Staying cool with heart and soul

But aren’t we constantly being told that Britain’s Got Talent? In abundance?

Tony Christie, a singer and performer for 50 years, doesn’t buy into the contemporary sales pitch pushed out at the public by cool television producers and desperate record promoters looking for the next trend.

He says: “A few years ago, I had a hit with a Jarvis Cocker song called Walk Like A Panther. It’s got the line: ‘Standards have fallen, my value has dropped…’ “Artists aren’t valued any more; it can all be done by a machine. Years ago, singers like Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra had distinctive voices.

“The music business has been taken over by producers. Everything is homogenised. I think music has lost its soul as well.”

Tony says his new album, Now’s The Time!, on the Acid Jazz label, has soul.

“The producers have gone for a Sixties sound with it. We’ve done it all in analogue rather than digital,” says Tony.

What’s the difference in terms of recording quality?

“It’s warmer, truer. It’s not done on a computer where you can move notes around. It sounds more real. A lot of people are going back to the old analogue way of recording.”

This is where we came in: the music business has got too technical.

How things have changed in the 46 years since he cut his first single, Life’s Too Good To Waste, in 1966.

The group he was in, The Counterbeats, didn’t have a lead guitarist who was up to the tune. A young session musician stepped in. It was Jimmy Page, later the main axe-man with super group Led Zeppelin.

On piano on the same recording session was keyboards player Nicky Hopkins, who later recorded with The Rolling Stones.

Though considered middle of the road, Tony Christie has had his moments in the fast lane over the past 50 years. (Is This The Way To) Amarillo was a bigger hit the second time it came round in 2005 than it was in 1971 when it reached No. 18 in the charts.

Thanks to Peter Kay’s mum, who had a soft spot for Tony Christie’s minstrelsy, the song zoomed into the top of the charts.

Was that the start of a beautiful friendship? Tony and Peter bumped into one another afterwards, but nothing more.

“It’s not like the old days when you met comedians on variety bills, because there’s no variety any more. Days of having support acts are finished, I’m afraid,” he says.

“The argument is that when people pay for a show, they pay to see you, not a comedian or anyone else.

“You say, ‘yes, but don’t you want a bit of variety?’ They say, ‘no, I want to see you.’ “These days promoters say, ‘no, no, no, it’s your show, you do the whole thing’.”

That’s why at St George’s Hall, Tony Christie will be doing the whole two halves. On his 2005 tour, in contrast, singer Carolynne Good, a former Bradford Bulls cheerleader, was on the bill as well.

Speak to showbusiness stalwarts such as Buddy Greco, Francis Rossi and Tony Christie, and they’ll tell you that the secret of being successful over a long period of time, in which fashions change quickly, is to keep working, keep moving. “I’ve had peaks and troughs like anybody. I have also enjoyed a tremendous amount of success on the continent – particularly Germany – since 1971. It’s never dipped,” says Tony.

A lot of British acts are more popular over there than they are over here. Is that dichotomy attributable to any particular reason?

He says: “We tend to pigeon-hole people. For years and years, I could never get on Radio 1. ‘No,’ they said, ‘he’s Radio 2’.

“Then I had a hit with Walk Like A Panther, and suddenly Radio 2 wouldn’t play it, yet Radio 1 kept playing it to death.

“If you’re hip, if you’re in, if you’re cool, you can do no wrong. At the moment, I am going through a cool period.”

These days, the man whose stage name was inspired by the actress Julie Christie takes his wife on his English tours and lives not far from his son Sean in Lichfield. At 67, you could say that for him, the time is always now.

Tony Christie is at St George’s Hall on Saturday, May 7, starting at 7.30pm. For tickets, ring (01274) 432000.