Christmas Number 1

448. Pink Floyd – Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) (1979)

/ robbarker1979 / 2 Comments

The Intro

One of the biggest bands of the 70s, prog rock legends Pink Floyd hadn’t released a single since 1968. Their dystopian disco classic Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) gave them their sole number 1 and was the final chart-topper of the decade, striking a sombre tone for the advent of the Thatcher era. The optimism of the decade’s first number 1 by Edison Lighthouse seemed a hundred years ago.

Before

Before the landmark albums, and before the psychedelia, there was Roger Waters and Nick Mason. The two met in 1963 while studying architecture at London Polytechnic. Sharing a mutual love of the upcoming beat music, they joined a band with some friends, and were joined by Richard Wright. Waters played lead guitar, Mason was behind the drumkit, and without a keyboard, Wright played rhythm guitar. Sigma 6 performed at private functions nearby, covering material by groups including The Searchers.

Sixma 6 went through several names, including The Meggadeaths, The Abdabs and Leonard’s Lodgers – Waters and Mason shared a flat owned by Mike Leonard. Guitarist Bob Klose moved into the flat when Mason left, and also joined the group, now called The Tea Set, in 1964, which prompted Waters to switch to bass. Wright began to use a Farfisa organ owned by Leonard. Later that year another lodger joined them and the line-up – Waters’ childhood friend Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett.

In December 1964 The Tea Set made their debut in a studio, thanks to a friend of Wright’s. The future keyboardist wasn’t there however, having taken a break in his studies. At this point Royal Air Force technician Chris Dennis was the frontman, but when the RAF posted him to Bahrain in early 1965, the good-looking, charismatic Barrett took over as frontman.

The Tea Set became the house band at London’s Countdown Club. Playing three sets, each 90-minutes long, they were struggling to avoid repetition in their material, but realised they could fill time with lengthy solos. Klose left The Tea Set in mid-65, so Barrett also became their guitarist.

Before one gig, their new frontman found out that there was another band with the same name set to perform at one of their gigs. He came up with The Pink Floyd Sound instead, inspired by two blues artists in his record collection – Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

In 1966, as musicians began exploring the outer limits of pop, The Pink Floyd Sound were mostly performing old R’n’B songs. That December they were noticed by their future managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King, and Jenner suggested they became The Pink Floyd. This coincided with them being booked at venues popular with the underground music scene, including The Marquee Club.

At the same time they were developing basic but very effective light shows via projections of coloured slides. Jenner and King’s connections got them coverage in the Financial Times and they performed at the launch of new underground magazine International Times. By that December the covers were slowly dropping from their sets and Barrett originals were becoming more frequent. They became regulars at the ultra-hip UFO Club, where the far-out lights, improvised sets and Barrett’s charisma earned them an ever-growing fanbase among freaks and hippies.

As 1967 began The Pink Floyd were signed to EMI Records and released their debut single. Arnold Layne, a psych-pop classic about a thieving cross-dresser, was banned by many radio stations but nonetheless made it to 20 in the charts. They followed it up with an even better single, just in time for the Summer of Love. See Emily Play was a smash hit, peaking at six and earning them appearances on Top of the Pops. It was their last charting single until 1979.

However, Pink Floyd, as they were now known, were in trouble. Barrett, despite his good looks, was an unlikely pop star and too fragile to cope with the pressures of fame. He was already a regular user of LSD by the time they recorded their classic debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1967. It features some of the best psychedelic rock ever, including Interstellar Overdrive, plus lysergic-dipped whimsy like Bike, whose ending was perhaps a sadly fair approximation of Barrett’s mind at the time. He became increasingly distanced from the others, and while standing at the front of the stage in silence with a guitar slung over his neck might have seemed nicely trippy for their audiences, it didn’t bode well for the future as far as the others were concerned.

While touring with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Barrett’s behaviour came stranger and stranger. Stories circulated of performances where the singer crushed Mandrax tranquillisers and Brylcreem into his hair, which under the heat of the stage lights, gave the impression to drugged-up audiences that he was melting on stage. His behaviour became so unreliable the others drafted in Dave Gilmour, who had studied alongside Barrett in the early-60s, as an extra guitarist. Apples and Oranges, the final single written by Barrett, failed to chart. Under pressure to come up with the goods, he told the band he’d written their next single, called Have You Got It Yet?. Every time they rehearsed it, he played a different tune, making it impossible to work on.

