Tony Rivers has died at the age of 85. He had several minor Top 30 hits in the 1960s but is best known as the voice on the theme song to the 1970s sitcom Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?.
He was also the voice on the Top of the Pops albums during the 1970s, selling more than 40m copies of the cover versions of the big hits of the day.
He was Cliff Richard’s musical director and voice coach for more than a decade during his halcyon years in the 1980s, and he mentored Shakin’ Stevens to the top of the charts. At Live Aid in 1985, he backed Elton John and George Michael as they duetted on Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, which was one of the highlights of that extraordinary concert.
His real name was David Anthony Thompson and, above all else, he was born on December 21, 1940, in Cooperative Street, Shildon.
His most memory of his Shildon was of playing out during the wartime black out, and being struck by a lorry.
He once told the Echo’s Mike Amos: "I still remember my friend shouting to me to stop. If I hadn't, it wouldn't have hit me, but I turned around and said 'What'?"
And the next thing he remembered was coming to lying on the kitchen table with neighbours frantically dashing down to the Hippodrome cinema to find his mum. He was taken to Darlington Memorial Hospital where he was found to have a fractured skull, arm and leg.
"You could say," said in 2008, "that Shildon had left its mark on me."
That mark went with him when, aged seven, his family moved to East Ham in London. He became a West Ham supporter (in 1975, he was responsible for the FA Cup final song, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles) and, inspired by Buddy Holly, learned to play the guitar. He got a job at Butlin’s in Clacton, formed a band – Tony Rivers and the Castaways – and supported the Beatles.
The Castaways released several singles on Polydor and toured the country, which meant David – or Tony, as he now was – returned to the North East to play at places like the Top Hat in Spennymoor, the Big Club in Newton Aycliffe and the Fiesta in Stockton.
In 1968, the Echo interviewed him when he released I Can Guarantee You Love, which the paper called “a relaxed, high harmony” number, and of which Tony said: “If a nice song like this can’t be a success, what can?” It flopped.
Searching for a hit, the Castaways changed their name to Harmony Grass and grazed into the Top 30 with Move in a Little Closer, Baby, which reached No 24 in January 1969 – Tony’s biggest hit.
In 1970, he released a single called Mrs Ritchie, written about the landlady whom he always stayed with when playing in Stockton. She ran a guest house called Pendelphin in Norton Road. The Echo predicted it would be a big hit; Tyne Tees featured it for 15 minutes on the television news, but David Jacobs on Juke Box Jury voted it a miss, and it flopped.
The lad from Shildon then became a solo session singer, voicing the Top of the Pops albums, and then, in 1973, recording the theme to the famous Geordie sitcom – “ooooh, what happened to you, whatever happened to me? What became of the people we used to be?” – written by Mike Hugg of Manfred Mann.
In 1975, he teamed up with Cliff, working on Devil Woman, Miss You Nights and the million-selling album Wired for Sound – the video for the title track featured Cliff rollerskating in legwarmers with an ultra-trendy Walkman cassette player clamped to his ears.
In 2008, Tony told the Echo: “Cliff's all right, a perfectly nice guy, just like he seems on the telly. I think he's a bit more full of himself than he used to be, not as modest, but that's because he was fed up of being pilloried by some sections of the press. He’s achieved an awful lot.”
Tony also achieved an awful lot. He worked on hits and records for artists like Shakin’ Stevens, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Sheena Easton, Pink Floyd, Ralph McTell, Al Stewart, The Alan Parsons Project, Jeff Beck, Nick Heyward, and even, in 2005, Saint Etienne.
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He lived most of his later years in Spain with his wife, Pat, who died in 2019, and their son, Anthony, who is also a singer. He died on March 30, 2026, and Cliff was one of the first to pay tribute.
"Tony Rivers has passed on, leaving me shocked and upset at losing yet another talented friend,” he wrote. “He featured on many of my albums and tours, creating backing vocals that lifted my tracks into what I could only have dreamed of. He was the “Master” of harmonies. God Bless you Tony, I shall miss you greatly. Rest in Peace, Cliff.”
Tony’s boyhood home in Cooperative Street, Shildon, has long since been demolished, but he still had fond memories of growing up there. He told Mike Amos in 2008: "It's been a while now since I was in Shildon. What I really miss, talking to you, is a game of football down the Rec.”
