Bruno Mars admits that the sudden death of his mother had a huge impact on him.
Bernadette San Pedro Bayot died of a brain aneurysm in June 2013 when she was just 55. "My life has changed," he tells the February issue of Latina magazine. "She's more than my music. If I could trade music to have her back, I would."
Mars shares that his mother gave him some words to live by before she passed. "I always hear her say, 'Keep going and keep doing it.'"
A photo posted by Latina Magazine (@latina) on
During an interview with 60 Minutes in November, Mars went back to his humble childhood home in Hawaii, a one-room building in a park that now is grown-over by plants and missing a roof. "Just so people don't think we're crazy, it did not look like this. It had a roof, it didn't have plants growing on the inside," the 31-year-old musician explained. "Where we were staying at first didn't have a bathroom, so we'd have to walk across the park to this other spot that had a bathroom."
Despite living in poverty, Mars insisted that he has fond memories of where he was brought up. "We had it all. We had each other," the "24K Magic" singer added. "It's OK we don't have electric today. We're gonna figure it out."