Leo Sayer: 'They’ll have to drag me off kicking and screaming off stage'

Launching his career in the early 1970s, Leo Sayer’s high-pitched voice became one of the most recognisable in Britain by the end of the decade with hits such as You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, The Show Must Go On and When I Need You.

The 78-year-old, who was born in Sussex and now resides in Australia, would have been happy to have seen his career last ten years, but following his first number one with When I Need You in 1977, he then scored his second in 2006 with the 1977 track Thunder In My Heart, when it was remixed by DJ Meck as Thunder In My Heart Again.

In the period between the two number ones, Sayer continued to have regular hits with songs like More Than I Can Say, Have You Ever Been In Love and a version of the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody.

The singer also scored six UK top ten albums during his career, including a number one with the compilation The Very Best Of Leo Sayer in 1979.

Other well-known albums by the singer include his debut album Silverbird and its follow-up Just A Boy, both released in 1974, along with Endless Flight, with its recognisable album cover showing Sayer in dungarees with arms outstretched seemingly floating through the air against a backdrop of clouds.

And he has continued to release music ever since, with his latest studio album, 1994, coming out in 2024.

His mix of soft rock, disco and soul has charmed legions of dedicated fans who are happy to follow him around the world on his extensive tours, but now he plans to bring his full-scale touring to a stop, with his final tour of Britain set to begin on October 7 and coming to York Barbican on October 30.

“They’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming off the stage at the end of it,” Sayer says.

“But I must admit, it was just put to me that we can’t carry on doing this like this, or we don’t expect you to; that was what they were saying to me, the agent and the manager over in England.

“So they said, ‘Look, you know we have to be realistic, and if we say this is the final one where we’re going to tour like this, because I think the next time I come over I’ll have to do fewer shows, because if I’m going to keep putting the energy that I’m putting into it, it is very exhausting.

“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Where do you live?’, and I said, ‘Between the drum riser and the front of the stage’.

“I mean, the rest of the time is just kind of like filling in; I just don’t know how to do anything else. This is what I’ve been doing for 54 years, and long may it, if I keep it up, and the voice is still strong.”

The singer is certainly not ready to leave the stage completely, but when Sayer says his shows are exhausting, they certainly sound it, as he reminisces about a recent performance at Sydney’s State Theatre.

He adds: “I played for about two and a half hours; I mean, Jesus, they couldn’t get me off stage. We put in every single, we kept adding songs, but I mean, I don’t think I’ll be working that long on stage in England.

“But to work at that kind of the intensity that I need to put into it, I suppose I’ve got to pace it and take it a little bit easier.”

In a world where Sir Paul McCartney, 84, Sir Mick Jagger, 83, and Bob Dylan, 85, are still performing sold-out shows around the world, Sayer is still a relative spring chicken, but he is still an example of those rockstars of the golden age of the 1960s and 1970s who refuse to pack it in completely.

“It’s a bit like a conjurer,” Sayer explains of the seemingly infinite touring of his generation.

“Imagine a magician, and you’re sitting on a train, and the guy is playing with some cards, and you say, 'Oh, what do you do?’, and he says, ‘I’m a magician, look at this’, and he shows you a trick, and he’s so proud of that trick, and that’s a trick he might have learned 30 years before.

“So once you learn the trick, why let it go? And I can understand that.

“But then when you see, you know, the grand dukes of our business, people like Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, still carrying on, and they don’t want to retire, they don’t want to give in, and they don’t want to give it up.

“I think it’s admirable in a way, and as long as you’ve still got something to offer, and those two blokes always have, whenever you kind of bash them down and think there’s nothing to offer, they’ll surprise you.

“So I think that it is like a magic trick, and if you have worked up the skills to get this far, you don’t want to let it go.”

In fact, Sayer himself never thought his career would last a lifetime, but now he feels like he may be part of a dying breed with artificial intelligence (AI) artists being created. Indeed, he was caught out by the quality of AI only recently.

He says: “It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we never ever thought that this would carry on; we thought that it would all become replaced by something else.

“But maybe now with AI coming in, maybe we are all about to be replaced.

“I was raving about a Spanish singer the other day that I found on the internet, and I go, ‘She’s so good, oh my God’, and share it with all my friends, putting it on Facebook, and I find out she’s AI; she doesn’t exist.”

It is not just Sayer’s final UK tour which has seen him take a look back down memory lane; he has just released his career-spanning 18-CD, 220-track Leothology box set.

The collection includes all 16 of his previously released tracks and two that he never did, in Don’t Wait Until Tomorrow – Live and Return To Paradise, a compilation of unreleased songs.

“I love it all,” Sayer says proudly of his life’s work before realising there may have been one blot on his copybook.

“I mean, probably, there was an album called Have You Ever Been in Love?, and it was like the year that marketing came in, and so the record company decided I just recorded a bunch of my takes on a lot of other songs.

“They were all covers, so it was like kind of like Bowie’s Pin Ups, so it was like let’s pick some favourite songs and let’s play tribute to them.

“But they decided that ‘no, it can’t be good’, it’s got to be called Have You Ever Been In Love?, it’s going to have three tracks from your past albums plus More Than I Can Say, Have You Ever Been In Love?, Heart (Stop Beating In Time).

“I think Orchard Road came into there as well, so I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, that’s really sad’, they’ve been released before, but hey, what can you do? That’s the times we were in.”

Leo Sayer’s Can’t Stop Loving You tour will be at York Barbican on Friday, October 30 (www.leosayer.com)

Sayer’s Leothology CD box set is out now.