“I was in the studio, recording this song, when the enormity of what I was doing hit me – there were plaques on the walls from all the artists who had recorded there. Tony’s new solo version of Stay Another Day is available on FOD records via iTunes. "I love this time of year – I feel all festive just thinking about all those Christmas songs now.” It’s not a novelty record but a song in its own right, and I feel validated as a musician to have had a Christmas hit. "You never know if songs are going to be good or bad, really. Then we stuck some bells on it in production and suddenly we had a Christmas record. But I suppose people often think of people they miss at Christmas, so it means something to everyone.
"To me this song was just a ballad about someone I was missing. It was also tricky to record because Brian Harvey, our lead singer, hated it. Our label kept saying, ‘This will be a Christmas hit,’ but that was a bit difficult to imagine with it being hot and sunny. "I actually wrote the song and recorded it in August.
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It was such an intense feeling – like coming full circle. It took me right back to Christmases as a child, listening to the radio and wishing I was a pop star. “I found out that we had the number one slot while sitting on my bedroom floor in Woodford, Essex, listening to the radio. It’s still doing its job.”įor Midge’s live tour dates, see .uk I always say it’s the hardest working record out there – it has sold more than 3.7 million copies and every time it’s played on the radio, in a supermarket or on TV, the royalties still go to Africa. "You don’t get more ‘hot off the press’ than that. Bob made a cassette recording and took it straight to the BBC where they played it immediately, so I heard it over the radio while I was driving home, only an hour after leaving the studio. "We had to hit our press deadline so we recorded and produced for 24 hours solid and that was that. Everyone just turned up, worked hard and got the job done.
"But it was a bit awkward when I had to say things like, ‘You’re a bit out of tune, can you do it again?’ All egos were checked in at the door and there were no limos or entourages. It was very nerve- wracking being in a studio with all your peers – we had loads of artists who had never worked together before and we didn’t know how it would gel. I’d started work on the song by myself, but when everyone else turned up it suddenly felt real. "The run-up to Christmas 1984 was a mad time. That technology dates it a bit, but I guess it still stands up today. When I listen to it now, I can hear Ultravox in the synth sounds. "It starts with those bells of doom clanging away and it’s very gloomy then ends with the anthemic chorus of ‘feed the world’. I don’t think it’s a very good song – it’s a bit of an oddity. “This was a strange record to make, in that Bob Geldof and I were trying, for the first time in our careers, to write a song that would make as much money as possible. Maizie is a co-founder of the new Scandinavian Boot Camp in Sweden. "The Russian crew rubbed vodka into our feet and made us drink it to keep warm, so we were a bit drunk and covered in vodka for the whole time. We were running around in these long white coats and having to dash back into the trailer every couple of minutes to warm up. It was snowing and so cold, it was painful. "Recording it was huge fun but the strangest memory I have is of being in Red Square in Moscow, shooting the video. It was a Christmas song but we put a beat on, added the steel pans and made a good fun record for everybody to dance to. When I play it live or if I hear it on the radio, it always makes me smile – it’s magic.” We were in the studio corridor singing the chorus, with all these Americans looking at us like we were crazy, singing about Christmas in 100-degree heat. We actually recorded it in New York, on a boiling-hot day. "The winter of '73 was a pretty bad one in the UK with a lot of strikes but our song lifted people’s spirits, I’m certain of that. We had no idea it was going to be as big as it was – it sort of captures the spirit of the time. So Jim and Noddy Holder sat down to do one. “The song came about because our bassist Jim Lea’s grandmother said nobody wrote Christmas songs any more. Jimmy appears in Once in a Lifetime – The Final Tour from June 20, 2014. We were back at home and I ran to my father and said, ‘Dad! I got number one!’ He handed me a broom and said, ‘Go clean the yard.’” "I remember the exact moment when I heard I was top of the charts in the UK.
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