How This Pub Singer Went From Making Tea To Having a No. 1 Hit Record That Later Turned Into a 21st Century Meme

Life changes in an instant. One minute, you’re working for pub and club payouts split multiple ways. The next, you’re in the recording studio making tea for hit groups like Bananarama. Then, suddenly, you’re at the top of the charts yourself, only to become a meme twenty years later. Indeed, it can all feel like a whirlwind. Especially if you’re Rick Astley, the English sportcoat-clad singer of “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

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Astley and the song’s writer and co-producer, Pete Waterman, dove into the making of this 1987 pop hit in a 2020 installment of The Guardian’s “How We Made It” series. And the sequence of events that led to Astley sailing to the No. 1 position on charts all around the world seems more like something out of a movie than real life.

It all started with FBI. (No, not that one.)

How Rick Astley Got Promoted From Behind the Kit to Behind the Mic

In the mid-1980s, Rick Astley was the drummer for a popular local soul band called FBI. When the band’s vocalist and guitarist left, Astley volunteered to be the singer. That’s what he was doing when Pete Waterman discovered him at the Monks Social Club in Warrington. The producer told the band’s manager, “Don’t like the band. Don’t like the song. I’ll sign the kid.” And with that, Waterman took Astley under his wing as part of the Youth Opportunities Programme at Waterman’s studio, Pete Waterman Limited.

While working at Waterman’s recording studio, Astley did what most interns start out doing. He made tea for the engineers and clients, including groups like Bananarama and Dead Or Alive. Waterman later promoted him to tape operator, giving Astley an even closer look at the recording process. But Astley knew the main goal was to cut a record, which hadn’t happened yet. (According to Waterman, Astley’s distinct voice made it difficult to find the right track. “In some ways, he was actually too good,” Waterman said.)

Waterman eventually came up with the idea for “Never Gonna Give You Up” after Astley razzed the producer about being hung up on a long-time girlfriend. Astley and crew cut two different versions of the song. But both versions got lost in the holiday shuffle. “Then one day, someone played it in a meeting, and everyone went, ‘What is this?’ And the rest is history. It went No. 1 in every country, including America.”

From No. 1 Pop Star to 21st Century Meme

Two decades after Rick Astley released his chart-topping 1987 track, “Never Gonna Give You Up”, he became an internet sensation with the advent of Rickrolling. Rickrolling involves tricking an online user to open a link only to have it send them to the music video for Astley’s late 80s smash hit. The trend started on 4chan and quickly spread to other social networking sites. Even today, nostalgic pranksters will drop a rogue Rickroll here and there—although it’s not nearly as pervasive as it was in the late 2000s.

And to think: if FBI’s vocalist hadn’t quit, if Pete Waterman decided to stay home (he was sick with the flu that night), if Rick Astley had lost his gig as the studio “tea boy” before getting into the studio, and if Astley hadn’t poked fun at Waterman’s relationship, “Never Gonna Give You Up” might have never happened.

What 1987 hit would we have been stuck with otherwise—this one?

Photo by Frank Hempel/United Archives via Getty Images