Pop Don’t Stop: Kim Wilde Interview

In this afterglow of the eighties, Kim Wilde still delivers high-octane performances. Her energy on stage is an incendiary experience, and this performer acts as a conduit to a simpler time with that bombastic injection of nostalgia. Truthfully Kim Wilde is an artist who we as music fans still deserve, and that stage presence is integral to who she is nowadays. Although that was not always the case, and it is only in the last number of years that she has found that artistic freedom. It is no understatement to say then that Kim is as busy touring now, as she was at that start of her career. “Oh God yeah!” states Kim today. “There wasn’t much touring in the eighties. It was all about video, making videos, MTV and doing TV, and miming a lot. Doing lots of interviews and photo shoots, traveling all over the world, doing various TV shows all over the world. So my career started very powerfully right across the globe, so it didn’t leave much time for going out and doing concerts. I did relatively few really during the eighties – I have done more in the last twenty years then I ever did in the eighties.”

Born Kim Smith in Chiswick, her introduction into music was always assured through her father Marty Wilde. The fifties and sixties icon, who is spoken about in the same breath as Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, provided a firsthand introduction that few get into the industry. His influence and his gift for songwriting, provided Kim the perfect springboard. That family affair developed further as Marty, along with Kim’s brother Ricky, penned all those classic hits such as ‘Kids In America’, ‘Cambodia’, and ‘Chequered Love’. Of course, Ricky also acted as producer, and in her initial run from 1981 to 1996, Kim Wilde racked up a staggering twenty-five singles that charted in the Top 50 (UK). Further afield her cover of The Supremes’ ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ hit the top of the US Billboard Charts in 1987. “I had grown up as a child watching my dad entertaining people all my life – standing beside the stage and watching how he transported them. He entered their life and talked to them and laughed with them. I was never able to do that sort of performing in the eighties, there wasn’t much of an opportunity to do it. Firstly, I didn’t do much live performing, it wasn’t the kind I am able to do now and to have that connection with the audience. It is an interesting thing being an older performer, I have all the experience of life to bring to the stage and share.”

In the beginning, after finishing college, Kim was signed by legendary hitmaker Mickie Most to his Rak Records. Even then there was no plan or thought of longevity. “Yeah, it was really spontaneous, getting on and seeing what happens. It was a blank canvas in front of me.”

There is an interesting concept of dealing with a public perception. Certainly in the eighties at the height of her fame, and the pop star Kim Wilde was in some ways an alter ego of Kim Smith the person.

“There was a strong focus on image, I guess. Although it was a part of me, it wasn’t all of me, and of course I didn’t have the confidence or the knowledge or the experience to be one hundred percent me in many situations, except when I was doing interviews. I was always very honest and very truthful really about how I felt about things. If you read the press from that time, you will get a very authentic Kim Wilde, but if you look at public appearances of me then, you will get a more polished effect. Now you get warts and all Kim, and she is a much more interesting animal.”

Nowadays, where Kim is concerned, what you see is what you get. There is no superficial pretence as there once was or an image to live up to. Furthermore, there is a definite sense she is enjoying herself, and revelling in the stage show. “It is pure me really. I feel liberated on stage these days in a way that it never used to feel. When I first started doing live gigs, the same for anyone starting out doing live performing, it was a strange thing. Standing on stage to a small handful and people are looking at you, it’s a bit crazy, and it took me years to feel comfortable.”

It is worth mentioning how a certain amount of her audience nowadays were not even born when those hits first dominated the charts. “Going out now and seeing lots of younger generations out there loving it, it is enchanting. To see the face of a young twenty something singing, it is just fantastic to be me these days. I have to tell you, being a live performer is much more fun these days, as it was back in the eighties.”

Of course, that boundless energy is drawn from the stage, the musicians around her, and the audience in front of her. All of this combines to create Kim Wilde the performer. “Yes it does. Least of all it is because I have an amazing band. So that was another thing in the eighties, sometimes I would do stuff, and obviously I had been doing gigs with bands, but it took me a long time to really feel like I was in a band rather than Kim Wilde being at the front and the band behind. It took me a lot of years to integrate into my band. In the last twenty years I have had the confidence to do that, and I have an amazing band that plays with me, and we work as a team and it makes my job a lot easier and a lot more fun. Working as a team is a lot more enjoyable than working on one’s own.”

That brings us back to that creative foil. Having her brother Ricky, and her niece Scarlett Wilde to share the stage with, gives it a more personal aspect. “I have always had Ricky there; he has always been around. But it did help me to progress through the eighties into the performer I became by the late eighties. It was his constant presence, his focus on music, his passion for music and production, the way things sounded, replicating that live on stage.”

The changes in technology, improves the dynamic in this twenty-first century, something which benefited the musical experience for all those involved. Something at one point which made the performance on a lesser par than the album recording. “It is a lot easier now to replicate our sound in all kinds of ways than it was in the eighties as well. We worked a lot with synths and stuff but there often wasn’t the technology to have that sounding great on stage and taking it with you. Nowadays it is a lot more user friendly and you can get a better representation of what you are doing live. So, technology and live music has really moved on and you get a much better sound. Not just for the musicians but the singers. The in-ear technology helps us to hear the music at last. For years you were battling loudspeakers from bass players and guitarists, including my brother, who kept turning up the bloody amp. You were left trying desperately to hear yourself sing a song. Where now with in-ear technology you can hear yourself perfectly, you can moderate the way you sing. It’s really helped elevate performance I think.”

