大象传媒

It's one of the most vivid memories I have aged 11, in 1986, and at the cusp of my musical awakening.

In class we were tasked with writing about a favourite song and I chose When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going by Billy Ocean.

The number one hit was duly played out on the old cassette recorder - booming out 80s pop magic while we all sat quietly at our desks.

Billy Ocean on Top Of The Pops in the 70s

Back then we just couldn't get enough of the suave R'nB popstar, whose hits such as Caribbean Queen and Suddenly peppered playlists around the world.

Get Outta My Dreams And Into My Car blared out of speakers everywhere and When The Going Gets Tough, the theme tune to blockbuster The Jewel of the Nile, earned Billy a gold disc.

But while the songs still remain a firm favourite on the radio today, the man behind them ducked undercover.

"Things got a little out of hand," says Billy, now 58. "Success can be a beautiful thing but it can also be disorientating."

"Music was beginning to change, things around me were starting to get a bit negative," he says. "I found that the more success that I had, the more I was losing myself."

The Grammy-award winner made the decision to "take some time out" to be with his family, and left behind a career that earned him the status of top British-based R&B singer-songwriter of the 1980s.

However his career break hasn't affected his music's popularity. Today the Sunningdale resident is still the biggest-selling black artist of all time.

And it's an accolade that the teenage Billy Ocean, born Leslie Charles, could only have dreamed of when toiling as a tailor in London.

But as luck would have it, it was in fact his job cutting ladies dresses that led him to pen his first hit.

"One of the girls there was selling her piano and I thought, 'why don't I get it?'," he remembers. He borrowed 拢23 off his boss to buy the instrument and taught himself to play.

"One day I wrote Love Really Hurts Without You - and that's how the whole thing started."

His love of singing led to performances at several London clubs and studio time.

"I used to do a lot of free recording for people because I loved being in the studio and that for me was the only way I could get experience and making demos."

A single in 1971 (under his birth name Les Charles) and a string of subsequent unsuccessful releases was followed听by his first chart success in 1976 - the aforementioned Love Really Hurts Without You, which went to number 2 in the UK singles charts.

But it was in the 80s that Billy perfected his pop formula and in his 25-year career his success has led to more than 30 million single and album sales worldwide.

Now, with his children grown up, the dreadlocked and bearded Billy (an image far removed from his sleek look in the 80s) is making a come-back with a forthcoming tour as well as a new album, slated for release next year.

"I thought that I'd get back out there, test the water and see if I still enjoy it," says Billy, who ranks gardening at his Berkshire home among one of his favourite past-times.听

"I built a studio in Grenada where I recorded 90 per cent of my forthcoming album. It's different and interesting to the extent that it's been recorded in Grenada so I'm using Caribbean rhythms."

And is writing music easier or tougher now he's a veteran pop star?

"From experience it's easy to sort out the good from the bad; with confidence you're a little bit more adventurous with words adventurous with ideas - but is it easier? No.

"Something I heard a long time ago is that writing is ten per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration - and that doesn't change!"

See Billy Ocean perform at the Anvil in Basingstoke on Sunday 5 October 2008.