Tina Charles holds the unusual honour of being a backing singer on a number 1 before reaching the top spot in her own right. A year after she featured on Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel’s Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), I Love to Love(But My Baby Loves to Dance) became the first homegrown disco tune to conquer the UK charts.
Before
Charles was born Tina Hoskins in Whitechapel, London on 10 March 1954. As well as being a backing singer she also worked as a session musician. She was only 15 when she recorded her debut single, Nothing in the World, and it featured Elton John, then unknown, on piano. Charles released one or two singles a year from then until 1974, but didn’t make a mark. In the meantime she sang on the Top of the Pops album series, in which anonymous session singers and musicians performed covers of hits. In 1971 she guested on The Two Ronnies, performing The Rolling Stones’s Ruby Tuesday, among other famous hits.
1975 was where Charles’s career took off. In addition to providing the famous ‘Oooh la la la’ backing vocals on Make Me Smile with her friend Linda Lewis, she sang on 5000 Volts’s disco hit I’m on Fire. Due to contractual issues her name was not given publicly and singer/actress Luan Peters stood in for Charles on Top of the Pops. Then she met Biddu, the Indian/British producer responsible for making Kung Fu Fighting. They recorded the album I Love to Love, but it wasn’t the first single to be released. You Set My Heart on Fire preceded it but despite going top 10 in Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden, she still couldn’t crack the UK top 40. She and Biddu must have known they were on to something with I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) however, to name the LP after it.
Review
I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) starts very promisingly, bouncing along to a nifty disco groove played by Manchester musicians Richie Close (keyboard), Clive Allen (guitar), Des Browne (bass) and Tom Daley (percussion). The conceit appears to be, Charles wants to make love, but her partner is too busy dancing. This rather suggests there is a problem in the relationship and Charles should start asking him a few awkward questions really, but she doesn’t sound too upset about her situation and ends the night danced out but still hoping to ‘have my way’.
Unfortunately, the song doesn’t really go anywhere and is too lightweight to get much out of. Charles certainly has a powerful voice, but what at first sounds appealing gets a bit annoying. This song is probably as frustrating as wanting a good time with a partner who goes off to dance as soon as he hears music. If it came on at a club on a drunken night out (remember those?) you could probably enjoy yourself but that’s about it.
After
I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance) was a massive hit all over Europe. Charles’s follow-up LP, Dance Little Lady, was also produced by Biddu and spawned two top 10 hits in 1976 – Dance Little Lady Dance (reached six) and Dr Love (four). At the time her then-boyfriend, future genius producer Trevor Horn, featured in her backing band for live shows.
Only a year later, her hit rate was decreasing, and in 1978 I’ll Go Where Your Music Takes Me was the last time she charted (at 27). Charles tried to move with the times in 1980 with the harder sound of her album Just One Smile but interest was low. She concentrated on family life for the next few years. In 1987 there was a brief resurgence when I Love to Love and Dance Little Lady were remixed by Sanny-X. Both songs did well in Europe.
The Outro
Since then she has resurfaced from time to time, touring in Europe since 2000, performing on stage as a guest with The Producers, Horn’s supergroup of, yes, you guessed it, producers.
The Info
Written by
Jack Robinson & James Bolden
Producer
Biddu
Weeks at number 1
3 (6-22 March)
Trivia
Deaths
19 March:Free guitarist Paul Kossoff
Meanwhile…
16 March: Labour leader Harold Wilson shocked the nation by announcing his resignation as Prime Minister, to take effect on 5 April. Since returning to Downing Street in 1974, he had admitted in private that he had lost his enthusiasm for the role. Publicly, he claimed he had always intended to retire at 60, and said he was physically and mentally exhausted. He may have also been aware of the first stages of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
19 March: Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon announce they are to separate after 16 years of marriage.
