Rick Astley’s back and having fun again
1980s hitmaker talks about unretiring, his new music and his other life as a meme
Didn’t think we’d still be talking about Rick Astley in 2018, did you? Neither did Rick Astley.
Therein lies the charm of the unlikely, ongoing middle-years comeback that will usher the Lancashire-born baritone back to Toronto for a sold-out show at the Opera House on Thursday. Astley is, of course, the still-cherubic face behind such late-’80s hits as “Together Forever,” “She Wants to Dance With Me” and the indelible guilty pleasure “Never Gonna Give You Up,” which gained a weird second life a decade or so ago thanks to the internet phenomenon known as “Rickrolling.”
The affable Astley, who scored a surprise No. 1 album in the U.K. with the self-made white-soul opus “50” in 2016, has a healthy sense of his place in pop history, which is why he’s not taking his return to the stage for granted. Or too seriously, for that matter.
A “closet rocker,” he’s been known to drop a cover of AC/ DC’s “Highway to Hell” into his sets of late and has gamely joined the Foo Fighters onstage in recent years to perform a pseudo-mashup of “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” This is a man who chose to “retire” from music for good in 1993 at just 27. He wouldn’t be doing it today if it wasn’t fun again.
We spoke from his home on the edge of London. Some highlights:
What eventually compelled you to get back onstage? You really did take a long time off.
I did. I’d had offers to do gigs in different places and I always said, “I really appreciate it, but I don’t do that.” And then quite a few years went by and I got an offer to go to Japan and do gigs, and my wife and my daughter basically pounced on me and said: “We’re going. You’re going.” And it was good, it was really great. We had a week’s holiday, I did the gigs and the gigs were really good fun — I didn’t think they were going to be that much fun, to be honest.
What kept you from getting back onstage all those years?
I think I just related to, you know, when I had my break. It just kind of exploded and went mad. My first single, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” was kind of a big song everywhere and it just went “boom,” and I never really stopped and I never took stock of myself or life or anything for probably four, four-and-a-half, five years. It was kind of relentless. Which was great — you know, how lucky am I? — but on a personal level, it just was like a red light. There was a part of me thinking, “You need to be really careful if you ever try to do anything like that again because you need to really be sure you want to do it.”
Was it weird to walk away from music when you did?
I was ready to do it, to be honest. I was ready to be done. I mean, it was a bit weird. I’ve never been on drugs, but I can imagine it’s a bit like coming off a drug of some kind or quitting smoking; it’s a bit addictive, let’s face it, that lifestyle. I know everybody moans about it who is famous, but it’s kind of nice, as well.
Obviously, there are moments … and if I was 21 or 22 again and going through all of that, I can imagine today it’s so magnified because of the internet and everyone’s got a camera and a video camera in their phone and all of that; it must be worse than it was in my day in terms of just trying to get that moment of privacy.
You’d be amazed at how many faces I’ve seen light up over the past few days when I’ve said I’m gonna be talking to Rick Astley. You had a pretty good run of hits that haven’t gone away.
That’s really nice to know. It’s kind of weird because I don’t really relate to it in that way on a day-to-day basis. I just kind of forget about that. Well, I don’t forget about it — that’s not completely true — but it’s not part of my everyday life. It will be for the next three weeks, when we start doing gigs and stuff because, obviously, your name’s on a ticket and above a door and blah, blah, blah. But when I go home, I live in a leafy, small suburban part of London — it’s not even London, really, it’s way on the edge of London — and I go and get coffee in the morning at a little place with my wife or, you know, my daughter and I were down there for lunch today and nobody bats an eyelid.
You have another new album on the way, correct?
I have. I’ve just finished one.
It’s a way off being released, to be honest, and when we come over we’re not gonna play any songs from that yet because it’s just mad to do that — we’re months off even starting radio promotion — but I’ve got it in the bag and I’m really glad I’ve finished it because I wanted it to be mastered and finished and done before we came over for these gigs.
Is the new record in the same vein as “50”?
Yes and no. I did the same thing again. I did everything at home with “50.” I wrote it all and I played everything and produced it and did it at home in my home studio and I’ve done that again. But playing that “50” album a lot live made me understand that, even though I’m in my 50s and a lot of my audience who’ve been at the gigs are around that age or a bit younger or a bit older, they still wanna dance. They still wanna get out of their seats and boogie.
As an aging raver, I can appreciate this.
I was a bit paranoid to mark my birthday and to say, “This is what I’m capable of doing. I can write a song that really means something to me.” And with this record, I have got a few songs like that, but I’ve also got a couple of songs where, unless you really want to read something into the lyric, it’s just about having a dance.
And also, if anybody does remember my old songs and old videos, I don’t want to deny that in any way. I did those songs. I made those videos. It’s part of my life.
I know you’re probably sick of it, but I have to ask you about the whole “Rickrolling” thing.
It’s been really good to me. I didn’t really understand it when it first started, many years ago. I didn’t really grasp it. A friend of mine, an English friend who’s lived in L.A. for years, he Rickrolled me … and then he did it again and I thought, “I don’t know why he’s doing this.” So I called him and he explained it to me and I still didn’t really get it. And then I had to stand back and go, “If it wasn’t your video, you might actually think this is kind of funny, as well.”
Or annoying or whatever it was. It was all those things.
But, personally, for me it’s been pretty amazing because it’s led to some crazy moments and some really funny things. I’m not saying the whole Foo Fighters thing was because of Rickrolling, but of course it had something to do with it.