As one of the Eighties’ biggest pop stars, Nik Kershaw still holds a special place in many people’s hearts. But not in Sir Elton John’s, apparently…
At the height of his fame in 1985, Nik performed alongside Elton at LiveAid, played guitar on his hit Nikita, and the pair even recorded a duet together.
But Nik, a guest at Elton’s wedding to David Furnish in 2005, fears he might not be as popular with the music legend after falling down his gifts list.
“You know where you are with Elton depending on what happens at Christmas,” explains Nik.
“I used to get a Fortnum and Mason hamper with Cristal champagne.
“A few years later I started getting just a bottle of champagne. Then it was a personally written Christmas card, then a Christmas card that wasn’t personally written. Then last year I got f*** all.
“It was the first Christmas I didn’t get anything from Elton. So I feel I’ve slipped down the ladder.”
It is a feeling he has had before. After bursting on to the pop scene in 1984, Nik became a global hit, enjoying more weeks in the UK charts than any other solo artist over the next two years.
During that time he had two albums and eight top 40 singles, including I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me.
But just as quickly as he’d arrived, he disappeared, with his next albums flopping.
It is something Nik, now 64, and about to embark on his first UK tour in 11 years, is surprisingly candid about.
“You can drive yourself nuts thinking about that kind of thing,” he says.
“I never thought about why people were buying the records until they weren’t anymore. Maybe the new songs didn’t have the same appeal.
“I had two albums in nine months which was pretty nuts, then the third album I produced myself and I got a bit up my own backside doing that.”
Nik says he was not “very good” at being on TV and promoting himself, adding: “My management kept saying, ‘You’ve got to do celebrity f***ing washing up or whatever’. I never did.”
He wonders if his sudden rise to fame sparked his “massive imposter syndrome”, never believing he was
as good as his record sales proved.
Nik says: “I’d 25 years with nobody paying attention to me and all of a sudden everyone wanted a piece of me.” He says it was one of the reasons why he famously forgot the words to Wouldn’t It Be Good at LiveAid.
Nik recalls: “I got nervous before gigs, but this was absolutely terrifying.
“I forgot the words because I was near the end of the gig and I relaxed.
“Then all of a sudden there was a little bloke on my shoulder saying, ‘You don’t know the words to the end of the song’. And I didn’t.”
He says it took 10 years to find the courage to watch the gig, adding: “But I have fond memories of those years. My one regret is I didn’t stop to enjoy the moment more.” The son of an opera singer mother and flautist father, Nik grew up in Ipswich, Suffolk, and taught himself to play the guitar.
He left school before finishing his A-levels and worked at a benefits office while playing in local bands.
Nik was married to his first wife, Canadian singer Sheri Kershaw, when Wouldn’t It Be Good hit No4 in 1984.
But he did not indulge in pop excesses, saying: “I was quite boring. My wife came with me most places.
“Drugs, I had a little go on most, but didn’t get on with any.” It was not until after he had left the limelight that Nik got his first No1, writing The One and Only for Chesney Hawkes in 1991.
But did he regret giving it to Chesney instead of singing it himself?
He says: “Oh no, never. I stopped performing in 1989. I wanted to stay at home, write songs and watch my family grow up.”
Nik, who has three grown-up children, remarried in 2009 to wife Sarah, with whom he has son Theo, 12, and step-daughter Renee.
He says: “I’m older than Stonehenge as far as Theo’s concerned. I’ll be 70 when he’s 18, that’s the terrifying number.
“He’s aware of it all and knows my songs and he comes to my gigs. He’ll sit in the backstage really bored.”
But Theo shares his dad’s love of music. Nik says: “I’m encouraging him to buy musical instruments and get recording equipment. He mostly
plays drums. He might follow in my footsteps.” Nik begins his No Glitz, Just Hitz tour in the autumn, when fans will hear him play his songs without him running around the stage.
He says: “I can’t run around any more and have enough breath to sing.
“I don’t know why I ran around so much, I think I was trying to make up for my inadequacies. I was clueless.
“Now I know people have come to hear and sing the songs.
“There was a time when I did get bored of playing the same old songs, especially when I had new material.
“But I’ve come to acknowledge they’ve been really good to me and enabled me to do so many different and interesting things.
“It was a really tiny period of time but it defined the rest of my life. I’m eternally grateful for that.”
- Nik Kerhaw tours the UK in September and October. Tickets are on sale at www.nikkershaw.net.
