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Interview with Kim Wilde, recorded in Bochum.

You look great today, but back in the Eighties everybody wanted to have your hairstyle like you, even me.
Yeah, I mean, the spiky hair was a spontaneous thing at the time, at some point everyone had it but I did start things up a little bit in that direction, I think.

When you play songs like ‘Kids in America’, ‘Cambodia’, ‘View from a bridge’, do you still like them, or are you sometimes fed up with it?
Well I think I did get fed up with it when… just before I got married. I was 36 and I did want to get out of the music business. And I’d had enough. I wanted to do something totally different. When I did come back, I really enjoyed the songs again. Some time out can rekindle the flame. Not that every love affair needs a pause, of course… It’s hard not to love something when everyone else is smiling and jumping up and down and having fun.

You were only 20 years old when ‘Kids in America’ was released and you became a superstar almost overnight, all over the world. How did you survive that?
Well I had a great family around me. My brother still produces me and he is my best friend. Now I have my own family, my husband and my children, but back then my parents kept my feet on the ground.

Do you sometimes feel sorry that the Eighties are over? When you were extremely famous and everybody loved you?
No, no, I can deal with it much better nowadays. I like that my career has been a bit like a rollercoaster, it’s had its ups and downs, it taught me a lot of things in life, it’s made me a stronger and wiser person, and I think a happier person.

For us you came back when you sang the duet with Nena, How did this happen, how did you meet?
Well I knew her in the Eighties, and when she decided to do the album ‘Nena feat. Nena’ she wanted me on it and she just asked. It was fantastic to work with her, it was very inspiring. She helped me find my inner rock chick.

I was very impressed to learn that you became a gardening expert and you worked on British television.
Well I wanted to create a garden for my children to grow up in…

Just for yourself?
Yeah, just for us. I wanted to create a real paradise, with flowers, vegetables, fruits, to see butterflies and I just wanted to create my own garden of Eden. When I started everything was so confusing, there was so much you had to know, ‘you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that’. And so I studied horticulture and then I wrote ‘First time gardener’ to cut through all that and all the things you can’t do, just to say ‘here’s the things you can do.’

I learned it’s trial and error.
Exactly, it’s trial and error. Like life.