GORDON HASKELL, 58, shot to fame in late 2001 with the release of his ballad How Wonderful You Are, which went to No 2 in the charts and became the most requested record in the history of Radio 2.
It was swiftly followed by the album Harry’s Bar, which immediately went platinum and also rose to No 2. Gordon has just released his latest album, The Lady Wants To Know, and has written his autobiography.
The singer grew up with his older brother and sister in Verwood, a village in Dorset, and went to Wimborne Grammar School. At 16, in l964, he started playing the bass guitar and singing in local clubs.
Gordon spent the next 40 years as an “itinerant musician” who earned a living from singing in clubs and bars, mainly abroad.
Advertisement
In l967 he wrote Lazy Life, which was a No 1 hit in South Africa and Australia, but failed to chart in Britain. In 1971 he joined and recorded with the progressive rock band King Crimson for a year, which led to a solo record deal with Atlantic Records.
In December 2000 Gordon wrote How Wonderful You Are within a couple of hours. He thought it was good, but had no idea it would change his life.
He gives regular concerts in England and throughout Europe and is planning his first American tour for 2005.
Gordon, who is divorced, has two children from previous relationships: Amanda, 36, a midwife, and Jasper, 12. He lives in a 14th century cottage in Shaftesbury, Dorset.
How much money do you have in your wallet?
Advertisement
I’ve never had a wallet but I’ve got £100 on me. It will last a couple of days and go on petrol and food shopping.
Do you have any credit cards?
I have a NatWest Mastercard and a Switch debit card. I use them for hotels abroad and rail fares, but I’ve never borrowed a penny on credit since I cleared £28,000 of debt in 2001. I prefer to pay for things with cash.
Are you a saver or spender?
I haven’t saved any money since I was 14 years old. I have always depended on the English property market.
Advertisement
Whenever I was hugely overdrawn I would sell my home to pay off my debts. Each time I moved further away from London, so I managed to maintain the same size of house. When things got really bad I would buy a wreck, do it up and make a bigger profit.
How much did you earn last year?
In excess of £150,000, which is quite comfortable when you are sitting at home writing a book. Of this, £100,000 was from royalties and the rest came from concerts, record sales and airplay.
Have you ever been really hard up?
I was hard up until I was 55. I became a musician at the age of 16, and always lived the life of a minimum wage earner. However, I had to go abroad to maintain it.
Advertisement
When the work was not here in l983 during the Thatcher years, I went to Norway where the cost of living is double but so are the wages.
What is the most lucrative work you have done? Did you use the fee for something special?
It was recording How Wonderful You Are. During the 12 weeks that the song was on the radio before Christmas 2001 I was making at least £1,000 a week from airplay.
I received a cheque for more than £500,000 on December 17, 2001, so I paid off the £65,000 mortgage on the house my mother lives in. I also bought a cottage, which now has a £100,000 mortgage. I cleared my £28,000 credit-card debt and bought myself a Mazda MX5 for £10,000.
Do you own a property?
Advertisement
I have two properties. The one I live in is a four-bedroom 14th century cottage in Shaftesbury. It cost £285,000 and is valued at £350,000. I also own my mother’s two-bedroom bungalow outright. She lives 20 miles away.
Do you have Peps and Isas?
I have just put £3,000 into a cash Isa. I was going to use some capital to buy another house on a buy-to-let basis, but changed my mind at the last minute because of the capital-gains tax if I were to sell it.
Do you have a pension, or other retirement plan?
No, I don’t. When my sister worked for the former Ministry of Pensions, she said men of 21 were phoning up to check how their pension funds were doing. I thought it was ridiculous to be thinking at 21 about retiring and dying.
Do you believe pensions are a good thing?
I don’t trust any of the institutions any longer, so I don’t have a pension. Fund managers are the sort of people who work for my former record label. They are corporate types, highly trained executives who think only of their profits. They have no morals. My daughter is a midwife and the NHS protects her, so I approve of government pensions.
What has been your worst investment?
Housing my mother, who is 85. It has been a struggle because I had to house myself as well in the leaner times.
My mother’s bungalow cost £12,000 in 1984, which was a fair whack for me. In the end, after the interest rate doubled, I had to lose one of my properties to be able to afford the other. I had to move in with my mother, which was not easy for a man in his forties.
And your best?
It was paying for the production of my albums. Harry’s Bar cost me £7,000 plus the interest on the credit cards I was using. In total I got back £700,000.
Do you manage your own financial affairs?
Until recently I’ve handled my financial affairs myself, but now I use an accountant. Considering I lived on my wits for decades I did very well to avoid going bankrupt.
What aspect of our taxation system would you change?
I would like to get some tax rebate for relieving the council of the need to house my mother. In fact when I come to sell her property, I will pay 40% capital-gains tax on it, making it an almost useless investment.
What is your financial priority?
To create, because creating any work has proved profitable for me. After my hit single I chose to take a year off to write my autobiography and produce this new album. I’ve now created two valuable assets.
Do you have a money weakness?
After a lifetime of poverty, I don’t have a money weakness. I look at the latest Jaguar sports car and I don’t buy it because I was brainwashed by my old lifestyle when I was perfectly happy driving a Ford Fiesta. The difference is that now I have enough money in the bank to buy a Jag.
What is the most extravagant thing you have ever bought?
I spent £1,200 in a menswear shop on Regent Street a week after receiving my big cheque in 2001. The truth is I bought all these clothes but never wore any of them. Then I found a jacket I loved for £12 in my local charity shop.
Do you play the lottery? What if you won?
I don’t, but I do the football pools, and I do know what it is like to come into a huge windfall. To be honest, the charts are the biggest lottery you will ever come across.
If I came into £1m or more now I would buy a nice property, with a cottage in the grounds for my mother.
What is the most important lesson you have learnt about money? If you are self-employed and successful in the music business, remember that there is 40% tax to pay. Don’t believe your record company managers when they say you are going to become a millionaire in six months’ time. I was a target for masses of charities because of the publicity surrounding my single, and I think I may have been over-generous.