Leigh Blake may have lived a Rock ‘n’ Roll lifestyle, but the sex and drugs she’s surrounded by these days are anything but.  Here, the artist reveals the huge highs and devastating lows of her long-term addiction.
What can’t you live without?  This season’s designer bag?  That fabulous new dress?  For Leigh Blake, the answer is drugs.  And a myriad of them at that.

The ‘former punk’, who has worked in the music industry for the past 30 years alongside everyone from Bono to Britney Spears, isn’t talking about Class-A drugs though.  Nor even Class-B for that matter.  What Leigh Blake is talking about is the drugs that save lives – and the lives of those suffering from AIDS in particular.

Since setting up Keep A Child Alive with R’n’B singer Alicia Keys in 2003, a charity dedicated to providing life-saving medicine to children and families with AIDS in developing countries, this is what she has become consumed by.  Addicted to, even.  And she’s the first to admit she’s tried to kick the habit.

“I’ve tried to escape it at various times, to have a normal life,” insists Leigh, who hails from Elephant & Castle, and is a mother of one 12-year-old son.  “But I’m lost without my mission.  I’m not happy or satisfied without it.  I am a warrior for the poor, that’s who I am.  That’s what I do from the minute I get up in the morning until the minute I go to bed.  And there’s not much I can do about it.”

Lucky then that she does it so well.  Because, since Keep A Child Alive’s (KCA) inception almost eight years ago, they have raised over $26m for the cause, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.  But, as Leigh knows better than most, to continue, they need a constant cash injection.

Over 30 million people have already died from AIDS in Africa, and another 33 million are currently infected with the virus.  Yet trying to get people in the western world to face up to the sheer scale of this crisis is almost impossible.

The problem, she says, is with people’s values.  Rather than address this emergency and work together to find a solution to this issue which is killing thousands of babies in Africa every day, people continue to concentrate on materialism.  “We value the most absurd things.  We’re running around trying to be somebody based on our things, our ‘stuff’.  We have lost the plot,” sighs Leigh.

In the US, where she has lived on and off since 1976, she insists the situation is worse.  “In Britain, people can see documentaries and hear real news about this.  We can’t here.  We don’t have news.  We have celebrities.  So, because I’m stuck here with celebrities, it’s the engine we use to get our point across.”

And Leigh is expert at making her point.  Take KCA’s Black Ball last September, the charity’s eagerly anticipated annual fundraiser attended by the cream of New York society.  Stepping out in designer frocks, ready to enjoy dinner at their $50K-$100K tables, and to be serenaded by stars such as Jay Z and Sade, guests were stopped in their tracks.

In the foyer was KCA’s art exhibition – 1,000 black baby dolls piled up to the ceiling.  “It’s the number of black babies born every day with AIDS, and only 50 per cent of them make it past the age of two.  They might as well be shoved on a trash heap,” says Leigh.  “So we made a trash heap to garner their attention.”  The cheques written that night shows her point was made.

Philanthropy wasn’t Leigh Blake’s first love though.  At age 11, having seen Paul McCartney on TV, she discovered music.  “It was the way for a working class cockney like me to be a somebody in the England I grew up in.”

In her 20s, she worked with the Talking Heads band, moving to the US when they toured there.  By the mid-80s, she had discovered a talent for filmmaking.  But it wasn’t until the late 80s that she put the two together for charitable effect.

With an increasing number of friends becoming affected by AIDS, Leigh co-founded Red Hot Organisation in 1989, bringing together artists like U2, Madonna and KD Lang to collaborate and raise money for AIDS research and education in the US.  Producing two seminal projects – ‘Red Hot + Blue’ and ‘Red Hot + Dance’ – she helped raise millions for the cause and brought attention to the disease worldwide.

In the 1990s, having married South African music video and commercials director Earle Sebastian, her attention turned to the developing world.  She set up Artists Against Aids Worldwide (AAAW), an organisation dedicated to the eradication of AIDS in Africa.

As part of AAAW, Leigh led the remake of Marvin Gaye’s classic ‘What’s Going On’ in 2001 with a host of celebrities (Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Ja Rule).  This didn’t just become a worldwide hit and raise millions, it also introduced her to the then 21-year-old Alicia Keys.

At the time, Leigh had also set up a clinic in Kenya, providing antibiotics to treat AIDS related infections in sufferers, but not the anti-retroviral drugs needed to prolong life as they cost $11K per person per year.  When a black woman took her three-year-old AIDS infected son to the clinic one day and refused to leave until he was given the drugs available in the US, everything changed.  Leigh, whose son was the same age at the time, realised the woman was right.  “I thought ‘Who would I kill to get those drugs to keep my child alive?’”

She decided to pay for the boy’s drugs herself with the help of funding from NYU.  When others heard her story, they too started to pay for a child’s drugs there.  The idea for Keep A Child Alive was born.  Within months, she had approached Alicia Keys to become its co-founder.

Leigh says she knew from the get-go that Alicia was different.  Having introduced Bono to the AIDS issue with ‘Red Hot + Blue’ in the 80s, she saw in her a kindred spirit.  “She is unlike any other artist or celebrity I’ve ever met, just totally committed to the work.  We find out every day that there’s only one Alicia.”

Today, thanks to constant fundraising and awareness promotion, KCA helps over 300,000 people in Africa and India via their treatment centers and AIDS orphanages – and by supporting other community-based organisations there.  It is, she admits, the greatest high.  “There’s nothing like the face of that woman who looks at you and says ‘But for you, I’d be dead’.”

But, as with any drug, also comes the unbearable lows.  Because, despite the glossy celebrity-studded image, and the encounters with inspirational people like Michelle Obama, building their charity day-to-day is a constant struggle.  “One moment, we’ll be happy as hell because someone cares and wants to help us.  Another minute, we’ll be totally devastated. We have days that are sensational and others that are bloody awful when it feels like the world is insane and people have lost all their values.  Sadly, we have more of the latter.”

But Leigh Blake isn’t close to quitting.  She’s well aware of the withdrawal symptoms by now, and knows the best therapy is continuing to raise money for the cause and encouraging others to do the same.  “The more we’ve been able to do, the more lives we’ve been able to save, the more kids we can look after, the more driven we are,” she insists.  And it’s spoken like a true addict.

Tickets are available to Keep A Child Alive’s London Black Ball on 15 June.  Hosted by Alicia Keys and Mark Ronson, contact Ellie Milner on +44(0) 8450949491 for more details

http://keepachildalive.org/