Let’s Roll!

As he prepares to bring his Reflections tour to the M&S Bank Arena, pop icon Rick Astley talks about turning 60, making sure his hits stay fresh, the curious life of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ in the age of memes – and why playing Liverpool always keeps him on his toes

Words | Lawrence Saunders

First of all, Rick, how are you?

I’m good! I’ve got a lot going on this year. I just turned 60 and I didn’t necessarily think I’d be this age playing the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, but here I am!

How are preparations going for the upcoming tour? Have you started rehearsals yet?

Not yet, but I’m gonna have a get together soon with some of the guys in the band. It’s more to brush the cobwebs off, to be honest, for things like drums, bass, keys, guitar – the main unit of the band, as it were. We’re gonna have a couple of days together and then we start full rehearsals about 10 days before the tour begins in Glasgow.

Is it the same band that you had on the last tour?

Almost. There’s a few new people, and there’s nothing untoward there, it’s just nice every now and then to change it up a little bit and add some different people. It’s a funny one because I was always the youngest person on the stage, and now I’m the oldest person on the stage [laughs].

And you’re okay with that?

No, I’m not okay with it [laughs]. But that’s just what happens. And on the one hand, it’s quite nice, because I’m quite young at heart and one of the reasons is because I work with people younger than me. Some of them are not that much younger than me, by the way – just want to throw that in there! But also it’s quite nice to walk into a room and it’s just full of energy. Do you know what I mean?

And that’s one of the things I love about playing live. We’ve got a great bunch of people, the crew as well. We can dress it up however we want, but we’re going to go and play some songs that are old, and I’ve sung them a lot of times and my band have played them quite a lot as well. The only way to attack them is to say, ‘let’s go for it and have a bit of fun’.

I called the tour ‘Reflections’ because I’m reflecting on the last almost 40 years and going, ‘you jammy sod!’ And also thinking how amazing this is, and isn’t it great to be able to do it. It does help to have a bit of youth involved here and there because you see an energy in people’s faces when they haven’t played your songs before. And I love my guys. They’re all great, and they all dig in, and they all give everything they’ve got. But it’s just nice sometimes when someone’s never played it.

It’s a bit like in football – a manager might throw on a young 17/18-year-old and the crowd goes mad, especially if it’s a homegrown talent. It gives the whole stadium a boost and I kind of feel there’s a tiny bit of that with us as well.

As well as the band and keeping it fresh, how do you decide what makes the setlist for each tour?

I lean into nostalgia pretty heavily, to be honest, because that’s what the majority of people who come want to hear [the old hits]. But I’ve also had the joy of people singing along with my new songs. And I’ve got to be honest, it’s just so emotional for me. Yes, they came for the old ones, but they must have listened to the new ones a bit, because you can’t sing along if you don’t!

But I never fool myself. The band sometimes gets excited when I’ve written something new and they say, ‘Oh great, let’s play this’. But I remind them: if we don’t play ‘Together Forever’, ‘Whenever You Need Somebody’ and, obviously, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, plus a few others, they’ll lynch us. And so they should!

What’s your view on artists and bands who take the opposite approach and just play whatever they feel like playing?

If fans are paying the price of tickets these days and getting off their arses to come to an arena, then if you’re not going to play the hits, at least warn them – or just play the songs they want to hear!

The likes of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison are known [for not playing the hits]. Maybe the first couple of times they did that the fans were like, ‘what are you doing?’ But I think people get it now, and they don’t buy a ticket if that’s not what they want to see.

I try to be honest with my audience and myself. The only reason I’m playing arenas is because I had some hits in the ’80s, and thank God one of them in particular has stayed around and has found a new life on the internet.

So yeah, the setlist drives me mad. When we go away to Europe or more far-flung places, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, was this song a hit in Australia or wherever?’ I literally go on Wikipedia and I check. And I might find out that they released a certain song as a single in Asia, because sometimes in Asia they just pick whatever they want as a single, so I make sure we play it.

