The People's Tenor and multi Classical BRIT award-winning singer, Russell Watson, takes on our Six of the Best Podcast - talking about performing at the Royal Albert Hall, who would be his favourite people to duet with, life on his farm and recording a compilation of songs for a cancer charity which has gone into your will.
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00:00 On today's podcast, this world famous singer's unique voice has captivated audiences around the globe
00:04 and won numerous awards and accolades, including four classical Brit awards.
00:09 He's now embarked on a magnificent buildings tour, including some of the UK's most beautiful abbeys,
00:13 churches and cathedrals. I'm so excited to welcome the people's tenor, Russell Watson.
00:18 Hello Russell, how are you? Yeah, very good, thank you. How are you? Yeah, really, really good. So
00:23 the magnificent buildings tour is coming to some cracking venues, including Lavenham Church
00:30 on December the 9th. I mean, what can you tell us about the tour and how's it been so far?
00:34 It's been brilliant. I mean, our last one in Worcester was tremendous, just a fantastic night.
00:42 And the great thing about a lot of these places is they're big and I make a lot of noise.
00:48 So the two kind of, the two work very well together. Acoustically for me, it's just such a
00:56 wonderful feeling singing in these massive, you know, massively expansive buildings. It's
01:04 incredible. And, you know, a lot of them with a lot of history. I mean, I can see, if I'm
01:10 looking behind you, you look like you're in a magnificent building as well. It's sort of 1970s
01:16 style brick, is it? Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, I think it is. It looks like, with the window, it looks
01:20 like I'm in some sort of ship. I mean, I've watched your video, I've watched Russell's video
01:28 on Worcester Cathedral. I mean, just wow. I mean, if you get a chance to go to this tour,
01:33 podcast people and see Russell perform, I mean, it just looks great. So definitely check him out.
01:38 So Russell, with this being the Six of the Best podcast, I've got some questions from your biggest
01:43 fans. They're members of the Russell Watson fan site worldwide Facebook page. So are you ready
01:50 for these? I'm ready. Let's do it. Oh, brilliant. Cool. Okay. The first one comes from two people,
01:56 Kelly Wiles from Nottinghamshire and Carol Burrows from Devon, who saw a picture of you on your
02:02 Facebook page at Sheffield Retired Greyhouse. Yes. Saw a picture of you with one of the dogs there,
02:09 and they want to know, did you end up adopting that one? We will be making an announcement about
02:15 said dog very soon. Oh, okay. Nothing more than that. Well, we lost our dear old boy,
02:24 Blaze, who we've had for almost 12 years. He was a rescue greyhound.
02:32 And it was, yeah, I mean, they become like your friends. And it was a very difficult time. So we,
02:40 to cheer ourselves up, we thought we'd take a trip down to the retired greyhound home and
02:47 just go and stroke a few and have a look. And there was one there in particular that gave me
02:52 a certain look and made me feel all warm inside. So we'll be updating the news on that very soon.
03:01 Fantastic. We won't go any further than that. We'll wait for the news.
03:04 So now we go to Diane Hunt from Somerset, who said she's seen you many times. First,
03:11 way back at the Playhouse in Western Supermare, and she last saw you at Wales Cathedral. She
03:16 wants to know, do you sometimes prefer performing at these sort of smaller, intimate venues,
03:22 rather than some of the sort of world-class venues you've performed at before?
03:27 No, I mean, not necessarily. They're all very different. So it's kind of, I enjoy performing.
03:36 It doesn't matter where I am. I mean, recently I've done everything from singing in a stadium to
03:45 singing in the smallest location that you could imagine for a handful of people at a retirement
03:50 home. But I get the same buzz and the same feeling from singing and performing in front of a group
03:57 of people, regardless of whether it's 10,000 or 10. It gives me, I get a wonderful feeling. It's
04:05 a known fact, a scientific fact, that singing, the process of singing releases endorphins in
04:11 us as humans and makes us feel good. So I like to sing as often as I can because I like to feel good.
04:18 That's fair enough. That's a fair answer. I mean, do you still get nerves though, you know,
04:24 performing, you know, at the Royal Albert Hall or even with these ones on the tour? I mean,
04:29 do you, is there a bit of nerves? I did the Royal Albert Hall a couple of months ago
04:34 and there were no nerves. I literally couldn't wait to get out there. I walked out. I mean,
04:42 I've been very fortunate since '97 to have performed at the Royal Albert Hall on
04:48 lots and lots of occasions, too many to recall actually, individually. But yeah, it's a lot
04:57 of performances there. And I walk out, I remember the first time I walked out on the stage at the
05:03 Albert Hall with this real sense of trepidation and felt overwhelmed by the whole occasion and
05:09 this magnificent, you know, building in the centre of London. Yeah, just feeling quite
05:18 intimidated by the whole thing, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra waiting for me on the stage.
