THE ROCK YEARBOOK 1989

PROFITS WITHOUT HONOUR

Although Stock Aitken & Waterman were not among the chosen few to be garlanded as Act Of The Year in this book, there is a very strong case for just such a recognition. It's called 31 number one hits and 35 million records sold around the world. (And that was just 1987.) For theirs was the sound that dominated the charts, dancefloors and airwaves of Britain with its instantly recognisable bouncy, chattering dance rhythms and chirpy, catchy pop tunes, no matter who the chosen vocalist - Mel & Kim, Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue, Bananarama, Hazell Dean, Sinitta, Samantha Fox ...

The high priests of hip hated them, of course. Bland and mindless, sneered the elitists from their ivory towers (while silently cursing them for reaching just the people they wanted to reach). Now had Stock Aitken & Waterman been black and American, one can't help feeling it would have been a very different story and they would have been lionised as the voice of new realism or some such. Yet even here Stock Aitken & Waterman had the last laugh when they had copies of their seventies-style funk instrumental 'Roadblock' pressed up on white labels and imported from New York into the ultra-hip Rare Groove club scene. So good and so convincing was their forgery that some DJs even went around claiming to have copies of the seventies original!

But why the sudden rise to massive prominence of this obscure trio, none of whom will ever see 30 again? On one hand, Stock Aitken & Waterman can be seen as part of the rise of that very eighties phenomenon - the creator - producer. With the rise of increasingly sophisticated keyboard technology and the increased accessibility of such products, one person operating alone in their proverbial bedroom can now produce highly professional techno-dance records. Witness, for example, the creative sampling technique which has brought hits for smart young club DJs like Tim Simenon (Bomb The Bass) and Mark Moore (S-Express), or the way the sound of House music has largely been taken over in Britain by white kids who already had the right electronic equipment.

Yet Stock Aitken & Waterman are no advocates of the help-yourself technique of sampling. They have complained loudly about preserving the "integrity" of the performance and even gone so far as to take legal action against M|A|R|R|S for pirating one of their productions. More to the point, Stock Aitken & Waterman are in fact the direct descendants of a much earlier phenomenon - the silent songwriter. Appreciation of this now endangered species has declined dramatically since the advent of The Beatles. When the loveable, down-to-earth mop-tops wrote their own songs so everybody else thought they could write songs too: before you could say "pass the joss-stick" there was a moral obligation "write your own material" - regardless of whether you had any talent for this or not. From there, things progressed to the point at which if you performed someone else's songs you were "selling" out to the establishment, man" - another useless sacred cow of the white hippy seventies which has still to be put to rest.

Where Stock Aitken & Waterman really belong is among the production lines of pop - Brill Building, Motown, Philadelphia International - all of which, curiously enough, are looked on as some kind of Golden Era by the very people who sneer at Stock Aitken & Waterman. It is an honourable tradition still carried on today among the black music sector in America where there is still a much closer adherence to the older values. Take, for example, the work of Chic in the seventies or the miracle-working Jam/Lewis team today, with other up-and-coming writer-production teams like the Calloway brothers or LA & Babyface waiting in the wings.

Nor is the factory connotation too strong an image. It is one that Stock Aitken & Waterman happily use themselves. Nor is there anything necessarily wrong with such a way of working. What if 'Never Gonna Give You Up' did only take three and a half minutes to write? What that demonstrates is a real gift, a natural talent - something borne out by the fact that it was the best-selling British single of 1987. If it's really so simple, why don't more people do it? There is no natural law - only another self-denying hippy hangover - stating that popular music must be art, or that to be valid a piece of music has to be agonised over for hours in some gloomy garret.

And is there any real difference between what Stock Aitken & Waterman do with Bananarama or Rick Astley and what The Pet Shop Boys have done with Dusty Springfield or Patsy Kensit (sor-ree - Eighth Wonder)? The only difference is in the eye of the beholder. The Pet Shop Boys understand full well the value of presentation and play the game of appearances to win. Stock Aitken & Waterman, on the other hand, are uncomfortably honest in their opinions about what they do and calling an industry an industry. This is dangerous talk to the crusading image- makers and Stock Aitken & Waterman have paid the full price by being branded as deeply unfashionable by those who seek to preserve the myth of "rebel music" as they fondly imagine it.

"We've taken pop music back to the people who buy records, not the journalists who preach to people, enthused Pete Waterman to Smash Hits. "If Stock Aitken & Waterman do anything, we make music for people, for people to buy. What a big crime that is! We entertain people. We write songs about life as we see it and as the kids see it.

