Brotherhood of Man

The Brotherhood of Man ranks among the United Kingdom's most successful pop groups of all time, their long career spreading across two very separate incarnations of the band, together with a string of highly infectious hit singles that carried the group through much of their first decade together, and success at the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest. The original Brotherhood of Man was formed by record producer and songwriter Tony Hiller in 1969, specifically to record a song he had recently written with vocalist John Goodison, titled "Love One Another." The original lineup comprised Goodison, fellow songwriter Roger Greenaway (better known as the songwriting partner of Roger Cook), and session vocalists Tony Burrows, Sue Glover and Sunny Leslie, the latter were already established as the duo Sue & Sunny. Surprisingly, "Love One Another" flopped, but the band's label, the Deram subsidiary of Decca Records, kept faith and early in the new year, a second single, "United We Stand" became a hit in both the U.K. and U.S. A follow-up, "Where Are You Going to My Love," made the U.K. Top 30 in July (and has since been covered by Olivia Newton-John , the Miracles and the Osmonds), before Burrows quit. He was replaced by American singer Hal Atkinson, whose debut with the group, "Reach Out Your Hand" continued the Brotherhood of Man's American chart success. Greenaway was the next to depart; he was replaced by Russell Stone, but when further singles failed to chart, the band was dropped by Deram. The other members drifted away, but Hiller retained the group name for various television projects, with a new lineup of Martin Lee, Lee Sheridan, Sandra Stevens and Nicky Stevens gradually coalescing from a pool of session vocalists. Brushing off accusations that they were little more than a...