Paul Carrack: The Man with the Golden Voice

# I want to know

# How does it feel

# Behind those eyes of blue?

# You've made some mistakes

# Now your heart aches

# Behind those eyes of blue... #

-How are you feeling?

-OK.

A lot better than I felt at eight o'clock this morning.

I was a bit worried.

My voice has been playing up for a few days and I thought...

I tried all the natural remedies. I thought it'd just clear up.

It turns out I had this virus that affects your breathing.

Anyway, I saw a doctor this morning. He gave me something, it feels a lot better.

So I'm excited again. I hope it's good.

It'll be great. Rehearsal sounded good.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-Well, the orchestra sounds fantastic.

They're just amazing. And this beautiful venue.

So let's try and enjoy it.

Shall we go and do it?

# ..People may say

# You've had your chance

# And let it slip away

# But hard as they try

# There's a dream that won't die

# Behind those eyes of blue

# Maybe once in a while

# There's a trace of a smile

# Behind those eyes of blue

# It's painfully clear

# There's a river of tears

# Behind those eyes of blue... #

BASS PLAYER IMPROVISES

APPLAUSE

# It's not too late

# To bring about a change

# Not too late to learn from it all

# By your mistakes

# Now it's time to look at yourself

# See just what you are made of

# You've got to try and see... #

He's a soulful cat, you know, people can see that.

They can sense it, that he's soulful.

He's known here more by music connoisseurs

and people who are deep into music.

He's never been super, super huge,

but every time, when people find out who he is,

they always go, "Wow, that guy's voice is incredible."

That's the thing with Paul, isn't it?

He doesn't actually reckon he's a great anything, but in actual fact,

he's a great, great everything!

# ..It ain't over till it's over

# I never quit till I get to the bottom line

# Cos it ain't over till it's over... #

'He has the ability to make people see

that he's being truthful and he's not a fraud.

Pop music is filled with frauds, and actually,

some of the frauds are actually quite entertaining, you know,

but he is... Look at the length of his career.

You really don't stick around that long

if you haven't got something really special going for you.

He's a really great musician.

If you put it in football terms, I suppose,

he's kind of like the Bobby Charlton of football.

He somebody that you admire, love, and you would want to be around.

He probably wouldn't say Bobby Charlton. Who would he say?

Somebody from Sheffield Wednesday.

What's he up to, young Glen?

-Glen, sunning himself, I guess.

-Gardening.

-Is he?!

He wants us to sign a guitar.

'I suppose I am pretty down-to-earth.

'Growing up in Sheffield, you're probably not going to be anything other than that.

'Sheffield people are down-to-earth, you might say dour,

'but it's a good grounding for getting through life

'and getting through a tricky business like the music business.'

-Wonderful.

-No worries.

-I hope it hasn't detracted from the value!

-Ha!

My maternal grandfather came over from Ireland,

he was a Flaherty, or as they say in Yorkshire, 'Flarty.'

And he came over from Ireland to work in the steel mills.

I think he died quite young, about 36, of consumption,

and he left my grandma with six young kids. I think only one of them

of any kind of working age, so my granny, who was a scullery maid,

had to feed these kids somehow or other.

She started to work in the newsagents across the road here.

And it turned out that the fellow who owned the shop had had enough of it,

he didn't want it, and eventually, my grandmother took over the shop,

the running of it and the ownership of it, I suppose,

and so my mum and all my aunts

and uncles and my grandmother grew up here.

We've now come down to Broad Street.

When we set off, it was quite bright and sunny

but it's gone a bit overcast. We've brought you to see the shop,

where we stayed for 37 years.

We moved in 1936,

took the paper shop, the newsagents,

and Mum had it for 37 years.

'Sheffield's changed dramatically over the years.

'A lot of it's been demolished,

'but there are still little bits and pieces. There's still Granelli's,

'the sweet shop's still there, been there as long as I can remember.

-Did you grow up here, then?

-Yes, I've been here all my life.

'I've always gone back because of family

'and because I support Sheffield Wednesday,

'and I still go to the games. It really is an emotional tie.'

-Well, continue with your success.

-We'll try.

-I'm so pleased for you.

-Well, look out for us on the telly.

-I will.

You're still talking to poor people, that's a good thing, isn't it?

-Lovely to see you.

-Take photographs of what you want.

-OK, love.

-See you, Rosita.

-Excuse me. Don't leave your wine gums.

-Thank you very much.

-Is that enough for four of you?

-You never leave empty handed!

-Bye, love.

-Ta-ra.

