me songs are smashes straight . t of the gate. Others take years to nsinuate their way into our lives. The super-hits live on through TV shows, cereal commercials and music to get married to. Walking On Sunshine started life as a pop record and eventually became a Living on sunshine: Walking On Sunshine enabled Katrina & The · · t thb h Waves' songwriter Kimberley Rew 00 to "retire.from the big stage." It's SIngIng rus • been an airplay record·breaker, a movie soundtrack regular and -d h even the tune played by an electric toothbrush (far left). This year the song celebrates its 25th birthday Davi Hepwort by popping up as a production number on hit TVseries Glee. talks to a lucky few who wrote the evergreen hits they could retire on. ONOVAN ENJOYED AN AVERAGE career as a recording artist. His first hit was Catch The Wind in 1965. Barabajagal, his last one, was four years =~.Since then he has continued to tour and _:lrd, gone in and out offashion and tried .odic comebacks, all without significantly - -:ng the barometer of public perception. As - ~- most people are concerned, Donovan was ~ cess for five years. But take the longer - ~'. as his song publishers Peer Music cer- ::Iy do, and Donovan has never stopped g a success. His signature compositions ..nue to earn serious money nearly 50 years -:i'r they were first put on record. Those =:urds, in which Mickie Most's rock-lite ~ngements underscore the singer's attrac- ::;y fey delivery, are capable of conjuring - -:her world. This anachronistic music can - -? t to regular use many years later, some- '=~literally through Catch The Wind's use a TV advertisement where the American .:ty company General Electric promote their =itment to wind turbines and sometimes and, like the soundest of sound investments, nisation department when I was at EMI music. -..:nterintuitively, such as in the scene in they carryon attracting exploitation and mak- Now everybody regards it as a serious revenue -..:Handbags And Gladrags in 1989, had just turned up as a major produc- lion dollars for the use of Start Me Up in a ~~.1,0years ago. "So many songs sink without tion number in America's biggest TV hit, Glee. Windows commercial in 1995. But that was _ =ace. But if you write a song He knew nothing of the show or worldwide and it was exceptional. You might :.::2.: hangs around for years not the song's use, even though the get£50,000 for the use of a song in a major TV cly does it provide a useful bit "Iwrote clip had already had 2 million and radio commercial. That's for a year. That's . ~arnings but also it seems to Walking On views on YouTube. As record com- just for the song." :=-erate a power and momentum Sunshine in a panies bemoan the fact that the This may seem modest until you calculate -= of its own." record-buying public on which that in the last few years Donovan's Mellow ~'hese special songs may attract rented room. they once depended now have far Yellow has been used to advertise The Gap, res of cover versions, hitch a I lived in other more leisure options, the writers Marks & Spencer's Free Range Eggs, Mr _::'.e on somebody's marketing people's houses and publishers of songs are find- Kipling's Yellow Drizzle Cake and Kraft Mello , become fortuitously identi- ing that there have never been among others; Sunshine Superman has been with a major movie or the first for about ten more ways of making money out used by Magners Cider; the relatively obscure :; ~ of call for the lazy film editor years. Then we of song copyrights, often from I Love My Shirt by K Swiss watches and Hap- ..:hing to announce a subject, had a hit record those same options. piness Runs by Fruity Cheerios. Similarly, in _O"aest themselves to a pro- and Ibought Nigel Elderton runs the UK the 21st century his music has been on TV or =-=.mme director needing to mark a house" arm of Peer Music, a company film soundtracks for Confessions OfA Danger- : rticular time of year, slot into accustomed to looking after song- ous Mind, Futurama, TheSimpsons, TheRules ::mlti-platinum computer game writers whose material outlives OfAttraction, Edison, Skins, HouseMD, Nip/ :'ind themselves in the narrow repertoire of their success as a recording act. Donovan was Tuck, The Invention Of Lying and Dancing ~::gs that people pick to celebrate the key attracted to them in the early '60s because they With The Stars, again among others. This is -uals of their lives. They make fortunes for handled Buddy Holly. "Donovan has always not bad for somebody who stopped having hits : - lishers and put roofs over their composers' represented a certain set of values and there's 40 years ago. ....ezds;at the same time they often create cracks been a lot of demand for his songs and his "We're negotiating at the moment for the use :>ands formed in more carefree times. sound lately. Sync rights, as we call them, are of Mellow Yellow in a soft-drink commercial. Sometimes they happen right out of the box. now an increasingly important part ofthe We've re-recorded some of his old songs ..:::.o.:ther times they have to be roused from