Bucks Fizz may be considered a bit of a joke, but they deserve better than that. Not only did they win the Eurovision Song Contest with the sugary sweet Making Your Mind Up, but they went on to have a further two number 1s, and The Land of Make Believe is an excellent pop song with more to it than the fairytale imagery and super-catchy chorus.
Before
Although Bucks Fizz had originally been intended as merely a vehicle for songwriter Andy Hill’s Making Your Mind Up, he and his girlfriend, music publisher Nichola Martin, were determined for the group to sustain that success. Together with RCA Records executive Bill Kimber, they decided to change tack, update the cheesy rock’n’roll sound of their debut, and make the whole project more polished. And it paid off when follow-up single Piece of the Action climbed to 12. That may not sound too impressive, but bear in mind that at the time this was the highest chart placing ever achieved by a Eurovision-winning act with their follow-up single. It became the first track on their eponymous debut LP, which also contained their next single, One of Those Nights. However, this track only reached 20, so alarm bells may have begun to ring. Had the well run dry already?
With this perhaps in mind, Hill sought help from fellow songwriter Pete Sinfield. He had been a founding member and lyricist for King Crimson, before writing words for Emerson, Lake & Palmer. He also wrote the lyrics for Lake’s classic I Believe in Father Christmas. Sinfield moved to Ibiza to live as a tax exile, and by the time he returned to London in 1980, progressive rock was largely extinct.
Sinfield was introduced to Hill and they set to work on Bucks Fizz’s fourth single. Though it may seem a simple task for the man who wrote the words to prog classic LP In the Court of the Crimson King, Sinfield said in a 2002 interview: ‘It is 10 times more difficult to write a three-minute hit song, with a veneer of integrity, than it is to write anything for King Crimson or ELP.’
During the recording, Mike Nolan told Hill he thought the song was a dud, and could even sink the group for good, but the producer told him that Bobby G and Cheryl Baker had already recorded their parts, and what’s more, they loved it. Nolan later admitted he had been totally wrong.
Review
Whether Hill’s fairytale tune came first or not, Sinfield nonetheless wrote lyrics that shone a light on the darkness behind so many fairytales, and that queasy, eerie feeling they can conjure. Though the first verse seems traditional enough:
‘Stars in your eyes, little one Where do you go to dream To a place, we all know The land of make believe’
It’s followed up with this distinctly darker couplet: ‘Shadows tapping at your window/Ghostly voices whisper: “Will you come and play?”‘ and a genuinely creepy
This lyric, and ‘Something nasty in your garden’s waiting/Patiently, till it can have your heart’, take on a whole new meaning when you consider that Sinfield later revealed The Land of Make Believe was in fact an attack on Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government – something that’s focussed on brilliantly in episode one of director Adam Curtis’s recent BBC documentary Shifty.
Most eerie of all is the ending – usually not played on the radio. It’s a nursery rhyme, read by then-11-year-old Abby Kimber, who was the daughter of the RCA Records executive mentioned earlier:
‘I’ve got a friend who comes to tea And no-one else can see but me He came today but had to go To visit you? Ya never know’
This gains added weirdness when you consider that young Kimber would a year later star in Minipops, the ill-advised TV show in which young children performed pop songs. The series was cancelled after one series due to complaints over having children dressed up as adults performing songs with sexual lyrics. Conspiracy theorists would have a field day with this song – anti-Thatcher, who was mates with Jimmy Savile… what did Sinfield know?!
The hidden depth to The Land of Make Believe adds lots of appeal – but even if that depth wasn’t there, it’s a great pop song. The chorus is incredibly catchy and the early 80s electro production is leagues above Making Your Mind Up – fair play to Hill and co for not resting on their laurels. And as a young child at the time, I can tell you that this ticked all the boxes when it came to parties and discos.
With sights set on the Christmas market, the video to The Land of Make Believe has lots of pantomime imagery, glitter and sparklers. And for a change it’s Baker, not Jay Aston, that is the video’s sex symbol – which is ironic as it was Aston that chose the outfits.
After
The Land of Make Believe was released in November in time for the Christmas market, but stalled at five during the festive chart itself. However, when Don’t You Want Me finally ran out of steam, Bucks Fizz finally scored their second number 1. The Human League’s Phil Oakey was among many critics, fans and fellow pop stars that were full of praise for the first new chart-topper of 1982. It would be a hell of a year for chart music.
The Outro
A year later, The Land of Make Believe was recorded by future Eurovision winner Celine Dion, whose first UK number 1, Think Twice, was written by Hill and Sinfield.
The Land of Make Believe was covered by pop group allSTARS* in 2002. It reached nine in the singles chart.
The Info
Written by
Andy Hill & Pete Sinfield
Producer
Andy Hill
Weeks at number 1
2 (16-29th January)
Trivia
Births
16 January: Ordinary Boys singer Preston 19 January: Ice hockey player Shaun Wallis 21 January: Rugby union player Nick Duncombe
Deaths
21 January: Actress Penelope Dudley-Ward 27 January: RMS Titanic survivor Frank John William Goldsmith
Meanwhile…
18 January: ‘A Complaint of Rape’ – the third episode of BBC One fly-on-the-wall documentary series Police, shows police treating a female complainant dismissively, which led to changes in police treatment of rape allegations.
21 January: Miners vote against strike action and accept the offer of a 9.3% pay rise from the National Coal Board.
26 January: Unemployment is recorded at over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s.However, the 11.5% of the workforce currently unemployed is approximately half of the record percentage which was reached half a century ago.
It’s a tale as old as 1981. The tall but true tale of how a bunch of Sheffield synth-based misfits fell apart, causing the remaining singer to hire two dancing teenage girls he saw in a club and release one of the best pop songs ever. This is the story of The Human League and Don’t You Want Me, the Christmas number 1 that year.
Before
The Human League flickered into life in 1977. Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were computer operators who met at the youth arts project Meatwhistle. Both were lovers of glam rock and Motown, but, perhaps in part because of their occupations, were becoming increasingly interested in avant-garde electronica. Only a few years previous, the idea of working class people delving into the latter was just fantasy. But the cost of electronic components had started to drop, and so Ware and Marsh clubbed together to buy a Korg 700S synthesiser. A mutual friend booked them to perform at his 21st birthday party, and so The Dead Daughters were born.
After a few more informal performances, Ware and Marsh decided to form a proper group. They recruited Adi Newton, bought a Roland System-100 synth and became The Future. They rehearsed in a disused cutlery workshop in the centre of Sheffield and during this brief time they recorded and compiled a demo tape of 10 songs. The Future visited London with this tape but were not signed, resulting in Newton leaving to form the influential Clock DVA with Steven ‘Judd’ Turner. The demos were eventually released by hip producer Richard X in 2002, along with early Human League tracks on compilation album The Golden Hour of the Future. It’s not an easy listen, sounding not unlike Throbbing Gristle or early Cabaret Voltaire, but it’s a curio.
Ware, wisely, decided a singer was needed if they were to hope to find a record deal. First, they asked Glenn Gregory, who had been in a punk band with Marsh, but he had moved to London to become a photographer. Instead, they settled on their old school friend, Philip Oakey. He was working as a porter in a hospital, when they asked him. Despite no musical experience, Oakey was handsome and known on the Sheffield music scene for his outlandish dress sense. Ware went round to his house to ask him to join The Future, but was forced to pin a note to his front door when he didn’t answer.
Oakey accepted, but got off to an awkward start, struggling to sing around the rest of the band, and only possessing one instrument – a saxophone – which he couldn’t really play. But they persisted and Ware decided a change of name could give them a second chance with record companies. In early 1978, he suggested they become The Human League, named after a group from the science fiction board game Star Force: Alpha Centauri. The Human League wanted greater independence from Earth – in the game I mean, not Ware, Marsh and Oakey.
The Human League released a demo tape with Future material thrown in. Ware’s friend Paul Bower from local new wave act 2.3 alerted the Edinburgh-based label Fast Product, who he had recently signed with. Thus, the first Human League single Being Boiled was released (for a long time, I thought Being Boiled (Fast Version) was an incorrect description of the pace of the record). Being Boiled was catchy, but it was not pop. Oakey’s lyrics, combining a protest against silk farming with Eastern religion, were his first contribution to the group.
The Human League’s first live performance came that summer at Sheffield’s Psalter Lane Art College – now known as Sheffield Hallam University. The trio were concerned about live shows beforehand, and more so afterwards, but hope came in the form of Oakey’s friend Philip Adrian Wright, who went from audience member to the band’s Director of Visuals. A session for John Peel followed, as well as dates supporting The Rezillos and Siouxsie and the Banshees. None other than David Bowie saw one of their live shows and declared in the NME that he had witnessed the future of pop music.
