CLIFF RICHARD
Sir Cliff looks back on Move It, the ’70s zenith of Devil Woman and Wired For Sound, and the importance of not telling interviewers to “go away”.
The Brit-rock’n’roll cornerstone on the Fabs, God and Devil Woman.
The press officer says we can talk to Cliff Richard about anything – “just nothing that’s happened in the last two years.” Ostensibly, then, we’re here to discuss his new album, his 101st, JustÉ Fabulous Rock’n’Roll. It finds the 76-year-old back singing the music of his youth. Luckily, we also find time to talk about his two golden periods; his first five years with The Shadows, and his amazing run of pop singles and LPs released between 1976 and 1981. “It breaks my heart that I’ll never again take 12 new songs into the studio and give them to a bunch of musicians,” he says. “We do ‘projects’ now. Next there’ll be a jazz project, and then I’d like to do an album of Everly Brothers ballads, do all the harmonies myself. Record companies are not so fearful of releasing a record like that.”
The last track on the new album, It’s Better To Dream, is so heartfelt. Have you considered doing a strippedback, Rick Rubin type album?
I haven’t really. Sometimes, there’s a danger when you’re doing something that’s just about you.
But you’ve always had that melancholy in your voice.
I’ll take that as a compliment. I’ve always said the song will let you know how to sing it. If you’re singing Congratulations, that’s not melancholy. It’s not even rock’n’roll. For the Eurovision Song Contest, I did six songs on The Cilla Black Show and the public voted for the one they liked best. There were a couple of others I was hoping would win, and they didn’t. Now, when I go to a restaurant, and people are having a birthday party, guaranteed they sing Happy Birthday, then they all swing into Congratulations! Can you imagine? But then I think, well, if someone had offered me Happy Birthday, you know I would have done it.
When you started out, you were still part of that variety circuit. The first shows we did there would be fire-eaters and jugglers. It was very weird, but then the promoters could see that the audiences weren’t coming to see the fire-eaters. So quickly, within a year, after my first tour, the promoter said, “I’d like to take you on tour as the headliner.” I’d got one record, at the time. I only had Move It.
By the time of your third LP, Me And My Shadows you’d defined a new British rock’n’roll sound. When we started, we were influenced by America. But on Me And My Shadows I can hear a new rock’n’roll come out. The Shadows and I had it for five years. One of The Beatles said, “Cliff and The Shadows had it sewn up, so we left and went to Hamburg”. Now, that means The Shadows and I played a part in the creation of The Beatles. If they hadn’t gone there they might have been us, if you know what I mean. They came back and blew us all off the
stage. It was great. I wish something like that would revive our industry now.
Do you think people went out of their way to give you a hard time once you found Christianity in 1964?
They might have done. It’s funny, when I think back, I suppose I haven’t followed the pattern. I’ve changed all the time. Compare Move It with Living Doll! I started to think to myself, Maybe I’m the radical one, because I’m not so fearful of trying new things. I’m so grateful to John Lennon, because so often I get written off as uncool and bland and I know that he said, “Before Cliff and Move It, there was nothing.”
You also had a second Òfive-year cycleÓ from 1976 to Õ81.
That was called my renaissance period. I loved it. I was getting a little bit too comfortable. My manager, Peter Gormley, said to Bruce Welch, “Cliff would like to do another album, but nothing that sounds like Summer Holiday or Congratulations.” I already had the Devil Woman demo in my hot, sweaty hands. [Songwriter/producer] Terry Britten gave me that and I thought, This is fantastic but will people accept me singing this kind of song?
YouÕd already refused to sing your previous single, Honky Tonk Angel on the Russell Harty Show because of your Christian fansÉ
Partly true. I’d gone to do a Christian meeting and one girl had said, “Your new record… it’s about a prostitute.” I phoned my manager, Peter Gormley, “Is this true?” He phoned America. It turned out a honky tonk angel was the name given to someone you might pick up at a bar. I pulled away from it. But it’s on my jukebox now and I listen to it for what it is. It’s a great record.
What caused the shift to musical theatre in the mid Õ80s?
There’s a danger that if you get trapped, you can’t spread your wings at all. I hadn’t done musicals and I loved it. I loved Time. The album Dave Clark made, I was a bit annoyed he didn’t let me sing my character’s songs. He gave them to Freddie Mercury and somebody else. I was, “Oh no! They’re my songs, the songs I sing live on stage.” That bothered me. But Time led to me doing the thing I’d wanted to do since I was 18 – play the part of Heathcliff. I got the opportunity because I decided I’d have to pay for it myself. No one was going to offer me that part.
Tell us something youÕve never told an interviewer before.
Oh dear. There are a hundred things I’ve never told an interviewer before, and I’m going to keep it that way. I’ve never told a journalist to go away. And I’m particularly thinking of other ways of saying “go away”.
Andrew Male