Kenny Everett - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

In a classic example of the British public losing its collective mind over Christmas, the 1982 festive number 1 wasn’t The Jam’s Beat Surrender. It was the bizarre but strangely charming novelty duet Save Your Love, credited to Renée and Renato. And even more strange is the fact this one-hit wonder was the first truly indie chart-topper.

Before

In 1975, the Italian-born, West Midlands-based waiter Renato Pagliari auditioned for ITV’s hit talent show New Faces. He didn’t succeed, but he caught the eye of songwriter and producer Johnny Edward, who loved rock’n’roll and hated kitsch pop. As a reaction to Brotherhood of Man’s 1976 Eurovision winner Save Your Kisses For Me, Edward wrote the tongue-in-cheek, overblown ballad Save Your Love with his wife Sue.

Over the next few years, Edward was busy creating, controlling and even voicing, through a vocoder, the robot Metal Mickey. Metal Mickey, directed by Micky Dolenz of The Monkees, was a hit children’s show from 1980 to 1983. I loved it at the time but from the clips I’ve seen since, I reckon it probably hasn’t aged well.

Edward decided to return to Save Your Love, and remembered Renato. He teamed him up with the singer Hilary Lester and got them in the recording studio. To help sell the record, he credited the song to Renée and Renato, portraying the duo as lovers, or husband-and-wife, who were singing their hearts out to each other to a frankly ridiculous degree.

BBC Radio 2 DJ Terry Wogan was of course no stranger to kitsch. The Eurovision Song Contest commentator played Save Your Love on his hugely popular breakfast show, and the single gained traction.

Review

Anyone with any knowledge of Christmas number 1s, or longtime readers of this blog, will know the long and not always illustrious history of novelty chart-toppers over the festive season. The combination of parents and grandparents buying songs for young children and the strange sense of humour of Brits in general, has resulted in some, you could politely say, unique Christmas bestsellers. Before 1982, some had their merits (I’m thinking Lily the Pink or Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)), while some were totally awful (see Long Haired Lover from Liverpool, or There’s No One Quite Like Grandma).

Save Your Love, believe it or not, falls in the former category. It shouldn’t, because it’s dross. But it’s also very funny. The idea of the British public falling for an Italian waiter and his fake lover performing such a lightweight saccharine love song sounds like something that could easily happen in the 50s or 60s, yet this was also feasible in 1982, in an era in which a group like Kraftwerk would also top the charts.

The lyrics are totally unremarkable, but the performance is. Renato certainly belts his parts out with real gusto, and that makes it funny. The knowledge that the Edwards were taking the piss also adds new appeal. But the best thing about Save Your Love is the video.

Renato, in a series of tight pullovers, serenades a very serious looking Renée (played by model Vivienne Marshall). This wonderfully ill-matched couple wander around in ultra-soft-focus. Renée remains mostly stony faced while Renato blasts the song out at full volume in her face. He even manages to throw a rose up to her bedroom window, and we see them holding hands in bed. Aww. The video was subject to a delicious spoof by the wonderful Kenny Everett.

After

Save Your Love, amazingly, held fort for four weeks. As it was released on Hollywood Records, it was the first ever truly independent record to top the hit parade. But reality soon set in and Renée and Renato’s follow-up, Just One More Kiss, failed to crack the top 40. Other singles followed but got nowhere.

Lester returned to private life, but Renato loved to entertain. He became a cruise ship singer, and would often entertain guests at his son’s restaurant, named Renato’s. He is also rumoured to have been the voice behind the famous ‘Just one Cornetto’ campaign for the Wall’s ice-cream in the 80s, though his son denies this.

Renato continued to release albums and singles, and even though he was a figure of fun, he’s scored one more number 1 than most of us ever will. He died from complications during brain tumour surgery on 29 July 2009, aged 69.

The Outro

Renato was a big fan of Aston Villa FC, and in the early 90s he was asked by their manager Ron Atkinson to perform Nessun Dorma for the team to provide inspiration. After his song was over, Atkinson told his team to harness that passion on the pitch. When he appeared on the BBC Two TV show Room 101, Atkinson said that only Luciano Pavarotti could perform the song better than Renato.

The Info

Written by

Johnny Edward & Sue Edward

Producer

Johnny Edward

Weeks at number 1

4 (18 December 1982-14 January 1983)

Trivia

Births

1 January 1983: Footballer Calum Davenport

Deaths

19 December 1982: Composer Lawrance Collingwood/Actress Jane Arden
29 December: Motorcycle racer Jack Brett
31 December: Convicted robber Derek Ridgewell
2 January 1983: Comedian Dick Emery
5 January: Opera singer Amy Evans/Writer James Wentworth Day
6 January: Composer Bernard Stevens
7 January: Opera singer Edith Coates
8 January: Army brigadier-general Arthur Stanley-Clarke
10 January: Welsh rugby union player Carwyn James
14 January: Actress Margie Morris

Meanwhile…

23 December 1982: The Round Oak Steelworks at Brierley Hill in the West Midlands closes, meaning more than 1,200 jobs are lost.

