My 1980 "Hit"
The story of my chance of an actual hit single came when I was a radio presenter on Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio in the 1970’s. As well as presenting the breakfast show, I also worked with Steve England of Radio Atlantis fame in the commercial production department, voiceover taping, making radio ads, promos, jingles, liners and even radio dramas. I had access to a lot of professional recording gear and brought in my ARP synths that were used to write various radio advert jingles and so on.
In 1979, I had written this rough demo and played it to a friend of mine, Dave Eager who saw its potential. He was a Radio 1 weekend DJ and also an Equity union rep, and had contacts to re-record and release my humble demo of “It Happened Then”. We hired Smile Studios in Chorlton (now burnt down) and recorded all the synth tracks using the luxury of a 16-track multitrack with Dolby! But what about the vocals? I couldn’t sing, but I let the synth do the singing!
Steve England had taught me how to use “Sonovox”. This is where you play the “tune” that needed to sound like a robot singing, then you’d play that track back through two tweeters (from Radio Shack / Tandy!) that you pressed hard on your throat. The vibrations then make their way through your vocal apparatus and if you opened your mouth and mimed the words, you would sound like a singing robot! I was never really pleased with the clarity of the voice that was recorded and too much mouth noise was being picked up, but we ran out of studio time to improve it and it was duly released on a small indie, Superstition records.
The publisher was Jeff Wayne Music, well know by us in commercial production as the writer of many advertising jingles like Gordon’s Gin and so on, but not had yet found fame with “War of The Worlds”. Jeff loved the song and the unique sound and did a deal with Louvigny Music which was owned by Radio Luxembourg. This got the song to be a “PowerPlay” on Radio Luxembourg, which was a great breakthrough into Europe. I still remember hearing my little song being played on the car radio, picking up fish and chips in Urmston as Stuart Henry was raving about this “new synth sound”. Very proud! Quickly, the song was picked up by Polydor who rush released it in Germany with a colour sleeve, plus Ariola released it in France and it was re-released in the UK in blue vinyl!
There was a very good chance of it being an actual UK hit, so Dave Eager pulled favours from media legend Mike Mansfield and filmed a “one shot, no editing” video in Mike’s video tape room in London. On the German sleeve there is Dave in the middle, a pal of his to the left and there’s me to the right holding the Casio keyboard! A couple of toy robots later and the video was done and Dave Eager managed to get the video placed to be shown on network ITV that following Saturday in the kids’ show The Mersey Pirate, again pulling favours, this time from Granada producer, Steve Leahy. However…the tragedy and injustice! At the very last moment, the Musicians’ Union (of which I was a full member) banned the video from being shown as they stated that a “synthesiser” was not a “proper musical instrument"! Can you believe that? This is before that days when synths "played themselves", so of course musical talent was needed to play them. We were devastated. So the video was never shown and in the following weeks when we tried to persuade the union to change their mind, the impetus was lost.
But talking about injustice, do you think my little hit has inspired other musicians? Was my little 4-note motif from 1979 the inspiration for that "Stardust" tune from the “Lazy Jones” game in 1984? What about the riff from "Kernkraft 400", the hit from the German Zombie Nation band?
The problem is that there are only certain combinations of notes and chord changes, and similarities will always pop up now and again. As an example, never mind my little 4-note inspiration, what about 15 similar notes? Go to Spotify or Tidal etc., and have a listen to “Do You Hear The People Sing” from Les Misérables and the lyric “Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand by me?”. Now listen to the Lee Marvin hit “Wandrin’ Star”. The middle 8 section : “Mud can make you prisoner, and the plains can bake you dry”. What do you think? There are plenty more examples!
Still I was very lucky and proud to be able to bring out a song that was certainly “different”. The early singles are now collector’s items and there was a feature about it some months ago in Record Collector Magazine, reproduced below. I hope you found this interesting, here’s the original pop video:
IT HAPPENED THEN (ORIGINAL 1980 VERSION)
Music and Words - PETER BAKER
Published by Universal / MCA
IT HAPPENED THEN
(2003 re-recording and mix)
Music and Words - PETER BAKER
Published by Universal / MCA