‘Rick Astley walked away with £5m’

• Published date: 15 April 2024
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Remember when Kylie Minogue left Jason Donovan for Michael Hutchence? Waterman has an epic account that ends with a light-bulb moment: “I turned to the others and said, ‘Better the devil you know.’ And Kylie arrives, waylaid by all the press and paparazzi, and we have our backs to her so she can’t see we are still writing the lyrics. It sounds fantastic, but it was a great way to work.”

Name any star, and the veteran producer has a story about them. “I remember Steven Spielberg asking me, ‘Why are the British so obsessed with dirt?’” says Waterman. “I was watching an episode of Minder on set. He just didn’t understand. It was anathema to him that there was this gangster – but not a movie gangster, just some spiv around the corner.”

You might say that “around the corner” was part of the Stock Aitken Waterman ethos. In contrast to today’s Instagram- ready, micromanaged pop stars, the trio generally prized ordinariness above all else.

“If you’re with us, you ain’t going to turn up in a Rolls-Royce. You are not going to be wearing fabulous suits and dresses,” Waterman says. “It’s cheating the public if you’re in it for the money. You’re going to turn up for work and look like the people who buy your records.”

Rick Astley proved that the Stock Aitken Waterman system worked. He was the reluctant singer of a Lancashire duo when Waterman saw him play at a Christmas party at a working men’s club in Warrington, near Liverpool. Astley dutifully served his apprenticeship as a tea boy in the producers’ hit-making factory in London before Never Gonna Give You Up made him a star.

“We put Rick on a Youth Opportunities Programme government training scheme,” Waterman says. “He was on £40 a week. At that time, you signed for five albums over five years, and the artist always came out with less money than they thought. We went 50-50 on everything after costs.

“He walked away with a cheque for £5 million, which is pretty good for an apprentice. He was a lovely, shy guy, and at the moment when he could have broken America, he said, ‘I can’t do this.’ And we backed off. I wanted to stay friends with him. He had lived in my house for four years when he came to London.”

Early pioneer

Waterman is a fascinating fellow. To cover his costs as a budding DJ and record collector, he worked as a gravedigger and for British Railways before being taken on by General Electric, where he became a shop steward.

At the moment when I Should Be So Lucky became one of the biggest hits of 1988, the...