www.musicweek.com INTERVIEWPETEWATERMAN
EXECUTIVES BY TIM INGHAM
P
ete Waterman is dreaming of Barbados. If the Coventry-born mogul had sold his exceptionally successful label, PWL, at the
height of its Kylie-boosted fame (circa 1988), he reckons his life would have ended up very different. And right about now, his feet would be being kissed by the crisp azure waters of the Caribbean. As it stands, Waterman is actually “freezing my
chuff off ” outside the BPI’s Westminster offices, chatting to a notably un-Bajan trade paper. Although he might regret not selling PWL to
the two biggest majors of the late Eighties – whom he admits both made handsome offers – Waterman clarifies that the stature of his personal wealth wouldn’t have made a jot of difference to his enthusiasm for his new project. The Hit Factory, the ever-spawning nucleus of
PWL’s floor-filling operations, is back: both on the stage – via a Hyde Park spectacular next Wednesday ( July 11) – and a celebratory, triple- disc compilation album. Originally, Waterman wasn’t keen on the
revisionist venture, preferring instead to let PWL’s glory years speak for themselves – and with 500 million records sold in his name, it’s not hard to understand why. But after noting that PWL’s 25th anniversary coincided with the Olympics, the Diamond Jubilee and an overall “iconic year for Britain”, his enthusiasm began to blossom. No doubt partly due to his big black book, all
of The Hit Factory’s leading lights are now involved – including Kylie and Jason, Bananarama, Steps, Rick Astley and more. They will play the evocative, dyed-in-the-bygone- charts music of PWL: the indie label masterminded by Waterman and fellow entrepreneurs/songwriters/producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken. Yes, that’s right: the indie label. PWL might
not have housed the sneer of The Smiths or the cult of The Cure, but it never sold out, either. As Waterman puts it: “Whether you like what
“Whether you like what we did is irrelevant: we shook the tree. To me, we were creating rock and roll. We went out on the road with a bunch of artists, stuck our fingers up at the record industry and did exactly what Dick Clark had done 30 years before”
POP, IN THE NAME OF LOVE
Pete Waterman’s hugely successful Hit Factory is back – but what does the chart-conquering impresario think of the modern music industry?
we did is irrelevant: we shook the tree. I remember [BMG Chrysalis’s] Chris Wright not understanding that, to me, we were creating rock and roll. Because there were no guitars, he didn’t get it. “But we went out on the road with a bunch of
artists, stuck our fingers up at the record industry and did exactly what Dick Clark had done 30 years before.” Few people know that before Waterman
ABOVE All the Hits: Pete Waterman Presents The Hit Factory (PWL/Sony) is released on July 9
entered the record industry in the early Seventies – earning just £60 a week – he was an influential tastemaker of far ‘trendier’ music. DJ’ing in Meccas across the UK, he became a respected buddy of hipsters like The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things and Fleetwood Mac, and was a significant early champion of Motown and US R&B. The more voguish elements of the media may
later have balked at his PWL output, but Waterman had a darn catchy last laugh: by releasing the classic slice of James Brown-sampling funk-pop Roadblock in 1987, Stock, Aitken and Waterman truly bared their songwriting chops – unearthing a nationwide guilty pleasure of trendsetters everywhere in the process.
06.07.12 MusicWeek 17
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