David Brett, singer/arranger
We were all actors in a play, One Big Blow, about a miners’ brass band, for which Rick [Lloyd] wrote the music. To amuse ourselves in the tour bus, we used to improvise a cappella harmonies around our favourite songs. When we did this in pubs between shows, the reaction seemed out of proportion to the effort we put into it. We thought we might be on to something.
After the play finished, none of us had any theatre work to go to. The cabaret circuit was just getting going in London and there were gigs available in pubs and clubs. At first, we sang for the bus fare.
We were a special group of people and together we had such a laugh. We did an interview where Ken [Gregson, band member] said we were a “disparate bunch of people”. In print it said we were “desperate”, which amused us. Everyone had individual ideas about dressing up on stage. Brian [Hibbard] was the teddy boy; Red Stripe always wore a donkey jacket. We didn’t have stylists. When we did a live album and started playing bigger theatres, the Guardian’s Michael Billington wrote that we looked as if we’d done a “midnight raid on an Oxfam shop”, and “If the King’s Singers had gone to borstal they’d look like the Flying Pickets”.
Yazoo’s Only You was in the live set, and the audience reaction persuaded us to try it as a single. It was our first serious studio recording and it was certainly a challenge translating a synthesiser hit for voices. It took ages to piece it all together. The single went nowhere at first, then suddenly it was at No 9. I was in the antenatal clinic awaiting my daughter’s birth when I heard we were No 1.
That night we were invited to dinner with Richard Branson, the head of our label. He walked into a glass door on the way in, so he had a great lump on his head. Later, I saw Yazoo on TV being asked what they thought of our version. Vince [Clarke, songwriter] said he loved it; Alison [Moyet, singer] absolutely hated it. She said: “Ours got to No 2 and then this other lot came along and blew us out of the water.”
Rick Lloyd, singer
We did all the groundwork before the single. We supported Bo Diddley, toured with Dionne Warwick and sold out the Dominion theatre. In Edinburgh, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson were the act on before us. We did a lot of telly, Jasper Carrott’s show and stuff. An a cappella band was unusual at the time, so we were pretty busy.
I remember sitting in Belfast airport discussing which song we’d do for the single and reading in Melody Maker that Rita Coolidge had just released a version of Only You. At first I thought, “Oh heck, now we can’t do it.” But, of course, we didn’t think we were going to make a No 1 single, so on the Monday morning we were in the studio. After we’d finished it, we played in Stoke Newington Town Hall with Billy Bragg supporting, so I played the finished recording over the PA. No one in the audience batted an eyelid.
We were quite old for the pop charts. I was 36 or something. We didn’t have a record deal, but Virgin’s new 10 Records subsidiary did us a production deal and got a radio plugger on the single, which developed huge momentum. I don’t think Radio 1 knew what a flying picket was, so the name never stopped us getting airplay. Somebody told us that Only You was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite record. The following year, the miner’s strike happened and the media cottoned on to what flying pickets were [groups of people who travel from other workplaces to participate in industrial action]. It was funny and pretty subversive, really.
Getting the Christmas No 1 was a big deal. We stayed at the top of the chart for weeks. We must have made a dozen appearances on Top of the Pops, dressed as snowmen, all sorts. Only You wasn’t intended as a Christmas hit but our version does have a festive vibe, somehow. I’d always wanted to be in the studio when someone made a No 1 record. I never imagined it would be us.
• A new production of One Big Blow is at Romiley Little theatre, Stockport, 19-22 February. David Brett performs with Plink and Pericles theatre group.
