In Conversation With Leo Sayer

Good morning, Leo. How are you?

Well, it's evening here. I'm just about to have a very late dinner. And of course, we're in opposite seasons to you, so we're winter here and you're summer. So I see you in a T-shirt, and I'm in a sweater. Oh yeah, the weather's always unpredictable.

Oh, I do wish we had the Australian weather! What is the weirdest thing you've ever done in public?

Oh, my God. Let me think. See, I've had a long career, and it's over 50 years now. So I'd have to kind of pick something. I suppose, from the career. I recall a time when my zip burst while I was performing on stage at one of my very first shows. And, you know, you're wearing these satin pants. And I suppose everything was on display.

How do you get out of that?

Quickly, you take your jacket off and put it around your front. That's the first thing you should do. However, everyone in the audience has already seen what they need to see, so they're all thinking, "Oh my God, it's all Leo." You know, so I think that probably is it. That's the first thing I think of.

But, you know, there's always an embarrassing moment, isn't there? It's like when you have those dreams where you went to school in your pyjamas. Do you know? So I suppose embarrassment comes to mind first. But there are plenty of weird incidents. I mean, when I got the number one in the U.S., I was shopping in New York at a store called Bergdorf Goodman right on Fifth Avenue. We'd been waiting for the record to get to number one. It was moving very fast up the charts. It's a significant achievement to reach the top of the U.S. charts, particularly when it's your first one. Somebody yelled out, and there he is. He's number one. And I thought, What? And yeah, it must be so.

You didn't have any communication methods like we do now, such as mobile phones or, you know, social media or anything else. But I walked outside, and somebody spotted me and said, Yes, he's number one. And I said, Is it true? And he replied, "Yes, and a large individual lifted me onto his shoulders, would you believe?" And a crowd sort of grew in the street. Wow. You know, all of a sudden, this is real fame.

They marched me up the street. They said, Where are you going? I said, I'm at the Plaza Hotel up the top of the street. It wasn't too far to go. So this big guy plunked me down outside. Everybody in the staff started applauding me as I got down off his shoulders and walked in. And I thought, This is fame. And to me, that was weird. I don't know.

It's weird because, you know, it's something I never expected to happen. And that was a great moment. It felt fantastic as well.

I can imagine! Your success was before social media. Did your response feel more human back then?

Yes, because a lot of the time, you know, we were almost oblivious to the effect that we were having, except, you know, when you'd step on stage and you got that reaction from the audience, then you knew, yeah, things were working. But other than that, it was very much a vacuum. I mean, you'd say ready to do an interview, and you'd think, Oh my God, has the disc jockey heard of me, you know, things like that, you know, because you just didn't know. We were not surrounded by the wealth of knowledge that we have today. (You know, I mean, you can get up in the morning, look at your Facebook, and boom, there are like 50 messages, and people have put videos of old shows that you did, and all this sort of stuff.)

You're acutely aware of your popularity these days, whereas in the past you weren't. You know, we've just had to knuckle down and get on with it and hope we had that effect.

What is the most cringeworthy thing you've ever heard about yourself on social media?

I did Celebrity Big Brother, which was a pretty cringe-worthy experience because I didn't realise until I was in there that I'm quite claustrophobic. So I reacted like a spoilt Max Verstappen; you know, I wasn't very well behaved. Afterwards, you know, a lot of the comments that came back were just so awful.

You know, I really was at the bottom of the ladder in people's perception of what a music business personality should be doing. So the most cringeworthy things are years and years after you think it's all gone away. OK, you think, well, maybe they've forgotten about that. Thank God. And then every now and then there'll be somebody.I hope this fits the bill, but you're planning a British tour, and everything is looking really good. I'm incredibly excited about the prospect of embarking on this journey, but there's a concern about forgetting your underpants. I think that not being able to leave that kind of thing behind is, oh, my God... And what do you do? You know, I just delete them, of course.

But at the same time, it's kind of reminding you they always want to. I think people who don't have, you know, maybe fame or power feel very much that they've got to destroy the lives of those who are more privileged than they are. And, you know, as much as you like to think it doesn't, it hurts because it's personal.

People would say things to you that they would never say to you in person?

Yeah. Look at politics. I am referring to the rudeness of certain individuals and the statements they make. You look at the MAGA campaign in America and see how rude and objectionable it is. But they've got something to hide behind, which is their obscurity.

Who do you still dream of working with?

I don't know, really. I'm one of those unusual persons who gets great pleasure out of working by himself. I mean, having written the song One Man Band, I suppose that's my curse, isn't it?" When I'm on stage with all my guys, my musicians, and my band, as we are going to be on this tour coming up, it's a fantastically social moment. And I love talking to members of the audience backstage and at the dressing room—the stage door kind of thing, you know, how they feel and all of that. You know, the interaction is lovely.

But at the same time, when I make records these days, I completely lock myself away like a hermit. So I never think about who I'm going to work with. I'm just thinking of getting the best out of myself.

But I guess, yeah, I mean, I'd love to sit down with Bob Dylan and construct a song one day. That would be fantastic. You know, those of my heroes that are still living, because they're all going now I'm getting older. But Bob's still there. And I'm sure we could conjure up something.

Bob has the same star sign as me. As a result, he's another chameleon and Gemini Taurus. You know, we're both kind of like we can never settle on one style or one operation. We've always got to try everything. And I like that kind of thing, and I recognise that. And no wonder he's my hero, you know, because we're very, very alike in that kind of way.

You are headed back to the UK for a tour. What have you got planned for everyone?

