He said he was never gonna give you up, but gigging around the globe’s no longer his style. Before he retires from touring, though, Rick’s rolling into town for SINGfest – and as he told Jonathan Evans, he can’t wait

Are you speaking from [south London beauty spot] Richmond? I come from there, too.
I’m actually in Kingston, just off Richmond Park.

Do you know any other famous musicians who live around Richmond? There’s quite a few – Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, [The Verve frontman] Richard Ashcroft… I do know one or two, yeah…we used to live just down the road from Richard Ashcroft.

I saw him in [supermarket] Tesco once. He’s a hero of mine. I didn’t know whether to ask for his autograph or stand and stare.
[Laughs] He’s probably the kind of guy who’d take to you asking for his autograph!

So have you been out here before?
I went to Hong Kong a few years ago. I’ve got friends who live there and they’ve got a house in Bali, so we went [to Bali] for a week for a holiday. That’s the closest I’ve been.

There’s a club here called Zouk… they do a night called Mambo Jambo where everyone dances in a funny way to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. I think you’ll go down well here!
[Laughs] Awesome!

In fact a lot of singers from the late ’80s are really popular over here. I was here on New Year’s Eve and they were playing your songs and Jason Donovan’s all night! It’s on the clubs and the radio all the time.
It’s a strange thing, I’m going to Manila as well; we have a friend [whose mum lives there] and he said it’s the exact same thing. I’m looking forward to it, I don’t do things like this very often. I know it might sound a bit heavy but for me it’s a sort of closure in a way. It’s not work, if you know what I mean. It’s genuinely exciting for me to do it…I’ve got an offer to go to the States next year and I don’t know whether I’m gonna do it. I like the performing, I just don’t wanna travel every day! Living out of a suitcase and everything…I know it sounds like I’m moaning, [but] I did that for a number of years when I was young and I really enjoyed it, but at the end of it I was sick of it. And I just don’t want to fall into the trap again of thinking, ‘You can buy a bigger car, or a bigger house’, you know what I mean? It’s tempting, but there’s the other side of it…I played with two other friends for 250 people at [suburban London town] East Molesey cricket club; I play drums and sing; we do rock covers. I absolutely love doing that as well. It’s to keep some spirit of why you’re doing it. Otherwise you’re just a very well paid ‘whatever’.

Just another suitcase, another hall…
It is! I don’t mean to be…ungrateful or anything. A friend of mine plays for an absolute megastar, [but] he’s bored to tears of going to Vegas. I’d love to do a residency in Vegas! You’re in the same place, you get a room at a hotel and you say, ‘Right, this is where I am for the next month’. Do all the tourist things as well…but I’m pretty sure once I’d done that month, I’d never want to go to Vegas again! [And] I think that’s the way I view this…

Maybe part of your reluctance to tour [comes from] having a young daughter?
Yeah, to be honest that’s partly in reverse now. She’s 16. One of my main priorities this year is to…get her to come on holiday with us. [So] if I wanna go off and play gigs for a couple of weeks then she probably won’t be at home anyway…she’ll be over at her boyfriend’s or whatever! So that dynamic has definitely changed. For instance I went to Japan to do a couple of gigs 18 months ago and she came on that. I really wanted to go to Japan, [and] I thought if I could tie it in with work that was perfect. We had a week’s holiday and she loved it. We met some friends who joined us for a few days.

I really want to go [to Japan] myself, I’ve never been…
If you can wangle it with work, then go…God forbid you should have to pay for it yourself ’cos it’s very expensive!

Even worse than London, I’ve heard. You were once a drummer in a band, FBI, and you mentioned you revert to that sometimes in an ad hoc way. Can you imagine returning to that band format on a more permanent basis?
Not really, we do it for fun. It just works, we really enjoy doing it. We’re not fooling ourselves, we like doing it on a small level. We charge everyone a small amount of money and give it to charity, or the cricket club!

