Tim Hughes discovers that for singer-songwriter Rumer, a life less-ordinary has resulted in music of true beauty.

MANY musicians can point to a turning point in their life where they realised that they were destined to write, sing or play.

It might be a moment of high drama, a high, a low or just an instance of clarity.

For singer-songwriter Rumer it’s hard to know where to start.

Could it be her isolated ex-pat childhood in Pakistan, where her dad worked as an engineer on the construction of a huge dam; her position at the bottom of the pecking order as the youngest of seven children; or was it growing up in a musical family in which brothers and sisters sang and wrote to keep themselves entertained?

Or could it have been the shock of moving back to England – seeing television for the very first time and falling in love with old films and the great musicals?

Try all the above.

“Our universe wasn’t defined by anything other than ourselves,” she says, recalling her musical childhood.

“My songs have elements of the folk tradition, which I grew up with.

“But when I started writing on my guitar, I tended to combine it with these cinematic, epic chords.

“I’m always looking for a lilting, romantic melody. I basically wanted to write the soundtrack for Hedy Lamaar walking down that spiral staircase.”

But the events which really changed her life took place soon after they returned to the UK to settle in Hampshire’s New Forest.

Although she didn’t know it at the time, it had emerged that her biological father was not the dad of her six siblings, but was, in fact, the family’s Pakistani cook, with whom her mother had been having an affair.

It’s something which continues to occupy Rumer. After all, her mother and her biological father couldn’t have been more different.

“My mother was this well-educated and beautiful, fair-haired English woman,” she says.

“This quite old man was working to support his own family in a mountain village. But they had a connection.

“My dad was very noble about it. He didn’t treat me any differently, though, yes, it has been very painful for everyone.”

Her parents split and Rumer went to live with her dad in Cumbria, spending her summers in the New Forest.

She left school at 16, studied at art college in Devon and then joined her first band – an indie rock outfit called, La Honda, who had minor success with airplay on Radio 1 and support from the NME.

Then her mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, so she moved back to the New Forest to be near her.

Living in a caravan in a scrapyard, she made ends meet by promoting local gigs and teaching drama. And it was there she began writing her own songs.

“I went back to my roots in the caravan,” she confesses.

When her mother died, eight years ago, she moved back to London, before joining what was essentially a commune at a stately home in the countryside.

“It was owned by a charismatic, philanthropic baronet,” she says. “I washed dishes, cooked, and made the beds.

“The place was full of fascinating people who, for one reason or another, had fallen out of society.”

It was in these secluded surroundings that she wrote some of her best-loved songs – including live favourite Blackbird.

“That song was the turning point,” she says. “It’s about a lot of things, but mainly about being addicted to sorrow. It gave me the courage to go back to London and really try to go somewhere with my music.”

Determined to make it as a musician, she supported herself by working in bars, shops and hotels and by performing everywhere she could, all the time desperate to get noticed – which came, after 10 years of trying, when she was spotted by TV composer Steve Brown (whose credits include, no joke, Harry Hill and Alan Partridge) who saw her at an open mic night where his son was playing.

“You have to be tough,” she says. “I was constantly rejected, and I kept trying to improve.

“You see a lot of amazing musicians quit, because you have to sacrifice.

“I’m not concerned with what’s musically popular or fashionable,” she goes on.

“All I wanted was to make something of quality that would stand the test of time, that people could come back to, and that was rooted in authenticity. Because that’s the kind of music I listen to.”

She has certainly come a long way from that scrapyard caravan.

With the backing of Steve as a producer, she has sung with Carly Simon and her son Ben Taylor, and the king of smooth Burt Bacharach – who flew her out to California to sing for him.

“I cried with joy when I found out,” she says.

“If Burt Bacharach says you’re good, you have to start believing you’re good too!”

* Rumer plays the New Theatre Oxford on Saturday. Her album Seasons of My Soul is out on Atlantic.