Soft rock - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

Diminutive singer-songwriter Leo Sayer may be short in stature, but he was a big star in the 70s. From 1973 onwards he was a regular in the top 10 but it took four years to finally reach the pinnacle of the charts with the soft rock ballad When I Need You.

Before

Gerard Hugh Sayer was born on 21 May 1948 in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, where he attended St Peter’s Catholic Primary School. Then he moved on to Blessed Robert Southwell in Goring-by-Sea and then West Sussex College of Art and Design, where he studied commercial art and graphic design. When he was 18, Sayer was working as a hall porter at the King’s Hotel in Hove. He became a hero when a serious fire broke out on the first floor and he assisted with saving elderly guests. Sayer ended up in danger himself but was rescued by builders working on nearby flats.

By the late-60s he was frontman in Terraplane Blues Band, before forming the group Patches in 1971 with drummer David Courtney, who had previously played with former number 1 singer Adam Faith. Patches were hoping the connection would pay dividends as Faith was moving into music management. Although Faith wasn’t that impressed with the group, he did think Sayer had potential and agreed to work with him.

Sayer began recording songs he co-wrote with Courtney at the studio of Roger Daltrey. The Who’s lead singer was impressed with what he heard, and was trying to kickstart a solo career. His debut, Giving It All Away, was written by Sayer and Courtney and produced by Faith. Peaking at five in the charts, Daltrey never surpassed this achievement again. Sayer’s debut single followed that same year but Why Is Everybody Going Home failed to chart. It became the closing track on his first LP, Silverbird.

Sayer’s second single, however, made him a star. The Show Must Go On was a music-hall-style song about making the wrong choices in life. He memorably promoted the single appearing on TV dressed and made-up as a pierrot clown. It took him all the way to number two. Second album Just a Boy (1974) spawned One Man Band, which reached six and Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance), which climbed to four. The latter became his first US hit when it went all the way to four. With a canny knack in catchy pop, a lot of charisma and energy and that unmistakable 70s afro, Sayer became a frequent presence on Top of the Pops.

His third album Another Year continued his winning ways in 1975 with Moonlighting stalling at two. He and Courtney had gone their separate ways and Sayer wrote this LP with Supertramp bassist Frank Farrell. He and Faith also stopped working together after this album and he went to the US to record Endless Flight. With a bigger production budget and Richard Perry at the helm, it was his most commercial work yet and the first single from it, the ultra-catchy disco pop tune You Make Me Feel Like Dancing gave him a number 1 in the US, Canada and New Zealand. Despite being his signature song, it was his third single to not make it past the runner-up spot. Finally, Sayer cracked it with When I Need You.

This love song was penned by Albert Hammond and Carole Bayer Sager. Hammond, father of Albert Hammond Jr from The Strokes, was a singer and has been very successful for decades in writing hits for Glenn Campbell, Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Ace of Base and Westlife, to name a few. Singer-songwriter Bayer Sager has an Academy Award, a Grammy and two Golden Globes to her name and later married and worked with Burt Bacharach. Together, these pedigree songsmiths were bound to strike gold. This track actually first appeared as the title track to Hammond’s 1976 LP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVmBXm9OfDo

Review

I’m not sure what to make of Sayer to be honest. I used to think he seemed a nice unassuming guy, happy to play the fool (literally in the case of The Show Must Go On). I formed this opinion after seeing him fall off a running machine on the Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer ill-fated game show Families at War. You can see the clip here. It starts with him sat on someone’s back performing this very number 1. So surely he has a good sense of humour. But then my opinion fell rapidly after seeing him take part in Celebrity Big Brother in 2007. He came across as a childish prima donna, eventually storming out because he couldn’t be provided with clean underwear. And during one of his hissy fits, he accidentally gave a thumbs up to the camera rather than the finger. Look. Silly sod.