1 January 1983: The British Nationality Act 1981 comes into effect, creating five classes of British nationality.

3 January: Children’s ITV is launched as the new late afternoon programming strand for children on the ITV network.

5 January: Two policemen and a policewoman drown at Blackpool after attempting to rescue a man who entered the sea to save his dog (both also drown).

6 January: Danish fishermen defy the government’s prohibition on non-UK boats fishing in its coastal waters.

14 January: Armed policemen shoot and severely injure the innocent Stephen Waldorf in London. They believed he was escaped prisoner David Martin.

Before

After his fourth chart-topping single kept The Sex Pistols from number 1 (so we’re led to believe – see First Cut Is the Deepest/I Don’t Want to Talk About It) in 1977, he remained in the upper reaches of the singles chart. One of his most popular tunes, the love song You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim) peaked at three. It was the first release from his eighth album, Foot Loose & Fancy Free.

Next up was Hot Legs/I Was Only Joking, a number five hit in 1978. The former, a Rolling Stones-style raunchy blues number, hasn’t aged well, with lyrics like ‘Are you still in school?’ and ‘Hot legs oh you’re pussy’s whipped/Hot legs I just love your lips’. He later wisely changed these last lines.

A huge football fan (and former player), Stewart then teamed up with the national Scotland squad for their 1978 World Cup song Ole Ola (Mulher Brasileira). It fared better than the team’s performance in the tournament. Despite manager Ally MacLeod’s bold claims, they were unable to get past the first round. The song climbed to four.

Setting to work on his ninth LP, Blondes Have More Fun, Stewart developed an increasingly outlandish look. With his peroxide bouffant and tight spandex, he began to resemble a prostitute. Seeing an ever-growing number of fellow rock stars adopting disco (best of the bunch was The Rolling Stones’ sleazy Miss You), Rod the Mod went full throttle down the disco avenue.

Released on 10 November, a week before the album, Da ‘Ya’ Think I’m Sexy? was co-written by Stewart with his drummer Carmen Appice (formerly of Vanilla Fudge) and producer and musician Duane Hitchings. However, several other names should be on those credits, really. The chorus is remarkably similar to Brazilian singer Jorge Ben’s 1972 track Taj Mahal. A lawsuit ensued which ended in Ben’s favour. However, in a potentially sly move to avoid him making royalties from the track in the future, Stewart donated them all to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Stewart claimed in his 2012 autobiography that it was an unconscious steal on his part and Taj Mahal had stuck in his brain after hearing it at the 1978 Rio Carnival. He did admit to purposefully stealing from elsewhere though. The yearning synth line in Da ‘Ya’ Think I’m Sexy?, which is the highlight of the track, came from Bobby Womack’s 1975 soul song (If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It. Now that’s a great title, isn’t it?

https://youtu.be/Hphwfq1wLJsn

Review

As we all know, Da ‘Ya’ Think I’m Sexy? has become synonymous with Stewart’s image as an egotistical, leopard-skin-wearing joke. There’s been countless spoofs – perhaps the most memorable being from Kenny Everett in the early 80s. A friend of Stewart’s, he performs this song glammed up as him, strutting around in the same stupidly tight spandex Stewart wears in the real video. His arse grows ever bigger, eventually causing the DJ to fly off into the sky.

It’s worth noting though, and it hadn’t really occurred to me before, that the song isn’t about him. It’s another of his character studies and it only takes a read of the first verse to realise this. A guy in a nightclub wants to try his luck with a girl, but ‘He’s so nervous, avoiding all the questions/His lips are dry, her heart is gently pounding’. As if Stewart would be nervous in that situation! Come the second verse he’s worked up the courage to ask her back to his ‘high-rise apartment’. We even get a porn-style saxophone interlude, which is clearly there to symbolise them getting it on. Come the last verse, it’s dawn and it sounds like he may have talked up his situation as he confesses he has no milk or coffee for a pick-me-up after their night of passion but, in a nice play on words ‘Never mind sugar, we can watch the early movie.’

Da ‘Ya’ Think I’m Sexy? has been in my mind for decades as a song to laugh at. So it came as a surprise to find myself enjoying it upon this review. It’s a lot more fun and less ‘worthy’ than his earlier number 1s and the third-person narrative adds a new dimension to the song. Also, Phil Chen’s disco bass is great and the aforementioned synth line is even better, despite beingstolen. Not so good when the sax mirrors it at the climax, though, and Stewart’s voice isn’t the right type for the chorus, I’d argue. He rather bludgeons it.

I’d say the video is a big reason for this song and Stewart himself becoming a joke. He stars as the guy in the song, sat with his prey, watching himself and his band on a little TV on the bar. Inbetween the footage on stage, in which Stewart’s outfit is somehow actually more ridiculous than Everett’s, we cut to Rod the Mod and the girl, about to get it on, while watching him and the band on TV. In case you’re not sure what the song is about, Stewart gets on the floor and humps thin air. The interplay between him and the band is good knockabout fun though. For the dawn scene, they remain clothed and the band are still on TV, which suggests either Stewart gets off on a looped performance of himself, or they’ve just fallen asleep for a minute or so.