{"id":318569,"date":"2025-11-28T12:26:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/318569\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T12:26:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:26:07","slug":"how-am-i-still-going-the-everlasting-appeal-of-cliff-richard-cliff-richard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/318569\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018How am I still going?\u2019: the everlasting appeal of Cliff Richard | Cliff Richard"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 85, Sir Cliff Richard<\/a> is out on the road again. Last week, he wrapped up a run of shows in Australia and New Zealand. Tomorrow, the UK leg of his Can\u2019t Stop Me Now tour opens in Cardiff, finishing at the Royal Albert Hall on 9 December. He was the artist who opened the British rock\u2019n\u2019roll era, with Move It in 1958, and after 67 years he is still selling out big rooms.<\/p>\n

To the uninitiated, Sir Cliff\u2019s continued presence is at best a mystery, and at worst an affront to taste. That is to misunderstand him: Sir Cliff doesn\u2019t operate in the music business \u2013 despite his gripes with it \u2013 so much as in the Cliff Richard business. When he disappeared from national radio, to his great distress, it was because he had long since ceased to operate in a world recognisable to the rest of pop.<\/p>\n

National institution \u2026 Cliff Richard sings to Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2022. Photograph: Simon M Bruty\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The writer Richard Williams predicted this future as far back as 1980, when the singer was having a revival off the back of a run of sleek MOR hits such as Carrie and We Don\u2019t Talk Anymore. \u201cPerhaps he will become the next century\u2019s Vera Lynn,\u201d Williams wrote in the Times, and that is more or less what he has become \u2013 a performer to commemorate Christmases and royal anniversaries. A national institution rather than a national treasure.<\/p>\n

How has he managed to endure? \u201cHe asks himself that an awful lot,\u201d says Ian Gittins, who has ghostwritten two books for Sir Cliff, including his autobiography The Dreamer. \u201cHis contemporaries when he started were Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and Adam Faith, and he said to me two or three times, \u2018How am I still going?\u2019 He\u2019s extraordinarily tenacious and incredibly driven, probably more driven than anyone else I\u2019ve interviewed over the years. And he still cares about his career.\u201d<\/p>\n

He remains fit, too. He plays tennis twice a week and goes to the gym, Gittins says. And while he has long regretted never breaking America, the fact that his fame is confined to the UK and the Antipodes means he seldom plays more than 30 shows a year \u2013 his schedule is not as physically gruelling as, say, a big Stones tour (Mick Jagger is 82).<\/p>\n

At Sir Cliff\u2019s shows, the adoration is as fervent as that for the Gallagher brothers at this summer\u2019s Oasis reunion: it\u2019s just expressed a little more sedately, by a rather different demographic, principally women within a few years in age of their hero. The relationship between artist and fans is extremely gentle. \u201cHe\u2019s very fond of them,\u201d Gittins says. \u201cAnd they\u2019re extraordinarily fond and protective of him. They have grown up and grown old with him \u2013 they\u2019ve seen him go through the ups and downs. But he can\u2019t attract new fans, because he doesn\u2019t get radio play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up and growing old with his fans \u2026 Cliff Richard opens the Alexandra Rose Day Market at Seymour Hall, London in March 1970. Photograph: Express\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The cleaving of Cliff from mainstream pop came in the mid-60s. Though he was already a clean-cut family entertainer, the records he had been making with the Shadows were decent, peppy beat pop. But just as UK pop culture went into overdrive, he fully embraced Christianity, and in 1966 \u2013 the year of the Beatles\u2019 Revolver \u2013 he toured the UK not as a rock singer, but as a preacher (contemporary accounts say he needed a large security contingent to deal with the fans who had not yet followed him in renouncing lust). From that point on, no matter the records he made, he was always exiled from pop\u2019s centre.<\/p>\n

Not that it necessarily harmed him. Young female fans often remain very loyal as they age \u2013 as Take That and Westlife have found to their benefit \u2013 and Sir Cliff has rarely shown any interest in anything other than satisfying them. He rarely gives interviews, and when he does it is to outlets that cater to the people he wants to reach: sometimes to the Daily Mail, more often to Christian newspapers and magazines. That is perhaps wise, given that two separate TV interviews in November 2023 went viral owing to their cringe-worthiness. It has also, perhaps, prevented his genuinely important legacy being reassessed: he doesn\u2019t talk to the publications who would love to run such pieces.<\/p>\n

But somewhere behind that perma-smiling, perma-tanned face still lurks the raw rock\u2019n\u2019roller who once electrified Britain. \u201cI\u2019ve just finished writing a book with Jimmy Tarbuck,\u201d Gittins says, \u201cwho was on tour with Cliff in the late 50s, when they were both 18 or 19. And he said the girls were going crazy, that you couldn\u2019t hear yourself think. And all the mums hated Cliff because they thought he was a sex object.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 85, Sir Cliff Richard is out on the road again. Last week, he wrapped up a run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-318569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}