Phenomenally successful
British pop music production team. Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman comprised
PWL (Pete Waterman Limited - he owned the whole shebang), and dominated the British (and european) pop charts from the early eighties to the early nineties with their
saccarine throwaway
nonsense.
Not that I wish to imply they're not talented people - they most certainly are, they have an almost spooky ability to write catchy melodies, infuriatingly hooky hooks, and graft on just the right amount of whatever 'sound' is the current musical vogue.
Acts they have masterminded (i.e. formed, promoted, written all the songs and run-the-singer's-out-of-tune-vocals-through-an-Eventide Harmoniser for) include;
Thankfully, the trio's talents are not limited to just producing lowest common denominator pop music - they have come up with some cracking quotes..
PWL On How To Write A Gigantic Hit Single
- Pete: "First go out and buy Beatles CDs and listen to every single they ever wrote over and over until you are so sick and tired of them that you could repeat every track verbatim."
- Matt: "Get kicked around a bit."
- Pete: "Watch soap operas"
-
Mike: "We spend maybe an hour discussing what the story should be, maybe ten minutes actually writing the lyrics."
- Mike: "Mozart did it for cash in hand- for the velvet trousers. The king would phone up and say, 'I’ve got this new bird and I’m getting married and I want a big thing in Church- you’ve got to make the stained glass windows rattle so don’t start off with any pansy violins, start off with the timpani and the organ and grab ‘em in the first ten seconds and do all the flashy bits afterwards. Make it last about half an hour.'"
- Pete: "Never Gonna Give You Up? (Rick Astley's biggest hit) - That took us about 3 1/2 minutes"
- Pete: "We're renegades! We break the rules. All The Smiths and those guys think they're left field - well, we're so far left we make them look central."
They masterminded over 65 tracks that made the charts (they produced over 100 singles) before splitting up to go their separate ways.
He also masterminded and co-presented (with the truly winsome Michaela Strachen) the late night trashfest The Hitman And Her, which visited a tacky different meat-market club in a different decrepid town every week.
SAW acrimoniously split up in the early ninties with Stock and Aitkin suing Waterman for unpaid royalties (Waterman is worth an estimated £60 million) and they have not spoken for several years.
Since the trio split, Pete Waterman has been responsible for many more projects, the most successful is currently Steps, who are a seriously shite pop band, in case you were wondering if the leopard had changed his spots.
Trivia fact: Pete Waterman is a keen owner of
Koi Carp and owns a fish farm in
Cheshire.
More fantastic dirt can be found at http://www.cafe80s.freeserve.co.uk/saw/