Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman

“If you’re going to be in the music business, you gotta make hit records,” Mike Chapman once pithily observed.

A simple philosophy, it guided sometimes singing waiter Chapman (born 1947 in Queensland, Australia) and former car salesman Nicky Chinn (a Londoner born in 1945) throughout the 1970s, when their prodigious songwriting/production partnership ruled the British pop roost.

The pair met at a Jermyn Street nightclub called ‘Tramp’ – one of the London music business’ most exclusive watering holes. Chinn was hanging out and trying to impress people with a test pressing of the first songs he’d ever had recorded, co-writing Mike d’Abo’s latest single, Miss Me In The Morning and Arabella Cinderella.

Chapman, who had just abandoned his own dreams of success by quitting the band Tangerine Peel, was working as a waiter.

Chinnichap (as the duo were quickly dubbed) enjoyed their first hit with Tom Tom Turnaround for New World in 1971 (also recorded by Sweet as an album track). They wrote a further three hits for the Australian act – Kara Kara (1971), Sister Jane (1972) and the first released version of Living Next Door To Alice, which subsequently became a giant hit for Smokie

Other similarly quirky hits followed for Sweet (who became their primary outlet): the typically alliterative Funny Funny, Co-Co, and Alexander Graham Bell (who apparently invented the telephone so he could contact his girlfriend).

Co-Co and Poppa Joe — Sweet’s next two hits in 1972 — both played with stylistic form and adopted a kind of summertime Caribbean feel (complete with steel drums), but the choruses and the hooks were getting bigger.

Their hits incrementally traded Archie-style bubblegum for hard rock (Blockbuster became the first #1 for both parties on 27 January 1973) before indulging Sweet’s desire to be taken seriously with the epic The Six Teens.

Though Glam was essentially a look, Chinnichap’s association with Sweet ensured that their stomping, anthemic releases in this period (through Mickie Most‘s RAK label) became defined as *the* glam rock sound – one they also conferred on tomboy rocker Suzi Quatro and quartet Mud.

The latter’s rip-roaring 1974 UK #1 Tiger Feet may well be the pair’s most famous track.

Suzi Quatro started working with Chinn and Chapman after Mickie Most had signed her and she’d missed the target with her first release, Rolling Stone.

Enter Chinnichap with Can The Can, and June 1973 saw Suzi celebrating her first #1, after which the hits started rolling in — 12 penned by Chinn and Chapman, including 48 Crash, Devil Gate Drive, Daytona Demon and The Wild One. Their alliance was a perfect fit.

Chinn and Chapman, though, were not one-trick ponies.

They provided sultry ballads for Exile (Kiss You All Over) and mature, reflective soft rock like If You Think You Know How To Love Me and Don’t Play Your Rock ‘n’ Roll To Me for Smokie.

By the end of the 1970s, however, Chapman was gradually moving away from his partner, independently producing great albums like Blondie‘s Parallel Lines (1978) – which helped forge the sound that turned them from a new wave niche act into global pop superstars. – and The Knack‘s Get The Knack (1979).

As a co-writer with Holly Knight,  he scored huge hits with Tina Turner and Pat Benatar – including Simply The Best and Love Is A Battlefield – and he even returned to working with Suzi Quatro on her highly rated 2006 album Back To The Drive.