Tony Hiller
Songwriter and creator of Brotherhood of Man whose Save Your Kisses for Me was a 1970s smash hit
TONY HILLER, who has died aged 91, was for decades a prolific, versatile and highly successful figure within the British popular music industry; he was perhaps most noted as the creator of the group Brotherhood of Man, which in the 1970s won the Eurovision Song Contest and enjoyed such charttopping hits as Save Your Kisses for Me.
The band had two incarnations. The first was put together by Hiller, then a music publisher and songwriter, as well as a producer for Decca Records, in the late 1960s. It was made up of session singers he knew, among them Roger Greenaway, who would himself subsequently pen hits such as I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.
This Brotherhood of Man was best known for United We Stand, the demo version of which was sung by Hiller’s office boy at the time, Reg, who later became Elton John. It reached the Top 20 in Britain and the US in 1970.
Its refrain “United we stand, divided we fall” (later re-appropriated by Hiller for a song for Manchester United), gained special resonance in America after the September 11 attacks. It was recorded by Carrie Underwood, who is among 500 artists to have sung one of 1,400 tunes written by Hiller.
Brotherhood of Man’s line-up was reluctant to tour, however, so some years later Hiller revived it with younger singers. He would go on to co-write all their major hits, notably Save Your Kisses. In 1976 it won the competition (held at the Albert Hall) to be Britain’s Song for Europe and was already soaring up the charts in the UK when it triumphed at The Hague.
Its victory owed not a little to the band’s choreography – simple but catchy, like many of Hiller’s tunes. It had been his idea to add movement to the performance, the first time it had been done at Eurovision, and he held firm when the BBC only wanted to film the group from the waist up.
The song went on to sell more than six million copies and to become the fifth-biggest smash of the decade, behind Wings’ Mull of Kintyre but ahead of any hits by, for instance, Abba. It brought Hiller three Ivor Novello Awards and he followed it with two other No 1 hits for the group, Figaro and Angelo.
The former he claimed to have been inspired by Spanish waiters romancing his daughter and the latter by Romeo and Juliet (“Running away together, running away forever – Angelo”). Both remain eternally evocative of their particular era.
One of eight children, Tony Toby Hiller was born at Bethnal Green, London, on July 30 1927. His grandparents, who were Jews, had fled pogroms in Prussia, disembarking at Liverpool under the impression that it was New York.
The family did later settle in America, where Tony’s uncle sold sheet music with his partner, the young Chico Marx, and worked for Irving Berlin with Tony’s father, Sam. Sam returned to Britain to fight in the First World War and later ran a gym for boxers in Hammersmith. Tony would become a qualified boxing referee.
As a boy, his great friend was Vidal Sassoon, the future hairdresser. The pair dedicated much of their time to disrupting meetings of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts in the East End.
Hiller undertook several ventures – including selling jelly and driving a taxi – before following his heart and pursuing music. He made the decision after surviving lymphoma in his twenties. He and his brother Irving performed as a crooning duet alongside the likes of Alma Cogan and Tommy Cooper.
He then turned to writing songs, for instance Caroline, which became the theme for the pirate radio station Radio Caroline, as well as light orchestral dance music. Thereafter, he became the manager of Mills Music, a publishing business in Denmark Street, the centre of London’s record industry. In 1965, his partner Cyril Gee bought Tim Rice’s first song, That’s My Story.
After Brotherhood of Man’s heyday had passed, Hiller moved for a time to Nashville, the heart of the country music business, where he was known affectionately as the Rhinestone Rabbi.
A supporter of Chelsea – his friends included Terry Venables, who has musical credentials – Hiller subsequently wrote numerous songs for football clubs, such as Everton’s Here We Go (1985) and the England 1986 World Cup anthem, We’ve Got the Whole World at Our Feet.
A jolly man who enjoyed his success and remained working into his nineties, Hiller was much liked by his fellow musicians. He was a former “king” of the Sods – the Society of Distinguished Songwriters.
His first marriage, to Norma, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife Leigh, whom he met in 1979 and to whom he was married in 1991, as well as by a son and daughter of his first marriage.
Tony Hiller, born July 30 1927, died August 26 2018