Give Stock Aitken Watermen their due – they enjoyed a phenomenal level of success in the 80s, especially the late 80s when their songs seemed to have a lock on the top ten. They played an important role in helping popularise Australian soaps by making singing stars of Kylie and Jason.
Stock is obviously a smart, canny guys, and his views pop songs and how to write them is interesting. He’s a little defensive on how much flak SAW received (which was a lot). He also puts forward conspiracy theories as to the demise of his success – he says the big companies took over and helped drive him out of business by mucking with the charts and stuffing his distribution. There may be some truth to this but he doesn’t raise the possibility that maybe he didn’t have his finger on the pulse like he used to.
The book also lacks colour. Stock admits to spending most of the late 80s and early 90s cooped up in a studio, working – he had a strong worth ethic, didn’t take drugs. Okay, fair enough, but there aren’t that many decent anecdotes about the acts who worked for him – they didn’t know who Kylie and almost snubbed her, Jason Donovan wanted to play rock music, Mel and Kim were lots of fun then she got cancer, Rick Astley was the boy next door… that was about it. Surely there were more colourful characters than this during the hey day of Brit pop? Is Stock just being diplomatic? Or does he genuinely have no clue? Pete Waterman, all anger and ambition, seems far more lively and probably would have written a more fun book.
There’s a list of his songs at the end. A lot of them are fairly bland but some genuine non-camp classics in there – ‘Better the Devil You Know’.
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