Never by Rick Astley

Author:Rick Astley [Astley, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

Chapter Nine

Even if I had been inclined to let success go to my head, there was something about Stock Aitken Waterman that could bring you back down to earth with a bump. At some point, when I’d been shuttling backwards and forwards from Britain to America, it had been pointed out that we needed to make a new album, and that we’d have to start soon if we wanted it to be ready for the end of 1988. It was a tricky job, following up an album that had sold 8 million copies and produced two US No. 1s. They wanted me to write more songs, but Mike and Matt were definitely going to come up with the first single. It was really important that we got it right. Plus, at that point, the idea of the Coca-Cola commercial was still in the air. If we were going to put out something that was going to be on TVs during ad breaks around the world for months – albeit with its lyrics changed to sell cola – it had to be good.

I’d just landed back in the UK when I got a call to come to the studio: they had a track that was right. I arrived, and they told me the song wasn’t ready yet – I should hang around for a bit; they’d be finished soon. I waited in what was now called the Missile Room, where Pete had hung the decommissioned missile that he’d got from God knows where. The hours went by, and the song still wasn’t ready. I waited all day. Still nothing. They told me to come back tomorrow, that it would definitely be ready by then.

I didn’t say anything, didn’t kick up a fuss, but I was angry: not because the song wasn’t finished, not because I thought I was too important to wait around, but because it was a day off wasted. I hardly ever had a day off. I could have been spending time with Debbie, I could have been getting my laundry done – anything, it didn’t matter. Instead, I’d spent it pointlessly sitting around in the Missile Room, doing nothing. I’d have been better off making the tea and fetching sandwiches, the way I had been eighteen months ago. If they’d called in advance and told me they weren’t finished – ‘Look, sorry, Rick, stay at home, mate, we haven’t quite cracked it yet’ – that would have been absolutely fine.

I don’t think it was done deliberately at all. It wasn’t a case of, ‘You think you’re a star, but you’re nothing special here.’ I feel it was simply done without thought. In a way, that was more annoying. I believe they didn’t have a clue how hard I’d been working. I hate saying things like that, because I’m a pop star and, like I said before, it’s a privilege to do what I do: I wasn’t digging ditches for a living, or saving anybody’s life. But I was on a plane every other day, I always had something to do, somewhere to be.

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