Features : Billy Ocean Interview

The 70s and 80s legend, who is headlining the Rewind Festivals this summer, is still touring and recording new material, much to the delight of his many fans, confessing he’s “had a blessed life” and that “without music, I don’t know what I’d be doing.”

Since the 1970s, Billy’s classic hits - including Love Really Hurts Without You, Red Light Spells Danger, Suddenly, Get Outta My Dreams and Caribbean Queen have formed the soundtrack of people’s lives.

The much-loved singer-songwriter has sold over 30 million records, scoring a UK number 1 hit with When The Going Gets Tough, as well as 12 Top 40 hits. Billy also had three number one hits in the USA, winning a Grammy Award in 1986 for best male R&B vocal performance.

This year, before a tour of the USA, Billy will be headlining all three Rewind Festivals, kicking off with Rewind Scotland in Perth (July 19-21), Rewind North in Macclesfield (August 2 to 4) and Rewind South in Henley (Aug 16-18).

These will be extra special performances as Billy will be joined by a big band, chorus and special guests. We spoke to him about the Rewind gigs, plus future plans and career highlights.

How are you Billy?
I’m good, I’m trying my best, working, They say working keeps you alive, and it’s certainly keeping me alive. I’m still working, I ‘m still going right through my years, filled up to November and in fact, I’m already booked for 2025.

You’ve got an American tour coming up, haven’t you Billy?
Yes, the end of October into the first part of November. They wanted to add more to it, but listen, take a little and live long, that’s what I say, save some for the following year. Little and often!

Now we’re not having much of a Caribbean summer here in the UK, can you bring some sunshine to our festivals please?
I hope to do that. It’s going to be nice. Normally I go for a nine-piece band but this time it’s going to be a little bit bigger. There’s going to be a brass section, I’m going to have a percussion player and chorus - we’ll have to bring the sunshine too.

The crowd always absolutely love you at Rewind, Billy.
I’m looking forward to it as well. They like it because we give them what they want. I give them the old songs, the Love Really Hurts Without You, Get Into My Car, Caribbean Queen.

We’ve interviewed you a few times over the last decade but not since the pandemic. How did you cope during that time without any gigs?
It sort of blocked things off for a while but the pandemic time wasn’t all bad. It gave people like me a chance to connect with ourselves, it gave us a chance to sort of do things that we hadn’t done for years, like see people and it gave me a chance to spend time with my grandchildren, my wife, all different things like that. Normally you’re so busy, you sometimes forget the important things in life. It made you appreciate yourself. We keep going, and in this business, we live and do whatever we do, but we give enjoyment to people so we’re always giving.

You’re headlining all three Rewind Festivals this year, we’re really excited about that, are you?
Me too. I’ll give people the hits. They come to hear Love Really Hurts, they come to hear Get Into My Car, they come to hear Caribbean Queen, they come to hear Suddenly, they come to hear the things they associate me with. I do about three tracks off the latest album, the One World album. As I said, I’ve got a brass band with me, I’ve got percussion players with me, I’ve got choral with me so it should be good fun.

And what do you love about the Rewind Festival in particular?
It’s well-organised, the organisers put things together beautifully. There’s a lovely crowd that come to party, they come to enjoy themselves. I’m glad to be part of it. We were almost like pioneers of it, to be honest, in the very early days of it when it started

As you say, this autumn, you’re off on your Billy in The USA tour?
I love going to America. I love being back home again but I love going to America because I suppose America is the land of music, isn’t it?

There’ll be Sad Songs, Caribbean Queen and Get Outta My Dreams were all number 1s in the USA. You’ve got a great history with America, haven't you?
I’ve had a blessed life. I appreciate and am thankful for what I’ve had. Without music, I don’t know what I’d be doing.
I’ve had eight Top Ten hits in America, something like that. You know, you start off, you don’t expect it to be as successful as it was, and I thought that after Everything Hurts, that would be it. But thank God it kept going, and it’s still going.
As well as those No 1 hits that you had in America, you also had a number 2 with When The Going Gets Tough from the movie Jewel of the Nile, and it was Number 1 over here in the UK. We love that song and we absolutely love that video.
It was a privilege to work with such top-notch stars, Michael Douglas, Danny de Vito and Kathleen Turner, lovely people. It’s my favourite video. We had a fun day filming it. The conditions we filmed it in, they were not accustomed to (laughs).

Was it filmed at the Brixton Academy?
Yes it was but the Academy at the time was defunct, there was nothing happening in there. If you looked around, you’d see cobwebs coming down from the ceiling. It was freezing cold but you know, we did the video, and then the place was revitalised. After we did that video, it literally brought the place to life again and it’s still going. It’s one of the top London venues.

We loved the Motown moves that the actors did in the video!
When you look at them, they went to the trouble to learn the song enough to mime it, even though they weren’t really singing it, and all the movements, and all the choreography! C’mon, it was serious!

Wasn’t the video banned by the BBC?
Yes because they reckoned that Danny de Vito wasn’t part of the musician’s union. It stopped the public seeing a beautiful video for a while. Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car had the same sort of problem because they said it would entice kids to get into people’s cars. I mean, there’s always something.

What do you think of the music business nowadays?
The music business has changed so much. They’ve taken the joy out of recording the music. You used to have the charts and you could see where it was on the chart and you did Top Of The Pops. Now it’s all streamed and you don’t really see what is going on. It has taken the joy out of some things. My granddaughter played me something last night, she said `Grandad listen to this, I’ve created all the backing track, all you have to do is present the words, and AI arranges the song’, and I thought to myself, what is music going to be like in two or three years time? It’s frightening. In my day, it used to be that you’d go into the studio with four or five musicians and you’d sit there and you’d practise and you got the track right and then you recorded it. Now, I just don’t know what’s happening now. Back then, I like to think you can hear the joy with songs like Love Really Hurts Without You. It was fun, now I don’t think it is.

So your last album One World was out in 2020, are you writing any new music or have you got any other projects ahead?
You know, I was going to be doing some writing this year, and then I thought to myself, listen, just leave it until next year. I thought, after doing the One World album, I was so disappointed in the fact that it never did what I expected it to do because of the Covid pandemic. So I thought, let me not write anything, let me concentrate on this album, and as I go out and work, promote it a little bit more. But I’ll be doing some new things next year, that’s for sure. there’s so much fun in the new artists recording. I wonder how much fun they have doing it.

*For tickets to the Rewind Festivals, visit www.rewindfestival.com