# Satisfy my soul

# Let the day begin

# Make the evening roll

# Let the big sky in

# Satisfy my heart... #

'My mum met my dad and we moved out of town a little bit

'to a place called Crooks, which was a bit more rural back in those days,

'almost semi-rural, on the outskirts of Sheffield.

# ..Love is all around

# And all the hurt will heal... #

Mr Carrack, this is your life!

Ha-ha!

-We've got a red book.

-Present from Rosita Granelli.

-Oh, marvellous.

# ..When we were walking... #

'I grew up in pretty austere surroundings,

'as did most people in Sheffield, but we didn't know that.

'It was a happy upbringing, we had a lot of freedom as kids.

'We had the love of our family and our parents

'and things always seemed to be getting better.

'That was the great thing about growing up as we did,

'in the '50s and '60s, things always seemed to be improving all the time,

'and it didn't seem such a complicated world as it is today.'

My mum run the shop, my dad was a painter-decorator.

-And then, um, John had just started work, hadn't you?

-Yeah.

Came home from school one day, and they weren't here,

because unfortunately, my dad had had an accident.

-As a decorator.

-As a decorator. He'd gone down a staircase.

A ladder came down on him and he trapped his neck

in-between the ladder rungs and broke his neck.

Three days later, he passed away.

In that year, or at that time,

they didn't really know how to treat spinal injuries so much,

so the poor lad had two holes drilled in his head, didn't he?

And weights to try to pull his spine back into position.

And it didn't happen. My dad had not made a will,

so we had quite a session with all sorts of people, really.

And then they gave me six months off and then after six months,

I stayed here and I've been here ever since, really. So...

And that was at 15, he took over the shop!

Yeah, but we had a lot of help.

I'm saying that the support from where we've been today,

that's where my mum's family grew up and all my aunts and uncles,

they were unbelievable support. That's what brought us through.

# I was standing

# All alone against the world outside

# You were searching

# For a place to hide

# Lost and lonely

# Now you've given me the will to survive

# When we're hungry

# Love will keep us alive. #

# Bought a ticket at the station

# Waved my brother John goodbye

# Got the ferry down to Hamburg... #

'I know of other sibling situations

'where there would be intense resentment, or jealousy,

'or what-have-you. There isn't any of that with my brother,

'he's just fantastic. He loves coming to the shows

'and he's totally supportive. He's started collecting guitars now,

'and he's still playing. He's just a great guy.'

# ..And following the gold... #

When I went to the secondary school,

they had a couple of bits of kit there.

They had a snare drum and there was two lads played guitars

so we had a little group at school.

We played at the school concert, doing The Shadows,

we did Foot Tapper. And then, of course, the Beatles, with Love Me Do.

And I remember playing the school concert, we did Love Me Do,

and Twist And Shout, and all the girls threw Jelly Babies,

like this, at us, and asked you for your autograph.

When I was about 15 or 16, we had a band with my cousin, Robert.

We entered a bit of a battle of the bands competition,

the idea being you could win a day in a recording studio.

So we brought all our pals down, made sure that we won the competition,

even though we were rubbish. We got our day in the studio,

and inside the recording studio was a Hammond organ.

Bear in mind I'm a drummer at this point.

We turned the Hammond organ on and the engineer showed me a few chords.

And that was the first time I'd seen how to play chords on a keyboard.

Not long after that, our singer, Clive,

went on to form a soul band, CG Morris And The Reaction,

and he gave me a call one day and said,

"You want to sell your drums, buy yourself an organ,

"and you're in the band." So that's what I did.

I used to buy Jimmy Smith albums and play them at half speed,

you know, instead of playing them at 33, the next speed down,

to try and figure out what he was doing.

-My friend got you a job at the Gas Board...

-That's right.

..which you loved, didn't you?! You loved to be away from it.

And then you had to go missing one weekend

and it entailed having Friday off, I think.

And so he went without any permission, and that was it.

We came down to London to do an audition, actually,

that's what we did. We played this audition in a reggae club

off Caledonian Road. We drove through the night,

we kipped in the van to be there early.

Hundreds of bands auditioning to go and play in Germany.

And, you know, we went for it, big style.

Got changed and everything, did our set, and they loved us,

the bloke, and so that was our first gig.

I was 17, the other lads would probably have been 18, 19.

-And we went off to Frankfurt.

-You never had a proper job after that, did you?

-No.

-So that was it.

So he left the Gas Board...

Which, I mean, at the time, it was really bad to not have a job.

-Most people had a job.

-Because there were too many jobs.

You left school on Friday and walked into your first job on Monday.

It was full employment, especially in our lot,

-to not have a job was really...

-Frowned on.

And to be playing in a band was the lowest of the low!

