Unbelievable rise Musical trip from bedsit to Broadway
John Wright talks to a musician whose career has spanned playing pubs at Gloucester Docks to writing a duet for megastars Beyonce and Shakira
THINK back to 1991 and you’ll possibly remember where you were when the catchy pop song Unbelievable by EMF blasted onto the scene.
Written by Gloucestershire musician Ian Dench, it reached number three on the UK Singles Chart, number one on America’s Billboard Hot 100 and the top 10 of a dozen other countries.
“I remember driving into the States,” Ian tells me. “We did a gig in Montreal and got on the bus and heard it had gone to number one just as we crossed the border for a tour, all sold out – a wonderful, crazy, non-stop six weeks.”
The Billboard review said the band had “stormed European charts with this insinuating, Manchester-influenced rave”.
It added: “Scratchy, neopsychedelic guitar riffs nicely contrast the track’s hip-hop groove, promising extensive exposure here.”
Memorable songs keep popping up, like royalties for their creators. Ian is
the first to acknowledge they are often shared.
“I was the main songwriter on the record, but the way we did it was that everybody would get a proportion of it,” he said.
I ask him if he liked Kraft Foods’ clever use of the enduring song in a 2005 TV advert to promote a crumbly cheese.
“Yeah, and they changed the words to ‘You’re crumbelievable.’ If you look online there are so many cover versions of it, this way and that. Also, they paid very well.
“American clothes label Target used it and did a version on a glockenspiel, and last year Zadig & Voltaire, a cool French fashion label, did a remix of it in their ‘Girls Can do Anything’ perfume TV commercial.”
Ian’s success with EMF – the band had eight top 30 hits and three UK top 30 albums – has kept him in demand.
He recalls: “After EMF, I started working with Amanda Ghost, a young singer. She got a record deal and wrote You’re Beautiful with James Blunt and it ended up a huge hit.
“She said to me one day, ‘Somebody’s called. They want me to write a song for Beyonce.’”
They were in New York, unaware their previous success had been spotted.
“We went to this huge Universal building and met Ty Ty Smith, who said, ‘Hey, I’ve got somebody for you to meet,’ and in walked Jay-z and Beyonce, who asked us to write a song,” he said.
“When Amanda said, ‘I’m an artist, not a jobbing songwriter’ they said, ‘That’s what we want, something real.’
“When Amanda said, ‘We can get to know you and...’ they said, ‘No time for that. It’s going to be a duet with Shakira and we’ve got the studio booked tonight.’
“So Amanda and I went to the hotel room and wrote Beautiful Liar. All of a sudden we got these calls, ‘Oh, can you write a song for us?’ and we were flying to New York all the time.”
For Ian, it’s still like a dream come true out of nowhere.
“I remember playing my guitar in my first band when I was 17 or 18 in The Flag pub in the Docks in Gloucester and I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. Imagine if I could do this for a living.’”
Born in Cheltenham he grew up in Gloucester and, although living in London, he feels the pull of the West Country.
“My parents live in Gloucester and I go back and see them,” he said. “My best friends live in Cheltenham and I go back there, go drinking in The Beehive.
“I love Cheltenham and feel attached to the countryside whenever I drive back down the M40 and then the A40 from Oxford.
“It’s like going home when I’m driving through the Cotswolds.”
He remembers his first band Apple Mosaic playing in Gloucester in 1984.
“At the end of the night a guy came up and said, ‘Here’s your money.’ I said, ‘What money?’ He said, ‘So many came to see you we made a profit.’ I remember walking home with £100 stuffed into my pocket, thinking, ‘Maybe I can make a career of this.’”
After Apple Mosaic ended, EMF began in 1989.
“The other four guys lived in Cinderford and they allowed me to be an honorary Forester,” Ian says.
“It was so much fun. They were a great bunch and funny. Cinderford’s a tiny town, but it had such a big heart
and I loved going there.
“One famous rehearsal they set the fire alarms off and the fire brigade got called out, but it was pranks rather than malicious. We’d go out into the woods, go swimming in the lakes.”
EMF are still going and this year (or early next) there will be a 30th anniversary release of their albums.
“Recently, I’ve been feeling my age after spending years writing pop songs for young people,” the 54 year old confides.
“Amanda called one day and said we’ve got to write a song for King Kong, the musical. So we did and they loved it and flew us to New York and they put our two songs in the show.
“I took my wife back to the opening night in December and all of a sudden there I am with my Broadway debut, which was incredible.”
So, the moral of this story? “There are so many songs I’ve written and nothing’s happened to them,” he said.
“Every day I get up and write a song, but the vast majority come to nothing. But occasionally something works.
“I think you have to really love it. I got a place at Oxford to study art and then my band got a record deal and I dropped out to do a sabbatical and then I didn’t go back.
“We made a record and then nothing happened to it and I’d been living in London for that.
“Then I moved back to Gloucester and couldn’t face living back with my mum and dad. So I got a bedsit in Gloucester.
“I remember my mother coming to see the bedsit and she cried. She said, ‘You’ve ruined your life, gave up Oxford University, your band’s come to nothing, and you’re living in a bedsit.’
“I mean, to be fair, she was worried about her son. But it was in that bedsit that I wrote Unbelievable.”
He continued: “For me it was always like, well this is the next step.
“Mum and Dad did support me through everything. They were both musical and would have loved to do music professionally – my dad played the guitar, my mum sang – and it hadn’t happened because their parents hadn’t necessarily supported them.
“They said, ‘You want to do that, then that’s what you do.’
“Now that I have children myself my wife always says, ‘I won’t let them drop out.’”
I remember playing my guitar in my first band when I was 17 or 18 in The Flag pub in the Docks in Gloucester and I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. Imagine if I could do this for a living’