Richard Kerr, songwriter who gave Barry Manilow a worldwide hit with Mandy – obituary

Richard Kerr, who has died aged 78, was a songwriter best known for Brandy, which was a top 20 hit in the UK for his co-writer Scott English in 1971; renamed Mandy, it was a worldwide smash three years later when it became Barry Manilow’s first chart-topper.

The title was changed to avoid confusion with Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl), a 1972 hit for the American band Looking Glass; Kerr had no idea that Manilow had taken on the song until he was at Rondor music publishers in Los Angeles and heard it being played in one of the offices.

“I couldn’t actually pick out the fact straight away that it was ‘Mandy’ as opposed to ‘Brandy’ that was being sung, but when I did find out, I was absolutely livid that someone had changed the title without asking us. Until I saw it zooming up the charts.”

Richard Buchanan Kerr was born on December 14 1944 in Bedford to Joyce and Jack Kerr; he credited his father, an engineer, with giving him a love of music by singing to him in his childhood.

He attended Bedford School, where he studied the clarinet and sang in the choir, performing the solo part in Once in Royal David’s City.

The first record he bought was Eddie Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock, though his biggest influence was Buddy Holly, he recalled, and he “couldn’t stop playing” All Shook Up by Elvis Presley.

When he left school he was taken on by the wine department at Fortnum & Mason, living in a boarding house where there was a grand piano in the sitting room. He began writing songs on it, despite never having played the instrument in his life.

He started hawking his work around Tin Pan Alley, with some success, and put out a couple of singles under his own name – as a result of which Fortnum & Mason, not wanting to be associated with anything as common as pop music, fired him. In 1968 his song Blue Eyes was a hit for Don Partridge, the busking “one-man band” best known for Blue Eyes’ predecessor, Rosie.

He went on to work with the American musician Scott English – who began writing the lyric for Mandy when he was attending the annual Midem music-industry expo in Cannes; it was, he said, about wanting to leave his wife but lacking the courage to do so (though he did, eventually). When he got back to England he and Kerr started working on it.

Barry Manilow only recorded Mandy at the insistence of Clive Davis, his label boss at Arista. But though he preferred writing his own songs, he recorded several more by Kerr, including Somewhere in the Night and Looks Like We Made It – because, Kerr said, “Clive wanted him to.”

Kerr met the singer only three times, he reckoned, at music-business functions, and Manilow did suggest they sit down at the piano and write together. But Kerr told him: “I can’t imagine how that would work, Barry.”

His other songs included I’ll Never Love This Way Again for Dionne Warwick, and In the Real World for Roy Orbison: “Roy was the one with the least glitter about him,” Kerr recalled, “he was such a humble man.”

Frank Sinatra covered Blue Eyes – surely the only song in his back catalogue that had been made famous by a busker – while John Denver recorded another Kerr song, Don’t Close Your Eyes.

The list of singers who recorded songs by Kerr (who made four albums of his own) includes Bonnie Raitt, Gladys Knight, Frankie Valli, Michael Ball, Johnny Mathis, Tom Jones, Andy Williams, Herb Alpert, Kenny Rogers, Natalie Cole, Rita Coolidge and the Righteous Brothers. In 2003 Mandy became Westlife’s 12th UK No 1 after Simon Cowell suggested they cover it.

Richard Kerr married Charlotte Aldred, an interior designer, in 1991; she survives him.

Richard Kerr, born December 14 1944, died December 8 2023

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