Stock, Aitken and Waterman: ‘It felt like everyone hated us – apart from the teenagers’

Schlock, Aimless and Waterdown. That’s what critics called them in the 1980s. But on the afternoon I meet Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman, they are cock-a-hoop to learn they’ve been rebranded as “Legends of Pop” by a new three-part documentary celebrating their record-breaking run of more than 100 top 40 hits from 1984 to 1993.

“Legends of Pop!” repeats Waterman, flushed with satisfaction, while the more self-deprecating Aitken joshes “Not Tsars of the Stars?” and Stock lobs in “Chiefs of the charts?!” Forty years after they formed the songwriting/production trio that launched the pop careers of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Rick Astley (shifting more than 40 million records and netting an estimated £60 million) they’re all buzzing with the belated recognition. “Because,” says Waterman, “for a long time it felt like everybody hated us, apart from the teenagers”.

“What people forget,” sighs Stock, “is that we weren’t just fighting a few sniping comments in the press. We were fighting the whole music industry. We were being blocked. The industry didn’t like us biting into their apple. A lot of our records stalled at 41. Too many to be a coincidence.”

Waterman nods. He reminds me that Stock and Aitken started out as musicians who’d slogged out almost a decade of pub gigs and cruise shows before hunkering down to write songs for other people. He was a former coal-miner and DJ who’d spent the 1970s in music publishing and A&R for labels such as Magnet before becoming part of the production team behind Musical Youth’s 1982 chart-topper Pass the Dutchie. But by the time they met, he says, “We’d all been rejected by the industry.”

So although, in retrospect, those squeaky-clean SAW hits smelt of the Establishment, the trio saw themselves as indie outsiders. Even if they joked that they sounded like a firm of solicitors. They approached their business with a solid plan: to lay catchy pop tunes over the Hi-NRG beats popular in gay clubs.

Songwriters Stock and Aitken hooked up with DJ Waterman in 1984 and he sourced the singers. They kicked off with sister act Agents Aren’t Aeroplanes and American drag queen Divine before they broke the Top 10 with Hazell Dean’s Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go) (1984) and Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) (1985) which gave them their first UK No 1 and made them their first serious money.

Success bred success. Bananarama – already an established act – heard Spin Me Round and wanted some of its percussive energy to lift a cover of Shocking Blue’s 1969 single Venus. Waterman recalls that their label weren’t impressed by “all the ricky-ticky” on the new version. “The hi-hats, the cowbells, all that,” says Aitken, “They said people wouldn’t like the ricky-ticky, until we told them all the same ricky-ticky was on Spin Me Round. Bananarama’s Venus went to No 1 in the US. After that we always said ‘ricky-ticky’ instead of percussion.”

From that point, SAW’s studio had a revolving door. In 1986, Kylie Minogue, the Neighbours star, was sent to them for a follow-up to her debut hit, Locomotion, and recorded I Should Be So Lucky (1987) in 40 minutes. Stock likes to point out that although the hit is often dismissed as aural candyfloss, it’s harder to play than it looks as it’s written in four “really awkward” keys. Minogue’s on- (and off-) screen love interest, Jason Donovan, soon followed her into the SAW vocal booth when Woolworths promised to order 250,000 copies of a duet and in 1989 SAW produced three solo Top 10 hits for him.

The trio say they were “usually fine when singers went on to do other things”, as when Minogue left them to reinvent herself with a raunchier image.

“We’ve stayed in touch with pretty much all of them,” says Waterman. “I went to see Jason the other day. I’ve been to a couple of Kylie’s birthday bashes. I still see Bananarama and Sonia regularly.” He pauses. “We did feel extremely let down when Rick decided to leave because we regarded him as part of the family.”

Waterman had spotted him in a band in the North and brought him down to London, where he briefly worked at the SAW studio making the tea. “We’d given him this No 1 single [Never Gonna Give You Up, 1987] and he’d aced it. Then he said ‘I don’t want another No 1 single’. Well!”

The trio all agree that the singers to whom they felt closest were Mel & Kim, even though Waterman recalls the young Appleby sisters were initially both shocked by how “old and white we were”. “They were part of the band,” nods Aitken. The duo’s only studio album, FLM (1987), took its name from SAW’s studio banter. “If we liked something, we’d say, ‘F------ Lovely, Mate’, which we borrowed from a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch,” says Aitken. “They picked up on that and it became FLM.” Tragically, Mel Appleby was diagnosed with cancer in 1987, dying aged just 23 in 1990.

By that point, the public was tiring of cookie-cutter acts. The tweens who’d bopped along with fresh-faced soap opera stars were graduating to grunge. Aitken walked in 1991. Kylie left for that reinvention in 1992 and Stock bailed in 1993. Both Stock and Aitken attempted to sue Waterman for selling on copyrights in 1999, but ended up paying court costs.

“But we’ve never really fallen out,” says Aitken. Mike and I spent about nine years together in a really tiny room in really pressurised situations. We might have had a few stand-up shouting matches but we never came to blows. I think that’s remarkable, really.”

Although some of their singers lived wilder lives – Waterman says he’d get regular 4am calls from Bananarama, asking him “to pick them up from some nightclub because they’d run out of taxi money” – the trio never indulged in rock and roll excess themselves.

When pressed, Stock remembers their wildest night out “was with [metal band] Judas Priest, in Paris”. “That was my birthday! Don’t you remember?” nudges Waterman. “No, I don’t remember anything!” “They took us to the Folies Bergère and bought us that ridiculously expensive bottle of champagne we’d never heard of. Then all these hookers turned up and we pretended we were gay, so all these gay boys turned up…”

Although they all claim to listen to new music, none of them can name a young artist they admire. And they’re unimpressed by the current charts. Stock tells me he wouldn’t listen to Taylor Swift and has limited time for the UK’s Ed Sheeran. “I shouldn’t be criticising because he does his best. But it’s very limited. I couldn’t sit through a whole concert.”

He pins the problem on stage schools which he says are “turning out all these kids who think they’re going to be pop stars and there’s not enough room. All these kids have paid £10k a year for three years and they’ve got unrealistic expectations. Meantime, we need more plumbers, y’know?”

Stock looks suddenly cautious. He admits he has form saying the wrong thing in interviews. Like the time he compared SAW’s output to the works of Shakespeare? He insists that his comments were taken out of context, but then rolls back. “I mean, there are comparisons…” Between “I Should Be So Lucky” and, say, King Lear? All three crack up. “Well,” Stock laughs, “They both have rhymes.”

Stock, Aitken & Waterman: Legends of Pop' begins on Channel 5 at 8.30pm on Saturday