DAVID ESSEX – “GONNA MAKE YOU A STAR”: FIFTY YEARS LATER, THE DREAM WAS STILL SHINING IN GLASGOW
On September 3, 2026, the lights came up at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for David Essex’s Thanks for the Memories tour, and somewhere in the evening came one of the songs that defined the extraordinary beginning of his career: “Gonna Make You a Star.” More than five decades after David first became a household name, the song carried an entirely different weight. In 1974, its title sounded almost like a prediction. In 2026, standing before a Glasgow audience, it sounded like a chapter from a life that had actually lived through the promise. The concert was the second date of Essex’s 21 date UK tour celebrating his career, following the opening performance at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on September 1 and continuing through venues including Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester and finally the London Palladium.
When “Gonna Make You a Star” first arrived in 1974, David Essex was already moving at remarkable speed. His breakthrough had come through several different worlds almost simultaneously. He had starred as Jesus in the London production of Godspell, appeared in the film That’ll Be the Day alongside Ringo Starr, and released “Rock On,” the song that introduced his distinctive voice and restless image to a much wider audience. “Rock On” became an international success, while “Lamplight” followed into the UK Top 10. Then came “Gonna Make You a Star,” a song that looked directly at the machinery of fame and the young performers desperate to find their place inside it. David’s official biography describes this period as the moment when his music, acting and stage career were all embracing him at once.
The song was released by CBS in 1974 and became something much larger than another hit. It entered the UK Official Singles Chart on October 12, 1974, initially at No. 42, before climbing rapidly through the Top 20 and reaching No. 1 on November 16. It remained on the chart for 17 weeks, spending eight weeks in the Top 10. The timing is significant because the song was not simply celebrating celebrity. Its lyrics had a knowing, almost satirical edge, looking at the promises and illusions surrounding the music business. The phrase “gonna make you a star” could sound wonderfully encouraging, but Essex’s performance gave it another shade, as though he understood that behind every promise of stardom there was another young performer waiting to discover what fame actually demanded.
That young performer had already experienced an unusually complicated route to success. David Essex was not simply a pop singer manufactured for the moment. He was an actor, songwriter and performer whose ambitions moved freely between music, theatre and film. His role in Godspell had established him on the London stage, while That’ll Be the Day placed him inside the rapidly changing world of British rock culture. In the same period, he was writing songs that sounded unmistakably like his own. His career would soon bring “Hold Me Close” to No. 1 as well, while Stardust, the 1974 film sequel to That’ll Be the Day, allowed him to explore the rise and fall of a rock star through the character Jim MacLaine.
That makes hearing “Gonna Make You a Star” in Glasgow in 2026 particularly poignant. The young man who sang it in the 1970s could not have known the extraordinary list of chapters that would eventually follow: decades of recording, major tours, theatre productions, films, television, EastEnders, and songs that would become part of the soundtrack of British life. Essex’s official career history now lists 23 UK Top 30 singles and a remarkable body of work across music, theatre, film and television. His 2026 tour itself was announced as a celebration of that monumental career, following two previous UK tours that together sold more than 65,000 tickets across 39 dates.
There was also something wonderfully fitting about Glasgow as the setting. The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, on Sauchiehall Street, welcomed Essex on September 3 at 7 p.m., with the venue listing the performance as part of his Thanks for the Memories tour. And the reaction from people who were there carried its own little piece of history. David’s official guest book includes a message from a lifelong fan whose wife had been following him since she was young and was returning to see him in Glasgow decades later. Other Glasgow concertgoers wrote about the familiar charm, the songs, and the feeling of seeing him again after so many years.
There is a beautiful irony in “Gonna Make You a Star” being part of this particular tour. In 1974, David Essex was singing about the possibility of becoming somebody. In 2026, he was singing it as somebody who had already spent more than half a century proving how far that dream could travel. The title no longer needed to sound like a promise. The evidence was sitting inside the theatre: generations of songs, films, stages, television appearances, and audiences who still knew the words. And when that familiar opening began in Glasgow, the song could briefly return to the moment when David Essex was young, ambitious and standing at the edge of everything, before the decades had arrived and turned “Gonna Make You a Star” from a prediction into part of his own history.