Joan paid a visit to Great Barr School in Birmingham, one of the many schools she visited whilst on tour. She has been talking to the students about education and how important it is to keep up with their grades.

On 26 February 2007, taking time out from a hectic international tour, Birmingham's rock superstar and number one singer-songwriter dropped into the School to deliver a simple message! if you want it enough, work hard for it and persist, and you can achieve what you want.

She talked of her early life in St Kitts where she was born and in Birmingham where she was brought up. When she saw a guitar in the pawnshop selling for £3, she asked her mom if she could have it. Her mom didn't have the money but agreed on condition that the pawn shop would take two prams in exchange. And that moment, a star was born. Now the only woman to be rated alongside Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler as one of the best guitarists in the world, those two prams certainly nurtured an amazing talent.

As her time in the blaze of the media spotlight was the late 1970s and early 1980s, most of our pupils weren't old enough to realise just how big a celebrity Ms Armatrading is. In the era of manufactured pop stars, her music has stood the test of time and every album she has ever produced has charted. It was only when asked to name some of the celebrities she'd met and she said that Michael Jackson had visited her once to tell her that HE was a big fan of HERS that most of the pupils began to take her seriously.

But the moment she picked up her 12-string guitar and - live and unplugged - blew them away with her best known song, Love and Affection, it hit home what a massive talent had dropped by to see them.

Staying behind at the end of her presentation, Ms Armatrading signed autographs, posed for pictures and didn't seem at all concerned about being surrounded by a several hundred excited, celeb-hungry teenagers.

She was introduced to Year 11 student, Adam Butler, perhaps the only person in the room under 30 who knew who she was and could be called a fan!. Adam had a ticket to see her live at Symphony Hall that evening and she immediately took down his name and booked him onto the guest list to visit her backstage after the show. It is no understatement to say that Adam's year was made!

But things got better in the evening when he went backstage after the concert and she asked him to join her at the after-show VIP reception.


Great Barr was proud that Ms Armatrading took time out of her schedule to pay us a visit and impressed not only by her talent but by her genuinely down to earth and friendly manner. It took just an hour for Ms Armatrading to make a whole new generation of fans.