Rick Astley reveals: I still get a tingle from singing

May 13 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

“In the end, I didn’t even like myself.

“I used to look at myself and think, what the bloody hell are you doing?”

He quit when he realised he’d missed his daughter’s first steps and arrived back from a promotional tour.

But there was still a gap – if he wasn’t a pop star, what was he?

“I’ve struggled with that occasionally,” he admits. “I mean struggle is a bit much because I haven’t got to go digging ditches to pay the bills, but it’s a bit weird for your life to be so intense for a couple of years then step away from it.

“There’s been moments when I’ve thought this has been a bit of a waste because I still like singing and I still think I can entertain people in a certain way.”

He had therapy to help him understand what had happened.

“It wasn’t just about the fact I’d been a pop star, it was about a lot of things.

“I was about four or five when my parents split up. I saw my mum at the weekends and I think that had a massive effect on me.

“I think that’s why I was a performer, I wanted my mum’s attention; I wanted anyone’s attention to be honest.

“When you look at people who’ve ended up performing one way or another, look at their childhood and very few of them come from a mum and dad, 2.2 kids and a Ford on the drive. There’s usually a crack.

“I even think, when performers fall off the wagon, often it’s because of that twist within them that’s made them want to perform.”

That “twist” hasn’t been completely smoothed out of him. He did a tour in Japan two years ago, simply because he was offered “loads of money” to do it and his family fancied a holiday there.

“It was just weird and a baptism of fire, so I didn’t have time to get nervous. It just felt like such an odd time anyway.

“My wife Lene had just been nominated for an Oscar for a short film, so we went to the Oscars. Oscars. Hark at me bragging on,” he chuckles.

“The thing that I came away with, besides money, was a kind of tingle.

“I get lots of offers to do things all the time, TV shows with ex-this and has-been-that and blah blah. I’ve been offered to go on all of them and I’ve no interest.

“But when it’s applied to singing, I get a bit of a tingle. I’ve lived from the money I made in the 80s and I’m not the richest guy in our street, but I could probably do that for the rest of my life.

“Anyone who’s ever performed in front of thousands in a big arena will know it’s something you can’t really replace with much else.”

He’s written a script for a film musical and will do a private show for a company in Switzerland later this year, and even goes back to Newton now and again, driving up the high street in the dark, reflecting on what’s changed.

But he’ll still relish being a pop star for 10 days with old sparring partners like Bananarama, ABC, Curiosity Killed the Cat and Paul Young.

“I’ll have a grin and a trip down memory lane, go home and nobody will recognise me again. I’m happy with that.

“I define myself now as a dad with a Land Rover and a nice house and a nice, comfortable life and I’m lucky and that’s about it,” he says happily.

* RICK ASTLEY joins Bananarama, Curiosity Killed the Cat, ABC, Paul Young and more for the Here and Now at the Echo Arena, Liverpool tomorrow night. Call 0844 8000 400 for tickets.

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk

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