East 17’s Tony Mortimer on the pain of hearing Stay Another Day: ‘It never stops – and it’s every year’

It’s the Christmas reward that retains on giving: 30 years after its launch, “Keep One other Day” is as fashionable as ever.

It’s a seasonal staple, blasting out of excessive avenue outlets, auto-playing on vacation playlists, on everlasting December rotation on Peter Kay’s beloved Eternally FM. In 2023 East 17’s lachrymose piano ballad was streamed 20 million instances, virtually double the determine for the earlier yr. On Spotify, the place yow will discover covers of the track by Jorja Smith, Kylie Minogue and Women Aloud, it’s at present sitting at 64.1 million performs, and can probably be at 65 million by the point you end studying this story.

All of which is the long-tail legacy of a track that, in 1994, raced to No 1 and stayed there for 5 weeks, holding off one other track that will turn into a festive perennial: Mariah Carey’s “All I Need for Christmas Is You”. The next yr, “Keep One other Day” gained its creator an Ivor Novello award for songwriting.

For that man, although, “Keep One other Day” can be the reward that retains on taking.

“It normally begins round October,” begins East 17 founder and songwriter Tony Mortimer with a decent smile. “I settle for it, nevertheless it’s at all times been tough, a two-edged sword, for my household. Individuals come as much as me and say: ‘That track means so much to me…’ I’m like: ‘Hold about, I’m not prepared for that but, I’m simply in McDonald’s!’ However I’ve bought used to it, as a result of it’s been so lengthy. It by no means stops, although, and it’s yearly. So, yeah, I stated to the missus this morning: ‘Going into city right this moment to do some interviews. They’re gonna remind me that my brother killed himself.’”

“Keep One other Day” was written by a 23-year-old Mortimer in August 1994. Its lyrics – “Child if you happen to’ve bought to go away/ Don’t suppose I might take the ache/ Gained’t you keep one other day?” – aren’t about misplaced romantic love at that almost all great time of the yr. They’re in regards to the suicide, 4 summers beforehand, of Mortimer’s older brother Ollie. He was 22.

“It’s such a heavy phrase, suicide, and other people do wrestle presently of yr. That’s the darkish aspect of [the song] – however the mild aspect of it’s that it’s turn into a Christmas snowman!” says Mortimer, 54, with a boyish giggle on the considered the fluffy, puffy white coats that he and his bandmates wore within the iconic, very mid-Nineties pop video. “It’s surreal. Anyway, it’s the thirtieth anniversary and the document firm was going to do one thing. We have been batting round concepts, speaking a couple of reunion and one thing massive. And I stated: ‘I don’t simply need to launch the one and be on the take. That’s not proper.’ So I’ve stopped them simply releasing it [for money] – and I be ok with that.”

Reasonably, Mortimer has partnered with the music remedy charity Nordoff and Robbins to re-release “Keep One other Day” as a part of an consciousness and fundraising initiative. Over the previous few weeks the Essex-based musician, a father of two and grandfather of three, has been performing with a few of their younger shoppers forward of a particular Nordoff and Robbins Carol Service. On the occasion subsequent week (which additionally options Jamie Cullum and Lemar) at St Luke’s Church in Chelsea, Mortimer will carry out “Keep One other Day” accompanied by a kids’s choir.

“[We want to] assist dad and mom discover out that there’s music remedy, one thing they most likely haven’t heard of, if their baby’s struggling with autism or another psychological factor,” says Mortimer as we speak in a room in a personal members’ membership in central London. “And I believe we will get that message on the market through this track.”

Ruby, 17, from Bedfordshire, has autism and ADHD. She’s one of many youngsters who’ve been helped by Nordoff and Robbins, and by working with Mortimer. As her case research notes, “On a regular basis occasions triggered Ruby excessive emotional misery. At age 14 she was sectioned for her security and positioned in a specialist psychiatric kids’s ward. After returning residence, Ruby began weekly periods of music remedy.”

