Sandie Shaw

478. Bucks Fizz – Making Your Mind Up (1981)

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The Intro

One of the most enduring pop images of the early 80s is the skirt-ripping routine of 1981 Eurovision Song Contest winners Bucks Fizz. This is the story of how their entry, Making Your Mind Up, brought about their creation and became their first of three number 1 singles.

Before

Allegedly, songwriter Andy Hill wrote Making Your Mind Up in 1980 with a view to entering it in the UK’s Eurovision qualifying contest, A Song for Europe. Hill’s girlfriend, singer Nichola Martin, suggested Hill team up with a musician called John Danter, who she could sign up to her publishing company, which would enable her to own half the rights to the song, as Hill was signed elsewhere. Hill had been a member of Rags, a group who failed to win the 1977 A Song for Europe.

That October, Hill and Martin recorded a demo with the singer Mike Nolan, who had worked with the latter before. Nolan had been in the boyband Brooks, who were put together by Freya Miller, who became Shakin’ Stevens‘ manager. Another original member of Brooks was Chris Hamill, later known as Limahl.

Two months after the demo was recorded, Making Your Mind Up was selected out of 591 submitted entries to be one of the eight finalists. Martin had decided to name the performer as ‘Buck’s Fizz’, in honour of her favourite drink, so when she discovered the song had been picked, she needed to act fast and create a group featuring Nolan.

In January 1981, Martin contacted Cheryl Baker, who she remembered from the 1978 Eurovision group Co-Co. Baker had previously been in the band Bressingham Spire, which also featured the soon-to-be Radio 1 DJ Mike Read. Worried that Baker, disillusioned after Co-Co’s loss, may say no, Martin also auditioned for another female vocalist, plus a second male singer. The winners were Jay Aston and Stephen Fischer. When Baker agreed to take part, Martin decided to keep Aston anyway, as her vocal complemented Baker’s well. Aston had trained to be a dancer and actress, as well as a singer, and had taken part in the 1978 Miss England contest, where the act during the interval had been Co-Co.

Fischer threw a spanner in the works when it turned out he was contracted to appear in the musical Godspell, so he was out. A year later Fischer was the male member of the duo Bardo, who came seventh in Eurovision with the song One Step Further (a number two hit).

Martin found a replacement in Bobby G, a singer/guitarist/actor who had impressed in previous editions. On 11 January 1981, Bucks Fizz (what happened to the apostrophe?) met for the first time and Jill Shirley, who had been in Rags with Martin, agreed to be their manager. This meant Martin and Hill could now concentrate on their own entry for A Song for Europe, Have You Ever Been in Love?.

During rehearsals for Making Your Mind Up, the attention-grabbing skirt ripping routine during the lyric ‘see some more’ was hit upon. But by who, remains a mystery. It could have been routine choreographer Chrissie Wickham, formerly of Hot Gossip, who spent two days with the group. Martin, Baker and Aston have all laid claim to the concept too. I’d personally go with Martin, as the Top of the Pops performance that Rags made in 1977 when promoting Promises Promises has something rather similar as they remove their, er, rags.

Martin and Shirley scored a recording deal for Bucks Fizz with RCA Records, and Hill went with the group to record Making Your Mind Up at Mayfair Studios in London. The record, featuring Alan Carvell on backing vocals, was done and dusted in a week.

Review

I have a lot of time for Making Your Mind Up and I feel no shame. It’s pure cheese of course, but it’s so bloody charming and fun. The lyrics are mostly nonsensical – aren’t most Eurovision entries? But, there is some meaning in there – it seems to be about someone playing the field that might have found someone to stick with, but they need to stop being indecisive.

Not that the words really matter when you have a tune like this on your hands. Making Your Mind Up is so sugary sweet, it was always going to go down well at home, and abroad – and the latter is helped by what sounds like an accordion in the latter half.

This is one of those songs that defies analysis, really. It’s pure pop and if you can’t enjoy it, you may be dead inside. It’s leagues ahead of the other UK winners before this point, and I prefer it to Waterloo, too. And Bucks Fizz were the perfect vehicle to promote this song. You’ve got the Ken dolls, Nolan and G, for the girls, Baker has mumsy appeal for the mums and grans, and Aston was very popular with the dads – as was the skirt-ripping when they sing ‘If you wanna see some more’ the last time.

That routine of course featured in the official video for Making Your Mind Up, which starts with the group cheekily waving their arses for an adoring crowd before breaking into song and dance. There’s no bells or whistles here – it’s for all intents and purposes a Top of the Pops or Eurovision performance, really.