In a way I would have thought that must be even more fulfilling than doing a big, expensive live show? It is! It’s very different because one of the things I appreciate now, which I didn’t at the time – because I’ve had a chance to live and be a real person myself in terms of having a family – is that when I do go and sing my old songs now, I know what it means when someone hears that song, if it’s the song they ‘met to’…if it’s their song, a couple’s song, someone’s favourite song from college, I kind of relate to that now. It was very hard to relate to it when I was doing it all those years ago. I was a kid myself in reality. Whereas now [that] I’ve been through a bit more myself, when a favourite song comes on, that means everything to us. So when I’m singing those songs that means something to people. I didn’t realise that all those years ago.

It’s probably fair to say most people associate you with that era, the late ’80s. You’ve moved into other genres in the last few years.
I like doing it. I did some very small gigs with swing stuff, obviously Robbie Williams has done that. I played some really nice places…[my] label said, ‘Why don’t you do an album like that?’. We didn’t really make the record that I wanted to make, to be honest. It was a classic thing where everyone’s got the right intentions…but when it comes down to it, nothing’s changed, it’s exactly the same. And I just thought, ‘I don’t wanna do this’. I love singing. You get up and do it for an hour and a half…and [unless] someone’s pulled the power on you, you’ve got the control to do whatever it is. Whenever the record company gets involved and all the rest of it, God help you! I’ve been on the receiving end of that in a fantastic way, that’s why I’m sat on my bed doing this interview in a lovely house. But I’m also realistic enough to know that you’ve really got to give it everything. And when I’ve packed it in and retired, I wanna think [it’s] for the right reasons, because I’ve had enough of it. I’m doing these gigs for two reasons: one because they pay me well – I will always acknowledge that – and two, it gives me a tingle to do it. I think if I did 50 gigs, one after the other, that would just finish me off! I don’t think I’d ever want to do it ever again. Doing little bursts of it is fine; I can see myself doing it into next year and then maybe stopping, that’ll be enough I think.

You were away from the music industry for quite a long time prior to your ‘comeback’ in 2002.
Yeah! You know [UK topical comedy quiz] ‘Have I Got News for You’? You know they put up the four pictures and [ask] who’s the odd one out? I was one of them. I was the odd one out, because everyone else had tried to have a comeback, but I didn’t! I’m really proud of that! I’ve done a few things – I did a bit of film music for my wife [Danish film producer Lene Bausager], but in truth I never set out to say, ‘I wanna have a big record around the world’, because I don’t think I do. Part of me does, because I’ve got an ego obviously. But I don’t think I’d want to do that. My main focus in the last two years [has been] a musical I’ve co-written with a guy in Hollywood who’s helped make it a ‘proper’ Hollywood script, shall we say. Because my first one wasn’t! [Laughs] I’ve really enjoyed doing that. It’s a departure from what I was successful with, but it’s sort of in the same vein, because I can get involved with the music but I don’t have to go and promote it. I’ve really enjoyed…getting the songs down the way that I want them to be and I sleep with a producer, so she’s gonna try and get that rolling for us. It’s like my rock band – when you can throw yourself into something and really enjoy it, but it doesn’t affect what you’re gonna do on Monday morning. The musical’s slightly different…it isn’t to do with ‘me’, if you know what I mean, it’s the project. And I think that’s [something] I can see myself doing more.

What was your take on the Rickrolling phenomenon which happened last year. It just seems like such a random thing to happen. What was your personal take on it? Why do you think it was your particular song?
Well, if I’m really blunt about it, I love that song, and I’ve got great memories of it. I was really sick of it about ten or 12 years ago but [now] I really love it…it’s paid for my life, basically. But I can also see that some kid in Wisconsin who’s 15 who’s trying to play a trick on his friend would look through videos and see that one and go, ‘God, that’s a naff video, I’m gonna use that!’. [Laughs] It’s perfect! I can totally get that, and there’s some really funny ones…you click on a link, you think you’re gonna see something, and you get ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. People have done some fantastic things as well…there’s another one [which is] the rock band Kiss, and someone’s edited one of their live videos to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. Evidently, it’s absolutely perfect! I can’t wait to see it, there’s a few of those things kicking around. Another of my all-time favourites is [east London transport hub] Liverpool Street station…someone sent me the email for God’s sake! A generic email went round saying, ‘If you travel home on Friday evening and you’re gonna be at Liverpool St at six o’clock, then learn the words to ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ because when the clock strikes six, everyone’s going to burst out singing it. And there’s clips on YouTube of, I don’t know, a thousand people in Liverpool St singing that song! And I just think that’s hilarious. I know it’s not really about me, it’s just a crazy bubble thing, but it still makes me laugh!

