John Paul Young - Chart Successes

Chart Successes

Young renewed his association with Albert Productions, signing with them as a solo artist. Vanda & Young had returned to Australia from UK in 1973, after his stint in Superstar, they took over as his producers and resumed writing songs for him. Young's third single "It's Only Love" was released in March 1974 but failed to chart in the top 50. The B Side was a track called Bad Trip. Young said "no one liked it. It was a disappointment. It was about suicide but they must've thought it was about drugs because of the title. It wasn't banned or anything, they just didn't play it."

He considered a part in Godspell but decided against it, preferring to go back to sheet metal work. He left the job after a day and a half due to being hassled by the boss.

His next single was "Yesterday's Hero", which was released in March 1975, a song about the fleeting nature of pop stardom which clearly drew on Vanda & Young's own experiences as former teen idols. The single shot into the national charts in April and gave Young his first top ten hit, reaching No. 8 on the Australian singles chart and staying at No. 1 on the Melbourne charts for six weeks before being replaced by Hush's "Boney Maroney". The single sold strongly in the United States, where it reached No. 44 on the Cash Box Top 100 in February 1976. It was subsequently covered by the Bay City Rollers. One of the key factors in the Australian success of "Yesterday's Hero" was the film clip made to promote it, which enabled the song to be given heavy exposure on Countdown, which had just switched to its new one-hour Sunday evening format, following the official start of colour TV broadcasting on 1 March 1975. Young's debut performance on Countdown had him miming "Yesterday's Hero" while dressed in a sailor's suit surrounded on an island stage with a studio audience of screaming teen girls. He was dragged off the stage three times by audience members and the microphone cord was ripped out but the song continued uninterrupted. ABC TV producer, Michael Shrimpton believes his show, Countdown, played a big part in making "Yesterday's Hero" and Young a teen pop success.

John Paul Young was the first male singer that the show chose to make a megastar. It was an experiment. Could we actually take someone who was basically unknown and in a matter of two months turn him into a number one hit? —Michael Shrimpton

By mid-1975, Countdown's talent co-ordinator, Ian Meldrum, had started appearing on-screen with a weekly rock report. Young, as guest host, introduced Meldrum's second report, "Here's boring old Molly with boring old humdrum"—"Molly" Meldrum's Humdrum and Countdown continued until 1987, with Young often featured as a performer or guest host named "Squeak" or JPY by Meldrum. For touring purposes Young fronted John Paul Young and The All Stars, with members who had worked with Vanda and Young's former bandmate Stevie Wright. The All Stars included, Warren Morgan (ex-Chain, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs) on piano and vocals, who co-wrote songs with Young. Other early members were, Kevin Borich (La De Das) on guitar, Johnny Dick (Max Merritt & the Meteors, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs) on drums, Ronnie Peel (Missing Links, La De Das) on bass guitar and Ian Winter (Carson, Daddy Cool) on guitar. Billy Thorpe reportedly said they were the best rock band in Australia.

In May/June 1975, Young initially toured with Stevie Wright, where he would be introduced in the middle of the show to perform Pasadena and Yesterday's Hero. His next tour was with Sherbet and Stylus, with the latter also being his backing band. It was during this tour, Warren "Pig" Morgan was the musical director. "(Stylus) backed me with good vocal harmonies. They were beautiful," JPY said at the time. After Stevie Wright stopped touring, the All-Stars were free to tour with Young. Young headlined his first concert tour over the Christmas period of 1975-6, preferring to use local bands as their support acts.

Young's debut album, Hero, produced by Vanda and Young, was released in October 1975 on Albert Productions/EMI, which peaked at No. 9 on the Australian Album charts. Ray Goodwin (ex-Dragon) replaced Borich on guitar in The Allstars. A string of top 10 hits, written and produced by Vanda & Young, followed in Australia including "Love Game" (peaked at No. 4 in September 1975), "I Hate the Music" (No. 2, April 1976) and "I Wanna Do It with You" (No. 7, May 1977). Young's second album, J.P.Y., released in September 1976, which also peaked at No. 9, it contained three tracks co-written by Young with Morgan, including "Painting". The next singles "Here We Go" and "Where the Action Is" however did not reach the top 30. In addition to his Australian success, Young achieved top 20 hit singles in Sweden, with "Yesterday's Hero" and "I Hate the Music", and in South Africa where "I Hate the Music" and "Yesterday's Hero" were No. 1 hits, and "Keep on Smilin'" and "I Wanna Do It with You" were top ten hits.

