Mike Stock: "I'm this amazingly successful songwriter, and yet not a single record company has ever attempted to employ my talents." Photo: David Sandison/The Independent

THEAGE.COM.AU, 16 OCTOBER 2004

A songwriter takes Stock of his legacy

Mike Stock is sitting in his kitchen, waving expansively around him. "Nice, isn't it?" he says, of his mansion. I have to agree. Stock had met me in a Maserati and as we crunched down his gravel drive through the 40-hectare estate in Sussex, England, he was keen to draw my attention to the grazing cows, the somnolent deer and the ripe vineyard. We parked alongside a Porsche and a Honda 4x4. His house is a labyrinthine mansion with exquisite cream furnishings that scream "this cost a packet". Even the most casual observer would have to concede that whoever owns this house must be obscenely wealthy. As Stock is quick to acknowledge, he is.

"Living or dead," he says. "I am the most successful songwriter of all time. Look it up, it's right there in the Guinness Book of Records. It means that I'm even better - well, OK, not better as such, but more prolific - than either Matt or Pete." He's referring to his erstwhile music partners, Aitken and Waterman.

"Does it make me happy? You bet it does. My success as a songwriter, as a creative, brings me a great deal of satisfaction."

Later, the man who once wrote "I would rather jack than Fleetwood Mac" will compare himself to Shakespeare.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the union of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the songwriting and producing colossus that created some of the biggest - and worst - hit singles of all time. For every example of pure pop gold - Kylie Minogue's I Should Be So Lucky, Mel & Kim's Respectable, Dead Or Alive's You Spin Me Round - there has been an awful lot of dreck.

The team were never fussy about the songs they wrote, or to whom they then dispensed them, they were quite happy to drag all manner of unwitting tea girls and post-room boys into the limelight. They also wrote songs for such luminaries as Bill Wyman's former paramour Mandy Smith and Samantha Fox.

For these very reasons, a British poll recently decreed that they were the second-worst aspect of the entire 1980s; they were pipped at the post by Margaret Thatcher.

"Well, we've never been trendy, maybe, but who cares, because we've been massively successful," Stock says. "The industry hated us because we did it our way, and the media were forever turning your noses up at us, simply because, if you don't mind me saying, you're all so precious. Anything that's successful in this country is criticised, mostly out of fear, I think. With us, it was because we were the best. Come on, we've had over 150 hit singles." He leans towards me, puggishly. "Have you?"

Stock has published an autobiography called The Hit Factory. It's fascinating, but hampered by some appalling ghost-writing that does the man few favours, with passages that veer between nonsensical - "I worked with a lot of black artists over the years and I'm pleased to say we had hits with all of them" - to the bizarre - "Whatever people said, SAW was never Thatcherite. I don't remember voting for anybody in those years."

Despite the team's success, they were hemorrhaging money at such a rate that, by 1990, Waterman - the self-appointed businessman of the three - was forced to sell the company to Warners. Stock still has no idea where all the money went, and was incensed that Waterman failed to inform his partners of the sale, and at his refusal to split any of the profits. Because they had never signed a legal agreement with one another, neither he nor Aitken had much legal recourse.

"I still consider Pete a friend, and I would go out for a drink with him," he says, glowering. "Although, there's no guarantee I won't grasp his throat."

Despite the ungainly fall from grace, Stock continued to flourish throughout the 1990s, producing most recently a group called Fast Food Rockers - perhaps the most wretched of his pop creations so far.

"That wasn't wretched, it was genius!" he thunders.

"Listen, there is far more profundity within me than many of my songs would suggest at first. I feel fantastically challenged by the restrictive nature of a three-minute pop song in much the same way that Shakespeare liked to restrict himself to writing 14 very precise lines for a sonnet. It's like art, painting. A painter doesn't just splash colours all over the wall, does he? He uses a frame, same as me. And believe me, writing three verses and a catchy chorus is far more creative than something like Bohemian Rhapsody will ever be."

He pauses, watches my reaction, and frowns. "I don't know why you're smiling. I'm being quite serious here."

"Think about it. I'm this amazingly successful songwriter, and yet not a single record company has ever attempted to employ my talents. Why? It's a conspiracy, pure and simple. But they won't stop me, because I'll just resurface with another project, I'll do it by myself and, like always, I'll show everyone else how it's done."