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“It’s actually helped with my confidence,” Ruby, a eager bass participant, tells me over a Zoom interview alongside her mum, Bev. “I wouldn’t be within the place I’m now musically if I hadn’t finished music remedy. Mentally, [it’s the] similar. Socially, they’ve actually helped me as nicely. Now I’m so much higher at leaving the home, going out to locations and socialising with individuals. [It’s a] protected place – after being in hospital for such a very long time, you get used to being with the identical six individuals for ages.”

As for the way working one-to-one with Mortimer within the music room has helped her, she says, approvingly, “He’s so down-to-earth. You wouldn’t suppose he was well-known in any respect – not in a horrible manner!” Ruby provides with amusing. “He’s bought this comforting aura.”

“It’s a heat feeling he provides you,” agrees Bev. “I can see with Ruby that she interacted with him very well.”

And what did she learn about East 17 prior to now?

“I didn’t know who they have been!” Ruby admits. “Mum needed to present me a great deal of music movies on YouTube. It was actually humorous seeing Tony being a boyband individual and doing his… stuff.”

That stuff has not too long ago been excavated within the glorious, unvarnished BBC documentary collection Boybands Eternally. Lairy unhealthy boys East 17 are featured closely, alongside parent-friendly rivals Take That, within the first episode. The four-piece from Walthamstow, east London (postcode: E17) signed their document deal in 1992 – on April Idiot’s Day, notes Mortimer.

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By the tip of 1993, they’d had three prime 5 singles from their debut album. The strain was on for Mortimer, as chief songwriter, to maintain up the hit-rate with their second album. Working at a livid tempo the next summer season – he had six weeks to give you a complete album (“I used to be informed to cancel my household vacation”) – he wrote “Keep One other Day”. Does he suppose it took him 4 years to course of the lack of his brother and switch it into one thing inventive and, nicely, constructive?

“I’d like to say yeah,” replies Mortimer, a typically cheerful, easy-going man, and an open e book. “However no. It was the desperation that I wanted songs for an album, and I used to be drawing on something. I’d at all times have this little psychological field [of subjects]. I might write a couple of membership. A few breakup with a lady. About seeing a lady in a membership.” However he permits that he was, by then, a extra achieved author. “So I used to be a greater artist [and more] succesful to attract on it. However it wasn’t the intention. The intention was simply to write down a ballad.”

Nonetheless, that didn’t imply a Christmas ballad. Or, actually, a single in any respect. “It’s a ballad, and East 17 didn’t launch them – they’re a bit unhappy. It was to go on a B-side.” Then their supervisor Tom Watkins heard it. “That’s a Christmas No 1!” says Mortimer, approximating the late Svengali’s gruff bark. “And I went: ‘No, not that one. You actually ain’t releasing that one.’ I defined what it was about. However he was wanting from a advertising and marketing perspective. Then the document firm stated it was a basic. So as a result of they appreciated it as nicely, it simply bought worse!” Mortimer says with one other giddy snort. “I had completely no management with what they have been placing out.”

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Once I talked to Mortimer in 2011, he informed me he was crushed by the necessity to maintain the “gravy prepare” on monitor. Once I remind him of that right this moment, he nods. “I at all times thought: if I don’t ship an album, this stops. So I put myself below that strain. The burden was coming off me – I’m six-foot and I used to be nine-stone-three, which is absolutely unhealthy. And later I used to be 19 stone at my heaviest. So I’ve gone from super-featherweight to super-heavyweight. My coronary heart can’t deal with it!”

Again then, he additionally fretted in regards to the influence of “Keep One other Day” on his household. “If I get to open my soul to the general public, it’s an honour,” he defined. “However my household had no say. Even now, once they hear the track, it’s arduous. It takes them proper again. They’re like: ‘Cheers you t***. Made that one a bit public.’”

