Posts Tagged ‘Gary Barlow’

Nik Kershaw discusses his career to date and album ‘EI8HT’ with TAPEtoTAPE

Fame is certainly a fickle mistress, many have fallen for her charms only to be used, abused and spat out the other side.  Those stars of the 80s often suffer the most, a golden period for the pop star but with the highs, there come the crashing lows.  Nik Kershaw can appreciate both sides of the coin, having enjoyed massive success in the mid 80s with two Top Ten albums, a string of hit singles not to mention a performance at Live Aid, he rightfully earnt his place on the cover of Smash Hits and adorning thousands of bedroom walls around the country (including my good wife).

However, two albums in one year is a tall order for anyone and upon his return in 1986, nearly two years later, the landscape was changing and things would not be the same again.  Far from the end of the story though, throughout the 90s and beyond Nik Kershaw has been penning tunes for any number of top artists and there is a good chance that you have (maybe unwittingly) been singing along to a Kershaw tune more than once over the past couple of decades.

The turn of the millennium saw Nik tentatively returning to the spotlight with his first new album for a decade, since then he has released two more studio albums along with a stripped down acoustic collection.  2012 will see the release of his eighth studio album entitled EI8HT and is a bolder move back into the public eye.  Nik kindly agreed to have a chat with me about his career to date, the new album and among other things revealed even pop stars embellish their CVs just a tad…

With the release of his first single (I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me) in 1983, two albums in 1984 numerous tours and then Live Aid in 1985, with such a workload in a short period of time did you even have time to fully appreciate the stardom?

Chuckling slightly Nik replies ‘You just kinda clung on for dear life really and rode the train until it crashed!  It was crazy, it was bonkers, whose idea it was to have two albums in nine months is beyond me but I was kind of stupid enough to go along with it’.  This point is worth highlighting and indeed formed part of my next question.  It has always seemed a strange decision to rush out two albums in just one year, especially in a decade where the single was an important part of the process, surely this had to have a negative impact on the longevity of his career…

Nik explains ‘I think the first album (Human Racing) was released in March 84 and the second album was released in Nov so I was promoting one album and making the other at the same time so it did really’.  ‘I was completely exhausted and had run out of ideas by that point’ he says candidly. ‘But I can never look back and say that was responsible for damaging or even making it.  It is impossible to look back and analyse why it was a success in the first place, there were so many different factors, not least being the right face at the right time’ there is no trace of bitterness in his voice, just an honest assessment of this time.  ‘The career went how it went; I have no regrets about it.  You can look back and think you could have done it differently but it could have been a worse result, you just don’t know. I couldn’t say it damaged it but it was certainly responsible for the big gap before the 3^rd album’ he concludes.

Nik Kershaw was among the lucky few who got to perform at Live Aid in 1985, having watched some of the show on TV as a kid It has always fascinated me so I asked Nik what his memories of this day were.  ‘That day kind of summed up the whole period of my career in one respect’ he recalls ‘My one regret is that I didn’t really have the time to stop and enjoy it.  I didn’t ever seem to have time to stand there and think this is great and soak it up.  That day was a microcosm of that, just panic and pandemonium start to finish! Fortunately I was on quite early, about 2.30 so I could relax for the rest of the time’.    Nik pauses for a moment before adding ‘I just remember the blind terror, walking out and not knowing if A) your equipment was on the stage, and B) whether any of it was working’ he says chuckling at the memory.

Still, the benefit of being on early must have been that at least things were running more or less on time at that point, at least you got your full slot.  ‘I had four songs, twenty minutes’ he agrees ‘I actually had reason to do something about Live Aid a few weeks ago and you’re right, the amount of songs people played got less and less… So I was lucky I got all my four songs in’.

Having had a similar conversation with fellow Live Aid veteran Howard Jones earlier in the year I remind Nik that he only did one!

‘That is the difference between him and me though as I remember talking to him on the day and I was going “God this is terrifying!” but he was just loving it and savouring the moment while he was on for his one song, just wishing it would go on and on whilst I was thinking “God I’m glad that is over!”.

Drawing a line under the 80s nostalgia for a bit, we move on to discuss Nik’s song writing career.  With the gradual decline in record sales towards the end of the decade Nik concentrated on penning tunes for others.  The most memorable for me is the track ‘The One And Only’ that took Chesney Hawkes to the top of the charts, but did he wish that perhaps he had kept this track for himself to relaunch his career into the 90s?