In January 1968, Pink Floyd were en route to a performance in Southampton when they decided it would be best if they didn’t pick up Barrett. Jenner and King, perhaps understandably, thought Pink Floyd were finished without their frontman, so they went with Barrett. The burden of leadership fell to Waters and while they continued to experiment live, their recorded output began to consist of failed attempts to sound like Barrett, such as Wright’s It Would Be So Nice. A Saucerful of Secrets, released in June, closed with, for me, one of the most blackly comic songs ever. Jugband Blues was Barrett’s farewell, with him singing ‘I’m most obliged to you for making it clear that I’m not here’ and ending with a sad strum following a final trip to the cosmos, and the closing line ‘And what exactly is a joke?’ You could argue Barrett never left the group in a way, as his descent into madness would provide the band with inspiration for years to come.

Point Me at the Sky, sung by Gilmour and Waters, was their last UK single until Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). From then on Pink Floyd’s albums saw them searching for a new direction through soundtrack LPs More (1969) and Obscured by Clouds (1972) and albums of experimentation, that fitted in with the growing trend for progressive rock. Ummagumma, released in 1969, was a double album featuring a side by each band member, plus a live concert recording. Atom Heart Mother (1970) was better, featuring an interesting 20-minute-plus title track and some pastoral rock. They built upon this with Meddle (1971), which included the driving space rock of One of These Days and Echoes, another long track that pointed the way towards the band’s future.

Then came The Dark Side of the Moon. Released in 1973, this lush, wonderful album about universal themes including time, greed, conflict and madness (the latter inspired by Barrett) was the peak of Waters and Gilmour’s partnership. The latter’s languid, melodic guitar lines and soft vocals were the perfect counterpoint to Waters anger and satire. It remains one of the bestselling albums of all time, and deservedly so.

Following a lengthy tour, Pink Floyd reconvened and were under pressure to follow up with something just as successful. Struggling for inspiration, Waters began writing explicitly about the loss of Barrett as well as the perils of the music industry, for the album that became Wish You Were Here (1975).

Incredibly, while recording the two-part song Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a paunchy man with no eyebrows appeared in the studio, brushing his teeth. Initially unrecognisable, it became apparently the tragic figure was Barrett. He had released two solo albums after Pink Floyd – The Madcap Laughs (1970) and Barrett (1970), co-produced in different sessions by Gilmour, Waters and Wright. They’re a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a schizophrenic, at times painful to listen to.

Waters couldn’t believe Barrett was there, listening to a song explicitly about Pink Floyd’s former leader. He asked Barrett what he thought of it and he replied ‘It sounds a bit old’. Waters was distraught afterwards. Other than an accidental meeting with him in Harrods a few years later, in which Barrett ran away, it was the last time any of Pink Floyd saw him.

Pink Floyd’s bassist became ever more dominant within the group and came up with the concept of the next album. Animals, released in 1977. was loosely based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and in the year of the Silver Jubilee and punk, its cynical comments on the class system proved timely. But Wright in particular found himself increasingly sidelined.

The subsequent ‘In the Flesh’ tour saw the prog-rock behemoths touring stadiums for the first time, but friction grew and Wright flew back home at one point threatening to quit, and most famously, a group of noisy fans at the Montreal Olympic Stadium prompted Waters to spit at one of them. He began to wish there was a wall between the band and the audience.

In 1978 the band, struggling financially through ill-advised investments, needed new material, despite Gilmour feeling they had done all they could achieve. Waters presented them with two ideas. The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, which became his first solo album in 1984, and a 90-minute collection of demos entitled Bricks in the Wall. Available online, the demos are the bare bones of what became an ambitious double album soundtracking the story of rock star Pink.

