Groan Up

One of my favourite dance tunes ever is Talizman’s ‘Only You’. I tried to find out more about the history of the song.

Talizman recorded Only You originally in 1993. This is a song you probably heard but never knew what it was called. That was certainly the case for me. I remember hearing it when I was out – somewhere in Chester. This would have been, probably, in around 1997 or 1998. I can clearly vividly recall walking down the stairs when it came on and asking one of my friends if they knew what it was. They didn’t. But it was somehow etched into my brain. And I didn’t hear it again until 1999 when a cover version came on the radio. We were on a minibus on our way to a nightclub somewhere or other.

Flying high and I’m feeling fine

Kick off your shoes and let’s blow our minds together

The cover version was by Ca$ino and I thought it was great. It was a song a played a lot. There was something about it that I loved – you didn’t often hear a male voice on a dance tune. Maybe it was that?

There was always a nagging feeling that the Ca$ino version would do but it wasn’t the one I remember in the club.

I want your love

I want it right now…

Because in my world there’s only you

I was determined to track down the original and eventually I managed to connect it to a song by Talizman. I think it was when I was using Limewire and I was trying to digitise my music collection. But the version of song by Talizman was nowhere near as good. I couldn’t understand – the version I recalled was SO much better than this. I later bought the CD and the version I remembered was not on there either.

I don’t know how or when I realised that the version I loved was the Chris & James Remix but I am glad I did! If you can track it down, the Chris & James Old Skool Baleric Remix is the one you want.

So why has this amazing tune never made it big?

According to Discogs, the song was first released in 1993. It was written by A. Webb and C. Martin. It would appear that this was the only song they wrote, although, of course, they are credited as the writers of the Ca$ino cover.

It must have been re-released as it then charted at Number 88 in 1994. This was its only foray into the charts.

It was re-released in 1995, this time with the Chris & James remixes. There was also a Grinstretcher Club Mix too. Not sure what that sounds like.

And that’s it. It has appeared on a compilation in 2012 (not sure which version). And that’s it.

I honestly can’t get it. This is a tune I love and I think is amazing but it’s like no one else has ever heard of it!

Update July 2020

Not long after writing this post another cover of Only You was released. This time, dance artists Cahill released a version, featuring Craig Smart on vocals. It has more of a beat than the Ca$ino version but is still nowhere near as good as the original. The Apple Music song info reveals a little bit more information about the composers: their first names! Apparently it’s Ashley Webb and Colin Martin.

The WhoSampled page says that the song samples the Talizman original. This is all of the information that I can find out!

Update: October 2020
It was interesting to discover this interview with the remixer Chris, from Chris + James:

“Talizman – only you, it sounds at first like its going to be a bad karaoke attempt, but it develops into what is a beast of a track unlike any other out there. What was it like working on it?

We used to play the original mix years ago in warm up sets and it stood out as being incredibly different even then, but it was way too slow for peak time. Charlie Chester rang me up and asked if we’d be interested in doing it……..we were dead keen but the vocals were so off key in places that it wouldn’t be straight forward at all. Once the parts arrived it was almost painful to listen to the acapella! Anyway I had an idea for making the ultimate Balearic house track – utilising the Bocca Juniors ‘raise’ piano line and the Bassheads ‘Is there anybody out there ‘ bassline…..thankfully James Wiltshire managed to work out some chord sequences and we had it nailed within a day and a half. Unfortunately James Bradley was absent for the making of this, first he heard was when I played the finished mix back to him.

It’s not surprising that mix has stood the test of time – people have covered it and remixed it without even getting close to the C+J mix- a classic case of remixers bringing far more to the remix than just a few loops!”

(Charlie Chester was the co-owner of Cowboy Records, James Wiltshire was one half of Phats & Small and James Bradley is one half of Chris + James)

Update July 2022

Ashley Webb, one of the co-writers of the song contacted me and offered to answer any questions I had. He was really kind and sent a really great response!

Who sings on the track? It’s not a voice I recognise at all. His name is Carl Martin. He was a guy who was part of the social group that went out to clubs/ raves back in the day where I lived. I was looking for a vocalist to use on my music and Carl convinced me he could sing.

One thing I love about the song is the randomness of the lyrics. I wondering what the meaning or significance is behind the words. The lyrics were written by Carl. They were really just about going out and having fun but with a bit of a hippy, festival flavour (kicking off shoes, sitting on a beechwood tree etc. There is also reference to taking ecstasy, although only in a very non-specific way (high flying and feeling fine).

I have heard the track in cities such as Chester, Stoke and Liverpool. Do you know where the track was ‘big’? Was it in the North-West mainly or did you get lots of plays across the country? We didn’t really get much feedback from Cowboy Records on how the track was received nationally. On one occasion we did go to Cream in Liverpool to perform the track live. It was quite funny as we performed the original version only to find out that the reason we were invited was that the B side (The Only House mix) was the club’s cult favourite. The club DJ had to spin that version after we performed the slower original to keep the punters happy.

How did the Chris + James remix come about? I have no idea. We did not sign a deal with Cowboy Records, who were the architects behind getting Chris & James to do their thing.

The song is really unique – male voices on dance tracks were not all that common at the time this came out and there is a really unique sound to the whole track. What was the inspiration? I am a hip hop fan, and have been all my life right up to the present day. The original was more of a hip hop tempo, and had some beats and baselines which I guess you could say were influenced by my love of that genre. I even managed to add some old school hip hop breaks at the end of the track – super indulgent!  However, it was not an option for a UK act to do Hip Hop at that time, so I guess what we made (the original mix) is a product of that influence along with Carl’s lyrical input.

Are you still involved in music? No, other than being an avid music fan!  My current favourite rapper is Pusha T.