It’s an obvious fact that I’ve mentioned many times before, but what a weird barometer of taste the singles number 1s are. Just when I’m applauding record buyers for sending Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) to the top, it gets replaced by… this. A slushy spoken word cover of a Bread song (the second by David Gates, after Everything I Own), recited by Hollywood actor Telly Savalas, best known at the time for his iconic role in Kojak. Strange times.
Before
Aristotelis Savalas was born in Garden City, New York on 21 January 1922, the second of five children to ethnic Greek parents. As children, he and his brother Gus would sell newspapers and polish shoes to support their struggling family. Savalas could only initially speak Greek when he started school. After graduating from high school he worked as a beach lifeguard. Despite being an excellent swimmer he was unable to resuscitate a father who had drowned. His children watched on as their father died, and it affected Savalas so profoundly he spent the rest of his life promoting water safety.
Savalas was drafted into the United States Army in 1941 and served for two years before he was discharged following a car accident in which he was seriously injured. He spent more than a year in hospital with a broken pelvis, sprained ankle and concussion.
After the Second World War, Savalas moved into media, but not as an actor. He hosted radio shows and then became a director at ABC on news and sports programmes during the 50s. His move into acting was an accident. He was asked to recommend an actor capable of doing a European accent (a pretty vague question) and when the friend he suggested failed to turn up, Savalas covered for him, and made his debut on Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1958. He became in demand for the next few years as a guest star for programmes including Naked City.
Savalas made his film debut in Mad Dog Coll (1961), and received much acclaim for Birdman of Alcatraz a year later, getting nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. He was rapidly losing his hair, and chose to shave his head for his role in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), remaining bald for the rest of his life. Some of his best-known work in the 60s included The Dirty Dozen (1967) and as Blofeld in the James Bond movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969. That year he also had his first role as the lead in Crooks and Coronets.
He was already recording music before the role he became best known for, with his debut LP, This Is Telly Savalas… released in 1972. He leant his distinctive husky voice to easy listening covers of tracks including Johnny Cash’s I Walk the Line.
Savalas first played Lt. Theodopolus “Theo” Kojak in the TV movie The Marcus–Nelson Murders on CBS in 1973. Based on true crime, Savalas went down a storm as Kojak, and five series were made between 1973 and 1978. A lot of the character’s eccentricities came from Savalas, including sucking on lollipops. The character’s catchphrase ‘Who loves ya baby?’ became one of the best remembered of the 70s, and Savalas won an Emmy and two Golden Globes for Best Actor in a Drama Series.
In 1974 Savalas recorded his second album, Telly. It was more of the same, this time produced by Snuff Garrett, a big name in the 60s. Among the covers this time around was a spoken word version of If, which had been a big hit for soft rockers Bread in the US in 1971, reaching number four. Bread were always more popular in the US than the UK, where it failed to chart.
Review
Savalas’s version is very similar… well, apart from the one glaring difference. Whether it was because he was never going to reach the high notes of Gates, or a stylistic choice, he chose to use his deepest, most sincere and meaningful voice and recite the lyrics instead over a melodramatic production. It’s… well, it’s not actually as awful as it sounds. There have been worse number 1s. It is laughably dated and terribly over-the-top though, and even taking into account how popular Kojak was at the time, this one is a mystery. Gates’s lyrics are reminiscent of Charles Aznavour’s She, which put its muse on a pedestal, making her an enigma and wonder. A certain type of record buyer clearly loved this Hallmark card style of tacky romance.
The video of Savalas performing If above makes for hilarious viewing. He’s stood, fag in hand, gazing at a giant face of a blonde woman, who looks scared and confused by him. I urge you to watch. They really don’t make them like this anymore. If shares the top spot for shortest number 1 title ever with 19 by Paul Hardcastle from 1985, fact fans.
After
Savalas released two more LPs in the 70s – Telly Savalas (1975) and Who Loves Ya Baby in 1976. Two years later he starred in Capricorn One, and Kojak was cancelled after five seasons. If wasn’t Savalas’s only amusing spoken word contribution to British culture. In recent years footage has resurfaced from three short films made for cinemas – Telly Savalas Looks at Portsmouth, Telly Savalas Looks at Aberdeen, and Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham. All are unintentional comedy gold.