Well, getting together with the guys, because I have a wonderful, loyal bunch of incredible guys that I've toured with for the last, oh, God, 12 or 15 years or so. And they always seem to make themselves available when I want to tour, which is good. Mind you, we plan it very much in advance. So we make sure everybody is clear. But I'm really looking forward to getting together with the guys because we're going to play a couple of new songs.

Unlike a lot of the acts that you see these days, we don't use any pre-recorded material. We don't use any sequences or stuff like that. There's no clever clog stuff, really. It's just like five people getting down on stage and working off each other. And there are times in the act where, God, I don't know what's going to happen. They don't know what's going to happen. We're just kind of like throwing things at each other, as it were. And that is really what I live for—creating that magic on stage, which is unpredictable. So hopefully every single night that you play will be different from the last night and the next night. Always reserve something special for that night. And that's exciting. You know, we're on our toes all the time. We're not just sitting on our laurels and going through the motions.

That's what makes great shows, and that's what makes me able to sing really well, because it's that unexpected kind of unknown element that creeps into it, you know. So I'm excited about that.

I'm really excited to look out into the audience and see some of those diehard fans who've been there for years, and you'll recognise those faces. You go, oh, it's him again. Oh, there's that Malcolm. Oh, hello, mate. And you wave, you know, from the stage. That's also exciting because, you know, after doing it for 50 years, it becomes a very friendly operation, if you know what I mean.

It's kind of like you're just relaxed. I never get nervous. I just walk out on stage, and I know I'm there with all my pals, you know, and that's a really nice feeling.

In the early days, yeah, you'd be shitting yourself, you know. You'd be throwing up before the concert or you'd be a bag of nerves and you couldn't get your words out and all this stuff. But after a while, it just becomes a very pleasurable activity.

So, yeah, I can't wait to get back. I missed it because it's been two years since I've really done anything. Early last year, we did a few gigs in America, but they were smaller gigs and lacked the excitement of going to a large theater like the Palladium. It's a big room full of people. And the moment you walk out on stage and they're just, oh God, they almost all stand up and applaud, and you feel really wanted. It's a lovely feeling, you know.

And you mentioned new material there. Is there a new record coming?

Yeah, there's a record called 1992, which is coming out in September, and it's all recordings I made at that time, actually between 1992 and 1994. Self-produced. I wrote all the songs. I couldn't get a record deal at the time, but I've been living with these songs for quite a while now, and, you know, I looked at them and thought of re-recording them, but that would be very difficult because basically I still love the demos, you know, the songs that we came up with. So we did a little bit of work, a little bit of mastering.

I've got a great engineer I work with here who brought out some of the good qualities in them, and, yeah, it's ready for release, and it's coming out in September, and I'm very excited. And the songs feel contemporary and fresh, you know, from what everybody has said, not only me. So it should be, yeah, it's going to be a nice album.

Sounds amazing. And you have an autobiography coming out, too.

Oh my God, yes, and everything's in there.

Is there anything you thought of—no, I don't want to share that?

Yeah, a few moments where it's a little bit dodgy, you know, you might have kind of had a liaison with a starlet or something like that and you have to kind of slightly disguise the name as I sort of rough over it, as it were, you know, but those things happen and you can't leave them out, you know. And there are also, kind of, in the book, crazy things where everything kind of goes wrong and you didn't manage to kind of either sell that record or make the best appearance on TV, but you've got to talk about it, you know, and you've got to kind of put up the feelings about it afterwards, you know. So, yeah, so there's a few hard things.

I mean, I got ripped off by one manager later on who literally forged my signature on all these contracts and gave away everything, gave away all my money, really, you know. And it's hard to talk about that because my reaction to that was, Oh, my God, I just want to kill myself, you know. So you have to kind of get through those things.

And in a funny way, talking about it in the book is very pathetic. It kind of expurgates all of that kind of, oh, God, am I going to talk about this? And then when you read it off the page and you've actually put it there, you go, Yeah, that's all right, actually. That's gone. Suddenly, that's public. That's theirs. It's not something I've held on to anymore. You know what I mean? I don't have to protect that memory any longer, you know, and it's better to tell it, you know. And so, in the book, I'm trying to be very honest.

I am currently working on the audiobook version of it as well. It looks like we're going to make a film about it. We have already begun the planning process. So I've got a good little team there, a director and producer who are English as well but live in Los Angeles. And we're working it up, and we're working out all the angles.

You know, it's going to be a very interesting documentary because it's not only about my success, but it's also a little kind of link into, you know, how things can go wrong and how you can, you know, get messed up. I mean, I signed a power of attorney over to my very powerful manager when I started. I didn't realise that that would end up with him earning all the money and not me.

These are the issues that need to be addressed. And hopefully that will help other people in any way, you know, because at the same time as I've, you know, didn't make the money and had problems, I also had great record success, didn't I? So you can't complain about that. So, you know, there are plenty of people who didn't get success because they were affected by awful ripoffs and things like that. And they never even got off the ground, or else their careers ended up pretty miserable, or they committed suicide because of it. There's plenty of stories like that, you know, where the frustrations kind of, you know, beat the end product. But in my case, I think the end product was good.

So it's now kind of like maybe explaining the reasons why I'm not at that stratospheric position that many people would have expected me to be at. There's a reason for that, you know. And hopefully we'll get all that right.

October Northern Tour Dates

17 Manchester Bridgewater Hall

19 Liverpool Philharmonic Hall

23 Hull City Hall

25 Sunderland Fire Station

26 Edinburgh Queens Hall

27 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Tickets for all shows available now here: www.leosayer.com