Tim Campbell: Back to the '80s with new album and tour

When tracks from British super-producers Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman ruled the airwaves in Australia the mid to late ’80s, the record chain Brashs was a dominant retail force.

It was also a time when Barry Bissell’s Take 40 Australia was the country’s most popular syndicated radio show, and Rage on the ABC on a Saturday was must-watch TV.

Collecting the Coca-Cola ARIA chart each week from Brashs, on paper – the internet wasn’t around then – was the thing to do.

For all-round entertainer Tim Campbell, 42, those days and the music of Stock, Aitken and Waterman – anything from Kylie Minogue, Bananarama, Mel and Kim, and Rick Astley – had a profound impact on him.

So much so, Campbell has released an album called Electrifying 80s – Stock, Aitken and Waterman (his second album of covers).

Growing up in the Sydney suburb of Campbelltown, Campbell, like many, wasn’t open about his love of a Kylie or Bananarama track.

“I didn’t mind a band like Bon Jovi, but friends of mine were really into the dark, heavy metal bands like Metallica, and that kind of stuff,” he says. “I was secretly listening to Stock, Aitken and Waterman and all the pop music.”

Initially, music wasn’t what made Campbell a household name in Australia. It was his role as Dan Baker in Home and Away from 2004 to 2008 that gave him his big break.

He has had high-profile acting gigs since, including two years, in 2012 and 2013, on House Husbands, opposite Gyton Grantley as Australia’s first openly gay couple on television. In real life Campbell is married to singer Anthony Callea.

Away from the screen, Campbell and his band are one of Australia’s most in-demand corporate acts, playing to thousands of people every week across the country.

He is proud of playing the hits of the ’80s, and not writing original music. Campbell knows what he is good at, and very good he is. “To be honest, I don’t have a passion for that,” he says of writing original music. “I’m unapologetic about that. Maybe it’s the entertainer in me.

“I love to fill a dance floor at the end of the night. I would never say never, but I would probably write a TV script before I would write a song, to be honest. I’m just happy to do the ’80s covers, because they work.”

If he had to pick a favourite Stock, Aitken and Waterman track, Bananarama’s pop classic, I Want You Back would come close. Campbell describes the song, with one of the best chorus hooks of the decade, as a tragic love song that was a joy to rework.

Campbell has created this album on his own, starting his label Encore Records – and that’s the way he likes it. “Doing it this way I have total control,” he says.

• Electrifying 80s – Stock Aitken Waterman
• Album released July 27