The British power pop group the Records earned their lasting renown chiefly through the 1970s cult favorite and modest chart entry “Starry Eyes,” a track widely regarded as a definitive example of the style. Although later efforts never repeated that breakthrough, the songs issued from 1979 through 1982 have aged with unusual durability and continue to serve as a template for subsequent British and American power-pop movements. Commentators have sometimes dubbed them “the British Big Star,” a description that reflects both their stature inside the genre and the wider public’s limited awareness of their work.
The band coalesced around 1977 after the pub-rock outfit Kursaal Flyers disbanded. Drummer Will Birch and vocalist-guitarist John Wicks, who had joined the Kursaals late in their run, began writing together under the influence of the Raspberries, Badfinger, and Big Star. Bassist Phil Brown and guitarist Huw Gower completed the lineup in 1978. After a string of club dates, the independent Record Company label issued the debut single “Starry Eyes” in November of that year. Exposure on Stiff Records’ Be Stiff tour soon led to a contract with Virgin.
For the next three years Wicks and Birch supplied three albums of polished, overlooked pop: Shades in Bed (1979, released in altered form in the United States as The Records), Crashes (1980, with Jude Cole replacing Gower), and Music on Both Sides (1982, which introduced Dave Whelan in place of Cole and added vocalist Chris Gent). Apart from the modest American success of “Starry Eyes,” the records received scant commercial reward. The group dissolved in 1982 yet reconvened briefly in 1990 to record for a Brian Wilson tribute project.
Birch subsequently worked as a music journalist and historian, overseeing several reissues including Naughty Rhythms: The Best of Pub Rock. Wicks launched a solo career in the mid-1990s and appeared on the Yellow Pills, Vol. 3 collection with the Birch co-write “Her Stars Are My Stars,” a track that resumed their earlier melodic thread. “Starry Eyes” remains a staple on alternative-radio retrospectives. On October 7, 2018, John Wicks died at age 65 in his Burbank, California home after a prolonged battle with cancer.
