Few producers truly divide opinion in the way that the team of Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) have since their first chart entry in 1984. Dismissed by most during their late-80s peak and with few sympathetic critics getting much further than justifying them through their chart statistics, Pete Waterman, nonetheless, led the trio through a career that generated more than 100 UK Top 40 hits and sales of more than 40 million globally. “The Hit Factory”, as they were known, was often compared to Motown’s Holland-Dozier- Holland powerhouse and, given Pete’s lifelong passion for soul, it’s an apt comparison. Both units poured out work at a prodigious rate; and both have come in for a critical re-evaluation as the years have rolled by and their dominance of the charts has faded. 

Born in Coventry in January 1947, Waterman first discovered his love of music from the American Forces Network radio. “I remember listening to these amazing songs and then I would go round the record stores to find them,” he recalls. “There were a couple of good shops that could track things down for you then, but it wasn’t easy. I got into record collecting early! 

“By 1959, I’d collected a good number of R&B records, as well as artists like Buddy Holly. I especially loved the doo-wop bands such as The Penguins. That genre was a huge passion of mine. 

“My aunt lived near Leicester, close to a big American airbase, and we all went to this pub called The Shoulder & Mutton. All these US servicemen from the base would pass on their records to me when they’d finished with them. I picked up some really rare stuff that way. 

“At that time, I hadn’t got the foresight to think I could make a living out of the music industry. I probably didn’t even know there was such a thing as the music industry, but I loved records. I was a big collector!” 

Pete was fortunate enough to catch the 1962 gig that The Beatles played at the Matrix Hall, Coventry. In his 2000 autobiography he describes it as a “revolution”, but today admits some of the ingredients were already very familiar to him. “They played a lot of R&B songs I knew, but they really were a complete package. Everything came together for the first time. That gig blew me away. It’s where it all really started for me.” 

By 1966, Pete estimates that he’d collected between 5,000 and 6,000 records and his local reputation as the man who had everything on vinyl led to his first professional gigs. “The guy that ran the ballroom needed someone with a big record collection. To call me a DJ then would be rather over-egging it. My job was simple – I had to pull kids through the door and keep them dancing. I was on 10 bob [50p] a session and 10 bob to me was three records. 

“I made a rule of buying the NME every Friday. I would look at the US charts and then try to collect all the new entries. Some of these records wouldn’t come out over here for months and some songs were completely different from what you were expecting when you finally heard them. I collected Motown and most of the stuff on the Atlantic label as a matter of course.” 

It was the Mecca ballroom circuit where Pete claims to have started to learn how to manage an audience. “I was instinctive and have an ear for a good tune. I could read a crowd quickly,” he says. “By the early 70s, I was playing to 5,000 or 6,000 kids a week and it was around this time that the record companies were discovering what promotion was. They worked out that I could help them shift records in the Midlands by playing what I loved. 

“I was very outspoken about what I liked and I’d never play a record that would clear the dance floor. I began to get a reputation among the reps that I’d give them a straight opinion on releases. There are two tracks that stick in my mind because I went mad for them. One was Armed And Extremely Dangerous by First Choice. I loved it so much I helped design the poster for the label and wrote the tagline for it! The other was Doctor’s Orders by Sunny, which came out the following year.” 

It’s interesting that these two tracks capture the blend of European pop and Stateside soul that were to be the base ingredients of many of his later hits, but Pete admits that he wouldn’t always let his own taste dictate what he worked on. In 1975, by now an A&R man at Magnet, he found himself fronting a novelty project called 14-18, updating Good-Bye-Ee, a song made popular in World War One. “I just couldn’t get anyone else to sing it and I knew it was a hit,” says Pete. “I went into the studio and sung the demo myself to show the label what it could be like. The next thing I know, I find myself dressed up as a Tommy for a slot on Top Of The Pops!” Pete’s determination and instinct for sniffing out a hit rewarded him and the label with a Top 40 entry that November. 

This early brush with stardom did nothing to tempt Pete to a role as a frontman. “I got forced into all of that,” he claims. “By the early 80s, all of my records were credited to my partnership as part of Loose End Productions. I’d had big success with artists like Musical Youth, Tracey Ullman and The Belle Stars, but I had no profile through any of those projects. It was a real problem. 

“So I had to come up with a company name for my projects that could help me build a name for myself. Someone from McCartney’s office at MPL called me around that time and accused me of being pretentious for picking the first one we used, Pete Waterman Productions. So then I decided I liked the idea of just PWL. We were still broke and needed some letterheads quickly so we used Letraset to create the famous PWL letterhead that’s used to this day. Those fonts are all over the place!” 

Meeting Mike Stock and Matt Aitken was, says Pete, where it all came together. He describes it as a formula that felt right from the start. “Mike came in with a song called One Nine For A Lady Breaker, and I thought ‘This kid has got it.’” That song was released under the pseudonym Chris Britton in 1982. “I then asked him to play me what else he did and he brought Matt along. I said, ‘Guys, stick with me and I’ll make you millions.’ I could see straight off they knew what they were doing with a tune.” 

