Wet Wet Wet: 'We used to get star struck by Clare Grogan and Edwyn Collins' - Scotland's Favourite Albums

They’d be gone for a week’s holiday, but time was of the essence.

“To this day, my mother and father still don’t know the extent of what went on,” confessed the drummer of Wet Wet Wet, nearly 40 years later.

“I had to get my sisters, who’d been given the job of looking after me, to swear they wouldn’t grass me up … and to their credit they never did.”

For the next seven days it was bedlam. Furniture was stacked against the walls of the living room to clear a space for Tommy’s drum kit.

Keyboard player Neil Mitchell bought an old piano, which was delivered to the house in a van. Bassist Graeme Clark rigged up a £40 reel-to-reel tape recorder he’d bought from The Barras.

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When singer Mark McLaughlan, who’d later adopt the name Marti Pellow, stepped up to the mic they made their first demo.

“We recorded for a whole week from early in the morning to last thing at night,” recalled Tommy.

“My sisters were going crazy. So were the neighbours, particularly when we did drum tracks at 4am.”

The band recorded Something Special and Home And Away as they took their first tentative steps as songwriters.

“Immediately, there was some kind of rapport. We were literally nose-to-nose, working out exactly how you wrote a song,” said Graeme.

But disaster struck when the temperamental reel-to-reel chewed up the tape, destroying it.

“We ended up with all this ‘spaghetti’. It was unplayable, unusable,” said Tommy.

On May 27, 1983, the band scraped together £34 for a session at Centre City Sound in Glasgow.

Tommy and Graeme raised the cash by washing dishes in a local Chinese restaurant.

They recorded I Suppose, Please Louise and a new version of Something Special, which later paved the way for their second single, Sweet Little Mystery as its opening lyric was: “My love has taken a tumble/And I’m still standing.”

“Something Special was a breakthrough moment. Suddenly, we had something we could play and it was only three minutes long,” revealed Graeme.

“It makes you go, well, we’ve done it once, so why can’t we do it again?”

It was now time to impress the London-based record companies.

“We called Directory Inquiries to get their numbers and rang them one-by-one,” recalled Tommy.

“Our attitude was, we’ve got a demo, let’s sign a deal. That’s how naïve we were.”

Several majors turned them down flat, including Phonogram, who rejected the demo saying it was too crudely recorded.

Geoff Travis, boss of Rough Trade, wanted to sign them but he’d spent his entire budget trying to break a new band called The Smiths.

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Over the next two years, the band gigged relentlessly trying to get a break.

“We were never considered cool enough to be part of the Scottish music scene,” admitted Tommy.

“We’d go to The Hellfire Club to rehearse and feel like outsiders.

“If Clare Grogan of Altered Images or Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice walked in we got star struck. They were in REAL bands. We were coming at it in a different way. Maybe that’s what made us stand apart.

“We also had no real life experience. So we were trying to live our dreams through music.”

The band chose the name Wet Wet Wet from a lyric in the song, Gettin’ Havin’ And Holdin’ by Scritti Politti.

In 1985, Phonogram won a bidding war and signed them on a deal worth £600,000.

But the two-year road to Popped In Souled Out was problematic.

The band demo-ed songs with Gil Norton, who’d worked with Echo And The Bunnymen and China Crisis.

But when they were then paired with hit US producer John Ryan it was a disaster.

“When a new act is signed, many labels think, what’s big in the charts at the moment and who produced them?” said Graeme.

“It’s then a case of, let’s apply that model to our band. During our first meeting with John, alarm bells rang when he said: ‘OK, who do you want to sound like?’ I wanted to sound like us. Not a carbon copy of somebody already in the charts.”

Next, the band demo-ed Wishing I Was Lucky, with Wilf Smarties in Edinburgh.

The song, inspired by life on-the-dole in Clydebank, was a turning point.

They couldn’t wait to play it to their A&R man.

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“He hated the tape and threw it on the floor saying: ‘This is rubbish’,” said Tommy.

With relations at an uneasy impasse, Stephen Hague, who’d produced The Pet Shop Boys, was drafted in to see if he could turn the track into a hit.

“It was such a fantastically-made demo it was impossible to improve on it,” Graeme recalled.

“Stephen did have a good try but said: ‘It sounds better than some songs in the charts’. He was right. The original was better.”

What happened next took them across the Atlantic. The band jumped at the chance to work with Willie Mitchell at Royal Studios in Memphis. The veteran producer was behind hits by Al Green, Ike And Tina Turner and Solomon Burke.

