'˜I'm surprised at my own ambition sometimes, it keeps me on fire'       Â

Leo Sayer's first time playing on a festival stage on the Isle of Wight was to a bunch of roadies and no-one else.
Leo Sayer performing live.Leo Sayer performing live.
Leo Sayer performing live.

But this was 1970, and while they weren't on the actual bill, his then band had been asked to pop across The Solent to test out the Isle of Wight Festival's PA before the event kicked off.

The festival was a who's who of the era's music stars, from Jimi Hendrix to The Doors, Miles Davis, The Who and dozens more, attracting an audience of around half a million.

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They got the unusual gig thanks to a roadie friend working on the site, heard the organisers needed someone to test the sound system.

Leo SayerLeo Sayer
Leo Sayer

'˜It was quite an extraordinary thing,' Leo tells The Guide. '˜It was the first time we'd heard something so much louder than us with the big delay going through the air. We didn't know what it was, but it was a good feeling.

'˜We decided what's the point in driving back quickly, so we stuck around for the festival. Then when our heroes Free were on, it was being filmed wasn't it? I was mates with them because I used to play in a band with Paul Kossoff and Andy Fraser. You can't see me, but I was actually on stage behind Koss's amp. It's a great memory.'

Leo returns to the island as part of the Jack Up The '80s festival which takes place at The Smallbrook Stadium near Ryde.

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He last played the festival in 2016 alongside '˜good mates' Bruce Foxton from The Jam and Paul Young.

'˜It was great fun, I couldn't have been in more familiar territory. We had a fantastic time and I think the audience enjoyed it! It was a really well presented and organised event.'

But going back to the 1970 festival, Leo, born Gerard Sayer, says: '˜It was inspiring.

'˜By that time my commercial art career was almost up and over and I was really looking to do something different. I was back at home in Shoreham-by-Sea, working in a factory, and kind of enjoying being with a bunch of old school mates and we'd formed a band. I don't know if we were any good, but we were playing gigs at local church halls, and that was about as much as we could aspire to.'

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Spotting an ad in the Brighton Argus soon after, he auditioned for David Courtney, which ultimately set him on the road to stardom.

'˜That was right on the cusp of me deciding to be something and Leo Sayer was born. You could say it's come full circle.'

There were huge hits with The Show Must Go On, One Man Band, Moonlighting, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and When I Need You, and throughout the '70s and early '80s Sayer was a huge star. But he hit trouble when it emerged his manager Adam Faith had badly mismanaged his business affairs. There was another lengthy, and eventually successful, court battle with his former label, Chrysalis, to regain the publishing rights to his songs.

While his old songs have remained radio staples, it was a 2006 dance remix of his song Thunder In My Heart that really bought him back into the public eye when it hit number one. And it has helped bring him a cross-generational fanbase.

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'˜My rereleases of hits have done some some fantastic things,' acknowledges Leo. '˜That Meck remix of Thunder in My Heart, it brings the song back to life.

'˜We've just been doing a tour in Australia [where he is now resident] with a bunch of older artists who are all big down there, and we were filling out all the theatres. The wonderful thing was to see lots of younger people coming because they think the music from our time is very special.'

His most recent release was a 50-track triple-disc best of, The Gold Collection, earlier this year.

'˜And it hit the charts too!' says Leo when it's mentioned. '˜It was amazing. It was nice to be in the album charts alongside Beyoncé, she was at 28 and I was at 27. It was a really nice collection, and I put it together myself with Demon Records, so it was a labour of love.'

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Leo says he's happy to look back into his past, which is handy for one of his other current projects.

'˜It's good to delve. I'm doing my book at the moment, I'm covering each album and what the recording sessions were like and writing the songs and there are so many little stories in the adventures behind all of these things. I kind of like being my own curator '“ I can't see anyone else doing it for me!

'˜We did come from a very special time. If you look at the charts from 1976, or 1977, you can look at the top 40 and you can still sing every single song that's in there. I don't think has happened since then, not even in the '80s. All of the acts were good, and competitive, they were great records, we were all bouncing off each other. We would say: 'That bloody Marc Bolan, I'm going to beat him, I'm going to do a song that sounds better than that!' The standard was high.

'˜I don't think there was much marketing around in those days, they wouldn't say, well the kids are buying this, so we want something like that. No, they would say, bring it on Leo, what have you got? My early career is with all of my hits sounding totally different to each other. We were able to explore creatively and we weren't given definitions of how to sound. That happened much later.

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'˜They didn't say, which they did later: 'I Iike the song Leo, but it doesn't really sound like you'¦' he laughs.

'˜That's how you got David Bowie and The Beatles. They understood their audiences '“ it's all there in their music. I recorded something like One Man Band because it's something I felt someone would enjoy. And I'd do the story of Moonlighting because so many people asked me about it and it became a song, that's how these things grow '“ it's all about the relationship you have with the people who are enjoying what you're doing. And that's why our time was wonderful.'

And he admits, much as he loves the old guard, they should have been deposed by now.

'˜It depresses sometimes that there's nobody doing bigger box office than Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney and The Stones and Elton. There should be by now, shouldn't there?

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'˜There's Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, but they're the rarities. And it's a shame that their music has to be almost so accessible and sort of middle of the rock to get there. I'd love it for somebody to do something totally weird and different to be up there in that position. I guess the parameters are not being reopened, rock is not growing.'

He is currently working on a new album, the follow-up to 2015's Restless Years. Fittingly for the man who wrote One Man Band, he is doing everything on it himself.

'˜We're going to hopefully, if we can fit them in, preview a couple of new songs at these show. It's called Selfie and I did all of the songs myself, I did all of the production and played everything, I decided to explore what I could do with my own studio.

'˜These days we're using a computer and we emulate all of the instruments. I've found a way to make it sound like it's humans and the result is pretty good. I'm obsessed with doing things myself '“ I've always been like that.

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I like this way of working, I live in a quiet village and I've got a studio in a converted barn next to my house. I love being in there with no-one else around and exploring the possibilities '“ sonically and writing. If I want to have strings on there, I learn how get the thing off the computer and download some of those, and manipulate them. I teach myself how to do all of this, and somehow I get there.'

Although Leo knows what his fans want, he remains determined not to just become another nostalgia act.

'˜I'm surprised at my own ambition sometimes, but it's what keeps me on fire and what keeps me alive.

'˜My career is this dichotomy between one side which is the entertainer and what you do on stage and putting on a good show, and the other side is the writer.

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'˜The two things can work together and that's what's important to me. I wouldn't like to be doing one without the other. I wouldn't want to just be playing lots of live shows and doing all of the hits, if I didn't have a side to me that allowed me to be creative and lets me believe that I can make my Sgt Pepper's album. I'm driven in that way, and I think that's what keeps me going. It keeps me feeling very young. I'm 70 now and feeling 25. I'm loving being this age, it's fantastic.'

Jack Up The'80s is from August 10-12 on the Isle of Wight, Leo Sayer plays on the Saturday. Other acts appearing over the weekend include Toyah, Shalamar, Chesney Hawkes, Jaki Graham, T'Pau and more. Friday tickets £27.50, Saturday and Sunday £41.80 each, Saturday and Sunday £60.50. Go to jackupthe80s.co.uk.

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