Yes, I know it’s been a long time… but I simply had to bring this blog out of hiatus to write a bit about Gavin Scott and Matthew Denby’s wonderful podcast A Journey Through SAW.
It is quite simply the documentary series all SAW fans have coveted for many years, and quite frankly, I struggle to think about who could have done a better job than Gavin & Matthew.
If you’re reading this blog, then you will of course know about the podcast, so there’s no need for me to go into detail about it. Nor do I want to spoil the experience for new listeners by going through all of the juicy info that Gavin & Matthew have uncovered. But should you not be aware of it, the podcast is telling the story of SAW using each of their released UK singles as touchpoints, from first SAW single The Upstroke through (I expect) to Slamm’s Virginia Plain, though I believe they will cover post-SAW product in some form, and will no doubt cover the latterday Stock & Waterman one-offs as well as the full SAW reunion for the remix of Kylie’s Every Day Is Like Christmas.
The podcast is a seriously impressive endeavour; Gavin & Matthew are journalists, and it’s clear how much those skills and that background contribute to the whole affair. They have tracked down all manner of contributors – many of whom we have not heard from before – and have gotten some great stories and viewpoints from. They know their stuff and their quality standards around information are high. And crucially, they are not afraid to voice their opinions if they do not like certain tracks, but remain respectful when doing so.
I especially like how Gavin positions himself as good cop, with Matthew being bad cop (in a good way, if that makes sense); it’s fun when the two do not agree on something.
Whilst Gavin & Matthew are following in the footsteps of the great fan researchers such as Jeremy Kay, Paul Smith, John Palmer, Dave Roberts & Tom Parker, they are actually taking the whole SAW fandom wider as their podcast gains increasing recognition. And deservedly so.
Anyway, I wanted to share 10 things I have learned from A Journey through SAW, so here goes:
1) Suzanne Rhatigan would be my ideal dinner party guest
Like many diehard SAW fans, you kind of get used to hearing the same old stories from the same old people – which is absolutely fine, but one of the joys of this podcast is hearing from people who haven’t told their story before. I loved hearing from people like Yoyo, Dee Lewis and Nick East, but Suzanne Rhatigan was an absolute delight. She was enthusiastic, friendly, honest yet respectful and hilarious. I could listen to her reading the full SAW discography. In particular, I loved her story about getting in trouble with Pete Waterman because Suzanne’s mum had unwittingly leaked a story to the Irish press! If this was my podcast, Suzanne would be on every episode.
2) Matt Aitken is refreshingly honest about the SAW back catalogue
Well I guess I kind of knew this anyway from what others have said about Matt Aitken, but what I really like about Matt’s contribution to the podcast is that he will give his view on whether a track worked or not. This is different from Mike Stock, who I feel is more defensive of SAW’s work (which is fair and proper – and I’ve spent 30-odd years defending their work too). By the way, it’s great that Matt has started to contribute more to retrospective projects such as the podcast; I feel his account of events is helping to give a fuller view of SAW’s history.
3) Sheila Ferguson’s version of Always Doesn’t Mean Forever has different phrasing in the chorus than Hazell Dean’s version
Always Doesn’t Mean Forever is genuinely one of my favourite SAW tracks, and it was a real thrill to hear a snippet of the original & unreleased Sheila Ferguson version. I love the sneaky way Gavin introduced it as the Hazell Dean version, and then stopping it after 20 seconds to correct himself! At first, I thought “ooh I haven’t heard this mix before”, before realising what version it actually was! The biggest surprise was that the phrasing of the “Always doesn’t mean forever” is different, in the way that the phrasing of the “Got to be certain” line is different in Mandy Smith’s version of Got To Be Certain to Kylie Minogue’s. Great to hear the snippet, and hopefully one day we will get to hear the full Sheila version (and the rest of her unreleased tracks).
4) Romi & Jazz could – and should – have been the next Mel & Kim
Gavin & Matthew did a great episode recently with a big focus on Romi & Jazz, whose sole 1990 SAW track One Love One World is a favourite of mine. The boys did a great overview of Romi & Jazz’s career leading up to the SAW collaboration, and it was great to hear Romi & Jazz now looking back on that time with fondness. Matt Aitken made a comment – “(We’ve) hit the jackpot here – where did it all go wrong?” – which got me thinking about the parallels between Romi & Jazz and Mel & Kim. One Love One World probably isn’t as revolutionary a track as Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend) was, but it was a case of SAW applying emerging club sounds to a pop track and doing something new (like using a spoken sample as the bridge). I think if Chrysalis had managed to break this single, then Romi & Jazz had a great chance of forging a successful career, especially if they had stayed with SAW and also if they had the opportunity to bring in the Bhangara elements more.
