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It's amazing to me that Elvis was going to dump "Oliver's Army" when we first started recording it. We went through it all afternoon, and it just wasn't happening at all. But I thought it was really good — and furthermore, I had a plan.
I was flushed with success after producing Mickey Jupp's Juppanese album. Mickey was quite a... well, let's call him a difficult artist, and he loathed the version that we had cut of one of his songs called "Switchboard Susan." Loathed it. We'd recorded it with Rockpile, who were playing on his record, and I didn't understand what he thought was wrong with it at all. So I offered to buy the track off him. I bought it and I put my vocal on it, and it became quite a well-known piece of my canon.
Anyway, I thought it was a really cool thing to do: to be a record producer, and if people don't like the odd track we've done I just swan in there and buy it off 'em! I thought the same thing was looming up with "Oliver's Army," because Elvis didn't like it at all. He was getting more and more shirty, and I couldn't really see why. I thought it was a really good track, but it did sound very obviously poppy. Maybe that was a problem for him. Anyway, something about it was getting up his nose, and I'd started making overtures about this: "Well you know, Elvis, all is not lost. I can take this off your hands any time." I was making those sort of noises but he wasn't really biting — he was just making grunting noises at me.
Then, out of the blue, Steve Nieve said, "What about if I do a sort of ABBA piano part on it?" There was silence. Complete silence. An ABBA piano part? ABBA were really big but they weren't hip like they are now. We knew their records were good, but no one really wanted to own up to it. But Nieve really liked them, and so did Elvis, so the consensus was, "Oh, alright then. Let's try it." But I have to say, I really didn't think this was going to disturb my plan to get the track for myself.
Anyway, of course Nieve went out and did the piano part and suddenly the whole thing went from black and white to fireworks. I don't think it's quite the first take that you hear on the finished record but the effect was certainly instantaneous. We all just went, "Yeah, that's it!" It was definitely an afterthought, but it gave the record an unbelievable sound and spirit. I thought it was pretty good before but when that piano went on it I saw my nefarious scheme going straight out of the window. I didn't mind too much, because it was such a great cut. And so Elvis had the massive hit — and I didn't!
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