Fact #161805

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HAZELL DEAN? by Johnny Black

Hazell Dean : I was in the music business for fifteen years before I had a hit with Searchin’ so, when the hits dried up for me in the early 90s, I was quite prepared to go back to what I’d always done.

I had a deal in the 70s with Decca, and my first bit of chart activity was a song I wrote called Jealous Love which did well in Europe. Searchin’ was actually a hit first in Holland in 1983, when I was on a little label called Proto. It was huge in the clubs and got in the lower reaches of the chart, but then it was deleted.

Soon after, I met Stock Aitken and Waterman during the Song For Europe where one of my songs got into the final eight. We got along well, and decided to re-release Searchin’. Then, when I did Whatever I Do with them, it gave them their first Top 5 entry.

I had a bit of a gap in Britain with the hits until Who’s Leaving Who in 1988, but around the world I was very active. I was huge in Florida, for example, and I spent a month working there every year up until 1989. There were songs like Love Pains which was massive in American clubs, but didn’t do much here.

That was also the year, though, when everything changed. I track it to the Black Box Single, Ride On Time, which is an absolutely fabulous single, but it was also the beginning of the end for the Stock Aitken and Waterman sound, which I was very closely identified with. When they stopped having the success, I was kind of dragged along with it.

When I did a song in 1990 called Better Off Without You, it was really great track and would definitely have been a hit five years earlier, but it flopped and that’s when I realised I had to move on.

I understood perfectly well when EMI dropped me, because you can’t expect them to keep you on if you’re not selling records. I parted company with Pete Waterman’s company, PWL, in 1991, on good terms, and I was aiming to get back again to more song-writing and production work, which I’d always done anyway, but I definitely hit a bit of a brick wall because of what was then seen as the stigma of SAW.

93 and 94 was a bit funny but by 95 I was writing with a friend, Barry Upton, and then I started a label, Infinity, with another songwriter/producer called Peter Ware. We also run a management company together, Deano Management, and we’re currently busy with a new act we’re developing called Krave, two boys and two girls, very pop oriented.

But my attitude is just to keep on working because things are cyclical, it all comes round again. I’d always done session work with bands, and I’ve always kept a tight grip on the purse strings so I never suffered for lack of cash. There’s now such a revival of interest in the 80s that I’m working constantly. Last July, for example, I played three gay pride events in one day, in Brighton, Southsea and Southampton .

I don't just do the gay clubs, I do a lot of straight clubs as well. On the straight circuit, everything has come round full circle because there’s a lot of nostalgia nights and I fit perfectly into that.

I’ve just been approached to do some acoustic shows towards the end of this year, which I realise might seem odd for someone so identified with Hi-NRG, but my roots lie in soul and blues, and I know exactly how I can do Searchin’ as a slow blues, and Who’s Leavin’ Who in a jazzy mode. So I’ve just been out and bought myself a lovely brand new hand-made acoustic guitar.

I live in rural bliss in Surrey with my partner, who is not in the music business, and who I’ve been with for eleven years and, if I say so myself, I’m a bit of a domestic goddess.

I won't say that if the opportunity came around again I wouldn't take it but me, as long as I'm out there working, which I am, I'm happy.

(Source : Q magazine feature)