THE SMASH HITS YEARBOOK 1989

"The best song I've ever written"

Mike Stock: "Out best song? 'Never Gonna Give You Up', I suppose. We've got to be true to our public - it's been the most successful. Personally we might say others have been more artistically satisfying. (He mentions Rick Astley's "It Would Take A Strong, Strong Man" and Mel & Kim's "Showing Out"; Matt mentions Princess's "Say I'm Your Number One")."

Matt Aitken: (diplomatically) "There's various confusions as to how we wrote it."

Mike: "The way we work as a team is basically that Matt and I do the work in the studio. Pete sometimes thinks of the title - as in this case - but that's about it. What happens is that Pete's ego will sometimes get the better of him and he will make all sorts of lavish claims - for this song he claims he wrote it for his girlfriend which just isn't true. If you look at the lyrics it doesn't bear any relation. We wrote it for Rick, because we'd known Rick for a time and he'd told us he was in love and his girlfriend was his girlfriend from when he was very very young and they'd been together ever since.

"That's what we do a lot - to find out what an artist is and do something that fits in with their life. The song is about two young people suddenly realising they're mature now and are going to take their relationship further - it refers to their growing awareness of each other as human beings, starting to realise each other's sexuality. (Matt sniggers) Yeah, it sounds a bit profound doesn't it? It was the first song we sat down and wrote for Rick."

Mike: "We spend maybe an hour discussing what the story should be, maybe ten minutes actually writing the lyrics."

Mike: "The chords always come first though we often change them later on. In this song they're our chords, ones we use over and over, the same as 'I Should Be So Lucky', 'Toy Boy', 'Together Forever', 'I Heard A Rumour'. It's only the same as saying we have our own style. We have other series of chords too - every writer does. 'Love In The First Degree' ("a major chord with a descending bass that goes around the cycle," Matt chips in) is the same as lots of songs like 'One More Try' (George Michael) or 'When A Man Loves A Woman (Percy Sledge)."

Matt: "We type the lyrics out so it looks finished then get the singer in."

Mike: "To our shame we didn't realise we had a number one. We thought it was a bit old-fashioned sounding - which it was, but we didn't realise that was its strength.

"Where people go wrong in writing songs generally is they want to deal with all the world's problems in one three minute pop song. They think each song is The Statement. They're not prepared to throw a song away. And people are embarrassed to write songs to be successful, to sell."

Matt: "It didn't used to be like that. Chopin didn't sit down and write. He waited for some geezer to phone up and say 'I'll have the Brandenburg Concertos, please'." (They're by Beethoven, actually - Ed.)

Mike: "Mozart did it for cash in hand - for the velvet trousers. The king would phone up and say 'I've got this new bird and I'm getting married and I want a big thing in a church - you've got to make the stained glass windows rattle so don't start off with any pansy violins, start off with the timpani and the organ and grab 'em in the first ten seconds and do all the flashy bits afterwards. Make it last about half an hour'."

Matt: "There's a thousand quid and a pair of velvet trousers in it for you."

Mike: "Why do people think music has to be this big artistic statement? I'd like people to look back at us and say 'that typified the age' ... 'that was when I met my wife' ... 'that did something for me' ... Anyway, our biggest hits will come back. I'm quietly confident."