a business. Publishers and record companies because then we can do better deals with peo- a sleep. At their biggest they are far bigger didn't think of this kind of thing until the Levi's ple who want to use those songs. They don't -~"n the writer to whom they first occurred ads in the mid-'80s. I set up the first synchro- have to pay what the record company want as ~ well as what we want. We can provide the IN THE PUB IN CAMBRIDGE WHERE HE'S PLAYING to concentrate very hard. It's not something sound recording as well. When we did some his regular Wednesday-night show, Kimberley that comes naturally to me." deals with the re-recorded tunes, the penny Rew proudly shows me a battery-driven tooth- The group financed their own album but dropped for Donovan. His voice may be a brush that plays his song Walking On Sun- couldn't find a record company in Britain or semitone lower but he can still do it." shine. This is just one in the Tooth Tunes the US interested in putting it out and therefore Donovan is unusual in having half a dozen series, promising "Music In Your Mouth". in 1983 Walking On Sunshine emerged, to no songs attracting covers and sync uses. Often "Instantly change volume with brushing pres- great fanfare, on a small Canadian label. They it's just one. Veteran music publisher Tom Bra- sure," announces the packaging. Rew, who's continued to tour and the song went down well dley tells me about the author of one such. In preserved it in its blister pack, produces it as with audiences. Meanwhile an earlier Rew 1960 he was in a band in Swindon along with an example of the unpredictable places a hit song, Going Down ToLiveTpool, was covered a younger player who was brave enough to set song may take you. Still boyish in the latter by The Bangles on their successful albumAll offfor London. "And this was before the M4," half of his fifties, the unassuming Rew is the OveTthe Place. In 1985, by now signed to EMI he points out, admiringly. After coming under last person you would suspect of having in the US, they released a reworked version of the benign influence of Marty Wilde, the penned a money-spinning song. His website Walking On Sunshine, punched up further by young guitarist was hired to replace Denny features pictures of him blinking alongside the addition of horns. "On the second one I Laine in The Moody Blues. They recorded a Celine Dion (he wrote a song called That's Just played two guitars, the rhythm plugged into song the boy had written at the age ofl7. That The Woman In Me for her album Taking the desk. I didn't think the horns would make song, Nights In White Satin, changed the Chances) and a representative of the American so much difference but, well, all power to the direction of the group and turned them into a collection agency BMI to mark the fact that horns. The second one was again produced by franchise that still flourishes today. "He can Walking On Sunshine has had 2 million plays Pat Collier but it was mixed by Scott Litt, who never get away from that song," says Bradley on US radio. That kind of airplay means you worked with REM. He had a radio ear. We of his old friend Justin Hayward, now 63. "He don't have to work again. He looks like a weren't particularly extrovert people but when does very well. Lives in Monaco. The Moody slightly greyer version of the we played we were. The record just Blues tour America every year and do great young man who played guitar came to be associated with sun- business. I don't know whether I'd want to play with Robyn Hitchcock in The Soft "Six months shine." This time it went Top 10 those old songs every night but that's the life Boys, formed in Cambridge in later one of my in the US, UK, Canada, Australia he wanted. He's still driven by the same things 1977. Unlike most veterans he ex-wives rang and beyond and found its way into that drove him when he was 15. All songwrit- doesn't betray a trace of bitterness the repertoire of radio program- ers are like that. They're all insecure and they about the hand rock has dealt me to say mers the world over, a position it need reassurance." him, not least because he's written Handbags And has held ever since. In a recent Bradley stresses that even the most success- a couple of songs that on their own Gladrags was American radio poll it came sec- ful songwriters derive the majority of their would be able to put a fairly decent being used ond in the most programmed income from a tiny fraction of the songs they've roof over most heads. summer records of the year. written. Formerly Sting's publisher, he esti- After The Soft Boys split in 1981, on this new Walking On Sunshine has fea- mates that between a quarter and a third of he joined US Air Force brats Kat- programme on tured on the soundtrack of count- Sting's publishing income is owed to one song, rina Leskanich as singer and boy- BBCcalied less films, including Look Who's EveTy BTeath You Take. "You go anywhere in friend Vince De La Cruz on bass The Office" Talking, High Fidelity, AmeTican the world and turn on the local radio and you'll plus his