Producer Bob Ezrin, who had been behind School’s Out in 1972, wrote a script for the album, telling of Pink’s childhood trauma over losing his father in the Second World War (which had happened to Waters), his alienation through the education system, his mental problems during stardom (Barrett, once more) and subsequent breakdown. All his issues represented bricks in a wall he built up around his audience and his loved ones until he becomes a maniacal fascist. At the end, Pink recovers and tears down the wall and the story comes full circle, ending as it began.

Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall featured many repeated musical motifs, just like a film soundtrack. The double LP’s backbone was Another Brick in the Wall, which traced Pink’s downfall at three points in his life. Part I occurs after his father dies, Part II spotlights trauma suffered at boarding school, and Part III comes as Pink completes his wall, deciding everyone he knows has contributed to his suffering.

Recording began in December 1978. Previous tensions within the band continued and Wright contributed so little to the sessions, Waters, Gilmour and Mason issued an ultimatum. Wright was to leave the group once recording was over. He did however perform on this number 1, playing Hammond organ and Prophet-5 synthesiser.

While recording the album, Ezrin suggested to the band that they go out to a club and listen to some disco. The idea appalled Gilmour, and even more so when he did what Ezrin asked. He thought it was awful. However, Gilmour developed the catchy Bee Gees-style guitar riff that underpinned Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). To his relief, it sounded good. With an added disco beat behind it, Ezrin thought they had a hit on their hands if more work was done. Pink Floyd stuck to their guns and insisted they didn’t release singles. Eventually they relented to a degree, with Waters telling him, ‘Go ahead and waste your time doing silly stuff’.

So he did. While Pink Floyd were absent, Ezrin extended the song and decided on another key ingredient. Perhaps with School’s Out in mind, he asked engineer Nick Griffiths to record a few children at the nearby Islington Green School singing Waters’ lyrics – a delicious irony considering the theme of the song. Griffiths, inspired by a Todd Rundgren song, decided to ask for a choir instead. The school agreed, but insisted it take no longer than 40 minutes.

Head of Music Alun Renshaw loved the idea. He’d been longing to make his pupils more interested in class by making music more relevant. Fearing headteacher Margaret Maden might feel different when she knew what the song was about, he kept such information from her. Renshaw and the children practiced for a week before going to Britannia Row studio. In return for the performance, the school received £1000 and the students were given tickets for a Pink Floyd concert, plus copies of the single and album.

When Ezrin played the results to Waters he recalled ‘there was a total softening of his face, and you just knew that he knew it was going to be an important record’. After more than a decade, Pink Floyd decided to release a single edit. Ezrin added a four-bar disco instrumental intro by looping a section of the backing track and Gilmour’s guitar solo was faded out. Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) was released on 23 November 1979, a week before the album.

Review

I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan and find their story fascinating – at least, until the point Waters left. Most Pink Floyd fans have a preferred era, but I genuinely don’t know whether it’s the Barrett or Waters era for me. I can totally see why Waters’ increasing takeover of the group has its critics, and that many find The Wall bloated and self-obsessed, but I love it. I could sing the entire album to you right now, with all the film-style snippets between songs. And Ezrin’s work on Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) is excellent – there’s no way The Wall would have sold as well as it did without the success of this downbeat disco anthem behind it, and that’s all down to him by the sounds of it. Hats off to Renshaw for the performance of the choir. They sound genuinely pissed off and rather scary, fitting the nightmarish mood perfectly.

I love that this was the least festive Christmas number 1 in years and marked the end of the 70s. How strange that these progressive rockers, famous for their dreamy soundscapes, should somehow capture the mood of so many disaffected youths. It sounds obvious these days, to stick a children’s choir on a song released at Christmas, it means you’re on to a winner. But not a choir singing about needing no education! Who says punk killed prog? You’ve got both here in just over three minutes.

There’s two ways to hear Another Brick in the Wall (Part II). You either need to start with the preceding track on the LP, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, in which Waters sets the scene, or, if you want that disco intro, plus Gilmour’s solo from the album, you want the version from the 1981 compilation A Collection of Great Dance Songs.