“My mum and pa have handed, so there’s a little bit of reduction with that,” he says now. “However again then, yeah, it was tough. It’s their son… My dad rang me as a result of I’d informed a tabloid the story. They’d gone with the headline ‘A Rave from the Grave’. How delicate! My dad was very upset.

“So there was these items happening within the background. It was positively opening your soul to the general public – nevertheless it additionally feels such as you’re strolling round along with your trousers down.”

And worse. Boybands Eternally opens with cell phone footage from 2015 of East 17 singer Brian Harvey having a meltdown on the street. “Over the previous 15 years I’ve been handled like an entire c***,” he yells. “I’ve bought no f***ing heating. I’m getting abused by the police, I’m getting abused by the court docket system and I’m getting abused by the CPS, and I’ve had sufficient of all of you.” Then he smashes his document gross sales awards discs. “A million gross sales. That is what it means. That’s what I consider your f***ing music business.”

I ask Mortimer the inescapable query: how broken was Harvey by his expertise within the band?

“That’s his persona,” he says rigorously of a former bandmate with whom he now appears to have few dealings. “Individuals suppose he’s [been pushed] to that time. However that’s his persona, that’s what he was like within the band… However after all, there’s a public strain.”

“And the way about you, Tony?”

“Oh, broken? I used to be worn out. I’ve usually questioned if I’ve PTSD from it. It was hilarious however, yeah, I used to be so drained by the tip of it. I at all times discovered travelling actually tiring. I hate going to airports, even now. However broken? I’ve at all times been tousled. I’m simply extra tousled!”

We not too long ago noticed the acute, horrible final result of that strain on younger males from boybands with the loss of life of Liam Payne. Mortimer expresses deep sympathy for him and his household. However he appears to not have engaged correctly with the information, whether or not as a result of he’s in any other case distracted along with his work and household life, or for his personal psychological wellbeing. “I simply heard he fell off a balcony. I noticed it bought a variety of consideration on-line, after which persons are leaping throughout it. That’s what individuals do.”

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He does, although, have ideas on what was revealed in Payne’s toxicology report. “Medicine don’t assist. You would possibly suppose they masks [your troubles]. However you’re by no means gonna make your finest selections on them. Medicine are the issue we have to have a look at. However, yeah, there’s strain,” he repeats, exhaling closely. “For us, it was for fairly a brief interval – four-and-a-bit years.”

However from that popstar mayfly existence has come a track whose sleigh bells chime resonantly to this present day. Thirty years on Tony Mortimer can, lastly, take a extra elevated, even barely dispassionate view of the track that defines him as a musician. This yr’s partnership with Nordoff and Robbins, and the music remedy he’s in a position to give to Ruby, are a life-affirming alchemising of a track born of deep darkness and unhappiness.

“It nonetheless stings, nevertheless it does assist,” he acknowledges. “I can’t play that track and never know what I’m enjoying, not consider my brother, each time. However it’s not about me any extra, and it’s not about him. It’s in regards to the track and the way the general public see it. Most of them don’t even know the factor behind it. And I settle for that – that it [just signifies] Christmas. That provides me a smile.”

‘Keep One other Day’ is launched on limited-edition seven-inch vinyl on 13 December. For all objects bought through www.stayanotherday.co.uk, London Information is donating £1 to Nordoff and Robbins Music Remedy. Tickets for the Nordoff and Robbins Carol Service on 10 December can be found right here

In case you are experiencing emotions of misery, or are struggling to manage, you may communicate to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), e-mail jo@samaritans.org, or go to the Samaritans web site to seek out particulars of your nearest department. In case you are based mostly within the USA, and also you or somebody you understand wants psychological well being help proper now, name or textual content 988, or go to 988lifeline.org to entry on-line chat from the 988 Suicide and Disaster Lifeline. This can be a free, confidential disaster hotline that’s accessible to everybody 24 hours a day, seven days every week. In case you are abroad, you may go to www.befrienders.org to discover a helpline close to you