Stock Aitken Waterman

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Stock, Aitken & Waterman, sometimes known as SAW, were a British songwriting and record producing trio who had great success during the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s with many of their productions. The three can be considered to be the most successful songwriting and producing partnership of all time, scoring over 200 top 40 UK hits. SAW started in Hi-NRG production on underground club hits, but would hit the motherlode when they mixed the House-influenced sound with Sweet bubblegum lyrics and referred to themselves as the British Motown.

The trio consisted of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman.

Contents

[edit] The team

On January 15, 1984, shortly after meeting Aitken and Stock, Waterman asked them to work with him and his recently formed production company, Pete Waterman Limited (PWL). Their initial style was Hi-NRG with a cover version of "You Think You're a Man" by Divine (#16 UK Jul 1984) and "Whatever I Do" by Hazell Dean (#4 UK Jul 1984). They struck gold in March 1985 when "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" by Dead or Alive reached number one in UK. However, Pete Waterman has said in interviews that the trio were still in dire financial straits at the time.

This success, and the trio's unique sound attracted the attention of female pop group Bananarama, Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama member), wanted to record a cover version of Shocking Blue's "Venus". The result was a Hi-NRG reworking which became a worldwide chart hit, achieving the coveted number one spot in the U.S Billboard Hot 100. Bananarama went on to make Stock Aitken and Waterman their main producers, and would collaborate with them on some of their biggest hits, including "Love in the First Degree", "I Can't Help It", and "I Heard a Rumour". SAW took early notice of the skills of UK engineer and mixer Phil Harding, who had defined a signature sound for himself on the debut Matt Bianco album "Whose Side Are You On?" in 1984. He was put under contract and made the chief engineer at the newly formed PWL studios. Harding was arguably the biggest single force in shaping the sound of a PWL record, and subsequent engineers Pete Hammond and Dave Ford would quite clearly follow suit from his example. Harding's signature take on the House sound (in conjunction with Ian Curnows keyboards and sequencing work) was an uncannily lyrical staccato programming of bass synth over the Linn kick drum. Harding and Curnow were much copied throughout Europe's dance underground. Their mixes and productions from the late '80s suggest the duo were the primary influence on what would become the Euro-Disco influenced sound.

[edit] The assembly line

Following their early success, their style evolved into a more mainstream bubblegum synth pop, with attractive singers. They typically worked by writing the songs, although many of their early acts (such as Hazell Dean, Dead or Alive, and Bananarama) wrote their own material, recording the music with extensive use of synthesizers, drum machines (drums were often credited to "A Linn", a sly reference to the Linn brand of drum machine) and sequencers, and then bringing in a singer solely to record the vocal track. The tendency toward interchanging artists and repertoire was well established when Rick Astley's sensational breakout album "Whenever You Need Somebody" got its name and title track from a minor hit the trio had produced a year earlier for O'chi Brown. Evidently they thought the song still had some mileage, and it was even issued with an exact replica of O'chi's club mix for the Rick Astley club mix. Their prodigious, production line-like output led to them being referred to as the hit factory (not to be confused with the record label of the same name) and attracted criticism from many quarters. However, Pete Waterman defended their style by comparing it to the output of Motown in the 1960s.

[edit] The kids, the press and the underground

SAW's greatest success, not unlike Madonna in the States, was in fully exploiting the underground music scene that was booming in Britain in the late 1980s. SAW's goal was to harness the dynamic energy of club culture (and the sound of Chicago House) and marry it to squeeky-clean light entertainment that could sell in large quantities, while all the while keeping their hands firmly in the publishing of all they produced. In this regard they were extremely similar to Motown, with SAW reportedly making use of the dubious "artist development deal" just as Berry Gordy had two decades earlier. Under such arrangements all facets of a young artist's career would be controlled and dictated by the record company and often the artist's publishing rights would be co-opted in the process and the record company would fill the role of manager on the artist's behalf. While SAW seem to have worked equally well with artists under their control and those more established and independent, it would obviously make more business sense for them to focus on the development of new talent under the terms that gave them most control. As the nineties rolled in, they seemed solely focused on their young teenage signings (through PWL and the publishing arm of All Boys Music). PWL was initially championed by the music papers for their fresh sound seemingly underground aesthetic, but not for long. They invoked the wrath of the British music press when they strong-armed the group M/A/R/R/S into a legal settlement over a 7-second sample of someone moaning the single word "hey" that M/A/R/R/S had taken from SAW's "Roadblock" and used in their surprise hit "Pump Up the Volume". Pete Waterman wrote an open letter to the music press calling such things "wholesale theft". The press fired back that Waterman was currently using the bassline of Colonel Abrams "Trapped" in Rick Astley's "Never Gonna' Give You Up". Waterman's production company had even lifted the entire basic rhythm arrangement off "Pump Up the Volume" (complete with the chorus) in a remix for a Sybil record (wisely titled the "Red Ink Remix"). Thus began a longlasting acrimony between PWL and the bulk of the UK's music underground. Waterman stated that it was a matter of principle rather than profit and pledged to donate all the royalties from the court case to charity.

In later years one of their most successful artists was Kylie Minogue, a young actress and a promising pop singer from Melbourne, Australia who was well known for her role in the soap opera, Neighbours. Her first thirteen singles reached the UK top ten and her debut "I Should Be So Lucky" spent five weeks at number one in the UK singles chart. The album Kylie was the highest selling album of 1988, and fifth highest-selling album of the decade. They were also responsible for 1987's highest selling single, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". At the height of their fame, Stock, Aitken & Waterman also had a top twenty hit as themselves with the largely instrumental "Roadblock" (from which M/A/R/R/S would lift the offending sample for "Pump Up the Volume").

In 1989 they wrote and produced the highest-selling album of the year, Jason Donovan's Ten Good Reasons. Donovan had been Minogue's co-star in Neighbours and his success for a time equalled hers. In 1988-89, the trio recorded three tracks with Judas Priest. These tracks were never released, and are said to be in Judas Priest's possession.

Another of SAW's most successful hit singles was the 1989 number-one single Ferry Cross the Mersey (a charity single featuring The Christians, Holly Johnson, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden.)

Pete Waterman's career as a record producer preceded his collaborations with Stock and Aitken, and continued after the demise of the trio as an entity.

[edit] List of acts who have performed songs written or produced by SAW

[edit] UK number-one hits

The following hits produced by S/A/W made it to the top of the UK pop chart:

In addition to these, "Venus" by Bananarama, "That's What Love Can Do" by Boy Krazy and "Together Forever" by Rick Astley held the number one position in the U.S. pop charts (though did not achieve the same success in the UK).

[edit] See also

[edit] Trivia

  • The ubiquity of their productions led some who were less impressed with their style to re-interpret the abbreviation "SAW" to mean "Stop Aitken Waterman!"
  • Also referred to by some critical of them as "Shock, Ache and Water Torture". Another epithet (applied by the Guardian) was "Shlock, Aimless and Waterdown".
  • British experimental music duo Stock, Hausen & Walkman chose their name as a play on words, referencing SAW, composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and the SONY Walkman.

[edit] External links

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