By Ron Tennant
Looking back at the incredible career of Tony Christie…
Tony Christie as a young boy
Anthony Fitzgerald (Tony Christie’s real name) was born on April 25th, 1943, in Conisbrough, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. He left school aged 15 in 1958 and started working in a nearby office.
His father wanted him to become an accountant, but the more Tony studied at night school, the more he hated every minute of it.
So, for pleasure, he started doing some close harmony with his pals and also did some pub nights now and then with jazz trios and quartets he was friends with.
He was a self-taught guitarist as well as a singer. He always listened to the radio and he loved most of the current hits at that time.
Tony was a young lad when his father, Paddy was in the Air Force and stationed in Egypt and India. After a long service, his dad came back with a fantastic collection of old 78 rpm records of big bands of the 1940s.
Tony was bought up on Glenn Miller, Harry James and vocalist Frank Sinatra. But later, he then got into rock and roll. Eventually, he was spotted by a local band that wanted him to join them professionally.
But Tony did not become a professional music man until early 1964 when he was almost 21.
In 1961, as a late teenager, he had joined a local and popular amateur group called The Counterbeats, and also in 1961, aged 18, he did his first stage performance with them. He was with that group for almost three years. Soon afterward, he fronted his own combo group, and with his own show-biz name then changed to Tony Christie, they were called Tony Christie and The Trackers, and professionally, he was with them for a couple of years.
In 1966, he began his solo singing and instrumental career. In that year, he cut his debut single called Life’s Too Good To Waste. Tony co-wrote the song with Barbara Ruskin for the CBS label, but it failed to chart, despite having Jimmy Page – later a Led Zeppelin member – on guitar.
Tony Christie in 1967
A year later, his follow-up single was: Turn Around, on the MGM label, written by Les Reed and Barry Mason. Tony himself wrote the B side song: When Will I Love You Again. But once again, the single also failed to chart for him because top lady singer Kathy Kirby had also released her version of Turn Around and she had more success.
So even though Tony’s recording was not a hit, listening to his singing showed everyone that he was already developing his own trademark “sound”.
He later moved the 16 miles from Conisbrough to Sheffield, where he lived for many years: and that’s where he now and then played golf, sometimes alongside the famous TV star Bruce Forsyth.
Tony began to be a frequent artiste on stage at many working men’s clubs in the Sheffield area. On signing to MCA in 1969, he teamed up with the songwriting and production twosome Mitch Murray and Peter Callender. Their first collaboration: God Is On My Side got nowhere.
In about 1970, he was discovered and managed by Harvey Lisberg who was excellent. In 1971, Tony, with help from this new manager, had three big chart hits. He started with Las Vegas, written by Murray-Callander, which reached No. 21 in the U.K. singles chart.
He had another two big hits in the UK with I Did What I Did For Maria, also written by Murray/Callander, which reached No.2; and then Is This The Way To Amarillo, which peaked at No.18 and was written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield.
Singer Tony was so pleased that his manager Harvey had made the trip over to New York to see the writers of Is This The Way To Amarillo. They played it over there for manager Harvey and he quickly signed it up for his vocalist Tony.
So to have three chart successes in one year,1971, was a great achievement. Incidentally, that third GB hit Amarillo was a No.1 for him in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Spain. It had easily sold more than one million copies by September 1972, so Tony was awarded his first gold disc.
His very first big hit, Las Vegas, was originally offered to Tom Jones’s manager, but he turned it down.
Tony Christie’s second and his biggest hit single: I Did What I Did For Maria officially reached No.2 in GB, but on the “New Musical Express” charts, it was actually their No.1. Tony’s other chart placings tailed off for a short time until a UK single called Avenues and Alleyways (Murray/Callander) came out and reached No.37 in early February 1973. That was the theme of the TV series “The Protectors”.
Tony next made the charts in early 1976 with the single Drive Safely Darlin, written and composed by Barry Mason and Geoffrey Stephens. In that year, he also sang and played the role of Magaldi on the original 1976 album recording of the musical titled “Evita”, by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Eurovision Song Contest
For some reason, in 1976 Tony actually turned down the opportunity to appear on the London stage show production of “Evita”. In that same year, he was part of the UK selection contest to be chosen on TV as an entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest. He sang: The Queen Of The Mardi Gras but his entry only came third.