With Kojak no more, the late-70s and 80s were leaner times for its lead. He featured among all-star casts in The Poseidon Adventure in 1979 and Cannonball Run II in 1984 and had cameos in Tales of the Unexpected (1981) and The Equalizer (1987). From 1985 onwards there were TV movies that gave him the chance to reprise his most famous role, but they didn’t have the same impact as before.
The Outro
As the 80s became the 90s he found more time to indulge his many hobbies, including poker (he finished 21st in the 1992 World Series), golfing and collecting luxury cars. Savalas was also a philanthropist, and took a special interest in Greek causes. Back in the 70s, he had been the sponsor for bringing electricity to his ancestral home in Ierakas. Remembered fondly for his compassion and generosity, Savalas died on 22 January 1994, one day after he had turned 72. His final film, Backfire! was released posthumously a year later.
The Info
Written by
David Gates
Producer
Snuff Garrett
Weeks at number 1
2 (8-22 March)
Births
12 March:Co-chairman of the Conservative Party Amanda Milling 21 March: Snooker player Mark Williams
Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) is one of the best examples of a song where the original intention of the writer is largely ignored by the masses. Like REM’s The One I Love, a spiteful song that has, because of its title, become popular at weddings, for example, with little attention paid to the lyrics. Steve Harley’s number 1 is to most a song about positivity, about enjoying yourself, about seeing the ones you love and soaking up the good vibes. For Harley, it was a giant ‘fuck you’ to the original Cockney Rebel, who dared to question his authority. He showed them who was right, and how, with this glam rock classic.
Before
Harley was born, ironically, Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice on 27 February 1951 in Deptford, London. His father was a milkman and his mother a semi-professional jazz singer. He contracted polio aged two, and between the ages of three and 16 he spent a total of four years in hospital. Aged nine, Nice began classical viola lessons, and guitar a year later. While recovering from major surgery in 1963, aged 12, he fell in love with literature, enjoying the poetry and prose of giants including DH Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and the lyrics of Bob Dylan, all of which would influence his music as he grew older. At 15 he wrote an autobiographical poem called ‘The Cockney Rebel’.
At 17 Nice left school and became a trainee accountant at the Daily Express before making the move into reporting, working for a variety of regional newspapers in Essex before settling with the East London Advertiser. Becoming disillusioned, Nice moved into the folk club scene in 1971, performing on line-ups featuring John Martyn and Ralph McTell, and busking on the underground He grew his hair and refused to wear a tie in his day job, and got the sack in 1972. His replacement was Richard Madeley.
Before the year was out, Nice’s stage name became Steve Harley, and he decided to form a glam rock band. The original Cockney Rebel consisted of Harley as singer, his friend from the folk scene Jean-Paul Crocker on electric violin, Stuart Elliott as drummer, Paul Jeffreys on bass and Nick Jones on guitar. Jones was quickly replaced by Pete Newnham but Harley decided Cockney Rebel were not going to be your average glam rock outfit. They ditched guitars and Milton Reame-James became their keyboardist. Labels were soon showing an interest in their demos, and they signed with EMI Records.
The first Cockney Rebel LP, The Human Menagerie, was released in 1973. Debut single Sebastian was a number two hit in Belgium and the Netherlands but never troubled the UK charts. Harley set to work writing a hit single, and proved he could when Judy Teen soared to five in 1974. With Alan Parsons, he co-produced follow-up album The Psychomodo, which featured number eight hit and inspiration for a classic 80s advert, Mr Soft.
