Edwin J Bernard

SUMMER OF LOVE
July 01, 1987

First published in Record Mirror, 1987.

Donna Summer, the diva of gay disco who became the target for a backlash following remarks about AIDS being punishment from God, answers her critics in the best way possible - with a hit record. Devil's advocate: Edwin J Bernard

Remember grooving to the electro-coo of 'I Feel Love'? Falling in lurve to 'I Love You'? Exhausting yourself at the disco to the full 17minutes 34 seconds version of 'MacArthur Park'? Well, the diva who almost single-handedly created disco music is back, hoping her seven year stretch of bad luck is over.

Until the watershed year of 1980, Donna Summer had everything going for her. With a string of 17 hits in less than four years, she was the queen of the charts as well as the discos. As the new decade heralded the supposed death of discos - the music that Donna, together with producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, had done so much to popularise and define - things began to go wrong. Moving from disco-defined Casablanca to the rock-orientated Geffen label, Donna changed musical direction and became a Born-Again Christian, much to the chagrin of her fans, who mostly still loved disco and thought Christ had nothing to do with music.

Apart from a brief respite in 1983, when Donna teamed up with golden-touch producer Quincy Jones, her career took a downward slide; then, in 1984, it was reported that Donna had claimed that AIDS was a punishment from God. Her many gay fans took this as a sign that she'd completely lost her bottle and mass burnings of Summer's records took place all over the world. Certainly that report didn't do much for her last album, 'Cats Without Claws', which bombed.

Three years later, Donna is making a comeback, although I'm much too polite to call it that to her face. There's the new single, 'Dinner With Gershwin'; an album, 'All Systems Go', and a tour (Manchester and London at the end of November). I'm almost ready to accept her back, but there's a few things to clear up first. A deep breath and here goes. Tell me about your alleged anti-AIDS statement, Donna.

"That statement was not the truth," she states categorically. "It was a misquote taken totally out of context. I'm here to spread love and not to judge people."

So what did you say?

"What I was trying to say was, look, I've done a lot of crazy things in my time and God changed my life and helped me. The message that I was trying to bring, that has been taken out of context and totally perverted, was that, whoever we are, wherever we are, God is still there and he does love us and he will forgive us only if we ask."

Do you think it is the pop star's place to say such things?

"I'm not trying to force it down your throat and I'm not trying to make you change," she says. "So I don't want people to get angry at me because I followed a need to correct things in my life that were out of whack."

Do you think you've been forgiven yet?

"I hope people are forgiving, but if they don't want to buy my records this isn't a ploy to have them buy them."

Donna tells me she feels persecuted for becoming a Christian, and certainly it did nothing for her pop credibility stakes. But, she argues, she didn't do it for credibility, she did it for herself.

"When I reaffirmed my faith in God, it was the beginning of the worst seven years of my life. You know, if I hadn't had God at that time, I probably would have committed suicide because I wouldn't have had anything to hold onto to get me through it."

Well, that makes the rest of the conversation seem a little superfluous, doesn't it? But we got round to talking about her new album, which was partly recorded back in Munich where all her old disco classics were created. Behind the glass this time, though, was Harold 'Axel F' Faltermeyer, for whom Donna provided the first break during the recording of the 'Bad Girls' album.

"I'd have worked with Giorgio, except he was busy," says Donna tactfully, "but me and Harold go back 19 years, when I was 19 and he was 17. He was playing the organ at this club in Munich and I started singing, and that's how we met."

Donna's turned into something of a vocal chameleon. On the title track she's a dead ringer for Pat Benatar. On another she's just like Joni Mitchell. And on the single, 'Dinner With Gershwin', the only track on the album you could really class as dance music, she's singing deep and low like Jody Watley on 'Still A Thrill'.

"Each song has a character," says Donna, "and I try to sing a song with a voice that fits that character."

Donna may have a struggle keeping up with the likes of Madonna and Whitney Houston, but she can be content in knowing that she opened the doors for both of them. Not that her career is over. Far from it. At 38, she still has a lot of energy and ambition.

"I'm a disgustingly optimistic person," she says. "It makes people sick sometimes."

Labels: 1987, music, popular culture, record mirror

THE GREAT RENEGADE
October 18, 1986

from RECORD MIRROR, 18 OCTOBER 1986


Pete Waterman is over 40 and he makes hit records. With his partners Stock and Aitken, he has been responsible for producing or re-mixing discs for Bananarama, Dead Or Alive, Princess, Hazell Dean and many more. His ambition is to produce Paul McCartney, but the musicbiz establishment isn't too keen on a self publicist who made his name producing 'gay' records ...

Story: Edwin J Bernard





Pete Waterman is the Aaron Spelling of British pop. His partners, Matt Aitken and Mike Stock, are more akin to Spielberg than Scorsese. Together they make beautiful -- or rather, very commercially successful -- dance music. What they do, and have been doing ever since they teamed up in 1984 is simple: "We write a pop song and fit it into the current dance trend."

