How Nik Kershaw let slip chance to eclipse Freddie Mercury at Live Aid
Of all the receptions pop star Nik Kershaw must have received during his long career, being greeted with a cry of ‘it’s just an old man’ must sting a bit.
And yet, from the field of fans who swooped on Bents Park in South Shields, like many a town seagull was doing on every stray chip, there it was: an observation for the ages - or, more accurately, for the ageist!
To be fair, he had been given a thoroughly overblown build up throughout the day by the enthusiastic MC who bandied words like ‘legend’ and ‘superstar’ with gay abandon. Perhaps, it was not beyond the realms of possibility that Nik would, like Cher, be perfectly preserved via the miracles of modern surgical intervention and hair weave technology.
Nah. While it would be easy to purchase himself a perfectly serviceable crimped and mulleted wig along with his once trademark fingerless gloves and snood, he instead appeared sporting a grey and receding short back and sides, a smart shirt, waistcoat and slim-fit jeans. Every inch the social club stage hypnotist.
That resplendent barnet we so loved and adored (or loathed and abhorred, depending on which music camp you were in at the time) was no more.
His only nod to stardom was perhaps the blue-tinted shades. Oh, and the electric guitar, full band behind him and the thousands of fans whose enthusiastic cheers thankfully drowned out the ‘old man’ comment from the ‘just as old’ lady to my right.
Nik Kershaw peaked in 1985. He was on the Live Aid bill. Who knows what might have been had he seized his moment and jumped in ahead of Freddie Mercury to cajole the vast crowd into that now legendary ‘day ooh’ chantathon.
Instead, he rather froze up in front of a TV audience of two billion people across the globe and forgot the words to his song Wouldn’t it be Good. If nothing, it at least added some convincing poignancy to the line in the song that goes: ‘I don’t wanna be here no more.’
We’ve all been there. Time catches up with you. Question is: how do you deal with it?
Like a man after my own heart, Nik Kershaw has gone down the appreciate-what-you’ve-got route and generously sprinkled it with a healthy handful of self-deprecation.
As his hits began to thin out during his performance as part of the South Tyneside Summer Festival gigs last weekend, the upbeat Kershaw shouted out: ‘Who wants to hear a number 27 from 1985?’ That he launched into When a Heart Beats without waiting for a reply was worth the entrance fee alone, and they hadn’t even charged one.
Kershaw is not ‘just’ an old man, he’s ‘the’ old man you might want to look up if he’s gigging in your area.