Young love lives forever
The Eighties hitmaker on his latest Irish tour
PAUL Young is busy packing his suitcase again for yet another stint on the road. It’s a tour that will take him to Ireland at the end of next month where he’ll be performing new songs from his latest album Behind The Lens and, of course, a heap of old favourites and chart-topping hits that he never tires of.
The Eighties legend and heart-throb who adorned so many bedroom walls in the days of Smash Hits might have hair that’s a bit greyer and a few more wrinkles but apart from that he’s in fine fettle still, entering into that national treasure stage.
‘I’m getting that feedback, yes,’ he says, laughing. ‘But it’s not through anything I’ve done apart from the fact that I’m still around and I am a bit of a cheeky chappy.
‘I always say I’m not as squeaky clean as Cliff Richard but not as bad as Motorhead. I am not that offensive, I do like to enjoy myself and I love music.’
Behind the Lens is an album that shows Young has still got what it takes to be a champion of that popsoul sound but it also shows his versatility as an artist, with that incredible voice lending itself to big ballads, love songs and even a hint of country.
He is coming to Ireland for three seated shows starting with Cork Opera House on February 27, University Concert Hall, Limerick on February 28 and Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre on February 29. The album was collected during lockdown as Paul had time to go through recordings he’d done in the past that had fallen by the wayside.
‘I couldn’t get into a studio because I am nog very good with home studios on my own and I couldn’t get an engineer out and I couldn’t do any live work.
‘But I had lots of little projects and so I went through the recordings and out of those I was thinking ‘this song works and the other two don’t.’ I worked with a German band who were Robert Palmer’s last band. I had written some songs in Nashville that I had as demos. So I put all my favourites into a folder and there was enough to make an album’Behind the Lens then became his latest Paul Young project but last year he also released another album, Seven, with Los Pacaminos, his Tex Mex side project.
‘I am still actively writing and recording in two different genres and it’s great because it means I am not doing the same thing all the time,’ Young says. ‘I had a text conversion with Rick Astley the other day and you know he has a band that he plays drums in when he’s not doing his solo stuff.
‘So it’s really nice to be able to get away from what you’re known for to do something different. I try and keep the writing styles and the recording styles away from each other so there is a definite difference between what they do and what I do as a solo performer. With Los Pacaminos I am playing and touring with my friends and it’s wonderful - it’s very low budget stuff so I drive a lot of miles when we tour.
And then when I do the Paul Young solo stuff and everyone starts to sing along, what could be better than that.
‘Los Pacaminos is laid back and relaxed with Paul Young I have to be a bit more professional.’
Paul has also written a book about his No Parlez years and his incredible rise to fame in the early Eighties. He recently did a tour to promote the book where he talked about his life and did a few acoustic songs too but he is looking forward to bringing the full big band back to Ireland for a proper series of live shows.
‘I grew to enjoy the book tour,’ he says. ‘In the beginning when you are doing something for the first time, you worry that it isn’t quite right but then I got it down to a fine art.
‘I like to chop and change and I am looking forward to these full band shows. And I would like to bring Los Pacaminos to Ireland too.’
Not bad for a man who became a singer almost accidentally while practising his guitar in his bedroom in Luton.
‘I always listened to the radio and I did have piano lessons and I took a few basic exams so I started to understand what was going on with music and then I picked up the guitar and enjoyed that more.’
He started playing bass and then learning guitar too but began singing along as he was learning tracks in his bedroom.
‘ I enjoyed the singing. I was a bass player in two local bands for about three or four years but in the second band I started to get a little section in the middle of the show where I could sing three or four songs and the other singer went off and spoke to girls, I suppose.
‘I got to really enjoy that and I felt I would rather be a singer. They wouldn’t let me so when a band from London approached me who had heard a tape of me and asked em to join as their singer that was it.’
Then came hit after hit from Common People and Wherever I Lay My Hat, I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down, Senza Una Donna and so many more. Paul says he never tires of singing, especially when the audience sings with him.
‘Every Time You Go Away is always great fun because it has that lovely opening line and everyone in the audience knows it is and there’s a big response. It has a great melody. It is a ballad but everyone loves to sing along with it and you can end a show on it as it works really well. It has a dynamic feel.’
RECENTLY Young has become engaged again to Lorna whom he met through a mutual friend. His first wife Stacey, the mother of his children, passed away in 2018 after suffering from brain cancer for two years. And Young says he is surprised that he found love with Lorna.
‘I wasn’t expecting it to happen — neither of us were but it came as a surprise that we got on so well and so quickly,’ he says.
‘We lived near each other but we didn’t know each other — we had one person in common and he said “you should meet Lorna because she is in a very similar situation to you and if nothing else you have that in common” but it turned out to be much more than that.’
And other good news is that Young is now a glamorous grandad too.
‘It’s great, my granddaughter is just a year old and it’s lovely,’ he says.
It looks like Paul Young has plenty of love songs that are still to be written.
Paul Young plays Cork Opera House on February 27, University Concert Hall, Limerick on February 28 and Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre on February 29. Tickets are available now from ticketmaster.ie