John Paul Young is a pop music icon. He is so well-known in this country that he doesn’t even need to use his name. Say his initials – JPY – and just about everyone can immediately picture the star performing on Countdown, or they can instinctively sing the chorus of “Love Is In The Air”.
But in JPY: The Autobiography, which is about to be published, the singer begins the tale of his life with a story about scrounging in a park in Swansea in the 1980s with his long-time keyboardist and dear mate, Warren “Pig” Morgan, desperately searching for a bundle of money that had fallen out of a pocket the night before, when they had made a toilet stop on the drive back to Sydney after a gig in Newcastle.
“I started thinking there’s so many stupid things that have happened, and that one just shone out,” he laughs.
That anecdote says a lot about John Paul Young, the man. If you were from another planet and meeting him for the first time, you would think he is an everyday bloke, perhaps the sheet metal worker he began his working life as, not the internationally famous performer he would become.
Read more of the Newcastle Herald: Pop legend John Paul Young writes about his life in music in new book (April 30 2019) article here.
JPY: The Autobiography, is released on May 1, by New Holland Publishers.
