Ivor Novello Award winner Gilbert O’Sullivan talks about hit singles in run-up to Harrogate gig this week

Despite a treasure trove of hits, Gilbert O’Sullivan has a confession to make on the eve of bringing his 60 Years in Music tour to Harrogate this week - it's his love of songwriting that keeps him going.

Despite never quite recapturing the massive success of the 1970s in the UK and USA with sublime, soft rock kitchen sink chart toppers such as Clair, Matrimony and Nothing Rhymed, this resilient Ivor Novello Award winning singer-songwriter has kept recording new material at a pace to rival Paul McCartney.

Talking to the Harrogate Advertiser before his date at Harrogate Theatre on Friday, October 30, the 79-year-old Gilbert O’Sullivan may have put the tank top look behind him but that trademark blossoming expanse of curly hair remains impressively the same.

“At the start I had the pudding basin haircut and the flat cap, which has partly inspired by Charlie Chaplin” he said.

“In the early 1970s when everyone else had long hair and jeans, people thought I was a freak.

“Then, when I let it grow longer, people thought I got it permed.

“Just for the record, I never got it permed.”

Twenty-one albums into a career that has set its own high standards from his very first appearance on Top of the Pops, O’Sullivan has always cared more for the art of music, rather than the music industry.

Never a critic’s darling, he has also never been interested in playing the game.

“I never saw and association between the image and the song,” said O’Sullivan, who remains a more intelligent artist than he is sometimes given credit for.

“Songcraft is serious. The image isn’t.

“Coming up with a good melody is hard but, when you do it, it is fantastic.

“A good melody never dates.”

His latest release, On The Record, is O’Sullivan’s third new album just four years

To this day, all his songwriting is done on an Epstein grand piano.

For live concerts such as the current 60th anniversary tour, he favours playing an electric keyboard, the RD 1000.

“I have eight of them because they’re very rare,” said O’Sullivan.

“The great thing about using the RD 1000 on stage is that I can face the audience.

“The trouble with doing concerts with a grand piano like Elton or Billy Joel is that you’re sitting to the side and you’re looking to the side.”

Far from avant garde, O’Sullivan is, nonetheless, not someone to make easy assumptions about.

He reveals that two of his biggest influences when it comes to lyric writing are old time music hall and late comedian and poet Spike Milligan, founder of The Goon Show.

A natural born storyteller, O’Sullivan may have grown up in Swindon, but he was born in Waterford and remains proud of his Irish roots.

After current Irish country-pop singer CMAT hailed Alone Again, Naturally as the greatest Irish song ever written, he invited her on stage at Glastonbury Festival to sing with him.

“It’s all about the future for me, rather than dwelling on the past," said Gilbert O'Sullivan, who lives in Jersey these days.

“I have a good family background with my wife and two children.

“Life’s been good to me despite the downs that do occur.

“I still love the joy of songwriting.

“It’s the love of the craft of songwriting that keeps me going."

Gilbert O'Sullivan: Celebrating 60 Years of Music, Friday, October 30, 7.30pm, Harrogate Theatre.

Tickets here