A memorable promo film was made for the single. It begins with footage of St Paul’s Cathedral as a backdrop of London, and everything looks grey and grim. Panning around, the camera eventually swoops down into a playground. The footage is then interspersed with clips of puppets and animation by Gerald Scarfe, the satirical cartoonist responsible for the album artwork and subsequent tour. The nightmarish Schoolmaster Scarfe created puts pupils into the top of the school, which minces them up, and the headmaster’s head becomes that of one of the marching hammers stomping around. After a wall encircles a child, we see a group of children miming the ‘We don’t need no education’ chant as disco lights flash, and then as Gilmour’s solo begins, foreboding footage of children leaving flats suggests trouble, and we fade out on the marching hammers. Merry Christmas!

After

Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) was a worldwide smash, going to number 1 in many countries including the US. Thatcher and The Inner London Education Authority were not fans of the cynical lyrics. Waters would have been thrilled at upsetting the former. He could claim his number 1 was his reflection on his boarding school experiences, but he was a staunch critic of the Conservative Prime Minister, and would rail against her explicitly on the next Pink Floyd album, which would be his last.

1980 began with Pink Floyd’s elaborate stage show for The Wall, with inter-band relations at an all-time low. Wright returned but only as a salaried musician rather than band member. Plans were made to combine tour footage with animation and make a film. Alan Parker became director and decided to take a different approach. Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, who originally dismissed the idea as ‘bollocks’, was hired to play Pink.

Following the Falklands War, Waters suggested Pink Floyd follow-up with a sequel-of-sorts, delving deeper into the loss of his father in the Second World War and linking it to Thatcher’s jingoistic response to the conflict with Argentina that made her into a hero to many. Gilmour wasn’t keen, and in effect, the appropriately named The Final Cut was more like Waters’ first solo album than a Pink Floyd LP. There’s some interesting parts but it pales into comparison with The Wall, which, despite Waters’ dominance, proved that Pink Floyd were at their best when he and Gilmour worked together, for example, on tracks like this and the epic Comfortably Numb.

A year later Waters released The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and went public in saying he believed Pink Floyd were done. Whatever the others had in mind, he went to the High Court in an effort to dissolve the band and prevent the others from using its name. Nevertheless, Gilmour and Mason pressed ahead with the 13th Floyd album. A Momentary Lapse of Reason had Wright back on board and was a return to the sound of The Dark Side of the Moon with added 80s bombastic production. But it lacked soul and with contributions from the others at a minimum, it was in effect a solo Gilmour album but it sold very well and a world tour followed.

The rancour between Waters and the others got silly. He would contact promoters in the US and threaten to sue them if they advertised Pink Floyd gigs. He issued a writ over the use of the inflatable pig based on the idea he came up with for the cover of Animals – they responded by adding male genitals to their pig to differentiate it. What a load of bollocks.

In January 1993 when Gilmour, Wright and Mason began work on the next album, The Division Bell, the legal war was over. Released the following year, it was better than their previous, but still way past the band’s prime. Another world tour came afterwards, which would be their last.

Although the legal issues had long since been settled, Gilmour and Waters still had a strained relationship. So it came as a huge, exciting surprise to Pink Floyd fans – myself included – when it was announced that the duo would reunite with Wright and Mason to perform at Live 8 on 2 July 2005 at Hyde Park. Geldof had managed the impossible, although Gilmour had originally refused and it took a call from Waters to persuade him. Pink Floyd’s dramatic return was a spellbinding treat, especially when Waters spoke to the crowd before Wish You Were Here and mentioned Syd. He even managed to coax Gilmour over for a hug at the end of the show.

Waters was enthused and spoke of more possible shows for charity, but Gilmour said he was done, insisting it wasn’t due to any tension between them. On 1 July 2006 I saw Waters at Hyde Park performing The Dark Side of the Moon and other classics, with assistance from Mason. As always he paid tribute to Barrett, but seemed quite emotional when doing so. Unbeknownst to me and everyone in attendance, Barrett had pancreatic cancer, and died six days later, aged 60. In May 2007 Gilmour, Wright and Mason performed together at a Barrett tribute concert, while Waters featured alone.

Wright died of cancer on 15 September 2008, aged 65. Perhaps age was mellowing them, or the deaths of their former colleagues had got them thinking, but relations thawed again for a brief time, with Waters and Gilmour performing together for an audience of 200 at a charity event in July 2010. The following year Waters was performing The Wall at London’s 02 Arena when Gilmour joined in on Comfortably Numb. Mason also joined in for album closer Outside the Wall.

