Steve Levine checks out Stock Aitken Waterman in perhaps the best radio series ever - The Record Producers.

Brilliant show - this really is the best and most interesting series on radio.

Check it out on Listen Again.

By the way, when Pete Waterman was at Magnet, he worked for my brother Andy... and he's always credited me as well as Motown as big influences on his career.

Amazing how many good records Pete, Mike and Matt made together.

What people tend to overlook is how harmonically interesting a lot of those songs were, as well as having great melodies - really well written. Take them out of the typical SAW production style, and they'd equally well in an acoustic or jazz setting. But so much for their reunion - I haven't heard a thing that they've done together since the promo for the compilation a few years ago.

Good point SW - I've been humming Too Many Broken Hearts ever since the show - great melody.

checked it out...brilliant stuff. Funny, Waterman was/is one of those producers that I hold in high regard, but I never actually liked his productions.

Odd thing music...

Interesting enough but really they merited a four-part series.

That Rick Astley "Nothing Can Divide Us" vocal was astonishing and Jason didn't do a bad job on his version either.

People forget that SAW kept the British pop single alive in the late eighties when few others were bothering (the Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Erasure and the Smiths are the only other ones I can think of offhand from that dance-dominant period).

My personal favourite SAW production - the 12-inch mix of Mandy Smith's "I Just Can't Wait" which kickstarted the Balearic Beat movement, sounds like nothing else SAW ever did and is total leftfield genius.

Another nugget of info regarding "Roadblock" - apparently they recorded a full vocal track with Jimmy Ruffin but dropped it at the last minute because they reckoned it made the record sound "too authentic"!