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SMASH HITS (AUSTRALIA), 24 AUGUST 1988
THE STOCK, AITKEN & WATERMAN EMPIRE
They sold 35 million records last year around the world. They
are quite possibly the most successful producers ever to have existed.
They have written hits for Bananarama, Mel & Kim, Kylie Minogue, Rick
Astley, and virtually thousands besides. They are Mike Stock (36), Matt
Aitken (31) and Pete Waterman (41) - otherwise known as Stock, Aitken &
Waterman - producers extraordinaire and general all round nice fellows.
And when Mr Pete Waterman had a few spare minutes while in Australia for
a three-week holiday, he shared his songwriting and producing secrets
with Marc Andrews who was all ears.
"We usually bash out a song a week. Last week, for example,
before I left for Australia, I gave the boys (Matt and Mike) 72 songs
that I'd written in two weeks." 72 songs!!! Jiminies, no wonder you're
so prolific. "Well, having said that, they're not songs," he admits,
"I'd written 72 ideas for songs - titles and lines." Phew! He then goes
on to explain that "sometimes I contribute a lot, sometimes it's Matt,
sometimes it's all Mike Stock songs. I think it's fair to say that most
of the songs - 85% - are Mike Stock's songs. Matt and I add in lyrics
and little gimmicks, title stories, odd lines that just work. Mike
doesn't work on his own - he needs that little bit of aggravation from
Matt to get him started. It's a bit like Lennon and McCartney." (???)
And what does Mr Waterman have to say to people who criticise the
trio for being able to make anyone they write and/or produce for sound
reasonably decent? "There is no way that we can make someone awful sound
good. Mind you, I could tell you what is unusual and what sounds
different," he chuckles. "With all of our artists - from Pete Burns
(Dead Or Alive) to Divine, all our artists have very unique voices.
They all sound very different to everyone else around. Not necessarily
great singers - but interesting and unusual."
So how did the trademark SAW sound come into being?
"I began as a DJ," he explains, "and wangled my way into making
records by telling record producers that I felt I could do a better job
than they could. After they challenged me to do so, I took up the chance
and that was like letting a child loose in a candy store. I finally met
up with Matt and Mike when I was looking for people who had the same
ideas about dance music that I did. They were the first people to
understand what I meant by 'dance music'."
After a couple of dodgy releases that never went anywhere, they
hooked up with Divine, a jolly portly bloke dressed as a woman and star
of quite a few "underground" films. That was when they really started to
get the hang of this pop lark. Their first record with Divine, "You
Think You're a Man" went Top 20 in the UK and Top 10 in Australia. After
that there was no stopping them. They finally had their first No.1 hit
with dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round".
"They said they wanted to sound like Divine", says Pete. With
the loot they accrued from this success they built their own studios, PWL
in East London and it was from these rather unassuming premises,
(situated in a run-down, dockland area), that Stock, Aitken & Waterman
plotted their ascent to the very top of the pop pile. So do they have
any ambitions left?
"We'd like to have ten records in the top 10" says Pete. "We
don't feel we've made it yet. We don't actually believe we've done
anything." In fact, they have done quite a bit. They're getting close
to having their 100th hit and at this very moment are quite probably
writing their 200th. Stock, Aitken and Waterman - the story of success
continues ...
THE STARS
One thing Stock Aitken & Waterman are generally very careful about
is writing songs specifically to suit different pop types. "We try to
make a suit of clothes that fits them nicely, not try and squeeze Rick
Astley into doing a rock'n'roll record or something." Here are a
selection of the people they've worked with, some failures, mostly
successes - and Pete Waterman's pearls of wisdom ...
KYLIE MINOGUE
(They produced all of Kylie's debut album and wrote all the tracks
excelt for "Locomotion".)
"The first time I met Kylie I was shocked. For two reasons - I had
never ever seen an episode of Neighbours, and I'd only seen a
photo of her - I'd never seen her in the flesh. I was surprised at how
young she was and how small she was. We re-did "Locomotion" for Kylie's
album because I didn't like the Australian version. It's my favourite
song of all time and I don't think it did Kylie any justice. They got
the chords wrong for a start, and the male voices on it are quite
obnoxious. We've made it more like the original - and we've got the
chords right. The first thing I've got to do when I get back to London
is redo it again to make it right for a single in England. Kylie works
for me because she's got a great voice and also she's believable in her
character as Charlene, and the kids love her. In Australia you've got
no idea how the kids in England adore her. She is enormous over there.
Neighbours has become an institution in England because none of the
English shows can compare to it - it's the kids soap opera. "Je Ne Sais
Pas Pourquoi" from her album is my favourite song we've done, at the
moment. Mind you it changes week by week. When people ask me if Kylie
Minogue is really Rick Astley speeded up, I tell them that it's really
Margaret Thatcher and because of who she is she can't put her name on
the record!"
MANDY
(They wrote and produced her first two singles and the b-side of her
current "Boys And Girls" single)
"Mandy sells a lot of records in Europe. Lots and lots of them. She's
a huge star there. I actually think that if we could break Mandy Smith
in Britain there would be an end to musical snobbery in that
country."
