Cliff Richard's 60th anniversary tour heads to Birmingham

He was voted Britain’s Ultimate Pop Star and will be celebrating his 60th anniversary in the music business tomorrow at Symphony Hall with his new tour 58 – 18 = 60th.

The show comes 25 years after his first visit to Symphony Hall and it will be Sir Cliff’s fifth performance at the event.

Sir Cliff has a number of celebrity fans and BBC Radio 2’s Ken Bruce has described him as a one-off: “To sustain any career for 60 years is amazing. To do it in the field of music is rare indeed and Cliff has achieved it with style and quality throughout.”

Sir Cliff is simply happy to still be around: “I am so happy to announce that I will be doing a tour to celebrate my 60th Anniversary in the music business. I cannot believe it is already 10 years since my 50th Anniversary in 2008 – so much has happened, and I’m very grateful that fans have kept me busy. I am truly delighted to be performing the 58-18=60 Tour . . . I simply can’t wait.”

The tour coincides with his new record, Rise Up.

He started 60 years ago with Move It, which he recorded in Abbey Road. In an interview with Paul Gambaccini, he said: “When they tried to get me as a new artist on to Jack Good’s Oh Boy TV show, they said ‘You want your boy on my show, he can’t sing School Boy Crush, it has to be Move It’. I therefore became an artist with original material – I might have been a cover artist.

“We then started writing our own songs and The Shadows continued even after I stopped working with them. Loads of friends have also written for me.”

Cliff hails from a different era where he’d worked with paid songwriters, rather than pen his own material. “There was a camaraderie between writers and singers because we needed each other. If I was starting now, I’d probably attempt to be a singer-songwriter because I did write some songs with The Shadows.”

However, during his years with The Shadows, he was spending all of his time in press conferences or being the public face of the band, rather than writing songs.

And while he was doing interviews with the press, his bandmates had been busy writing a couple more songs.

Cliff recorded his latest record in Miami. “The Bee Gees recorded Staying Alive and so I was happy there.

“When I started I was 17 and so in those days, the thought of being 60 – well, I don’t think we thought we’d reach the age of 60 let alone still be recording. I have great fond memories of Studio Two.

“The new album will be released in November and it will be called Rise Up because after the bad period of two years in my life, where I couldn’t sleep and think about anything, it feels to me like I’ve managed to Rise Up. The songs are good. I’m hoping it will be a revival for me. I’m not messing around with it, it’s for real. You should close your eyes when you listen to new records.”

Cliff’s sold more than 21 million singles in the UK and is the third-top-selling artist in UK singles chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

He was initially marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Elvis and Little Richard and with his backing group, the Shadows, he dominated the British music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s to early 1960s. His 1958 hit single Move It is often described as Britain’s first authentic rock and roll song and Beatle John Lennon claimed that ‘before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music’.

He has amassed many gold and platinum discs and awards, including two Ivor Novello Awards and three Brit Awards. These days, he divides his time between Barbados and Portugal.

Recently, he broke his silence after winning a legal case against the BBC, which had caused ‘years of hell’.

In an interview with ITV, he said: “It was very difficult [and] my eyes were watering . . . it was far more emotional than I thought. I still find that I can’t speak about it to anyone. I’m controlling myself. I’m sure when I do start speaking I’ll be weeping . . . it’s been such a relief . . .”