I visited the PWL (Pete Waterman Ltd) studios the week that Bananarama's 'Venus' was atop the US pop charts. Pete showed me round the former power station which now contains two technology-packed studios, with another on the way.

Pete Waterman is a highly affable man, with a northern accent and a style that belies his age -- probably into his forties. Pete explains that this is his second career in production. He had partnered Pete Collins until they went their separate ways in 1983.

"I had a friend. Barry Evangeli, running a small gay record company, Proto. He needed a producer. I needed a place to stay, so we did each other a favour.

Evangeli took Waterman to London's biggest gay clubs -- Heaven, the Hippodrome and Bolts -- and the music he heard influenced him greatly, taking him back to when he was a DJ in the Sixties.

"We make gay records, there's no question about it and we're not afraid to say that," says Pete of the music that Stock, Waterman and Aitken make. "I've always fought for fast dance records to be acceptable in the hipper clubs. To keep people dancing you've got to have up' music, with lots of excitement and a heavy bass drum. The music I heard in those gay clubs was like that. Everyone was dancing. But I immediately twigged what was wrong. The records they were playing were cheap and nasty. I knew I could give them exactly what they wanted, with quality.

Just at that time, the young, slightly successful writing/producing partnership of Mike Stock and Matt Aitken approached Pete with a song called 'The Upstroke'. They needed guidance -- he needed technically proficient musicians. They were made for each other. The finished product owed a lot to 'Relax', but it marked the start of the Stock, Aitken, Waterman partnership.

"I actually worked on 'Relax'," says Pete matter-of-factly. "I heard a lot of the early mixes and I knew what the guys were doing. I changed 'Upstroke' from a fast pop song. And we worked together well. They got on with the music and I came in halfway through, changed it all, and drove 'em all barmy -- which I still do!"

In cinema terms, Peter Waterman is the producer. Mike Stock and Matt Aitken. the directors and scriptwriters.

After subsequently producing hits for Hazell Dean and Divine, Dead Or Alive approached the team, who were still struggling.

"I used to wear really outrageous clothes. I had on this red leather suit with a yellow stripe and a massive earring the day I met Pete Burns. He tells everyone this story, that when he met us, he thought I was an old queen with my two young toy boys."

Just to set the record straight (as it were), Stock, Waterman and Aitken are all heterosexual.

After hitting number one with 'You Spin Me Round', Stock, Waterman and Aitken became established producers, notching up pop or dance hits for Princess, Brilliant, O'chi Brown, Haywoode and Bananarama, whilst their work with the Pet Shop Boys never saw the light of day. Their restructured remixes are almost as famous as their productions, and they are also known as the Funky Sisters when remixing other people's records.

This year, they are second only to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis as the most successful hitmaking team around. Ironically, their early Princess hits 'borrowed' the Jam and Lewis sound.

"We didn't copy Jam and Lewis," asserts Pete. "'Say I'm Your Number One' was more of a floater, like BB&Q's 'Cenie' which was big at the time. If we wanted to make a Jam and Lewis record we could make one. We can copy them better than they can themselves. It's my guess that Jam and Lewis are listening to our records and copying us copying them. There's no question that they'd heard O'chi Brown's 'Whenever You Need Somebody', which was a number one dance record in the States, when they were making Janet Jackson's 'What Have You Done For Me Lately'. No question."

With their Princess and O'chi Brown records, they single-handedly created the black pop category -- a niche that Janet Jackson has more than happily fitted into. Was this a deliberate ploy?

"We didn't want to make watered-down American records. We wanted to make British pop dance music. We could have produced Five Star. Everyone tells me how great they are, but I don't think so. They're watered-down American pap.

What Waterman and his cohorts do instead, is take the current American groove and mould it into something terribly British. Take Mel and Kim's housey 'Showing Out' or Wyman girl, Mandy Smith's forthcoming gem...

"We're going to get slagged for making this great gay record with Mandy Smith," exclaims Pete excitedly. "But I don't give a shit. I saw her in the paper where she said that her favourite record was Bananarama and she wanted Pete Waterman to produce her. That's good enough for me. I met the girl; she's sweet and she looks brilliant. F**k it. I don't care.

"I'm the renegade, anyway. I'm the guy that makes gay records. The record companies don't particularly like dealing with me, but I make hits so they have to. When they've got a quirky artist that they don't know what to do with, they say, 'ring Pete Waterman, he'll know what to do with them'.

The renegade of dance pop and his partners have now had a number one record in Britain and America. They have a very comfortable studio and have made pots of money. Is there anything more they'd like to achieve?

"The only thing we want to do that we haven't yet, is work with Paul McCartney. We idolise him, but we think he's lost the plot recently and we're cheeky enough to believe we could make him a great pop record. When we hear things like 'Press' we know we could do better than that with the doors closed and our eyes shut."

Labels: 1986, music, popular culture, record mirror