JASON DONOVAN
(They're producing his first single)
"Yes we are producing Jason. He's already done two tracks with Pete
Hammond, who's our house engineer and has worked with Pepsi &
Shirlie and Mandy Smith. We put Jason with him first basically because
too many people were giving him a hard time for working with Stock,
Aitken & Waterman, so we decided to ride it out for a period and I
didn't really know the direction Jason wanted to go. I didn't know him
that well either. I got to know him in England quite well when he was
there. Then when I was in Melbourne I went out to dinner with him and
Kylie, and I said to him, 'Are you prepared to put up with all the
adverse publicity if you make a record with SAW'. He said that he'd
love to make a record as long as we write him one. Well, that's good
enough for us. We'll do three tracks with him, make a single and maybe
finish an album. It'll be a dance record but it won't be like Kylie's.
We've got a few ideas for him that we're starting work on."
RICK ASTLEY
(They've written all of Rick Astley's hits except "When I Fall In
Love" abd co-produced his first album)
"Rick is the male pop star. With Rick Astley we write songs
that are personal to him, but that people can relate to their loved
ones. Rick Astley coems from the same village as me, Newton-le-Willows.
I had a flat which Rick and I shared before he became famous - I was at
one end of it and he was at the other, and every morning I got up and no
matter what time he would come in (he used to work nights) he would
always make me a cup of tea and a piece of burnt toast. So in the
morning after I'd come out of the bathroom I'd never see Rick Astley but
I'd always see this hot pot of tea and burnt toast on the table. I'll
tell you a funny story about Rick. One night he went home with my keys
and I rang him and couldn't wake him up. I went home and I banged on
his window for an hour and couldn't wake him. I bashed the door down
but I still couldn't wake him up so I had to go back to work and sleep
on the couch in the studio. When he finally arrived at work at midday,
the next day I said, 'Were were you last night' and he said 'I was at
home'. I said 'I rang you, I banged on your window, I bashed the door'.
And he said, 'Oh, I didn't hear you." I tell you, Rick Astley is the
heaviest sleeper in the world. If there was a World War III Rick Astley
would sleep right through it."
MEL & KIM
(They wrote and produced all of Mel & Kim's records)
"They think they've got the cancer in Mel's back arrested which is what
we're all hoping. She's lost another stone so she's about seven pound
overweight now. They won't be recording for a while. I think they're
taking advantage of the fact that everyone knows she was cancer now and
they're just relaxing. I mean we obviously tried not to let anyone know
for so long that really tired us out. Keeping it a secret was very
difficult. I went out to dinner with them a few weeks ago before I came
to Australia an Mel managed to walk across the room in the restaurant
which was a big deal for her. We've got our fingers crossed for a full
recovery for her."
BANANARAMA
(They've produced "Venus" and all their hits since then, and produced
and co-wrote their last LP, "WOW")
"To us they're the pop group, the ultimate female group. Mind
you, we had to sneak things past them so they couldn't see the whole
picture at the start. For instance, they'd never have agreed
to the idea of 'I Heard A Rumour' so we recorded it in such a way that
they never heard more than two lines at a time. Then we put it
together afterwards. They loved it. Since we did the Kylie album all
the sounds are starting to change a bit and Bananarama are no exception.
It's not so much that there's a new girl in the group - it's just that
we've all got fed up with the old sound and we're our biggest critics
and worst enemies. People do like a certain familiarity with what they
want. They key to that is to follow the Beatles example and watch where
they made their mistakes ie they listened to their critics and changed
too early. We've already recorded three new songs with Bananarama and
we should have a new single with them out in the next month or so."
SABRINA
'We remixed her "Boys" single for England (which subsequently went
to No.3 over there) and we've done her next single and the single after
that. We had to re-write "Boys" for obvious reasons."
SAMANTHA FOX
"We've just started a new album with her. We're doing three tracks with
her - two of our songs and an oldie "Satisfaction" (originally done by
the Rolling Stones). The last track we did with her, "Nothing's Gonna
Stop Me Now", we recorded in two or three hours with her and it went on
to sell several million copies throughout the world."
SINITTA
(They have written and produced all her records - "Toy Boy",
"GTO", and "Cross My Broken Heart".)
"She's such a bubbly character. Girls definitely identify themselves
with her. She's one of them, whereas Mandy Smith is definitely
not. With the exception of Rick Astley, she's the only artist
we've got who can go on stage and put on a great show for 20 minutes.
And who else could have sung a song about a toy boy and sold a million
records? Sinitta is believable."
AND THE OTHERS:
PRINCESS - they wrote her Top 10 hit "Say I'm Your Number One" in
1985.
WET WET WET - They did a remix for them of "Sweet Little Mystery"
("Rick Astley tells me that they just didn't like it") which was never
released.
BROTHER BEYOND - "We've done a song for them, "The Harder I Try"
because they desperately need a hit record. They could be the next
Bros."
DEAD OR ALIVE - They produced two albums for them, "Youthquake"
and "Mad, Bad And Dangerous To Know" ("The second album took six months.
We've never done anything like that before and never will again.")
SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK - they recorded one never-released song,
"Sex, Fun, Success" with them.
JUDAS PRIEST - They want to us to do a whole album with them.
They're saving the three tracks we've already done with them for it.
They want to do a pop album, It'll certainly be different for us."
STOCK AITKEN WATERMAN - They've made two singles under their own
name: "Roadblock" and "Packjammed With The Party Posse". "I don't think
we want to be pop stars," says Pete. You may not exactly be pop stars,
gentlemen, but you certainly have the magic touch when it comes back to
black vinyl!
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