old drummer Alex Cooper Psycho, Bean, HeTbie: Fully hear a Sting song within an hour, and it's quite to form Katrina & The Waves. This Loaded and, most recently, Moon; likely to be that one. Commercial radio is not group married the pizzazz the band had devel- it has been danced to by competitors on US interested in music. It's interested in advertis- oped playing an unforgiving live circuit with show Dancing With TheStaTs, performed as ing and therefore they programme the most Rew's rare gift for writing pop songs. an audition number onAmeTica's Got Talent popular songs all the time. Hence EveTy "I can remember writing Walking On Sun- and, most recently, appeared on the high-rating BTeath You Take." shine," he says. "I was living in a tiny rented show Glee.Bob The Builder did a version called How much is all this airplay worth? In 2007 room in somebody's house and I didn't have a WOTkingOn Sunshine. "It's very much bigger the alliance between MCPS (the Mechanical proper tape recorder but Ijust wanted to write than the band," he concedes. "People remember Copyright Protection Society, which repre- something that was upbeat in a kind of Motown the song but not the band." sents songwriters) and PRS (the Performing vein. I lived in rooms like that for about ten The group never matched its success but in Rights Society, representing recording artists) years. Then we had a hit record and I bought a 1996 Rew wrote the British entry for the Euro- paid £155 million to writers and performers house. I had the rifffirst and then the lyrics vision Song Contest and once again showed his of recorded works for the right to play them on came very quickly. I played it to the band and versatility by coming up with a winning tune the radio. That's in the UK alone. At the end of from the start we did it in the way you hear it in Love Shine A Light, performed by Katrina last year, Google, the owners of YouTube, paid today. I knew it was pretty good. Some of my & The Waves. Leskanich left in 1999, since an undisclosed lump sum to PRS for the music songs are better than others but nobody said, when there have been the usual wrangles over they'd been streaming on their sites. These 'This is going to make us stars.' The song may uses of the name, with Katrina wanting to go are all revenue streams for the people who come quickly but getting the feeling that you out as Katrina & The New Wave while the hold the rights. "Publishers have always taken need, the bounce and energy that's going to remaining Waves briefly toured with another a longer view than record companies," says communicate, that takes all your life up to that singer. Rew says he has "retired from the big Bradley. "Airplay to publishers is not promo- point. It's a combination of something very stage", although he still makes records and tion. It's income." quick and something very slow. I've always had plays once a week at the Hopbine pub with his girlfriend and musical partner Lee Cave- Berry. He also walks the coastline of England and Wales. De La Cruz has just gone back to the US, while Lesnacich, after a period as a DJ, plays on the oldies cir- cuit, where she fronts the old Eurovision hit and others. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the record that changed all oftheir lives. It's reissued and made available on iTunes. No good deed goes unpunished, and it's almost inevitable that the authorship of a big song causes tension within a group. No matter how much the rest of them may have sweated over the recording and how much of its appeal might be down to the qualities of the vocal or the drum sound, the lion's share of the credit and the money goes to the writer. When The Animals' House Of The Rising Sun was credited to "traditional arranged Alan Price" in 1964, the rest of the band didn't realise that 50 years later their erstwhile keyboard player would still be getting what publishing sources estimate as $50,000 a year out of that credit. But even in cases where the authorship is not in dispute there are inevitable jealousies when, in middle age, the band notice that one of them has a far Once Iwas a young man: Mike O'Abo bigger house than the rest of them and no wrote Handbags And longer feels the need to bash up and down Gladrags when he the motorway doing gigs to make the mortgage was in Manfred Mann payments. It's this that has occasioned court (top, far right); the cases involving the members ofSpandau Ballet Rod Stewart version (on his disastrous and accounts for why Procol Hamm's Whiter solo debut) eventually Shade OfPale has put so many barristers' chil- earned him money, dren through school. but it was the hit by Kimberley Rew isn't comfortable talking The Stereophonics and the song's use about his attempts to make sure that the rest on the titles of The of the band shared in the rewards that flowed Office that bought from the publishing of Walking On Sunshine. the glad rags for the "I've tried. It hasn't really worked out ideally, twins he fathered so I can't really say anything about it. It will in his sixties. bring up insoluble