Hazell Dean tells Classic Pop how she found her true calling in the 80s, becoming the Queen of Hi-NRG with the classic hit Searchin’ and recording many tracks with Stock Aitken Waterman…

IAN WADE

Having done the clubs and paid her session musician and songwriting dues - including a couple of attempts as a Eurovision hopeful in the first few years of her illustrious career - Hazell Dean became the Queen of Hi-NRG with Searchin’ (I Gotta Find A Man) during 1984, and landed Stock Aitken & Waterman’s first Top 5 breakthrough with her follow-up, Whatever I Do. As 2019 closes, with Hazell as busy as ever with Pride events and touring around the world, we put a few questions to the Essex-born icon…

What made you decide to move towards pop-dance with the first release of Searchin’ in 1983?

It wasn’t a conscious transition. In fact, Hi-NRG dance music wasn’t really on my radar at that time. I had always wanted to be a singer-songwriter, strumming a guitar. I was happy singing ballads, but Searchin’ was such a special song it literally burst into my life and changed my career path. It was recorded in very few takes at Scorpio Studios in London, but it was certainly a catalyst on many levels.

Before the song’s re-release in 1984 came the single Evergreen, backed with Jealous Love…

There was no intentional change of direction - it happened naturally and quite unexpectedly. Evergreen has always been a favourite track of mine, as I’m a huge Streisand fan. This song holds very special memories of my late mother. Jealous Love I wrote myself, and it’s always very encouraging when an audience embraces something that you have written.

Looking back, 1984 was a huge year in terms of gay culture breaking through into the charts. Of course there was Frankie and Bronski Beat, plus tracks crossing over from gay clubs such as It’s Raining Men, So Many Men, and then came your song Searchin’… was that, and those successes, something you were keeping an eye on at the time?

No, not really, I was concentrating on my own career. Obviously, I was very aware of those tracks and artists. I bumped into many of them when we were doing PA’s here in the UK, across Europe and the USA. It was the music I heard when I was working in the clubs, but not what I was listening to in my own home. That said, the transition of many of those tracks from gay clubs to mainstream charts was very exciting, and I’m proud to have been the first British artist to have crossed over to the mainstream in the UK and pioneered the Hi-NRG sound globally.