05:22 Spin on 25, 26 years later and I'm walking out on the stage and it's a different feeling because
05:33 I've kind of grown into what I do and I don't go out on the stage now with trepidation or nerves
05:41 or fear. I walk out there now with confidence and I walk out there with a sense of I want to
05:47 deliver the best performance that I can because this is what I do. Not necessarily because of
05:53 where I am, but because this is what I do and I always want to deliver my best.
06:00 I mean, and obviously, like I said, I'd heard that video on your Facebook page.
06:04 And I mean, I know you said on the post that nothing had been tweaked or anything like that,
06:11 and it was just amazing. Yeah, we literally just, it was just, my wife recorded it at the side,
06:17 there's no microphones in use and we didn't have a, the performance was amplified and then
06:25 at the end I thought, you know, I'll sing a couple without the microphone and just walked
06:30 out into the audience and belted it out. It was good fun. It's nice because, you know,
06:38 the voice really does, as I say, it soars in those types of locations and
06:43 to sing without the microphone is an exhilarating experience.
06:48 Absolutely incredible. I mean, our next one is an interesting question away from the music,
06:54 it's from Doc Pearcy in Bidolph. It's about your farm, actually. And she wants to know,
07:00 how is the transition to farming going? How has it changed your life?
07:05 And how many animals do you have now there? I couldn't possibly give a number on the animals.
07:10 We've got about 10 horses, six alpacas. We've got 12 chickens, six chicks, two cockerels,
07:22 one miniature horse, three dogs, one cat, one parrot and a South African ostrich.
07:32 I was going to ask about the ostrich because I'd seen that written somewhere
07:35 and I wasn't sure whether you were going to put that in the list or not. So it's good to know.
07:40 Yes, the ostrich is in the list. The ostrich is, my wife, shall I say, rescues animals that she
07:50 feels are in need of being rescued. There was two chickens, this is only a week or so ago,
07:56 and there was two chickens down the road at a farm nearby and news on the wire got out that
08:04 they were going to basically, I can't say, I can't put a better spin on this, but they were
08:09 going to have their necks wrung because they weren't laying eggs. So my wife came to me and
08:13 she said, not on my watch, got in a car, drove down the road, picked the two chickens up, brought
08:18 them back here and within a week or so they were laying eggs. Wow, the power of the farm.
08:24 Must be. The same with the ostrich, as bizarre as it sounds, Louise came to me with a little picture
08:35 on a phone saying this animal sanctuary, due to financial issues, is having to close down and
08:43 they need to rehouse all the animals. Now it's easy to rehome, or I wouldn't say easy, easy is
08:52 probably the wrong word, but it's probably easier to rehome cats and dogs than it is, you know,
08:58 a six foot ostrich. So she said to me, they can't find a home for this, they need somewhere with
09:07 land, which thankfully we've got. I'm going down for it this afternoon. And I said, no, no, this is
09:17 this is silly. I said, it's getting beyond the joke now. No. And she says, well, I'm going anyway,
09:24 so you can come or stay at home. So, okay. So anyway, I got in the car with her, we drove down,
09:31 met the bird and it's now with us. That's a brilliant story. I mean, there's some cracking
09:38 pets, but yeah, I saw that online somewhere else. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, you know,
09:44 it was really sweet about it, though. She's called Fuzzy. And the day she arrived, we put her in the
09:52 paddock, it's about an acre, acre, acre of land, the paddock, beautiful trees and a pond and all
09:59 the rest of it. It's a great location for her to live. But we were concerned that she might be
10:07 frightened of the alpacas because we've got six alpacas in there. Anyway, she waltzed in and the
10:13 alpacas ran off. They were petrified of her. Spin on three days and she sleeps in the left hand
10:20 corner of the paddock. So spin on three days. We woke up, open the curtains, lo and behold,
10:27 she's asleep in the paddock and all the alpacas are sat in a semicircle around protecting her.
10:33 Oh, amazing. She's become part of the pack.
