( * featuring Odia Coates )
Chart entered : 29 September 1974
Chart peak : 6
Paul smashed Jerry's comeback record with this one, his first UK hit in 12 years and his first in the Top 10 since 1959. There's a nice symmetry to a run that began with him serenading his babysitter ending with him about to need one.
There's a mystery here. The song got to number 6 and it was in the Top 20 for 6 weeks but I have no contemporary memory of it at all and this was a time when listening to the charts was a religious ritual for me. All the records that were in the chart at the same time are familiar but when this came up in a quiz in the late eighties and team-mates looked to me as the pop guru I hadn't a clue. I know I missed at least one Top of the Pops around this time because I've never seen the Robert Wyatt appearance that people still talk about but was there any other reason that could account for it ( an airplay ban perhaps ) ? Answers on a postcard please.
What makes this hole all the more intriguing is that many people loathe this record and, by extension, its author, with a vehemence that transcends the normal "Justin Bieber sucks" response in musical criticism. Simon Frith in his book Taking Popular Music Seriously is one, citing "( You're ) Having My Baby " as an example of bad music for relying on false sentiment. Actually it's difficult to know how Frith could be so sure Paul didn't mean it when he'd fathered four of his five daughters by this point.
The syrupy nature of the record is one thing but where the song really needled people was / is the line "You could have swept it from your life but you wouldn't do it " which feminists , fiercely protective of the recent Roe vs Wade decision, interpreted as a Pro-Life message. The previous line "Didn't have to keep it wouldn't put you through it " implying that Paul would have been OK with an abortion made things worse with its suggestion that the girl would have needed his absolution. It was picked to shreds. The "My " in the title should have been "Our " ; Paul tacitly acknowledged this by changing it in performance before dropping it from his set altogether. His friend Odia Coates is already in a subservient position on the record; effectively she's just parroting the lines he's sung before her and then she didn't appear in the promo film at all. None of this stopped the record reaching number one in the US but Paul was showered with negative awards from women's organisations and the criticism continues to this day.
I don't find the record offensive but it's not very good either. The melody lines on the electric piano are surely cribbed from Elton John's Daniel and his vocal is very rough , sounding strained and off-key throughout. Perhaps I simply tuned out straightaway.
Britain turned its back on him after this but he was still a big star in America for a while churning out more middle of the road romantic ballads assisted by Coates. In the follow-up "One Man Woman/ One Woman Man" ( US : 7 ) he's an adulterer cheating on a faithful wife. "I Don't Like To Sleep Alone ( US : 8 ) sounds like its remorseful sequel. The rather robotic "There's Nothing Stronger Than Our Love" ( US; 15 ) completes the trilogy. "Times Of Your Life" was a glutinous advertising jingle he sang but didn't write for Kodak which gave him his last Top 10 hit in the US in 1976.
Thereafter his chart fortunes fell off quite dramatically, possibly due to the emergence of a big-nosed New Yorker working in a similar field who we'll be coming to soon enough. The country-tinged "Anytime" peaked at 33 and the interminable , meandering "Happiness" which he seems to be making up as he goes along somehow got to number 60.
By 1977 Odia Coates was on Epic trying to kick start a solo career and Paul wrote and accompanied her on the disco single "Make It Up To Me In Love Baby". It's very average and didn't trouble the charts. "Everybody Ought To Be In Love " ( US : 75 ) which I haven't heard and the schmaltzy "My Best Friend's Wife" ( US : 80 ) closed his account with United Artists.
His first single on RCA, the maudlin piano ballad "Brought Up In New York" missed out on the charts but the hardly livelier "This Is Love" ( not written by Paul ) restored him as far as number 35 despite Paul sounding like he's got sinus trouble. In 1979 he teamed up with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for the awful self-congratulatory "As Long As We Keep Believing" which didn't chart.
His first single of the eighties was "I Think I'm In Love Again" which is indistinguishable from a Manilow ballad. "I've Been Waiting For You All Mt Life " is more Neil Diamond but not much better though it reached number 48. "Lady Lay Down " is a country cover and a good cure for insomnia.
By 1983 he was on Columbia and scored his final US hit with "Hold Me Til The Morning Comes" , a boring ballad chock full of awful eighties synth programming and drum machine sounds and the inevitable dentist drill guitar solo. Its belated follow-up "Second Chance" an AOR rocker on which he sounds remarkably like Michael McDonald was his last record for some time.
Paul's most famous recording of the eighties was a secretly-recorded foulmouthed rant at his backing band for being loose and not sticking to instructions. It's a source of some classic phrases - "Don't make a fucking maniac out of me ", "The guys get shirts " and "I slice like a hammer".
Paul's next single was a co-write with McDonald . It was a duet with Julia Migenes on "No Way Out " for the Kevin Costner film of the same name in 1987. The film was good; the song is tedious in the extreme.
Paul dabbled in acting in between live commitments, guest appearances and recording the odd LP that wasn't released outside Canada. In 2005 he went down the Pat Boone route and recorded an album of rock covers re-worked as big band numbers "Rock Swings". For some strange reason Jon Bon Jovi helped him out on it. Even more bizarrely enough people over here liked the idea of "Smells Like Teen Spirit " and "Wonderwall" re-imagined as Bobby Darin swing tunes to get it to number 9 in the charts although a second volume two years later was taking the joke too far. His latest album "Duets " was released last year.
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