461 Hello Nik Kershaw - I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

Chart  entered : 19  November  1983

Chart  peak : 47  ( 2  on  re-release  in  1984 )

Number  of  hits  : 13

This  guy  always  gets  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  as  Howard  Jones  as  being  indicative  of the  paucity  of   mid-eighties  pop  .

Nicholas  Kershaw  was  born  in  Bristol  in  1958  but  grew  up  in  Ipswich. His  parents  were  both  musical. He  worked  for  a  time  in  an  unemployment  office  before  becoming  unemployed  himself. He  started  out  as  a  guitarist  in  local  jazz-funk  outfits ending  up  in  one  called  Fusion. Some  demos  have  surfaced  of  Fusion  trying  out  his  songs  but  they  split  in  1982  and  "Nik"  started  hawking  his  wares  as  a  solo  artist. He  acquired  a  manager,  Micky  Modern  through  an  ad  in  Melody  Maker. Modern's  previous  charges, R & B  group  Nine  Below  Zero,  hadn't  been  massively  successful  but  he  got  Nik  a  deal  with  MCA.

Nik  was  hooked  up  with  the  Loose  Ends  production  company  formed  by  Pete  Waterman   and  Peter  Collins, then  best  known  for  his  work  with  mod  chancers  The  Lambrettas. Collins  set  about  transforming  his  folk-y  ditty  into  a  modern  pop  song. Waterman  claimed  much  of  the  credit  for  this  in  a  feature  on  The  One  Show  but  only  Collins  is  named  on  the record  and  Nik  has  denied  that  Waterman  was  ever  in  the  studio.

"I  Won't  Let  The  Sun  Go  Down  On  Me"  is  a  late  addition  to  the  anti-nuclear  song  canon and  along  with  Nena's  99  Red  Balloons  probably  did  as  much  as  Mikhail  Gorbachev  to   kill  off  the  genre.  Nik  wasn't  happy  with  the  new  arrangement  but  must  accept  responsibility  for  the  trite  lyrics  with  their  bathetic  detail - "old  men  in  stripey  trousers "  and  repetitive   one-line  chorus. The  verses  betray  his  jazz-funk  background  with  his  hard  flat  vocal  and  the  juddering  bass  line  suggestive  of  Level  42  but  then  it  goes into  that  twee  , vaguely-Caribbean   chorus  with  its  toytown  synth  lines  and  any  message  is  lost  in  its  burbling  mediocrity. He  wasn't  actually  as  appalling  as  Jones  and  would  make  better  records  so  it's  a  shame  this  eventually  became  his  biggest  hit  as  a  performer.