problems. It wouldn't be fair on the other guys to talk about it." One account holds that he has shared the publishing with ~ the rest of the band but then subsequently ~~ bought their shares back from them. He refuses . ~'" to confirm this. I ask him if he's set up for life. ~ "I didn't have a house when I wrote this song. It's bought me a house and I can go to the bar going to record Handbags And Gladrags wrong, it was Rod Stewart. Anyway, I said, why and buy a round of drinks and not worry about tomorrow morning.' This was seven o'clock the don't they record it? Funny you should say that, it. It's been very good to me. But if it hadn't night before. He insisted on changing the they said, they're mixing it today and it's their happened I would probably still be playing in arrangement. He didn't want my piano so next single." That single came out in 2001 and this pub but not quite in the same style." much. He wanted me to arrange something went to number four in the charts. The album for flutes. So I had to overnight produce a was number one. MIKE DABO WAS 23 IN 1967 WHEN HE wrote whole new arrangement, but I couldn't write Mike D'Abo and his new family never moved HandbagsAnd Gladrags. He's 65 now. "My a note of music. to New Zealand. "I have felt at times in my life children range in age from forty-two to two," "By nine o'clock I'd come up with the coun- a little embittered because life hasn't dealt me he says at his Gloucestershire home. The ter-melodythat was to become the oboe part. a very fair hand. For instance, I never got paid 42-year-old is the actress Olivia D'Abo. The By ten o'clock I was ringing round every a penny on BuildMe UpButtercup when it got two-year-olds are twins. Before they were born arranger in town that I knew and they all said to number one in America in 1968, because it he was thinking of moving with his new wife they couldn't get it done by ten. I'd booked ten was infringing a Motown song and they got all to New Zealand in order to lower his cost base. musicians and I got through to this guy who the royalties. But thankfully that's been recti- Years spent playing the oldies circuit, enter- lived in Finsbury Park and he said, 'If you pay fied and that earns me something because it's taining at summer balls with variations on the me for my time and a cab, I'll come over.' He a big party favourite with young people thanks former members of his old group came over and stayed till five in to it being featured in There'sSomethingAbout Manfred Mann and eking out the morning writing down the Mary. Songs do come back. They've both been what revenue he could from his old "Vougo parts. We showed up at ten the very good to me and updated my credentials. publishing credits had left him anywhere in the next morning and Lou Reizner At the end of the day I'm delighted and very contemplating retirement uneas- world and turn was producing. This was the first well adjusted to it all." ily. Then, from two directions at song. I'm playing the piano with once, his old song enjoyed a second on the local Ian McLagan on organ plus Ron LONG BEFORE THE MUSIC BUSINESS CAME TO BE wind and with it came a windfall. radio and you'll Wood on bass and Micky Waller all about hit records, the holy grail of publish- "I wrote it in 1967 when I was in hearaSting on drums. We did one take which ers was the song that everyone wanted to play Manfred Mann. I knew it was song within an I thought was a bit all over the on their piano at home and which consequently something rather special in that I place and I told Rod he'd got the sold a lot of sheet music. You Raise Me Up, knew I'd got a bit of divine inspira- hour, and it's words wrong. Rod missed the which was written by the Norwegian Rolf Lov- tion. In those days there were two quite likely to internal rhyme and I was not land and the Irish novelist/songwriter Brendan types of songs. You either wrote be Every Breath happy with the grammatical side Graham, has proved that's still possible, pro- aiming to be commercial, in which VouTake" of things, but that's the only take vided you come up with a song that people wish case you had to have a hook that he ever did. Lou said, 'That'll do, to incorporate into their lives. the butcher boy would whistle. On we're moving on to the next one.' In the world where pop rubs shoulders with the other hand there was the song that was "By 10.30 we'd done and I left, tail between classical in the approximate vicinity of ins pi- written from the heart that people would say my legs. The album sold a few thousand rational music, You Raise Me Up has been a 'that's beautiful', but you never expected it to albums all over the world. But Rod was slowly phenomenon. Lovland, whose instrumental generate record sales because it was aiming too building. Two years later, once Maggie May music comes out under the Secret Garden high. Build Me Up Buttercup (a hit for The has come out and the world had gone mad for brand, has written Eurovision-winning songs. Foundations in 1968) falls into the first cate- Rod Stewart, Mercury started