大象传媒

by Bob Stanley of

As a guest on the Top of the Pops radio series, the Liverpudlian star told Brian Matthew of his desire to start working less, and focus more on his hobbies.

Merseybeat and R&B groups had been growing in popularity in 1963 and 1964 and by 1965 had pushed Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and down the pecking order. In Billy's case, there was also his health to take into account - he'd had a weak heart since he was a child, which played havoc with the schedule of a pop star.

Sandy Denny's biographer Mick Houghton recalls a 1963 holiday in Great Yarmouth, of which the highlight - for 12-year old Mick, if not his parents - was going to be a trip to see Billy playing at the end of the pier. "We passed droves of people walking back the other way" he remembered in the book Love Is The Drug. "I thought little of it until we arrived to find a young girl outside, sobbing her heart out. The show had been cancelled owing to Billy Fury's ill health. We trudged back to the B&B in silence... I went to my room and cried. After the bitter disappointment, I was glad to get back to school."

Billy's ill health frequently led to cancelled shows, testing his fans patience and, once Beatlemania hit, many of his younger fans had started to look elsewhere for their kicks. Older fans stood by him and ensured he still had hits, though he was becoming ever less visible - during a rare appearance on the American show Shindig in 1965, he barely looked capable of standing. By 1966, his contract with Decca was up - his last couple of singles for them were the tough beat of (a terrific single which failed to chart at all, his first ever flop) and an update of Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1954 number one that stalled at number 27. Decca didn't renew his contract.

1967 saw Billy on Parlophone. Under doctors' advice, the work load eased up. He issued eleven singles on Parlophone and, though none were hits, almost all of them are recommended listening: one was an early David Bowie song,

Maybe if Billy's health had been well enough to promote them, some of the Parlophone singles might have charted, but by now he was quite content indulging in his hobbies at his farm in Surrey, with the occasional single to keep his name in the public eye. Hits or not, Billy Fury would still get mobbed in the streets right up until his death in 1983, a true star to the end.