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Paul Young: 'A weird dream kicked off my solo career'

paul young - Shutterstock
paul young - Shutterstock

Paul Young was born in Luton in 1956. In the 1970s, he was the frontman of the bands Kat Kool & the Kool Kats, Streetband, and the Q-Tips, before achieving meteoric success when he went solo in 1983. His first solo album, No Parlez, was a triple platinum hit, and he went on to record eight more albums.

Young met his wife, Stacey, in 1983 and they married in 1987. Stacey passed away in January 2018 from brain cancer at the age of 52. Young now lives in Bedfordshire and regularly sees his three children, Levi, 35, Layla, 27, and Grady, 26.

Best career decision you ever made?

Going solo. I wanted to give the Q-Tips a more modern sound and they wanted to stay quite retro. So that was an indication that maybe it was time for me to change. Then it was just like everything pointed to it. We used to stay in really cheap hotels with the Q-Tips and went to one in Sheffield where there were three mangy dogs – one of which was blind and losing its hair. That night, I had a dream that the dog was looking at me and stopping me from speaking. In the dream, I was saying I wanted to go solo, but the dog was stopping me saying it. I took that as a sign.

And there was another thing. I’m not really big on horoscopes, but in the Evening Standard mine kept saying: “You are approaching the time when you will have to make one of the most important decisions in your life.” So all these things were coming into alignment and I thought: “I’ve got to do it.”

Best moment in your career so far?

Doing This Is Your Life in 2001. I’ve not really looked back at what I’ve done, but that’s where you go: “Jeez, I’ve come a long way.”

Best advice you’ve ever been given?

I remember meeting Billy Connolly years ago in an airport lounge. He said to picture yourself at the bow of a ship and you’re forcing your way through that sea, and that’s where your life is going. Looking back does you no good at all.

Best thing about finding fame in your 20s?

If it had happened when I was a teenager, I might have been quite reckless and selfish, but I was in my mid-20s, so it didn’t really go to my head. I’d think, well, I’m the same performer I was in the Q-Tips, but now they’re all screaming – they didn’t scream at the Q-Tips shows, so it’s not anything I’m doing or the person I am. They’ve been affected by the hype. The manager and the keyboard player from the Q-tips came with me, too. So because they knew me before the fame, we all tended to laugh at things that happened. We still played practical jokes on each other – that sort of thing – to keep it real.

In your life, who has been the best influence on you?

My dad kept me grounded. He always worried that I wasn’t saving any money in the early days. He’s a very practical man. My bank account was always dwindling to near zero for quite a long time before success came. I was signing on and off the dole in the early days when the work would dry up. The Q-Tips finally started to earn decent money towards the end, because we got a great reputation. But my dad influenced me and made me more pragmatic.

Best thing about being a dad?

Those lovely early years, taking them to Disneyland – that kind of thing. When Levi was very young, though, I was going away for maybe six or nine months at a time, with only the ­occ­asional visit back home. That was quite tough.

We all keep in constant touch with each other now. Because they’re grown up, they are fairly self-sufficient, but obviously we’re a support for each other. When we have family get-togethers and things like that, it’s always the four children [including Jude, from ­Stacey’s relationship when she and Young were separated for three years from 2006 to 2009].

Worst habit?

It used to be lateness. I used to be awful. I could be hours late if I had to drive somewhere. So the satnav has been a godsend.

Worst thing in your house?

The mess. I am going to be building a ­little home studio at the bottom of the garden, but in the meantime, all the boxes are in one bedroom and there’s a handful of things I can’t find – really important things. I had to buy another Sky broadband box, for instance. And I can’t find the keyboard and the mouse for my iMac, either, so I can’t switch it on and use it. It’s annoying the hell out of me.

Worst moment in your career?

I used to do a lot of knee slides off the stage, like footballers do. We played two nights at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney, and on the first night, the stage got so sticky that I couldn’t slide along it. So, naively, one of the road crew hired an industrial cleaner, who put all these products on it. So the stage was like an ice rink on the second night and I slid off it and fell onto some scaffolding, which put two ribs out of position. I was on elephant-stunning painkillers to get through the next 10 days of shows in Los Angeles. I would have to lie down after each show and the ­chiropractor would push the ribs back into place, because they’d shifted. It was constant agony.

Worst thing about showbiz in the 1980s?

The press intrusion. They seemed to have no filter. They could turn on you on a sixpence – and love you one ­minute and hate you the next. However, not only has that changed because of certain restrictions regarding ­privacy, but I’m also at an age now where people seem to treat me a bit more like a gentleman, rather than some stupid pop star.

The absolute worst

The thing that always upsets me the most is when I see or hear on the news about the violence and muggings on old people. I just think that’s the lowest of the low.

Paul Young is touring with Go West at UK venues throughout May (gowest.org.uk/tour.htm). Tickets are available now