By the time that single had reached the top 10, Cockney Rebel effectively didn’t exist. Harley has always maintained the understanding within the group was that he was the songwriter, but Crocker, Reame-James and Jeffreys chose to quit after demanding they be allowed to contribute. While Harley searched for a new band he released his debut solo single Big Big Deal, which proved to be anything but. Shortly afterwards, with Elliott back on drums, he hired guitarist Jim Cregan, who had played bass for Family, keyboardist Duncan Mackay and bassist George Ford. To ensure everyone knew where they stood this time around, the group was renamed Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, and they recorded their first album together, The Best Years of Our Lives.
Harley penned Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) within days of the original Cockney Rebel split. Harley was distraught and very bitter, and had the idea to write a dark blues song in order to get his feelings off his chest. One day in November as the new group were recording, Harley performed Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) as a slow dirge. Parsons saw something in it but suggested they speed it up and rephrase the chorus and Harley agreed. One of the masterstrokes was the addition of tacets before the verses, which is the deliberate use of silence. As Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis wisely noted, the space between the sounds can be as important and effective as the music. It added drama to the song, and although it’s been played to death so it’s impossible to imagine hearing it for the first time, it will have left the listener wondering what was on Harley’s mind next.
The instrumental break was originally to be a saxophone, but Cregan had the idea to play it on his guitar and give it a flamenco feel. Harley has noted since how difficult it’s been over the years for band members to perform live, as it was in fact three composite takes. The addition of female backing singers was another masterstroke. As well as Yvonne Keeley, Linda Lewis and Liza Strike there was Tina Charles, who would be number 1 a year later with I Love to Love. After having them sing the chorus, Harley liked the idea of having them add some ‘oooh la la la’ as a nod to Rubber Soul-era Beatles. The excitement grew throughout recording. Harley’s revenge was going to be very sweet. When the finished product was played to EMI’s head of A&R, Bob Mercer, he was blown away and uttered only two words. ‘Number one.’
Review
It might be considered a ‘glam’ tune, but to me Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) is pure pop brilliance from that memorable intro to the fade. Parsons deserves more credit for wrapping Harley’s barbed lyrics inside a shiny chart-friendly package. Not that Harley doesn’t deserve all the credit he has received over the years, once Parsons set him on the right path. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I am among those who has misunderstood part of this song over the years – it’s only now that I discover it isn’t ‘I’ll do what you want, running wild’, but ‘Or do what you want, running wild’. Which is a key part of Harley’s message to Cockney Rebel Mk1 really. By all means, come and watch me now, see how well I’m doing without you, it’ll put a smile on my face… or just do what you want, because I don’t care really what you do anymore.
Perhaps Harley and Parsons’ success in making a pop classic did too good a job in masking the real message, as the backing vocals, as great as they are, distract from the lyrics. I’ve also only just discovered he makes it explicit who his ire is directed at, the second line being ‘And pulled the rebel to the floor’ – an obvious reference to Cockney Rebel. Of course, you could argue that Harley is being precious and needs to get over himself, but even then you’d be hard pushed to argue what a great, slick tune this is, and that it never gets old.
In 2015 it was reported the single had sold around 1.5 million copies, and the Performing Rights Society have confirmed it as one of the most played songs in British Broadcasting history, and over 120 covers, and counting, have been recorded.
After
Fresh off the back of their number 1, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel released The Best Days of Our Lives, which reached five in the album chart, and Mr. Raffles (Man, It Was Mean) was a top 13 singles hit. However, Harley produced the next album Timeless Flight alone, and it was a failure. More experimental than their previous LP, the critics slated it and its singles tanked. The final album by the band, Love’s a Prima Donna, fared better thanks to a faithful and timely cover of The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun. Released in the long, hot summer of 1976, it was their final hit, reaching 10.
Harley featured on The Alan Parsons Project’s album I, Robot in 1977, and that July he announced Cockney Rebel were no more. He moved to America to work on his debut solo album, but Hobo with a Grin, released in 1978, fared badly. It featured his friend Marc Bolan’s final studio performances before his shock death. When his next album The Candidate also tanked a year later, he was dropped by EMI.
