Fact #160662
When:
Short story:
The re-released and re-mixed Love Changes (Everything) by Climie Fisher enters the UK singles chart where it will peak at No2.
Full article:
CLIMIE FISHER by Johnny Black
In the wasteland that was the late 80s UK pop chart, London-based songwriting, producing and performing duo Simon Climie and Rob Fisher could at least be relied on to deliver well-crafted slices of white boy soul, like their biggest hit Love Changes (Everything). Shame then, that they hated it so much. Having already scored a major international hit as half of the duo Naked Eyes, Climie Fisher was Rob’s second ascent of the ladder of success, but he hated it even more than Simon.
Simon Climie : Rob and I had met in the mid-80s and started having success as a songwriting/production team and that’s what we both enjoyed most. It all changed when we had the hit with Love Changes (Everything). It was a success in 35 territories, and our first album sold over a million copies, which meant that we spent two years travelling, promoting that one song around the world. We became entertainers rather than musicians.
You very quickly realise that, if you don’t keep your chops up as a writer, you fall out of the way of it, and we just never had the time to sit down and write, which was very frustrating. You spend all your time talking to journalists and radio deejays about how you write your songs, but you never actually get to do it. Then the singles stopped charting so well, and the second album only sold half a million, which was perceived as failure. The next move, if we were to continue as pop stars, was to learn to dance on the videos and we couldn’t face it.
The dichotomy is that, as a songwriter, you’re at your best when you expose your emotions, and show how fragile we can be. As a performer, however, you’re constantly being presented as if you’re superhuman. Some of my best songs, like My Heart Can’t Tell You No, are so painful and personal to me that I can’t perform them, but I was lucky enough tohave Rod Stewart cover that and it was a big success. Rob and I found it very difficult to do both things.
What I really wanted was to be acknowledged as a producer. Luckily, people had begun to notice that our demos sounded better than their finished products, so we were in demand as producers. I’ve since written and produced hits for Eternal, Louise, MN8, Vanessa Williams, and recently The Honeyz single, Won’t Take It Lying Down. With an act like The Honeyz, I basically write and record the entire track with them in mind, and then the girls come in and sing it.
I did the George Michael/Aretha Franklin single, I Know You Were Waiting For Me. I also worked with Eric Clapton on his Pilgrim album, which gave us a huge US hit single with My Father’s Eyes.
I’m currently (Feb 00) doing a duets album with Eric and B.B.King in Los Angeles, and I’ve co-written a new solo album with Heather Small of M People.
I haven’t been in England for a while, and I have properties in Europe and America with their own studios built-in. (Villefranche in the south of France; upstate New York, and Santa Monica, California).
I still love to sing, so I might yet do a solo album, but there’s so many different ways to be successful in the music business and right now I’m really enjoying what I do.
Rob and I were well-matched in talent, but he was the intellectually bright one, full of ideas. Rob was the one who’d always know about bands like Portishead before everybody else. After we stopped being a performing duo, he started running his own studio, and he’d written Cry For Help for Rick Astley and he was in demand, writing great songs.
Then he started losing weight and it was realised he was ill, with a very severe form of pancreatitis. He kept writing, and none of us realised just how serious it was, but about four months before the end, he suddenly looked very ill. His death, which came on 28 August 1999, was the most terrible shock. I miss him terribly.
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In the wasteland that was the late 80s UK pop chart, London-based songwriting, producing and performing duo Simon Climie and Rob Fisher could at least be relied on to deliver well-crafted slices of white boy soul, like their biggest hit Love Changes (Everything). Shame then, that they hated it so much. Having already scored a major international hit as half of the duo Naked Eyes, Climie Fisher was Rob’s second ascent of the ladder of success, but he hated it even more than Simon.
Simon Climie : Rob and I had met in the mid-80s and started having success as a songwriting/production team and that’s what we both enjoyed most. It all changed when we had the hit with Love Changes (Everything). It was a success in 35 territories, and our first album sold over a million copies, which meant that we spent two years travelling, promoting that one song around the world. We became entertainers rather than musicians.
You very quickly realise that, if you don’t keep your chops up as a writer, you fall out of the way of it, and we just never had the time to sit down and write, which was very frustrating. You spend all your time talking to journalists and radio deejays about how you write your songs, but you never actually get to do it. Then the singles stopped charting so well, and the second album only sold half a million, which was perceived as failure. The next move, if we were to continue as pop stars, was to learn to dance on the videos and we couldn’t face it.
The dichotomy is that, as a songwriter, you’re at your best when you expose your emotions, and show how fragile we can be. As a performer, however, you’re constantly being presented as if you’re superhuman. Some of my best songs, like My Heart Can’t Tell You No, are so painful and personal to me that I can’t perform them, but I was lucky enough tohave Rod Stewart cover that and it was a big success. Rob and I found it very difficult to do both things.
What I really wanted was to be acknowledged as a producer. Luckily, people had begun to notice that our demos sounded better than their finished products, so we were in demand as producers. I’ve since written and produced hits for Eternal, Louise, MN8, Vanessa Williams, and recently The Honeyz single, Won’t Take It Lying Down. With an act like The Honeyz, I basically write and record the entire track with them in mind, and then the girls come in and sing it.
I did the George Michael/Aretha Franklin single, I Know You Were Waiting For Me. I also worked with Eric Clapton on his Pilgrim album, which gave us a huge US hit single with My Father’s Eyes.
I’m currently (Feb 00) doing a duets album with Eric and B.B.King in Los Angeles, and I’ve co-written a new solo album with Heather Small of M People.
I haven’t been in England for a while, and I have properties in Europe and America with their own studios built-in. (Villefranche in the south of France; upstate New York, and Santa Monica, California).
I still love to sing, so I might yet do a solo album, but there’s so many different ways to be successful in the music business and right now I’m really enjoying what I do.
Rob and I were well-matched in talent, but he was the intellectually bright one, full of ideas. Rob was the one who’d always know about bands like Portishead before everybody else. After we stopped being a performing duo, he started running his own studio, and he’d written Cry For Help for Rick Astley and he was in demand, writing great songs.
Then he started losing weight and it was realised he was ill, with a very severe form of pancreatitis. He kept writing, and none of us realised just how serious it was, but about four months before the end, he suddenly looked very ill. His death, which came on 28 August 1999, was the most terrible shock. I miss him terribly.