Eddy Amoo
Member of the Real Thing, who reached No 1 with You to Me …
EDDY AMOO, who has died aged 73, was a vocalist and guitarist in the band the Real Thing, which in 1976 became, with the discosoul of You to Me Are Everything, the first all-black British group to reach No 1.
Although he would write many of their later songs, perhaps Amoo’s most valuable contribution to the band was his experience of 13 fruitless years with his previous group, the Chants. Though much praised, they had failed to break through, but Amoo used his knowledge of the music business to mentor the Real Thing when he joined them in the early Seventies.
The lead singer was his younger brother Chris, the other members being Dave Smith, Ray Lake and Kenny Davis (who afterwards left). Although they landed a contract with EMI, they struggled to have a hit, despite television exposure on Opportunity Knocks, where they lost to a yodeller.
A tour with David Essex helped to raise their profile, but Amoo admitted that when they first recorded You to Me Are Everything, penned by Ken Gold, he had no inkling it would make their names.
A first appearance on Top of the Pops proved crucial, though because of nerves they had spent much of the day drinking, having arrived (in a furniture van) at the BBC studios early to rehearse with the house band. The lyrics – “I would take the stars out of the sky for you …” – seemed to resonate with the public and within a few weeks it had topped the charts.
Record industry politics led to it not making much impact in the US, though Franki Valli covered it, but the band’s follow-up Can’t Get by Without You was also a hit in Britain, reaching No 2. Both songs resurfaced in the Top Ten a decade later after being remixed.
By then, however, the band’s success had gone flat. They had notched up half a dozen further chart entries, including Can You Feel the Force, written by Amoo after seeing Star Wars and a No 5 hit in 1979.
But when they put some more socially aware material into their 1977 LP Four from Eight (a reference to Liverpool 8, or Toxteth, where they had grown up), there was little appetite for it.
One of four children, Edward Robert Amoo was born in Liverpool on May 5 1944. His father Robert, a musician and tap dancer from Ghana, had reached the city as a stowaway. He found a room in a lodge for seamen and eventually married the proprietor’s niece, Moya, of Irish and African descent.
They brought up their family in Toxteth. As a youngster, Eddy was brought before a judge after being arrested in possession of a knife and credited his father’s plea to the court with having spared him from prison and an uncertain future.
He was less interested in a paternal attempt to teach him “highlife” guitar, a genre originating in Ghana. But rock’n’roll – spread in part by US soldiers stationed nearby – hooked him. While still a teenager he formed a black a cappella group with some friends, and by the early Sixties the Chants had gained local popularity. In 1962, they played a set at the Cavern Club with the Beatles as their backing band and were then briefly managed by Brian Epstein.
In the Eighties, the Real Thing toured again with David Essex after singing on his hit Me and My Girl (Nightclubbing), and Philip Bailey enjoyed success with Amoo’s politically charged Children of the Ghetto.
The band continued to tour, while Chris Amoo also became a leading dog breeder, winning Crufts in 1987 with his Afghan hound. Eddy Amoo, meanwhile, diversified into property development in Liverpool.
He is survived by his wife Sylvia, and by their four daughters.
Eddy Amoo, born May 5 1944, died February 23 2018