Football was my first love, really, probably before music.

I would play football every day, as did most kids.

Our Christmas ten bob note from Grandma,

we used to be straight down to get a new shirt,

or a new pair socks, or something.

That was better than Christmas Day.

'It's an incredible bond

'and attachment.

'It's a big thing in your life. I don't know why. It's mental, really.'

I'm only three miles away, but he's 160-odd, and he'll still drive up and go,

turn round and go back.

And unfortunately, it's rubbed off on Charlie, his eldest boy,

and he's up to his neck in it.

Unfortunately. It's a terrible thing to do to a lad. It's in your DNA.

Afraid so.

# Oh, this is what my heart needs to feel

# Oh, yes, it is now

# This is what my heart needs to feel... #

Then we got a bit more serious and into music,

and the progressive rock music was happening,

so that's when we had this little band called Warm Dust,

which was, uh...

I mean, we thought it was very important,

but it was pretty pretentious stuff.

But we meant it.

At that time, rock music was taking itself a bit serious,

and people got fed up with it and a lot of punters didn't really dig it.

They wanted to hear songs, you know. Short songs and rock'n'roll.

There was a sort of feeling about bringing music back to its roots,

which meant in pubs and bars, so groups could see their audience,

the audience could see the bands,

and it was engendering a sense of excitement again.

# She looked out to stand the patience

# Did a cloud just cross the sun...? #

'Occasionally, we do one or two of these stand-up rock'n'roll venues,

'and we skip the ballads.'

People are out there, they're having a pint, and a bit of a boogie,

so we keep it a little bit more rock'n'roll.

# ..Every morning, noon and night

# Cos though it seems you've walked all over my dreams

# I'll make believe that it's all right

# Just a little lie to try and get me through

# Just a little lie

# Changed from white to blue... #

We came back to London, the band fizzled out,

and out of the ashes of that

was formed Ace.

Two of the guys from Warm Dust met up with two guitar-playing singer-songwriters.

Basically, we just got together to play in pubs in London,

like the Tally Ho, Hope and Anchor.

It was wonderful just to sort of turn up and see Ace play,

or Dux de Lux, Nick Lowe, Brinsley Schwarz, of course.

It was all great days.

I remember seeing Ace play a lot of times,

and we all sort of knew each other.

All the bands would at least nod to each other

because it was before punk rock,

when all the bands were supposed to really hate each other, you know,

even if they didn't. But the pub rock thing

was all rather friendly, you know.

We were a bit different to most pub-rock bands

because we wrote a lot more of our own material,

most of the other guys were playing covers, you know, rock'n'roll.

We did a bit of that, but we also wrote our own stuff.

And that's when I first started really writing songs.

One of the first songs I wrote was How Long.

And I think that probably helped us to get a record deal

because we were playing that live and it sounded like

it might have a chance of being a hit. Let's hear you sing now.

# How long has this been going on?

# How long has this been going on...? #

'I thought it was really strong. I was naive enough to think,

'this is going to be a hit, and it was, but it was a very slow process.

'It took weeks and weeks of DJs giving it a spin,

'as they were allowed to do back in those days,

'play a bit of what they like. And it built up, word-of-mouth.'

Likewise, in America, it came out and it made its way very,

very slowly, week-by-week, all the way up the charts.

# ..And it's no use pretending

# It could happen to us any day... #

Sing it! # ..How long... #

'Our first tour, we were booked to open up for Yes,

'who were a big arena band at that time, a big live act, a big draw.

'So we went over there, in front of 20,000 people

'every night for three months.

'And we just about got away with it, to be honest,

'because we were rough and ready, no presentation, pub-rock stylee,

'in front of 20,000 people.'

They expected a little bit more, I think!

But that was such a big hit in the States, that one,

that, as I say, we got away with it.

We were a tight little bunch of guys, we'd come from nowhere,

we had this big hit. They worked us into the ground

and it went a bit pear-shaped. We got a bit burnt-out

and there was a bit of falling out.

But we didn't want to give it up, because we'd been through a lot.

And it was hard, but it came to the point where it fizzled out.

And that's when I started playing around London, picking up sessions.

My peers, that seemed to be what they did.

And I figured that that's how you progressed as a musician.

So I started to get a few sessions playing with different people

but, I mean, I'm self-taught and I was bluffing away like mad.

I only knew how we did things in Ace, so, yeah, I was learning on the job.

There are these fantastic guys that can have instant sight-reading,

and do all the commercials and what-have-you,

and there are other guys like us that, you know, do it all by ear

and, you know, manage to come up with something at the end of it.

