Leo Sayer interview
Disco Leo
Coming home at last, Leo Sayer is full of energy & feels like dancing! Victoria Nangle talks to the music icon of the 1970s and 1980s about Russell Brand, Operation Yewtree, and taking Bruce Springsteen on a tour of Brighton
So, you’re coming back to the seaside?
“I have to come back to the seaside, yes! Yesterday, in fact, I got back with my old writing partner David Courtney, who I wrote all the first hits with, and the funny thing is that he’s moved from Brighton, where I used to see him and write together, to my hometown of Shoreham-By-Sea.”
I heard a rumour you once showed Bruce Springsteen around Shoreham…
“I certainly did – no, it was Brighton! He showed me around Aylesbury Park so I returned the favour. I heard the band were going down there so I went down to Brighton and I knocked on his door, because I’d already seen his gigs in London so he knew me. And at the gig I said ‘Come on, we’re going out for a walk’. He said, ‘Great, great, great, I was hoping you’d turn up’. He kinda knew I was coming, I think I’d bumped into Clarence Clemons, the sax player and asked him to tell Bruce I was coming and he said, ‘I will man, I will’. So there he was and he said, ‘Come on, let’s go’. He said, ‘Show me round your hometown’. Of course, that was his first tour of the UK and not many people knew who he was. So, I went round and introduced him to everybody I knew – shopkeepers, cafés, restaurants, all the local people, everybody. And he was charming, a lovely bloke. So it was really nice, yeah.”
You’ve had incredible fans over the years. Have they changed much, apart from maybe getting a little bit slower at chasing you?
“It’s a difficult question to answer. I mean, last year we did a tour with David Cassidy, Smokie and all these people. Basically, you know, it’s these really die-hard fans that come to those kind of shows because they’re really dedicated. But just before we did that, we did two shows as a warm-up, just me and the band, and we did Llandudno and Bradford. And it was extraordinary, since I hadn’t done any solo shows – any headline shows, in England like I’m gonna be doing in November, I hadn’t done anything like that for so long. It was extraordinary to kind of see an amazing mixture of audience. I’m afraid to say that the gigs weren’t advertised that well but we packed them both. There was this kind of word of mouth, that people knew we were there. I’m talking backstage to kids of like 20 or 21 who really are tuned into the music, comparing me with Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker, and I couldn’t see it… but they can! So it’s very difficult to be objective.
“And there’s people there, some of them are as old as me, and some of them just younger than me, who’ve followed me all the way through, and for them it’s this big moment when they’re coming to see you.
“When you do these big public gigs in your own name, I get this in Australia as well, it’s amazing how you get this potpourri of people that really know you and appreciate you, but they don’t have to be just your generation. That’s where music crosses over, look at Bobby Womack and how hip he is now, but consider that he wrote ‘It’s All Over Now’ on one of the very first Stones albums. That guy is as old as the hills but he’s as hip as anything.”
I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, having just arrived, but there’s been a certain shadow cast over the entertainment industry of the ‘70s and ‘80s with the Yewtree Investigation.
“What, the paedophilia and everything?”
Yes.
“I think more over at the BBC than anything. Look, there’s always bad people in every… how many politicians have been found, you know, gagged in rubber and covered in chocolate, in a distant back alley or bedroom somewhere? It’s in all walks of life. I went to this lunch yesterday, with people like Noddy Holder and Bruce Welch of The Shadows there, Ed Bicknell who’s the manager of Dire Straits – all these classic people there. Mick Avery, the drummer with The Kinks, I mean for God’s sakes, and Clem Cattini, another famous drummer on everybody’s records. And lots of top music writers like Barry Hoskins and Philip Norman were there, and David Hancock and Keith Altham, who of course hosted it all.
“The talk could have been about that very subject. Noddy, I think, said something very prevalent. He said, ‘Isn’t it funny how there’s been that fuss it’s all turned back on to the world of entertainment but really it’s changed nothing.’
“I think that here in England, one thing I really do spot is that we tend to take what is the zeitgeist of any bit of scandalous news or anything and we tend to turn that back onto the industry those people came from. And I don’t personally think that it changes anything [to the industry]. There’s some really bad people involved and certain bits of Top Of The Pops can never be seen again.
“On my first Top Of The Pops I was introduced by Jimmy Saville, and he’s got his arm around me and everything, and I’m thinking, ‘it’s a shame that can never be seen again!’ And it means that song is gone too because Jimmy is in the background of the whole bloody song. Get out of the way, mate! We might be able to use this in 50 years time! So, what can you say? I mean, I don’t know.”
Do you think the way that celebrity is seen has changed?
“We did get away with a lot of stuff. I’ve got a song called ‘We Got Away With It’ and it’s really about those times, and there are things that we did in those days that we could never, never, never do again. I mean, look at people like Keith Moon, you wouldn’t get a Keith Moon in this age, would you? Not really.”
That’s possibly what’s emerging with the rise of social media and the internet as a release format…
“But I’m not sure, what with the social kind of world we live in now, where it’s so much about being PC…
“We’ve got an over-populated planet so that means there’ll be people of a different race and creed bound to be living next to you or running your local shop or whatever. We all have to get on board with being a little bit more, dare I say it, PC. Especially with politicians running around trumping up little wars and everything that, you know, divide everybody anyway.
“To me it’s a little bit sad but I mean, the extremities of culture… Look at Russell Brand. I don’t know if you saw the Russell Brand clip [when Russell Brand told a US interviewer off for being patronising]. It’s fantastic. But then you kind of think to yourself, ‘Russell, be careful, you’re not gonna get a visa for the States. You can promote the show but they might not even let you in!’ You see what I mean? So we’ve all gotta be very careful about that. I have to bite my lip. I’m trying to write songs about Julian Assange but everyone’s telling me, ‘You’ll never get that released, mate!’. It’s very difficult. We live in strange times indeed where sensitivities are so greatly affected. We will end up with, unfortunately, very bland entertainment.”
So, the new tour…
“It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be nice to come back to Sussex. There’s lots of rumours that I’m going to be doing an entire set of Silverbird, which is not correct. I’m just calling it ‘The Silverbird Tour’ because it’s how it all started, so there’ll be a lot of that in it. I’ve got to do so many songs; I think I’m looking at a three-hour show, basically. It’s impossible to get all the tracks in! Too many hits…”