Not that you could tell that from their next release. The Dignity of Labour EP contained four experimental instrumentals and didn’t perform well, but this combined with the growing support of their contemporaries helped them get noticed. After supporting Iggy Pop in June 1979, they signed with Virgin Records, taking Fast Records label owner Bob Last as their manager.
The problem was, Virgin insisted they use conventional instruments and vocals. As a compromise, they released the disco-influenced single I Don’t Depend on You, which featured two female backing singers… as The Men. It didn’t chart. They were allowed to continue with their old style and released their debut album Reproduction in August. It was patchy at best, and although the single Empire State Human was promising, it didn’t compare with Tubeway Army’s Are ‘Friends’ Electric?. Gary Numan was taking any momentum The Human League might have initially had.
Nevertheless, 1980 showed promise when Holiday ’80 EP almost cracked the top 40. Produced by John Leckie, who had worked with XTC and Simple Minds, it included an excellent new version of Being Boiled and closed with a medley of Gary Glitter’s Rock ‘n’ RollPart 2 with Pop’s Nightclubbing. The Human League made their Top of the Pops debut with a performance of the former.
In May 1980 Wright began playing keyboards during live gigs as well as looking after visuals, and they released their second album, Travelogue. It was an improvement on Reproduction – particularly The Black Hit of Space, which sounded ahead of its time. But tensions were growing. Oakey and Ware had often disagreed about their direction, with the former fancying a more commercial sound whereas Ware wanted to continue a more esoteric, totally electronic manifesto. Numan’s success with Cars and Virgin’s refusal to release anything else from Travelogue brought matters to a head, and Ware decided to walk out, taking Marsh with him. With a tour imminent, this was a disaster.
Last tried to sort the situation out, suggesting two new bands under a Human League sub-label, but Ware and Marsh wouldn’t return. It was agreed that Oakey could keep the name and they went on to form Heaven 17 with Gregory, based on the reference to a fictional pop band in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Interestingly, before that, they formed British Electric Foundation, and released albums featuring modern acts covering famous songs with their electronics as backing. Heaven 17 was just one BEF act.
Although Oakey got to keep the group name, this was in effect a poisoned chalice at this point. All Human League debts and commitments were his, including ensuring Ware and Marsh got one percent in royalties from the next Human League LP. Not only that, the media were, understandably, laughing at Oakey. How the hell was he going to get anywhere? Wright hadn’t written a song as yet and was new to playing keyboards. The musical talent had gone and the tour was literally days away.
It’s a well-known anecdote, but it bares repeating, that Oakey decided to hire a female backing vocalist and scoured the clubs of Sheffield. He visited the Crazy Daisy Nightclub and chanced upon two 17-year-olds on the dancefloor. A desperate Oakey, in an image that brings to mind Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1980) if his girlfriend wasn’t also there with him, asked Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall to join The Human League as dancers and backing vocalists. Once they agreed to be on board, he had to approach their parents, who agreed, providing Oakey promised to keep them safe. The new line-up was completed by professional musician Ian Burden from local group Graph on keyboards. However, despite Oakey’s moves, the tour was scoffed at by the music press, who slated Sulley and Catherall. The girls returned to sixth form education.
With Virgin still pressuring The Human League for reasons to keep them on the label, Oakey and Wright recorded and released the single Boys and Girls in February 1981. It was similar to the kind of songs recorded by the previous line-up and only reached 46, but Virgin decided what was missing was a decent producer. In a genius move, The Human League were paired with Martin Rushent, who had worked with Buzzcocks, Shirley Bassey and Joy Division. Rushent’s first move was to get the group out of Sheffield, where they still shared a studio with Heaven 17, and offer a fresh start at his Berkshire studio.
The first fruits of this pairing were the call-to-arms single The Sound of the Crowd. Sulley and Catherall were now on board as official members and on backing vocals, and Burden was also offered a full-time job. It was catchy as hell and perfectly timed, capturing the imagination of electronic music fans and New Romantic poseurs alike. The single peaked at 12 that spring. At last, some momentum.
Last reckoned one more professional on board could really guarantee future hits, and so he suggested guitarist Jo Callis, formerly guitarist with The Rezillos, who he had managed. The new line-up recorded one of the most enduring Human League tracks, Love Action (I Believe in Love). Released in July and soaring to three in the charts a month later, The Human League had proven the naysayers wrong and against all odds, were now bona fide pop stars. Sully and Catherall dropped plans to go to university and the group convened to assemble the album that would cement their reputation. As Shaun Ryder would later say, ‘It’s Dare‘.
Dare was released in October and preceded by another great single, Open Your Heart, which was a number six hit. Dare was huge, even causing the Musicians Union to publicly condemn it for potentially putting ‘real’ musicians out of a job. After it went to number 1, Virgin executive Simon Draper insisted the album should be mined for one more single. Oakey wasn’t happy with Draper’s choice. It was a song that the singer considered to be the weakest on Dare, which he had relegated to the last track on the album. Amazingly, the track was Don’t You Want Me.
Dare’s closer had been inspired by a photo story in a teen girl magazine. Originally conceived and recorded as a song solely from the point of view of the male protagonist. But, inspired by the romantic drama A Star Is Born (1976), he veered towards a troubled romantic duet. With two female backing vocalists in the group, he was spoiled for choice. Pure luck of the draw meant Sulley got the gig. ‘Romantic’ is perhaps the wrong word for this bitter power play snapshot between a man who falls for a cocktail waitress and ‘five years later on’ is being left behind. However, he’s not going down without a fight and threatens ‘I can put you back down too’.
Callis and Wright created a synth score to accompany Oakey’s bitter lyrics, which was initially harsher than the finished article. They really struck gold when they hit upon the guitar-synth melody that accompanied the chorus, which came about by happy accident caused by a computer error that played the line a half-beat out of time. Rushent and Callis loved the end result but Oakey thought it was largely shit – which is perhaps why he recorded his vocal in the studio toilets. An experience that went on longer than he’d have liked due to Callis repeatedly flushing a toilet by reaching in through an open window.
Review
You don’t need me to tell you what a totally brilliant song Don’t You Want Me is. But you might want me to explain why it not only endures as the years go by. Why it is never boring. It’s never annoying, no matter how many times you hear it. Were it not for Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind, this would be the best Christmas number 1 of the 80s.
There is something innately brilliant in these early 80s electronic British number 1s, in the same way there was back in 1963 when The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and similar acts pushed the envelope. The technology is primitive (though incredibly futuristic in 1981 – so much so, the Musicians’ Union had felt obliged to show everyone just how threatened they felt). Don’t You Want Me is one of the best of the bunch.
Oakey’s decision to keep The Human League going and moving in a pop direction when their split happened has of course proven how wise he was. But his feelings towards this song were definitely wrong. It’s incredible to discover he considered it an afterthought and shoved it at the end of Dare. At the time, he and Rushent often disagreed about their work, but the producer was absolutely right to add a glossy, commercial sound to Don’t You Want Me. It’s that brightness, that colour, and simplicity of sound that made the album so huge.
Oakey didn’t give himself enough credit either. The concept of basing a duet around love is as old as time. But a duet that was possessive, cold and cynical, was new. The word ‘love’ doesn’t even come into the equation until Sulley admits her feelings near the end.
Of course, everything comes together for that total banger of a chorus, which will be drunkenly shouted by men and women on dancefloors for evermore. If The Human League’s story was made into a film, Don’t You Want Me would be the perfect happy ending. Oh, and hats off to Sulley too, who’s vocal is both deadpan and somehow emotional at the same time.
Another element that is definitely worth a mention is the video, directed by Steve Barron, who created some of the most memorable pop videos of the era, including Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing and a-ha’s Take On Me. Shot on 35mm film, Don’t You Want Me really stands out due to its cinematic feel. The storyline, of a director’s struggles to make a film, was inspired by the French film Day for Night. Oakey, Sulley and Callis really stand out and could have perhaps made great actors. It could be argued that Oakey proved his worth in his cameo in Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer’s amazing 1992 pilot The Weekenders…
After
Don’t You Want Me held firm at the top of the pops for five weeks and was the biggest-selling single of 1981. The Human League were in so much demand that the stereo remix of the Fast Product version of Being Boiled was re-released in January 1982 and soared to six. Don’t You Want Me then scored the group a US number 1 that summer. Later that year, an instrumental version of Dare called Love and Dancing and credited to The League Unlimited Orchestra was also a hit. They very nearly achieved two Christmas chart-toppers in a row when the Motown-influenced Mirror Man was kept from the top by Renée and Renato’s Save Your Love. Disgraceful. In 1983 they reached two once more, this time with (Keep Feeling) Fascination. This marked the end of the always fractious working relationship with Rushent, who walked out during initial sessions for their next LP.
