Fact #159597
When:
Short story:
Nik Kershaw enters the UK singles chart with his single One Step Ahead. It will be his last chart entry, stalling at No55.
Full article:
Nik Kershaw : After the big hits stop, it gets to be that you don’t want to be forever associated with what you did. You want people to appreciate what you’re doing now, but that wasn’t really happening. I stopped performing and recording and promoting in 1989. I was just totally fed up with it. I was good at songwriting, but I was never good at the public side of it, so I had this naïve idea that I could just sit at home and write songs and all these famous people would want to record my songs, and I could produce them.
I look back now (August 00) and think, “What the hell was I doing for those ten years?” I wrote hundreds of songs that nobody ever heard, and loads more that people recorded but they never got anywhere. I could have used that time more productively.
I was lucky in a way, though, because some of my things did work. A song I’d written was lying around at Warner-Chappell publishers in 1991 and it got picked up and recorded by Chesney Hawkes for the Roger Daltrey film Buddy’s Song. It went to number one, and also got used in Doc Hollywood with Michael J. Fox.
Then, in 1993, I had written a song, Old Friend, which I sang with Elton John on his album Duets. I’ve also had a song recorded by Bonnie Tyler, produced an album for Let Loose, worked with Ronan from Boyzone and my next project is working with Geri Halliwell.
But at the end of the 90s I had become bored with working my arse off writing things to please everybody else and I suddenly realised what a privilege I’d had before, when I was allowed to write and record my own songs. Luckily, I’m one of those people who was by nature cautious with money, and I’d been given good advice by accountants and lawyers, so I’m financially secure enough not to have to work if I don’t want to.
So I’ve got my own digital studio at home in Essex, and I started to work on some tracks of my own. I didn’t actually realise I was making an alum until the record company people started talking about which tracks they could get on the radio. That album, Fifteen Minutes, came out in April of 1999, and it did well enough for me to tour and start work on another one, which will be out in about February of 2001.
I’ve been lucky on the personal side of things too, because my wife Sherry and I were married before I became successful. In those days I was a no-hope guitarist in a functions band, so I know she loves me for me. Having the hits and everything put some stress on us, and I did go through the mid-life crisis, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the grey hairs coming in when I turned 40, but we’ve got three boys, Rudy (12), Ryan (10) and Dylan (7), who are great. Mind you, I do have to keep them locked out of the studio when I’m trying to work. I’m basically a lazy bastard, and it’s easy to get distracted.
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I look back now (August 00) and think, “What the hell was I doing for those ten years?” I wrote hundreds of songs that nobody ever heard, and loads more that people recorded but they never got anywhere. I could have used that time more productively.
I was lucky in a way, though, because some of my things did work. A song I’d written was lying around at Warner-Chappell publishers in 1991 and it got picked up and recorded by Chesney Hawkes for the Roger Daltrey film Buddy’s Song. It went to number one, and also got used in Doc Hollywood with Michael J. Fox.
Then, in 1993, I had written a song, Old Friend, which I sang with Elton John on his album Duets. I’ve also had a song recorded by Bonnie Tyler, produced an album for Let Loose, worked with Ronan from Boyzone and my next project is working with Geri Halliwell.
But at the end of the 90s I had become bored with working my arse off writing things to please everybody else and I suddenly realised what a privilege I’d had before, when I was allowed to write and record my own songs. Luckily, I’m one of those people who was by nature cautious with money, and I’d been given good advice by accountants and lawyers, so I’m financially secure enough not to have to work if I don’t want to.
So I’ve got my own digital studio at home in Essex, and I started to work on some tracks of my own. I didn’t actually realise I was making an alum until the record company people started talking about which tracks they could get on the radio. That album, Fifteen Minutes, came out in April of 1999, and it did well enough for me to tour and start work on another one, which will be out in about February of 2001.
I’ve been lucky on the personal side of things too, because my wife Sherry and I were married before I became successful. In those days I was a no-hope guitarist in a functions band, so I know she loves me for me. Having the hits and everything put some stress on us, and I did go through the mid-life crisis, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the grey hairs coming in when I turned 40, but we’ve got three boys, Rudy (12), Ryan (10) and Dylan (7), who are great. Mind you, I do have to keep them locked out of the studio when I’m trying to work. I’m basically a lazy bastard, and it’s easy to get distracted.