Brian Potter, British songwriter behind hits for Glen Campbell, Take That and more, dies aged 87 | Music

Brian Potter, one of the most versatile and successful British producers and songwriters of his generation, has died aged 87. He has been living with Alzheimer’s disease for the past few years, his daughter told Billboard.

Working with American songwriting partner Dennis Lambert, Essex-born Potter was behind a staggering 1970s hits spanning pop, soul, soft rock, country and beyond. Best known include Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, which hit #1 in the US in 1975; It Only Takes a Minute, a barnstorming disco hit for Tavares, and later Take That; The actor’s super-soft Baby Come Back is another US No.1; and Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got), one of the Four Tops’ soul-stirrers’ biggest hits.

Potter was born and raised in Essex and trained as a drummer, but found his first success as the Small Faces’ songwriter, co-writing their hit 1965 album Whatcha Gonna Do About It. They met while Lambert was visiting London, and Potter moved to the US to help deepen their creative partnership.

One of their first songs together was One Tin Soldier, which had a fairytale-like structure with bitterly angry lyrics about the Vietnam War: “Go ahead and hate your neighbor / Go ahead and cheat on a friend / Do it in the name of heaven / Be vindicated in the end”. It charted with Canadian band Original Caste, then had more success for American band Coven, and their version was used as the theme song to the movie Billy Jack.

In 1971, Potter had a major hit in the US with the symphonic pop song Don’t Pull Your Love; this song peaked at #4 when performed by Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds, and was later covered by Campbell.

In 1973, Potter and Lambert helped reinvent the Four Tops, who formed a new label after leaving Motown Records. Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I’ve Got) gave the Four Tops their biggest post-Motown hit, steering them away from peppy pop and towards a softer R&B sound, taking them back to the top five in the US for the first time since 1967. Potter and Lambert also helmed the Four Tops’ album Keeper of the Castle, whose title track became another US Top 10 hit. They collaborated again on the follow-up album, Main Street People, which included another hit song, Are You Man Enough. The band paid tribute, writing: “We are so grateful for his contributions to the world of music and the legacy of the Four Tops.”

Potter continued to deftly make hits in the world of African-American music as the disco craze began in the mid-1970s, bringing in synthesizers for Tavares’ It Only Takes a Minute, whose love-filled chorus was offset by moody, socially conscious verses about unemployment and illness. It was another US Top 10 hit and later became the first UK Top 10 hit for boy band Take That, who covered the song in 1992. Potter and Lambert had a productive partnership with Tavares, producing two of his mid-’70s albums and writing most of the material on both.

During this period they also produced Dusty Springfield’s 1973 Cameo album, worked with the 5th Dimension on their hit Ashes to Ashes, and produced the Righteous Brothers’ hit cover version of Rock and Roll Heaven, and subsequently wrote another hit for the latter group, Dream On.

Potter and Lambert later had great success with Campbell. Originally written by Larry Weiss, Rhinestone Cowboy became a huge hit for the duo that produced it; another hit single, Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in LA), who also wrote the opening four tracks from the album of the same name. The album’s success earned Potter and Lambert two nominations for recorder and producer of the year at the 1976 Grammy awards; Potter and Lambert also directed Campbell’s sequel, Bloodline.

Later in the 1970s, Potter and Lambert produced Player’s Baby Come Back (a breakup lament that spent three weeks at No. 1 in the US) and Santana’s 1978 album Inner Secrets.

Potter and Lambert’s song Why Do People Fall in Love? It was recorded by both Tony Bennett and Dennis Edwards in the mid-1980s. After an amicable split from Lambert, Potter did other songwriting with artists such as the Pointer Sisters, George Duke and Kenny Rogers, and continued to work on projects such as musical theatre, children’s television and theme park rides.

He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Karen, his daughter, Courtney, and his stepdaughter, Mary Shirley, according to Billboard.