Hysteria (1984), produced by Hugh Padgham and Chris Thomas, divided fans and critics alike, and The Human League’s commercial powers waned. The singles – The Lebanon, Life on Your Own and Louise, reached 11, 16 and 13 respectively. Oakey’s collaboration with one of his idols, Giorgio Moroder, was deservedly more successful, as Together in Electric Dreams – from the soundtrack to Electric Dreams (1984), peaked at three.
The Human League, once at the forefront of electronic music, struggled to adapt to rapidly advancing technology as the 80s progressed. Callis, who had helped write some of their biggest hits, quit and was replaced by drummer Jim Russell, closely followed by Last. In 1985 they shelved material for their next album due to disagreements with producer Colin Thurston, so Virgin paired them with hip hitmakers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. At first the signs were good, as the single Human was a number eight hit in 1986, but the other singles released from Crash sank rapidly. Wright left soon after, and Burden departed in 1987.
There were more line-up changes and poor results as the 90s began. Romantic? (1990) featured a line-up bolstered by keyboardist Neil Sutton and guitarist/keyboardist Russell Dennett, and even Callis returned to help. But although Heart Like a Wheel was a minor hit, reaching 29 in 1990, Virgin dropped The Human League two years later.
Oakey’s mental health suffered and he lost confidence in his abilities, but after recording an EP with Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1993, EastWest Records signed The Human League and paired them with producer Ian Stanley, formerly of Tears for Fears. The first fruits, Tell Me When, was released on Boxing Day 1994, and was a well-deserved hit, peaking at six. Sounding very of its time, but reminiscent of material from Dare, The Human League were back in vogue, and the parent album Octopus scored a further hit with One Man in My Heart. A remix of Don’t You Want Me even made it to 16.
A change in management at EastWest saw The Human League without a record deal and although they signed with Papillon Records in 2001 and released the album Secrets, it sank commercially. They joined the nostalgia circuit. However, in 2008 Oakey had a great idea – The Steel City Tour. The Human League teamed up with Heaven 17 and ABC to celebrate the music of the early 80s that came from Sheffield. Oakey and Ware had buried the hatchet – whether it was genuine or for the sake of a moneyspinner, I don’t know, but I’d have loved to seen it.
The Human League’s last album to date is Credo, which was released in 2011. This would suggest there may be no more to come, but if so, that’s fine. Oakey and co. should be more than content with their legacy, and especially this song, which went from an afterthought to a single that made them pop immortals.
The Outro
Don’t You Want Me became a top 20 hit for the third time in 2014, reaching 19 as a result of a social media campaign by fans of Aberdeen FC, who one week earlier had won the Scottish League Cup. They had turned the chorus into a terrace chant of ‘Peter Pawlett baby’ in honour of their midfielder.
The Info
Written by
JoCallis, Philip Oakey & PhilipAdrianWright
Producers
Martin Rushent & The Human League
Weeks at number 1
5 (12 December 1981-15 January 1982) *BEST-SELLING SINGLE OF THE YEAR*
Trivia
Births
15 December 1981: Actresses Michelle Dockery/Victoria Summer 21 December: Cricketer Sajid Mahmood 28 December: Singer-songwriter Frank Turner 29 December: Actress Charlotte Riley 1 January 1982: Footballer Luke Rodgers/Television host Gemma Hunt 4 January: Footballer Richard Logan 6 January: Actor Eddie Redmayne 9 January: Catherine, Princess of Wales/Conservative MP Robert Jenrick
Deaths
15 December 1981: Journalist Claud Cockburn 16 December: Engineering manager Rose Winslade 17 December: Opera singer Sybil Gordon 1 January 1982: Actress Margot Grahame 2 January: Conservative MP Sir Tam Galbraith 4 January: Wykeham Cornwallis, 2nd Baron Cornwallis 11 January: Actor Ronald Lewis/Army major-general Sir Kenneth Strong 12 January: Army major-general Frank Crowther Roberts
Meanwhile…
19 December 1981: An opinion poll showed Margaret Thatcher had become the most unpopular postwar British prime minister, and that the SDP-Liberal Alliance had the support of up to 50% of the electorate.
20 December: The Penlee lifeboat disaster occurred off the coast of Cornwall. The mini-bulk carrier MV Union Star‘s engines had failed in heavy seas, so the lifeboat Solomon Browne went to the rescue. But sometime after the lifeboat had rescued four people, both vessels were lost with all hands. 16 people died, including eight volunteer liefeboatmen.
1 January 1982: The new year began with three new regional TV stations on ITV – Central, TVS (Television South) and TSW (Television South West), replacing ATV Midlands, the incredibly bitter Southern Television and Westward Television respectively.
2 January: The Welsh Army of Workers claimed responsibility for a bomb explosion at the Birmingham headquarters of Severn Trent Water.
10-15 January: The extremely cold winter that began in December 1981 continued with the lowest-ever UK temperature of -27.2C recorded at Braemar in Aberdeenshire.
Singer-songwriter Julio Iglesias is the most commercially successful Spanish singer in the world and the best-selling male Latin artist in history. However, it took his cover of Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine to finally take him to number 1 in the Uk singles chart.
Before
Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva was born in Madrid on 23 September 1943. His father, Julio Iglesias Sr, was one of Spain’s youngest gynaecologists and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat was of Jewish descent.
Growing up, young Iglesias spent most of his time either playing professional football as a goalkeeper or studying law. But his time as the former came to an abrupt end when he was involved in a serious car accident in 1963. Unable to walk for two years, Iglesias was given a guitar in hospital from a nurse who thought it would help him concentrate on new skills he could learn with his hands. After rehabilitation, he passed his law degree.
In 1968, Iglesias won the Benidorm International Song Festival with La vida sigue igual, which was used in the 1969 film of the same name, in which he played a fictionalised version of himself. He then signed to Discos Columbia (the Spanish branch of Columbia Records) and released his first album, Yo Canto, which was a huge hit. In 1970 Iglesias represented Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest, where he came fourth with Gwendolyne.
Throughout the 1970s, Iglesias would score hits around the globe in various languages, including Uncanto a Galicia (1971), A flor de piel (1974), Corazón, corazón (1975) and Quiéreme mucho (1979).
In 1979, Iglesias moved to Miami, Florida, where he signed with CBS International. The title track to the LP Hey! became his first charting track in the UK, peaking at 31. 1981 saw Iglesias release the album De Niña a Mujer, which featured his version of Begin the Beguine.
Porter had written Begin the Beguine while on a Pacific cruise in 1935 and it quickly became a part of his Broadway musical Jubilee. The song refers to the dance and music form beguine, which is similar to a slow rhumba, had originated in the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and was steadily growing in popularity at the time. Begin the Beguine was considered too long to become a hit, but Artie Shaw and His Orchestra’s version became a hit in 1938.
A year later Joe Loss and Chick Henderson recorded their version, which went on to become the first record to sell a million. The song featured in Metro-Goldywn-Mayer’s musical Broadway Melody of 1940 twice and soon became a pop standard, covered by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Elvis Presley.
Iglesias wrote new lyrics for his version – titled Volver a Empezar in Spanish. Only the first line, ‘When they begin the beguine’, is in English, which makes it the first mostly foreign language chart-topper since Manhattan Transfer’s Chanson D’Amour in 1977. It was the first Spanish song to become number 1 here, but Iglesias was the second Spanish act to do so, after Baccara, also in 1977.
Review
It’s astounding to think that this track managed a week at number 1 inbetween two all-time classics in Under Pressure and Don’t You Want Me. It’s very dated for 1981 and would have sounded more contemporary had it been released in the balmy summer of 1976. Over the lightest of disco backings, Iglesias sings about lost love, rather than dancing the beguine. However, the words, translated into English, are empty and bland. One doesn’t feel Iglesias has ever felt such emotion.
A strange number 1 for 1981, indeed – perhaps the older record buyer liked the easy listening stylings of the handsome middle-aged crooner, while younger listeners fancied something that reminded them of summer, just as one of the coldest winters of all time began (see ‘Meanwhile…‘.
The video is also very uninspiring, featuring a suave Iglesias crooning against a multi-coloured disco backdrop.
After
Iglesias tried to repeat the success of Begin the Beguine with Yours (Quiéreme Mucho), This cover of a criollo-bolero nearly did just as well, peaking at three in 1982. The 1943 song Amor was less successful, only climbing to 32.