In the first position was the group Brotherhood Of Man with the song: “Save Your Kisses For Me” and they later won the Eurovision competition.
That group’s song soon sold millions of copies all over the world and was a great No.1 for the Brotherhood Of Man foursome group in many countries.
At the end of the 1970s decade, Tony began a song-writing partnership with Graham Sacher, leading to his continental hit Sweet September.
The UK musical landscape started to change then, with the onset of punk music, which meant Tony’s popularity went down as the 1980s began. But his career in Continental Europe, both in the 1980s and 1990s, went from strength to strength, especially in Germany with four of his albums made with the German producer Jack White and the first one, called “Welcome To My Music”, reached No.7 in Germany and went platinum.
From 1991 to about 2002, Tony recorded nine albums especially for the German music market, and they included quite a number of his own song compositions. Tony, at that time, was living in Spain, on the South coast in Mojacar, on the Costa Almeria (He lived there from 1990 until 2005), once again got into the UK Top 10 in 1999 with Walk Like A Panther and that single earned him his first appearance on the BBC’s “Top Of The Pops” show since his previous appearance way back in the mid-1970s.
In 2002, his previous big early 1970s hit song: Is This The Way To Amarillo was revived and used in a TV comedy series by Peter Kay called “Phoenix Nights” as its theme song. A couple of years later, in 2005, Tony’s original version of that song was again used and this time re-released by him a single to raise funds for the charity “Comic Relief”. It spent seven weeks at the top of the UK singles chart.
So this success brought Tony back to England, to Lichfield, Staffs, in 2005, after living his 15 years in Spain.
His Amarillo song, with its new success, had changed everything for him and revitalised his interest in singing and acting. Following that song’s success once more, Tony was awarded the freedom of Amarillo in Texas. And also, as soon as he was back in England, he made a guest appearance on the popular ITV soap series, the highly-rated “Emmerdale”.
On January 5, 2005, he released a single, ia big band cover of the pop-group Slade’s 1973 No.1 single: Merry Christmas Everybody, but Tony’s single only reached No.49 in the UK charts.
In 2008, he recorded the album “Made In Sheffield” and on May 20 that year he performed one of the songs, from that album at the Royal Albert Hall, called Danger Is A Woman In Love. In July 2010, he made his West End debut in the musical “Dreamboats and Petticoats”, at London’s Playhouse Theatre. On January 22, 2010, he had already appeared in the celebrity version of “Come Dine With Me” in which he came second with actress Susie Amy. His £1,000 prize went to charity.
In October 2011, he released a charity single called Steal The Sun, and all of its proceeds, via iTunes, HMV, and Amazon, went to a charity supporting all the British Forces fighting on the frontline in Afghanistan. From January 2011, Christie appeared in pantomime as The King at The Theatre Royal, Windsor. He has done many charity performances in the decade from 2010 until 2021 and he’s raised a lot of useful charity cash.
On-stage accident halts the progress
Currently, Tony Christie still enjoys performing as much as ever and he recently said that these days he’s even more relaxed now than before. He also said he has never been plagued by a sex symbol image and also has no fear of growing old. He thinks that all of his fans are fans of his voice and nothing else.
He also believes he has more men fans than women fans which means they are actually the fans of his music rather than the person himself.
Tony Christie has released masses of singles since 1966, until now about 70, with 10 or so hits. Since the early 1970s, he’s made and released about 40 albums. In 2011, for one of his biggest-ever show tours, he embarked on a giant 50-date promotion for his new album called “Now’s The Time”.
Strangely in his long career, he has never actually been successful in America, but of course, many other great British singers have also had that same problem.
About four or five years ago, something serious happened to Tony while at the age of about 73. He was performing a concert in Essen, Germany. As he ran onto the stage he accidentally fell over a speaker he had not seen and he landed on his hip and elbow. The big audience laughed because they thought it was a comedy part of his show.
Tony got back onto his feet straight away and he carried on easily with his one-hour performance. But when he got off-stage he saw he was black and blue from his hip down to his knee. So he got bandaged up by the medics and all then seemed okay.