After

On 11 March, Bucks Fizz won A Song for Europe, beating even Liquid Gold, a popular act at the time. A Top of the Pops performance followed, which helped the single enter the charts at 24, before soaring to five a week later.

Eurovision was held at the RDS Simmonscourt in Dublin on 4 April 1981. Bucks Fizz performed 14th that evening, and despite a rather off-key performance (which may or may not have been down to nerves or a mic mix-up), they became the fourth winners from the UK, after Sandie Shaw, Lulu and Brotherhood of Man. Two weeks later, Making Your Mind Up became the third UK winner to then become number 1. The record eventually sold four million worldwide, and Bucks Fizz were one of the hottest groups of 1981.

The Outro

In 2013, BBC Radio 2 listeners voted Bucks Fizz’s debut the best Eurovision entry of all time. The skirt-rip routine was spoofed endlessly, has appeared in numerous Eurovision entries since 1981, and was even copied by Mick Jagger and Tina Turner at Live Aid in 1985.

The Info

Written by

Andy Hill & John Danter

Producer

Andy Hill

Weeks at number 1

3 (18 April-8 May)

Trivia

Births

23 April: Actress Gemma Whelan
25 April: Paralympian sprinter John McFall
3 May: Charlie Brooks
5 May: Singer Craig David

Deaths

19 April: Labour Party MP Colin Jackson
21 April: Antiques caretaker Dorothy Eady/Pianist Ivor Newton/Electrical engineer Lesley Souter
22 April: Liberal Party politician Philip Rea, 2nd Baron Rea
23 April: Olympic rower Sir James Angus Gillan
24 April: Mathematician JCP Miller
25 April: Indologist Isaline Blew Horner
26 April: Robert Garioch
28 April: T Rex bassist Steve Currie/Educationalist Marjorie Rackstraw/Businessman Bernard Mason
1 May: Actor Barry Jones
2 May: Unionist politician Joseph Foster
4 May: Zoologist Alan William Greenwood
5 May: IRA member Bobby Sands (see ‘Meanwhile…‘)
6 May: Film director Gordon Parry

Meanwhile…

20 April: Steve Davis, 23, wins the World Snooker Championship for the first time.
Also on this day, skirmishes break out in Finsbury Park, Forest Green and Ealing in London. 100 people are arrested and 15 police officers are injured.

23 April: Unemployment passes the 2,500,000 mark.

29 April: Peter Sutcfliffe admits to the manslaughter of 13 women, on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

5 May: 27-year-old republican and Provisional IRA member Bobby Sands died following his hunger strike in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison, one month after becoming MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Also on this day, Peter Sutcliffe’s trial begins at the Old Bailey in London.

7 May: Labour’s Ken Livingstone becomes leader of the Greater London Council.

384. Slik – Forever and Ever (1976)

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The Intro

Here is surely one of the strangest and most obscure number 1s of the 70s, perhaps of all time. Before his solo career, before Band Aid, before Ultravox, Midge Ure was in a group called Slik, who briefly lorded it over the charts with a bizarre mix of Gothic horror and Bay City Rollers-style pop.

Before

Slik started out as Glasgow-based heavy-rock band Salvation in 1970. The original line-up featured the McGinlay brothers, Kevin and Jim, Nod Kerr, Mario Tortolano, and Ian Kenny. The line-up changed several times but stabilised in 1972 with Kevin on vocals, Jim on bass, Kenny Hyslop on drums, Billy McIsaac on keyboards and Jim Ure on guitar. In a bid to avoid the confusion of having two Jims in the band, their bassist suggested Ure say his backwards, and he became ‘Mij’, which in time became ‘Midge’, and stuck for the rest of his life. They became the house band at Glasgow discothèque Clouds, where they would perform cover versions.

In April 1974 Kevin McGinlay left Salvation to pursue a solo career. Ure assumed singing duties while remaining as guitarist. That November they became Slik. They signed with Polydor and adopted pseudonyms – Ure was already Midge, Hyslop became Oil Slik, McGinlay was Jim Slik and McIsaac was now Lord Slik. Slik suited up to live up to their name, and ditched glam rock to work with pop songwriters Bill Martin and Phil Coulter. Together the duo had scored three number 1s over the years with Sandie Shaw, Cliff Richard and the England 1970 World Cup squad. Their most recent group to benefit from their skills was the Bay City Rollers, and very well they were doing too.