10:36 Yeah, she has. And they, alpacas are naturally protected. Sheep farmers use them to keep away,
10:44 you know, the foxes and things like that, and any animals that might harm sheep. And it's the same
10:50 with, you know, with her, that they naturally want to protect. Fuzzy, which is quite sweet,
10:58 actually. No, that's really cool. And I mean, and has having the farm sort of changed your life?
11:04 Oh, God, yeah. I mean, incredibly so. Just well-being, general well-being and being away
11:14 from it all and that sort of feeling like the music industry is all consuming and it's a bit
11:22 like a rat race. And, you know, more often than not, it's more bad news than good news. So to be
11:28 able to step out of that arena and just isolate from it, it's the best. It really is. I'd recommend
11:39 it to anyone if you can get out to the country. Some people like the city. I don't mind if I'm
11:47 working, but this is a retreat that, you know, I mean, I feel I can't begin to tell you how fortunate
11:54 both of us, my wife and I, feel to be where we are right now. It's just one of the most
12:02 beautiful places. I feel so lucky. That's really cool. That's really, really cool.
12:08 The next question comes from Dundee in Scotland, and it's from Jean Thompson, and she wants to know
12:15 if you could do a duet with anybody, past or present, I mean, who would you choose or who
12:23 would you like to do it with and why? This one's easy. Whitney Houston.
12:27 Just one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard at the peak of her power.
12:36 Just insurpassable. Fantastic vocal technique. I mean, so much soul in that voice as well.
12:47 Smooth, like butter. The high notes, effortless and strong. You know, you can hear a lot of people,
13:02 you know, a lot of female vocalists trying to sort of impersonate Whitney. Impersonation,
13:08 of course, the highest form of flattery. But nobody quite manages to pull it off to
13:15 the full extent. There's always those high notes that you can't quite reach or hit with. I mean,
13:23 it was the way she hit the high notes, sort of limiting the vibrato on her voice, so it almost
13:30 sounded like a, it almost sounded superhuman. That would be a voice that I would have loved to
13:37 have sung with. Outside of that, there's a chap called Mario Lanza back in the 1950s,
13:44 used to do the old MGM movies and musicals. Again, like myself, not a bona fide opera singer,
13:52 but sang the classical repertoire and made a great career out of doing that. And to me,
14:01 and I know a lot of other tenors as well who had a huge amount of respect for him, but to me,
14:05 I would have loved to have, first of all, met him because he seemed like such a complex
14:10 and interesting character, but also to sing with him as well.
14:16 They both came off as answers very, very quick. So you've obviously had that one asked a few times.
14:23 Question five comes from Alan E Smith in Lancashire, who saw the news report about
14:30 you recording a compilation of songs for Worldwide Cancer Research, which has gone into your will.
14:35 And he wants to know, how did this all come about? And can you tell us a bit more about it? But he
14:42 also said, can Ross reassure fans that he isn't likely to be leaving us in the near future?
14:49 Well, that was when my daughter, my eldest daughter, Rebecca, she saw this article online.
14:57 It was on BBC, and then we ended up doing an ITV national news piece. And the first thing I got was
15:05 a message from my daughter saying, "You're not planning on going anywhere soon, are you?"
15:11 So I was like, "No." But I thought Worldwide Cancer Research contacted me about getting
15:19 involved with the charity. I don't just get involved willy-nilly in any charities. I have
15:25 a look at what they do. I have a look at, you know, kind of what their ethos is and
15:31 what their plans for the future are and how the financing works and where it goes.
15:39 And I really like this charity, predominantly because the idea of it is to put together,
15:52 they're called sparks, because they ignite fresh ideas. And it's the cleverest, basically some of
16:01 the cleverest humans on the planet, with regards to creating new cures and developing new cures
16:14 for cancer, either to sustain life or to hopefully and eventually cure this horrible disease,
16:29 which has affected, I think, I can't think of anyone that I know, maybe, you know, I'm talking
16:36 adults. I can't think of anyone that I know that hasn't been affected in some way by this disease,
16:44 either through having it themselves or knowing somebody that they love or have loved that have
16:52 had cancer. And it seems to me like it's been around for such a long time. And so to get
17:02 the concept of putting the cleverest humans together in one room at the same time to discuss
17:11 and hopefully come up with a solution to this, I think is a, it's a fabulous charity. And I think
17:17 one that, you know, we should try to fund, basically. I just, I liked the whole idea of
17:26 basically, as I said before, I keep repeating this, putting lots of very clever people together
17:32 in one room to discuss how we can hopefully eradicate this. - It's a brilliant and interesting
17:40 idea that you guys have come up with for these songs to sort of come out, you know, in your will,
17:46 and hopefully that helps, you know, that helps fund more research, like you said.