Early success for the trio came from the gay dance scene, known at the time as Boystown. “I’m as camp as a row of tents and just loved those places,” says Pete. “Back during the 60s in the Midlands, I used to play records at venues for gay guys when it was still illegal. These men were huge music fans who went mad for uptempo dance records. What I saw later in the early 80s was just like the Mecca scene all over again. The music I heard there was awful, but everyone was dancing. My flatmate had a small label that had hit with Hazell Dean’s Searchin’ and I got him to let us do her follow-up.” That sequel – Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go) – gave the trio their first Top 5 smash in the summer of 1984. 

Hazell’s hit, which had swiftly followed their first two releases – Agents Aren’t Aeroplanes’ The Upstroke and Divine’s SAW breakthrough, You Think You’re A Man – didn’t change the fortunes overnight of the fledgling unit. “We were living hand-to-mouth and I knew we wouldn’t really get paid for those Divine and Hazell Dean records. Those labels were just too small. So I sold on the rights to Nik Kershaw and Musical Youth and had an unexpected royalty cheque from a Matt Bianco project I had been working on, which paid for the equipment we really needed. It was tough – we were paying credit card bills with credit cards.” 

The turning point was Dead Or Alive and a song Pete Burns presented to them called You Spin Me Round (Like A Record), which finally hit UK No 1 in March 1985 after first charting three months earlier. “We were old-fashioned record producers for the band, working with what they brought in,” says Pete. “We got £12,000 to do six tracks with the band, but I spent all that on Spin Me Round. I never really finished the other tracks. I just took that finished song to CBS and they were so disparaging about it that they made a fantastic mistake. Obviously, 12” records were important to us as gay dance music producers, but the label didn’t typically pay for sales on that format or care about them. I negotiated with them that we’d earn from the two 12” releases we did of that song and they then sold shedloads.” 

Another early project was TV puppet Roland Rat’s second LP, Living Legend, released by the BBC in 1986. “That rat was my alter-ego and I could do anything I wanted with it,” grins Pete. “No one cared about it and I was being paid to experiment. If you listen to that Roland Rat release, you’re hearing an early Mel & Kim record. That’s where that sound came from.” 

By that year’s end the trio had worked with 70s soul act The Three Degrees, helped ex-Wham! vocalists Pepsi & Shirlie forge a solo career with Heartbreak, given Phil Fearon another Top 10 hit with I Can Prove It and seen the effervescent Mel & Kim go big with Showing Out (Get Fresh At The Weekend). 

It was also that year that stagnating girl group Bananarama enjoyed a career renaissance with Pete, hitting No 1 in the US with Venus and putting his team on the international map. Pete is passionate about the group that he describes as “his Supremes” but admits that they were impossible to work with. “These three girls had this incredible attitude and they taught us to work in a very different way. Without them, we wouldn’t have had all the success that came later. They forced us to change how we did things. We couldn’t do anything openly with them. Everything had to be left to the last minute to avoid a row and had to be built up piece by piece. I had to put my foot down on a number of occasions, especially with Love In The First Degree, which they didn’t want to release. It ended up being their biggest British hit. Part of their problem with me was that I was their biggest fan and I knew what their fans wanted.” 

In contrast, one artist that proved very easy to work with was Kylie Minogue, who came in to work with them in late 1987. But Pete puts this down in part to practicalities. “She never had time to be difficult,” he says. “Her workload then was just phenomenal. People don’t realise that this young girl had less than three days to fly in, learn the songs and record a whole album. No ordinary artist would have done that. Pete Burns would spend four hours just talking about the bass!” 

Kylie’s overnight success when I Should Be So Lucky hit No 1 in February 1988 may have caught the music establishment by surprise – in fact, the majors’ disinterest in the Neighbours actress forced Pete to launch his PWL label – but he says she stood out from the start. “Matt rarely expressed a positive opinion about anything, but I’ll always remember that he said after that very first session that she could really sing and had a truly great pop voice,” he says. 

By now the hits were coming fast and furious from artists as diverse as Samantha Fox, Rick Astley, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Sinitta and Jason Donovan. The pace at the trio’s new studios in Borough, central London, was relentless. “The workrate was tough, but it was fantastic fun,” says Pete. “No one was telling us what to do; we were just making the records we loved. I actually think the pace improved the output. It’s only when you are flat-out that you produce your best work.” 

Despite being an avid collector, Pete admits that not much time was spent on the acts’ image or record packaging. “To choose an album sleeve, we’d just look through 20 or 30 shots from a recent photoshoot. Styling was an afterthought. With Rick, we picked a jacket from Next on the way to the Top Of The Pops studio to tape Never Gonna Give You Up. 

“But I did want as many of my records out in picture sleeves as possible. As a DJ in Denmark the previous decade, I knew that all records there came in picture sleeves and I didn’t understand why you’d put a teen idol in a plain sleeve. The only time we did was when we just couldn’t print the sleeves fast enough, which happened with some of the later Jason, Rick and Kylie releases.” 

