David Essex

October 2012

I’VE not locked the door on EastEnders but I’ve kind of shut it.

I enjoyed doing the show. It was fast and furious, and it worked a treat as I think the viewing figures were at a ten-year high when Eddie (Moon) was in it.

But I have lots of other things to do.

I’m in and out of the studio at the moment doing some film music for Traveller, which comes out next year. It’s about a boy who is half gypsy and he’s trying to work out where he belongs in life.

I’ve a cameo role in it as a character called Blackberry, who is the gypsy patriarch. But they asked me to do the music as well.

They’re working on the post production now so it should be in the cinemas hopefully next year.

It’s a very powerful script and very positive from a gypsy traveller point of view, which is nice. There is some bare knuckle fighting in it but it’s more of a spiritual journey.

And it was shot with real travellers so it’s very authentic.

What I’m really looking forward to is getting back on the road with the band. It’s three years since we’ve toured.

Since then we’ve had All The Fun Of The Fair which was a great success. I’ve been working on the Traveller film and doing EastEnders, so it will be nice to get back to where I started, with a band up on stage.

We’re going to do something a little bit different this time. We’re going to have a big old film screen at the back which will have relevant images of what we are playing on stage. There’ll be clips of films and photographs. So it is kind of the story of my career.

All The Fun Of The Fair came to Nottingham earlier this year and it did feature my music but it was a story. It wasn’t autobiographical. This is purely a concert tour.

Am I ready? I hope so. Sex, drugs and rock n roll is page one of the rule book for going on the road. I think I’m on page two now.

Once the tour finishes, I’ll put my feet up over Christmas and we’ll see what happens next year.

I should probably put more energy into film-making. It’s an area I’ve not really explored as much as I’d have liked. Obviously I did That’ll Be The Day, Stardust and Silver Dream Racer and they were successful but there was a pressure for me to go to Hollywood after them and I didn’t particularly want to.

Even though Rock On has been No. 1 twice there, I’ve always been very English, my family are here and everything I’ve been doing has been based locally really.

What’s brilliant for me is being able to work in different mediums, as a writer, as an actor and as a singer. It’s perfect.

You don’t get bored or complacent and I think that probably radiates to an audience and they don’t get complacent about the things you are doing.

That’s probably the essence of longevity.

David Essex appears at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday, October 29. Ticket are £27.50 and £29.50 from the venue, call 0115 989 5555 or go towww.trch.co.uk.

David Essex

February 2010


My weekend
The weekend is all about catching up with friends and family.
On Saturday I’ll be up pretty early and I’ll have a look through emails and sort a bit of business out. I’ll probably watch a bit of football, go to Upton Park or check a game out on the telly if I’m working.
Sunday will be the papers, a bit of breakfast, get over and see one of the kids in the afternoon, then I’ll go to a local restaurant.
I like a pub lunch as well but I’m not really a drinker so it’s more the lunches rather than going off to a pub for the evening.
I’m not much of a cook. It has to be visual. Anything in a frying pan I can cope with but if it disappears in to an oven I don’t quite know what’s going on. So I’ve never mastered the famous Sunday roast.
Sport is a big passion of mine. I’ve played a lot of football and cricket over the years. I still suffer as a West Ham fan. I do have a soft spot for Notts Forest. I think teams like that should be in the top flight.
It’s more watching sport than playing these days. I’ve three sons and they sometimes drag me in to the garden. And they’re pretty good. The twins are at West Ham Academy and they played cricket for Surrey when they were kids. The older boy played for Surrey too but he’s not much of a footballer. Just don’t tell him I said that.
There are no TV programmes I have to see. I’ll watch news programmes and documentaries. I watch Al Jazeera a lot. I think it gives you a different perspective. It’s kind of interesting to switch to the BBC for a slight variation on a particular story.
I went to see Inglourious Basterds at the cinema and I liked that. I saw The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, that was quite moving. And I saw Up on a plane but I didn’t have my 3D glasses with me (laughs). I get quite teary with things. I cried watching Finding Nemo. I’m a bit of soft touch really.
I prefer theatre to film and that relationship between the live audience and the live players. That it lives for that performance, then changes for the next one.
I don’t do gyms or anything like that. I’m always racing about anyway marching from one meeting to the next or from one rehearsal to another. That keeps me fairly active.
I’ve never been a great reader of books. I wish I was but my concentration starts to drift after about eight pages. I think that’s all down to my teacher back at secondary school who made us read Silas Marner (by George Eliot). That turned me off books. Which is ironic because I wrote my autobiography all by myself and it was a No. 1 bestseller. Maybe I should read more.
I’m not a big fan of concerts either, ironically. I do listen to music at home. I’m forced to with two sons bashing about but I’m not really aware of what’s in the charts to be honest.
I’ve got four children. The last time I counted anyway (laughs). The twins are 21. The other two from the other marriage are in their thirties.
I’ve three grandchildren. The eldest, he’s six, I’ve taken him out to Hamley’s, The London Eye, The Lion King, a trip on a boat down the Thames... I did get him to the London Museum but that only lasted ten minutes because he kept misbehaving.

