Every Time I Think of You

The Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on a song that still makes the room go quiet for half a second and then come back loud. "Every Time I Think of You" by The Babys, off the album Head First, is one of those late-seventies records that feels like a letter somebody actually meant. John Waite is out front, that voice already carrying more miles than the band had driven, and the girls on the chorus answer him like a church choir that wandered into a rock session. If you are a Zoo Freak riding with us over at THE ZOO, you already know the rule: we play the whole story, not just the chorus.

The tune was not written by the band. Jack Conrad and Ray Kennedy wrote it, the same pair who had handed The Babys "Isn't It Time." Lead single duty on Head First went to this follow-up, finished without founding member Michael Corby, who happened to be friends with those songwriters. It came out in December 1978, with the title track sitting on the flip side. John Waite took the lead, and the gospel lift underneath him came from Myrna Matthews, with Pat Henderson and Marti McCall in the blend. Anne Bertucci is the one you see beside him in the old video clips. Jimmie Haskell arranged and conducted the strings. Ron Nevison produced it. The single version runs a little under four minutes. The album cut stretches to four. Either way, it is the sound of a band trying to get the same lightning back in the bottle on purpose.

Waite said as much later, in a memory that turned up in Goldmine. They were trying to repeat what "Isn't It Time" had done by using the same situation. He pointed at Steve Marriott and Paul Rodgers as the lesson he had learned from a distance: you can sing hard rock, flip the coin, and sing a ballad, and it is still believable. Most bands that stick to one thing, he said, are one-trick ponies. That is the whole trick of this record. The verses walk in soft, almost careful, and then the chorus opens the door. People say a love like ours will surely pass. He answers that he knows a love like ours will last and last. Whether you buy the promise or not, the delivery sells it.

The road to that take was a mess, which is usually how the good ones get made. Chrysalis had put the band back with Nevison, but nobody could agree on whether Head First should lean rock or lean ballad. They cut the first version in a pressure cooker, the Record Plant mobile parked at Hidden Valley Ranch in Malibu. Corby wanted something more progressive. Waite was drifting toward country-leaning songs that never made the album, things like "Restless Heart" and "World In A Bottle." They burned through about three hundred thousand dollars in six weeks, and the label rejected the album. Corby, already on the outs, was shown songs he had never played on. He was gone by late August 1978. Tony Brock later put it plain: if Michael had not left, they would not have had a record deal anymore. Everybody felt bad about it, but they had put too much work in to stop.

Two weeks later the remaining trio, Waite, guitarist Wally Stocker, and drummer Tony Brock, went back in and rebuilt the record in a stripped-down shape. Corby's parts were cut down to keyboards. They added a swaggering opener, "Love Don't Prove I'm Right," and this gospel-backed Conrad and Kennedy song. Waite has said being forced to recut the album worked in their favor. The version that came out in January 1979 is the one people remember. Head First climbed to number 22 on the Billboard album chart, the highest the band ever got. "Every Time I Think of You" matched the number 13 Hot 100 peak of "Isn't It Time," landing there in March 1979, and it hit number 8 on Cash Box, same as the earlier single. Australia took it to number 6, Canada to number 8, the Netherlands to number 11. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called it the best single of 1979. The title track, flipped to the A-side later, only reached 77. The ballad was the one that stuck.

Waite has talked about how huge that moment felt from the inside, and how little it paid. You could not turn on AM radio and not hear "Every Time I Think of You." You could not turn on FM and not hear "Head First." Same record, both sides of the dial. He said he had not seen a record that successful until maybe The Police. They were on television, on the road with big bands, rail-thin by the time they came home, and then Chrysalis told them they were not selling records. It stopped everybody in their tracks. He has called the whole Babys story a strange beauty, something about being really good and having fate hold you back. Dark, romantic, not meant to win. He kind of digs that.

There is a second life to the opening line that most people miss until somebody points it out. Five years later, writing alone, Waite needed a way into a new song and borrowed the first words of this one just to get moving. "Every time I think of you, it always turns out good" became "Every time I think of you, I always catch my breath." He sang the first verse, the bridge, and the chorus of "Missing You" without stopping, then had to step back from the microphone because he could not speak. He has said it felt like the song he had been looking for since The Babys. The ballad on Head First did not just chart. It handed him the first brick of a number one.

None of that happens if a joke in a London cafe does not stick. Founding member Mike Corby places the start of the idea at Smalls Cafe on the Fulham Road in 1973, a chance meeting with manager Adrian Millar. They signed a management deal in September 1974 and started auditioning. Drummer Lucas Fox passed through on his way to Motorhead. Singer and guitarist Gordon Hawtin came and went, and pointed them toward a Lancashire kid named John Waite, who had already been through bands called England, Graf Spee, and Chalk Farm. Tony Brock, out of Strider and Spontaneous Combustion, signed on after Millar hounded him for months. Wally Stocker, a Paul Kossoff fan, took the guitar chair in early 1976. The four of them made a three-song demo on video, which was a new trick then, and Chrysalis offered them a deal reported as the biggest ever handed to a new band at the time, somewhere around a million dollars. They did not even have to showcase.

The name was the joke that outlived the plan. Waite told Hit Parader in October 1979 that they called themselves The Babys because record companies would not come hear anything they thought was rock and roll. Labels wanted sure-fire teen bands. They figured they would keep the name two weeks. Word got around London that some outfit playing rock and roll was called The Babys, and it was so off the wall that people showed up. It appealed to everybody's sense of humor, and it never came off the marquee. Bob Ezrin cut the first album. Nevison cut the next two. By the time Head First was in shops, Corby was out, and Americans Jonathan Cain and Ricky Phillips were on the way in for the tours and the records that followed. The band split in 1981. Waite went solo, Cain went to Journey, and the songs stayed on the radio.

The current lineup, led by original drummer Tony Brock with Wally Stocker back on guitar, still puts "Every Time I Think of You" in the set. Their own site lists it right beside "Isn't It Time," "Head First," and "Back On My Feet Again," and the road posts still talk about the chorus hitting every night. You can find the band at thebabysofficial.com, on Facebook, on Instagram, and on X. Fans keep their own rooms going too, including the John Waite and The Babys Fan Club and The Babys Official Fan Club. Spin it again if you want. The line still turns out good.