Corrie scriptwriter listed in UK's biggest rave anthems
Coronation Street scriptwriter Damon Rochefort is featured in today's Guardian in an article all about the UK's biggest rave anthems. Damon was in a band called Nomad (which is his name spelled backwards) and their hit (I Wanna Give You) Devotion reached No 2 in 1991. The Guardian calls it a pop-dance earworm that launched the careers of super-producer Steve McCutcheon, Olivier award-winner Sharon D Clarke and Corrie scriptwriter Damon Rochefort.
Damon telsl the Guardian about what happened after the record topped the charts.
“I made my first-ever record with Sharon Clarke in 1986 by borrowing five grand from an Iranian club owner. I think it got to about No 92 after Tony Blackburn played it. It was thrilling but precarious. I also did an acid tune called Don’t Believe the Hype by Mista E which featured Steve Coogan – before he was famous – doing impersonations of Prince Charles and Alistair Burnet. I liked the acid stuff but I also liked all those big vocal tunes around at the time, so I put all that together and I came up with Devotion. When it became a hit, my life changed completely. We toured for four or five years, we did America, we did Australia, we supported Kylie on her UK tour. It was great fun. Then I grew up a bit and became a producer, making records for all sorts of people – Bad Boys Inc, Michelle Gayle, LaToya Jackson, Kim Wilde – but by 1996 it had all become a bit workmanlike.
Damon Rochefort and David Neilson (Roy Cropper)
I decided I needed to shake myself up so I went on a scriptwriting course taken by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who created The New Statesman and Birds of a Feather. They took me under their wing and I ended up writing for Birds of a Feather. I’ve been at Coronation Street for 11 years now. I wrote Blanche’s funeral, which was lovely – it’s a great honour to bury an icon. A few years ago I went to Mardi Gras in Australia and they opened the parade by blasting out Devotion. You do feel a great surge of warmth. It was my 50th birthday party recently and as a surprise Sharon and I came out and did Devotion for about the first time in 20 years with half the Corrie cast pointing and laughing at me!”
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