Matt Goss

January 2015

Matt Goss returned to Nottingham for the first time in 27 years with a show that was markedly different from his days with boy band phenomenon Bros.
The 46-year-old brought his Las Vegas show The Gossy Room to the Alea Casino last night, a sold out concert in front of just 100 people.
“Bros first broke in this neck of the woods so it’s good to be back up here; I don’t get up here often,” he told the Post.
It was an intimate setting for a man who played to 80,000 at Wembley Stadium in 1989, a year after Bros came to the Royal Concert Hall.
“It’s probably the smallest show of my career,” said Goss, who has been playing Ceasars Palace in Vegas every weekend for the past six years, described by the LA Times as “the best new act in Vegas.”
“Every room matters, I learned that from Caesars. No matter where I am I still perform to my best, so every person knows I’m not dialling it in,” he said, meaning ‘going through the motions’.
“I still sing from the deepest part of my heart.”
With a nine-piece band, including a horn section and backing singers, Goss ran through a 90-minute set of big band, swing and lounge jazz, made famous by the Rat Pack in Vegas during the Sixties. It included songs from his solo album, Life You Imagine.
Fans had paid £75, although that included a three-course meal and a chance to meet him.
Earlier this week Goss, who described himself as “essentially a soul singer”, sold out the 2,200 capacity London Palladium.
“My granddad loved Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr,” said the Londoner of his shift from pop to crooning.
“When I was in Bros, I was lucky enough to know Liza Minnelli and she invited me to the Royal Albert Hall when Sinatra played there with Sammy. I met them briefly. It was amazing.”
That memory stuck with him throughout the break-up of Bros in 1992 and his solo pop/dance career in the mid-Nineties, which included the hits If You Were Here Tonight, The Key and I'm Coming With Ya.
The Vegas shows is planned to run to its tenth year.
“Caesars is my second home,” he said, although his first is in Los Angeles, where he lives alone.
“I’d love to met someone and have a family and share my life with someone. I just have to meet the right woman,” he revealed.
Goss keeps in shape by boxing.
“I’ve spar three times a week and have done for the past 14 years,” he said.
“And I drink tons of water. I meditate as well.”
He’s not in touch with twin brother Luke. When asked what he’s up to he said: “I’ve no idea.”
But added: “I know he makes movies. He does very well as an actor.”
His sibling had roles in Blade II, Hellboy II and Tekken, as well as stage musicals. He was at the Theatre Royal in Grease in 1998.
The often forgotten third member of Bros, who sold 17 million records including the singles I Owe You Nothing, When Will I Be Famous? and Drop The Boy, is Craig Logan.
“Craig’s a very successful music manager, so there is absolutely life after Bros.”
Although being tagged as ‘Matt Goss from Bros’ annoys him.
“I’ve been at Caesars Palace way longer than I was in Bros. I’ve very proud of those days, they are some of the best memories of life but it was just part of my career.
“It amazes me to read: Matt Goss from Bros. It’s such a lazy headline. People know who I am. You don’t have to constantly premise it.”
Along with the Vegas show, he is working on two new albums, one with Gloria Estefan’s husband Emilio, and a Christmas album.
He recently launched a free smartphone app, may be doing a film and will publish a children’s book in time for Christmas.
“There are rumblings of me playing Wembley,” he added.
“For me to go back there would truly be a dream. Especially as it was the last show that we did as Bros. That was a great way to go out.”

The Illusionists: Dan Sperry

May 2013

I WAS four years old when my grandparents took me to see a David Copperfield show in Minnesota, where I grew up. It’s a mid-western state right up by Canada where it’s all hockey, fishing and that kind of thing.
I can still roughly remember him getting cut in half as part of an escape that supposedly goes wrong. I thought I had just seen a guy die.
It was my first non-clown, non-balloon twister experience of a show. My brain hadn’t developed to understand the idea of magic yet.
You could say what were my grandparents thinking taking a four-year-old to a show like that but nobody knew Copperfield would be opening with that.
That was really the beginning for me; the reason why I do this for a living now.
I was doing birthday parties, I was going to libraries and doing school assemblies when I was a teenager but I kept it away from my friends. I didn’t feel that it was necessary to force it on them.
It was cool though because I got pulled out of school quite a bit to go and perform at other schools.
I always knew I was going to do it for a career, though my parents didn’t. They were telling me ‘you’ve got to have something to fall back on, this isn’t a real career!’ My dad is a partner in a business and my mom works in retail. So I went to university just to appease them. I studied digital art in Chicago.
It was during that time that I was offered tours and shows in inner city schools in Chicago where eight-year-olds were throwing gang signs at me. I had a buddy of mine who was a stripper and he’d come with me carrying a gun. It was a learning experience, that’s for sure.
I started filling in for another magician in Vegas when he was on vacation and eventually the producer said ‘how about we just don’t bring him back and you stay on?’
That’s when I moved to Vegas. It was about seven years ago. A couple of years after that was when YouTube really took off and I started throwing videos on there and getting a lot of attention.
Just before then I did a birthday party for Johnny Depp at a club in Los Angeles called the Magic Castle. It was one of his kids’ birthdays and he’d hired out the whole place. But we didn’t get to talk to him because they said ‘you’ve got to be professional’.
I started describing myself as ‘the anti-conjuror’ to give myself a title when I was opening for bands in rock clubs. If I was billed as ‘magician Dan Sperry’ people would think ‘what the hell is this?’ I didn’t want to be immediately disliked because I was a magician.
I’ve used it for years now and it’s worked. And I’ve trademarked it.
I’m not offended that I’m described as Marilyn Manson meets David Copperfield. It was used for a TV show and it’s kind of stuck. I guess it’s an easy way to describe what I do. I do magic tricks and the presentation style is a little shock and gore and craziness but there is a lot of dark humour. It’s not to offend; it’s just silly.
I went on America’s Got Talent to publicise what I do. I knew I wasn’t going to win. I looked at it as a great free TV commercial.
We did The Jonathan Ross Show this week and I was sat next to Yoko Ono in the Green Room the whole time but we didn’t speak to each other. I took a look at her and she took a look at me and I think internally we both just thought ‘Nah!’

