For a man whose band’s big No1 was sandwiched between The Wurzels and Demis Roussos at the start of that long hot summer of 1976, Eddy Amoo is a very chipper man.
The Real Thing recorded You To Me Are Everything at the start of the year after it failed to excite record bosses in London – and it kick started a career that’s lasted until the present day.
The soul trio perform at the Theatre Royal this weekend as part of an idefinite programme of live shows and expect an energy-filled audience to set the party alight.
“Life doesn’t stop just because you don’t have hit records,” says Eddy.
“We continually recycle ourselves in that me and Chris are producers and writers, and over the years we have tweaked and changed the classic tunes so that they fit in today without losing the magic. We’re always writing new material for the show and we can still stand up there and be full of energy.”
So what does it feel like to be the architect of the hit that forms the soundtrack to so many people’s lives? Did the band feel something special was about to happen when they first heard their biggest hit back in ‘76?
“Abolutely not!” he said.
“It was hawked around everyone in London before it came to us. They all turned it down.
“We were just about to get the boot from our record company because we’d had a series of misses. Our record company thought it wasn’t a bad song at all, so they gave us a small budget to record it.
“It was very early in 1976 we recorded it and then forgot all about it. Three or four months later our manager came to us and told us it was selling 100 records a day.
“Then one day we got a telegram from our manager. He said get the band down to London tomorrow as it was one of the breakers [the fastest climbers in the top 50] and they wanted us on Top of The Pops.
“Everything went mad, it was magic.”
Yet the biggest year of hits for The Real Thing was actually in the following decade, when in 1986 they hit the charts with Straight to the Heart and sccessfully released remixes of You to Me Are Everything, Can't Get By Without You, and Can You Feel the Force?
And it’s their stying power that’s the secret.
“We’re the original members – we’re not a tribute band,” says Eddy, “which is what happens when you keep replacing people over the years.
“We built up an audience over two completely different timespans and have built on that.”
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