The Break a leg column is proudly sponsored by Counting King
MANY PEOPLE love the 80s, especially its music, and one of the main figures of that era was Nik Kershaw.
Now the man behind some of the most familiar hits from that decade has spoken to Ian Cheeseman for his Break-a-Leg column.
MOST PEOPLE of my generation will probably agree with my view that the 1980s was the best decade for music.
Sale of vinyl singles was the barometer of success, with Top of the Pops being the single most influential TV show, everybody being glued to their sets on a Thursday evening.
We’d have our cassette tapes ready on a Sunday when the new top 40 was revealed on Radio One, so we could record our favourite songs.
MTV, video recorders, smart phones and streaming were either just starting or still a figment of the imagination, so buying singles or recording off the radio were our modus operandi.
Music videos were new and often seen as cutting edge. There were many artists at the forefront of new technology with Abba, Queen, A-ha and others leading the way.
The hits and videos of Nik Kershaw were right at the heart of this inventive and melodic era.
1984 was an epic year for the Bristol-born star, who had 62 weeks on the UK singles chart into 1985 with hits like Wouldn’t it be Good, I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me and my favourite The Riddle, which also had a weird, fascinating promotional video.
Well, you can relive those Nik Kershaw glory days next month when the once ‘coiffeur-haired’ singer celebrates 40 years since the release of his 1984 albums Human Racing and The Riddle by touring Europe – including a gig at Manchester Academy Two on Wednesday, October 9 – performing every track in full, probably for the last time.
I spoke to Nik recently for my radio show Break-a-Leg and he told me: “1984 was my big year really, I had two platinum albums, which was a bit greedy!
“I’ve seen many of my peers do celebration tours like this, after 40 years, so it seemed a bit rude not to do it myself.
“My creative juices were properly flowing in 1984, but as you get older it’s harder because you don’t want to repeat yourself.
“It took me two weeks to write the nine songs for the album The Riddle. I’d spent the years before my success playing everything from Cole Porter to the Birdie Song, so all of that was in me.
“When I wrote a song like The Riddle, I just followed the tune which led me somewhere else harmonically.
“That led to me getting a reputation for writing unusual chord modulations and I did catch myself a few times doing it on purpose, just to be clever and I had to stop myself because that was sometimes to the detriment of the music.
“I didn’t go to pop star school. I was naturally quite a shy, retiring, unconfident kid.
“Suddenly being on Top of the Pops and being asked my opinion on everything was not me and I’d had no training in that kind of thing.
“I wasn’t part of the club scene, I was a country boy, I felt like I was an outsider. I wasn’t very good at falling out of night clubs with random blondes on my arm at 4 o’clock in the morning.
“In terms of performing my old hits, I think everybody goes through cycles.
“At the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s I almost went through a period of resenting the old songs because I wanted to show everybody my new material.
“At that time, I would reinvent them live, but having gone through that, I’ve come out the other side and I now realise how good those songs, in their original form, are.
“I’m so grateful to them now and I’ll be playing them all on the current tour, including album tracks I haven’t played for years and may never play again.
“But I wouldn’t consider my style as theatrical, despite the video for The Riddle. I loved Peter Gabriel’s time in Genesis, which I considered to be very theatrical.”
If you fancy a trip back to that wonderful 1980s era, then Nik’s tour sounds perfect.
You can hear the full interview on my radio show Break-a-Leg, which is on various different radio stations each week, including Oldham Community Radio on 99.7FM and DAB every Friday at 1pm and OnDemand via their website.
NIK KERSHAW with his ‘1984 Tour’ – Autumn 2024 UK Dates coming to cities all over the UK including MANCHESTER – Academy 2 on Wednesday 9th October.
Tickets for the above shows are available from – https://www.thegigcartel.com/Artists-profiles/Nik-Kershaw.htm