If you missed Paul Young four months ago, that's because he was happy to hide his light under a Tex-Mex combo, reports CHARLES HUTCHINSON...

PAUL Young is playing York for the second time in four months this weekend.

If the Eighties' heart-throb's first visit passed you by, don't worry; he wasn't sailing under his own steam. In February at Fibbers, he was just one of the boys in the Tex-Mex combo Los Pacaminos.

On Sunday, however, the Luton soul singer will be the centre of attention at the Grand Opera House, performing his Eighties hits and more besides on The Essential Tour.

"It was a great gig at Fibbers," he recalls, reflecting on his enjoyment of being involved in an extra-curricular project in which his name does not appear on the posters. "What's the point of being in another band and just sounding the same? Of all the music I listen to, I thought Tex-Mex was something I could get together quickly, and the more we do it, the more authentic it gets, and the more we enjoy it."

Los Pacaminos is, he says, "a well kept secret". "We just thought it would be something we'd do for a couple of years, and then someone would get something else to do, but we've been doing it for ten years now," Paul says.

Meanwhile, his solo career now stretches to 23 years, although his chart life has even longer legs, beginning in 1978 when he was a member of Streetband, those bread-and-butter funk enthusiasts behind the novelty hit Toast.

If Toast is the Laughing Gnome of his back catalogue - and as unlikely to appear in a Paul Young live set as the tale of the chortling short guy in a David Bowie concert - Paul is nevertheless happy to revive his solo golden oldies. Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home), Come Back And Stay, Love Of The Common People, I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down, Everything Must Change, Everytime You Go Away: you know the songs, the rasping voice and that way he has of clasping the microphone at an angle and closing his eyes when the emotion pours out.

Not that the live show will be predictable.

"I always try to change it because you're playing those songs to the same people each tour and you don't want to just repeat yourself. So we do different arrangements of some stuff; like we've now got the original Sony arrangements back and brought the songs back to the way they were made on the records," says Paul.

For this tour, he is dropping a couple of ballads, including Don't Dream It's Over, and replacing them with Now I Know What Made Otis Blue and a Frank Sinatra number from 1965, It Was A Very Good Year (latterly covered by Robbie Williams on his Swing When You're Winning album).

Slowing down does not suit Young's style of impassioned performing. "I'm terrible! I'm approaching 50 he is 48 and I still don't like playing theatres with seats whereas my fans are saying 'Oh, no, we like sitting down'," says Paul.

Nevertheless, he is not averse to giving a song more time to breathe in performance. "There's a song from No Parlez we do called Sex that we've found a new way to open out. These days we don't just plunge between the sheets; we have to have a bit of foreplay with the song!" he says.

Sony plans to release a new anthology album, The Essential Paul Young, shortly after the 36-date tour ends at the Sunderland Empire on July 5.

"There'll be the singles, and some of the album tracks that give a broader picture of what the scene was like at the time; maybe some live tracks that you won't have heard unless you bought the 12-inch of Wherever I Lay My Hat, and some previously unreleased tracks," says Paul, who hopes to include a Los Pacaminos number too.

What with Los Pacaminos' road work, a two-month solo tour and a compilation album to plan, there was no time for Paul to climb aboard the Reborn In the USA bus and enter the quagmire of celebrity reality TV.

Mind you, he would not have done the show anyway.

"They asked me and I just thought 'What's the point?'," he says. "Besides, I'd had three Top Ten hits and a number one over there, so it's not like America doesn't know me."

Paul Young, Grand Opera House, York Sunday, 7.30pm. Tickets update: "selling well" but still available at £15 and £17.50 on 01904 671818. Also in Yorkshire: Bridlington Spa, May 25, tel 01262 678258; Penningtons Live, Bradford, June 26, tel 01274 224488.

Updated: 09:01 Friday, May 16, 2003