Rick Astley rolls back the years: ‘Even when I had a No 1 in the US, it didn’t make me cool’

Born in Lancashire in 1966, Rick Astley is a pop singer. He started his career as a teaboy at the music production company Stock Aitken Waterman before being recognised for his own musical talents. His 1987 debut album, Whenever You Need Somebody, sold 15.2m copies worldwide and featured the track Never Gonna Give You Up – a mega hit single that made him a household name not only in the 1980s but into the new millennium, too: the song became an internet phenomenon in 2007. He has released eight studio albums and his new single, Dippin’ My Feet, is out now.

There’s some serious shoulders going on here. Clothes were a bit of a weird thing for me at the time as I’d had a massive hit – No 1 for five weeks, the biggest song that year – but nobody had come to me and said: “Don’t worry, you’ll get a bit of cash in your account soon.” At this point I didn’t have my own money to buy anything. There’s every chance that I got that outfit from a stylist who had pulled it out for a photo session.

This was taken a few months into the madness of Never Gonna Give You Up. It was intense doing all the shoots and promo for TV and radio, but you get used to it quickly. That said, I wasn’t super-comfortable in front of the camera and I’m still not now. I wasn’t a pop star. I was a guy with a quiff in a jacket that was probably a bit too big for him, singing a pop song that I didn’t write.

Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) made Never Gonna Give You Up in 1986 and it was released in the summer of 1987. The record label, RCA, had stalled on putting it out because they weren’t 100% sure that I was compatible with the song. They weren’t convinced by my voice or the way I looked. Because of that, there was no grand plan about how I should be launched into the world – it was left up to me. If you look at the video for Never Gonna Give You Up – the raincoat, stripy jumper, turtleneck, the striped T-shirt, blazer, chinos, the tatty shoes – all of those items were mine. I turned up to the shoot with a black bin bag and that was it.

Perhaps the fact that I looked so naive was part of the appeal. My dancing in the video is like that of some 12-year-old kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing, even though I’d been around in the SAW studios for a year, hanging out and making tea, and working my demos at night. There’s a certain charm to that honesty. There are stars like David Bowie and Prince who have beamed in from another planet, but there’s an appeal in the type of artist where the audience thinks: I could have gone to school with him.

Even when I had a No 1 in the US, it didn’t make me cool. I was still “that tosspot who sings that song”. I was never cool when I was younger – even though, like every teenager, I wanted to be. Growing up in Newton-le-Willows, I was in a band at school, playing drums and singing. We were not considered popular, but we won the battle of the bands, so we got to play at the school Valentine’s disco and all of a sudden there was a shift. Until that moment, 90% of the students didn’t know I existed, but after the disco quite a lot of them did. That’s what rock’n’roll and pop music does. It was a gamechanger in terms of my perceptions of me.

After that I carried on playing in bands, mainly gigging in pubs down the high street. We got a following and would fill the room on a Tuesday night when the landlord normally had nobody drinking. When I went to London and signed my first deal with SAW, I lost touch with my home town as my career took off so fast. I’m eternally grateful that I had that success but I often wonder if it would have been better to have had a No 22 with my first song, just so I got a handle on going from obscurity to that level of fame.

Thankfully, I never had the type of hysteria that an act like Bros had in the 80s. There were no girls tearing the clothes off my back. I wasn’t particularly sexy. People use the word “pinup” but I wasn’t one before I had a hit record. It’s nice to know that people had a poster of me on their wall, but it was the fame and the songs that made me desirable, not what I looked like.

I still think that holds true today. I’m 57, I’ve still got a quiff, my hair is still kind of reddish and I know that when someone approaches me, they’re connecting to a level of nostalgia, a part of their youth. Naturally, when I play shows now, my audience are of a certain age. But every now and then I see young people in the crowd and I stop the band and say: “Hang on, spotlight on row four. What are you doing here?” Sometimes I get them up on stage and they do the Rick Astley shuffle while we play Never Gonna Give You Up. I’ve realised it’s better to take the piss yourself before anyone else gets a chance to.

A friend of mine was the first person to “Rickroll” me. I was on holiday on the Amalfi coast and I got an email with a link in it. I clicked on it and a video started to play, something I had no interest in, and I wondered what was happening. Then, boom! The video for Never Gonna Give You Up came on. I was fooled into watching my own video. I sent him an email saying: “And what are you doing?” He replied with another link, and the same thing happened. I got Rickrolled again. So I called him to ask what was going on. He explained it was a new thing kicking around the internet, people were tricking friends into clicking on a link of my song. Ever since, Rickrolling has come and gone in popularity. I know some artists would be horrified by having one of their songs turn into a prank, but I think it’s great. I quit performing for a long time to be with my family and that time out gave me perspective.

Having a hit that will not die has opened up all sorts of opportunities: I’ve played songs by the Smiths on stage with Blossoms in Manchester, I’ve sung Frank Sinatra at the Albert Hall and I even got to don a black suit and sing Elvis songs at a charity event in LA. I’ve made a couple of records that have done well in the past few years, too. Rickrolling has kept me in the public’s consciousness.

That period in the 80s has given me so much life. It may sound crass, and I don’t want to belittle the music, but I got to be a pop star and travel the world like an idiot, and I now live in a nice home because of it. Beyond a bit of therapy here and there, I came out of the experience relatively unscarred, and I have a wonderful life. I even own my own coat now.