Bootleg vs. Soundalike | Stars On 45

Back in 1980, while visiting a record store, Willem van Kooten, the managing director of the music publishing company Red Bullet Productions, noticed a disco medley being played on the sound system. 

The medley blended original recordings by The Beatles, The Buggles, The Archies, and Madness with several recent disco hits like Lipps Inc.'s FUNKYTOWN, Heatwave's BOOGIE NIGHTS, and The S.O.S. Band's TAKE YOUR TIME DO IT RIGHT. The amazing part was that the rhythms of the various cuts complemented and "dovetailed" into each other.

But when van Kooten heard Shocking Blue’s VENUS in the mix, he realized the medley was a bootleg. VENUS was a song for which he held the worldwide copyright, and he knew that Red Bullet had not given permission for the use of the recording.

At the shop counter, Willem discovered that the bootleg was a 12” single called LET’S DO IT IN THE 80S GREAT HITS. It was credited to a nonexistent band named Passion and issued on a nonexistent record label called Alto. 

The medley was the work of Canadian busker and small time hustler Michel Ali, along with two deejays, Michel Gendreau and Paul Richer. Gendreau and Richer specialized in "splicing," stringing together snippets of music from different genres in varying keys and beats per minute from various records. They had created several versions of the medley, but the one Willem discovered that day was eight minutes long, and included parts from more than twenty tracks, three of which were by The Beatles: NO REPLY, I’LL BE BACK, and DRIVE MY CAR.

With LET’S DO IT IN THE 80S GREAT HITS already circulating in clubs on both sides of the Atlantic, Willem decided to "bootleg the bootleg" and create a licensed version of the medley by using soundalike artists to replicate the original hits. So he gathered a cadre of studio musicians: John's parts were sung by Bas Muys, Paul and George’s parts were sung by Okkie Huysend and Hans Vermeulen. Willem did not initially included any songs sung by Ringo. The female vocals in the chorus were performed by session singer Jody Pijper.

Apart from the recreated songs, an original chorus and hook called "Stars on 45,” written and composed by arranger Martin Duiser, was added at intervals to help connect differing sections. The '45' in the title obviously refers to the 45rpm vinyl single.

The Stars on 45 recordings were produced before the advent of digital recording technologies, which meant that each song was recorded separately and then the different parts were manually pieced together with a pre-recorded drum loop, using analog tapes, to create the segued medleys. The specific drum loop heard on most Stars on 45 recordings is often referred to as the "clap track" (due to its prominent, steady handclaps).

The first Stars release was a nearly 12-minute 12" single, issued on CNR Records in December 1980, a few years after what many had hoped or believed was the apex of disco and a few days after the murder of John Lennon. Keeping with the bootleg idea, Williem simply titled it STARS ON 45 MEDLEY and released it with no credits on the label or the cover. 

But Dutch radio began playing the four-minute, eight-track Beatles segment of the medley that was plopped down in the middle of the mix. So, apparently unafraid to cash in on the death of a creative genius, Willem and company released an edited 7" single with the Beatles part preceded by VENUS and SUGAR, SUGAR.

The medley was released and hit the number one spot on the Dutch singles charts in February 1981. A few months later, it also reached number two in the UK, where it was released by CBS Records and credited to the imaginary band Starsound. In June 1981, the single went to number one in the US, where it was released by Radio, a sublabel of Atlantic Records. This time, the release looked official, and the tracklist for the STARS ON 45 MEDLEY included the names of all the songs that make up the actual medley. With its 41-word title, the single holds the record for the number one single with the longest name on the Billboard charts.

Toward the end of that year, Martin Duiser was awarded the Conamus Export Prize in the Netherlands in recognition of his contributions to Dutch culture and the economy, likely for proving that disco was not dead.

Willem continued to successfully mine the rich fields of medleys, featuring extended cuts from soundalike Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder. Duiser, along with Tony Sherman, who sang lead vocals for STARS ON STEVIE, again won the Conamus Export Prize.

What happened to Michel Ali, you ask? Good question. Born Robert Williams, Michel was signed and then let go by EMI around the time of The Beatles' breakup. Also one unafraid to cash in on celebrity, he changed his name a few years later when he became part of boxer Muhammad Ali’s entourage, even appearing on an episode of This Is Your Life with the heavyweight. In 2008, Michel co-founded The Kindness Offensive, a UK foundation that feeds the homeless and provides holiday gifts to underprivileged children.