I wish I had more hits from the ’80s that I could just ram down their throat, but I don’t. I had eight top 10s, which is going some I think, considering how little I was around back then. I normally play all of them. Although we sometimes skip ‘When I Fall in Love’, because it’s hard to segue into, to be honest – it’s almost from a different universe.

When the dates for your new tour were released, you said Liverpool’s always been a special city for you both musically and personally. What memories and connections do you have to our city?

I’ll be blunt with you – when I went to Liverpool as a kid, I had to be really careful because of my accent. Now it’s very different. With club culture and dance music, everyone went everywhere and loved each other – it was great. But when I was younger and starting out in bands, Liverpool scared the crap out of me a little bit. So I didn’t really go clubbing there much, but with a couple of the bands I was in we did play a few gigs. I think FBI played there once – one of those gigs where you got a percentage of the door, but no one had to pay to get in. [laughs]

But I have two main memories of Liverpool, and the first one goes back much earlier than my band days. My dad had a flatbed truck because he ran a little gardening business. Every now and again he’d go down to the docks in Liverpool to pick something up for someone.

I was tiny, but when it was school holidays, me and one of my brothers would jump in the truck with him. For us, Liverpool was exciting because we weren’t going into the city centre – we were going to the docks. As kids it felt like stepping into another world. It was like, ‘Oh my God, what’s this?’

Then later, when I was about 18, one of my friends had a stepdad who was a drummer in a band. Their singer lost his voice just before Christmas and New Year – which was when they had about 12 of their best-paid gigs of the year lined up. So they asked if I’d come in and dep as the singer.

It was a real mixed bag of songs – rock and roll stuff, some more modern things, all kinds really. What we’d have called a cabaret or club-circuit band back then. One of the gigs was in a working men’s club in Liverpool. Before the band went on there was a comedian. He came out, introduced himself, told a joke… mild ripple of laughter. Another joke… not really landing. Then he said, ‘Well, the thing is, I do impressions as well’. Someone in the audience stood up and shouted: ‘Well do one of a f—ing comedian then!’

The whole place just exploded with laughter. We were backstage spitting our beer out going, ‘Where are we? What are we doing?’ The poor guy basically just left the stage, so we had to run up there as quickly as possible.

I remember thinking, ‘this is it – this is what puts some steel in you’. These people are there every week, and if you don’t entertain them, you’re finished. It wasn’t like playing in a pub full of young people who just want to see a band. This was more like, ‘You’d better entertain us, son, or you’re for it’.

In a recent BBC interview with Dermot O’Leary, you said that when you returned to playing live, it wasn’t for the money or anyone else – you did it because it was fun. What keeps pushing you today to make new music and perform?

I was having this same discussion with my wife, who is also my manager. Our daughter and her husband haven’t got kids yet, but that’s kind of the plan. Part of me wonders whether I’ll want to be retired by that point. I only mean that in the sense that what I do is quite a commitment – once you decide you’re making an album and releasing it, that sets a whole chain of things in motion.

Obviously I’m not doing what I used to do back in the day, but I’m still doing an awful lot – the gigs and everything that comes with it.
I think what I’m hoping is that I’ll realise I’m done before someone has to tell me. Some of the greatest artists in the world are still out there doing it, and they’ve got a lot of years on me.

I went to see Paul McCartney in America a few years ago with my wife. We made quite an effort to get there. We were touring ourselves and he was in a different city, so on our night off we travelled to see him. It wasn’t exactly on the way either – I drove 10 hours because I don’t like flying.

So we went to Texas, and I’m really glad we did. He was amazing. I don’t know whether that was a particularly good night for him or just a normal one, but he was incredible. I remember thinking, ‘Christ almighty, I hope I’m doing my gigs with the energy and desire he’s showing’. It genuinely felt like if someone had said, ‘Sorry Paul, could you just do the whole show again?’, he’d have gone, ‘Yeah!’

Maybe he’s just a very good actor, but that’s how it felt. He looked like he could have gone to a club afterwards and played another hour easily.

So I suppose that’s partly what it’s about –...

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