Love is blind they say, but the Stylistics prove it has never been deaf. Their sumptuous 1970s hits like Betcha By Golly, Wow and You Make Me Feel Brand New were the essence of romance distilled into seven inch slices of Philadelphia soul.
That irresistible alchemy has aged well. Singer Airrion Love grins broadly as he recalls a pre-pandemic St Valentine’s Day concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
“Afterwards, a woman posted a comment saying she’d come to the show with her ex-husband and mother-in-law and that after hearing the songs, she and her ex fell in love all over again. They were ready to get back together.”
Did they? “Oh no,” he says with a laugh. “Reality kicked in and she decided ‘I’m not going through that again’.”
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“Recently I was stopped by a lady who had a young woman with her, maybe 22 or 23,” he says. “She told me ‘This is my daughter; I want you to know she was conceived to your music’.”
Airrion keeps his own love-life private.
The Stylistics formed in 1968 from a merger of two rival high school singing groups, the Monarchs and The Percussions, who were being depleted by college admissions and the Vietnam War draft. Airrion, James Smith and original lead singer Russell Thompkins Jnr came from the former, James Dunn and Herb Morrell from the latter.
Their English teacher Beverly Hamilton put them together. “After four months of arguing about the group’s name, we finally started working locally, playing clubs in and around Philadelphia.”
Their guitarist Robert “Doc”’ Douglas came up with the classy handle, The Stylistics, and when local record company boss Bill Perry invited them to cut a single, Doc co-wrote You’re A Big Girl Now with their road manager Marty Bryant.
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The $500 record was a hit in cities all along the Eastern Seaboard.
Perry did a deal with Avco Records to promote it nationally – the song reached Top Ten in the R&B Chart – and suddenly the band were playing everywhere from New York to Baltimore.
As they gathered steam, they landed a support slot with the Godfather of Soul James Brown on a 35-date US tour.
“He was very instrumental to our success; through him we got the chance to play large venues all over the States.”
Audiences loved them too much though. “We started off doing a 15minute set but went down too well. He didn’t like that. By the end, he’d cut us back to five minutes.”
Their 1971 debut album, produced by Thom Bell, was a treasure trove of timeless classics. It spawned their first two US Top Ten hits, You Are Everything and Betcha By Golly, Wow – their first British success.
By the time their run of hits ended in 1977, they’d notched up nine UK Top Tens and a further five Top 30s.
“The first time I had to pinch myself was when I heard You’re A Big Girl Now on the radio,” recalls Love, whose rich baritone was a counterpoint to lead singer Russell’s unfaltering falsetto.
“I was walking home and I heard it coming out of a neighbour’s house. I ran home to find the station on the dial so my mother could hear it.”
For Airrion, who’d been singing since childhood, it was an unexpected joy.
“My mother said when I was little, I was always singing in the house. I’d sing songs by Little Anthony & The Imperials; later it’d be Motown. I enjoyed it but I never thought I’d have a singing career. We were very lucky when Avco contacted Thom Bell because that first album had so many songs that were hit singles.”
Eight of them, mostly written by Bell and Linda Creed, were hits in the R&B chart before it was even released.
“The album went gold. It was a dream come true.”
The dream, and the hits, got bigger; as did the size and passion of audiences.
“When we were working the album in Washington DC, we had to come off stage and go back to the hotel quickly because if we waited for the show to end, we’d be chased by teenage girls. But they’d come back to the hotel and be all over it.
“We played Madison Square Garden and the police put barricades around the stage. At the end there was a police spotlight shining directly at me as I was walking across it and I literally walked off stage. I fell about six feet. I couldn’t see where the stage ended. I thought I was at the edge of it, but I stepped on a barricade. That was it.”
Nothing was broken, except maybe the hearts of besotted fans who couldn’t lay their hands on him.
Love’s favourite memories are headlining the London Palladium in 1976, New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1974, and “a football stadium show in South Africa right after the end of apartheid in front of 65,000 people”. In 1975 the Stylistics did four weeks at the Riviera in Las Vegas as the opening act for Petula Clark.
“It was the first time we’d played a venue like that. We had to do two shows a night which was strange and hard for us, we were used to doing one. We played Vegas a number of times after that but never a residency.”
They performed their first British shows for free in “1971 or 1972”, with a showcase performance at Gulliver’s nightclub in the West End. They never had to do that again.
In these incredible years, The Stylistics racked up eight platinum albums, one double-platinum one, and a 1974 Grammy nomination for You Make Me Feel Brand New.
“When I heard that song for the first time, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” Airrion says, still in awe of Bell and Creed’s songwriting chemistry.
Why did the hits stop?
“A combination of things,” he says. “When disco came out, popular music changed. A few radio stations played our stuff but not many. They tried to get us to do disco songs. That wasn’t us.
“Things still worked for in the States but they slowed down. We worked more in the UK and Europe.”
Their worst live experience was in Hawaii when a local promoter convinced them to use house musicians. “We got there and they barely knew any of the music, and the songs they did know they weren’t playing it right – even at the soundcheck on the day.”
Airrion decided they’d perform to backing tracks with the band miming. “We had to do an hour, we had 45 minutes of tracks. So I asked for requests and we sang them a cappella. We got through it but never again!”
Russell quit in 2000, forming his own New Stylistics outfit in 2004. “He got tired of working with us,” explains Airrion. “There were songs he’d refuse to do. Now we do them all.” And Barrington “Bo”’ Henderson, formerly of The Temptations, hits the falsetto notes.
Does Airrion have faults? “Some people think I know too much and am very opinionated, but that’s only because I’m right all the time,” he laughs, adding, “No, I’m a good-hearted guy, I don’t like a lot of drama.”
In 1994 the group’s name was embedded in cement on Philadelphia’s Walk Of Fame. Now, ahead of their 35-date UK tour, Airrion believes music has come full circle.
Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak’s 2021 Silk Sonic album was a love letter to the Stylistics’ era and modern UK audiences range from 1970s veterans to teenagers.
“We’d like to thank out UK fans for 55 years of support,” he says. “British fans never let us down. Each year they come, and they’re very enthusiastic.
“They always make us feel at home. Our British shows are always sold out before we get there so I’d say thank you – for keeping our music alive.”
- The Stylistics UK ‘Greatest Hits Tour’ runs from October to December 2023, visit: www.thestylistics.org
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