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Terence Nelhams Wright (23 June 1940 – 8 March 2003), known professionally as Adam Faith, was an English singer, actor, and financial journalist. As a British rock and roll teen idol, he scored consecutive No. 1 hits on the UK singles chart with "What Do You Want?" (1959) and "Poor Me" (1960). He became the first UK artist to lodge his initial seven Hit song in the top 5, and was ultimately one of the most record chart acts of the 1960s. He was also one of the first UK acts to record original songs regularly.
Faith also maintained an acting career, appearing as Dave in the Teen film exploitation film Beat Girl (1960), the lead in the ITV television series Budgie (1971–1972) and Frank Carver in the BBC comedy drama Love Hurts (1992–1994).
Known as Terry Nelhams, he was unaware his name was Terence Nelhams Wright until he applied for a passport and obtained his birth certificate. The third in a family of five children, Nelhams grew up in a council house in a working class area of London, where he attended John Perryn Junior School. He had his first job at 12, delivering and selling newspapers part-time while still at school. His first full-time job was odd-job boy for a screen printing printer.
Faith began his musical career in 1957, while working as a film cutter in London in the hope of becoming an actor, singing with and managing a skiffle group, the Worried Men. The group played in Soho coffee bars after work, and became the resident band at the 2i's Coffee Bar, where they appeared on the BBC Television live music programme Six-Five Special. The producer, Jack Good, was impressed by the singer and arranged a solo recording contract with His Master's Voice under the name Adam Faith. According to Faith's obituary in The Guardian, Good showed him a book of names, and the aspiring singer picked "Adam" from the boys' list, and "Faith" from the girls' list.
His debut record "(Got a) Heartsick Feeling" and "Brother Heartache and Sister Tears", in January 1958, failed to make the record chart. Good gave him a part in the stage show of Six-Five Special, along with the John Barry Seven but the show folded after four performances. His second release later that year was a cover version of Jerry Lee Lewis's "High School Confidential", backed with the Burt Bacharach and Hal David penned "Country Music Holiday" but this also failed.
Faith returned to work as a film cutter at National Studios at Elstree until March 1959, when Barry invited him to audition for a BBC TV rock and roll show, Drumbeat. The producer, Stewart Morris, gave him a contract for three shows, extended to the full 22-week run. His contract with His Master's Voice had ended, and he sang one track, "I Vibrate", on a six-track EP released by the Fontana Records record label. Barry's manager, Eve Taylor, got him a contract with Top Rank, but his only record there, "Ah, Poor Little Baby"/"Runk Bunk" produced by Tony Hatch, failed to chart due to a lack of publicity caused by a national printing strike.
Despite the failure, Faith was becoming popular through television appearances. He became an actor by taking drama and elocution lessons. The script called for Faith to sing songs and, because Barry was arranging Faith's recordings and live Drumbeat material, the film company asked him to write the film score. That was the beginning of Barry's notable career in film music.
Faith's success on Drumbeat enabled another recording contract, with Parlophone. His next record in 1959, "What Do You Want?", written by Les Vandyke and produced by Barry and John Burgess, received good reviews in the NME and other papers, as well as being voted a hit record on Juke Box Jury. This became his first number one hit in the UK Singles Chart, and his pronunciation of the word 'baby' as 'bay-beh' became a catchphrase.
"What Do You Want?" was the first number one hit for Parlophone, Faith the only pop act on the label. With his next two single releases, "Poor Me" (another Chart-topper) and "Someone Else's Baby" (a UK No. 2), Faith established himself as a prominent rival to Cliff Richard in British popular music. A UK variety tour was followed by a 12-week season at Blackpool Hippodrome in the summer of 1960 and an appearance on the Royal Variety Show. In October, he appeared in the film Beat Girl.
Faith's next release was a double A-side single, "Made You"/"When Johnny Comes Marching Home", which made the top ten, despite a BBC ban for "Made You" for 'a lewd and salacious lyric'. His 1960 novelty record "Lonely Pup (In a Christmas Shop"), to coincide with his Christmas pantomime, gained a silver disc. His début album Adam was released on 4 November 1960 to critical acclaim for the inventiveness of Barry's arrangements and Faith's own performances. The material ranged from standards such as "Summertime", "Hit the Road to Dreamland" and "Singin' in the Rain" to more contemporary songs, such as Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman's "I'm a Man", Les Vandyke's "Fare Thee Well My Pretty Maid", and Howard Guyton's "Wonderful Time".
