At a time when boy bands were increasingly publicised as clean-cut and wholesome, East 17 emerged in the early-90s as a breath of rugged, bad boy fresh air. Indeed, promoted as an authentic antidote to the more manufactured Take That, the London quartet enjoyed huge commercial and critical success for much of the decade.
Initially a vehicle for the songwriting prowess of Tony Mortimer, he enlisted John Handy, Terry Coldwell and Brian Harvey from his local Walthamstow neighbourhood. The group’s music was a distinct amalgam of rap, dance-pop, American R’n’B and soul, with Mortimer and Harvey sharing lead vocals and Handy and Coldwell the dancers and backing vocalists.
All Walthamstow natives (hence the moniker East 17, taken from the London postcode for the area), the band’s 1992 debut single, the boisterous House of Love, acted as a clarion call.
It reached number 10 on the British charts and paved the way for an unstoppable string of hit singles – including Deep, Slow it Down, It’s Alright and a cover of Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls – that were all included on their first album, Walthamstow (which topped the album charts in 1993).
In 1994, the group returned with the melodic Around the World. This was followed by the suggestive Steam, before they notched their first number one single, the Christmas classic Stay Another Day, which held Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You from the top spot and went on to score Mortimer an Ivor Novello Award for songwriting and a BRITS nomination for Best Single.
The band’s third album, Up All Night, was another commercial smash and included the singles Thunder and Do U Still? The Gabrielle collaboration, If You Ever, hit number two in 1996. In 2019, Tony Mortimer collaborated with The Waltham Forest Choir for a new rendition of Stay Another Day, in support of raising money for mental health charity CALM.
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