A greatest hits collection, Julio, was released in 1983, and became the first foreign language LP to sell more than two million in the US. A year later came 1100 Bel Air Place, his first to be mostly recorded in English. It was a smash hit and included the popular duet To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before, which he recorded with country music legend Willie Nelson. It peaked at five in the US and 17 here. The album also featured his cover of The Hollies’ The Air That I Breathe, which featured backing vocals from The Beach Boys. The relevance of the album title? It was a former home of Iglesias, and superstar producer Quincy Jones resided there until 2005.
Iglesias continued to record with huge stars. In 1988 he released My Love with Stevie Wonder, which is to date his last UK hit, peaking at five. In 1993 he recorded Summer Wind with Frank Sinatra, and a year later, the album Crazy, which included duets with Sting, Dolly Parton and Art Garfunkel.
In 2003 he released one of his most successful albums, Divorcio, which I’m ashamed to say I can only hear being exclaimed in the same way as ‘Scorchio!’ from The Fast Show. 2006 saw Iglesias release Romantic Classics, which consisted of covers of songs he believed would become future standards, such as I Want to Know What Love Is and Careless Whisper.
Already boasting, no doubt, of shelves full of international awards, in 2013 Iglesias also was recognised by Guinness World Records as the best-selling male Latin artist, and he was also inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The Outro
Iglesias hasn’t released new material since México & Amigos in 2017, but to be fair, he is now in his 80s, and could very easily choose to retire and rest on his considerable laurels. Divorcio!
The Info
Written by
Cole Porter (Spanish version Julio Iglesias)
Producer
Ramón Arcusa
Weeks at number 1
1 (5-11 December)
Trivia
Deaths
7 December: Author Gordon Rattray Taylor 8 December: Burnley FC chairman Bob Lord 9 December: Rugby league player Brian McTigue/Scottish playwright CP Taylor 10 December: Metallurgist John D Eshelby
Meanwhile…
8 December: Following the freaky weather that brought 104 tornadoes to the country, a severe wave of cold weather, later to become known as ‘The Big Snow of 1982’ begins with severe snow storms across the UK. Temperatures plummet to the lowest in any December on record since 1874 and the heaviest snow storms since 1878. The storms continue in waves until 27 December. Also on this day, Arthur Scargill becomes the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Under Pressure, that behemoth of a pop track by rock giants Queen & David Bowie, sees both acts trying to outdo each other. Somehow, rather than come out as a sloppy egotistical mess, it became one of the greatest number 1s of the 80s, no matter how many times you might hear it.
Before
Six years previously, Queen had scored the 1975 Christmas number 1 with their most famous single, Bohemian Rhapsody. A lengthy nine weeks there earned them huge fame and meant their next two singles were hits too – in 1976, the lovely You’re My Best Friend went to seven and epic singalong Somebody to Love peaked at two. 1977 brought mixed fortunes, with Tie Your Mother Down only reaching 31. Queen’s First EP was a cash grab that went to 17. But We Are the Champions restored their fortunes, hurtling to two. The rest of the 70s featured some of their most famous songs performing well – most notably the double A-side Bicycle Race/Fat Bottomed Girls (1978) at 11, Don’t Stop Me Now (1979) at nine and Crazy Little Thing Called Love (1979) at two.
The last track I mentioned was the first release from The Game, which was their first LP of the 80s. It was also the first to see Queen introduce synthesisers into the mix for the first time. Other singles from this album included the number seven smash Another One Bites the Dust. They also released their soundtrack album for the camp film Flash Gordon (1980).
The last time we saw David Bowie around these parts wasn’t that long ago at all. Ashes to Ashes, the first track to be released from Scary Monsters(and Super Creeps), had been number 1 in 1980. The excellent Fashion followed and peaked at five, before commercial success trailed off with subsequent singles – the title track (number 20) and Up the Hill Backwards (32).
In July 1981, Queen were recording what was to become the LP Hot Space at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland. One of the tracks they were working on was drummer Roger Taylor’s Feel Like, but they weren’t happy with the results. Also at Mountain Studios was Bowie, who lived in Switzerland at the time and was recording the vocals to the title song of the film Cat People (Putting Out Fire). Two of the biggest acts of the 70s met each other and, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, they decided to try working together.
Queen and Bowie had lots in common, for a while. Both found fame during the glam period as rock acts that weren’t afraid to be flamboyant, or to experiment either. However, it’s fair to say that although Queen stuck mostly to the rock format, Bowie had been continually experimental as the decade progressed. But both were about to release some of the most straightforward pop material of their careers, but not before Queen continued to make Hot Space, which consisted mostly of disco.
Initially in Montreux, Bowie contributed backing vocals and a spoken word section to the track Cool Cat, but he wasn’t happy with his performance and asked to be wiped from the recording. With Hot Space recorded, they all decided to see if they could create a new song, which included the guitar element from Feel Like. Although Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, Taylor and Bowie were all credited for what became Under Pressure, Deacon claimed in 1984 that Mercury was the driving force.
You would think Deacon would be keen to lay claim to one of the most famous bass riffs of all time, but he didn’t. In 1982 he stated that Bowie had created it. However, Bowie said on his website that it had been written before he joined the band in the studio. In recent years both May and Taylor have insisted it was Deacon, but in 2016 May appeared to clear matters up. In an article for Mirror Online, the guitarist said Deacon had been playing a riff in the studio consisting of the same note six times, ‘then one note a fourth down’. Queen and Bowie took a break and went for food and liquid refreshment at a local restaurant. Several hours later, Bowie misremembered the riff that Deacon had been playing, and insisted it was what became the backbone of Under Pressure. He even went so far as to stop Deacon playing, which made matters tense for a while. However, everyone must have come to their senses and seen that, whoever was right, Bowie’s version was a magic ingredient. May also said in the interview that normally at this point, Queen would have gone away and discussed the song’s structure. Bowie wanted to carry on, saying ‘something will happen’.
Review
Bowie was right. Something did indeed happen. Under Pressure is one of the finest number ones of the 80s and one of that holy list of songs that I will never, ever grow tire of. If anything, the lyrics take on added relevance with every passing year. However, how much better would it have been if they’d taken more time on the song? I’m looking at you in particular, Mercury.
It’s strange to see how Queen’s lead singer would be so willing to let this song be mixed and released without him working more on his lyrics. Vocally, he and Bowie are an excellent match for each other, complimenting each other so well and then seemingly battling it out at the song’s finale. But why did he and the rest of Queen settle on his scatting in lieu of more actual words? Bowie later said he felt they could have spent longer on Under Pressure lyrically, and that’s a polite way of putting it.
However, Mercury does just about pull it off – after all, this is a man with such a commanding presence, he had the whole of Wembley Stadium yodelling along with him at Live Aid four years later. And of course, underpinning the whole song is Deacon’s entrancing, ultra-catchy bass riff. The intro is spellbinding, and when the riff and Mercury’s understated scat leads into his and Bowie’s ‘Pressure!’, the hairs on the back of your neck can still stand to attention.
Bowie and Queen’s anthem to the stress of modern life can be seen as a prediction of the 21st century, which explains just why the song has aged so well. The former’s handiwork is clear, and almost retro by his standards, as we get a little of the unusual wordplay little seen seen by the glam icon since his Berlin period – now don’t get me wrong ‘Pressure, pushing down on me, pushing down on you, no man ask for… puts people on streets’ is not exactly comparable with the cut-up lyrical technique of some of his finest late-70s material, but it’s clear this is him and not Mercury at work.
What makes it all the more frustrating is that Mercury’s few lyrics on Under Pressure work really well with Bowie’s. When he sings ‘Chipping around, kick my brains ’round the floor/These are the days it never rains but it pours’ are an effective compliment to Bowie’s preceding lyrics about the terror of seeing friends struggling under the weight of the world. But then he just scats again. And again. And when he says ‘OK!’, is it a sarcastic quip that everything is far from OK, or just pure laziness? Either way, it’s a bit mind-boggling that everyone was happy to let it stay in the song.
But with Under Pressure, the whole is definitely far greater than the sum of its parts. And back to that finale. From Mercury’s hushed ‘Turned away from it all like a blind man’ is pure brilliance. The way the two superstar singers battle for the last word is awe-inspiring and pop music at its best. Mercury as the questioning optimist, desperately hoping that love will win out. It makes for a brilliant ending. And yet Bowie somehow tops him, reviving the cynicism of his ‘Thin White Duke’ era with the cold cynicism of ‘Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word’. And then, even better, they both seem to predict where Thatcherism will go next, by noting that love means caring for others – the ‘People on streets’ could be the miners that go on strike three years later. Is this song a warning that, as Thatcher later said, there really is no thing as society, because pressure has stopped people loving anyone but themselves? It’s a hell of a lot to contemplate as the finger clicks fade into silence.