Slik didn’t initially have the same success. Debut single Boogiest Band in Town on Polydor in 1975 got nowhere. So they ditched the suits and, for some reason, swapped them for baseball shirts, probably to try and break the US. They also signed with Bell Records. Interestingly, Ure has claimed in the past that he was approached by Malcolm McClaren to be the singer of the Sex Pistols.

This isn’t Demis Roussos’ Forever and Ever, which would come later in the year. Slik’s song had originally been released by the pop group Kenny earlier that year on their album The Sound of Super K. It’s worth noting that their version is almost as odd as Slik’s, it just isn’t as well produced and is lacking bounce. Unlike their hit The Bump.

Review

I can still recall the first time I saw this on a BBC Four repeat of Top of the Pops. It blew my mind. Who the hell decided the opening section should insinuate we were about to hear some proggy, concept single or Black sabbath style metal obscurity? Considering Kenny and Slik’s version starts the same way, it must have been Martin and Coulter’s idea. It had me on the edge of my seat. I thought I was about to be treated to a forgotten surreal masterpiece. How the hell did this get to number 1? And is that really Midge Ure singing it? Thinking about it though, did this idea of an atmospheric opening help inspire Vienna?

Once the verses switch to the chorus, it becomes apparent how it got to number 1. It sounds like a Bay City Rollers reject, and it was. I’m all for schizophrenic singles, but the transition here is far from seamless, and although the chorus is catchy, as soon as it begins, my interest dissipates until the next verse. But I am an awkward sod. If I was whoever Ure is singing to here, I’d stay well away. He’s clearly assumed the role of a schizophrenic.

After

Slik, Martin and Coulter tried to repeat their surprise success with the follow-up Requiem, but only got to 24. This wasn’t helped by Ure being injured in a car accident which forced the band to cancel promotional appearances. Their eponymous LP soon followed, but didn’t even dent the top 40. In March 1977 Jim McGinlay left to be replaced by Russell Webb for Slik’s final tour dates. Desperate to ride the next musical wave, they changed their name to PVC2 and became a punk band. Only one single was released though, Ure’s Put You in the Picture, and it didn’t chart. They split up that September, with Ure joining The Rich Kids, former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock’s new band. More on them when we get to Ultravox.

As for the rest of Slik, Webb, Hyslop and McIsaac added Alex Harvey’s cousin Willie Gardner to their group and became Zones. They made one album, Under Influence, released in 1979, but they then split. Webb and Hyslop joined The Skids. McIsaac left the music business but made a return in the 90s with the Billy McIsaac Band.

The Outro

Weirdly, this is the first of two songs called Forever and Ever to reach number 1 in 1976, as Demi Roussos achieved the same accolade when an EP featuring his song topped the charts that summer.

The Info

Written & produced by

Bill Martin & Phil Coulter

Weeks at number 1

1 (14-20 February)

Trivia

Births

20 February: The Darkness drummer Ed Graham

Meanwhile…

19 February: Iceland breaks off diplomatic relations with the UK over the Cod War.

284. Dana – All Kinds of Everything (1970)

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The Intro

Somehow, Bridge over Troubled Water was replaced at number 1 after three weeks, by… this. The Eurovision Song Contest winner of 1970, Irish 19-year-old warbler Dana’s ultra-twee All Kinds of Everything is an early contender for worst number 1 of the 70s.

Before

Rosemary Brown, born 30 August 1951, was born in Islington, North London. Her working-class parents had relocated from Derry, Northern Ireland after World War Two due to high unemployment, but when she was five the Browns were advised to return to Derry due to the effects of smog in the city on some of her siblings (she was one of seven).

Both young Brown’s parents were musical, and she proved it ran in the family when she won an all-ages talent contest aged only six. She learned to play the piano, violin, guitar sang and became a ballet dancer too.

As a young teen in 1965 she won another talent contest, and this time the prize was to record a demo. When Brown finished her O-levels, Rex Records got to hear it and signed Brown up. Debut single Sixteen, released in November 1967, failed to ignite interest. Around this time, and now undertaking her A-levels, she took the stage name ‘Dana’ – her school nickname.

In 1969 her label suggested she take part in the Irish National Song Contest, as the winner would represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest. She came second with Look Around (her fourth single).

The following year the Irish National Song Contest producer Tom McGrath suggested Dana try again. This time the winner would represent just the Republic of Ireland at that year’s Eurovision. He thought the young singer would be a great match for All Kinds of Everything, a ballad by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith, two 28-year-old amateur songwriters working as printmakers for a Dublin newspaper.