At the age of 20 and living with his parents, he bought a house close to Hampton Court for £6,000, where he moved with his family from their house in Acton. In December 1960, he became the first pop artist to appear on the TV interview series Face to Face with John Freeman.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> BBC Genome - Radio Times billing for 11 December 1960 Faith made six further albums and 35 singles, with a total of 24 chart entries, of which 11 made the UK top ten, including his two number ones. Ten of the eleven singles that made the top ten also made the top 5. Faith managed to lodge twenty consecutive single releases on the UK Singles Chart, starting with "What Do You Want?" in November 1959 and culminating with "I Love Being in Love with You" in mid-1964; this was quite a feat for a British artist of Faith's era.
Faith's last top ten hit in the UK (in October 1963) was "The First Time" (UK No. 5), which was also his first single with his backing group in 1963 and 1964, the Roulettes, acquired to give Faith's music a harder 'beat group' edge more in keeping with the Beat music sound at that time sweeping the British charts. His 1974 single "I Survived" made the top 30 of the "Capital Countdown" on London's Capital Radio.
Benefiting from the enthusiasm of American audiences for all artists British at the height of the British Invasion in 1964–1965, Faith managed to register one single in the top 40 of the US Billboard Hot 100, "It's Alright" (which was not released as a single in his native UK). Faith's teen pop became less popular in the mid-1960s in competition with the Beatles. His final top-40 single in the UK was "Someone's Taken Maria Away" in 1965. In 1967, he recorded the psychedelic-sounding "Cowman, Milk Your Cow", which was written by Barry Gibb and Robin Gibb and released as a single in September that same year. The following year, Faith parted company with EMI.
During the 1970s, Faith went into music management, managing Leo Sayer among others. Faith negotiated an advance for his own comeback album with Warner Records, using half of it to record the album I Survive (which failed to chart) and the other half to finance Sayer. Faith and his former drummer David Courtney co-produced Sayer's initial hits "The Show Must Go On" and "One Man Band". Sayer later said in an interview with British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that "Faith handled everything for me, but although he was a very good mentor, he was less trustworthy with my money. In the end, Adam Faith made more out of Leo Sayer than I did." Faith also co-produced Roger Daltrey's first solo album Daltrey which included the hit single "Giving It All Away" penned by Sayer.
In 1962, Faith co-starred opposite Donald Sinden and Anne Baxter in the film Mix Me a Person, playing a working-class youth falsely accused of murder. The thriller was rated X-certificate (the modern equivalent would be a UK 18-certificate) by the BBFC. Following Faith's 1968 departure from his record label EMI, he concentrated on acting, particularly repertory theatre. After a number of small parts, he was given a more substantial role in the play Night Must Fall, playing opposite Dame Sybil Thorndike. In autumn 1969, he took the lead in a touring production of Billy Liar. Faith starred as the eponymous hero in the early 1970s television series Budgie (LWT/ITV), about an ex-convict. He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1971 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.
Faith's acting career declined after a 1973 motor car accident in which he almost lost a leg. He restarted with a role in Stardust (1974) as the manipulative manager of rock star David Essex, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award. Despite this success, he remained reluctant to act for some years, and turned back to music-related ventures.
In 1980, he starred with Roger Daltrey in McVicar, and again played a rock band manager in Foxes, starring Jodie Foster as his daughter. Faith played the role of James Crane in the 1985 TV movie Minder on the Orient Express – part of the Minder franchise. From 1992 to 1994, he appeared in another TV series, Love Hurts, starring with Zoë Wanamaker. In 2002, he appeared in the BBC series The House That Jack Built. In 2003, he appeared in an episode of Murder in Mind.
| 1960 | Never Let Go | Tommy Towers | John Guillermin |
| Beat Girl (aka Wild for Kicks) | Dave | Edmond T. Gréville | |
| 1961 | What a Carve Up | Small uncredited part | Pat Jackson (director) |
| What a Whopper | Tony | Gilbert Gunn | |
| 1962 | Mix Me a Person | Harry Jukes | Leslie Norman |
| 1974 | Stardust | Mike | Michael Apted |
| 1979 | Yesterday's Hero | Jake | Neil Leifer |
| 1980 | Foxes | Bryan | Adrian Lyne |
| McVicar | Walter Probyn | Tom Clegg |
| 1959 | No Hiding Place | Vince | Episode: 1.03 "Wheels of Fury" |
| 1966 | Seven Deadly Sins | Watcher | Episode: 1.05 "In the Night" |
| 1971–1972 | Budgie | Ronald "Budgie" Bird | 26 episodes |
| 1977 | McCloud | Inspector Craig | Episode: 7.05 "London Bridges" |
| 1984 | Just Another Little Blues Song | Frank | Television film |
| 1985 | Minder | James Crane | Episode: 6.07 "Minder on the Orient Express" |
| 1992–1994 | Love Hurts | Frank Carver | 30 episodes |
| 2002 | The House That Jack Built | Jack Squire | 6 episodes |
| 2003 | Murder in Mind | Terry Cameron | Episode: 3.05 "Contract" |
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