Nik Kershaw
How did it all start for Nik Kershaw? I started getting into music and playing music when I was about 13 or 14 and then it was just a case of being in school bands, after which I was in a functions band for about three years which was great training, playing everything from Irving Berlin to the Birdie Song but we eventually ran out of work so I spent about a year on the dole making demos. I hawked them around all the record companies and just got nowhere. I’ve still got all my rejection slips. As almost a last resort I advertised for management in Melody Maker and I got a call from a fella calling himself Mickey Modern who took me from there to getting a record deal and off I went. How long until the first single came out? Not that long, I don’t think. I think it was the beginning of 83 I signed the deal, we were making the album in the summer of that year and I think ‘I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” came out in September. It wasn’t an immediate hit was it? It came and went until the beginning of 84 when the rollercoaster really started with ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’ Yes. They reissued it in the Summer of 84. In those days there was a different deal really because record companies invested in artists and they built careers. So when we first released it and it only got to number 47 or whatever that wasn’t deemed to be a failure. It was a step in the right direction. And you did your first Top of the Pops, how did you deal with that? That was pretty surreal, ending up on a programme that I had watched religiously every Thursday night since I was about 14 or 15. I don’t remember much about it except for getting stopped by the police for jumping some traffic lights. I was in a little hire car because I didn’t have any money and it was quite interesting trying to explain to the police where I was going. But what everyone says about doing Top of the Pops is that when you watch it on telly you see all these masses of people in the studio but when you get there it’s about the size of my front room and there about ten people milling about. With the cameras nearly chopping their heads off. So after the reissue of ‘I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ got to number two, your second album was released, The Riddle - a multi-platinum album - these must have been amazing times for a young man. Yes although I wasn’t that young, I was 26. But yes, my feet almost literally didn’t touch the ground for two years. It was incredibly exciting and rewarding - all the good things but it was also terrifying because no-one was really in control of anything. I wasn’t in control of my own image I wasn’t in control of the press it just snowballed, it had a momentum of it own. We released two albums in nine months which was a pretty nuts thing to do. I didn’t
Nik Kershaw has enjoyed huge success as both a performer and song-writer with solo hits with such as Wouldn’t It Be Good and I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, while penning hits for artists such as Chesney Hawkes, Let Loose and The Hollies. We attempt to solve the riddle...
