As Cliff Richard’s pious dirge races up the charts, Stephen Moss explains why the Bible-bashing, sexless bore is still a star
Cliff Richard is like the queen: always there, always in the papers, almost born famous. And yet we know next to nothing about him.
He has made more hit records than anyone else, has had number one hits in five separate decades, has enjoyed 42 years at the top of an industry that normally spits out its manufactured icons after about four months. He is a phenomenon, covered by the carapace of fame that makes the “real” Richard impenetrable; he eludes anything written about him; he is as ethereal as a butterfly or a great artist.
Even the facts are hard to ascertain. This week he has become the hero of the Turner Prize-bashing, chattering-class- hating press because his new single, The Millennium Prayer, is – according to early sales figures – racing ahead in the bid to be the Christmas number one. the Daily Mail has led the acclamation, hailing “Cliff the unstoppable”.
So who tried to stop him? His record company, EMI, which refused to release the single, and radio stations across Britain (step forward Radios 1 and 2, Virgin, Capital) which refused to play it. That, anyway, is the account offered by the Mail, which has campaigned for Richard for years and sees him as a sort of pop version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his message suppressed by the vulgarity and petty-mindedness of the modern world.
The truth is less clear-cut. It appears that EMI would have released the single if Richard had insisted, but that their reluctance led him to record it for Papillon, a subsidiary of Chrysalis, instead. Richard is out of contract with EMI, but says that that has happened before and doesn’t necessarily signal the end of his 40-year relationship.
As for the “banning”, it is clear that Radio 1 and Virgin won’t play it – Richard gave up on them long ago – but his management expect Radio 2 to come into line soon, despite a station representative saying last month that the single was “not included on the playlist because it was not considered of broad enough appeal”. If Richard’s amiable dirge – the Lord’s Prayer intoned to the tune of Auld Lang Syne – does achieve the holy grail of the end-of-millennium Christmas number one, that representative may be facing a less-than-happy New Year.
The Mail wants Richard to beat the knockers because it would be a triumph for popular taste. In the paper’s Manichean worldview, the fundamental good sense of the public is perverted by those who think they know better, opinion de- formers (in this case “radio snobs”) who favour the faddish over the traditional, the difficult over the desirable. Richard, like hanging and Harrison Birtwistle, is an issue that helps define the right.
But does the Mail’s championing of Richard – all the hype and the telephone hotlines – actually help his cause? His manager, Bill Latham, was keen to play down the talk of triumph over adversity recently: “It’s early days. We’ve been in the business long enough not to jump to any premature conclusions. The projections are only based on two days’ returns, though the indications are that it is going well. All that Richard wants is to be allowed to compete. We don’t expect special treatment. Radio 1 has its own agenda and we understand that; we think Radio 2 will start to play it; and it’s been getting lots of regional airplay.”
Latham won’t accept that the record was “banned” – he calls that a “media invention” – but there has clearly been a marked reluctance to get behind it, first by EMI and later by stations such as Radio 2 and Capital Gold, which used to be among Richard’s staunchest supporters. It is not fashionable opinion that has turned its back on Richard, but unfashionable opinion – the stations where the 1970s never stopped.
Richard now transcends fashion, which is why he must be rescued from the clutches of those who would use him as a political weapon on behalf of middle England, and recognised as an icon who defies routine media classification.
Richard subverts all norms. He may appear to be a tennis-mad bore who lives in a mansion in Weybridge, Surrey, but look a little deeper. For 30 years he lived with Latham, his manager, adviser, friend and confidant, who is now 62. And with Latham’s girlfriends. Latham – and his 31-year-old German girlfriend Pia Hoffman – moved out only recently. Not for Richard the simple securities of the nuclear family: he has never married and says now that he never will.
There have often been suggestions of homosexuality, never backed up with evidence and always met with good-natured denials. He once said he had had sexual intercourse twice – in his life that is – and it has never been clear quite how passionate his affairs were. He described his relationship with the actress Una Stubbs as “not an ‘affair’ affair”, and said he would “like to marry a girl who was a combination of Stubbs, Cilla Black and Olivia Newton-John” (and with a forehand like Sue Barker’s, presumably). With that ideal woman, the fact that he remains a bachelor boy is hardly surprising.
In our sex-crazed age, Richard’s sexlessness sets him apart. Ironically, he began his career as the English Elvis, hips swivelling subversively, but that didn’t last long. By the mid-1960s he had found God – again going his own way, a true believer in a secular age – and was building a formidable career that ignored all the dictates of fashion. Who else, in the revolutionary year of 1968, would have sung Congratulations for Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest? A fellow 1950s survivor, Adam Faith, said of him that he “did everything wrong, but everything came out right”.
Fleetwood Mac, the dinosaurs of pop, once said they learned about the business by listening to Richard; if they are Jurassic, he is Silurian. It is life, but not as we know it. Rock stars are defined by their tedious excesses; Richard, as well as abjuring sex, doesn’t have much time for the rest of the repertoire either, though he admits to having been drunk three times. (These may or may not include the occasions when he had sex.)
He spends very little, gives away thousands to charity (including the proceeds of The Millennium Prayer, which are going to Children’s Promise) and is extremely rich. Rich enough to back the musical Heathrichard with his own cash – critics mocked, fans flocked, he banked the profits – and to do whatever he wants.
In one of his earliest films, Expresso Bongo, he portrayed a pop star exploited by a cynical manager. It is the antithesis of his career: he set up his own management team, the Surrey-based Cliff Richard Organisation, more than 30 years ago, and most of the original team are still in place. He is powerful enough to tell EMI to take a rest. Next year, when he will be 60, he is planning to take a year off to drive across Australia, before resuming his career in 2001. “The word retirement is not in my vocabulary,” he said recently.
There comes a point where a career has its own momentum: it rolls on oblivious to fashion, impervious to criticism, defining itself. Richard has reached that point: he can ignore the barbs of BBC representatives and the self-aggrandising bouquets of Daily Mail leader writers.
The greatest tribute to Richard now lies in the madly democratic forum of the Internet, where you can buy a cold-cast porcelain figurine of Richard for 69, a cross-stitch kit to knit his picture (19) and all manner of memorabilia, including a beige ticket stub for his concert at the Hammersmith Odeon on December 4 1981 (a snip at 5). That is not fame; it is immortality.