Classic Pop meets Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, the creative heart behind the SAW partnership, to chart their meteoric rise from humble pub rockers to transatlantic hit makers…

FELIX ROWE

Mike Stock: “We’d seen which way the compass needle ought to point by 1984… it was just a matter of manoeuvering ourselves into position”

When you get really moved by a simple, cheap pop song,” says Mike Stock with a chuckle, “you question: ‘What the hell… how’s it managed to do that?’” Ostensibly, he’s talking about a lifelong fascination with pop music that began with Elvis and Buddy Holly. But really, it’s a playful reference to his own considerable output as one third of Stock Aitken Waterman. ‘Simple, cheap pop song’ is a taunt that the phenomenally successful production team will be all too familiar with. Yet the key to doing anything well is to make it look simple, even when it’s anything but.

“And then you realise there’s a lot more to it than would seem on the surface,” Mike continues, “the way of structuring songs, pulling out the emotions, organising the music and the lyric to coincide. The whole thing comes together in an incredible confection. That’s what a great pop song is to me.”

SAW’s track record is truly unprecedented: over 100 Top 40 hits, including 18 No.1s, three of them in the States. They’ve entered The Guinness Book Of Records for topping the charts with 11 different artists - and very few people can lay claim to being knocked off the top spot by their own record, a remarkable feat they managed in 1987.

A YOUNG MAN’S GAME

Matt and Mike spent much of the 70s as gigging musicians, independently doing the circuit in pubs, clubs, hotels and, in Matt’s case, cruise ships. Their paths eventually crossed, and the perfectionist guitarist Matt impressed Mike enough to be offered a place in his band. Mike recalls the typical routine, playing crowd-pleasers at The Dorchester for £500 one night, followed by original material in the pub round corner under a different name for £60 the next. But, as Mike concedes, “it’s a young man’s game going out on the road” and once he’d found himself on the wrong side of 30, still without a deal, it was time to take action. “I just made the choice, get rid of the safety net, go into the studio and record some ideas,” he explains.

“I became seduced by the notion of making records,” says Matt, who joined Mike in the studio. “It struck me as being a much more creative way to spend your time. We’d write a song, invent a name for the group and send our cassettes off to the record company in that there London. ‘Hi, we’re Fred Blogs and his Shoelaces, here’s our new record… what do you think?’”

The pair knew they were onto something good; they just needed a way in. “I don’t understand why I felt this way,” Mike tells us, “but I had an absolute conviction in my own ability to write hit songs. I just believed I could do it. When Matt and I got in the studio and the first stuff we were doing was starting to sound promising, I thought all we actually needed was a business manager to get us into the right area.”