But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt as that series did strange things to people and let’s get back to 1977. And I think When I Need You is a decent single if you like 70s torch songs. Perry’s production is slick and top-notch, capturing that soft rock FM sound so well. Sayer portrays the sensitive pop star separated from his loved one well. Though they’re miles apart, it’s OK as he can picture her when he closes his eyes. Sounds cliched now (and the video above in which he wanders forlornly along a beach is definitely cheesy) but it captures the mood better than other songs of this type.

I prefer the falsetto-sung happy-go-lucky You Make Me Feel Like Dancing personally but When I Need You is better than, say If You Leave Me Now or Don’t Give Up on Us. The song works because you could imagine it as a love letter not to just one person, but all Sayer’s fans. And ‘It’s cold out, but hold out, and do like I do’ is a nice little punching-the-air moment.

It’s a class line-up performing the track, featuring award-winning composer James Newton Howard on synth, occasional Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys, Michael Omartian on electric piano, session guitarist Dean Parks on electric guitar, Jeff Porcaro (soon to join Toto) on drums and legendary session bassist Willie Weeks.

After

When I Need You finally got Sayer the number 1 he craved, and became his second US chart-topper too. It was a worldwide hit and also the first of two Perry-produced number 1s in a row. It’s somewhat of a standard, having been covered by Perry Como, Rod Stewart, Celine Dion, Cliff Richard and, erm, Will Mellor. But Sayer’s is the one everyone remembers.

The Outro

Normally at this point I’d run through the rest of Sayer’s career, but as he unexpectedly featured on a number 29 years later, you’ll have to wait. It’s cold out, but hold out.

The Info

Written by

Albert Hammond & Carole Bayer Sager

Producer

Richard Perry

Weeks at number 1

3 (19 February-11 March)

Trivia

Births

2 March: Coldplay singer Chris Martin
9 March: Actress Rita Simons
10 March: Radio DJ Colin Murray

Deaths

19 February: Anthony Crosland

Meanwhile…

22 February: Labour MP David Owen replaces Anthony Crosland as Foreign Secretary after his death three days earlier.

1 March: Prime Minister James Callaghan threatens to withdraw state assistance to British Leyland, insisting they put an end to strike action.

The Intro

US rock band Chicago are one of the longest-running and most successful acts of all time in America. They’ve dabbled in jazz, classical and pop and sold millions in the process. Yet they haven’t achieved anywhere near the same level of success in the UK, where their only chart-topper is this soft-rock ballad.

Before

They formed in 1967 in, well, Chicago, Illinois. Known then as The Big Thing, they consisted of saxophonist Walter Parazaider, guitarist/singer Terry Kath, drummer Danny Seraphine, trombonist James Pankow, trumpeter Lee Loughnane and keyboardist/singer Robert Lamm. All had previous band experience. Chicago toured local nightclubs and played covers of the hits of the era. With a need for a bassist and a tenor to complement the vocals of Lamm and Kath, they hired Peter Cetera towards the end of the year.

The Big Thing were ambitious and began working on their own material. In 1968 they moved to LA, signed with Columbia Records and changed their name to Chicago Transit Authority. They became regular performers at the legendary Whiskey a Go Go, supporting Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. In 1969 their eponymous debut album was released. Unusually for a first LP, it was a double. The seven-piece were lined up to play at Woodstock, but were replaced by Santana.

Less than a year later they had shortened their name to simply Chicago to avoid legal action, and another double LP, Chicago, followed. It spawned 25 or 6 to 4, which reached four in the US and seven in the UK. In 1971 they released Chicago III and began a trend for naming their albums after the group with a roman numeral to denote the order, bar a few exceptions here and there. These earlier, more experimental collections usually found their way into the top 10 of the UK album charts, where the more mature listeners had no quarrel with lengthy rock symphonies. Chicago V in 1972 was their first single album and contained the US number three hit Saturday in the Park. Chicago VI (1973) saw Cetera become established as their main singer. Chicago were so popular in the States, in 1974 their entire catalogue of seven albums was in the Billboard 200.

