Isn't It Time

You are locked in with The Zoo, the station that still treats an album cut like it means something, and the record on the turntable is The Babys, "Isn't It Time," the song that walked a London band straight into American radio. It sits on Broken Heart, the second Chrysalis album, released in September 1977 and cut with producer Ron Nevison at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, with extra work at Hidden Valley Ranch. Nevison already had Led Zeppelin, The Who and Bad Company on his résumé, and he gave these four a bigger room to play in. The single ran about three minutes and twenty-three seconds; the album take stretched past four. Either way, it is the track that made the phone light up.

Here is the part that still surprises people who assume every hit is written in the dressing room. "Isn't It Time" did not come from John Waite, Michael Corby, Wally Stocker or Tony Brock. The song belongs to session bassist Jack Conrad and singer-songwriter Ray Kennedy. Conrad had played with The Doors after Jim Morrison. Kennedy had co-written the Beach Boys' "Sail On, Sailor" and sung material tied to Phantom of the Paradise. The pair handed Chrysalis a finished idea the band had not lived with for years. Kennedy later said the lyric came out of a real crush on a French woman he knew while the song was being written. That is why the verses feel private and the chorus feels like a dare. Falling in love was the last thing on his mind. Holding her was a warmth he did not think he would find. Then the question: isn't it time.

The Babys had formed in London out of a 1973 café meeting between keyboardist and guitarist Michael Corby and manager Adrian Millar, with a formal agreement the next year and auditions to fill the rest of the room. John Waite, who had been knocking around Cleveland with a band called The Boys, came home and took the vocal and bass chairs. Tony Brock, already seasoned from Strider, sat down at the kit. Wally Stocker, late of Joy and Pegasus, joined on lead guitar in January 1976. Waite liked to say the name was spelled that way because he was a lousy speller. Chrysalis signed them in part on the strength of a color video demo, an unusual move for the middle of the decade, and the debut album arrived in early 1977 with Bob Ezrin and Brian Christian involved. "If You've Got the Time" scratched the American chart at number 88. Broken Heart was the leap.

Listen to how the record is built. Corby's piano opens it, soft and almost private, the kind of figure that makes a listener lean toward the speaker. Waite comes in with that high, slightly urgent British voice, not shouting the verse, just laying the dilemma out. Brock's drums announce the chorus. Then the Babettes answer him. Lisa Freeman-Roberts, Myrna Matthews and Pat Henderson, singers associated with Andraé Crouch and the Disciples, stack a gospel reply against the rock band. Nevison pans those answers left and right, so the hook moves across the room. Strings and horns, arranged by Alan MacMillan, lift the second half without turning it into a ballad. Stocker's guitar, the slow-hand close, brings it home. The flip side of the Chrysalis single was "Give Me Your Love." American Bandstand aired a clip of the song in December 1977. In Britain it showed up on Top of the Pops and still only reached number 45, the band's only UK chart single. Home crowds can be the last to notice.

The numbers tell the rest of the story. Billboard's Hot 100 saw the single enter at number 82 in early October 1977 and climb for weeks until it peaked at number 13 on the chart dated December 24, spending sixteen weeks in the survey. Cash Box had it at number 8. Record World listed it at 11. Adult contemporary parked it at 49, which says the song was never only a rock-radio toy. Canada’s RPM chart put it at number 8. Belgium hit 8. The Dutch Top 40 reached 4. Australia was the prize: number 1 on the Kent Music Report in March 1978, and a year-end placing inside the top 20. Broken Heart itself climbed to number 34 in the United States, with reported sales around 400,000. The follow-up from the same album, "Silver Dreams," written by Brock and Waite, made it to 53. Conrad and Kennedy were not finished with the band. They also wrote "Every Time I Think of You," which did the same American trick in 1979, number 13 Billboard and number 8 Cash Box, off the next album, Head First.

Broken Heart is a ten-song rock-and-ballad set, cover art built from Corby's notion of the group as characters out of A Clockwork Orange, photographed and designed by Charles William Bush. Outside writers were in the room on purpose. Mike Japp, formerly of Marmalade, contributed "A Piece of the Action." Chas Sandford had a hand in the writing pool. Waite's voice sits farther forward than it did on the debut. The band later said some of the first album felt overproduced; Nevison cleared the glass. Chrysalis re-teamed them with him for Head First, cut under pressure with a mobile truck at a Malibu ranch, and the arguments about rockers versus ballads never really stopped. Corby was out by late August 1978. Jonathan Cain and Ricky Phillips came in. "Back on My Feet Again" gave them another American Top 40 in 1980. By 1981 the original run was over. Waite went solo and landed "Missing You." Cain joined Journey. Stocker later turned up with Air Supply. Brock kept the drum chair and, from 2013 on, put The Babys back on stage with Wally Stocker still in the lineup, John Bisaha on lead vocal and bass, and a new pair of Babettes.

A few bits of trivia belong in the sleeve. The song had been turned down by the Temptations before The Babys cut it, which explains the soul under the guitars. Kennedy recorded his own version for a 1980 solo album on ARC/Columbia. Robin Trower covered it in 1990 on In the Line of Fire. Johnny Hallyday cut a French rewrite in 1978. The Babettes' surname spellings wander from liner to liner, Matthews and Mathews both show up, but the three voices do not. Current lineups still open or close with this song, and the official camp marks more than fifty years since the London start. If you want the catalog, the live dates and the reunion story in the band's own words, the door is thebabysofficial.com. The same camp keeps a Facebook page at facebook.com/thebabysofficial, an Instagram at instagram.com/thebabysofficial, and an X account at x.com/tweetthebabys. For session notes, pressings and the Chrysalis label history, the Discogs artist file at discogs.com/artist/272134-The-Babys is the working archive, and the AllMusic overview lives at allmusic.com/artist/the-babys-mn0000035125.

That is the record. A piano figure, a question Waite never wrote, three gospel voices answering a London rhythm section, and a producer who knew how to make a chorus move from speaker to speaker. The Zoo keeps the deep cuts and the hits in the same stack, commercial-free, the way album radio was built to work. Pull up a chair at thezoorocks.com and stay with the song. Isn't it time.