Adele has opened up about her complex relationship with her late father in a new interview, revealing the heartbreaking reason she cut contact with the Welsh plumber as a child.
The British superstar reflected on feeling 'let down' by her estranged dad, who died of bowel cancer in May 2021, during an in-depth conversation on BBC Radio's Desert Island Discs on Sunday.
The candid admission comes in the afterglow of Adele's emotional concerts at Hyde Park in London on July 1 and 2, which saw the Grammy-winner return to the live stage after a nearly six-year-long hiatus.
Speaking to host Lauren Laverne, the Easy on Me singer revealed that she "definitely had a yearning" for her father, Mark Evans, borne out of his inability to "deliver" as a reliable parent.
"I didn’t really have his attention, he’d say he would come and then he didn’t, and if he did come, we’d only go out for like half an hour and then he’d drop me home,” she said.
The Tottenham native then revealed that she decided to cut contact with her father, who separated from Adele's mom Penny Adkins when she was three, after he failed to fulfill an important promise to her as a child.
"I decided to stop seeing him when I was 12. I’d gone to Penarth [where Mark was from] to surprise him for Father’s Day and my nanna [told him to come] and he didn’t," she recalled. Adele didn't see her father again until she was 15, when the family reunited to mourn the death of her great-grandmother.
"He did apologize then but I was 15, I didn’t want to hear it then," she admitted. In later years, Adele was able to realize that her father 'had a disease'.
"He was a really big alcoholic and he had loads of demons, but I didn’t really understand that when I was younger.”
Adele reconciled with her father shortly before he died in May 2021, telling Oprah Winfrey that she felt that "huge gaping hole filled" when the pair "forgave each other" after so many years of estrangement.
"We found our peace together, and then I played the album [30] to him on Zoom," she told the US television veteran during the two-hour CBS special 'Adele One Night Only' last November. The meeting also gave the Grammy-award-winner the opportunity to appreciate the devastating impact of her father's addiction on his health and relationships.
"My dad's absolute lack of presence and effort... But I finally understood that it was the alcohol... It took my dad from me," she explained.
