Chart entered : 4 February 1984
Chart peak : 13
This is by no means the last time Hot Chocolate were in the charts but it was their last new hit. Following their debut in 1970 they had become one of the most consistent hit making outfits , placing at least one record on the singles chart in every calendar year since then. Their only chart topper was 1977's "So You Win Again" and their fortunes vacillated from song to song with the occasional dud that missed the chart altogether. The single immediately preceding this was one of those. There had been line up changes. Drummer Ian King left in 1973 and was replaced by Tony Connor previously with Audience and Jackson Heights. Two years later one of the twin poles of the band Tony Wilson quit for a solo career leaving Errol Brown as the main songwriter and sole vocalist. Patrick Olive switched from percussion to take up Tony's bass duties.
"I Gave You My Heart ( Didn't I ) " was the third and , by some distance, the most successful single from their 1983 album "Love Shot" . If that seems unusual, bear in mind that compilations apart , they never sold many albums and "Love Shot" hadn't charted at all so what order the singles were released in hardly mattered. The song was written by Racey singer Richard Gower. It's a Motown pastiche with the usual impeccable vocal from Errol as the abandoned lover and hooks a plenty. Its release just before Valentine's Day helped it along too. What does strike me though is how tinny and cheap- sounding ( to go with the tawdry sleeve perhaps ? ) the arrangement is, with Larry Ferguson's synths sounding like Bontempis.
What was Mickie Most thinking of ? Well probably his retirement , having recently sold the RAK label to EMI though he retained control of the studio. Kim Wilde had already released her last single on the label and as far as I can tell this was his last new hit as a producer. Contrary to many sources his son's band Johnny Hates Jazz were only on the label for their first unsuccessful single ( the hits were on Virgin ) and he never produced them though doubtless was a big influence behind the scenes. Instead RAK the label just petered out with a string of flops by has-beens and no-marks ( Cole ? 3D ? McVay ? Howcher ? ) few of them actually produced by Mickie himself. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and died three years later aged 64.
This left Hot Chocolate in a state of limbo. They were not involved in Band Aid at all and seem to have been inactive before re-grouping in February 1986 for the single "Heartache No 9" . Always noted ( not always appreciatively ) for assimilating current musical trends into their music, it was a contemporary urban track with echoes of Prince, written by the R& B writing team of Sturken and Rogers. Errol and the boys do it as competently as ever with Pete Wingfield producing and it was almost a hit , reaching 76 in the Bubbling Under section.
At this point Errol decided to quit the band to spend more time with his young family and the rest of the boys elected to dissolve rather than try to soldier on without him. As happened with Abba, their critical stock began to rise almost as soon as they'd called it a day. Having acquired the Hot Chocolate back catalogue as part of the RAK deal , EMI soon put it to work with a Ben Liebrand remix of "You Sexy Thing" which reached number 10 at the beginning of 1987. A new compilation ( their third ) "The Very Best of Hot Chocolate" went all the way to the top .
With this vindication of his past work there was never a better time for Errol to launch his solo career. In June 1987 he reappeared with the single "Personal Touch" written by Swain and Jolley, famed for their work with Alison Moyet and Bananarama. It's a reasonable bit of Paul Young-style pop soul but it's slightly over-produced and a bit dated for 1987. It reached number 25 in the charts . Perhaps disappointed by its performance , Errol was in no rush to put an album together and it was four months before his next single, "Body Rockin" which he wrote and former Landscape singer Richard Burgess produced. It's more contemporary, sounding like Living In A Box but it's a very ordinary song and peaked at 51.
The success of the compilation hadn't gone unnoticed by the other members and in 1988 , Tony, Patrick and guitarist Harvey Hinsley resurrected the group with a new singer, Grant Evelyn. Errol apparently gave his blessing and Larry who'd already begun a long second career as a studio engineer before the group split raised no objections. Without Errol though they could only get a record deal in Germany. They released three singles there that year "Never Pretend", "What About You" and "Get It Right". Evelyn 's voice is a dead ringer for Peter Cox of Go West and if I'd heard them blind that's who I'd sworn it was. The first-named song reached number 50 on the German chart which wasn't enough to sustain them and they broke up again.
Still taking it easy , Errol released just the one single in 1988. "Maya" is a blast of Fairlight pop with world music pretensions hence Errol singing in an African accent. It didn't make the chart. At the beginning of 1989 he came out with "Love Goes Up And Down" an unremarkable house track with rock guitar co-written by Harry Casey which bubbled under but didn't make the Top 75. He then finally put an album out , "That's How Love Is" which included all the previous singles bar "Body Rockin" and bombed completely. Errol later dismissed it saying "It was a tired album. I was tired, the people who gave me advice were tired and I'd stopped working with Mickie Most. To have someone who knows a song - that's gold dust".
Errol did contrive to give the impression in later years that his solo career had ended there leaving him free to race his horses and entertain Tory party conferences but that wasn't really the case. He was dropped by WEA but then sold his soul to the devil and did a Christmas single with Stock, Aitken and Waterman at the end of 1990. He co-wrote "Send A Prayer ( To Heaven ) with the terrible trio and it's not hideous, just a dreary synth ballad with echoes of "A Child's Prayer" and "Put You Together Again" . By that time the fortunes of SAW themselves were beginning to wane and the single was largely ignored.
