The Foundations – Baby Now That I’ve Found You (1967)

The Number One Written On A Hangover, Rescued By A Pirate Radio Loophole

“Baby Now That I’ve Found You” had every reason not to exist. Released on August 25, 1967, it was a song its own producer didn’t believe in, performed by a band he thought were terrible, written partly in the same Soho pub where Karl Marx was said to have penned Das Kapital. And yet, by November, it sat at number one in the UK — and would go on to sell over three and a half million copies worldwide.

When it was first released, the single went nowhere. Then came the lucky break. BBC’s newly founded Radio 1 was determined to avoid playing anything the pirate radio stations had already championed. Searching back through recent releases the pirates had missed, they landed on “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” — and once it hit the airwaves, it took off instantly. By November 8, 1967, it had reached number one in the UK for two weeks, going on to hit number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Canadian RPM chart the following February.

The day Tony Macaulay came to hear the Foundations play, he was suffering from what he later described as the worst hangover of his life. He thought they were pretty terrible, decided his hangover was to blame, and gave them the benefit of the doubt. “I didn’t have a lot of faith in the song,” he admitted years later, “but they recorded it with a lot of energy and I learned a lot from making that record.” The song itself had been sitting in a drawer — co-written with John MacLeod and not exactly a priority for either of them.

The recording session had its complications: a session bassist was brought in to replace the Foundations’ own player, and backing singers were needed to finish the track. What nobody could argue with was what they’d created — the first multiracial group to score a UK number one in the 1960s. A band of West Indians, White Londoners, and a Sri Lankan, making music that sounded like Motown had set up shop in Bayswater.

Their debut album, From the Foundations, followed in November 1967 on Pye Records, but the real story was always the singles. Lead singer Clem Curtis — a former Trinidadian boxer who’d come to England at 15 — gave the record its raw, soulful edge. Paul McCartney had even offered to write a song for Curtis, such was the buzz around his voice. Curtis left in 1968, replaced by Colin Young, who would front the band on their other massive hit, “Build Me Up Buttercup.”

The song’s afterlife has been remarkable. Alison Krauss released her own version in 1995, which won the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance — quite the journey for a track its producer once dismissed as an afterthought. The Foundations’ original also appeared on the soundtrack to Shallow Hal, introducing it to a whole new generation.

Few debut singles carry this much accidental glory. A producer nursing a hangover, a band playing too loud for him to judge properly, a radio station stumbling on it by chance — and somehow, the result was a timeless piece of British soul. The Foundations were hailed as the first British band to deliver an authentic soul sound, and “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” remains the moment that proved it.