After
With neither Queen or Bowie available to star in a video for Under Pressure, it made sense to task David Mallett with the responsibility. The prolific director had created some of Bowie’s most memorable videos, including Ashes to Ashes, as well as Queen’s Bicycle Race. For this single, Mallett compiled stock image of footage that loosely represented pressure, including traffic jams, riots and – controversially – footage of explosions in Northern Ireland, which Top of the Pops insisted on having removed before showing the video.
Under Pressure spent two weeks at number 1 in 1981. In 1982 it became part of Queen’s LP Hot Space. The band would perform the song live many times, but Bowie didn’t until he joined the line-up for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992, where he joined the remaining members of the band along with Annie Lennox fulfilling Mercury’s role. It later became part of his own sets, featuring bassist Gail Ann Dorsey singing Mercury’s parts.
The Outro
In 1990, the song had a revival thanks to the rapper Vanilla Ice. Although he originally claimed not to have sampled the bass and piano on his number 1 Ice Ice Baby (which he clearly had), and then refused to award a songwriting credit or royalties to Queen and Bowie, he later relented. He also later claimed to have purchased publishing rights, which was also bullshit.
In 1999 a remixed version of Under Pressure, known as The Rah Mix, made it to 14 in the singles chart.
The Info
Written and produced by
Queen & David Bowie
Weeks at number 1
2 (21 November-4 December)
Trivia
Births
26 November: Singer Natasha Bedingfield 27 November: Actor Gary Lucy 29 November: Photographer Tom Hurndall 1 December: Actress Kathryn Drysdale
Deaths
3 December: Historian Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith 4 December: Writer Enid Welsford
Meanwhile…
23 November: The 1981 United Kingdom tornado outbreak became the largest recorded tornado outbreak in European history when 104 reached England and Wales
25 November: A report into the Brixton Riots, which hit inner-city London earlier this year, blamed social and economic problems in inner-city areas across England.
26 November: Shirley Williams won the Crosby by-election for the SDP, overturning a Conservative majority of nearly 20,000 votes.
After a couple of near misses, The Police found themselves back at the top of the hit parade for the fourth time with Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.
Before
The trio’s third album, Zenyatta Mondatta, had spawned their third number 1, Don’t Stand So Close to Me. But the next record – their ‘gibberish classic’ (as Alan Partridge called it) De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da – was understandably their lowest-placing chart position (minus some reissues) at five.
Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers headed to AIR Studios in Montserrat to record their fourth LP, Ghost in the Machine, which was co-produced by Hugh Padgham. First single from this collection was Invisible Sun, which did very well indeed, peaking at two.
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was an exception from the album, in that it was recorded at Le Studio at Morin Heights, Quebec, Canada. It was also the oldest track from Ghost in the Machine, having originated back in 1977 as a track by Sting, before the band had formed. He eventually revealed the inspiration for the track was Trudie Styler, who lived next door to Sting and his then-wife Frances Tomelty, who was Styler’s best friend at the time.
The demo of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic eventually surfaced on the 1997 compilation Strontium 90: Police Academy. Strontium 90 was the name of Sting, Copeland and Summers’ – plus Gong’s Mike Howlett – previous band. On this rather charming, gentle acoustic guitar-led version, Sting played every instrument.
Four years later, Sting worked on a second demo in Le Studio, this time with piano to the fore. He was confident this would form the basis of a number 1 single, but Copeland and Summers were less keen, so they started from scratch on a band version. When this didn’t work out either, Sting finally persuaded the others to go back to the Le Studio demo.
Tensions grew when Sting decided to bring in session keyboardist Jean Roussel, who had played on Cat Stevens’ Wild World. Summers found Roussel pushy, and his inclusion on piano, Minimoog and clavinet certainly sounds like a potential recipe for excessive use of instrumentation on such a light track. However, Roussel’s input makes for that rather lovely intro, and adds colour in general throughout. The rhythm section did get to add some of that signature Police sound, though muted compared to their previous chart-toppers.
Review
It’s clear that Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic meant a lot to Sting and had personal meaning for him as it meant he could express his forbidden love. But his determination to get Copeland and Summers to in effect play backing band to this solo outing understandably caused problems.
However, Sting was ultimately proven right. Sure, it’s on the lighter side of The Police’s back catalogue and possibly too saccharine for some, but it’s a lovely, sun-kissed burst of upbeat loveliness. It’s not without flaws though. Rhyming ‘magic’ with ‘tragic’ is a bit rubbish, and I don’t understand why, after all the time spent getting Roussel to give the track more, they decided to make Sting sound like he’s singing from a cave. What happened there?
Far better is the second verse, which Sting returned to several times through the years:
‘Do I have to tell the story Of a thousand rainy days since we first met It’s a big enough umbrella But it’s always me that ends up getting wet’
Again, this most likely has personal meaning to the singer and Styler, as he uses it again on O My God, a track on the final Police LP, Synchronicity (1983), and the song Seven Days from his fourth solo album Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993).
The video, filmed in Montserrat by Derek Burbidge, is also a mixed bag. It’s nice to see the band performing for locals and the island footage ties in nicely with the joy of the song. But this is the fourth Police video I’ve watched now, and they’re all the same. Put the band in a very literal setting that fits the theme of the track, and also film them pissing about in the studio and generally acting up for the camera.
After
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic topped the charts in the UK, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands, and peaked at three in the US. They had one more UK chart-topper to come before they split up.
The Outro
An orchestral version of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic was recorded by Sting for his 10th album, Synchronicities, in 2010.
The Info
Written by
Sting
Producers
The Police & Hugh Padgham
Weeks at number 1
1 (14-20 November)
Trivia
Births
15 November: Labour MP Jared O’Mara 17 November: Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding 20 November: Frightened Rabbit singer Scott Hutchison/Actress Andrea Riseborough
Deaths
14 November: Ulster Unionist MP Robert Bradford (see ‘Meanwhile‘) 17 November: Anglican bishop Colin Winter
Meanwhile…
14 November: Ulster Unionist MP Robert Bradford was gunned down by three IRA members in Finaghy, Belfast, during political surgery.
18 November: The England football team qualified for the World Cup in Spain by defeating Hungary 1-0 at Wembley Stadium. It was the first time they had qualified for the tournament since 1970.
Look for this song anywhere online and the first thing you’ll read is ‘No, not that Dave Stewart’. Nonetheless this Dave Stewart, with Barbara Haskin’s version of the 60s teen classic It’s My Party by Lesley Gore is an interesting curio in the history of number 1s.
Before
It’s My Party had been written in 1962. The original was penned by John Gluck, Wally Gold and Herb Weiner, who were staff writers at Aaron Schroeder Music. However, the lyrics actually came from Seymour Gottlieb, a freelance songwriter, who had worked with Weiner (oo-er). He had been inspired by his daughter Judy’s tears over her grandparents being invited to her 16th birthday party.
The writers took the song to Barbara Jean English, the receptionist at their firm, who cut the demo version. However, Musicor, the label owned by Schroeder, wasn’t interested.
It could have, potentially, become Helen Shapiro’s third number 1 single. The young British star, who had scored two chart-toppers with You Don’t Know and Walkin’ Back to Happiness in 1961, recorded a version for her Helen in Nashville LP in 1963. Unfortunately for her, she was beaten to the punch by 16-year-old US singer Gore. Her version, produced by the legendary Quincy Jones, was huge and is rightly remembered as a pop great from the early 60s, becoming number 1 in many countries – but, surprisingly, not in the UK, where it peaked at nine.
Stewart, who was born in Waterloo, London on 30 December 1950, would have been 12 at the time. He was still at school when he joined his first band. The Outsiders were a local covers band. From there, he joined Uriel as their organist at the age of 17, a group that also featured future progressive rock icon Steve Hillage. When university called for Hillage, Uriel continued as a trio, renamed as Egg. They recorded two albums for Decca, and stayed on good terms with Hillage, who briefly rejoined them in 1969 to record together under the name Arzachel.
Egg broke up (hahaha) in 1973, and Stewart joined upcoming Canterbury progressive rock band Hatfield and the North. When they split two years later, Stewart briefly joined Hillage’s Gong before forming National Health, which largely consisted of former Hatfield and the North bandmates. When National Health disbanded in 1980, Stewart quickly formed Rapid Eye Movement (not to be confused with the far better known and longer-lasting REM in the US).
