Mike Rutherford, Genesis stalwart and semi-frontman of Mike & The Mechanics and their producer Chris Neil have just spilled the beans to The Guardian regarding the creation of All I Need Is A Miracle, one of their biggest hits.
It turns out that the combo of pop producer Neil – who’d cut his teeth crafting hits for such lightweight fare as Sheena Easton and Dollar – and Rutherford – the lanky, hairy, curmudgeonly prog backbone for Genesis – was all the work of the band’s publishing company. “They thought the two of us – the yin and yang – would do well together. And they were right. We hit it off immediately,” explains Neil.
And, having been handed a cassette of a Rutherford demo and with all the time in the world during a stay at an oh-so-mid-'80s health farm, Neil was soon knee-deep in Rutherford’s half-ideas.
“There were loads of bits on the cassette I gave Chris – and they were pretty crap,” admits Rutherford. “But Chris has great ears. He can hear a few chords and go: ‘That’s worth looking at.’”
Game of two halves
“Mike already had the “All I need is a miracle / All I need is you” section,” explains Neil. “I loved that. While I was meticulously going through the second side, I found what became the verse instrumentation and pre-chorus. I pretty much wrote the verses, then came back to Mike and we welded it all together.”
But who would be stepping up to Miracle’s mic? “I’d sung on my previous solo album [1982’s Acting Very Strange] and I thought: ‘I’m never going to do that again’, admits Rutherford. “When I played the band the demos on the first day with me singing, you could see their faces, like: “We’re in trouble here, boys.”
Time for some fresh blood and it’s perhaps a little-known fact that the Mechanics’ self-titled first album in fact features two lead vocalists. And while Paul Young (not that one, but the one from Sad Cafe) does feature, it’s the more familiar Paul Carrack that’s the boss of Miracle… “The songs chose them. Paul just sounded better on Miracle: he had a rockier voice,” explains Neil.
Getting a new sound
And – for Rutherford at the time – Miracle represented an opportunity to present a whole new sound. “I wanted to try something different with the Mechanics. Drum machines were coming in, and I always liked programming stuff, so it felt natural to write the drum part on Simmons drum pads,” he explains, with the track setting a sound and style that mothership Genesis were to subsequently take on their world-conquering Invisible Touch album the following year.
And, after crafting the hit in Montserrat (of course) – “Chris rang me on a cold, wet November day, saying: “What about we record in Montserrat?” remembers Rutherford – the team soon had a hit on their hands.
“Miracle came out in America and just took off. There was a weird moment when, in the US Top 20, there was a Gabriel song, a Collins song, a Genesis song and a Mechanics song,” remembers Rutherford.
“American radio got it straight away and it went Top 5,” says Neil. “I remember getting into a taxi in New York just as it was coming on the radio. It sounded fantastic.”
Mike and the Mechanics are currently touring the UK with a new best-of compilation, Looking Back – Living the Years, out now.
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