But four weeks later, back home in Staffordshire, he started getting terrible pains in his hip and back and he could hardly stand up or bend down anymore. He was urgently given medication but that made him feel like a zombie and he told his wife Sue that he did not want to carry on anymore, and he was feeling so suicidal because of the constant pain.
Two years off
He received cortisone injections and could not work for about two years. Many people were ringing him to try to book him but he never told them he was ill. Instead, he said he was too busy at that time to accept their booking offers. In show-business, Tony knew that if you admit you are ill, the phone stops ringing and no more bookings come in.
However, nothing affected his voice – he could still sing, even though to do a long show, at that time, was impossible, but he was still able to stand up relaxed and do one song on a TV show, and also some recordings in a studio were possible after his illness break.
Before his stage accident in Essen, he had always enjoyed excellent health and he had kept himself fit by playing golf, doing karate, and some running, plus of course regularly performing on-stage. Over the two years after his serious illness, he did exercise and physiotherapy and so he gradually recovered.
His doctors encouraged him to do situps and plenty of walking. He also wants to take up playing golf again soon, if possible. For quite a few years now, Tony is back working well and properly again, lovingly recording and doing “live” shows…… something he was born to do!
On February 22, 2015, Tony was in Walsall at the new Birmingham and Black Country Big Centre TV venue. DJ “Diddy” David Hamilton was hosting a weekly chat show and Tony was the special guest alongside fellow singers Jess Conrad and P J Proby. So, on that TV show, “Diddy” had three great and legendary singing guests who spoke and also sang.
On June 12, 2016, Tony was one of the stars at the Beacon Park, Lichfield, where he was the support act for the great Tom Jones. Both were brilliant.
On July 1, 2017, Tony returned to his original home village of Conisbrough in South Yorkshire, to be the headlining act at the music festival. Later in that same year, he appeared at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in the pantomime “Jack and the Beanstalk”, set in a fictional town called Amarillo and featured Christie again playing the part as a King.
Tony’s grandparents came from and lived in County Mayo, Eire, and both were musicians. During World War One, they moved to Yorkshire, so it’s obvious Tony does definitely have Irish roots. Tony’s father was Paddy Fitzgerald who played piano, and his mom Iris could play the fiddle, so he was surrounded, all the time, by music. Tony had a younger brother named Neal.
In 1967, Tony met a girl called Sue when she was 19 and he was 24. In 1969, they married and had three children – Sean, born in 1970, Antonia, born in 1972, and Sarah born in 1979. When Tony’s career dropped down a bit in 1990, he and his family moved across to live in Spain, where they stayed until about 2005.
In the later part of Tony’s career, his son Sean became his general manager and I think he still is. Tony now has grandchildren. In 2005, his son Sean really helped his dad to get a major career comeback, so that was real proof super-son Sean is a good music manager. The great singer Tony Christie has had a wonderful career spanning five decades. He recently said that the big band sound and singers like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, etc., have always really been where his own heart is. Those three artists had the ability to beautifully interpret songs and Tony said: “There’s nothing I like better than taking a song and giving it that something that helps it to stand out the way the writers of the words and music had intended!”
In his long and great career, Christie has released about 40 albums and about 70 singles, plus of course, he has hundreds of “live” performances, singing thousands of songs. He has sung many special songs and his vocal ability, plus power, tone, and phrasing, made him a great and special singer who sounds similar and equally as good as Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, John Rowles, P J Proby, Solomon King, Gene Pitney, etc., and he can easily croon with the best of them.
Even now, in 2021, Tony is still singing on-stage and in recording studios, and he also still tours. Tony recently said: “I’m so happy my career has now come around the full circle, back to the big band era which I’ve always loved. When I was in my teens, I’d go to Rotherham, Yorkshire, every week to watch the big bands.”
Finally, he’s written a fantastic new book with assistance from Chris Berry. It was published in October 2019, by Great Northern Books company and titled: Tony Christie – The Song Interpreter (see our November article when Tony did an exclusive interview with Ian Woolley). As well as being printed in English, it was published in other languages, including German. It should be a popular publication in many countries and eventually a best-selling biography.