In 1981, Stewart moved in a different direction, becoming interested in new, electronically led versions of classic pop tunes. The first of these was a cover of Jimmy Ruffin’s Motown classic What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, featuring vocals by former member of The Zombies, Colin Blunstone. Stewart had clearly hit upon a good idea, but I’d bet even he didn’t think his next single would make it all the way to number 1. This time around, he enlisted Gaskin, who had provided backing vocals in Hatfield and the North.
Gaskin, born 5 June 1950, was actually born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. In 1969 she moved to Canterbury to study at university, but quickly fell into the Canterbury scene, becoming the singer in folk-rock group Spirogyra. She met Hillage, who was also a Kent University student, as well as the band Caravan and Stewart. Through this friendship she sang backing vocals occasionally for Hatfield and the North, but when Spirogyra split up, Gaskin left England to travel around Asia.
Upon her return almost three years later, Gaskin was invited to join the all-female group Red Roll On. Soon, she became reacquainted with Stewart and after working together on an album by Bill Bruford, they collaborated on It’s My Party.
Review
Stewart and Gaskin’s prog background is very much apparent on this single, in spite of it sounding like a New Romantic track due to the use of then-futuristic early 80s synths. It’s like a mini-symphony, in which Stewart initially makes his bank of keyboards mirror Gaskin’s trauma over her missing Johnny (stop sniggering), with lots of seemingly random drum machines sounding out.
Gaskin’s vocal is, to be honest, pretty irritating, particularly the way she wines ‘you!’ at the end of each line. She reminds me a little of Toyah, here, which might explain why this single did so well – Toyah was huge at this point, thanks to singles such as It’s a Mystery. Her stuff sounded great to me as a boy, and so did this record. Not so much as a middle-aged music snob… There’s an element of high-camp irony to It’s My Party, sure, but the spoken-word section is annoyingly over-the-top, and I don’t really understand how it then switches to a finale that sounds the most like the Gore version, all bubblegum pop and kitsch jollity.
It’s certainly not your average cover, but perhaps the end section appealed to parents and grandparents who loved the original, whereas the kids liked the modern sounds and incredibly of-its-time video? An interesting chart-topper, certainly – and for four weeks, to boot. But a bit of an annoying mess, too. I’d imagine the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart would have come up with a more commercial-sounding version, and Annie Lennox could have done a very good job with the vocal.
I have more time for the video than the song itself, I know that. But I’ve no idea why there are two kendo fighters battling, other than the Japanese martial art was popular at the time. And why is Stewart wearing – what is it, a face protector used by boxers? And I definitely don’t know why his face is replaced by neon light at the end, but it reminds me of the spooky kids with lights shining from where their eyes should be in the video to Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 chart-topper Total Eclipse of the Heart – and I like it. There’s lots of very 80s angular-faced mannequins scattered around the party, and yes, that’s Thomas Dolby playing Johnny.
The sleeve of the single used to mesmerise me as a child, I recall, with Gaskin wearing stupendously long nails and Stewart brandishing a sword.
After
Further Dave Stewart With Barbara Gaskin singles followed this UK and Germany number 1. They recorded an album’s worth of material but chose to release two tracks a year for the next three years. But nothing, including covers of Busy Doing Nothing in 1983 and The Locomotion three years later, managed to chart, let alone get in the top 10.
Stewart reformed National Health in 1981, and used his hippy days as inspiration for Neil’s Heavy Concept Album in 1984. The ‘Neil’ in question was Nigel Planer’s character in The Young Ones, and the LP featured his brilliant cover of Traffic’s Hole in My Shoe, which missed out on number 1 by one place. He had also composed the theme tune to BBC Two’s revamped Whistle Test in 1983. In the 1990s, he worked with cult TV critic Victor Lewis-Smith, creating the music for his two series Inside Victor Lewis-Smith (1995) and Ads Infinitum (1999).
The Outro
Gaskin continued to work with Stewart on albums and gigs sporadically through the years and in 2021, 40 years after It’s My Party, they married.
The Info
Written by
Herb Wiener, John Gluck Jr & Wally Gold
Producer
Dave Stewart
Weeks at number 1
4 (17 October-13 November)
Trivia
Births
25 October: Footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips 31 October: Physician Kate Granger 7 November: Footballer George Pilkington 13 November: Racing driver Tom Ferrier
Deaths
19 October: Footballer Johnny Doyle 22 October: Conservative MP David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter 24 October: Archer Inger K Frith 27 October: Army major-general Sir Randle Feilden 30 October: Writer Denys Rhodes 5 November: Cricketer Sir Harold Vincent 6 November: Physician Douglas Vernon Hubble/First World War nurse Beryl Hutchinson 8 November: Jockey Tim Brookshaw/Conservative MP Lionel Heald
Meanwhile…
19 October: British Telecom announces the discontinuation of the telegram in 1982, after 139 years in use. Also on this day, Scottish Celtic footballer Johnny Doyle is accidentally electrocuted while building his new home.
22 October: The case of Dudgeon vs United Kingdom is decided by the European Court of Human Rights, which rules that laws in Northern Ireland that criminalise consensual gay sex are in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights. Ooo, those pesky woke Europeans.
23 October: A MORI poll puts the Liberal-SDP Alliance on 40%, ahead of Labour on 31% and the Conservatives on 27%.
24 October: A CND anti-nuclear march in London brings together more than 250,000 people.
29 October: A patient dies of pneumocystis pneumonia in London, making him the first patient to die in of an AIDS-related illness in the UK. In 2021, ITN identified patient zero as John Eaddie of Bournemouth.
30 November: Nicholas Reed, the chief of euthanasia charity Exit, is jailed for two-and-a-half years for aiding and abetting suicides.
1 November: The island Antigua and Barbuda becomes independent of the UK. Also on this day, British Leyland’s workers begin a strike over pay.
13 November: Queen Elizabeth II opens the final phase of the Telford Shopping Centre.
1981 was the year of Adam and the Ants. No sooner had Ant and co. hit the top spot with Stand and Deliver! than they were at number 1 again with another early 80s classic.
Before
Following the success of Stand and Deliver!, Adam and the Ants spent most of the summer in continental Europe on tour. Upon their return they headed to London’s Air studios to record what became their last album.
Prince Charming, which became the title track, was an unusual sound for a number 1. Gone were the Burundi beat stylings of previous LP Kings of the Wild Frontier, and even the pop of Stand and Deliver!. Although Prince Charming is imperial Antmusic, it’s fair to say that, had this song been released by a total unknown, it wouldn’t have had the impact it did. Weirdly, it kind of already had been.
In 2010, Rolf Harris, still a national treasure at that point, claimed on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Danny Baker Show that a musicologist had found Prince Charming to sound identical to War Canoe, a 1965 release by Harris. You only have to hear 10 seconds of this (which is 10 seconds more than Harris deserves) to hear that they are indeed exactly the same.
However, Ant never denied it, and in fact showed Harris to be the devious bastard that he proved to be, when he noted that he owned a large collection of ethnic recordings, and War Canoe was in fact an old Maori folk song. Harris subsequently withdrew his complaint ‘with a bit of a giggle’. The prick.
Review
At least Ant and co-writer/guitarist Marco Pirroni made it interesting, adding the trademark Ant wailing alongside the guitar. Ant’s lyrics covered similar ground to Stand and Deliver!. That song concerned a dandy highwayman, whereas Prince Charming was lyrically inspired by Beau Brummel, the 18th-century dandy fashion leader, as well as the extravagance of men during the French Revolution. This tied in perfectly with the emerging New Romantic scene that Ant found himself in.
Much like David Bowie and Marc Bolan had encouraged men to not be afraid to wear make-up and experiment nearly 10 years previous, Ant made himself the voice of his generation, extolling the virtues of being flamboyant in 1981 – ‘Don’t you ever, don’t you ever, stop being dandy, showing me you’re handsome’ and the classic line ‘Ridicule is nothing to be scared of’.
Musically, yes, Prince Charming is far less adventurous than previous material, never changing from that War Canoe strum. But it is a true earworm that buries its way into the consciousness, and with Adam and the Ants, it’s more a case of taking note of the whole multimedia package, which means factoring in the video.
This Cinderella spoof is the strongest element of Prince Charming. Ant portrays the male version of Cinders, left at home while his drag queen evil stepsisters get to go to the ball and ‘dance the Prince Charming’. In one of her final roles, Diana Dors (Ant had personally appealed to her to take part) appears as Ant’s Fairy Godmother and dances iconically with five topless men. Ant becomes a Regency era dandy, goes to the ball and gets to do the dance himself, which went down in history as an essential element of this song. You simply cannot hear Prince Charming without picturing the dance, which is barely even a dance. The video ends with Ant in various guises, including Clint Eastwood, Alice Cooper and Marlon Brando, which he pulls off surprisingly well.
