MUSICAL REBIRTH
’80s star Astley roars back
Rick Astley celebrated his comeback with a mop and bucket. It was July 17, 2016 and Astley’s album, 50, had improbably reached No. 1, the ’80s pop star’s first chart topper in 29 years.
“It was pouring rain,” recalls Astley, who had been out doing promotional appearances with wife and manager Lene Bausager.
Their roof had sprung a leak, he says with a laugh.
“It was like the universe going: ‘Don’t get too big for your boots.’”
Astley has enjoyed one of the unlikeliest revivals in pop history.
“I never felt I could own being a pop star, and I still don’t, to be honest,” says the 52-year-old. “Going back to the days of Smash Hits, pop stars did it with a lot of bravado, like ‘f--k you, we’re Duran Duran, and we’re on the front of a yacht with models.’ And there’s me, this little northern guy in a trench coat singing Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Astley was 21 when his debut single topped charts all over the world. He scored a further 13 international hits, and sold more than 40 million albums. Then he walked away from it all, in 1993, at 27.
“I’d had enough. It was all business and no music. And I had a lot of inferiority complexes, which wasn’t helped by hanging out in trendy places where the waiters are better looking than the artists.”
Astley sits surrounded by instruments in his light-filled recording studio, converted from a garage at his home in Kingston Upon Thames. A striking open-plan kitchen adjoins, where his Scandinavian wife taps at a laptop. In the sun-drenched garden, their 25-year-old daughter Emilie (who has a master’s degree in arts) takes a dip in an open air swimming pool. This is where Astley has written and recorded his followup album, Beautiful Life.
“I can get really miserable and down about anything,” confesses Astley. “I’m a northerner ... I have to remind myself on quite a regular basis how lucky I’ve been. It is a beautiful life.”
In May, he was at Kylie Minogue’s 50th birthday party, serenading her with Never Gonna Give You Up. Astley, Minogue and fellow guest Jason Donovan all made brash hits much reviled by critics.
“We were having a cackle about the old days. Certain members of the press used to behave like we were doing the whole music scene an injustice. We were making pop songs, for f--k’s sake . ... You’d have thought we were criminals.”
Astley was the youngest of four in a family shaken by divorce.
“My mum and dad’s relationship was awful. It’s just no way for people to be brought up.”
As a child, Astley sang in a choir and played drums in bands.
“Anything to get out of the house. I hate to be such a cliché, but music was literally my escape.”
Yet, eventually the fame his thick, soulful voice brought became so oppressive, he quit.
Was he set up for life?
“It depends what kind of life you want. If you want to drive a new Ferrari every year, maybe not. But I made quite a bit of money in the ’80s and managed to keep a hold of a lot of it.”
It helped Astley was involved in songwriting, composing album tracks and his own 1991 U.S. No. 1 ballad, Cry For Help.
“The music business is littered with people who were screwed over, who had it all and have got nothing now. Some managers are like vampires. I was lucky that I had people around who cared about me.”
Astley returned to performing in the mid-2000s, often on nostalgia tours.
“I didn’t see it as a comeback, but I was enjoying singing again.”
The internet phenomenon of rickrolling put him back in the mainstream in 2007. It was a nerdy viral prank that involved creating links to something tempting that led, instead, to the cheesy 1987 video for Never Gonna Give You Up. Within a year, it was estimated that 18 million Americans had been rickrolled, and sports teams and even the White House created versions of the prank.
“It’s not like I could send a letter to the internet and say ‘Please stop.’”
Yet it rekindled the interest of old fans and brought in new ones.
Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters even rickrolled an audience at Tokyo’s Summer Sonic Festival last year, after spotting Astley watching from the side.
“He walks over in the middle of a song, gives me a big hug and says, ‘I’m Dave.’ I said, ‘I’m Rick.’ He said, ‘I know!’ Half an hour later, a tech guy hands me a microphone and says ‘Dave wants you to come out and sing.’ ”
Astley found himself performing a grunge version of Never Gonna Give You Up in front of 50,000 fans. Since then, he’s sung with Foo Fighters four times, and includes one of their songs in his own set.
“When I was younger, Never Gonna Give You Up was just a pop song to me. Maybe I’m getting old and sentimental, but when people come up and say ‘that was our wedding song ’ it floors me now.”
Ihadalot of inferiority complexes, which wasn’t helped by hanging out in trendy places where the waiters are better looking than the artists.