I'm an instinctive player, you know,

and I have a knack of playing what's needed

and I can blend in and harmonise with the situation, so that's a gift.

I'm not knocking that, I mean, that's a good thing to have,

but that's what saw me through,

rather than being, "Oh, yeah, well, I can do this."

I had to really feel my way into things.

And just by word of mouth, you know, that you're an OK guy and,

you know, you're tasteful in what you do,

and adaptable. But the session work was never really a big part

of what I did. I always thought I was a singer-songwriter.

My peers, a lot of them played in a band called Kokomo,

and before that, The Grease Band. I'm talking about guys like Alan Spenner

and Neil Hubbard. Great, great players, the best players in town.

They were involved in making the records for people like Bryan Ferry,

and later on, for Roxy. They were the sidemen.

That was the connection that got me involved with Roxy.

And I was invited to play on a few of their records

and invited to go on tour with them, which was fantastic fun.

I really enjoyed it, because it had been a bit of a struggle after the Ace thing had fizzled out,

and that was a really, like, back on the road in a posh way.

It was good. Celebrity travel, and all that!

Yeah, fantastic. You know, lovely hotels, all that sort of stuff.

Everything was taken care of,

and just really nice people to work with.

And Paul, as usual, being...

just very amusing and great to play with.

What else can I say?

To me, he's the Michael Palin of rock'n'roll,

because everybody likes him.

Nobody would ever dream of taking a dislike to Paul.

Every time I sing a song, it's almost like I'm doing it for the first time

because I'll be in a different frame of mind, my voice'll be in a different state.

If I've done five gigs in a row, my voice is different. I have to find a way of getting through it.

# You tell me I'm wrong

# And out of line... #

'A song is really just a framework for me,

'almost like the jazzers, really, although not to that extent,

'but I don't think I'm a great songwriter at all.

'My songs are very simple, very basic,

'but inside of that, as a singer,

'there's so much scope for what you can do,

'the phrasing and the intonation,

'and just subtle little changes, without taking huge liberties.

'It's never stale, in that respect.'

# ..Oh, if I didn't love you

# Would I let you walk from me?

# If I didn't need you

# Would I lose you from my dreams...? #

'Performers make the best songwriters in many ways,

'because they understand how a song has to work in performance.

'And just his vocal ability, just tremendous.

He's always absolutely in tune, and just little flourishes

contain four or five little notes which are all perfectly in tune.

He's just got such skill with that, and the feeling that comes with it.

He's got a voice that's, no pun intended,

strikes a chord with everybody, it seems like.

He has a voice that just makes you want to listen.

Is it the songs, is it the voice?

Sometimes, I think the voice can speak a million words just with its sound.

When he sent me the final version of the album before last,

when he'd written some tunes to my lyrics,

and I just listened to them and I cried my eyes out

because they were exactly how I imagined it to be.

And he touched the spirit inside me that no other writer really touches.

And that is a lot to do with the way he voices songs.

# ..If I didn't need you

# Would I lose you from my dreams...? #

Not long after that, I was approached by a guy called Jake Riviera,

who later became a manager. Jake had also taken on Squeeze.

Jools Holland had left the band, so they needed a keyboard player.

And they tried a lot of people and nobody would fit, for whatever reason, and Jake put me forward.

He said, go down, have a play with the guys, see how it goes.

So I went down, I didn't know anything about them.

I was absolutely knocked out by their musicality.

They were fantastic, really bright, upbeat, amazing songs.

Amazing players and singers.

And they were about to go in the studio

and record an album called East Side Story.

And they said, well, if you want to do it, you know,

you've got the job, basically.

We went in to do the East Side Story album with Elvis Costello.

And the song Tempted was tipped out on to the studio floor

and Paul sang it in one take, and it was like, my God!

One day, at the end of the album, we'd more or less finished everything

and we're messing about,

we're doing this song called Tempted,

which they had already recorded a different version of. But we were doing it in this kind of soul way,

and I was playing the Hammond organ. And Elvis Costello was producing it.

He came running in and said, "This is great. Let's put this down."

And we recorded the track in this new style, and he said,

"This is great, but you know what, Paul, you should sing it."

# Let's get out of this place... #

I felt a bit strange about it because, you know,

Squeeze already had two great singers, Glenn and Chris,

but it's a fantastic song and I just jumped at the chance to sing it.

So I ended up singing that song on the album,

which became a bit of a breakthrough hit for them in America.

# ..I know I will

# Tempted by the fruit of another

# Tempted but the truth is discovered

# What's been going on... #

He put a trademark on Squeeze which still lives to this day,

and that's a really gracious thing

and a loving thing for him to have done, really,

because it's not often you get someone with such talent

and such soul, really, coming to your band, give you a great song

and then leave the band.

