278 Hello Billy Ocean - Love Really Hurts Without You

Chart  entered  : 21  February  1976

Chart  peak : 2

Number  of  hits  : 19

The  third  hit  in  a  row  on  GTO   and  the  biggest  of  the  lot. Billy  was  the  last  big  star  to  emerge  before  punk  which  almost  buried  him.

He  was  born  Leslie  Charles  in  Trinidad  in  1950. His  father  was  a  calypso  musician. The  family  moved  to  Romford  in  1958  and  Leslie  started  performing  as  a  teenager. While  working  as  a  tailor's  apprentice  he  recorded  a  single  at  Pye  but  never  found  anyone  to  release  it,  He  got  a  second  shot  in  1971  when  he  signed  for  Spark  Records    and  recorded  two  singles  as  Les  Charles, "Nashville  Rain"  and  "Reach  Out  A  Hand"  neither  of  which  I've  heard.

 He  scraped  a  living  as  a  session  singer  and  in  1974 became  the  voice  of a  studio  project  by  songwriter  Ben  Findon  called  Scorched  Earth. In  March  1974  "they"  put  out  a  single  "On  The  Run"  with  Les  on  the  cover   on  the  independent   Young  Blood  International  label. Later  in  the  year  Findon  interested  Philips  in  the  project  and  they  reissued  it  with  some  "bandmates"  for  Les  on  the  cover  and  a  song  he'd  co-written  on  the  B-side. "On  The  Run"  is  a  real  hotch-potch , a  lyric  of  urban  survival  framed  by  echoes of  Hot  Chocolate, T  Rex  and  The  Rubettes   and  a  chorus  that's  melodically  similar  to  Graham  Bonnet's  much  later  "Mind  Games"  but  it's  a   good  showcase  for  his  impressive  vocal  range.

It  seems  to  have  been  around  1975  that  Les  adopted  the  Billy  Ocean  name  after  the  Ocean  estate  on  which  he'd  lived. He  was signed  by  GTO  and  released  his  first  single  as  Billy  , "Whose  Little  Girl  Are  You ?"  in  August  1975. Written  by  Billy  and  Findon  who  also  produced  it  , it's  a  fairly  blatant  attempt  to  replicate  the  retro  sound  of  the  latter day  Drifters  who  were  then  enjoying  a  second  wind  of  success  in  the  UK.

The  second  single  was  "Love  Really  Hurts  Without  You" . Again  co-written  with  Findon  it's  one  of  the  best  Motown  pastiches  ever  with  a  bass  line  that  James  Jamerson  would  be  proud  of, a  fabulous  vocal  from  Billy  and  a  top  drawer  earworm  melody  in  the  chorus. There  was  enough  modernity  in  Findon's  production  emphasising  the  strings  that  it  worked  as  a  disco  number  as  well. It  couldn't  fail  and  didn't  finishing  only  behind  another  newcomer, portly  British  disco  queen  Tina  Charles.