Dana won the contest and on 21 March she became the last performer at Eurovision, held in Amsterdam. She beat Mary Hopkin representing the UK by seven votes. This was the first of a record seven wins by the Republic of Ireland, and was only the second English language song to win the competition (Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String was the first in 1967, and Lulu’s Boom Bang-a-Bang had shared first place in 1969). It’s worth noting the political significance of this win, having a girl from Northern Ireland representing the republic and not the UK, just as The Troubles were rumbling.

The single version of All Kinds of Everything had been released the week before the show, arranged by Phil Coulter, who had co-written Puppet on a String and Congratulations. It began to climb the charts.

https://youtu.be/8xmnd3uiK_Y

Review

If this kind of dreck can win Eurovision, there’s no wonder it has such a reputation for the naff. The best thing I can say about it is that it didn’t make me want to hurt myself the way Puppet on a String did. All Kinds of Everything is all kinds of terrible. The production (Ray Horricks also produced both Anthony Newley’s chart-toppers) is lightweight and makes an already sickly song even worse, and the lyrics are something else. Dana’s got someone constantly on her mind and the song is simply a list of things that remind her of him. So let’s take a look at those things, shall we?

In the first verse she sings (in a serviceable but sickly manner) of ‘Snowdrops and daffodils, butterflies and bees’. Predictable, but sweet I suppose. But then she moves on to ‘Sailboats and fishermen, things of the sea’. Fishermen? Ok, that’s unusual. And how vague is ‘things of the sea’? Either she can’t be arsed to go into detail, or hasn’t got the imagination to do so. In the second verse we get ‘things of the sky’, including seagulls and wind… I daresay my eight-year-old could be more imaginative than this. Lindsay and Smith clearly should have stuck to their day jobs. Tacky, dated and dull, All Kinds of Everything is one of the worst songs I’ve reviewed yet.

After

Dana’s debut album was released in June, named after her number 1, and featuring a new version of that track. I’m not going to find it and compare, I’m not putting myself through that. Her fortunes soon became mixed, with her follow-up single I Will Follow You ironically not following her previous one to anywhere near the same success. Who Put the Lights Out reached the top 20 in 1971, though.

Despite still doing well in Ireland, it was 1975 before Dana was back on Top of the Pops with Please Tell Him That I Said Hello. Her second biggest UK success happened that December with the seasonal It’s Gonna Be a Cold Cold Christmas reaching number four in Christmas week. In 1976 she scored a top 20 hit with the disco-influenced Fairytale, but after that her fame dwindled until she took a new direction as the 80s began.

In 1979 Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, which inspired Dana to sing about her faith. She topped the Irish charts with Totus Tuus, and it opened the door to a career recording Catholic music and prayer albums, and spent most of the 80s doing this, appearing in Pantones or appearing on light entertainment shows.

Dana’s religious dedication made her popular in the US, and she presented a TV show there in 1991, called Say Yes. In 1997 the Christian Community Centre in Ireland suggested she ran for Irish presidency, and after scoffing at the idea initially, she ran as an independent under the name Dana Rosemary Scallon, and came third.

Scallon won a seat in the European Parliament in 1999, and proved herself to have values as outdated as her music – vehemently pro-life, anti-divorce, anti-same-sex marriages, and anti-EU. So actually, in a way she was ahead of her time, and could probably become supreme leader of the universe with the way the world is in 2020. All kinds of prejudice reminds me of Dana, you could say.

Scanlon lost her seat in 2004 and returned to light entertainment, launched a religious music label, released her second autobiography and became a TV talent show judge. In 2011 she ran for presidency again and came sixth. 2019 saw Dana, now 68, release her first album in years, My Time.

The Outro

Sadly, All Kinds of Everything sets the scene in a way, as there was lots more dreary MOR to come in the 70s.

The Info

Written by

Derry Lindsay & Jackie Smith

Producer

Ray Horricks

Weeks at number 1

2 (18 April-1 May)

Trivia

Births

27 April: Actress Kylie Travis

Deaths

20 April: Academic Thomas Iorwerth Ellis

Meanwhile…

18 April: British Leyland announced its longest-running model, the Morris Minor, which had been in production since 1948, would be discontinued at the start of 1971.

29 April: Chelsea defeated Leeds United 2-1 in the FA Cup final replay at Old Trafford, gaining them the trophy for the first time.
On the same day, last year’s winners Manchester City won the European Cup Winners’ Cup by defeating Polish team Górnik Zabrze 2-1 in Vienna, Austria.