Eddie Amoo obituary

In 1976, somewhat against the odds, the Real Thing topped the UK charts with You to Me Are Everything, a song that became a disco classic. Although black soul music was appreciated by British record-buyers, they had shown little interest in homegrown examples. This was the breakthrough single, the one that said it was OK to buy British soul music.

The Real Thing continued to have hits, but by far their most thought-provoking release was their album, 4 from 8, from the following year, in which Eddie (later Eddy) Amoo, who has died aged 73, and his younger brother, Chris (later Cris), wrote about the turmoil around them in the Toxteth area of Liverpool 8. A three-track medley of nearly 12 minutes included Children of the Ghetto, which was not a hit for the Real Thing but taken up very successfully by Philip Bailey (best known as a singer with Earth, Wind and Fire), Courtney Pine and Mary J Blige.

Possibly the Real Thing’s original fans found the social realism hard to take and it was clearly inspired by Eddie’s hero, Curtis Mayfield. “I met him in 1975,” Eddie told me, “and I played him one of my songs, A Man Without a Face. He said, ‘It’s too heavy, man.’ I wasn’t expecting that reaction. The most political songwriter of our age was telling me to cool it!”

The Liverpool 8 Medley is Eddie Amoo’s testimony to the streets he loved. It was a delight to walk around with him as everybody would recognise him and have a friendly word. In 1974 he married Sylvia Joel, and they lived close to Sefton Park, with their daughters, Dionne, Sara, Michaela and Marlene.

Born in the city, Eddie was the son of another Liverpudlian, Moya, and her husband, Robert, a seaman from Ghana. Eddie recalled his mother taking him to see Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers at the Liverpool Empire in 1957. “It was my first concert and there were very few black people in the audience. Someone pointed at me and said, ‘There’s one of them.’ I’d found a role model in Frankie Lymon and I wanted to be a singer.”

Still, there were troubles ahead. Eddie was caught with a knife and sent to borstal. In the early 1960s, he befriended Joey and Edmund Ankrah, the sons of a minister, and together with Alan Harding and Nat Smeeda they formed a doo-wop group, the Chants. They sang Gene Chandler’s Duke of Earl and Kathy Young’s A Thousand Stars a cappella. They saw the Beatles, who occasionally backed them. “About six times,” said Eddie. “It would have been more but their manager Brian Epstein didn’t think they should be backing anyone.”

As a result, the Chants established their own backing unit, the Harlems. The Chants were signed to Pye Records and produced by Tony Hatch, and although they nearly scored with an infectious I Could Write a Book, they should have done better. They were championed by the Liverpool MP Bessie Braddock.

In 1975 Chris Amoo formed his own band, the Real Thing, which won ITV’s Opportunity Knocks, and he suggested that Eddie, now playing guitar and keyboards, should join them. Eddie coached the band, which included Dave Smith and Ray Lake, and they toured with David Essex, who used them on the hit album All the Fun of the Fair (1975) and later on the hit single Me and My Girl (Night-Clubbing) (1982).

The Real Thing’s first hits, You to Me Are Everything and Can’t Get By Without You, the latter of which reached No 2, were written and produced by Ken Gold, but their subsequent successes, You’ll Never Know What You’re Missing, Love’s Such a Wonderful Thing and Can You Feel the Force?, inspired by Star Wars, were written by the Amoo brothers.

In the 80s the group had success with “decade remixes” but they wanted to avoid becoming a tired club act. “We had to find ways to tweak the songs,” said Eddie, “We wanted to re-energise and revitalise them without changing what made them popular.” This included rapping, and the group kept fit so that they looked good on stage.

In 2013 the Real Thing record- ed a live album and DVD at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, and a documentary film about their career, directed by Simon Sheridan, is in its final stages. “I have a theory,” said Eddie, “that so much racism isn’t racism at all but teenage boredom. I was so lucky to have an outlet for my frustration and life’s been good to me. When I started, I had nothing but the ability to sing.”

Eddie is survived by Sylvia and his daughters, and Chris plans to continue with the band.

• Eddie Amoo (Edward Robert Amoo), singer and songwriter, born 4 May 1944; died 23 February 2018