Prince Charming is perhaps Ant’s definitive statement on being a pop star, a love letter to his fans and the high watermark of his band’s popularity, and still sounds great today. But if I’ve spoiled it for anyone by linking it to Harris, I apologise.
After
In November, a few weeks after the single had began to slip down the charts, came the parent album, which surprisingly failed to hit number 1. Despite that, Adam and the Ants were one of the UK’s biggest-selling acts of 1981. In early 1982, Ant Rap peaked at number three. It was to be their final new release, as in March 1982, Ant disbanded his group. Pirroni, who was tired of touring, continued to work with Ant in a songwriting capacity. Bassist Gary Tibbs and drummer Chris ‘Merrick’ Hughes formed a short-lived duo.
The Outro
When Ant shot to number 1 as a solo star with the excellent Goody Two Shoes, it seemed to be a wise move. He was, after all, the star. However, his popularity began to wane soon after.
The Info
Written by
Adam Ant & Marco Pirroni
Producer
Chris Hughes
Weeks at number 1
4 (19 September-17 October)
Trivia
Births
21 September: Singer-songwriter Sarah Whatmore 23 September: Field hockey defender Helen Richardson 29 September: Hear’Say singer Suzanne Shaw 1 October: Journalist Deborah James 9 October: Actor Rupert Friend/Labour MP Jess Phillips 10 October: Journalist Stinson Hunter 13 October: Footballer Ryan Ashford/Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke
Deaths
19 September: Writer Ruth Tongue 21 September: Actor Nigel Patrick 23 September: Disc jockey Sam Costa 24 September: Actor John Ruddock 27 September: Physician Sir Stanley Davidson 28 September: Conservative MP Edward Boyle, Baron Boyle of Handsworth 29 September: Historian Frances Yates/Football manager Bill Shankly (see ‘Meanwhile…‘) 30 September: Welsh rugby union player Roy John/Conductor Boyd Neel 1 October: Conservative MP Sir Graham Page 8 October: Labour MP Arthur Allen 12 October: Political analyst Robert McKenzie
Meanwhile…
21 September: Belize was granted independence.
25 September: Ford announced it was to discontinue the Cortina model, which would be replaced by the Sierra.
29 September: Liverpool mourned former football manager Bill Shankly after he died of a heart attack, aged 68.
1 October: 24-year-old Bryan Robson became Britain’s most expensive footballer when he moved from West Bromwich Albion to Manchester United for £1.5 million.
3 October: The hunger strikes at Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison came to an end after six months.
10 October: The Provisional IRA bombed the Chelsea Barracks, killing two people.
12 October: Granada Television’s Brideshead Revisited began transmission on ITV.
13 October: Opinion polls revealed Margaret Thatcher was still unpopular as Prime Minster, largely due to her anti-inflationary economic measures.
15 October: Norman Tebbit’s famous speech in which he told fellow Conservative MPs, how his father didn’t riot when he was unemployed during the 30s. ‘He got on his bike and looked for work’ etc. Whoop-de-do, Norman.
Today sees the release of my first book! Every UK Number 1: The 50s is available on Amazon’s Kindle Store at £3.99 here. Members of Kindle Unlimited are able to read for free via their monthly subscriptions. If you’re into vintage music, pop culture and social history, it would make for great lockdown reading. Hope you enjoy!
The UK singles chart is the soundtrack to our lives and a barometer of the nation’s mood and tastes. And ever since 1952, the battle for the number one spot has had us all talking as well as dancing.
In this fascinating spin-off from everyuknumber1.com, as seen in the Daily Mirror, music journalist Rob Barker comprehensively reviews all the best-sellers of the Fifties, delving into the wild lives of the artists and the real stories and secrets behind the hits. He also counts down the influential events that shaped them, as we moved from rations to never having it so good.
Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Cliff Richard were among those who transformed the lives of young people throughout Britain, and taught a country battered by war how to have fun again.
Find out which chart topper was written by an illiterate rapist who formed his own prison band. Learn about the strange early days of the charts, which led to the number one spot being held by two acts at the same time, with different versions of the same banned song. Who was the first woman to top the charts? And which hitmaker lives on as Cockney rhyming slang?
Every UK Number 1: The 50s has all the answers on the decade in which pop took its first steps, before rock’n’roll shouldered in and left the baby boomers all shook up.
Matthews Southern Comfort, led by former Fairport Convention singer Ian Matthews, had a surprise number 1 with this beautiful cover of Joni Mitchell’s epitaph to the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival 1969, which also seemed to mourn the end of the optimism of the hippy movement, and touched a nerve following the recent death of the festival’s headliner Jimi Hendrix. Of the three famous versions out there, this is the best.
Before
Mitchell hadn’t actually attended or performed at the Woodstock festival as her manager had told her to appear on The Dick Cavett Show instead. She was in a relationship with Graham Nash at the time, though and he was there performing as part of his new supergroup with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Watching the events unfold on TV from her hotel room had a profound effect on the singer-songwriter, and she put pen to paper.
Woodstock turned Max Yasgur’s farm that hosted the festival into the garden of Eden, and the journey to the site became a spiritual journey that would lead to enlightenment. Mitchell imagines meeting a child of God on their way to the site, starts to feel like she can be a part of a movement, and before you know it there are half a million likeminded souls.
She began performing her new song only a month after Woodstock, at the Big Sur Music Festival. Her recorded version found its way on to her third album Ladies of the Canyon in March 1970. It’s a sparse, low-key arrangement, performed on an electric piano. Sadly, it’s somewhat spoilt by her annoying double-tracked backing vocals.
Around the same time, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (for Neil Young had joined the fray) released their version on the album Déjà Vu. They had recorded a version with Jimi Hendrix while working on the song, released on the outtakes album Both Sides of the Sky (2018). I’m a huge fan of CSNY, but find their version of Woodstock somewhat of a misfire. They ditch the haunting melancholy of the original and turn it into a rather bog-standard rock anthem. An alternate take was used to close Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock documentary (1970). Which brings us to Matthews Southern Comfort. But who were they?
Ian Matthews MacDonald was born 16 June 1946 in Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire. When he was 12 the MacDonalds moved to Scunthorpe, close to where I live. He left school at 16 and worked as an apprentice signwriter, and by the mid-60s he was performing in local bands. MacDonald moved to London in 1965 and formed surf music trio The Pyramid.
In the winter of 1967 he was recruited to sing for the then-new rock band Fairport Convention, and was among the line-up to record their eponymous debut (1968) and follow-up What We Did On Our Holidays in 1969. Sometime between the two, MacDonald changed his name to Ian Matthews (his mother’s maiden name), to avoid confusion with Ian MacDonald of King Crimson.
However, the second LP by the band saw them moving toward the traditional folk for which they would become so influential, and Matthews departed during the making of Halfbricking in 1969.
He quickly began work on his debut solo album, Matthews’ Southern Comfort, featuring more of the US country sound he performed. The line-up featured former Fairport colleagues like Richard Thompson, and included his own material as well as covers. Matthews put together a touring band, called Matthews Southern Comfort (minus the apostrophe), featuring lead guitarist Mark Griffiths and Gordon Huntley on pedal steel guitar from the album, plus new members Carl Barnwell on guitar, bassist Andy Leigh and Ray Duffy on drums.
Matthews Southern Comfort released their debut LP Second Spring in July 1970, and the world shrugged. However, a month prior to that they had recorded a set for BBC Radio 1’s Live in Concert. They needed one final song, and Matthews had recently bought Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon. The band kept their version of Woodstock faithful to the original, and it went down so well, the BBC contacted their label about it. Uni Records suggested it was recorded and added to their next album, Later That Same Year. Matthews refused, but said it could become a single. However, while recording the new version, the arrangement was radically altered, in part to suit Matthews’ voice.
Review
Apparently Mitchell later told Matthews this was her favourite version of Woodstock, and I agree completely. This recording is sublime. Matthews Southern Comfort perfectly capture the sadness of the end of an era, the feeling that the counterculture didn’t pull it off. That we never did get ‘back to the garden’. Of special note is Huntley’s steel guitar, giving the song a sense of yearning for what could have been, the circular guitar sounds (mixed down in the single version) and Matthews’ tender voice and the lovely harmonies. This version is what Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s should have sounded like.
MCA Records, the parent company of Matthews Southern Comfort’s record label, only agreed to release Woodstock if CSNY’s version tanked, which it did. But they refused to spend money on promotion upon its release in July. Luckily for Matthews and co, they had a fan in BBC DJ Tony Blackburn, who made it Record of the Week on his Radio 1 breakfast show. Here’s a great example of how long it could take a single to climb the charts back in the day. Three months to make it to number 1!
