Scratch Records SinglesStars - 1981Nicky Robson

Fame by David Bowie is one of my favourite songs, period. I was 18 when I wrote Stars and I wanted to write something that was my version of Fame and quite honestly, as a tribute to the song. If you listen to the bass lines, there is a hint of similarity in the two. Even the lyric of Stars has a passing reference to Fame.

Stars was one of four songs recorded at Gary's Rock City studio to supply the first two singles and form the basis of the first album. The other three tracks were Eye To Eye, Boys and She's Like Ice. Although all four tracks were finished, for one reason or another, Boys never made it to pressing and I walked away from the business to pursue a career in film.

Stars itself, was the most arduous and problematic track that I've ever recorded. It took around 14 days to finally get an agreed mix when the budget probably only ran to three days. Part of the reason for this is the enormous quantity of music tracks recorded in the song. In those days, we only had 24 recordable tracks available on the Otari, so once you had recorded 23 — or less actually — you had to bounce down sub-mixes to a single track to free up another batch of tracks. I think that there are around 46 tracks of instruments alone on Stars so although that kind of track usage is not uncommon now, back then it was rare. It remains the single most expensive song I ever recorded. The B-side Eye To Eye, on the other hand, was written, recorded and mixed in one day.

Gary and I fell out more than once during the recording, which to be fair, is not an unusual situation when you are in a studio for 20 hours a day. It happens all the time. The thing about Gary though, that not many people seem to respect, is that he is a brilliant producer for other artists, never short of an idea for improvement. Stars saw an amazing change through his production and it is a shame that it didn't do much chart-wise.

The cover of the 7-inch version was also a little light-fingered in originality. I liked the Pleasure Principle cover and decided to do a similar, albeit plagiaristic style. The cover design was done by me although I'm not particularly proud of it. The single was also launched as a 12-inch which is actually how long the original recording ran. The 7-inch was just an early fade-out of the 12-inch recording. The 12-inch did particularly well in Japan, if I remember correctly but there was no picture cover for the 12-inch, just a black RCA cover.

As for my band, they all did pretty well for themselves. My first drummer, Terry Lee Miall went off and joined Adam & The Ants as one of the two drummers in the band, Andrew Hale went off to join Sade as her keyboard player, Alex Godson joined Eighth Wonder with Patsy Kensit and Simon Kunz, who replaced Terry Lee, became an actor.