Steve Pratt speaks to songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan about why it is so important to keep up with music trends.

AFTER 40 years in the music business you might expect Gilbert O’Sullivan to be dismissive of modern music.

But, while noting that life can be difficult for older performers in a youthorientated industry, he listens to everything he can. Rappers, Lily Allen, Muse – you name it and O’- Sullivan is aware of it.

“There’s nothing that escapes me,”

he says. “I’m not saying that lyrically I can learn a great deal, but I will get production techniques. I buy everything to see if I can get anything from it.

“That’s very important. If I was dismissive about what’s going on around me I’d lose the melodic side.

Lennon and McCartney became great songwriters because they were prepared to listen to and learn from all types of music.”

O’Sullivan appears at York Grand Opera House tonight, one of a cluster of three performances – Manchester and London’s Royal Albert Hall are the others – on a 28-date tour stretching over 18 months and aimed at showcasing his latest album, A Scruff At Heart. The songwriter and musician, who had massive hits with songs like Alone Again (Naturally) and Clair, regularly tours Europe and Japan, where he had a number one single in the mid-Nineties.

Inevitably, audiences have changed. “If you’ve been around for 40 years, you’re not going to have 15- year-olds turning up unless they’ve been dragged along by their parents,”

he says.

Age – he’s 63 in December – has nothing to do with being a good songwriter, he feels.

The interesting thing is that many of his contemporaries have recorded other people’s songs, not something that he’s ever done.

“I’ve only recorded my own songs.

I don’t consider myself a great singer, so I wouldn’t be comfortable interpreting other people’s songs.

With a 40-year-old catalogue, I have everything in there,” he says.

“It’s nice to think that apart from the obvious songs people want to hear – and get to hear – there are tracks people recognise from new albums.”

HE hopes that, as a lyricist, he’s improved. The danger with his contemporaries (Paul Simon, Ray Davies and Paul McCartney are mentioned) is that “the melody disappears, but the lyrics continue”, he says.

“That’s an age thing. As you get older you lose interest in what you hear on the radio. But you can’t be like that, you have to enjoy what’s going on. That’s part of the reason why composers of my generation lose the melodic touch because they’re not interested in what’s going on around them.”

His press biography points out he spent more time in the courts than the recording studios in the Eighties and early Nineties after bringing action against his manager and former record label, and then a rapper who’d sampled him without his permission.

He still tours because he continues to make and release records.

In a show he’s able to not only sing some of his greatest hits but bring his new songs to the attention of the audience.

He knows it can be an uphill battle. “Because it’s a youth-orientated market you’re considered old hat in terms of marketing and writing and getting your music out there.

“I must never lose the energy and enthusiasm to fight against that,”

says O’Sullivan.

“I can sell 20 or 30 or 50,000 albums. We’re not bursting into the top 20 and get little exposure.

But maybe this time there’ll be a song in there that will get noticed.

That’s a good attitude to have, keeps you striving for something.”

■ Gilbert O’Sullivan: York Grand Opera House, tonight, tickets 0844-8472322 or online at grandoperahouseyork.org.uk