Leo Sayer has some great stories. Take this one from 15 August 1977. Sayer was at the height of his roller-coaster career: two of his songs – “You Make Me Feel like Dancing” and “When I Need You” – had recently topped the US charts, the latter winning a Grammy after becoming Sayer’s only UK number one. He was in Memphis on tour, when somebody passed him the phone: Elvis Presley was on the other end. “He seemed to really like me! Smashing conversation. He invited me the next day to Graceland.”
But it never happened: Elvis died the following day. “That was crazy. What a circumstance.” So Leo Sayer could have been the last person to speak to the King? Not quite, but years later he met Elvis’ then-girlfriend Ginger Alden. “And she said, ‘Look, I have to tell you that the last time I was with him he was jumping up the stairs singing “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.”’ It’s extraordinary, so fantastical. But when she said that to me, I felt that I could tell other people.”
What about the time Sayer met Paul McCartney at the very start of his career? “He gave me some advice: ‘don’t cut your hair.’” Sayer’s voluminous perm – inspired by his hero Bob Dylan – became as much a part of the pocket-sized Sayer package as his falsetto and his soft-rock-meets-disco-pop tunes. “It was good advice. Well, I stood out. And then in the end you become a brand, don’t you? Like John Lennon with glasses.”
Speaking of Lennon: “I worked at a studio where Yoko Ono lived upstairs.” This was when he was a graphic designer still known as Gerrard Hugh Sayer from Shoreham-on-Sea. “John Lennon used to come down for a smoke. He’d say, ‘Want a ciggie?’ I’d say, ‘I’ve got one.’ He’d say, ‘No, try one of these’.” He smiles mischievously. Sayer once sat next to a bandaged-up Muhammad Ali on a British Airways flight. “He said he trained to my songs. Was it bullshit? I don’t think so!”
Before his recording career, Sayer hit up the thriving rock scene in 60s London, where he’d hang with The Rolling Stones and play harmonica for Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton; he used to draw cartoons for Barry Humphries; he designed album covers for Island Records, including for Bob Marley. “I gingerly told him I designed the cover to Catch a Fire and he said, ‘Oh man, that’s my favourite!’ I went up a rung in his estimation.” Even his songwriting break was star-studded: he co-wrote The Who frontman Roger Daltrey’s first solo album. “Look, sometimes my career has been like a Forrest Gump of the music industry,” he smiles. “I still can’t fathom it.”
Sayer is on video call from his countryside home in New South Wales, Australia, where he lives with his wife Donatella. He’s as excitable and impish as ever, and looks great for 76 (the perm is still going strong). But life hasn’t been without its toils. There have been long periods when Sayer was decidedly out of fashion, and he’s had a string of financial troubles. “I just met rogue after rogue after rogue,” he says. One was the man who helped make him, Adam Faith, a former pop star turned music mogul who used his considerable nous and power to turn Sayer into a pop star. “Adam Faith was a fantastic mentor, who opened doors for me. He pushed me like mad. I was very shy, and he was very outgoing. But the very guy who put me there ripped me off in the end. I saw both sides of the same coin.”
For a while, though, everything was great: with his second single Sayer was soon on Top of the Pops, dressed as a Pierrot clown, with his number two hit, the music hall-tinged “The Show Must Go On” (you won’t find clips online, though, thanks to the prominence in the footage of Jimmy Savile). A further nine Top 10 hits followed, with Sayer living the high life in LA.
But by the mid-80s, Sayer couldn’t get arrested. He says punk changed the music business. “The idea was to diss everything that came before.” Mid-divorce from first wife Janice, in 1985 he decided to properly check his finances for the first time (“I’m not good with money”). It didn’t make for good reading: Faith had robbed him blind. Not only that, it turned out Faith was turning down opportunities – film roles, chances to work with certain producers – without Sayer’s knowledge. “I had a manager who didn’t want me to do anything else but be in his control.”