‘No not at all, I’d already made the decision to stop performing after the 4^th album because it wasn’t well received and the record company decided to let me go’ he says matter of factly ‘I was not in the mind set of being an artist at all, I was trying to get out of that.  So it (The One And Only) was almost the first one out of the box and I didn’t think anymore about it and stuck it on a shelf for about a year and forgot about it until Chesney’s dad walked into the Warner/Chappel offices and said have you got anything, that was played to him and he said he’d have it’.  The rest of course is history and the track made Chesney a star overnight, were there no regrets?

‘Even when it came out and it was a success I just thought this is brilliant, Chesney is up there doing all the work and I’m sitting here watching my song go up the charts, this is fantastic!’, you can hear Nik’s beaning smile when he says this ‘To be honest when I wrote the song I thought it was something I might have written at the beginning of the 80s, it was a bit of a throwback, even if I had of been recording at the time it probably wouldn’t have ended up on the album, I would have thought it was a bit dated to be honest’.

This leads nicely into my next question as I wondered at what point when writing a new song did Nik know if it would be for him or for another artist, was it a different approach to writing for these different hats? ‘I usually know as soon as the idea comes into my head where it is going or who it is for’ stopping abruptly he reconsiders ‘well that is not true, sometimes I’ll have ideas in my head but they are kind of vague.  Someone will come over to co-write or they have a project coming up so they will start playing something and then I’ll think I have something that fits and it just kind of comes together like that.  There are always certain ideas that come along and I think that is not a coverable song, no one is going to want to do that but me!’ he laughs again.  So it is dependent on how personal a song is as to whether it is kept or given away it seems; ‘Yeah, there is a difference between writing songs for yourself or other people, I’ve spoken to other people and they don’t have a difference but there is for me’.

‘As an example, when I started writing songs for other people at the end of the 80s/beginning of the 90s my first efforts were greeted by my publisher with the words “Yeah, they are good but they are a bit Nik Kershaw” there was something I was doing that I wasn’t aware of that was a bit restrictive on who would want to record these things’ explaining further he continues ‘They were either lyrically specific or had some quirkiness to them.  So I had to relearn to write songs, relearn the craft to write songs for other people.  It is quite a different process, especially lyrically; you have to be more generic if you are not writing for a specific person’.

‘If I am writing with someone I kind of encourage them to lead the lyric (writing) so it is about their life, so they take ownership of it.  Just writing a generic lyric I find incredibly difficult as I have no point of reference.  It is easier to write about what you know and your life’.

As well as the mighty Chesney Hawkes, Nik has written for a number of pop acts over the last twenty years, one name however stands out.  This is if your name is Jodie and you happen to be infatuated with Gary Barlow.  I therefore have to ask about their collaboration and what actually came out of their writing session.

‘This is a case of padding your CV’ Nik admits sheepishly ‘everyone does it… over playing your part a little bit’ he confides.

‘I got a call from Gary in the mid-90s… what shall we call it politely… he had just made his first solo album that got panned by the critics and nobody bought and he was thinking about doing another one but didn’t really know what to do with himself.  He was writing tracks for other people and was in a weird place so he called me up and said do you want to come over and write a song’.

‘I went up there and we wrote probably the worst song he has ever written and that I had ever written, I can’t even remember what it was called.  It got demoed so it exists but I didn’t even have a copy of it.  It was neither of our finest hours’ cheekily he adds ‘But it was great to hang out with him, lovely fella’.

This did then beg the question, have there been times where Nik had declined to work with anyone or other times where the process had not been successful?

‘There have been painful occasions, usually no one’s fault, where people have come to me and the signs are right and you are getting on but at the end of the day you’ve got nothing. So you kind of have to just say it has been nice spending time with you but… it is not something you can turn on and off.  You have good days and bad days; I’ve had plenty of bad days with good people.  But that is why the good songs are so precious; you don’t know when the next one is going to turn up’.

Experience has however enabled Nik to deal with this simply ‘You have to be honest’ he says ‘I usually break the ice with someone I don’t know by saying that this might not happen, if so it’s not a problem for me if we come up with something great’.

‘Earlier on when I was writing with people and didn’t work what would end up happening is we’d write a really ordinary song just for sake of doing something.  There is no point in writing a mediocre song, if you can’t write a good one, don’t bother’.

