Singer Rick Astley, 57, was born in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, and became a musician after leaving school at 16. He released his first single, Never Gonna Give You Up, in 1987 at the age of 21, which became a worldwide chart-topper. He retired in 1993, having sold approximately 40 million records, but returned to the music industry in 2000. He lives in southwest London with his wife, the actress Lene Bausager. They have a daughter, Emilie.
My early years were pretty traumatic. When I was five, my parents got divorced. At that age, you don’t really understand what’s going on, but you can feel something’s not right. My dad fell apart. My mum fell apart. They’d had a son who died years before I was born. I think there was residual damage, sadness and confusion left behind from that.
My dad was quite a scary man to be around. He was either in a great mood or he was in a really dark place. He never hit us, but he was very physical in the way he dealt with most things. He’d get angry and smash stuff. He couldn’t control his temper at all, so as a child it wasn’t a great environment to be in.
My mum was a closed book. I’m not sure I learnt a great deal from her, because she was quite broken and damaged. She wasn’t a bad mum, but she was dealing with her own stuff. What I may have got from her was her love of music. She was an incredible pianist, which is how she made a living when she was older. She’d had a job in an office but packed it in to play in pubs. She could sight-read anything. She’d just sit down and play Beethoven.
When your parents don’t like something, you rebel and do it anyway. My dad hated pop music with a vengeance, which made me love it more. He also hated accountants. One of my brothers is a chartered accountant and I became a pop star.
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I fell in love with music by listening to it. I have two older brothers and an older sister, so it was a struggle for me to get the Jungle Book soundtrack on. I was fourth in line! I ended up listening to everything from the Beatles to David Bowie. My sister also loved Motown so I listened to all the greats, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, you name it.
When I was ten years old, I started singing in a local church choir. There’s something about voices in harmony resonating together that’s pretty amazing. It wasn’t exactly rock’n’roll, but performing felt really exciting. I also sang in school plays and enjoyed having to go to all the rehearsals. It was a safe space to be — much nicer than being at home if my dad was in.
It was daunting to have a global No 1 record with Never Gonna Give You Up. Most of the time you put a record out, it might do OK, it might not. You put another out; it gets a bit more traction. So you’d have a No 28, then a No 17, then a top 5, and boom, you’d have a No 1. But to do it like I did, with the first one, it was overwhelming.
I was in the middle of a career that I felt I didn’t have any control over. In 1993 I decided to take a break because I just didn’t enjoy it any more. I also felt that my work wasn’t about the music. You make a record, you talk about it for six months, then you go out on tour. But really managers just wanted you on TV, because you’d be in front of millions of viewers.
It was my wife and daughter who got me back into performing. In the late Nineties, I had an offer to play in Japan. My family really wanted to go there and they knew that if we went with me doing gigs, it’d be great because we’d get looked after. So they made me do it. But then something inside me clicked and I realised I really enjoyed performing.
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I’m famous if somebody points me out, but I’m completely not famous in every other way. There’s a huge gig in Henley called Rewind, and I’ve been last on at that sometimes, driven home in the car, got out to fill up with petrol and not one person in the petrol station has batted an eyelid, even though I’d just been singing Never Gonna Give You Up to 30,000 people.
If I could tell my younger self one thing it would be: have more fun. In my early twenties I was in a state of confusion and took it all too seriously. I didn’t go out with people my age. I was a solo artist with no bandmates, surrounded by managers in the music industry who were in their forties. I should have been going out and having a laugh. I didn’t really do that.
Rick Astley partners with Specsavers to raise awareness about hearing loss
