Lyndall Locke dated the singer from when she was a 12-year-old wannabe. They split when she toured the world with Destiny's Child in her early 20s. Locke said 'control freak Bey' was always fixated on the pursuit of fame. Her campaign was orchestrated by her father Mathew 'Big Mac' Knowles.
But for one man, the outburst came as no surprise. Her first love, Lyndall Locke, who dated the singer for a decade from when she was a 12-year-old wannabe until they split when she toured the world with Destiny’s Child, said she had always been fixated on the pursuit of fame – and the ‘simple girl from Houston’ rapidly became a ‘control freak’.
‘She was focused and knew what she wanted,’ he says. ‘She’d started singing when she was five and her parents supported her. There was a Beyoncé train on the fast track to fame and you were either on it or off it. Some people fell off the train and others jumped.’
Lyndall reveals the true scope of the machine that has propelled her to stardom – a campaign orchestrated by her father, Mathew Knowles, who gave up his job and invested his life savings to making her a success, driving them to bankruptcy in the process.
Mathew ‘Big Mac’ Knowles was the mastermind of ‘Project Beyoncé’, as it was known in the family. ‘Let me tell you, there was no messing with Big Mac. He gave me the third degree about who I was and what my intentions were,’ says Lyndall. ‘He gave me the talk about “not messing anything up.” ’ Lyndall says he understood this to mean not to get Beyoncé pregnant. ‘We shared our first kiss at a Brian McKnight concert when Bey was 13. She was a little southern belle. She was an awesome kisser. We would hang out and do normal boyfriend-girlfriend things, although I was never allowed to stay over.’
Lyndall recalls cycling up alongside his teenage girlfriend as she pounded the pavement and asking why she was belting out songs as she ran. Her answer was telling. ‘Because Daddy told me it would increase my breath control and lung capacity,’ she replied. ‘I need to be able to perform onstage for hours when I become a star.’
But he says Beyoncé was already ‘fixated’ on fame when he first met her at a Houston church in 1993 after being introduced by her best friend Kelly Rowland, later a member of Destiny’s Child.
But Lyndall quickly realised that Beyoncé, then 12, was ‘no ordinary kid’. ‘She lived and breathed her career.’
Beyoncé’s parents invested every penny in hiring the top vocal coaches, dance tutors and managers. The budding star was pulled out of school and home-tutored to give her more time to rehearse – to the exclusion of almost everything else. ‘Beyoncé came to my high-school prom with me. It was a great evening. She laughed and danced and told me, “Lyndall, it’s so great to be normal, to be a kid.” ’
The family struggled once Mathew gave up his Xerox job. At one point they were declared bankrupt.
‘Every penny went into Beyoncé’s career,’ Lyndall explained. Undeterred, Beyoncé was able to ‘compartmentalise’ her life. ‘She kept her personal life separate from her career. We talked on the phone for hours, but I was never part of her music. I was an upbeat, positive kid. I made Beyoncé laugh. When she was with me it was downtime.’
Lyndall admits cheating on ‘good girl’ Beyoncé when he was 15 and she was 13. ‘I’ve never been a liar. I told her the truth which is that I lost my virginity to a girl from church. She cried and hung up on me.’ The pair split but reconciled. Lyndall believes it was because the Knowles family knew ‘I wasn’t after anything from them’.
He later cheated on her again towards the end of their relationship because she was constantly on the road and he felt ‘lonely.’
In one incident, Beyoncé fled the scene of a minor car accident because she feared it would be ‘bad’ for her image… even though she was years away from becoming famous.
She was 16 and Lyndall was driving Beyoncé and her cousin Angie to the beach in a five-car convoy of friends. ‘A car suddenly pulled in front of me, crossed to the side of the road then flipped and fell right off the highway.’
Lyndall screeched to a halt and raced down the embankment to check on the occupants of the other car (who were unharmed). When he returned, Beyoncé and Angie had driven off. ‘When I finally got a lift home I was furious. Beyoncé told me, “I can’t be around a mess like that. I have to think smart and staying there would not have been smart.” ’
‘I told her, “I wish we could have a normal life” and she said, “I don’t want a normal life. I’ve been waiting for this since I was a kid.”
Then the inevitable: in 2003 the ten-year relationship ended with a whimper. Feeling ‘rejected and angry’ as Beyoncé prepared to set off on a world tour, he confronted her about Jay Z. ‘She said, “He’s not even my type,” but we agreed to take a break. That was it.
