book, Lulu, born Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie on November 3, 1948, shares that she has been sober since 2013, when she acknowledged at her 65th birthday party thrown by her family that she was an alcoholic. “I felt shame, fear, anxiety,” she told an interviewer with the Times. “I’d kept it from a lot of people. I was what you’d call a highly functioning alcoholic.”

“You’re in a business that’s fixated on youth,” she told The Independent. “And you look in the mirror and think, ‘Oh my God. This face isn’t going to be helpful in getting work.’ Even when I was younger, people would sometimes say of me, ‘Is Lulu still alive?’ I don’t know how many years it took, but [the drinking] was creeping up the whole time. You control it until you can’t control it. And it’s very lonely if you’re just trying to manage it secretly on your own.”

From the publisher’s announcement: From the tenements of Glasgow to the Royal Albert Hall and the glittering lights of Hollywood: Lulu’s journey to fame and fortune is like no other British pop star. When she was 14 years old, she was invited down to London to sing, and the rest is history. She stepped into a part she played for the next 40 years. A part she played so well that she gradually lost who she was, becoming the version of herself she thought others wanted to see.

The book charts the highs and the lows of one of the longest running shows in British rock and roll history. It is the story of one woman’s determination to stay real, relevant and happy, and one which ultimately reveals a woman who is far stronger and far braver than anyone knew.

Watch the dynamo join Rod Stewart at Glastonbury 2025