A string of hits with Classix Nouveaux; a classic 'religious' single "San Damiano"; but then SAL SOLO retired from music. Mike Fearon found out why he left... and why he's come back.

One pilgrim asked Sal what he did - "I thought everyone knew; when Nick and I arrived, people started saying the carnival had come to town!" - and, on being told of the pair's rock'n'roll connections, the man smiled and said, 'I can understand why God has brought you here. Music is the international language of the young today. They are looking for what you have found. You can tell them about it.' Sal felt that these were his 'marching orders' from God.

Initially Sal thought this meant simply recording a song about San Damiano. He and Nick discussed the possibility of a collaboration, but Nick started to get cold feet. Whenever he mentioned San Damiano to evangelicals, he began to get a weird reaction. This apparent small-mindedness turned Sal off evangelicals for a long time.

An immediate problem for Sal was how he would continue to relate to the members of his band. Line-up changes ensued by natural progression, those who stayed were sympathetic to Sal's faith - though they didn't change their own lifestyles - and the new members were even more sympathetic. His drummer sometimes went to church with him.

The San Damiano trip happened in October 1983, and by the following May he got a call from his manager offering him a spot on The Rock Gospel Show. All he knew about the show, which he'd never seen, was that it has choirs; and Sal fancied a choir on his "San Damiano (Heart And Soul)" song.-

"When the choir came in the studio and began to sing my song, this heavenly sound came out, and I thought, 'That's exactly it!" I was in awe because, until that stage, all my music had been driven by my own ambition. Now here was something which it seemed God was driving. The sound conveyed perfectly the peace, serenity and majesty I had felt in San Damiano."

The song was never intended to be a single - simply as a television session. At the mixing stage, the engineer said 'Shall I mix it in mono or stereo? There's not much point putting it in stereo just for TV, is there?' It was almost as an afterthought that Sal asked for a stereo mix.

"When I performed it on TV, the BBC got letters about the song. When I'd performed it, one woman in the studio had said in a plumy voice, 'Excuse me Mr Solo, I thought that was lovely. I can just imagine it in Top Of The Pops.' I thought, Well I can't imagine it! Afterwards my manager asked what I would like to do with it."

Sal wanted to release it as a single and, because of its apparent uncommercial sound; his manager suggested releasing it near Christmas, so that people would think it was a Christmas record. Classix Nouveaux's last chart hits "Because You're Young" and the aptly titled "The End...Or The Beginning" had peaked at 43 and 60 respectively, and the band hadn't had a whiff at the UK charts since the end of 1982. It was to everyone's surprise, therefore, when "San Damiano (Heart And Soul)" entered the charts in December 1984 and stayed there for ten weeks, peaking at No 15.

"Even when the track was first offered to record companies, the reaction had been so much better than for anything I'd ever done in my life before. God really seemed to have his hand on it. People in the record company kept coming to me and sharing personal things. No one really knew what the record was about, but it seemed to touch a chord in them that made them think of God, or of all the hymns they'd ever known as a kid.

"To this day, I look back in wonder about the way the record went. At every interview, people wanted to talk to me about God. If I'd been a total unknown and sang a religious song, no one would have batted an eyelid; but because I was known for something at the other end of the scale, in image terms, it was a novelty for them."

Having a newly awakened conscience caused Sal some songwriting problems. No longer could he write songs about nothing when he could be saying something of worth. After a second solo single, "Music And You" peaked at 53, Sal wanted to record a pro-life song.

"I didn't want to get people's backs up, so my song - "How Was I To Know" -was simply the cry of a baby from the womb to the mother who doesn't want it. In a very short period of time, a lot of doors closed on me. Everyone thought, 'here's another Cliff Richard, we don't want another one of them.' I started to be categorised inappropriately to the kind of artist I was."

His record company would complain that, after appearing one night on the Terry Wogan show, he would 'spoil it' by cropping up the next night on The Rock Gospel Show! His musical ambitions had already been fulfilled, so he went in search of new challenges.

After the failure of his final "Adoramus Te" Christmas single based on a hymn, Sal was faced with a choice between proclaiming the message and making music. He chose the message, and retired from the recording world to concentrate on youth ministry in his own church. His image gained him the respect of many young people, by merit of his own individuality - he didn't look like the older generation.