Jake persuaded me that it wasn't in my best interests

to stay with Squeeze because I would always just be a side man...

I was happy being a side man in the band, because I didn't try to,

you know, ingratiate myself, because the identity of the band

was the songs and the singers, so I was just along for the ride.

But Jake said, "Really, it's not good for you to stay there too long."

So I was with them for about a year

and then I left, in order to work more with Nick Lowe.

# Dry all the raindrops

# Hold back the sun

# My world has ended

# My baby's gone

# Hold back the rushing minutes

# Make the wind lie still... #

'Three or four years, we more or less had the same band together

'and, depending on who had the current album, that's how we went out.

'It was either The Paul Carrack Band,

'or it was Nick Lowe and The Cowboy Outfit.

'But we did many tours up and down America.

# ..My world has ended

# My baby's gone... #

'Our little act, the Cowboy Outfit, went all over the place.

'We opened for big acts, we played our own shows, we played little tiny dives,'

huge great stadiums, whatever came our way.

And sometimes, we were really good,

and other times, we were frankly not so good.

He produced a solo album for me called Suburban Voodoo,

which is quite interesting, if you listen to it now.

I can manage about three tracks and I have to go and have a lie-down.

It's quite fuelled. But nevertheless, for me, it was a solo album

and it actually had a four-star review in Rolling Stone that year

and I had my first Top 30 hit from it, a song called I Need You.

-Can you remember it?

-Of course I can remember it, of course.

# Don't need a roller or a limousine

# Don't need my picture in a magazine

# Don't need approval... # D to A.

# ..From a chosen few

# I tell you what I do need I need you... #

'When we had our little group together,

'he was really head and shoulders better than the rest of us.

'We were sort of holding him back, really.

'But it was quite a rambunctious little outfit.'

We had a pretty good time, or sort of a good time.

There was a lot of boozing and what-have-you going on.

I tell you what there is on Suburban Voodoo, actually,

which is a cracking song which I have thought about doing again,

but about five tones lower and half the speed than we did it,

which is another great song that you wrote, From Now On.

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

-Oh, yes.

-Which has got one of my favourite all-time lines in it.

"You're going to see the biggest change in any man there's ever been.

"I'm going to do my level best to keep my nose clean."

I was onto something there.

Pity you didn't take your own advice!

How true, how true.

Can you remember it? E might be a bit high.

# From now on, I'm going to be

# Turning over a brand new leaf

# It may be tough

# But I will be strong

# From now on, from now on... #

'He had a family, the rest of us didn't.

'And he sort of looked around and said to himself,

'"This is going nowhere. These guys are nice fellas,'

"but we're going nowhere.

"The records aren't very good and I need to do something about it."

And he really took a conscious decision to change his act.

# ..I'm gonna do my level best to keep my nose clean

# From now on, from now on

# Cos from now on

# I'm gonna be

# Turning over a brand new leaf

# It may be tough

# But I will be strong

# From now on, from now on

# From now on, from now on

# From now on

# From now, from now on. #

'As luck would have it, timing-wise, that was when I was approached by Mike Rutherford.

Would I be interested in going and singing on a few tracks

on an album that he was making?

Surprisingly, The Mechanics was 25 years ago, we started.

And really, my kind of reason for doing it was, I love to write songs.

You write a good song, you want a great singer.

And that's not me, without doubt.

So really, I started the project,

I wrote some songs with Chris Neil and BA Robertson.

We went away to Montserrat, for some reason, to record it.

On a winter's day, we chose to go there. Came back with songs,

backing tracks, and no singers, hadn't even thought about that.

It seems strange, looking back at it,

but at the time, it worked that way. It was an unplanned project.

And quite early on,

it was BA Robertson who brought Paul Carrack down

to sing a couple of things, just to try out and see,

you know, there was no brief.

There was this track, a very simple track, but quite ethereal,

and they didn't have much of a lyric at the time,

just "Can you hear me, can you hear me running?"

So I went in and sang. They liked what they heard.

BA wrote this strange science-fiction lyric,

so that was the first song I recorded with Mike,

and I really enjoyed it, actually,

because it was very different to what I was doing at the time.

# Can you hear me?

# Can you hear me running?

# Can you hear me running?

# Can you hear me calling you...? #

'I think, for him, it was a different sound,

different sort of textures, quite heavy lyrics.

And I think one of the nice marriages of The Mechanics,

and Paul's involvement, was that having that kind of R'n'B voice

singing our kind of melodies was actually not his normal style

of melody, in a way, and I think it was a great combination

that still sort of works now.

