How 80s star Rick Astley fell in love with singing Never Gonna Give You Up again

Rick Astley was just 19 when he recorded a song that would change his life. Fast forward eight years and he retired from music, bitter and burnt out. Now the 80s icon is back and bringing the hits that made him famous to Melbourne.

On New Year’s Day 1987, a 19-year-old named Rick Astley recorded the song that would change — and finance — the rest of his life: the effervescent, synthesised ’80s classic Never Gonna Give You Up.

Three decades and plenty of subsequent songs later, it remains the hit that continues to define him.

“I see it in a different way now, that song,” Astley, now 53, says.

“It is part of my DNA, but it’s also something else.”

Rick Astley says retiring in his twenties set him up for a major comeback. Pic: supplied

The track wasn’t released until July that same year, but it made Astley an overnight success, hitting number one in 25 countries and becoming that year’s highest-selling single in his native UK.

“I was very lucky,” Astley says.

“(But) the money side of it changes your life. It’s daft to ignore it. Five or six years of success at that time changes you, and you want to change.”

In those years, Astley — along with Donna Summer, Bananarama and Australian actors turned pop artists Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan — was one of the most bankable singers working with production outfit Stock Aitken Waterman.

After that first flush of success, he would go on to release a streak of global hits that included Together Forever, Whenever You Need Somebody and She Wants to Dance With Me.

Astley moved to another label in 1990, and while first song Cry for Help was another big hit, success soon dried up.

“Pop music is like that, it’s all or nothing,” he says.

“You’re on the TV all the time, or you’re done.”

And “pop music” was part of the problem.

The press had pegged Astley as Stock Aitken Waterman’s puppet, so he was eager to shed his boy-next door pop persona and try making it as a serious soul artist.

Audiences weren’t into it.

After releasing an adult contemporary album in 1993 and disenchanted by years of negative press and poor chart performance, he retired from music, bitter and burnt out. He was 27.

“I didn’t have the energy or desire for it,” Astley explains.

“I’d had enough; people had probably had enough of me. So I quit.”

He cited family commitments at the time — not the entire truth but still a contributing factor.

“I’d become a dad at that point. I was happy doing other things.”

He would spend the next decade out of the public eye raising his daughter Emilie before eventually having another crack at making music.

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Rick Astley had a No.1 album at 50. Picture: Rankin

Rick with Kylie at her 50th birthday.

Now 53, Astley has had back-to-back hit albums in the UK and more importantly, has fallen in love with music again.

“I had a long break and I think that’s why I can sing Never Gonna Give You Up now and still be sane. There were years and years when I didn’t do it. I’d only sing those songs at real close friends’ weddings.”

Speaking of which, Astley sang the hit at Minogue’s 50th birthday celebration last year, and she in turn joined Astley for a duet of her own 80s hit I Should Be So Lucky.

“I thought it’d be like a wax works of all the famous people from the last 30 years and it wasn’t,” Astley says of the party.

“It wasn’t a glitterati, look-at-all-the-famous-people-I-know thing, which was really nice. She was having a great time; she got up and sang a bit. She’s one of the good ones. She must be. She’s lasted this long.”

At the other extreme, Astley also recently sang his signature song with US rock band Foo Fighters after the band’s frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl invited him onstage in Japan.

“I didn’t realise the band had learnt the song because they’d played it on James Corden’s show. So I’m side of stage and Dave comes over and gives me a hug and introduces himself. Twenty minutes later in front of 60,000 people he says in my ear ‘OK, we’re doing your tune, but we’re doing it a bit like (Nirvana’s) Smells Like Teen Spirit, get on.’ I’d had a few beers, so I just screamed at the audience: ‘Come on, you motherf---ers!’”

Rick Astley during a recent Australian tour. He’ll return with Norway’s a-ha next year. Pic: Supplied

It’s another in a long line of surprising ways that the legacy of Never Gonna Give You Up has made itself known to Astley.

He long ago come to terms with “Rickrolling”, an online prank wherein people click on a link expecting one thing and are jolted when the song’s film clip pops up instead.

Astley is in on the joke — and happy to be its punchline, too.

“I understand the Rickrolling thing would crush some artists. They’d feel used, or that it made the song seem petty. If I’m brutally honest, I feel like ‘Thank god some young kids know who I am and they’ve heard that song.’”

He is hoping some of those younger faces make up the audience when he returns to Australia to play live shows with fellow ’80s favourites a-ha early next year.

He’ll be playing songs from recent albums 50 and Beautiful Life, and says he’ll jump on drums while singing a cover of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell to mix things up.

But he knows what most fans are really coming to hear him sing, and he will oblige.

“I didn’t see (my early songs) as cool at the time,” Astley says.

“I was never cool and I knew it. When Never Gonna Give You Up was a hit, INXS were just starting to become enormous. Michael Hutchence was a cool dude, I just wasn’t. I looked about 12 years old and I sang pop love songs. That doesn’t make you cool.”

But Astley long ago stopped concerning himself with looking cool; he reckons trying is more trouble than it worth.

“Don’t get me wrong, I would have taken being cool. But it’s a bit of a millstone around your neck. You’ve got to keep it up for the rest of your life. People don’t expect me to turn up looking like a rock star, which is great, because I don’t. And surely even they just want to wear a tracksuit sometimes.”

A-HA AND RICK ASTLEY, PSEUDO ECHO AND I KNOW LEOPARD:

A DAY ON THE GREEN SHOWS:

Kings Park and Botanic Garden Perth Feb 19

Rochford Wines Yarra Valley Vic Feb 22

Bimbadgen Hunter NSW Valley Feb 29

Sirromet Wines Mount Cotton March 1

(Pseudo Echo not playing Perth)

A-HA AND RICK ASTLEY:

Margaret Court Arena Melbourne Feb 23

ICC Sydney Feb 26.