![]() Today he’s blunt about how success changed his life. Four of the songs on his eight-million-selling debut album were his own compositions, so he cashed in big. He got a deal and became a star overnight. I did envy singers like Morrissey who could sing in their own accents, but for me it didn’t make sense.” “Songs I loved, like Marvin Gaye’s gorgeous ‘Let’s Get It On’ and ‘Sexual Healing’, just don’t work if you sing them in a Manchester accent. So I stripped my vocals off the demos and ended up singing for the guy from RCA in SAW’s reception area, with a shitty mic and lousy speakers, feeling very sweaty in my new Next jacket.”Īstley found that pop songs only worked for him if he sang them in a mid-Atlantic twang. “Pete asked Mike and Matt if they’d play back-up in a showcase for RCA, and they told him they were far too busy making hit records to be some kid’s session band. “I mean, they’d have killed me if I’d have taken any of it out of the building, but they didn’t mind me using it there.” So he began working on his own songs, recording his own demos, which impressed Waterman. “It wasn’t Abbey Road,” he chuckles, “but there was £500,000 worth of equipment there and Mike (Stock) and Matt (Aitken) let me use all their guitars and stuff. The world is a rough place' Read MoreĪmbitious Astley soon realised that young artists and producers were snatching the opportunity to use the SAW studio over nights and on weekends. Music Gabrielle: 'We need our girls to be a bit more hardy. But I did have a sense that if I’d walked away I’d never have had those opportunities again.” He says he was “put on a back burner because people like Bananarama were throwing money at them to do stuff. “So by the time I got to London they were all a bit, ‘What shall we do with Rick?’” They’d scored a number one with “Princess” and had just made “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” for Dead or Alive. At the time there were bands like Duran Duran and U2, which were built for a bigger universe than that, but for me that was the goal.”Īstley was spotted in FBI by Pete Waterman just as things at the Hit Factory took off. I remember loving seeing Roxy Music and Depeche Mode on the show. “Maybe it was as simple as being on Top of the Pops. I do remember thinking, with a lot of bravado, ‘WE ARE GOING TO MAKE IT.’ But I couldn’t have pinpointed what that meant. But nothing was happening in Newton and the idea of anything happening would have been a start. “I guess ‘fame and fortune’ is the answer that comes to mind. Does he remember his early musical goals? “Not exactly,” he says. Young Astley escaped by listening to music, and in his teens joined local soul band FBI. ![]() “Twenty miles from Manchester, 20 miles from Liverpool.” Astley’s parents divorced, acrimoniously, when he was five years old and he was raised by his father, Horace, who he has recently told The Times was a “sad, angry, old-fashioned guy who was struggling… 50 per cent of the time he’d be great, then he’s the darkest person in the world.” Astley never let his dad meet his daughter, who is now 26 and working as a landscape gardener in Copenhagen. “I come from a small, working-class town in the North West, called Newton-le-Willows,” he tells me. The song flew straight to number one in the UK and the US, changing the shy, 21-year-old singer’s life forever. ![]() “Never Gonna Give You Up” was Astley’s 1987 debut single, written and produced for his soulful baritone by “Hit Factory” team Stock Aitken Waterman. It was just amazing to see all the security team dancing to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’… It’s so weird what’s happened with that song…” I knew I had to get a proper Edward Sexton suit for that because he’s dressed everyone so I was incredibly sad to hear he died. “And my midday set was bonkers in every way. Singing with Blossoms was just outrageous. “But I had the best Glastonbury I could possibly have had. “When everyone is bigging me up I feel I have to stand back a bit,” he says, in his dry Lancastrian accent. Astley is delivering a new album (Photo: Peter Neill) But he’s not allowing himself to bask in the glory. Astley’s humble-hearted tribute raised the roof. The show was a gift to Smiths fans who have missed the opportunity to mosh along to the wit and melancholy of the old songs without having to cheer on the increasingly problematic Morrissey. He’s had “an incredible year”, and is on the brink of delivering a new album in the wake of barnstorming shows at Radio 2 in the Park and Glastonbury, where he also a delivered a swooningly rich performance of The Smiths’ greatest hits with Blossoms. ![]() I’ve come to meet the 57-year-old man-turned-meme at a hotel near his home in leafy Hampton Court, where he’s just finished lunch “with a lovely glass of rosé”, so orders an espresso and hunches his still-lithe 5ft 9in frame over the tiny cup and spoon while we talk.
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