17:50 - Yeah, well, Worldwide Cancer Research is offering the opportunity to people who go on,
17:55 basically go onto their website to organise a free will. I mean, there are so many problems
18:06 and issues created by the lack of, and in particular in this country, where I think we see
18:14 talking about post-life as, well, it's basically something we don't want to talk about in this
18:23 country. I think in a lot of countries, they plan and they choose their coffins, and I know it sounds
18:29 morbid, but there's very, a lot of thought goes into post-life. Over here, it's kind of like,
18:34 I don't really want to think about that just yet. And it, if we did think about it a little bit
18:42 more, if we did give it a little bit more consideration, it would eliminate a huge amount
18:48 of problems for the people that are left behind after we've gone, even down to the most simplistic
18:55 things of choosing your music, or choosing the music that you would like to represent you after
19:03 you've gone. - Yeah, no, definitely. No, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, yeah, like you said,
19:09 there is, you know, it is sort of kept in the dark, really, and, you know, what you've done,
19:15 what you've done with that idea is, yeah, hopefully sort of gets that out to people as well,
19:20 and makes them think about that as well. - Yeah. - It's brilliant, it's brilliant. So, we're up to
19:25 the final question, and it's from Dorothy Yorkston from Edinburgh, who wants to know,
19:31 how do you manage to change your voice so much within songs? And I actually have a question
19:36 linked onto this as well, because I just want to know, I mean, can you just pull off those big
19:41 notes whenever you want? I mean, are you walking around the farm and suddenly you just think, you
19:45 just throw one out there, or does it take a bit of building up to, or how does it work? - Well,
19:53 it's dependent on a lot of things. If I haven't sung for a while, when I say a while, a few days,
20:03 I mean, then the voice just tends to switch on immediately. But if I've been doing a run of shows
20:11 and it gets a little bit tired, then I have to kind of warm it up a bit more. I have to do my
20:16 vocal scales and ease back into it. There are days where literally just, I'll do a vocal scale,
20:24 and I'll know straight away on the first run of the scale, yeah, this is working.
20:33 But in answer to your question, yeah, quite a lot. I mean, I was out doing, again, it was an event
20:39 for the Rotary Club. It was only a few days ago, and it was just down at the local bowling club,
20:45 coincidentally, in Biddulph. And at the end of the night, we'd done a quiz, there'd been a quiz,
20:54 and all the rest of it. And someone asked me to sing, and I just sat down and sang, and I went
21:02 and I hit basically a high B flat at the end of the song. I was singing at a semitone higher than
21:06 I would normally. I didn't realise there was a semitone out. And I hit this high B flat at the
21:12 end and sort of sat on the back side at a, you know, in a little bowling club.
21:22 So in answer to your question, yeah, sometimes it just works. Sometimes I have to insist it works.
21:30 And within songs as well, like with Dorothy's question, I mean,
21:33 do you, as you're getting up to the high note, I mean, do you prepare for that,
21:38 or does it literally just come like that once you've got going, or?
21:41 Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. I mean, generally, if you're sat in a slide there, for instance,
21:52 I wouldn't have wanted to aim at that B flat and then think, "Oh dear, I'm not going to hit this."
21:59 Because whenever you, it doesn't matter, whenever you're singing and you're going to
22:04 hit what I call the high wire notes, it doesn't matter if it's one person, 10 people,
22:11 a thousand people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people, you don't want to mess it up.
22:16 No, and that's fair. No, I suppose that's fair, because obviously, you know, they've come to see
22:24 you do those things. No, brilliant. I mean, so they were the six of the best questions, Russell.
22:30 I mean, how were they for you? Great. Really enjoyed the interview with you,
22:33 Kev. It's been fantastic. Oh, cool. Brilliant. Russell Watson's
22:37 Magnificent Buildings Tour is coming to a venue near you, and I'll be in Suffolk at Lavenham
22:42 Church on December 9th. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, Russell, and good luck
22:46 with the rest of the tour. You too, as well. I really enjoyed the
22:50 interview. You seem like a very nice chap as well.
22:52 Oh, thank you very much. I can't wait to tell the office that when I get back in. Cheers.
22:57 It's a pleasure. Thanks, Kev. God bless.