5) The story around how Princess parted ways with SAW and Supreme Records was even more fascinating than I thought
This was an early coup for Gavin & Matthew, and one which really showed that their podcast is a very special endeavour. They got Princess to agree to a comprehensive interview when the podcast had only started and was still building its profile, which is a great feat, but Gavin’s interviewing skills clearly put Princess at ease as she was able to be very candid about her experience. I want people to listen to the podcast so I am not going to go through the details here, except to say it’s clear there were lots of personalities at play and it seems Princess herself may have been caught in the crossfire. When your record label puts out a single with a text only cover, you know there’s a problem. I was also fascinated by Gavin & Matthew’s observation that one of the problems affecting Princess’s success was a move away from the pure soul of Say I’m Your Number One, as subsequent releases became more poppy (although final SAW single In the Heat Of A Passionate Moment went in a totally different direction and embraced Chicago House).
6) Lisa Fabien’s story of missed opportunities with SAW was a heartbreaking indictment on the record industry
If you’re a fully-signed up member of SAW fandom, then you will know the name Lisa Fabien but will not know much about her. Gavin & Matthew changed all that when they tracked her down. Lisa was a vocalist who was in the SAW and PWL orbit; she duetted with Rick Astley on the pre-Never Gonna Give You Up single When You Gonna (produced by Harding & Curnow), and later was the credited vocalist on the unreleased 4th SAW single Better Than Ever. It turns out that Lisa was signed for a deal and was given assurances that she was going to be the next big thing… before being unceremoniously dropped before anything actually happened. Sure, the history of pop music is littered with stories about artists who almost but never made it but Lisa’s experience, as she tells it, sounds really unfair and hurtful.
7) Kylie wasn’t actually flying back to Australia the day I Should Be So Lucky was recorded
Go and listen to Terry Blamey on the recent Better The Devil You Know part 1 edition of the podcast but it seems that Terry Blamey told a white lie about it being Kylie’s last day in the UK in order to force SAW to record Kylie. It’s bonkers he had to do that, but thank god he did. And this revelation only adds to the labyrinthine legend of how I Should be So Lucky was born.
8) Jamie Morgan’s life should be made into a film
I am slightly obsessed by Looking Good Diving by Morgan McVey, so it was great to hear from Jamie Morgan about how that track came together. What was even better for me was Jamie’s story about being chased by a murderous boyfriend who wrongly thought Jamie had copped off with his girlfriend, and how Jamie escaped into a club to hear DJ Tim Simenon playing B-side Looking Good Diving With The Wild Bunch, which led to Simenon producing Neneh Cherry's Buffalo Stance. Absolutely fascinating and brilliantly hilarious.
9) The guitar solo on Samantha Fox’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now was played on keyboard
Matt Aitken is of course an amazing guitarist, but I was already aware (having been lucky enough to have a brief email correspondence with Matt in the early 2000s) that a number of his guitar solos were actually performed on keyboard and routed through the Rockman guitar amp. Once I knew that, I was able to hear the difference between the keyboard solos (even though they were impressively done) and the real guitar solos. However, I was absolutely certain that the solo on Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now was the real deal – until Gavin revealed to Samantha Fox on the podcast that that particular solo was a keyboard/Rockman special. This is what’s great about the podcast; it’s easy to think that you know it all after nearly 40 years of being a fan, and then Gavin & Matt pull something out of the bag!
10) The mystery of the Roland Rat & SAW collaboration may have been solved
If you’re a die-hard SAW fan, you will know that they produced and co-wrote a number of tracks for UK TV puppet Roland Rat, one of which was the theme to the 1986 BBC TV show Roland Rat – The Series; these tracks ended up on an album, with the theme song released as a single. However, in Mark Elliott’s excellent 2017 book The Ministry of Pop, Mike Stock said he had no recollection of working on these tracks at all. Now, we know there have been occasions when a record contained a SAW credit but was actually the work of Pete Hammond or Phil Harding (and sometimes had nothing to do with SAW or PWL), but these tracks – at least in production terms – sound like SAW to me. Especially when you consider the Roland Rat-free version, which is a great slab of Chicago House and actually a proto-version of the Mel & Kim sound. But on the podcast, Mike re-iterated that he does not recall any involvement in these tracks, and I have no reason to doubt his account (he was there, after all – or, in this case, wasn’t!). He does suggest Matt Aitken was involved in putting the backing track together. Not only that, Phil Harding – credited as mixer – also cast doubts on his own involvement. The last word – for now – comes from the always-excellent John Palmer, who has suggested (and I am paraphrasing here) that perhaps SAW provided backing tracks to the BBC, probably for toplines to be written over them by composer Simon Brint, scriptwriter Lise Meyer & David Claridge, the man behind Roland Rat. This could explain the full-on Chicago House Roland-Rat-free version of the track with a female-sung verse (and no chorus); was this the original version of Living Legend rather than a remix of it as many of us have thought?
A quick note for the subscriber-only bonus material, which is already a treasure trove of expanded & additional interview material, as well as some special episodes where Gavin & Matt focus on a particular topic, album or artist. At roughly £2 per month, this is a steal.
In closing, the podcast is not only a history of SAW, but it’s also a wider cultural history of the music industry in the 1980s and 1990s – a double achievement then! A big well done and thank you to Gavin & Matt!
