This is the seventeenth in a series of examinations of music legends and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the previous sixteen.

This week is a special theme week - it’s a follow up to the previous “All British Invasion Artists” theme week. This time, it’s “All Artists From the SECOND British Invasion of the late 1970s/early 1980s!”

Let’s begin!

MUSIC LEGEND: The head of Madness’ record company bet his company that “It Must Be Love” would be a hit.

STATUS: True

Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera’s Stiff Records was definitely one of the more offbeat record companies of the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Just click here to see a sample logo they used in the late 1970s (be warned, profanity is included in the logo!)

Riviera left the company in 1978, and as part of his separation agreement, he took Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe with him.

Luckily for Robinson, in 1979 he signed the band Madness, whose commercial success throughout the early 1980s basically kept the label afloat, financially.

Some time in late 1980/early 1981, Madness keyboardist Mike Barson heard Labi Siffre’s song “It Must Be Love,” which was released as a single in 1971 (it reached #14 on the UK charts).

Barson worked out a new arrangement of the song and the band would often play it on encores at the end of their shows.

Dave Robinson thought that the song would be a hit.

The band disagreed.

Not only that, but seeing as how they were already quite successful with their own material, they did not feel like releasing a cover song.

Robinson insisted that their version of the song would be a big success - a top five smash, and success like that would be worth it, even if it were not their song.

Still, though, the band did not believe it.

That’s when Robinson made a striking offer - if they released their version of the song and it did NOT reach the Top Five in the UK Charts, Robinson would give them Stiff Records!!

Says Robinson, “I had to guarantee to give the band my entire record company to get them to put this out”

The band agreed, and in late 1981, they released “It Must Be Love.”

And sure enough, the song reached #4 on the singles charts in the UK and even reached #33 on the US charts!

The song had a music video, and Labi Siffre makes a cute cameo in it.

Now, of course, a few points…

A. We don’t know for sure that Richards would have actually gone through with his bet

B. We don’t know if Madness would even WANT him to go through with his offer

C. We don’t know if Madness agreed to release the single as part of the bet or just because they were impressed by Robinson’s devotion to the idea

and, finally

D. We don’t know if getting Stiff Records would be even that much of a prize at that particular point in time, when Madness was basically the thing keeping the company afloat (It would eventually fold in 1985).

But do not let those silly letters distract you from the cool story of a company head betting his company on a song becoming a hit!

MUSIC LEGEND: Billy Idol wrote “White Wedding” as a put down towards his sister.

STATUS: I’m Going With False

Billy Idol’s single “White Wedding” (specifically it’s “White Wedding (Part 1)” - I don’t know why it’s called that - there might be a legend there!) was released in 1982 off of Idol’s 1982 self-titled album.

It was a Top 40 hit in the United States and did even better in Idol’s native England.

The music video was one of the most memorable MTV videos of the era.

In any event, when the song was showed on VH1’s Pop-Up Video program in the early 1990s, it was claimed that the song was about Idol’s dissatisfaction with his sister getting married because she was “knocked up” by her fiancé.

Idol, though, disagrees with that take vehemently. He naturally admits that yeah, his sister’s (then) upcoming nuptials inspired the song, but only the general idea of the song. After that, he took the song in an entirely different direction, and really, the lyrics tend to support Idol’s take, as the song doesn’t seem to be one about a brother worried about a sister’s marriage.

Idol discussed the misconceptions about the song on his episode of VH1’s Storytellers…

In addition, at the time of the song’s release, Idol specifically referenced drugs as the influence for much of the song’s lyrics (to wit, it is certainly possible, although I’m not exactly up on my drug-related slang, that the term “White Wedding” IS, as I’ve seen claimed a number of places, a slang term related to cocaine use).

So could the song be a slam on his sister’s “shotgun” marriage?

I suppose so, but there’s enough going against it (including Idol specifically saying it isn’t) that I’m willing to go with a false here. I DO think that Idol views the song as generally anti-marriage, but not specifically his sister.

His sister, by the way, is still married to the man she married back in the early 80s, and they have three children.

MUSIC LEGEND: Thomas Dolby was sued by Dolby Laboratories over the use of the name “Dolby.”

STATUS: True

Thomas Dolby was born Thomas Morgan Robertson.

Growing up, Thomas was heavily into music, but more than just music, he was into the technology BEHIND music, and as a teenager, he got the nickname “Dolby” from his friends for the fact that he’d constantly be immersed in his recording equipment and computers (Dolby being a reference to Dolby Laboratories, the fellows who developed the noise reduction technology used on pretty much all music of the time).

In his late teens, he became a well-regarded sound engineer for bands on the road, as he really had basically mastered sound technologies.

Then, taking the stage name Thomas Dolby, he began to become an in-demand synthesizer player for various artists and he released some music of his own.

He had a gigantic hit single in 1983 called “She Blinded Me With Science.”

Where he got into “trouble,” though, was when he began to become a well-regarded film scorer.

He used the name “Dolby’s Cube” to score films.

Well, while Dolby Laboratories was not too worried about the name “Thomas Dolby,” they felt that “Dolby’s Cube” was far too reminiscent of their company’s name. So they sued Dolby after he used the name for the soundtrack of the film Howard the Duck.

The end result (after a settlement) was that he could continue to release records under the name Thomas Dolby, but the “Thomas” part had to always be part of it - he couldn’t release records under names like “Dolby’s Cube” or whatever.

If you check out the soundtrack for Howard the Duck, you’ll note that it now says music by “Thomas Dolby” not “Dolby’s Cube.”

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com