Stock Aitken Waterman
Stock Aitken Waterman (abbreviated as SAW) are an English songwriting and record production trio consisting of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, and Pete Waterman. The trio had great success from the mid-1980s through to the early 1990s. SAW is considered one of the most successful songwriting and producing partnerships of all time, scoring more than 100 UK top-40 hits, selling over 150 million records and earning an estimated £60 million.
SAW started producing underground club hits, but earned worldwide success with a mix of hi-NRG-influenced sound, romantic Motown lyrics and Italo disco melodies. During 1984–1989, their musical style was labelled Eurobeat. They also put swing shuffle elements into their songs.
In January 1984, Mike Stock and Matt Aitken called Pete Waterman asking for a meeting. Stock and Aitken turned up with a song they had written and produced called “The Upstroke”, a hi-NRG female version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”. Waterman was impressed and offered to form a partnership with Stock and Aitken. “The Upstroke”, performed by female duo Agents Aren’t Aeroplanes, was the very first Stock Aitken Waterman record. It was not a chart hit, but it was a club hit and was championed by Radio 1’s John Peel. Their initial style was in creating hi-NRG dance music with “You Think You’re a Man” by Divine (UK No. 16 in July 1984) and “Whatever I Do” by Hazell Dean (UK No. 4 in July 1984). This period saw a rapid refining of the core production team and their roles, with a fourth collaborator, Pete Ware, who was co-credited on the team’s earliest records, leaving after Stock and Aitken objected to him taking a side gig touring with Dean.
The production trio achieved their first UK No. 1 single in March 1985 with “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by Dead or Alive. Although a massive commercial success, the record set the scene for SAW’s often fractious creative relationship with those bands and artists who demanded creative involvement in their records. Engineer Phil Harding, who mixed the track, said tensions were running so high between the band members and producers Stock and Aitken during mixing, that it almost escalated to violence. Stock has disputed the seriousness of studio tensions, alleging that singer Pete Burns, Harding and Waterman have all “exaggerated” what happened in their recounting of events. Despite the enormous success of the single, Waterman has stated in interviews that the trio were still in dire financial straits at the time.
This chart success and the trio’s sound attracted the attention of girl group Bananarama. Group member Siobhan Fahey wanted to record a cover version of Shocking Blue’s hit song “Venus”. The result was a pop/hi-NRG reworking which became a worldwide chart hit, reaching No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart on 6 September 1986, and reaching the top 10 in the UK and many other countries. Bananarama went on to make Stock, Aitken and Waterman their main producers, and would collaborate with them on some of their biggest hits, including “Love in the First Degree”, “I Can’t Help It”, and “I Heard a Rumour”. The act were one of only a few who were given co-writing credits with the producers, with Stock describing the creative relationship as challenging; explaining he was obliged to collaborate with them due to a deal with their management. “It’s very difficult to be creative if someone’s just going to mock you, or laugh at you,” he said. “With Bananarama it was just awkward, all the time very awkward, and I didn’t feel comfortable writing with them.
Following their early success, SAW’s style evolved into a more mainstream synthpop, typically performed by attractive singers. Their usual method for creating the music was to write the songs themselves, although some of their early artists (such as Dead or Alive and Bananarama) wrote or cowrote their own material. Next they would record the music with extensive use of synthesizers, drum machines (drums were often credited to “A Linn”, a reference to the Linn brand of drum machine) and sequencers; and then finally bring in a singer solely to record the vocal track. Pete Burns would later criticise SAW for their methods, describing that “they took our sound and just basically wheeled it off with a load of other imbeciles, and that makes me a bit sour.”
The tendency toward interchanging artists and repertoire was well established when Rick Astley’s breakout album Whenever You Need Somebody got its name and title track from a minor hit the trio had produced a year earlier for O’Chi Brown. Evidently they thought the song still had some mileage, and it was even issued with an exact replica of O’Chi Brown’s club mix for the Rick Astley club mix. Similarly, many of their songs were tried out and recorded by multiple artists; Mel and Kim, Pepsi and Shirlie and Sinitta all recorded the song “Who’s Gonna Catch You”, both Kylie Minogue and Mandy Smith recorded “Got To Be Certain”, whilst Mel and Kim, Carol Hitchcock and Hazell Dean all laid down vocals for “More Than Words Can Say”. Their prodigious, production line-like output and similar song structures led to them being referred to as the “hit factory” (not to be confused with the record label of the same name or the New York City recording studio The Hit Factory) and attracted criticism from many quarters, including The Guardian newspaper, who unflatteringly dubbed the team, “Schlock, Aimless and Waterdown”. However, Waterman defended their style by comparing it to the output of Motown in the 1960s.
SAW’s early work was recorded and mixed at Marquee Studios in Wardour Street, where Phil Harding and Rob Waldron worked with them on Youthquake, the Dead or Alive album which included their huge hit “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”. Waldron went to work as an assistant engineer to Harding when Waterman opened his new studio in Borough, London (The Hit Factory). Waldron became the chief recording engineer and Linn 9000 programmer (A Linn) and Harding was the mixer/remixer, working with various artists including Bananarama, Princess, Rick Astley, Hazell Dean, Haywoode, Brilliant and O’Chi Brown.
In 1994, Stock and Aitken began working together again, forming Love This Records and achieving some success in the UK during the mid-1990s through the early 2000s; they achieved further top-10 hits with Robson & Jerome, Nicki French, and Scooch. Meanwhile, Waterman kept running PWL Records and continued to collaborate on music productions, most notably with Mark Topham and Karl Twigg, finding success with artists such as Steps and Tina Cousins.
In 2005, the three producers reunited again and released a CD+DVD album, Stock Aitken Waterman Gold, with some of their best-known singles. Despite their reunion, Aitken soon left. 2007 saw the release of a new Stock/Waterman-produced single, the first in 14 years, The Sheilas’ single “(I’m So) Happy Happy (You’re Mine)”, which reached No. 91 in the UK.