The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible UK tour comes to the Royal Concert Hall on Wednesday, October 2. For tickets call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk. Watch videos from the show at www.theillusionistslive.com.
Their appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show is repeated on ITV1 on Saturday, May 11.

Gladys Knight

As a friend of the Jackson family, Gladys Knight was hit harder than most by The King of Pop's death but it was "God's plan" she says. Ahead of her farewell show at the Trent FM Arena next month SIMON WILSON spoke to the Empress of Soul.



IT is 5am in Las Vegas but Gladys Knight isn't ending her evening in the city that never sleeps with a round of press interviews. "You know what? I'm an early riser," says the 65-year-old, dubbed the Empress of Soul.
"I've been to bed but I wake up around two or three. I know that's crazy but I got this way when I first had my kids – waking up for the feeding. I just kept it going.
"I'm a morning girl. Plus, I'm an insomniac."
Though she was born in Atlanta, Georgia, Vegas has been home to Knight for more than 30 years.
And for the past four years she has been off the world touring circuit, committing to a residency at the Flamingo Hotel & Casino in her adopted home city.
"It was a fantastic experience. It was two shows a night to start with, five nights a week, every week for four-and-half years. The only time I was out was when I was sick."
Did she prefer that to being on the road?

"I didn't mind it, you know, because I've been flipping and flopping this road for.... (laughs) OK people go ahead and ask me 'how old are you?"
37?
"(Laughs) Yeah, right.
"But it had been a long time so it was enjoyable. You get to know your family again, you get to watch your grandchildren grow up and I got to spend time with my husband."
But next month she'll be on the road once again bringing the same show to the UK.
"It's the same show to some degree," says the great grandmother.
"When you have an intimate setting like Vegas, you can talk a lot and you can shake hands with people. If you're in an arena it's a little bit less intimate so you have to reach them with a little more... how can I put it?... energy, maybe. And production and stuff like that.
"So that will be the difference. But I love to talk so that will be difficult."
I know you're a great-grandmother but why say goodbye on this tour? There's still performance life in you, isn't there?
"I would like to think so but we can't take things for granted. Tomorrow you're never promised. I wouldn't want to go out of this business – or even life – without saying goodbye."
She's determined it won't be the first of a few farewell tours.
"I've never appreciated in our industry where people would retire and then the next month they're back."
She doesn't rule out performing again but that will be strictly special occasions.
"Say, for instance, Elton and I are friends and if he asked me to do a benefit with him I would."
Joining her on the tour will be a number of surprise guests. Dionne Warwick, who Knight sang with on the 1985 hit That's What Friends Are For, has been confirmed to appear in Manchester (I guess that's no surprise now).
No-one has been lined up for the Nottingham date as yet but Tito Jackson will be opening all of the shows on the seven-city tour with his 14-piece band The Funk Brothers. His set will include a tribute to brother Michael.
Knight and the Jackson family have been friends since the early sixties. She introduced the Jackson 5, of which Tito was a founder member, to Motown label boss Berry Gordy.
"I watched those kids grow, from when they were really, really little kids," she says.
"And as they got older they got to be friends with my kids. So I know the family very well. Katherine is such a wonderful woman to me. I just love her to death."
Knight, a Mormon, uses an unusual phrase to describe Michael Jackson's death when I ask how she reacted to it.
"It really was sad in my heart for Michael's homegoing. But it's not our plan. That belongs to God. And as much as we'll miss him... we should be joyful for him that he's not in pain anymore.
"And he doesn't have people speculating about his life...well, you know, they still do."
Now they're speculating about his death.
"I know, you know. It's just really sad that our world, not just our country but our world has come to (view) gossip and speculation as what the news is all about rather than facts.
"The integrity has gone out of the news industry."

Alerted that my time is almost up and not wanting to end on a downer, I ask how Gladys Knight feels about the label Empress of Soul.
"Is that what they call me?" she laughs, like she's never heard it before.
"Work on it, work on it!" she adds, hysterically.
"That people would think of me that way, I love it!"
She invites me to say hello at next month's concert (they usually do) and says how much she's looking forward to it – which they always do but Knight has a very good, if bizarre, reason.
"I love shopping over there," she hollers.
"And I hate shopping!"