# Can you hear me?

# Can you hear me running?

# Can you hear me running?

# Can you hear me calling you? #

It happened terribly easily. He came down, the tape started running, bang.

A couple more songs, and then we got a surprise, really.

We put the album out and it took off in America, which was fantastic.

Mike basically assembled the musicians that had made the studio album,

and myself and Paul Young, a guy from Manchester,

from a band called Sad Cafe, sadly, no longer with us,

he passed away ten years ago, to be the frontmen to do the lead vocals

on tour, and it kind of went from there.

# I never wanted to say goodbye... #

We really worked around Mike because his schedule was most important,

he was still a part of Genesis. Of course, Phil Collins was having all this phenomenal success

at the time, so Mike did have time.

So for me, it was perfect because I would get together

and do Mike's albums and then do some touring with that,

but then I had plenty of time to get on with my own thing.

But it did sort of take second place

to what was happening with The Mechanics because that was the happening thing at the time.

# Every generation

# Blames the one before

# And all of their frustrations

# Come beating on your door

# I know that I'm a prisoner to all my father held so dear

# I know that I'm a hostage to all his hopes and fears... #

'To basically be involved in a song that actually touches people...'

# ..In the living years... #

'BA and I were not sure, actually, when we wrote it,

'whether it was going to work, you know what I mean?

'A song about death, in a way.

'If you got it wrong, it could have failed.

'But the writing was good and I think Paul sang beautifully.

'I didn't realise at that time, Paul lost his father so young.

'He's quite reserved about things like that, Paul,'

and I'm sure when he sang it, it had a feeling for him.

# ..Say it loud. Say it loud... #

The subject matter is about a difficult relationship

with your father and regretting that more effort

wasn't made in that respect.

Now, I didn't have that problem myself

with my own father, he was a great guy, we all loved him.

The problem was, I lost him too young.

So although I didn't relate entirely with the subject of the song,

I felt I was able to give it that little bit of gravity

that it needed to get a good performance out of it,

and by understanding the loss element of it.

# ..You can listen as well

# As you hear. #

'Last year, the choir contacted us and said, we'd love to come down

'and sing on The Living Years, and we said, yeah, come along.

'And they came down, and it sounded wonderful.

'It was a nice little moment in the show, so here we are again.'

-There's another song that's very...

-What's that?

-Beautiful World.

Beautiful World? Do you want us to work it out for you? Yeah?

It might be an idea. I'm just wondering how that would work,

because we'd probably need to do them both together, wouldn't we?

-Leave it with us, if you'd like, we'll get it done.

-It's dead easy.

It's just the chorus. It'd be great, actually.

I wish we'd have thought of it. In fact, I'm sure I did think of it,

but one of my people didn't sort it out!

One, two, three...

THEY SING "OOH" ALONG WITH THE RECORDING

# Beautiful world

# Yeah, you shook me to my senses

# Ooh, ooh, ooh

# Opened my eyes

# Opened my eyes

# To the love inside of me... #

By now, Mike and The Mechanics was basically Mike, Paul and myself,

and that was the nucleus of the thing.

It was a real sad loss, not just for us,

but for his family and his friends.

And obviously, when you lose somebody like that,

it does completely upset the balance of it, and why it kind of worked.

It didn't feel quite right, you know, something had changed.

The chemistry had gone. Things have certain times and eras, you know.

And after that tour, I was talking to Paul and my manager,

saying, "Do you want to give it a go?" And I felt Paul really felt

he'd done his... he'd served his time, his sentence.

At that time, as I say, I was trying to establish myself,

rather than being a hired hand, or whatever way you want to put it.

I was keen to establish myself and my own life.

I think he found it quite a formidable challenge facing him,

because he knew he was... Although he is an extremely funny

and fabulous bloke, he's diffident,

and quite shy. And I think he realised

that he was going to really have to teach himself how to be a front man.

And that is exactly what he did.

The Mike and The Mechanics years, for me,

there were a bit too many Mike and The Mechanics years.

I wanted to see more of Paul.

And I always want to see more of Paul

and less of the other things that he does, because he's the deal, really.

And it was with the help of the success from Mike and The Mechanics

that I got a proper recording contract with Chrysalis.

The only thing about the album I made,

it was very poppy,

and very programmed,

and not quite as organic,

possibly, as I would have liked.

People who liked what I did were a little put off by it.

Having said that, it introduced me

to a lot of other people who wouldn't have heard of me otherwise.

And I had, in fact, my first top ten American single,

a song called Don't Shed A Tear.