I think the point is [these things have happened] because it’s a memorable song [it first charted in 1987]. It is being used in slightly incongruous way, but people wouldn’t be singing it 20 years on if it weren’t for the fact it’s a great song.
Exactly. You know what? I think I got the absolute best [UK hit factory] Stock/Aitken/Waterman song that they ever did. I know they wrote loads, probably a hundred or more, and they wrote great songs as well, but…I think the marriage of myself, looking about 12 years old but maybe sounding like a black guy from wherever, that song was quirky enough to make it…

I think it was an icon of its era to be honest, like you say, not just the song itself but the video…it just takes you back immediately to that time.
But with music in general that tends to be what happens…it’s very rare that it’s just the song. It’s the coming together of a few things…someone makes a video…like the Robert Palmer song with the girls in the background [‘Addicted to Love’]. It’s a fantastic song, produced really well, but the video just sends it into another dimension altogether! In the ’80s we’d really entered that video age and sometimes those things make it all work.

So, back to SINGfest: there’s quite a few different acts, like Alicia Keys…
[Enthusiastically] Oh wow! How long does it run for?

It’s just the weekend basically, just like the V Festival in the UK. They had one quite successful one last year, but this year they’ve got a stronger line-up. Travis are there as well, and quite a few up-and-coming pop bands. I was just going to ask you, which are the acts you find most inspiring in today’s music scene?
Well, you just mentioned two there…Travis I think, from a songwriting perspective, I can’t remember the guy’s name now, the guy who writes and sings…

Fran Healy?
Yes! I don’t think Coldplay would be what they are without them. In terms of guitar bands, they weren’t like Oasis, [who were] more in your face, ‘don’t look at me mate, I’m hard’. They were able to write…

Sensitive, wistful ballads?
Yeah, melodies, something that had a bit more poetry to it. And I think they’re a great band, Travis… I’ll have to have a proper look at the line-up, see when everyone’s on. Alicia Keys, again, when she had that first song ‘Falling’, I think most people heard, and we just all went, ‘Fair enough!’. I think she’s got that voice, it’s just real, you can’t deny that it’s great. She married that with something quite unusual, the classical piano, and no one had done that. But with that voice on top of it. So I am aware of a lot of new bands because I’ve got a 16-year-old daughter. I’m a bit of an old fogey, but certain ones…I mean, I really love The Killers. We play their stuff in our middle-aged, midlife-crisis rock band! We were gonna call ourselves Midlife but decided not to in the end! Or The Luddites instead, which is very apt as well! I think it’s really dodgy when you get people my age [42], when they say, ‘I like this band, that band’, it’s all a bit of a cliché really.

Oh, I wouldn’t worry! I’m from more or less the same generation as yourself, but if it still means something then there’s no point trying to hide it.
I also think what it is…is that everyone’s music listening has changed, and it’s mainly about iPods and laptops…most of us listen to music like that nowadays, and…you flick through stuff so much easier. And you think, ‘What about this band’? And you find it straightaway. We’ve got a collection of a few thousand CDs downstairs, and I try my best to keep them alphabetical. We love having dinner parties where people have too much to drink, and it’s like, who gets to the CD player first. And it’s kind of changed because you can’t crowd around a laptop and listen to something all at the same time. But that’s the way it is, and I think we listen to things a lot more randomly because of that. And I’m terrible with the names of songs and even bands sometimes. I’ve thrown it in there and come back to it, and I don’t even know what I’m listening to!

Catch Rick Astley performing at SINGfest on 3 Aug.

More information on Rick Astley - Watch Singfest 2008 video.