At the height of Kim’s success in 1988 and gliding on the back of the hit album Close, the songstress toured as support for Michael Jackson. The European legof the Bad World Tour introduced Kim to Jackson’s audience and put her, and the Close album, further into the public consciousness. “So many people mention that tour, I don’t remember being that good on that tour. I remember feeling that Michael Jackson was at the peak of his career, in his success and performance ability, and I thought that anything that I did was so in the shade of what he was doing. These days people say, “I saw you at Aintree” or “I saw you in Cork” or “I saw you in Wembley and you were just great!” The thing is, and what happened was, I had to be the best version of myself for that tour. If I wasn’t going to be the best version of me on that tour, then I might as well have packed up and gone home. So supporting Michael Jackson helped me raise myown personal bar. I was probably much better than I remember thinking I was at that time. I was on tour with the greatest performer in the universe of that time.It took a lot for me to think about doing that tour let alone be on stage in front of Michael Jackson fans.”

Following that occasion, and less than two years later, Kim was on the Sound And Vision tour with David Bowie. Opening for David Bowie brought everything full circle. As Bowie himself influenced Kim but also he himself was influenced by the music performed by her father Marty Wilde. But touring as support for Jackson and Bowie paid a dividend in the further creation of the performer she is today.

“First of all, watching my Dad perform all my life, taught me everything really about going out and performing for a live audience. So that kind of sunk in. I didn’t have the personal confidence for it to come back out again, even though I had it within me. The performer that I have become today, is the performer I watched on stage when I was a child. It has taken me a long time to turn into that performer. Given the opportunity to open for Michael Jackson and Bowie helped shape the performer I am now, and it has all come together in the last fifteen years particularly. Even in the last seven years the whole thing has just ramped up and I feel formidable when I go out on stage in a way I never was. And it is very exciting.”

That excitement continues with some big news. Next year as Kim reveals we will get a new album Closer. Following that, a tour starting the 14th of March across the UK, which will take in nine dates. Then a further ten dates in Belgium and the Netherlands, and eleven dates across Germany. Through all of this, everything is in place the same as it was when she started. “Ricky is at the head of it musically, he was always there producing songs from ‘Kids In America’ right through to now and the new album that is coming out next January. Which is really kick arse and live is really kick arse. He is a huge part of why there is so much power on stage. It is his presence, his talent and his musical vision that make it – he is the integral part.”

At this stage of her career, those feelings on releasing a new album and the anticipation of how the public will react to it, has not changed. The pressure is not what it once was, and so a new album becomes more a vehicle to expand her live repertoire. “There is a strong element of hoping people will enjoy it and love it – get inspired by it. Like you say, all the pressure of having a hit record and all of that has changed so dramatically, and really like you say, it is a vehicle to further our live situation. We are very much, and I say ‘we’ now, rather than me because that is how it feels now. We are very much a team that goes out to play live music and fly the banner of Pop – which is a small word under an umbrella that covers lots of genres. Within that umbrella is every genre potentially and that is exciting. I call it Pop, you don’t have to call it that, some people don’t like that word very much, I happen to love it. I think it says it all, it is music that is popular.”

The word ‘pop’ is not just a description of the music Kim presents; it is in fact closer to her identity. An interesting viewpoint of labels in music, and howwe can restrict ourselves if we refuse to accept small, simple words. “I use the word Pop, you could just say music, I like it though, but Pop is a good word, it talks about the people within that, it is popular. It is a two-way street, and it is just about you going; “yeah, yeah here is my record, this is me and my music! but is it connecting with you?” You are out there and you are the essential element in this. For this two-way dialogue to continue, otherwise I should just sit in a room on my own and do it all for myself with a little light above me and a nice cup of tea. It is a two-way street and that is what’s exciting.”

Releasing music therefore becomes a gift for everyone. Not just a creative or artistic statement, but something for Kim’s fans and the public in general. “Yes,it is everybody’s. Like that brilliant Dave Grohl quote; “That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.” I love that quote; it is one of the best music quotes out there.”She is respectful to her music, though always looking for a new edge to present it. A few years back, Kim worked with an orchestra to recreate some of her best loved hits with 80s Classical. “We worked with Steve Anderson (musical director and producer) and we were really inspired by some of the orchestrations he did for some of my biggest hits. I love that stuff and it actually impacted how we play some of them live. We have tweaked them because of that collaboration with Steve, and I think there is a good chance we will be working with him again, maybe even on the Closer album.”

The lack of pressure puts Kim in a place of contentment, a place of peace. Although her interests these days stretch to gardening and books about the subject, she still returns thankfully to how we know her best. “This is the place I wish I could have been in all of the time. There are younger artists who have really hit the zone. If you look at someone like Taylor Swift, she is really in the zone. She is a young thirty something, and she has had a long career and she has not been always in that zone, and now she is. So it has just gotten better and better (for me). I mean dad is eighty-five and he is still doing gigs. He has still got a great voice, still writing and still in the studio – he has a new single coming out I think at the same time I have. So it can get better with age. Look at Mick Jagger, he is strutting his stuff in a very credible way.”

Whether or not Kim continues performing to the age of her dad is a long way off and yet to be seen. At eighty-five Marty Wilde is not showing signs of slowing down. For now, however, fans and audiences have a new album and tour to look forward to, and as always, that adrenaline fuelled performance to enjoy. “I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I don’t do anything like that. But when I go on stage it is the biggest high that is available to me. I am as high as a kite on that stage. It is all feeding off what is happening on stage and it is very much feeding off the audience.”