Close to collective exhaustion from their heavy workload, Chicago took a two-year break inbetween recording Chicago VIII and Chicago X (Chicago IX was a greatest hits compilation). Some of the band were reportedly unhappy with the number of ballads featured on their latest work.

Among the last to be recorded and nearly left off was Cetera’s If You Leave Me Now, which he’d originally written in 1973. The singer also performed backing vocals, with Lamm on electric piano, longtime collaborator Brazilian percussionist Laudir de Olivera provided congas, shakers, finger cymbals and wind chimes, Parazaider swapped saxophone for woodwinds, producer James William Guercio contributed lead and rhythm acoustic guitar (Kath sat this one out) and veteran arranger Jimmie Haskell looked after the strings and French horn orchestrations, played by Gene Sherry and George Hyde.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6WsbBu-ARc

Review

The first 40 seconds of If You Leave Me Now are great. Opening with that memorable horn hook, Cetera pleads with his love not to go. OK, this is hardly a new subject matter in pop, but it’s a very slick production and ‘If you leave me now, you’ll take away the biggest part of me/Ooohh no, baby please don’t go’ is a very effective earworm.

Unfortunately it all goes a bit aimless after that. It’s as though Cetera plays his ace too soon, stopping his partner in her tracks but is then unable to really give a good reason to persuade her to change her mind. He has a great voice that lends itself well to a song full of pleading, but there’s not enough meat to keep me interested. Dance act Lemon Jelly had the right idea when they used the intro as the basis for their track Soft, released in 2001. It made for a great grand finale to Jarvis Cocker’s Domestic Discos, which he broadcast on Instagram during the first national COVID-19 lockdown.

If You Leave Me Now spent three weeks on top and went to number 1 in the US and several other countries. It also earned the group the Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus at the 1977 Grammy Awards. Tragedy hit Chicago when in early 1978, Kath died after shooting himself with a gun he thought was unloaded. Singer-songwriter Donnie Dacus was his replacement.

After

Chicago’s sound kept evolving, with the horns being used less often and power ballads their bread and butter. The line-up changed too, and the core members of Toto helped out on 1982’s Chicago 16, which spawned the US number 1 Hard to Say I’m Sorry. It was their second biggest UK hit, peaking at four. Chicago 17 in 1984 featured their last UK hits, Hard Habit to Break (eight) and You’re the Inspiration (14). Cetera left in 1985 to pursue a solo career, reaching number three with yet another power ballad, Glory of Love, which was used in The Karate Kid Part II.

Chicago continued to score hits in the US despite the loss of Cetera, including Will You Still Love Me? in 1986 and I Don’t Wanna Live Without Your Love in 1988. That same year they topped the US chart for the last time with Look Away. Seraphine was sacked in 1990, and the decade saw their recorded output decrease greatly.

The Outro

They returned to experimenting with jazz and classical covers on 1995’s Night & Day: Big Band. Chicago XXX in 2006 was their first album of new material since Twenty 1 in 1991. Their last album to date, released in 2019, is their third collection of festive songs, Chicago XXXVII: Chicago Christmas. Lamm, Loughnane, and Pankow are the only remaining original band members, with Parazaider playing the occasional special event.

If You Leave Me Now was used to great effect in an advert for mobile phone network 3 in 2006.

The Info

Written by

Peter Cetera

Producer

James William Guercio

Weeks at number 1

3 (13 November-3 December)

Trivia

Deaths

20 November: Catholic intellectual Martin D’Arcy

Meanwhile…

16 November: The seven perpetrators of the £8,000,000 van robbery at the Bank of America in Mayfair were sentenced to a total of 100 years in jail.

1 December: The Sex Pistols achieved notoriety with an expletive-ridden TV debut on Bill Grundy’s regional news show Today for Thames Television. The punk rockers were drafted in at short notice when Queen pulled out, and went on to promote debut single Anarchy in the UK, which had been released on 26 November. Grundy, who was noticeably drunk, was suspended for inciting them.