POP careers were once expected to fade away, but Chris Farlowe continues to defy the sentiments of his biggest hit from the summer of 1966, Out Of Time.

Now 70, the Islington-born blues, rock and soul singer is on the 2011 Solid Silver 60s Show tour, playing 57 dates with fellow Sixties survivors Dave Berry, Wayne Fontana, The Merseybeats and Terry Sylvester from The Hollies.

Come Wednesday, Chris will be in York, singing that song once more. “It certainly has had a life of its own,” he says.

True, but it was Chris Farlowe who gave it that life when Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards famously offered their anthem-in-waiting to a singer with only one previous chart entry to his name: Think, peak position number 37.

“I suppose they wanted someone a bit better than they had before, so they asked me,” says Chris, tongue only just in cheek.

“Mick just rang me up one day and said ‘I’ve got a couple of songs I’ve written for you’, so I went round to his flat and that was that!”

Not that Chris was entirely sure he soon would have a number one on his hands. “I heard people say ‘Oh, that’s gonna be a big’un’ and I couldn’t see it, but they were right,” he says.

What’s more, he had already done the miles, building up that big, big voice to take on such a dramatic song in his mid-20s. “It came down to the apprenticeship I’d served,” he says. “I came across my diary from 1965 the other day and it showed that I’d driven from London to Newcastle with Albert Lee and after the petrol we got £1.1s.3d. That was the good old days!”

Chris still plays 150 gigs a year. “I just love music and it’s still my life. I always felt I’d still be doing it now because I’m a good singer! You get paid to play, you get to stay in the best hotels, so who wouldn’t want to do it?”

He is not content merely to keep reprising Out Of Time, Handbags And Gladrags and Stormy Monday Blues. “I’m getting songs together for my next album and I’ve pulled out 20 R&B greats to record from my collection, which is vast,” he says. “There’ll be lots of people involved, like Albert Lee and Miller Anderson, who’s a great guitar player.”

And so, unlike this interview, Chris Farlowe is far from out of time, still savouring the talent he first showed so young. “My mother played the piano and in the war she would go into the pubs and play to the soldiers and I would sing Doris Day songs, Frankie Lane songs, Frank Sinatra songs, and they’d say: ‘Where did your boy get that voice from?’. She said she didn’t know,” he says.

“I’ve never read music. It’s just instinct. I’m good at interpreting songs. It’s all about feeling and a bit of soul.”

• The Solid Silver 60s Show, Grand Opera House, York, Wednesday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 847 2322 or grandoperahouseyork.org.uk