Pete Waterman admits there was an “element of luck” behind his success with Kylie Minogue after he signed the Aussie star to his PWL record label in the late eighties.
The music mogul worked with Kylie alongside Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, writing and producing her breakthrough hit I Should Be So Lucky in 1987 and releasing four studio albums over a period of five years.
How the collaboration came about is the stuff of pop legend; having scored a hit Down Under with her cover of Little Eva’s The Loco-Motion, she travelled to London to work with Stock Aitken Waterman in September of that year. Having forgotten about the session, they quickly wrote I Should Be So Lucky while she waited outside the studio, before inviting her in to lay down her vocals.
They released the track that December on PWL – a decision Pete made after unsuccessfully pitching her to several other UK labels.
Speaking exclusively to RETROPOP ahead of the launch of the trio’s two-part Channel 5 series ‘Stock Aitken Waterman: Legends of Pop’, Pete recalls: “When we recorded Kylie Minogue from this television series [‘Neighbours’], Mike was really the only person who knew what Kylie was about because he had a family at that point.
“We made the record and we went to every record company to take that record – including Simon Cowell, which is why he makes all these comments… Nobody would touch her! Everybody said, ‘You can’t make records with TV stars.’ So in some ways, we didn’t have a choice; we had to go and do it ourselves. It really was that simple.”
At the time, Kylie had already topped the charts in Australia with her debut single, but Pete insists the industry was blind to her potential.
“That’s the record industry, isn’t it,” he adds. “They’ll tell you all these things, but they never see the facts in front of them.”
In the TV show, Simon reflects on his decision to pass on signing Kylie to his Fanfare label, sharing: “I got a phone call from Pete who said, ‘Have you heard of this show called Neighbours?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said do you know who Kylie Minogue is?’ I went, ‘No.’
“He said, ‘I have a deal with Mushroom Records. They want me to sign a deal with Kylie Minogue. Will you sign her?’ I said, ‘Yes, if you make the record. He went, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, then I’m not signing her.’
“For about five years I felt physically sick every time I heard one of her records, thinking, ‘God, if she’d been signed to me my label would have gone insane.’”
‘Stock Aitken Waterman: Legends of Pop’ is the first part of a new Channel 5 series, Secrets of the Hitmakers, and airs on Saturday nights, starting January 21.
It features the trio looking back on their time at the legendary Hit Factory, with exclusive appearances from Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Rick Astley, Hazell Dean, Kim Appleby and others.
