Hitmaker Paul Carrack heads to Oxford

Paul Carrack is one of those artists who seems to have done everything. He’s played with Roxy Music, Squeeze, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Mike & The Mechanics, while his own songs have been covered by The Eagles, Diana Ross, and Tom Jones.

But he is also an accomplished solo artist, with a bulging back catalogue. So when he comes to putting on a show, the only issue is what to leave out from his long career.

Such thoughts have occupied Paul recently, as he prepares to hit the road with his own show, which, reaches the New Theatre, Oxford, on Saturday.

The show, he tells me, promises something for everybody: “It’s a mixture of songs from my whole career, from my first hit, How Long, to present-day material.

“There are certain songs on which I’ve been the lead vocalist — big hits such as Mike & The Mechanics’ Living Years and Over My Shoulder — that I feel I’m entitled to include in my own show and people would be disappointed if I didn’t. But it’s not a greatest hits show, as such.”

Indeed, Paul is not one to rest on his laurels: “Since forming my own label in 2000, I’ve released an album of new material almost every year and my hardcore fans want to hear that material too.”

When asked about the differences between fronting his own band and being part of somebody else’s, he is candid about the former.

“It’s far more responsibility to be fronting and singing the whole show, because so much depends on your own performance and singing. Though it might look easy, it’s a pretty demanding and precarious proposition. Singers on tour live in constant paranoia of coughs and colds. In comparison, playing an instrument in a band is like going on holiday.”

But it will take more than a cold to stop someone whose career has been going strong for nearly 50 years. To what does he ascribe such longevity? Has chance played something of a role, or just a sense of adventure?

“I usually start with a blank page, lock myself in the studio and see what happens,” he says. “I certainly couldn’t have planned a career like mine.”

He’s a little too modest to presume to offer any advice to the young musicians of Oxford, but there’s something to be learned from his younger self’s sense of humility, coupled with determination.

“I started out with very low expectations,” he says. “I’m a totally self-taught musician and my only aspiration on leaving school was to be in a band; getting in the van, going off to play a gig somewhere and avoiding getting a proper job, for which I was evidently unsuited.

“Fortunately, I have been blessed with the musical gene and have been able, through hard work, to develop the natural to such a degree that I have been able to make a career and, most importantly, provide a decent, secure lifestyle for my family.”

And maybe it’s his chameleonic knack for adaptation and collaboration that keeps adding fuel to the fire.

“As a natural rather than technical musician, I have always found it fairly easy to adapt to different musical situations, as far as my limited technique allows.”

However, this particular talent comes at a cost: “It could be seen as a drawback in a way, in that my career has meandered all over the place and I’ve been involved in bands with different styles, which means it can be confusing for people to understand who I am and what I’m about.

“Perhaps if I’d had more courage in the past, I would have followed my own instincts a little more and concentrated, as I do nowadays, on my own music.

“It’s easy to say with hindsight, because really I am very fortunate to have enjoyed a long career doing something I love.

“We have quite an extensive repertoire to draw from and we try to strike a good balance of old and new material.”

And the balance is paying off.

“My band and I feel that, year on year, our show improves. People who have been to the shows and had a good experience are also often keen to have a CD of it as a way, I suppose, of capturing the moment.”

Evidence of that comes in the shape of his acclaimed live album, recorded at the London Palladium.

Asked about his best moments, he mentions his 2010 album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, A Different Hat, describing it as “a labour of love that had always been a dream”.

But when asked what he is most proud of, he simply says “survival”.

So the past has been good to Paul Carrack, but what does the future hold?

“I’m working on a collaboration of acoustic songs with long-time friends Nick Lowe and Andy Fairweather-Lowe, and also want to make a start on another studio album when my tour ends in March,” he says.

In the meantime, he’ll be relaxing with Ray Charles and Sam Cooke on the dressing room stereo. And preparing for his May tenure as organist in Eric Clapton’s band.

It’s not a bad life...

Paul Carrack
New Theatre Oxford
Saturday, March 14
Tickets: £32.40-£43.40 + £2.85 transaction fee from atgtickets.com