In the 1976 Rolling Stone interview, Young gives an insight into working with the Vanda/Young team:

After I recorded Pasadena our relationship just developed. They play me their songs and say: "See what you think of this." Usually I like it, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I pick out something they've written and say "I want to do this", like I did with Things to do. (For the JPY album), we worked out some of the songs on the road. Others are worked out in the studio and some, like Standing in the Rain are produced by the studio system. Harry and George work it out and I come in later to do the vocal.

During 1976 various Allstars members issued their own recordings. Winters left to join Mondo Rock by January 1977, Peel switched to rhythm guitar, Phil Manning (Chain) on guitar and Dallas McDermott on bass guitar had joined. This line-up recorded his third album, Green, released in May, Manning left in June to be replaced by Ian Miller. In January 1978, Young released a disco single titled "Standing in the Rain", originally the B-side to 1976's "Keep on Smilin'", "Standing in the Rain" became a No. 11 hit in Austria, No. 3 in the Netherlands and peaked at No. 4 in Germany, selling over 400,000 copies.

Now there's another fluke. We'd sent over a song called "Keep On Smilin'" and "Standing in the Rain" was on the B-side. There was a guy working for Ariola, who didn't like "Keep On Smilin'" at all and turned it over and thought this might have something. He decided to sidestep the radio stations and went straight to a DJ friend in a club and it got played and it just bled from there into the charts and stayed in the charts for forty-something weeks —John Paul Young, The Drum Media, 30 July 2009

The European success prompted local radio stations to play "Standing in the Rain" and it peaked at No. 12 on the national singles charts in March 1978. His next single, "Love is in the Air", became a worldwide hit during 1978, peaking at No. 3 on the Australian charts in May, No. 7 in the US Bilboard Hot 100, and No. 5 in the UK singles chart. Also in May, Jacques De Jongh (Hush) had replaced McDermott on bass guitar in The All Stars. The associated album, Love Is in the Air, was released in October and reached the top 40 on the Australian albums chart. European chart success for "Love Is in the Air" included, No. 2 in Norway and Sweden, No. 3 in Austria and Germany, No. 5 in Switzerland and No. 9 in the Netherlands. The song peaked at No. 2 in South Africa. As a result of his popularity in Australia he was crowned 'King of Pop' in October 1978. "Love Is in the Air" also won 'Most Popular Australian Single' and Vanda & Young won both 'Best Australian Record Producer' and 'Best Australian Songwriter' at the same King of Pop Awards. Subsequent singles, "The Day that My Heart Caught Fire" which peaked in the top 20, and "Heaven Sent" continued the disco style.

The 1979 line-up of The All Stars were, Ray Arnott (ex-The Dingoes) on drums, Tony Buchanan on saxophone, Miller and Morgan, with Vanda & Young briefly joining on guitars to record Heaven Sent released in September. By mid-1980 Young had left Albert Productions and ended his association with Vanda & Young. He used session musicians for his 1960s' covers album, The Singer released in 1981 but neither Heaven Sent nor The Singer reached the top 50. Young turned to a more contemporary electropop sound and adult oriented style. He signed to the Australian branch of German label I.C. Records in 1983 and flew to Germany with producer, composer and keyboard player John Capek (ex-Carson) to start recording a new album, with sessions at studios in Hanover, Munich, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Sydney. Most of the material was co-written by Capek and Canadian Marc Jordan, together with a Young and Morgan composition "Cryin' Eyes". The resulting album, One Foot in Front was released in March 1984, it was renamed Soldier of Fortune for the European market. The title track, "Soldier of Fortune", peaked at No. 17 on the national singles chart, other singles "War Games" (January 1984), "L.A. Sunset" (1984) and "Call the Night" (1984) all failed to chart into the top 50, possibly due to the demise of the record company. "Soldier of Fortune" gained further prominence when it was picked as the theme song for the 1984 Summer Paralympics held in New York, and also went on to be a hit in Germany. Young released two more one-off singles, "Spain", in October 1986 and "Don't Sing that Song", in June 1989.

On 25 January 1988 Young performed in the 'Royal Command, New South Wales Bicentennial Concert' in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Televised across Australia, the event was viewed by over 10 million people and prompted an invitation to appear at World Expo 88 in Brisbane.

In late 1988, Young and his family moved to Lake Macquarie near Newcastle. Newcastle's first FM radio station, New FM, was preparing to open in 1989 and Young was asked to head their All-Australian programme, Oz Made Mondays. The programme was successful with Young moving through the ranks of the station to Morning Announcer garnering four No. 1 rating spots for his Breakfast and Drive Time programmes along the way.