At 84 years old, Sir Cliff Richard is confronting the realities of aging — and he’s doing so with both honesty and grace. Speaking ahead of his upcoming Can’t Stop Me Now tour, the music legend opened up about the toll that touring takes on him and the uncertainty of the future.
In an emotional interview with New Zealand radio station Coast, the iconic singer admitted, “I might be dead the next year! So, I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s one of those things.”
Despite being one of Britain’s most enduring entertainers, Cliff confessed that touring at his age has become increasingly exhausting.
“The thing I would have to give up probably at some time is touring. It’s very wearing, and you never know when you wake up in the morning whether your voice is still there,” he said.
Cliff — who will turn 85 during the tour — is known for his boundless energy on stage, but he doesn’t shy away from the fact that he’s no longer the fresh-faced teen who first stormed the charts in the 1950s.
“We’ll try and do something that will make it look as though I’m 18! But I’m not. I don’t want to be an 85-year-old guy trying to be 18,” he joked.
Still, don’t expect him to declare retirement anytime soon. For Cliff, the word simply doesn’t exist.
“I don’t know if I ever want to retire. I don’t mind stopping,” he explained. “Stopping would mean that I could absolutely change my mind any time I wanted to, or phone my office and say, ‘Can you get us a couple of nights at the Royal Albert Hall?’”
He added, “Retiring is not in my vocabulary, but stopping is good for me — I can work whenever I want to, if I want to.”
With over six decades in the music industry and countless hits under his belt, Sir Cliff’s passion for performing clearly remains strong — even if the road is getting tougher to travel.
