Russell Watson is a man who's been in the business for quite some time, overcoming some of the biggest challenges an artist could face in their career, and coming out the other side with a smile on his face.
We got the chance to chat to Russell about his career, his upcoming body of work and a stage show that'll see him perform like he never has done before.
At what point did you realise you had this gift of singing?
You don't really - you're kind of just - 'I sing'. I think as a youngster I never really thought of what I did as a gift I just thought 'I can sing, and I'm not bad at it'. I didn't really see it as being a gift. It's only later on in your career when things started to heat up for me and I was getting a really good response from the public for my performances that I thought, 'I actually might have something here', (laughs), but I wasn't in the shower one day when I was 17 or so - 'Bloody hell I'm good!' (laughs)
So how did you find the challenge of breaking into the industry?
To be fair the challenge of breaking into the industry, in relative terms was quite easy. Sustaining a career for 13 years in the music industry and what I consider to be the 'industry of hard knocks' - that's a challenge, and not just sustaining a career through fantastic and good times, but sustaining it through quite a lot of turbulence as well - it's a real challenge.
Advice I would give to any new artist coming into the industry for the first time is be prepared for a very, very, long, hard, arduous fight to sustain a career. It's hard work. I would say 50% is singing and the rest is having a really good business acumen and good people behind you who believe you - it's crucial.
How does it feel to now have sold over seven million albums?
Pretty good when you say it like that! (laughs) We're hoping to add to that!
For me though it's never really just been about the record sales, because the record sales are kind of... it's great. Everyone seems obsessed with how much and how many these days but for me it's about the memories that I've taken from the industry - the sales figures are great and it's part of it and it's fantastic - but I would never walk around going 'I've sold seven million records, do you know who I am?' - Well have you? Good for you love! (laughs)
It's an achievement but my achievements are within what I remember - what's in my mind - the great moments in my career like singing the 'Star Trek' scene for a billion people at the opening ceremony of the Commenwealth Games in my hometown. That was an astonishing moment and performing at a private concert for Pope John Paul II who's about to be sainted, in 2002. That was another astonishing moment. Sort of hobnobbing with the presidents of the United States at various sorts of performances over the last 10 years has been amazing. Having dinner with the Emperor of Japan and chatting about football was again another astonishing moment, so they're the things that I take great delight from. Seven million records? It's fantastic but it's not really what it's all about for me... but it's nice.
You're now scheduled to release a brand new album - 'Only One Man' - in November, tell us a little bit about it.
I got a telephone call from my manager - he rang me at the end of last year - he says to me he goes: "I've got this idea Russell, I don't know what you think. I thought if you could make a brand new record with Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil - the writers of 'Les Mis', they'll write you new material.'
I said 'Yeah, yeah sure, and while you're at it I'll give President Obama a call and ask him if he wants to come out for a pint of lager tonight down at the local', because I kind of saw it about as realistic as that. To my surprise, a couple of days later he rang up and he said 'I poke with Claude-Michel's people and he wants to meet you at his house tomorrow'. I was like 'Is this a joke?' (laughs) 'because if it is it's not funny!' and it wasn't, and I went down and I sat down with the man who has wrote the world's most successful musical in history - probably one of the greatest composers of the last century - in his lounge and he looked at me and it's quite funny because he's quite direct Claude-Michel. He looked at me and he went 'What do you want from me Russell?'.
'Well, I don't know really!', I said 'well obviously your endorsement as Claude-Michel Schönberg would be amazing, but I'd like you to write something new for me. A brand new body of work.'
'We don't write for singers, we write musicals Russell. You can record any of my catalogue - you have access to that'. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, he asked me to tell him my life story so I gave him all the whistles and bells, the highs, the lows, the performances for the Pope, the getting ill and coming back from the brink, and the whole nine yards and when I finished after about two days of speaking - I'm joking - he looked at me and he said 'I love your story. I am going to write for you', and that was how it all started.
So it was basically written - 80% of the material is new and the pedigree of the record is amazing. We've got Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil who've written the music and some of the lyrics and then we've used a guy called Charles Hart who is basically the chap who wrote the words for 'Phantom of the Opera' - so there's a really amazing pedigree of world class writers onboard, and it's - the music is phenomenal. I'd like to think that I've done a pretty good job as well but the music is just extraordinary, it's different, it's cutting edge and it's a body of work I'm very proud of. Claude-Michel produced the record as well which was incredible because I got direct insight into how the legendary composer works as well, so it's all been quite an amazing time.
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