So with this in mind I wonder what the last song Nik had heard that he wished he’d written… after a brief pause he says flatly ‘I don’t think in those terms, I might admire it but I don’t think I wish I’d written it, because I’d never write it… or I’d have already written it’ he breaks into a laugh once more before offering ‘Bizarrely enough there was one of Gary’s songs a while ago, a Matt Cardle song and I thought was a really good song I wonder who wrote that.. and it was Gary.  Can’t remember what it was called but it was a single’.

Moving on to discuss the new album I admit I have not heard the album yet, I am still waiting for my promo copy to come through and therefore a little unprepared but Nik reassures me, ‘We only just got copies a few days ago so it is probably on its way to you’.  What we can get to the bottom of however is why has it been six years since the last studio album (not including the acoustic No Frills collection form 2010) and what has prompted the return now?

‘I didn’t have the songs!’ he offers as way of an excuse ‘If I was signed to a major record label there would be people setting deadlines but because I have my own record label it isn’t like that and sometimes I just don’t have it in me’.

Exploring this further he adds ‘That can be a period of a couple of years.  I started this album with just a couple of songs, songs I was quite happy about so I started playing them live early last year.  Then you just keep going until it is finished, it took a couple of years but it could have been ten, I’m in no hurry, I don’t want to chuck out something for the sake of it.  Nothing was driving it, the ideas just come or they don’t. I might have another record next year, it could happen, I might have a sudden rush of blood to the head and loads of ideas turn up. I don’t know, it could be another 12 years!’.

Far from bitter towards the industry Nik seems to be enjoying his creative freedom and the challenge of a new album.  Having touched upon it earlier I wanted to find out a little more about his record label and how this equated to a major label’s backing.

‘There are really only two major labels, Universal or Sony, and they are massive but they have quite a small roster of artists considering the size so I think there is a huge space for smaller labels to make some kind of dent.  The internet has levelled the playing field a little bit but they (the majors) still have the resources, the big media, TV, national radio and all that kind of stuff.  That is a difficult one to crack and that is still predominately how records get broken. But it is changing all the time and you just have to keep up’.

So does this mean we could see other artists being released on the Short House Records imprint?

‘Well my wife runs the label and is always saying why don’t we do that… I didn’t want the responsibility! This business is so full of people who don’t know what they are doing I didn’t want to trash somebody elses career.  I’ve seen so many talented people trashed by record labels I didn’t want to be one of them’.

However Nik went on to admit the idea is not completely off the table just yet.. ‘Previously records have just been allowed to escape; only the hardcore knew and those that wanted to find it did. This time we have actually made an effort to tell people about it! We have hired press agents and making an effort to tell people just to see if it makes a difference.  It is a really interesting process for us as an experiment just to see how things work these days and with a little more knowledge at the end of it, maybe we might feel more inclined to help other people’ so you will be your own guinea pig then? ‘Yes, I will be my own guinea pig!’.

Time has slipped away fast and I am conscious we have been chatting for nearly half an hour, sensing that perhaps I should be wrapping it up we switch our attention to the upcoming live shows and I wonder whether there is more pressure on him with the new album to promote.

‘There is always pressure when you put tickets on sale and you think “Oh God, is anyone going to come?!” These will be the first gigs, my (own) gigs, that I have done since 2001.  I’ve done festivals but that’s a different thing, that’s not my crowd’ before adding jokingly ‘It’s a different challenge 80% either don’t know who you are or don’t care!’

‘It will be great to do my own shows’ he enthuses genuinely ‘play what I want to play and know that they will be well received, that will be good fun.  You have more control (on your own tour), once you have reached a run of gigs you can get it right’ summing it up eloquently he concludes ‘I’m excited about it, there is no point in being anything else’.

As told to Jules

You can catch Nik Kershaw live throughout September.

19th Sept – Sheffield 02 Academy
20th Sept – Glasgow ABC
21st Sept – Liverpool 02 Academy
22nd Sept – Birmingham 02 Academy
23rd Sept – Newcastle 02 Academy
25th Sept – Oxford 02 Academy
26th Sept – Bristol 02 Academy
27th Sept – Bournemouth 02 Academy
28th Sept – London 02 Shepherds Bush Empire

Tickets priced £22.50 except London from £25 www.ticketweb.co.uk 08444 771 000

Prior to the tour Nik will be playing a special set at BT London Live in Hyde Park on Wednesday August 8th.

To find out more visit the official Nik Kershaw website HERE and follow him on Twitter @nikkershaw_HQ