The Intro

1977 was a very successful year for actor and singer David Soul. Not only was he a co-star of one of the hottest shows of the era – Starsky & Hutch, but he topped the UK charts twice. Silver Lady is the lesser known of the two.

Before

It had nearly been his third. Inbetween this and Don’t Give Up on Us came Going in With My Eyes Open, which climbed all the way to two. The name of his LP Playing to an Audience of One, released that year, couldn’t be further from the truth.

Silver Lady could be seen as a sequel to his first number 1. Despite his pleas back at the start of the year, his lover has indeed given up on him. Soul is reduced to ‘drifting, searching, shifting through town to town’, meeting with ‘Double talkers, backstreet walkers at every turn’ in ‘Seedy motels, no star hotels’. As before, Tony Macaulay produced and wrote this, but with Geoff Stephens on writing duties too. Stephens had been in The New Vaudeville Band, who had a hit in 1966 with Winchester Cathedral. Macaulay, as has been well documented here, had written and produced quite a lot of chart-toppers in the 60s and 70s. This was to be his last. He later turned to writing thrillers.

Review

As with many of Macaulay’s number 1s, Silver Lady is OK. Decent chart fodder and fairly memorable but disposable. I prefer it to Don’t Give Up On Us as it’s a bit edgier. Soul seems to be down on his luck through his own mistakes and is regretting where he’s ended up. Trouble is, he doesn’t sound too bothered. Considering he’s an actor I’d have preferred a bit more character.

The video is good fun though. Soul all manly and hurt, wandering around all lonesome, or on a motorbike, or remembering being with his silver lady. Who, it turns out, isn’t an old woman, but a young blonde.

After

Later on that year Soul released the top eight hit Let’s Have a Quiet Night In. I haven’t heard it but I love that title. I’d like to think Soul is either reunited with his love or found someone new. Tired of his old ways, he’s now preferring to suggest they just have a night watching telly. Considering Soul has been married five times, it’s likely he prefers a bit more adventure.

One more hit followed in 1978 – It Sure Brings Out the Love in Your Eyes. For some reason Soul’s music did better in the UK, even though Starsky & Hutch continued until 1979. That year he released another LP, Band of Friends. He also starred in the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which terrified me and many people of a certain age, that weren’t old enough to have been watching it in the first place.

Soul wasn’t as prolific on TV or in the recording studio in the 80s. He had lots of bit parts, and released the album The Best Days of My Life in 1982. The following year he starred a short-lived TV series of Casablanca and a season of The Yellow Rose. From there it was mainly TV movies. The roles became fewer and Soul had become an alcoholic and developed a violent temper. He was jailed and ordered to have therapy classes for alcoholism after attacking his third wife Patti Carnel Sherman while she was seven months pregnant. They soon divorced. I hope he struggled like the character in this song afterwards. However a year later he married actress Julia Nickson and they had one daughter, China Soul, who is now a singer-songwriter.

In the mid-90s Soul moved to the UK, which revitalised his career thanks to many West End roles, including in Blood Brothers. He helped his friend, former war reporter Martin Bell, become an independent MP in the 1997 general election. That year he also released his last album to date, Leave a Light On…

In the early 00s he had cameos in Little Britain and Top Gear, plus an appearance on Holby City. 2004 saw him land replace Michael Brandon as Jerry Springer in the controversial musical Jerry Springer – The Opera. He also appeared alongside his old crime-fighting parter Paul Michael Glaser as joint cameos in the movie version of Starsky & Hutch. Owen Wilson took his role and Stiller was Glaser’s character.

The Outro

Since then Soul has occasionally surfaced in film, TV and theatre. These include a role as a murder victim in Lewis, a cameo lip-syncing to Silver Lady in the film Filth (2013) and as a coach driver in an advert for National Express. He sang along to Silver Lady.

The Info

Written by

Tony Macaulay & Geoff Stephens

Producer

Tony Macaulay

Weeks at number 1

3 (8-28 October)

Trivia

Births

26 October: Paralympian swimmer and cyclist Sarah Storey

Deaths

11 October: Architect Misha Black

Meanwhile…

10 October: Missing 20-year-old prostitute Jean Jordan is found dead in Chorlton, Manchester, nine days after she was last seen alive. Police believe she may have been another victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. It’s the first time he was suspected of a murder outside of Yorkshire.

15 October: Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, go missing after leaving the World’s End pub in Edinburgh, Scotland. The next day their bodies are found tied and strangled in the countryside. It wasn’t until 2014 that serial killer Angus Sinclair was convicted of the crime.

27 October: Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe denies allegations of having a relationship with and subsequent attempted murder of male model Norman Scott.
Also on that day, Sex Pistols released Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Despite refusal by major retailers to stock the album, it debuts at number 1 in the UK album chart the following week.