Bickerton and Waddington had been writing songs together since they were both members of the Pete Best Four in Liverpool in the early s. Their biggest success had been writing " Nothing but a Heartache ", a US hit for the Flirtations in In the early s, they came up with the idea for a rock 'n' roll musical.
They then offered it to the demo musicians, provided that they would become an actual group with the exception of the recording's lead singer, Paul Da Vinci , who had signed a solo recording contract with Penny Farthing Records.
Surprisingly, only John Richardson , who played drums and spoke the "please take my advice," Alan Williams, who sang in the chorus backing vocal group and Pete Arnesen who played piano [ 8 ] would sign up and later become a member of The Rubettes.
Gerry Shury , who did the string arrangements, said, 'This is not going to work: you can't have a vocal group singing 'Bop-shu-waddy' non-stop. The record was dormant for 6 or 7 weeks and then we got a break on Top of the Pops and it took off like a rocket and sold 6 million copies worldwide. Gerry said to me, 'I'm keeping my mouth shut and will concentrate on conducting the strings. It also reached No. The B-side, "Kaze no Prelude", was used as an image song in the drama series.
The single peaked at No. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Wayne Bickerton Tony Waddington. Recording details [ edit ]. Charts [ edit ]. Weekly charts [ edit ]. Year-end charts [ edit ]. Wink version [ edit ]. J-pop dance-pop. Track listing [ edit ]. Title Music Length 1. Chart performance [ edit ]. Other cover versions and appearances [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved 10 October Archived from the original on 26 July Retrieved 27 March Archived from the original on 25 August Retrieved 4 March London: Guinness World Records Limited.
