Terence Trent D'Arby

One of the great musical mavericks to emerge in the 1980s, Sananda Maitreya fuses psychedelic soul, mind-bending rock, gritty R&B, and sweet pop throughout his rich, varied catalog. Initially finding stardom as Terence Trent D'Arby, Maitreya scaled to the top of American and British chars with the stylish funk of "Wishing Well" and the smoldering "Sign Your Name," a pair of international blockbusters that catapulted him to the front ranks of pop stars. He quickly rejected a conventional path toward stardom by pursuing his muse through Neither Fish Nor Flesh, Symphony or Damn, and Vibrator, dense and sprawling albums that earned acclaim as they whittled his audience to a fervent cult. Going independent in the 2000s, Sananda Maitreya continued to expand and refine his heady fusion through a series of albums that ran through 2024's The Pegasus Project: Pegasus & The Swan. Born Terence Trent Howard in Manhattan in 1962--he'd later adopt the last name of his stepfather James Benjamin Darby--he fell in love with music after hearing the Beatles at an early age. By the time he was a teenager, D'Arby was living near Orlando, Florida, splitting his time between boxing and a band called the Modernaires. In 1980, he won the Florida Golden Gloves lightweight Championship. After spending a year at the University of Central Florida, he enlisted in the Army, eventually getting stationed in Germany. While serving in the armed forces, he also sang in a funk band called The Touch. Music soon consumed D'Arby: he went AWOL to sing in The Touch, earning a dishonorable discharge from the army in 1983. The Touch released Love on Time the following year. D'Arby decamped for London in 1986, swiftly earning a contract with CBS Records. Working with Martyn Ware--a producer for Tina Turner who previously was part of both Human League and Heaven 17--D'Arby cut his debut Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby. Its UK release in July 1987--it arrived a few months after "If You Let Me Stay" reached the British Top Ten--was accompanied by a flurry of intentionally provocative press from D'Arby. Taking a cue from his idol Muhammad Ali, the vocalist placed himself in the pantehon of pop, claiming it was the most important album since the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. D'Arby's boasting helped raise his cultural profile and the album delivered musically, as evidenced by its Top 20 placing on the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll. It also was a commercial smash, reaching the Top Ten in the UK, the US, Australia and many European countries, thanks to the hits "Wishing Well" and "Sign Your Name." The international success of Introducing the Hardline gave D'Arby the freedom to explore on his second album, the self-produced Neither Fish Nor Flesh. A freewheeling, ambitious blend of psychedelic pop and funk, Neither Fish Nor Flesh divided critics and halted the singer's commercial momentum: it failed to generate a hit single on either side of the Atlantic. After its release, D'Arby retreated from the spotlight, eventually moving to Los Angeles to record his next album, Symphony or Damn. A commercial comeback in the UK thanks to four Top Twenty singles--"Do You Love Me Like You Say?," "She Kissed Me," the Des'ree duet "Delicate" and "Let Her Down Easy"--Symphony or Damn found him streamlining the inventions of Neither Fish Nor Flesh, a direction he continued to pursue on 1995's Vibrator. Vibrator closed D'Arby's contract with Columbia/Sony and he soon would turn his back on the mainstream. A deal with Glen Ballard's Java Records never resulted in a finished album; he decided to shelve Terence Trent D'Arby's Soular Return. In 1999, he played his idol Jackie Wilson in the CBS miniseries Shake, Rattle and Roll. That year, he stepped into the shoes of the late Michael Hutchence at an INXS concert celebrating the opening of Stadium Australia in Sydney. The show was his last major appearance as Terence Trent D'Arby. In October 2001, he changed his name to Sananda Maitreya. That same month, he released Wildcard on his official website, the first of several projects he'd independently release throughout the 2000s. Settling in Milan with Francesca Francone in 2003, Maitreya embarked on the two-part Angels & Vampires album in 2005, releasing the first volume in 2005 and the second in 2006. Nigor Mortis, another double album, followed in 2009. Sananda Maitreya soon settled into a regular schedule of writing, recording and releasing lengthy and ambitious albums on his Treehouse Publishing imprint every few years; he usually played and sang all the parts on a record. The Sphinx arrived in 2011, followed by Return to Zooathalon in 2013 and The Rise of the Zugebrian Time Lords in 2015; Prometheus & Pandora came out in 2017. Pandora's PlayHouse showed up in 2021, the same year that Sony re-released his major-label catalog under the name Sananda Maitreya. The documentary Welcome to the MadHouse: The Costa Rica Sessions!, which chronicled Maitreya and his band the Plum Pharoahs preparing to play Pandora's PlayHouse material in Costa Rica, appeared in 2023; a live album accompanied the film. In 2024, Maitreya released The Pegasus Project: Pegasus & The Swan. He supported the album with an appearance at London's Love Supreme festival; it was his first UK show in over two decades.
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