The 80s were, in Harley’s own words, his wilderness years. When The Best of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel was released in 1980, along with a reissue of Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), he formed a new Cockney Rebel. Over the next few years they had failure after failure, despite working with big-name producers like Midge Ure and Mike Batt. However, Andrew Lloyd Webber was planning a single to promote The Phantom of the Opera, and Batt suggested Harley audition to be the male voice on the title track. Harley succeeded and together with Sarah Brightman they had a number seven hit on their hands in 1986. He starred as The Phantom in the video, and won the audition to play him on stage, but the role was given to Michael Crawford instead.
1986 also saw the debut of an advert that fascinated and terrified my six-year-old self in equal measure, which Harley was inadvertently responsible for. Trebor had rewritten Mr Soft as the soundtrack to an advert for their Softmints, and asked Harley to record it, but he declined and an effective soundalike was used. The quirky, catchy song was perfect for this bizarre ad, as you can see here. So successful was the long-running campaign, Mr Soft was re-released in 1988. Years later when Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was used to advertise Viagra, Harley wittily remarked that Mr Soft would have been more appropriate.
In 1989 another Cockney Rebel incarnation was created and Harley would flit between solo and band work for years to come. Upon its fourth reissue, Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was back in the top 40, thanks to its use in a Carlsberg advert. It reached 33. Only two years later it was in the public eye again thanks to it being featured in The Full Monty. Harley branched out into radio work in 1999 when he became the presenter of Radio 2’s nostalgic The Sounds of the Seventies. It was so popular he would end up presenting it all year round until it ended in 2008.
Harley became involved with the charity Mines Advisory Group in 2002, later becoming an ambassador. The first album released under the Cockney Rebel name in 29 years, The Quality of Mercy, saw the light of day in 2005. A 30th anniversary remix of Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was also released that year, and the original garnered attention yet again in 2015 when Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May began a campaign to download the song to help Harley pay for a speeding fine. He reunited with the most successful incarnation of Cockney Rebel for a tour performing The Best Days of Our Lives in full, also in 2015.
The Outro
The Cockney Rebel leader unveiled his sixth solo album, Uncovered in 2020. Consisting of some of his favourite material by other artists, he released The Beatles’ I’ve Just Seen a Face as a single, but the intended tour was postponed due to COVID-19.
And what became of the original Cockney Rebel? Elliott remained as Harley’s drummer throughout his career, and Jeffreys and Reame-James had some success in the prog rock band Be-Bop Deluxe, while Crocker performed with his brother in obscurity. Jeffreys was among those who died in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. He was with his bride returning from their honeymoon.
Of MKII, Cregan became a session musician, working mostly with Rod Stewart. Mackay appeared on Kate Bush’s first three albums and George Ford went off the radar. He died in 2007.
The Info
Written by
Steve Harley
Producers
Steve Harley & Alan Parsons
Weeks at number 1
2 (22 February-7 March)
Trivia
Deaths
22 February:Violist Lionel Tertis 26 February:Police officer Stephen Tribble (see ‘Meanwhile…’, below) 28 February:Writer Neville Cardus 3 March:Theatre organist Sandy MacPherson/Poet TH Parry-Williams
Meanwhile…
26 February: 22-year-old Metropolitan Police officer Stephen Tibble is shot and killed after giving chase to a fleeing Provisional IRA member.
28 February: The Moorgate tube crash kills 43 people and injures 74 when a London Underground train failed to stop at the Northern city Line’s southern terminus and smashed into its end wall. It is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground.
1 March: Aston Villa, chasing promotion from the Football League’s Second Division, win the Football League Cup with a 1-0 victory against Norwich City at Wembley Stadium.
4 March: Comedy acting legend Charlie Chaplin, 85, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
7 March: The body of teenage heiress Lesley Whittle, who disappeared from her home in Shropshire in January, is discovered in Staffordshire. She had been strangled on a ledge in drains below Bathpool Park near Kidsgrove.