Errol then went over to Germany to work with Dieter Bohlen of Modern Talking. He wrote Errol's next single in 1992 , "This Time It's Forever" a SAW facsimile which sounds pretty similar to Donna Summer's This Time I Know It's For Real . Errol's voice is starting to sound a bit ragged on it . It reached number 26 in Germany. He made two albums there ( I'm not sure Bohlen was involved with the second one ) of utterly generic Euro-pop with vague echoes of past glories bottoming out with "Emmalene ( That's No Lie )" an utterly redundant re-write of Hot Chocolates finest three minutes, "Emma".
1992 was also the year that Harvey, Patrick and Olive re-launched the band for the second time, with another new singer Greg Bannis. They made an album in Germany, "Strictly Dance" , which was released the following year . All I've heard is one of a couple of singles they took from it, "Cry Little Girl" which sounds like Snap. It did nothing and in the same year another compilation "Their Hottest Hits" made number one in the UK and "It Started With A Kiss" was a hit again reaching number 31. The band took the hint and have trod the nostalgia circuit ever since with Kennie Simon replacing Bannis in 2010.
Errol returned to the UK in 1997 just in time to see The Full Monty take the UK by storm. In its wake "You Sexy Thing" charged up the charts a third time reaching number 6. "It Started With A Kiss" was also a hit third time round reaching number 18. It was oddly credited to Hot Chocolate featuring Errol Brown and was the last time either featured in the singles chart. Errol was not slow to capitalise on this fresh resurgence and did tours of the UK and Germany in 1998-99.
He also secured a deal with Universal for a new-ish album "Still Sexy" which was released in 2001. With 3 covers , a re-recording of "Heaven's In The Back Seat of My Cadillac" and four songs that had already featured on his German albums he wasn't pushing the boat out in terms of new songs. The title track and lead single was new but isn't very remarkable , Errol just humming along to a contemporary dance pop production but he looked like he was enjoying himself in the video which had him in a casino surrounded by young chicks. It wasn't a hit but the album managed a couple of weeks in the chart reaching number 34. With that his recording account was closed.
In 2003 he received an MBE. Six years later he decided to retire from performing and did a farewell tour of the UK. He died at his home in the Bahamas of liver cancer last May.
So what of those who left earlier. Larry's career as a US-based studio engineer working on soundtracks and with R &B artists seems to have carried on almost to the present day.
Ian played on Tony's first solo LP and did some work with Gil Scott-Heron but otherwise his subsequent career is a mystery.
That just leaves Tony who left disgruntled at being sidelined by Errol and Most. The latter felt that Errol had the more commercially appealing voice and their subsequent fortunes suggest he was on the money yet again but the group lost that darker edge apparent on "Brother Louie" and "Emma" once he'd quit. Having said that, his first solo single for seven years, "I Like Your Style" in October 1976, was a lightweight piece of disco froth which doesn't hold much interest other than Tony's own febrile bass line. An LP of the same title soon followed. The next single "Anything That Keeps You Satisfied " is another jolly tune in the same vein. The third single "New York City Life" is very different, the missing link between In the Ghetto and The Message with a grim tale of vice and squalor set to an understated moody urban soul soundtrack topped off with a dolorous guitar solo. It's the standout track on the album, some of which sounds pretty close to his old group. It didn't sell. Most was right that Tony's voice wasn't as distinctive and without airplay nothing happened for him.
Bearsville let him make another album in 1979. "Catch One" was partly recorded at Muscle Shoals and the songs are generally a bit meatier. The one UK single "Try Love" is a terrific funk pop number that should have been a hit. Instead the one track that did meet with some success was his cover of Randy Vanwarmer's "Just When I Needed You Most" which sold a million in Brazil. That wasn't enough for Bearsville who cast him adrift.
Tony retreated back to Trinidad where he became involved in producing and writing for local artists including his daughter Joanne. In 1982 he collaborated with Vanwarmer who produced his version of another RW song "Only What You Steal" a rather nice soft rock ballad. The B-side , a co-write "Hangin Out In Space" a doomy synth ballad that you wouldn't have expected from either of them , was released in the US in its own right the following year .
Tony's final album to date was "Walking The Highwire" in 1988. The lead single was "Mandela ( Not Even Rivers Run Free ) is a clumsy repetitive bit of bandwagon jumping with an ill-suited marriage of trilling flutes and robotic synths. The follow up "Part Of What You'll Get " was a touching piano ballad with a gorgeous melody ( though the album version is more electric and is grossly inferior ). Unfortunately the former is more indicative of the album as a whole which is horribly over-produced synth pop.
Tony had a couple of one-off collaborations in the nineties , a German single with a group Moving Emotion called "Kiss On The Radio " and a recording with 2Pac "Just One Time" which would be better without the rapper's contribution. Since then Tony's been happily living in Trinidad where he's well respected. It's a shame he's been largely forgotten here.
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