He’s the teaboy who became a platinum selling artist, the boy next door who went global. And with his reputation as the nicest guy in pop, it should come as no surprise that he finds time to speak to Lancashire Life from his holiday. We knew Rick Astley was never gonna let us down.
He calls on the dot of 9am, exactly as he’d said he would, and is every bit as polite and well-spoken as he has always appeared, his squeaky-clean image shining in the Italian sunshine.
Forget tales of rock stars and hotel rooms – there'll be no televisions crashing through windows here – Rick and his wife Lene are like any other middle-aged couple enjoying a break in a gap between work commitments.
It’s not always like that when they get away, though – as well as being an Oscar-nominated film producer, she is also his manager and they sometimes book separate rooms so she can continue to work when he wants to sleep.
The couple met in 1987 when Rick was at the height of his fame and Lene was working at his Danish record label. They got together in 1989, married in 2003 and have a 32-year-old daughter, Emilie, who is a garden designer living in Denmark.
Rick has credited Lene with reviving his career which has not followed anything like a typical trajectory.
Having shot to stardom with Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick gave up his pop career aged 27 in 1993.
He returned in 2000 with an album released on the Continent but not in the UK which he followed with a 2005 collection of cover pop classics.
And then things went a bit weird.
The 2007 internet craze known as Rickrolling propelled him back into the public eye around the world – victims would click an apparently unrelated link and the music video for his biggest hit would start to play. It led to him appearing in a Thanksgiving Day parade in New York and him being voted the Best Act Ever by online voters at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2008.
In 2016 he released the album 50 to mark his 50th birthday. It was made up entirely of songs he had written and recorded and it was his first chart-topping album since 1987.
He spent some time on the retro circuit and last year played to a crowd estimated at about 60,000 at the Glastonbury Festival, as well a more intimate gig with Stockport band Blossoms, covering Smiths songs. He’s also gigged with the Foo Fighters and last year saw the release of his latest album, the Americana-tinged Are We There Yet?
And this summer he was on stage on the Saturday night bill at the TK Maxx presents Lytham Festival along with Lightning Seeds and Madness.
It has been quite a ride.
‘It’s been a mad seven or eight years,’ he says. ‘Some years ago, there’s no way I would have got to play these arenas and be on the bill at these festivals. I realise how lucky I am.
‘It’s so easy to get blase about Glastonbury, I just need to tell myself “Calm down, son, you’ve played it once”. But some of the stuff in the last few years has been amazing.
‘Seven or eight years ago I put a record out and it got a good reception. I’ve done other things over the years which have given me a platform that would not have dreamed of.
‘I was playing the retro circuit and I loved that – part of me yearns for it. I genuinely miss playing with six or seven bands and just playing the big songs.’
Earlier this year he played one of the first test gigs at Manchester’s problem-plagued Co-op Live arena and said: ‘That place is going to be amazing. It's very dark, there’s no ads to distract you when you’re on stage, you can just focus on the audience. It was a real honour to be one of the first bands to set foot on that stage.
‘I love the old arena, too, I’ve played there a lot. I supported Peter Kay there and it became a second home for me.
‘Venues in the north of England has always played second fiddle to some in the south for certain bands coming to the UK but hopefully that is changing.’
Rick was the youngest of four siblings born to Horace and Cynthia Astley in Newton-le-Willows. His parents divorced when he was five and he was brought up by has father and worked for his market garden business when he left school aged 16.
He sang in a church choir from the age of ten and he was drummer for a number of bands as a teenager, most notably FBI who were popular in pubs and clubs and won a number of local competitions.
When the singer left to be a hairdresser, Rick stepped forward and that’s when record producer Pete Waterman spotted them. To overcome his shyness, Rick was persuaded to take a role as a tape operative for Stock, Aitken and Waterman in London where he would also make tea for artists.
Never Gonna Give You Up was Rick’s second single – the first didn’t trouble the charts. It was released in May 1987 and nothing was the same for him again.
The song spent five weeks at number one in the UK where it was the biggest selling single of the year. It reached number one in 25 countries around the world. It won him the 1988 Brit Award for the Best British Single. It has has had more than a billion views on You Tube. The album Whenever You Need Somebody went platinum four times over, with more than 15m sales worldwide.
By the time he stepped away from music just six years later he had sold over 40 million records worldwide.
‘Everything changes overnight when you have a number one, he says. ‘You’re not just in Smash Hits – as it was back then – you're in the tabloids too. Everyone knows you and everyone wants something.
‘I did everything, every interview and everything that was asked, because I thought that was the role – you become not just a singer but part of something else. You are thrust into a different world and it never stopped.
‘It’s just so relentless when you have a hit that big. It was brilliant – that's what I wanted and I loved it but eventually that madness becomes your day job. I sound like I’m complaining and I’m not, but sometimes I did just want to be at home watching Match of the Day.’
He is an old-hand at this – although not always when the delights of Puglia are waiting to be explored – but he chats away like he hasn’t said it all a thousand times before.
‘I packed it all in for a while but I met the promoter Simon Moran at a tiny pub and he asked why I didn’t sing any more and told me to have a think about it. I thought I might want to put my toe back in the water so I did some Sinatra and Bacarach songs and at about that time I was offered the chance to go to Japan.
‘My wife and daughter were very keen to go so they put my arm up my back so we went and I did it and really liked it. I felt enough time had gone by and I had grown up a bit. I got the thrill of it back – singing in front of people is something I really love and I realised I had really missed it.
‘Everything I do now, I do on my terms. I’m aware I used to be a puppet on a string. I did everything then and now I don’t.
‘Everything is different for younger artists today – social media has changed everything – but nothing has changed about being in front of an audience. An audience is an audience – they come to hear music and I know people are there because they know I’ll play that song at the end of the night.’
Rick has lived in Surrey for years but his soft Lancashire vowels are still evident and he’s looking forward to coming back.
‘Lytham is a great festival,’ he says. ‘I’ve played it before and it’s a beautiful place. I get back to Lancashire quite a bit to see family and hang out with the guys from Blossoms in Stockport.
‘Manchester is still a focal point for me – it's where I used to go and where I bought records when I was young.’
