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Legendary singer Tony Christie (80) tells Yours that being diagnosed with dementia hasn’t stopped him embarking on a 25 ‐date tour…
Tony Christie will never tire, he says, of singing Is This the Way to Amarillo? written by Neil Sedaka. It first charted in the UK, racking up sales of a million, in 1971. Then, in 2002, off the back of Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights, it was in the charts again. But it was courtesy of Comic Relief three years later that it soared to No.1.
On his recent trip to Nashville to record his album, We Still Shine (his first for a dozen years), Tony made a new recording of Amarillo, giving it a gospel treatment. He plans to put it on the album after this one.
For six decades now, Tony has been entertaining audiences around the world and shows no sign of hanging up his mic. The 11 tracks on the country-flecked new album have a wistful quality. The exception is the title track, an upbeat paeon of praise to a relationship that endures.
You don’t have to dig deep for its inspiration. It was 1968 and Tony was performing at a club near Rotherham. Sue Ashley worked at a folk club down the road in Sheffield and accepted an invitation from an Irish band to go and see Tony sing.
“I walked on stage and, midway through Stranger in Paradise, I saw this pretty brunette in the front row. I turned to my bass player: ‘Mike,’ I said, ‘I’ve just seen the girl I’m going to marry.’ He fell about, but I wasn’t joking.
“Afterwards, the band came backstage and brought Sue with them. I tried to get a date but she wasn’t having any of it. She later told me she thought I was big-headed. But we were married within the year. I was 23, she was 18.”
He’ll be 81 in April but you wouldn’t know it. Trim as a whippet, he’s dressed today in black from top to toe, a full head of luxuriant white hair brushed back from his face.
We meet in his record label’s King’s Cross offices. He’s on genial form and has brought along his son, Sean, once his drummer, now his manager.
He recently embarked on a 25 ‐date tour of the UK, Ireland and Germany, his most consistently loyal market. It would test the stamina of aman half his age, particularly given his condition. In 2021, Tony began to worry that names of people he knew well were slipping his mind. His wife suggested an appointment with a doctor and, following a brain scan, dementia was diagnosed.
In the intervening three years, has he noticed a gradual cognitive decline? “No, I don’t think so,” he says, although Sean’s widening eyes tell another story. But he claims not to be worried about the tour.
“I have an autocue with all the songs’ lyrics. And I always have Sue with me. She’s my rock. I