Despite huge success in the latter half of the decade, Pete refuses to believe that he was in any sort of competition with some of the other stellar acts of that era, such as Madonna or Michael Jackson. “They were in a completely different business to me. They were on major labels and we were just a little independent.” 

Despite their almost 100 per cent chart strike rate at this time, not everything went the trio’s way. A project with Johnny Mathis failed to materialise due to record company politics. CBS were in dispute with the team over the name The Hit Factory and blocked the collaboration. “We met Johnny at the Café Royal and we were all desperate for it to happen,” he recalls. “It was a huge disappointment when it didn’t.” If it’s any consolation, Waterman was not alone: Chic also cut an album with Mathis that failed to reach the pressing plant. 

Another project that never fulfilled its potential was the legendary Judas Priest session. “It’s the only time I have ever been told that we can’t release a record because it will be a No 1,” groans Pete. “The management said the band would never be able to follow a release like that. People we played it to had a heart attack! SAW do heavy metal! Still, the recording session in Paris was the most fun the three of us ever had in a studio. Matt is an amazing guitarist and the three of us became the new members of the band. We really thought that project would change our career.” Sadly for SAW fans, Pete is certain those tracks, which, incredibly, include a cover of The Stylistics’ You Are Everything, will remain locked in the archive, despite unreleased material from lesser acts such as Paul Lekakis, The Cool Notes and Delage belatedly making it onto iTunes in recent years. 

Work with other established artists like Cliff Richard and Donna Summer did, of course, see the light of day. “Really good vocalists would transform our records,” says Pete of the pair. “A treat for the staff back then would be to hear Donna go into the bathroom to warm up her vocals. Everyone would just stop work to listen.” The team’s 1989 Cliff track, Just Don’t Have The Heart, went a stage further as they used his vocal warm-ups to provide a distinctive start to the No 3 smash. 

Donna Summer’s This Time I Know It’s For Real provided something of a pinnacle for the trio – winning an Ivor Novello award for International Hit Of The Year – but Pete recalls that the 1989 transatlantic Top 10 single had a troubled genesis: “The song hadn’t come together and there were pieces of paper all over the floor with notes and ideas. Donna really pulled that together with her vocal. It shows what working with a truly great singer can achieve. What she did with that track was incredible.” 

In 1989, SAW generated 22 UK Top 40 hits but, by the following year, their star was starting to wane. New signings like Japanese singer Kakko and pop-house duo Romi & Jazz had stalled, while established artists like Jason Donovan were struggling, with some of his singles missing the Top 20 for the first time. 

“The boys lost interest,” admits Pete bluntly. “When you have so much money you don’t know what to do with it, it gets harder.” Matt Aitken had moved on by mid-1991 and, though the Stock-Waterman partnership generated later hits for Kylie and Bananarama, the glory days appeared to have passed. 

But Pete enjoyed a second extraordinary burst of success later that decade when he started working with Steps. “They were simply the biggest project I ever had,” says Pete. “It felt different that time round, though. I was on my own and a friend who had a label sounded me out to work with him on some ideas. Steps was the third project we worked on and everything just came together. We had a great management team to work with and the label was fantastic. Everyone was very focused.” Steps scored 15 Top 20 hits before disbanding at the end of 2001, but reformed as a predominantly live act three years ago. 

Recent years have been tough for Pete. After a successful stint on the Pop Idol and Popstars TV shows at the start of the last decade, his son Paul, who had worked with his father for many years, died suddenly in 2005 at the age of 33. “I lost faith in music and my love for it for a time after he died,” says Pete. “Paul had been so much part of it all. But then I got a regular gig with Smooth Radio and I thought he’d be so pissed off if he thought I wasn’t enjoying it and so I worked my way back into it.” 

The 2012 Hit Factory Live concert – reuniting many of Pete’s artists in one colossal bill – was a one-off project for the Olympics, planned for Hyde Park, but eventually staged at London’s 0₂Arena. It has served as something of a catalyst for a reappraisal of a musical stable that, until then, was largely overlooked. “The original date was rained off, so we rescheduled it for Christmas that year, but never again,” says Pete. “It was a fantastic night and I loved it because I could just be part of the audience, enjoying all these acts and going home at the end of the night. That’s the first time I have done that in my career.” 

For someone with a such a strong work ethic and bags of restless energy, it should come as no surprise that Pete hasn’t got a lot of time for nostalgia; he remains focused on what’s next and is currently finishing a new studio. “I saw this band in York 12 months ago and they were fabulous,” he says. “JamJar is nothing that you might expect from me, but they are great songwriters and I am producing again. We’ve recently picked up a US deal and they are touring. It’s a really exciting time for me because black and white music is the closest together it has ever been. You can hear hip-hop in everything and you then hear pop in all this hip-hop. It’s more of a mash-up than ever and I really like it.” 

With a track-record as long and successful as his, few would bet that lightning couldn’t strike a third time and it’s clear that the alignment of modern musical tastes seems to be swinging back in his favour. For a boy brought up to love a blend of Buddy Holly and The Belmonts, the timing couldn’t be better.