Mike Stock of Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW) "crawled on [his] knees" to get Kylie Minogue to record with them again after they kept her waiting on ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.
The 65-year-old songwriter was part of the producing unit also including Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman – who together launched Kylie’s pop career in the late 1980s – and Stock has revealed how he had to beg the Australian pop beauty to continue recording with them after they accidentally "insulted" her when they rush wrote the 1988 number one hit in less than an hour and how they had no idea it would be a chart-topping song.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Stock explained: "Kylie Minogue was the complete package, though. A great little singer, a great-looking girl, a great little dancer. Unfortunately, we’d insulted her when we recorded ‘I Should Be So Lucky’: she’d been hanging around all week and Pete forgot to tell us. We had to get the song together in about 40 minutes and she left not having had a happy experience. We didn’t know we had a hit on our hands and so when it went to No 1 for five weeks, someone said: "What’s the follow-up?" We didn’t have one. So I went out to Australia at the start of 1988 and met her in a bar with Jason and her manager. I basically crawled 100 yards on my knees and apologised profusely. She took it well and we did some more recording."
After realising the 48-year-old beauty was "the full package", Stock worked tirelessly on some new material for her, which they’d get together to work on after she finished shooting Australian soap ‘Neighbours’, which she starred in alongside Jason Donovan from 1986 to 1988.
He added: "She would be working on ‘Neighbours’ from 5am, then come to record with me at 6pm. Tiring for her. But at least this time I had the songs ready, the lyrics typed up and everything in order."
From that point on, Stock pulled out all the stops to make Kylie the star she is now.
He continued: "I said to Matt when we started working with her that it would be our purple patch because all the signs were right – they were just moving’ Neighbours’ from before the lunchtime news on a Wednesday to every day before the evening news. So we had an advert for her on the BBC every single day. I put all my effort into her."
In 2015, Kylie reunited with SAW for help on her track ‘Every Day’s Like Christmas’, bringing the trio back together for the first time in almost 25 years.
At the time, Pete Waterman said: "The three of us have not done a single for 25 years. We have never fallen out but there was never a purpose where we thought it was worth working together.
"I told the others this is what Kylie wants and they said, ‘Let’s do it — return at the top’."
Mike Stock begged Kylie Minogue to continue with SAW