# Don't shed a tear for me

# My life won't end without you... #

We were on tour in the States, riding high with Don't Shed A Tear,

it was a bit of a hit. And when I got the call,

because my wife was actually quite seriously ill,

she'd been having problems for some time

and we discovered that, in fact, she did have a problem with her kidney.

And she needed emergency surgery to take the kidney out, basically.

And so I got the call about that and sort of dropped everything

and came straight home.

And at this time, of course, we had a very young family, also.

My wife had just given birth to our third child,

and so that upset the applecart a little bit,

but the main thing was that she, you know,

is well and she recovered very well. But at the time, it was pretty tough.

I've made a number of albums

for various record companies over the years, usually just one,

and then the staff will change and the new guy will come in

with his own agenda and he wants to sign his own artists.

That's kind of how it worked back then. So I've had the benefits

and pitfalls of being involved with major record labels.

# I've got the rough end of lousy deals

# Heaven knows, I'm not a greedy man

# I can't have all your love

# I'll get what I can

# It's better than nothing

# I can't deny

# Better than nothing

# Just a poke in the eye... #

I've always had my own little studio here at home,

and I started writing songs for an album

that was eventually called Satisfy My Soul.

And basically, I just wanted to get on with making a record,

kind of a grown-up record, in the way I wanted to make it,

that I thought was honest and represented me and what I was about.

# ..If I can't have all your love

# Get what I need... #

A good friend of mine, Peter van Hook, suggested looking into

the possibility of producing the album myself

and just marketing it myself as an independent artist,

just in a small-time way, corner-shop way, without really stretching,

keeping things small and trying to reach to the people

who liked what I did.

Paul was still signed when we first worked with Paul.

He was still signed to a record deal.

Fortunately, that finished after the tour

and he decided to form Carrack UK,

and it's been, I think, the best thing he's ever done.

We had no idea how it got in the shops,

how you got the artwork together, any of that stuff.

So it was a very, very steep learning curve,

but it was a very good decision, I think, to go that route

and find out how that worked and to become independent.

I do the website and the merchandising

and lots of other things to do with Carrack UK, and keeping the thing

there on the road.

I hooked up with these lads from Sheffield about ten years ago,

just a club band, really, and bolted myself on to them.

It took us a while to really knock it into shape,

but it was a great move because I've more or less had the same band together for over ten years,

almost the same crew, and it's great fun.

And they're happy to be a part of it

and have been a very integral part of me establishing myself as a solo touring artist.

When we want to tour, we just go, click, and we've got a crew,

we've got a band, and we can go and do it when we feel like it.

And that's how it's worked, and that's what's made it work, really,

the fact that Paul owns his own PA, owns his own lighting system,

everything's done in house, so we're not relying on anybody else.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

'In some ways, I've never had it so good,

'certainly as a solo performer. I've been in bands that have had success

'but never in my own right, and it's probably took the last ten years,

'actually, a short period of my career but, in rock'n'roll terms,

'a lifetime, by getting together with these lads that I have now,

'this band, this crew, just going out there and doing it.

'There has been no hype, there's been no TV - very little, anyway -

'it's just been going out there, winning people over

'and them coming back.'

# Used to be superstitious

# Looking out for hidden signs... #

At heart, he's a low-profile guy.

You know, he happens to have this fantastic voice

and a great talent, but he wouldn't dream of, you know,

he doesn't blow his own trumpet, although I'm sure he probably could.

I think to a large extent, you know, I'm pretty much ignored by the press

and what-have-you, which really is the way I like it.

But at the same time, I'm in the business of touring

and doing my concerts and people have got to know who you are

or they're not going to come to the show,

so I'm quite happy to talk to anybody on a one-to-one basis.

I try to do it when we're on tour, though, cos when we're on tour,

the main focus of the day is the gig,

you try to save your energy and save your voice.

I'm not great TV, I'm not great-looking and all the rest of it.

TV's very, very powerful, though, no doubt about it.

But they're hard to get, those slots, and they generally go

to the major artists

and the major record companies that are promoting their artists.

So from that point of view, as an independent,

it's very difficult to get those things.

I was on Crimewatch a couple of years ago, when we had all our gear nicked,

and that went down well!

I'm delighted to welcome onto the show a legendary British songwriter and talented musician.

He's played with Roxy Music, Squeeze, Mike and The Mechanics, the Pretenders, the Eagles,

-the list goes on and on.

-Wow!

-Please give a big welcome to Paul Carrack!

APPLAUSE

'It's always been about playing live, as far as I'm concerned.

'We tend to play concerts when we're playing in England these days,

'but we do occasionally play stand-up rock'n'roll-type venues as well,

'they're also good fun. So however it comes.

