Paul Young talks ahead of Birmingham show

The album produced Paul’s first UK number one single, the Marvin Gaye cover of Wherever I Lay My Hat. It also featured the hits Come Back And Stay and Love of The Common People. The album also featured a cover of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Originally in early 80’s band Q-Tips, Paul went solo in the 80s and his career took off with No Parlez and further top 10 hits such as Everytime You Go Away and Everything Must Change. He was also a Brit Award winner for Best Male vocalist, sang the opening lines on the original Band Aid Single Feed The World and performed at Live Aid in 1984.

The keen chef, biker and fan of all things Mexicana! is a family man who continues to tour his classic hits as a solo artist as well as his side project, a Tex Mex/Americana band Los Pacaminos.

“I listened to the album in its entirety almost as a bystander, because I admit it’s been so long now. I’m at least one step removed from it and the album sounds crazy. If I didn’t know better and hadn’t being there myself, I’d say, ‘this lot have taken acid or something’. My voice has changed. I was 24 or 25 when I made that album. I’ve always had a baritone voice and sung at the very top end which becomes impossible. So, you have to alter the key a bit.

“Love of The Common People was originally a country song in the 1960s (recorded by The Four Preps) and I didn’t even know that. But that was the idea, I could write some decent songs like Broken Man which is a favourite with some of the fans, but it wasn’t particularly commercial. So, I knew I had to look elsewhere. Most of the artists I admired covered as well as wrote, so I didn’t see it as out of the ordinary.”

Success changed Paul’s life. He’d been a jobbing musician and in and out of bands for many years before he finally broke through. He spent the money he made from the number one hit Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home) on a new flat.

“The funny thing was, the week it went to number one, I moved into my flat in London. At the time, my manager said ‘You can’t really afford this flat but hopefully something good is going to happen,’ and it did. That is my most memorable moment! He said: ‘Right, you can rest easy now, that flat will be yours’.”

Paul’s success might not have happened had he not had the courage to go solo. His former band, Q-Tips, had been treading water and he decided to make a change.“Looking back on it now, the Q-Tips were dividing into two camps. Some of the band thought we should go one way and then I was writing stuff with the keyboard player feeling we should go another way. I felt we should be a little more contemporary. But I never thought: ‘That’s it, I’m going to go solo’.

“We asked our manager to look for another deal. He got us off Chrysalis Records because we didn’t want to be with them anymore. But then when he was coming to record companies they were saying they didn’t want the band. This was right at the beginning of all the synth pop duo era like Soft Cell and Blancmange. So I think the record companies looked upon the Q-Tips as archaic and why pay for an eight-piece band when you can pay for two people?

“So basically they didn’t want to take the band but they wanted to take me. It was tough for me because I’m very loyal to my friends. I thought: ‘What am I going to do?’ It was really strange but I did take the solo deal. I thought I’d run it like Rod Stewart and The Faces so I’d do a solo album and then could still do stuff with the Q-Tips but it didn’t go that way at all.”

The switch worked out and No Parlez was a huge hit. It remained in the UK Top 100 for 119 weeks and sold a million copies. Initially, the first two singles, Iron Out the Rough Spots and a remake of Love of the Common People, had no success, but the third, a cover of the Marvin Gaye classic Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home), was number one for three weeks in the summer of 1983, and the first of Paul’s 14 British Top 40 singles.