recompiling his In 2001 he came up with a melody and sought gory and Handbags the second. old stuff and Handbags started turning up on out the Irish writer Brendan Graham (who had "Manfred Mann didn't know what to do with Sing ItAgain Rod and other compilations. So previously written the lyrics for two Irish it. He didn't have a clue how to play the coun- I was not complaining. It wasn't until 1991 that Eurovision-winners) to pen some lyrics for it. tryish Floyd Cramer piano licks that were part he re-recorded it - and again I didn't think he Graham recalls how it happens: of the song. I got a call one day from Andrew did it very well - for his Unplugged album, "They called me and said they were in Leop- Oldham and Tony Calder, who'd started Imme- which went to number one in America, so that ardstown and could I come and listen to what diate, and they asked me to produce Chris suddenly earned me quite a lot of money out they had. I said I could come in ten minutes. Farlowe, who was coming off a hit with Out Of of the blue. They were calling it Silent Story at the time. Time, and the other was a totally unknown guy "Get to millennium eve 2000 and I was play- I thought it sounded like Danny Boy. I got called Rod Stewart. So Farlowe said he wanted ing with my band The Mighty Quinn at a hotel the title You Raise Me Up that afternoon." to do Handbags and we did an arrangement in Southampton and somebody rang me to say, The resulting song was released by Brian and I played the piano and it got a certain 'Your song's on JoolsHolland.' Kelly Jones from Kennedy, Secret Garden and the London Com- amount of airplay and charted at 32 in 1968. The Stereo phonics was playing it. I'd never munity Gospel Choir in 2002. Its refrain goes "I went down to a club to see Rod Stewart heard of him. Six months later one of my ex- as follows: as the lead singer with the Jeff Beck Group. I wives rang me to say it was being used on this "You raise me up, so I can stand on moun- played him Handbags and he said he wanted new programme on BBC called The Office. tains; to do it. I said he couldn't because I was already They'd wanted to use the Rod Stewart version, You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas; doing it with Chris Farlowe. Nine months later couldn't afford it and so they'd re-recorded it. I am strong, when I am on your shoulders; he showed up at my door in Albion Street just My publishers knew nothing about this. Any- You raise me up ... To more than I can be". off Hyde Park and he said, 'Great news - I've way, I called The Stereophonics' management That version went to number one in Norway. got an album deal with Mercury and we're and told them I'd written it. They said I was Daniel O'Donnell's version entered the Top 20 ~ in the UK the following year. Three years later Westlife's version went to number one in the UK. In the United States the producer David Foster, the Canadian behind the success of Michael Buble and other stars of the new MOR, was presented with the song by Peer Music and decided that his charge Josh Groban was going to record it that afternoon. This version was number one for six weeks in the US Adult Con- temporary Charts. It has since been featured on number-one albums by Paul Potts, II Divo, Russell Watson, Celtic Woman and many other acts readers of this magazine may not think about very much. It has been covered over 130 times already. It has also been widely used in a ceremonial context. In 2005 it was performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. In 2007 it was sung at the opening of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Brian Kennedy sang it at George Best's funeral in 2005. Olympic champions have skated to it.

"YouRaise Me Up appeals to a broad church of people who don't know what it's about. Tosome it's parent, lover, husband. It's the third most popular father/daughter dance at American weddings now"

Peer Music's Nigel Elderton admits that he buried his own father to it. Brendan Graham recognises that, unlike songs in the hymn tradition from which it sprung, You Raise Me Up enjoys the advantage of never quite identifying who the "he" might be. "It appeals to a broad church of people who don't know what it's about. To some it's parent, lover, husband. It's the third most popular father/daughter dance at American weddings now. Josh Groban says it's all about his par- ents. His manager says it came along after 9/11 when the American people wanted some- thing to draw them together. In these times, with institutions crumbling, people need something to hang on to, a kind of spirituality that fills the gap. There's a climb in the melody that goes with the lines 'You raise me up' and that helps." Nigel Elderton estimated, quite early in the song's commercial life, that Brendan Graham's share of the proceeds from You Raise Me Up would amount to 2 million pounds. It's cer- tainly provided him with enough to move from Dublin to a house overlooking a lake. I asked the 65-year-old lyricist if he is a believer. He laughed. "If I wasn't then, I am now.".