To give a little more background, my first experience of making music was at a studio called ‘The Spike’ in South London. I was a DJ, and had made a mix of the INXS track ‘I Need You Tonight’ using the original together with a Todd Terry breakbeat. A local record shop dude who was connected to a label heard it and invited me to go and do a track. You can find in on YouTube if you’re curious. It’s called ‘House You Tonight’ and the name I went under was ‘303 Force’, which was a nod to a Staten Island group called JVC Force, who did a legendary track called ‘Strong Island’.

There is one other track that Carl and I did under the name Talizman (Carl came up with the group name, by the way). We were asked by a local guy who we met through the club scene to do a very specific track. He wanted a house mix of ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ by The Animals. We renamed our mix ‘Don’t let House be Misunderstood’, lol. Personally I don’t like that track much, but we did it anyway. You can find it on YouTube also. The label says ‘Science Records’. It’s pretty poorly arranged, which is on me. I must admit my heart wasn’t in it.

Shortly after we did ‘Only You’ we were approached by a producer who had just produced a Jamiroquai album. He wanted to do something with us, so I went to his flat in Clapham, South London a few times to jam. I remember putting together a really nice track using a sample from ‘Brick House’ by The Commodores. He arranged for the three of us to record at ‘The Townhouse’ recording studio in London, which for us (well, me at least) was a pretty big deal. M People were in the studio next door!   However, on the first day of our studio  time Carl just didn’t turn up. I was phoning him all day but got nothing. The next morning I found out that he’d decided to blow it out to go to a local party and get off his face.  Needless to say I was super p*ssed, and gave him the full hairdryer treatement. That was effectively the end of Talizman.

I must also admit that I decided to step back from music at the time due to being a new father. We’d been offered a deal by Pulse 8 Records, and the first thing the CEO wanted us to do was go on a UK tour, which of course is fair enough. However, my wife had just given birth to my eldest son, and I just couldn’t go off and leave her for months with a new baby, so I passed on the deal, packed my turntables, drum machines etc. away in the loft, and got a job!

For me Talizman was one part of a wider musical passion that I guess was always a little hamstrung due to my love for a genre that I would not, in my opinion, have had any credibility in making commerically. I suppose that might be why ‘Only You’ sounds a little different, maybe? In any case, looking back I never particularly wanted to be famous. My first track (303 Force) was driven entirely by wanting to have my music on a piece of vinyl!

Finally, before I made music in my early twenties as a young teenager I was a Graffiti Artist in a crew firstly called The Trailblazers, and then when we welcomed three new members, The Chrome Angelz. This crew was formed in and around the original Hip Hop community of the early 80s that gathered most often in Covent Garden, London. This information has nothing to do with Talizman, but we made a bit of a name for ourselves!  We painted on stage with some big rap acts of the day including Grandmaster Flash. A fun music related fact: It was myself and a guy called Kevin Clark who formed the original Trailblazers graffiti crew (one Saturday afternoon in 1983 in a lunchtime rap club on Tottenham Court Road, London). He went on to be one half of a musical duo called ‘Definition of Sound’. I think there was a huge amount of creativity among that 80s Hip Hop community, be that DJing, dancing, graffiti, rapping, producing.

Update May 2023
Jono Edwards, the singer on the Ca$ino version of Only You got in touch to share his experience of making the record.

‘Only You’ by Talizman will always hold a ‘special’ place in my heart for sure.

Back in the early 90s when I was working and entertaining at The Yard/Limos in Mansfield (the home of venue 44 and Renaissance), it was always our ‘go to’ track to lift the roof – always a huge crowd pleaser!

When I became the lead vocalist with Ca$ino in 1997 and following the huge success of our first single, ‘Sound of Eden’, we needed a strong follow up track.

Ca$ino’s Paul Gotel was already an established A-list DJ around the UK, so he knew too the power ‘Only You’ had over many dancefloors from when it was released many years previous. As dance music was progressing in the late 90s, Paul, Aron Friedman and I just KNEW we had to rework it for the late 90s crowd.

We recorded it in London in September ’97, the week following Princess Diana’s death. For me, a northerner with no ‘London’ experience, I found the whole atmosphere of being in London overwhelming following such tragic news. An experience I’ll never witness again.

We recorded two version of ‘Only You’ – one being a more commercial ‘poppy’ friendly version and the the ‘Resurrection Soundscape’ mix – made for the now ‘progressive’ dancefloors of 1997. White labels were pressed and sent to the ‘big boy’ DJs and radio pluggers. That week the ‘Resurrection Soundscape’ mix was played TWICE in one show by Pete Tong on Radio 1 and was championed massively by Judge Jules, etc.

Following Pete Tong’s support, that Monday morning we received offers of record deals by Multiply, FFRR, Manifesto and Positiva. However, Paul decided to form his own label, ‘POW Records’ and release it independently.

Although we achieved Number 1 status in all Dance Charts and Mixmag Cool Cuts charts, etc. when the track was finally released months and months later, the physical sales sadly didn’t materialise.

In my opinion, at the time, we should have taken one of the deals offered to us with the track was ‘hot’ – but hey, it wasn’t my call at the time and hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Today in 2023, I still PA the track out and about for club classic events and it STILL takes the roof off wherever we go!

The track is currently being remixed and remodelled and we’ll hopefully be releasing new mixes of Ca$ino ‘Only You 23’ later this year!

And I must say, this track has been VERY good to me, and I still LOVE it – and finally, even though I’ve been singing this song for thousands of people for over 25 years, the C&J Mix is STILL hard to beat…

And P.S. the Cahill version has the wrong lyrics!

Thank you to everyone for the support and I hope you’ll love the new mixes!

Jono is the Company Director of Monkey Bars Ltd and The Cardinal Sutton Ltd in Mansfield. Thanks Jono!