ANTONY
Si was incredibly chilled about the whole thing, which was exactly what we needed to calm the rest of us down. We gave out an unusual energy as a group of four people, which was sometimes brilliant, and sometimes caused us no end of aggro. After we were signed in September 2000, we booked our first lads’ holiday for the following January. We picked up our first pay packet and headed for the Mediterranean. When we got there, the lads wanted to rehearse but I thought that was a bit precious, singing into hairbrushes in a holiday apartment in Tenerife. So instead we headed down the road. No one knew us, but people started staring at us walking down the street. All of a sudden, we had random blokes wanting to fight us, I kid you not, because apparently we looked like a boy band.
SIMON
I was more streetwise than the other three, so I told them to keep their heads down. That didn’t last long. Soon, we were surrounded by 14 blokes, compared to our meagre four (and one of them was Duncan). I should explain. We’d all grown up as fans of the TV series The A-Team and, since our earliest days together, had given each other different characters from the show. Lee was clearly ‘Mad Dog Murdock’ while I became, inevitably, ‘B. A. Baracus’. Antony, always organised, was happy being dubbed ‘Hannibal Smith’, which left … ‘The Face’, a character famous for using his charm, but never his fists, to get out of a bind. So that was Duncan – who else?
Fortunately, this bunch of upstarts had no weapons on them, but they were mouthy, and it soon turned to physical violence. They tried to separate us, but somehow we kept together, and it turned out to be a defining moment for us as a group.
ANTONY
Some geezer started chasing me with a belt … fun times.
SIMON
I remember Antony laughing while he was running, and Duncan getting hit, saying, ‘Hey, man, there’s no need for this.’ You could see him thinking, ‘Not the face, man.’ In these situations, some people freeze and they’re only out for themselves, but none of us did that, and by the time we went home that night, there was a bond.
DUNCAN
When it was time to create that harmonious pop sound that would become our trademark, we ended up flying off to meet some obscure but well-respected producers in Norway. It was bitterly cold, and we had to trudge through the snow to get to the studio. When we got inside, the producers were waiting for us – Tor Erik Hermansen, Mikkel Storleer Eriksen, Hallgeir Rustan, or, to give them their professional name, Stargate.
LEE
They were by no means massive back then, they were mainly known as re-mixers, but they’d worked with a few bands and were fast gaining a reputation for creating sounds. Their biggest hit in the UK up to that point had been S Club 7’s ‘S Club Party’ a couple of years before. Later, Hallgeir stayed put in Norway with his family when Tor and Mikkel went off to make their fortunes in America. In their studio in Trondheim, though, in those days, it was still three of them working together – that’s how old we are. Their incredible era of hit-making with the likes of Rihanna, Beyoncé, Coldplay and everyone else was still years ahead of them, but even during that freezing-cold week in Norway, their skill for putting together sounds in new and exciting ways became really obvious.
They were great at producing our vocals; making us do lots of different things to get hold of our sound. I know lots of tonal tricks now, and that’s because of those early lessons with Stargate. I was nervous, but I was really into their magic making – I wouldn’t come out of the booth until it was perfect.
DUNCAN
Once, while Lee was in the booth, I noticed some lyrics written out for Hear’Say’s single [‘Pure and Simple’], which had been recorded for Pop Idol back in the UK. It hadn’t been publicly announced yet who’d got through to the final group, and the press had really hyped up the mystery, but when I was reading the lyrics in Stargate’s studio, I suddenly noticed the names were written down by each part. We were instantly told, ‘You can’t repeat it, or let anybody know you’ve seen it,’ so I had to keep quiet. But I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s Suzanne,’ and being really chuffed for her.
SIMON
They were long days in the studio in Norway, and people invariably started messing about, heading off to find coffee, but I was really interested in how they made their sounds, so I kept walking back into the studio.
The Stargate guys were listening to Pink’s debut album [Can’t Take Me Home], with big tones on it, and they were making similar drum sounds, when I walked in and started singing, ‘One for the money and the free rides …’ I carried on, ‘It’s two for the lies that you denied.’ Out of nowhere, I piped up, ‘All Rise. All Rise.’ They turned round. ‘What did you say?’ Tor suddenly shouted, ‘Slamming, man.’ Next minute I was being eased out of the room, my work apparently done. Later, they called me back for a rap for it, and that was it, the birth of my strange song about a romance gone wrong built around the framework of a courtroom trial.
DUNCAN
We recorded lots of songs with them and ‘All Rise’ was my least favourite. They made us do some very bizarre things to create that song. They had us marching while we were recording our parts, like we were troops in some totalitarian regime. They kept shouting, ‘Sharper, crisper!’ So of course, being us, we started taking the mickey. We were cracking up, but we went with it, even though I hated the beat they added.
LEE
They made us all sound punchy and staccato, which wasn’t what we thought we wanted. But they were the organ grinders, we were merely the monkeys, and their trained ears could hear it. It’s like cooking: we were watching all the individual spices going in, but we had no idea what was going to come out of the oven.
DUNCAN
A couple of weeks later, we were back in England and our record label bosses phoned us up, saying, ‘We’ve got your first single.’ We thought it would be just about any of the others, until they announced, ‘It’s “All Rise”.’ I said to the others, ‘This is a disaster.’
I like to think I have a good ear for music, and I couldn’t understand how they could like it. But we went into the office to listen and sat down. A completely unrecognisable tune started playing, and it sounded amazing. Where had that accordion on the intro come from? Where were all the thuds I’d hated? It turned out they’d only put the beat on the track to regulate our vocals then they’d removed it later to make it sound all soft again. HOW had they worked all that out in the studio with us messing about, pretending to be soldiers? It turned out Stargate knew what they were doing after all – who knew?
DUNCAN
My first glimmer of what life was going to be like came in the middle of 2001, several months after we’d signed. ‘All Rise’ had just come out, and the record company asked us to attend the Smash Hits Tour Show at the Hammersmith Apollo. We hadn’t promoted anything at that point, so we were pretty much the only ones who knew we were in a band. Atomic Kitten, Westlife and Co were all performing, we were just wandering around. Well, we turned up, went in, got mobbed. Yes, that really happened. It was a very weird feeling, with girls running up to us, asking for autographs, even though they didn’t know our names! We managed to splutter, ‘We’re Blue, we’re releasing something soon, keep listening.’ While we were speechless, our bosses just looked chuffed, like they’d known all along.
ANTONY
There was definitely chemistry between the four of us, the sum being much bigger than the parts, and it translated into the music. ‘All Rise’ ended up selling 200,000 copies, not bad at all for a first single, and even the critics, usually snobby about pop music, had plenty of good things to say about the way our different voices worked together, our so-called ‘silky harmonies’, and, of course, that surprise accordion on the intro – all our own idea by now, obviously.
DUNCAN
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