While "the kids" responded to this simple, honest approach by buying their records by the shed-full (to use one of the trio's own favourite terms), there remains the nagging doubt - compounded by their use of phrases like "listening with Woolworths ears" - that "entertainment" can cover a multitude of talentless sins, and with it the corollary that somehow Stock Aitken & Waterman are aiming for the lowest common denominator.

Indeed, if you were so minded, you could put together from their collective history a pedigree of naffness that would give any TV soap opera pause for thought. Waterman (now 40) - the ideas man and commercial ears of the operation - had not only been a DJ for the terminally unhip ballroom and night-club chain Mecca but even worked for a record company in both A&R and marketing. He had also worked with successful producer Pete Collins (Musical Youth, Nik Kershaw, Loose Ends, etc.) before parting company with him over their move to California - "the sun really got to me brain." Of the other two - who take care of the musical side of things - Matt Aitken (31) had played guitar on ocean liners (very Black Lace!) while Mike Stock (36) had played in posh hotel "function" bands and even scored the ultimate naff accolade, appearing in a band called Dodge who came last on TV "talent" show Opportunity Knocks.

It was after a chance meeting that Waterman was impressed by a song the other two had written called 'The Upstroke'. "What Pete actually said," Mike Stock recalled to Smash Hits, "was 'Stick with me boys, and I'll show you how to make a hit record.' Which we thought was completely arrogant, because we'd been trying for years." But they teamed up and 'The Upstroke' duly hit the lower regions of the British charts; as performed by Agents Aren't Aeroplanes (a kind of female Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and championed by, of all people, John Peel (which the trio now find both flattering and amusing). But the team had yet to find that magic touch - they even wrote the Cyprus entry for the Eurovision Song Contest and came 18th!

The turning-point came when Waterman played the other two (who were still being "too clever") a demo of 'You Think You're A Man', "it was, Stock remembers, "everything a well-tempered musician who's been practising for 20 years like me thought was naff. It was simple to the point of being puerile." It was also a Top 20 hit for Divine and the light began to dawn. Then came Dead Or Alive who wanted to sound like Divine and thus was born their first number one production, the brilliant dance-pop of 'You Spin Me Round'. Other records with left-held talents followed though the hits didn't (although in the case of Brilliant they certainly deserved to) before the dam broke with their own creation Mel & Kim.

Now there may seem to be in this pedigree of naffness more of a throwback to the seventies teenybop creations of Mickie Most and Chapman/ Chinn (Mud, Sweet etc.) than a claim to the more exalted company of Gamble/Huff, etc. Yet the work of Stock Aitken & Waterman does not depend on the pubescent fantasies of teenage girls (though Rick Astley's fresh-faced looks certainly didn't hurt) - otherwise why work with so many female vocalists? And even the most cursory examination of the evidence shows that the Stock Aitken & Waterman Hit Factory is no British Leyland of pop.

Firstly and most importantly, their compositions show not just mere craftsmanship but a perfect understanding of what makes a great pop record: the uplifting cross-rhythms of dance, the dynamism of supporting arrangements, a gift for memorable tune and the essential of keeping things simple.

Secondly, they are careful to tailor their material to fit the natural personalities of the acts they work with. For the laughing, exuberant East End sisters Mel and Kim Appleby they created the image of strong, independent girls giving their advice to less experienced friends in trouble. Their touchstone for a happy life of Fun, Love And Money and the counsel that if you dance you'll feel a whole lot better may not reach new heights of inspiration but for sound practical advice it takes some beating. And when coupled with a near-flawless album of jaunty dance-pop it was as effective a piece of total image creation as you could wish to see. For simple, boyish Rick Astley they created a series of uncomplicated songs of love and devotion that struck a chord in a million hearts and minds. Girls next door Bananarama may not have the glamour of The Supremes but they've sold more records.

Nor is Stock Aitken & Waterman's care and attention restricted to the recording studio. They did their bit for Ferry Aid. They were careful to steer their protégés clear of the more destructive aspects of the music industry. They thank their staff nicely and are quietly nurturing the next generation of studio talent in mixers Phil Harding and Pete Hammond. Indeed far from being the archetypal throw-it-out-and-see-if-it-sticks merchants, Stock Aitken & Waterman seem to be motivated by a genuine love of pop music rather than money.

Stock Aitken & Waterman will never feature highly in the taste or style ratings but then they have no pretensions to doing so, and it will be their downfall should they try to do so. Just as Neil Tennant of The Pet Shop Boys remarked that the public will always like high energy, so there will always be room for a good, honest pop song. The secret of Stock Aitken & Waterman's success is merely that they do it so well.