He made more bad decisions chasing his tail. “Once you’ve had a few hits, you want to have more hits. It could be that you’re not thinking correctly and you’re going with something very dodgy, which I did, I must admit, a few times. You sacrifice your ethics sometimes.” His 90s were full of court cases and legal disputes: in 1992 he successfully sued Faith for mismanagement for a reported £650,000; he also won a publishing case with former label Chrysalis. In 1996 he sued his management team for a supposed £1m in lost pension (though withdrew due to spiralling legal costs).
He’d just moved to Australia, glad to see the back of the UK (“I needed a kick up the butt, basically”) when he had a wholly unexpected hit. DJ Meck’s dance remix of Sayer’s 1979 single “Thunder in My Heart” went straight to number one in the UK in February 2006, and was a smash in the clubs. “I was immediately rushed back to London. And it was very strange. Suddenly you’re on pop shows with Blue and groups like that. All the kids were screaming for them on the way in, and by the time I performed my song, it was the opposite.” It felt good to have another huge hit. “I think it made a difference in perception. Because it means that suddenly, you may be a bit older and your time might have passed, but now you’re a player.”
His newfound popularity led to a booking on – and dramatic exit from – the infamous 2007 edition of Celebrity Big Brother. Even allowing for the toxic atmosphere in the house – it was the series with the Jade Goody racism scandal – Sayer had a miserable time. He didn’t know what he was letting himself in for; he’d never seen the show. “My manager promised me that I would get huge reaction from it, and therefore I could go in the studio and make a record.”
That’s not how it panned out. Sayer didn’t come across well – certainly not as endearingly likeable as he does today – and ended up escaping the house after being denied fresh underwear, smashing open a fire door with a broom before an angry confrontation with security who tried to keep him against his will. “After 12 days I was climbing the walls. I learned that I was very claustrophobic.”
How does he look back on it? “Well, I told myself it never happened. It’s a better way to deal with it. But it was an incredible learning experience, about humanity. It was pretty horrible, though. Like being in a Maga cult – ‘switch off all intelligence’.”
If you’re thinking all this could be a film, it might well be: Sayer has just written his autobiography (think of the stories) and is trying to adapt it for the big screen. “I’ve got a producer and a director trying to cherry pick events of my life.” Who would play Leo Sayer in a film? “I fancy Jesse Eisenberg, really. Because he’s burning all the time,” he says, moving energetically.
Sayer remains active. Since 2008 he’s released five albums, most recently unreleased tracks from 1992 called 1992; last year he went on a 50th anniversary tour. He’s currently involved in Think Loud 4 Parkinson’s, a charity album raising money for the disease along with artists like Hank Marvin, The Waterboys and Paul Carrick.
Sayer contributes three songs, adding vocals to pleasant 70s rock-style original “Think Loud”, about sufferers “mentally preparing yourself to speak”; a reworked version of his stirring, soulful 2019 track “Soul Mining” with new vocals from Shakespears Sister’s Marcella Detroit; and from his 2022 Beatles covers album Northern Songs, a mash up of “Eleanor Rigby” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” (“that rubbed up some Beatles fans – they thought it was sacrosanct.”) Parkinson’s is close to his heart. “Richard Perry, my old producer, just died of Parkinson’s. So it’s a great cause, it really is.”
Sayer has plans for more albums, and is trying to make a Glastonbury legend’s slot happen. Why not? His hits live on; Sayer has over 2.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. “I’d love to do it, but you just need someone to come forward and say ‘you’re on’.”
Sayer might be the most optimistic person I’ve ever interviewed. “You’ve noticed,” he says, smiling. “Probably stupidly, I think that my best work is ahead of me. I think I can sit down next week and write some even better songs. There’s always possibilities as long as you’ve got your willpower.”
‘Kindred Spirit – Think Loud 4 Parkinson’s’ is out now. Leo Sayer tours the UK from 7 July