But while it was a valuable experience, the band quickly realised the tracks could prove commercial suicide.

“We liked the songs, but being honest there was no way we had anything which could have cracked the charts,” admitted Tommy.

“It was black, earthy, soulful, warm, human … everything the Top 40 wasn’t at that particular time.

“We were probably in the hole for £400,000, a level of money mind boggling to four guys who’d just got off the dole.”

When Phonogram deemed the album “unfit for release” it was back to the drawing board.

It was time for one final roll of the dice. They were paired with Michael Baker and Axel Kroll, who’d had success with The Blow Monkeys.

They remixed the demo of Wishing I Was Lucky, which had cost just £600, and it was released as their first single. It entered the charts at No99.

“That was good enough for me. We were in the Top 100, so it was a hit,” said Tommy.

Over the next few weeks it climbed to No6 and the band appeared on Top Of The Pops.

They moved to Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey for the album sessions.

“We got more assured that, finally, what we were doing was right,” said Tommy.

“We gave the version of Sweet Little Mystery, recorded in Memphis, to Axl. He came back with this sound that combined soul and pop. So our confidence was building day by day.

“We believed we had a guaranteed second Top 40 hit.”

The sessions also produced further hits Angel Eyes and Temptation, plus East Of The River and I Can Give You Everything, which remain key songs in their live set.

The album reached No2 in the charts, held off the top spot by Bad by Michael Jackson.

The cover art showing the band, suited and booted, was a homage to The Temptations, The Miracles and The Four Tops.

They also toured the UK – playing a sell-out Christmas show at the SECC – which helped the album gather further momentum. It reached No1 on January 16, 1988.

“We’d had a number of false starts, so the album was really three years of hard graft,” recalled Tommy.

“I don’t think I listened to it all the way through after we’d made it. There is NEVER a moment when you make yourself a big mug of tea, sit down with a cake, and say: ‘I think I’ll listen to Popped In Souled Out’.

“But in 2017, on the 30th anniversary, I did exactly that. And I heard just how diverse the songwriting and production was.

“On some tracks, we were naïve and still hadn’t found our true voice. While on others you can hear the real sound of the band.

“But there was a real joy in the room – an inspiration in the air – and that got transferred to tape.

“There’s a little caption I wrote on the sleeve which says: ‘We are first and foremost a soul band’.

“Popped In Souled Out gave us everything we ever wanted … success and a career. That’s a very high benchmark. It captures perfectly a moment in time.”

The Billy Sloan Show is on BBC Radio Scotland every Saturday at 10pm.

Wet Wet Wet with Elton John

WHEN ELTON CAME CALLING

ELTON John couldn’t believe his eyes when he dropped by Wet Wet Wet’s dressing room to say hello.

The superstar was such a big fan of Popped In Souled Out he’d invited the band to open for him on a US tour.

The itinerary included legendary venues like The Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden.

“Elton loved our music so he thought … I can help these guys,” recalled Tommy.

“We arrived at the Spectrum Arena in Philadelphia after an overnight flight and were absolutely shattered. We ended up lying on the floor of this tiny dressing room trying to grab some sleep before soundcheck.

“Elton saw us and said: ‘What are you doing?’ He immediately gave us his dressing room with tables laid out with food and which was decorated with plastic trees and astroturf. It was the real five-star treatment. He said: ‘You need it more than I do’.”

The Wets were promoted to the premier league as a live band on the back of the album’s phenomenal success.

They toured the UK with Lionel Richie and played the famous Budokan in Tokyo.

Another highlight was their appearance at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium. The list of acts taking part – including Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, The Bee Gees, Eurythmics and Peter Gabriel – read like a Who’s Who of Pop.

“It was a wonderful day. I was walking around in an absolute daze at the sheer scale of the event,” recalled Tommy. “You looked one way and there was Sting talking to Bryan Adams, looked another to see Phil Collins.

“I felt like a wee kid in amongst all of that. Even though we were only doing one song – Wishing I Was Lucky – it was the biggest, most important single show we’d ever been involved in.

“Two minutes before we walked on stage, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits gave us a little bit of advice. He said: ‘You’re going out there to play to 70,000 people but don’t forget there is another 600 million watching on TV in 67 different countries.

“That really put the fear of God into us. But we were honoured to take part. It opened a huge door for us.”

Now, the new-look Wets – fronted by singer Kevin Simm – are hitting the road again.

In October, they play gigs in Perth, Aberdeen and Edinburgh as part of a 20-date UK tour to promote The Journey, their first studio album since 2007.