The Real Thing

They've been performing together for 43 years and have hits guaranteed to get people of all ages up on the dance floor.

Four decades later, The Real Thing – comprising of brothers Chris and Eddy Amoo, and Dave Smith – show no signs of slowing down.

Playing at this year's rain-soaked Rewind Festival in Henley, the band's energetic performance got the crowd to their feet with songs like Can't Get By Without You and Can You Feel the Force.

Bringing a true disco fever to the festival goers, The Real Thing drew their set to a close with the crowd pleaser You to Me Are Everything, a song which has meant a lot to the band.

"We were very lucky to have recorded that," said lead singer Chris. "We didn't actually write that song, it was written by two writers called Ken Gold and Mickey Denne and we were privileged to record it."

The song, which went straight into the UK charts at No 1, was their first ever hit, and was also a hit in America. Chris said the band knew it was a special song when they first heard it.

"You've got a feeling for the song," he said "but then there's so much that can happen from when the song comes to you to when it goes out on plastic, you may just lose that magic or gain some magic."

Eddy added: "If anybody knew what a hit record was, you'd have a lot of millionaires by now, nobody ever knows. It takes on a magic thing of its own."

The band have come a long way since they were first discovered on TV Talent Show Opportunity Knocks, an X Factor type show which they won outright.

From there, they started to make their mark in the club world, and were soon snapped up for a tour with David Essex who loved their sound, a mix of disco and soul.

Chris said: "Growing up, our influences were bands like Earth, Wind and Fire, Parliament Funkadelic, Chic and all those sorts of bands."

Nowadays, they take inspiration from modern music too, with a particular passion for R&B.

"I think today's music is fantastic, the same as music always was," Chris said. "I like all of them, a lot of the R&B acts. We are more R& B influenced than anything else, we tend to listen to people like Marcus Miller, that's where black music tends to gravitate to."

It was The Real Thing's funky disco sound that helped them to become, by record sales, the most successful black rock/soul act in England during the 1970s, a feat truly appreciated by the Liverpudian band.

The trio all still live in Liverpool and believe that the city has been so musically successful because of the working class roots.

Chris, who in his spare time shows dogs and has had a Crufts winner in 1987, said: "Livepool's a working class city. Working class cities always produce creative people, doctors, athletes footballers, singers, and that's what Liverpool does, it creates a lot of fantastically creative people. We still live there. It's our favourite place in the world to be."

Since their chart successes in the 70s and 80s, the band have been concentrating on touring, and are currently in the middle of a world wide tour.

" We've been touring for 43 years. We have seen all the changes, we have seen the disco era come in, we have seen the punk era come in, we've seen the jazz funk era come in, the rap era, everything," he said.

"We are currently touring all over the world, and go on a tour of Australia next month which is somewhere we've never been to before."