David Essex appears on the Once In A Lifetime Tour 2010 alongside The Osmonds, Leo Sayer and Les McKeown’s Legendary Bay City Rollers, which comes to the Trent FM Arena on June 29. Tickets are £36.50, call 08444 124624.

Leo Sayer

October 2009



It has been more than 30 years since Leo Sayer topped both the UK and US charts with his signature hit You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, so what makes him feel like dancing these days?
“Not a lot really,” he says.
“I hate to say it. It’s all clever but it’s all done for money. And it’s all very much a business.”
It annoys him that the industry seeks to “bury the past” and spend more on promoting new talent.
Which is one of the reasons he moved to Australia five years ago.
“The popularity I’ve had down here has always been great,” he says, hastily disposing of a Carr’s water biscuit.
“They’re a fine old thing. I’m also supping up a cup of Taylor’s of Harrogate tea. I must be thinking about England.”
He adds: “I hit the ground running here in 1974, I think. They put a huge campaign together before I arrived. So it was a bit like when The Beatles went to New York. It was mad.”
And he can still get regular bookings these days.
“I work all the time. I’m in the middle of a load of gigs at the minute. I’ve done about 82 shows in the last five years. It’s keeping me young.
“I miss England in a lot of ways but the lifestyle here is not that different. It’s just the weather. It’s like Lanzarote but a bit further,” he laughs.
Sayer, who had his biggest hits in 1977 with You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and When I Need You, has garnered a new generation of fans in Oz thanks to The Wiggles. The children’s TV phenomenon did a cover of You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and invited him on to the show.
“It’s been crazy. You know, I’m a single bloke at the moment and I’ll get in to a shopping centre and a very attractive lady of about 30 or 40 will come up to me and say ‘I adore your music’.
“And I think ‘ooh, this is cool’. Then she says: ‘Yes, me and my son listen to it every morning’.”
Doh!
He recently converted a room in his Sydney home in to a recording studio in order to make new music.
“I’m still creative. If other people think of me as a nostalgic artist, that’s not really how I think of myself. I’m moving a little more with the times. I couldn’t make Beyonce or Jay-Z type of music. I just don’t know how to do that.”
Three years ago he was back at the top of the UK chart when Meck remixed his song Thunder In My Heart, although the marketing plan was to keep the name of Leo Sayer out of any publicity.
“First off they said ‘don’t tell anyone it’s Leo.’”
Bit of an insult, isn’t it?
“Yeah but that’s typical of English pop. We love to bury the past and reinvent. They spend more money on Duffy than they do on Dusty Springfield. I don’t understand it. Let’s kill anyone over 21 – that’s always been a British kind of thing.
“But it doesn’t work with the public because we all want to see Duran Duran again, Spandau Ballet again and hold on to Eric Clapton and Elton John. Look at The Beatles reissues. Kids will have spent more on The Beatles (Rock Band) game than the latest war games.
“The lasting power of music goes against the marketing ethic of ‘let’s find some new acts.’
“I say it’s The Beatles 10, Simon Cowell 0.”
It is nostalgia that brings Sayer to Nottingham next year on the Once In A Lifetime tour with The Osmonds, David Essex and the Bay City Rollers.
“Paul Young is a friend, he’s done it, and he was always telling me it’s a fun tour to do.”
It helps that he knows the other artists: “In those days we were all mates because we all did Top Of The Pops together.
“There was no video so we had to perform our songs live. There’d be David Bowie over there, Marc Bolan, David Essex, Mick Jagger, the Bay City Rollers... so, coming together for this tour, it was an easy thing for us to say yes to.
“There was a great camaraderie – none of that ‘I’d like to kill you’ kind of competition going on that there’s been in a lot of the acts since.
“I never had to be in hand-to-hand combat with David Essex for a place in the charts,” he laughs.
“There seemed to be room for all of us in those days. Maybe because pop music was so much more important as the voice of the age.”
Who is going to be the best and worst behaved on the tour?
“Who knows? We all grow up. Though I don’t think I’ve grown up as much as I thought I would. I don’t feel like a 61-year-old.”

Once In a Lifetime 2010 Tour with The Osmonds, David Essex, Leo Sayer and Les McKeown’s Bay City Rollers, Trent FM Arena Nottingham, June 28 2010, £36.50, 0844 8471726