The Rubettes biography
The Rubettes were an English pop band assembled in 1973 by the songwriting team of Wayne Bickerton, then the head of A&R at Polydor Records, and his co-songwriter, Tony Waddington, after their doo-wop and 1950s American pop-influenced songs had been rejected by a number of existing acts. The band duly emerged at the tail end of the glam rock movement, wearing trademark white suits and cloth caps on stage. Their first release, "Sugar Baby Love" was an instant hit remaining at number one in the United Kingdom for four weeks in May 1974, while reaching number 37 on the U.S. chart that August, and remains their best-known record. Subsequent releases would be less successful, but the band continued to tour on the nostalgia circuit well into the 2000s.
Career
The Rubettes' first and biggest hit was "Sugar Baby Love" (1974) which was a number one in the United Kingdom, going on to sell around 500,000 copies in the UK and three million copies globally. Two million copies were sold in France alone, an achievement matched by no other British group. With three more songs, "Sugar Baby Love" was recorded for Polydor in October 1973 at Landsdown Studios in Holland Park, London by a group of session musicians featuring the distinctive falsetto lead vocal of Paul Da Vinci (real name: Paul Prewer). Da Vinci would not, however, become a member of the band put together by John Richardson but would pursue solo work.
"Sugar Baby Love" was their only UK #1 and sole U.S. Top 40 entry.
In November 1974
NME music magazine reported that The Rubettes, The Glitter Band and Mud were among the UK bands who had roles in a new film titled
Never Too Young To Rock.
The Rubettes went on to have a number of other hits across Europe during the mid-1970s, such as "Tonight", "Juke Box Jive" and "I Can Do It" sung by Alan Williams, mostly written by the Bickerton-Waddington songwriting team. The Rubettes' success encouraged Bickerton and Waddington to set up State Records, so that ten months after the release of "Sugar Baby Love", the fourth Rubettes single "I Can Do It" was on State (catalogue reference STAT 1).
The band were to abandon glammy nostalgia to enter more serious territory.
After Thorpe's departure in 1979, the group's success began to dwindle.
Bass player Mick Clarke recorded a solo album Games in 1979 for the cult German label Blubber Lips.
The band continued releasing records into the 1980s, then re-grouped in 1983 in order to exploit the German market for 1970s nostalgia.
In 1994, the group's profile was raised by the inclusion of "Sugar Baby Love" in the hit movie Muriel's Wedding. This song was also featured in the 2005 Neil Jordan film Breakfast on Pluto soundtrack, and in a popular Safe Sex commercial.
In 2002, the group hit the headlines once more when, following an acrimonius split and legal action, the Rubettes became the latest in a long line of bands (including the Beach Boys and Spandau Ballet) to end up in the courts in a dispute over ownership of the band's name. The court ruled that both Williams and Hurd could tour as the Rubettes, as long as it was clear which member was fronting the band.
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