For Rubettes lookalikes Racey, proponents of boisterous, chant-y, handclappy, jolly, jejune school disco pop – notably the provocatively engaging and frankly fantastic Lay Your Love On Me – 1978 was a huge year, scoring two massive hit singles, becoming instant pop stars and reaping the rewards of years in various gigging bands. Singer Richard Gower (pictured above right, second from left) remembers that his future was laid out before him from an early age.
“I was playing in pubs in London by the time I was 16,” he tells RC. “I was working in a printing factory, and I was on about £6.50 per week for a five-and-a-half-day week, and when I was playing pubs, I was getting a fiver a night. I’d be doing three nights over the weekend and having 15 quid in my pocket at 16, which was pretty good money back then. There was no way working a regular job could compete with that.”
Racey may have appeared to have come from nowhere, but the band were all in their late twenties by the time Gower decided they should take things to another level, by pooling their gig money and making a quality demo.
“We sent demos to Rocket Records, EMI and RAK, and they all expressed an interest in signing us and wanted to hear more material,” Gower says. “Within three weeks I had a phone call at home from Mickie Most. I thought it was someone having a joke, so I hung up, but he rang back and explained that he was in town and wanted to see us at our residency at a pub called The Three Queens in Weston-super-Mare. When he entered the pub there was a deadly silence as everyone knew him from New Faces on the TV.”
Most clearly liked what he saw. “When we came offstage, he said the classic line to us: ‘I think you’re going to be stars.’” The legendary British hitmaker followed through on his interest by sending John Crawley, the head of RAK publishing, to confirm his instincts were on target. A week after that, Most called the band to advise them that the studio was booked. “We all turned up in our old bangers and parked outside RAK’s studios,” Gower laughs. “Mickie was in there hoovering the studio. He said he had a song for us, which caught us by surprise, as we were writing our own songs, but we thought we’d go along with it. It turned out to be 1978’s Baby It’s You, which was written by Chris Norman and Pete Spencer from Smokie. We thought it was a good song, though, and it was the first single, which failed, but we did get on Top Of The Pops, which was brilliant because it was all we ever wanted.”
Undeterred by the single’s failure, Most came back to the band with a plan for a revamped image and a song written by the none-more-prolific team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, Lay Your Love On Me, also 1978. “When he played us the demo, though,” Gower recalls, “it didn’t really sound like anything much at all. It was just Mike Chapman singing and playing acoustic guitar, with a very minimal approach. We wondered what the hell we could do with it; I thought, ‘Jesus, that’s horrendous.’ Mickie said to go away and work it up. We came up with that keyboard hook, which seemed to pull it together and Mickie thought it sounded good to go. Years later I wondered whether it was worth a co-writing credit as it was a big part of the song. We knew about the music, but we didn’t know about the music business.”
Gower continues the story: “Prior to its release, Mickie gave us a white label demo of the record, and when we played it at home, we thought, ‘Oh no! What have we done?’” He laughs. “It didn’t seem like it would ever be any kind of hit to us. Within a month it was No 1 or 2 in so many countries in the world that the success started to make up for the discomfort we felt. Everything changes when you’re zooming up the charts.”
The next hit, Chinn and Chapman’s Some Girls (1979) – which was initially offered to and rejected by Blondie – established Racey as fully-fledged pop stars.
“I remember we were on the M5 in an old Mk 2 Cortina and one car overtook us with young kids in it and they recognised us and were banging on their windows. That was the first time we realised that we were recognisable faces. The excitement to be on TOTP at that point was fantastic. It’s nerve-wracking to do your spot, though, because you know the whole country is watching. You’re watching yourself at home, really studying every move you make.”
Given the massive success of the band’s previous two singles, it came as quite a blow when Boy Oh Boy (1979) didn’t do so well. Gower accepts that the blame for that loss of momentum was the fault of the band.
“We made a really big mistake,” he admits. “We’d recorded Kitty, which was the original version of Mickey, the big Toni Basil hit [from 1982], and Mickie got us to record Boy Oh Boy as well. Then he asked us which one we wanted to be the next single. What did we know? We picked the wrong song.”
Racey only had one further hit after that, a cover of Dion’s Runaround Sue in 1980, and that was it for the band. They had mixed feelings about the material they were recording, though.
“We didn’t really think that was who we were as a band – we were not really, totally comfortable with the ultra-lightweight pop, you know? The demo that got us the deal was nothing like the music that Racey played. Mickie signed me as an individual writer to RAK but didn’t re-sign the rest of the band. He put me on a contract, and I wrote a few hits for Suzi Quatro, Smokie, Kandidate and Hot Chocolate, so that worked out well.”
Looking back, Gower has no regrets. “It was clear that our 15 minutes were running out as a band,” he says. “I was happy that I was able to continue to work successfully in the business. I guess if we’d made a few different decisions, we could have stretched out the hits a little longer.”
Gower is still active and highly successful. “I’m living in Australia, where I set up my own music and publishing company with my son, Matthew and Natalie, my daughter – Jam Mountain Music. We have had the same song at No 1 in the independent charts in Australia at Christmas for the last two years, Light A Candle, so that’s going well and where my focus lies these days. My plan was to become the Australian Mickie Most with a publishing and recording empire. I can’t complain about the way things have panned out at all.”
Interview: Mark McStea
To find out more about Richard Gower’s current activities, visit jammountainmusic.com.
