The New Cue #455 December 23: Christmas Special with East 17's Tony Mortimer: The story behind Stay Another Day
"It felt like walking down a high street with your trousers down"
Good morning,
Welcome to our final edition of the year, a Story Behind The Song Christmas Special as Tony Mortimer tells us about the tragic tale behind East 17’s enduring anthem Stay Another Day, how he felt as the nation took the song to their heart, beating Mariah Carey to Number One and more. Tony is a lovely fella and, as you’ll see below, in the course of their chat Niall asked him if he still had his white puffa jacket. Tony sent us the perfect picture in response.
Tony partnered with the music therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins for a special re-release of the song this year, with £1 from every purchase going to the organisation.
Thanks for reading The New Cue this year, and a special fist-bump to our paying subscribers. For £5 a month, they get full access to each and every edition as well as our epic archive and help to ensure we can keep doing this. You can join them here:
We’ll see you next year, enjoy the edition
Ted and Niall
The Story Behind The Song Christmas Special: Stay Another Day by East 17, 1994
Hello Tony. I’m sure you’ve never spoken about the creation of this song before, have you?
I was just thinking, I’ve been speaking about this for 30 years!
Did you have any idea when you wrote it you would be talking about this track three decades later?
I’ll never let go of saying that it wasn’t supposed to be released, it never was. I argued with the management and said, ‘You can’t release that’ but they felt strongly about it and they really liked it so it wasn’t the plan but here I am.
Why were you so resistant to it being released?
There was such a personal inspiration behind it, the storyline, and when I had my career, I’d do so many interviews and one of the first questions people asked, apart from ‘How did you all get together?’, was ‘What’s that song about?’. And I thought, ‘I can’t face people asking what that song’s about’ because I wrote it about my brother, it was inspired by his suicide. It was tragic and I was only in my early twenties and I thought, ‘I can’t face that’ so I said, ‘You can’t release that one, there’s loads of other songs on there you can release’ but I was told, ‘That is a Christmas Number One!’. I was like, ‘It’s not, it’s nothing to do with Christmas, it’s a hot August, stop it!’.
Had you ever written anything that personal before?
I got lines in other songs that are very personal but not as personal as that and how it went on to be so public.
How did that feel when it became so big that you’d put such a personal song out there?
It felt like walking down a high street with your trousers down. It wasn’t just me, I had a family as well that were involved in it and part of it so it opened up some conversations there and brought back terrible memories for them. It was very strange. The whole thing was about just trying to ride the wave and see what happens. It was a bit of a storm and then over the years it’s popped back as a Christmas jingle, like a bauble, and it’s become more of a Christmas thing now which I do enjoy.
Has your relationship changed with it over the years?
It has. I’ve let go of it but obviously every line and every word means something. It’s really small to me. Stay Another Day is a really small musical poem that was inspired by my brother’s death and that’s what it is to me, but to the people it became this big Christmas thing. It reminds me of him every time I hear it and every time I play it. It’s an interesting one. I’ve never known anything like it. One of the things you have to realise when you write songs is that if the public like it, it's now theirs, they’ve taken it and that’s the highest accolade you can get, they’ve accepted it as their song, so when you touch it and do things to it, they’re like, ‘What you doing with that song?!’ and you think, ‘Oh, OK’. I’ve grown up, when I was young I was very protective over it but now it’s a different relationship with it and it’s more distant, but it’ll always be this close to my heart and I’ll always play it to myself and enjoy it but it means something different to the public.
It’s lovely to hear when someone says, ‘Oh that song reminds me of this or that’ and you think, ‘Oh, I’ve done my job then’ because I’ve written it in an ambiguous way where it meant something to other people. That’s such a compliment.
How does it feel this time of year then where it’s unavoidable for a month or so, on the radio, in shops?
The word is acceptance. You have to accept that it’s not perfect the times it pops up, because of what it means to me, ‘Oh, there’s that memory again’. This time of year, it starts around September or October, we’re like, ‘Ooh here it comes’. The other day I was minding my own business going to do an interview and I was coming out of Tottenham Court Road and all of a sudden blasting across the road was Stay Another Day in this big foyer thing they’ve got there and there was this video they’d made of these weird cartoon characters of a snowman and stuff and you think, ‘This is mental’. It’s lovely, you can’t prepare for it, you’ve just gotta say, ‘It’s gonna come, you ain’t gonna expect it, it’s gonna be in a supermarket when you’re picking up the spuds’.
Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever heard it?
Well that was pretty strange the other day! The video and there was all people in there watching it and filming it and I was standing there and I wanted to go [adopts posh voice], ‘Do you know who wrote that song?’. It’s just surreal. I was smiling to myself watching everyone. In the supermarkets, it’s quite often around this time, or you’ll go to a Christmas market and you’ll think, ‘OK, they’ve played Mariah, they’ve played Wham, it’s gonna pop up soon’ and it does pop up.
And of course you held Mariah off the top spot at the time.
Yeah we did! I mean, her song has gone on to become one of the biggest selling Christmas songs ever and rightly so. My god she can sing, can’t she? What a great song. But we did hold it off in this country, I think she got to Number One eventually. I think Mr Blobby held us off a year earlier so we were her Mr Blobby!
What are your memories of it going to Number One that Christmas?
I listened to the countdown on the radio and I think it had got to Number Two, I was in a room on my own, and it weren’t us and I was like, ‘Oh man, we’ve bombed out, we’ve gone straight out the charts, it’s not even in there’. I was a bit upset about it and then I remember the DJ announcing it and it hit me like someone had smashed me over the head with a chair. It took a while to sink in that it was a Number One and we’d done it. It was really emotional. I was convinced it had gone out the charts, like, ‘Oh, another nearly song, we nearly got there’ and then he said it was Number One. And then it stayed again and stayed again and I think it only stopped because it was the end of the year and people had had enough of the year. It was really emotional because it was my only UK Number One that I’d written. I had a Number One album but never a single. It was everything I’d ever dreamed of happening.
Have you still got your white puffa jacket?
I’ve had a few over the years! You probably haven’t noticed but I’ve put on a couple of pounds, about ten stone, but the original one which I’m sure is in the garage, that wouldn’t fit my arm now. It’s gotta be in there somewhere. It was actually cream! They do look white and there was like a sheet that went over the top of it, but it was actually a very light cream colour but the sheet made it look white. Everyone’s always seen it white. It was very Boney M.
It’s a look you can only get away with if you’re Number One. I couldn’t wear one going to pick the kids up from school, there’s different rules.
I was at the train station and a chap had one on and I thought, ‘You wouldn’t’. I wouldn’t and I’m part of it! I thought, ‘I wonder if people think he’s one of us from behind’. But like you say, it’s true, it’s something you wouldn’t get away with unless you were Number One!
ND