Top of the Pops would show a lovely promo film during Woodstock‘s weeks at number 1, with a beautiful hippy girl wandering around the streets and looking at posters of the Woodstock film. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s pretty fitting.
Were the band pleased to be chart-toppers? Not really, it turned out. Matthews didn’t like the extra demands on his time being a pop star entailed, and he walked out in December, making Woodstock their final single. He went solo, and the rest of the line-up continued as Southern Comfort, releasing three albums between 1971 and 1973.
Matthews recorded two albums in 1971 (If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes and Tigers Will Survive), before forming a new group called Plainsong, which included Andy Roberts. When they collapsed Matthews continued to record while living in Los Angeles, working with Michael Nesmith of The Monkees at times during the 80s and 90s. He has gone by the name Iain Matthews ever since 1989.
In 2000 he moved to Amsterdam and continues to record and perform, sometimes reviving Matthews Southern Comfort or Plainsong. Matthews co-wrote Thro’ My Eyes: A Memoir with Ian Clayton, released in 2018.
The Outro
There are similarities shared between Woodstock and Scott McKenzie’s 1967 number 1 San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair). Both are folk songs written to commemorate counterculture festivals and give them mystical meaning. Yet by the time we get to Woodstock, it’s over. Hendrix’s death in September and this track are a full stop on the 60s. And yet, the festival scene certainly wasn’t over, with the very first Glastonbury Festival taking place the day after Hendrix’s death and celebrating its 50th anniversary this June, bigger than ever. And the next number 1 would be a very fitting postscript.
The Info
Written by
Joni Mitchell
Producer
Ian Matthews
Weeks at number 1
3 (31 October-20 November)
Trivia
Births
7 November: The Divine Comedy singer-songwriter Neil Hannon 12 November: Actor Harvey Spencer Stephens 13 November: Race walker Verity Snook-Larby
Deaths
8 November: Liberal MP Alasdair Mackenzie 13 November: Labour MP Bessie Braddock
Meanwhile…
17 November: The Sun newspaper featured a Page Three girl for the first time. This tradition made stars of Samantha Fox and Maria Whittaker among others, but divided public opinion. However it continued for 44 years, until 2015.
20 November: The 10 shilling note ceased to be legal tender.
Multi-talented American singer Freda Payne enjoyed an impressive six weeks at number 1 with this soul track, featuring noteworthy lyrics that have been much misunderstood over the years due to cuts made before its release.
Before
Freda Charcillia Payne was born in Detroit, Michigan on 19 September 1942. Her younger sister was Scherrie, who became the final lead singer of The Supremes in time. Growing up, the elder Payne enjoyed female jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, which would later have an impact on her singing style. She attended the Detroit Institute of Musical Arts as a teenager, and also recorded jingles for the radio, as well as taking part and winning various talent shows.
In the early 60s Payne toured as a jazz singer with big names such as Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby, leading to her debut album in 1963, After the Lights Go Down Low and Much More!!! for Impulse! Clearly, exclamation marks were popular back then. Three years later came the follow-up How Do You Say I Don’t Love You Anymore for MGM Records, and TV appearances on various chat shows.
Payne spent the next few years dipping her toes into acting, until 1969 when she was contacted by old friends and hitmakers Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr. Holland-Dozier-Holland had left Motown in 1968 and formed their own label, Invictus, also home to Chairmen of the Board and the first Parliament album, Osmium. Her first single for Invictus was the long-forgotten Unhooked Generation. Holland-Dozier-Holland then offered her Band of Gold, which they’d written with Ron Dunbar, but due to their dispute with Motown, they were forced to use the pseudonym Edyth Wayne in the credits.
Band of Gold touched on an unusually adult theme for its time. It’s about a recently wed woman, already separated from her husband, due to their honeymoon going awry. They ended up sleeping in separate rooms, with her hoping he would return and try to make love to her once more.
So, what went wrong? The ambiguous lyrics have been open to interpretation – her husband must surely be impotent, or gay? Over the years, Band of Gold became popular in the gay community thanks to the latter theory, one that was borne out by an interview Lamont Dozier did for Songfacts (songfacts.com), where he confirmed the husband loved his new wife, but was unable to get it up as he was a secret homosexual.
But according to Dunbar, the original version of Band of Gold explains exactly what the issue was. The first verse originally ended with ‘And the memories of our wedding day, and the night I turned you away.’ The original bridge also said ‘Each night, I lie awake and I tell myself, the vows we made gave you the right, to have a love each night’. Apparently, Payne has also said she didn’t want to record Band of Gold because she felt too old to come across like a naive, virginal teenager. So there we have it – the poor guy, believed to have been unable to get it up for all these years, was given the cold shoulder from his new wife, and walked out. A messy start for the poor newlyweds, and we’ll never know if they ironed out their differences.
Review
I was surprised upon first listen to hear this was number 1 for so long. Not because it isn’t decent – it is, but it took a few listens to make an impact on me. It helps if you pay attention to the lyrics, which I didn’t at first, and I assumed it was about a guy cheating on his bride, or something along those lines. Payne performs it well, sounding indignant (which also helped create the confusion – she sounds like she’s been let down between the sheets) and hurt at the same time. The stomping rhythm is very Motown, and the tune gets under the skin eventually.
I also like the electric sitar, played by session guitarist Dennis Coffey, who also played on Edwin Starr’s War, among others. Lead guitar comes from Ray Parker Jr, that’s right, the man behind the theme to Ghostbusters in 1984. The backing vocals were performed by Scherrie, Pamela Vincent, Joyce Vincent Wilson and Telma Hopkins. Wilson and Hopkins would soon be members of Dawn, number 1 artists with Tony Orlando in 1971 and 1973.
After
Band of Gold had a formidable run, and reached number three in the US, but Payne couldn’t get anywhere near repeating the feat. Deeper and Deeper, released at the end of the year, reached number 33 in the UK, but none of her singles reached the top 40 after that. However, Bring the Boys Home, her anti-Vietnam War single, did well in her home country in 1971
Payne left Invictus in 1973, and signed with Capitol Records in 1977, releasing three disco albums between then and 1979. Hot was her final LP for 16 years.
Sensing her music career was stalling, Payne concentrated on acting in the 80s. She also briefly hosted her own talk show in 1981, Today’s Black Woman. Only one single was spawned in this decade – In Motion, in 1982.
In 1995 Payne recorded a comedy album, called, bizarrely Freda Payne Sings the (Unauthorized) I Hate Barney Songbook: A Parody. Was she not a fan of the purple dinosaur? The following year came the festive Christmas With Freda and Friends, featuring a duet with her sister.
The new millennium began with the soul singer appearing on the big screen alongside comedian Eddie Murphy in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000). She’s been releasing music sporadically ever since, and recorded Saving a Life, a duet with Cliff Richard, in 2011, which led to her supporting him on a UK tour. Her last album to date is Come Back To Me Love in 2014 – was this a message for Darlene?
The Outro
Band of Gold is a curious number 1, sounding rather like a forerunner to disco and yet very much old-school Motown at the same time. Rather a bridge between what had passed and what was to come. It’s been covered several times since, by stars including Belinda Carlisle, but nobody has matched Payne’s original.
The Info
Written by
Edyth Wayne & Ron Dunbar
Producers
Brian Holland & Lamont Dozier
Weeks at number 1
6 (19 September-30 October)
Trivia
Births
29 September:Actress Emily Lloyd
4 October:Footballer Richard Hancox/Footballer Jason Cousins
5 October:SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh
10 October:Olympic rower Sir Matthew Pinsent
11 October:Footballer Andy Marriott
Meanwhile…
19 September: The first Glastonbury Festival was held. Then known as the Worthy Farm Pop Festival, farmer Michael Eavis had been inspired after attending a blues festival at the Bath & West Showground. 1500 watched Tyrannosaurus Rex headline after The Kinks pulled out.
3 October: Tony Densham, driving the ‘Commuter’ dragster, set a British land speed record at Elvington, Yorkshire, averaging 207.6 mph over the flying kilometre course.
5 October: BBC Radio 4 first broadcast the consumer affairs magazine programme You and Yours, a mainstay to this day.
15 October: The new Conservative government created the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment. Also this day, Thames sailing barge Cambria, the last vessel trading under sail alone in British waters, loaded her last freight, at Tilbury.
19 October: British Petroleum announced it had found a large oil field in the North Sea.
23 October: The Mark III Ford Cortina went on sale.