'I mean, I've played to some incredible audiences.

'I was one of the guest artists on The Wall Live In Berlin.

'There were a quarter of a million people there for that one,

'so that was pretty nerve-racking. And I think the following week,

'I was playing down the Half Moon in Putney with Nick Lowe.'

'I've seen Paul when he's been off for a couple of weeks

'and he's, like, chomping at the bit.'

You know, I'd hope to think that Paul would never stop touring.

I mean, physically fit to do it until he was 90, you know,

that would be nice, for him as well.

But no, I think Paul just gets a little bit bored

and wants to get out there.

I'm not getting any younger.

It does cross my mind occasionally, is this a healthy way to carry on?

Would I be better off taking up golf, or something?

But I think also, possibly, I still feel I've got a little bit to prove.

I don't know who to. To myself, probably.

You know, as I say, if I was really going downhill,

I probably wouldn't have any problem saying, OK, enough's enough.

But I'm enjoying what I'm doing and, musically, I'm kind of getting better, really.

So I'm not going to stop just yet.

# It's time to move on... #

I very rarely come in here and think, I'll write a song called Blah.

I usually come in, start messing about, sing something

and then have to try to make some sense out of it.

He's very good at writing songs which fit him,

so it sounds like you can't tell the difference between these cover songs

and his own songs, which is a real skill.

Paul is one of the only guys,

one of the few people who are in the club of The Eagles songwriters.

There are very few outside of the band itself.

# I was standing

# All alone against the world outside

# You were searching... #

I think it was about 1994. At this time, The Eagles had split,

but I got a call completely out of the blue from Don Felder,

who was the guitar player in The Eagles.

And he said that himself, Timothy and possibly Joe Walsh were frustrated.

They wanted to work and they wanted to do a project,

have a band, make an album and play.

And would I be interested in going over and checking it out?

So I said, yeah, absolutely.

# Don't you worry

# Cos sometimes, you've just gotta let it ride... #

I made several trips over there, with a view to having a project,

and it was getting quite exciting,

actually, and we were writing some good things.

But The Eagles did reconcile their differences and they got together

and reformed, and that was basically the end of the project.

# ..Emptiness inside

# When we're hungry

# Love will keep us alive... #

I got a call from Timothy, who said that The Eagles had reformed,

they're making a new album, and he needed a song,

and so, would it be OK if he sang Love Will Keep Us Alive?

It was written by a guy called Peter Vale, Jim Capaldi and myself,

which coincidentally became their big comeback record.

The melody, which it all comes back to,

"When we're hungry, love will keep us alive," just hits people.

It's a very simple love song that works.

# ..When we're hungry

# Love will keep us alive... #

'Paul is dedicated to his music, but it's not a chore.

'I know, as a songwriter, that at times, it is a chore,'

at times, like, a song just doesn't flow out of you.

With Paul, it always appears to just fall out so easily.

With me, effortless means, pffft... Ha-ha!

That sort of effortless, but with Paul, it's just...

it comes out of him, you know,

like water comes out of a spring or something.

# ..Baby, there's nothing I wouldn't do for you

# Now I've found you... #

When your child tells you that he wants to try

and make his way as a musician, you know it's going to be hard for him

because it's hard for every musician.

Jack was always a little bit different, slightly rebellious,

but he just has the musical gene.

It's just in there, and I think it's really been his saviour,

as it was mine, because I think as a young teenager, he was not focused.

He didn't know what he was wanting to do.

He went to music college and it really kind of all came together for him.

I guess I've sort of got big shoes to fill,

as it was, really.

But I think there's some expectation of me.

I mean, my dad's really supportive. He's brought me along on this tour,

which has been a great learning curve for me.

It's always hard to make your way as a musician,

it's not the easiest profession, by any stretch, but he has some talent.

He'll need some luck and he'll need some determination.

You've got to find your own way and what's real to you.

I'm just planning on trying to get better

and constantly improving, that's my life plan for the minute, anyway.

# How long has this been going on?

# Tell me how long... #

'I think what he delivers to an audience

'is family. I think Paul manages'

to plug everybody back into that spirit,

that soul of what it's like to grow up in a family of love.

I think music is the way he translates that.

# ..How long has this been going on, baby? #

Thank you very much, everybody!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

# Behind those eyes... #

I can start worrying about tomorrow now!

# ..People may say

# You've had your chance and let it slip away

# But I want to know what goes on

# Behind those eyes of blue... #

BOOGIE-WOOGIE PIANO

# It's time to move on

# Forget the past

# You said our love

# Would never die

# Now it seems you've changed your mind

# After the thrill is gone

# I know it could never last... #