In 2014 Pink Floyd released the album The Endless River. Gilmour and Mason had revisited sessions for The Division Bell and put it together as a tribute to Wright. Gilmour said it would be the final Pink Floyd album. In 2018 Mason said Gilmour and Waters remained at loggerheads and so he formed Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, which would perform early Floyd material. In 2019 Waters joined them on stage.

The Outro

So it really did look like Pink Floyd were finally done. But then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Gilmour, who has Ukrainian family, contacted Mason. They decided to team up with their bassist Guy Pratt (Waters was left out of the project) and musician Nitin Sawhney, and they created Pink Floyd’s first new song in 28 years. Hey, Hey, Rise Up! samples a performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk, frontman of Ukrainian rock band BoomBox, who was recorded performing an a cappella version of a 1914 Ukranian protest song.

It’s highly likely that this will be a one-off but you never know. It could perhaps lead to live shows, at the least, Who’d have thought they would perform at Live 8, after all. But even with Mason as a go-between, it’s likely Waters won’t play with them again.

If they never do never reunite, at least they put their egos to one side for a good cause. If Pink Floyd’s career was made into a film – and it should be, because what a story – it would make a great, emotional ending, with Hey, Hey, Rise Up! an interesting epilogue.

And speaking of emotional endings, that’s the 70s done. What a decade of musical ups and downs, to say the least. To try and sum up this period would take a blog in itself. Sadly, just as things were getting interesting and exciting once more, it’s time for a break. Watch this space, though.

The Info

Written by

Roger Waters

Producers

David Gilmour, Bob Ezrin, Roger Waters & James Guthrie

Weeks at number 1

5 (15 December 1979-18 January 1980)

Trivia

Births

17 December 1979: Cricketer Charlotte Edwards
24 December: Field-hockey player Lucilla Wright
25 December: Racing driver Robert Huff
1 January 1980: Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner
8 January: Actor Sam Riley
18 January: Singer Estelle

Deaths

6 January 1980: Racing car driver Raymond Mays
11 January: Novelist Barbara Pym
18 January: Photographer Sir Cecil Beaton

Meanwhile…

20 December 1979: The government publishes the Housing Bill, which will give council house tenants the right to buy their homes from 1981 onwards. This policy was a big vote winner among those who finally had a chance to own their ow homes.

2 January 1980: A new decade may have begun but strike action remained popular. Workers at British Steel Corporation began nationwide action for the first time since 1926. 

430. Boney M – Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord (1978)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

So we reach the end of 1978. Finally, the singles chart and pop in general has become important to the public once more. Singles by Wings, Boney M and John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John remain among the biggest sellers of all time. Punk may have never officially had a number 1, but its presence had shaken pop up, and god was it needed. As the 70s draws to a close, the chart-toppers take on a whole new freshness and 1979 is the most exciting year for pop number 1s in over 10 years.

Before

But first, this. Manufactured disco quartet Boney M capped off an enormously successful year with the festive number 1. Rivers of Babylon had been number 1 for five weeks in the spring/summer of 1978. It was the bestseller that year and is still the seventh best-selling single of all time in the UK. The album it came from, Nightflight to Venus, was also huge and also spawned Rasputin. Number 1 across Europe, it stalled at two here, and unlike most of their oeuvre, I can enjoy that one. Maybe.

In November, the mastermind behind Boney M, Frank Farian, assembled the group to hastily record a Christmas single. He decided to cover Mary’s Boy Child, which had been the UK Christmas number 1 for US singer Harry Belafonte in 1957.

If you read my review of that single when it was live here, or have since read my book Every UK Number 1: The 50s, you’ll know it was composed by Jester Hairston. His friend, who he was at the time sharing a room with, asked Hairston to write him a song for a birthday party. He came up with the calypso tune He Pone and Chocolate Tea but it was quickly forgotten about. But when the composer Walter Schumann asked Hairston for a festive song for Schumann’s Hollywood Choir to perform in 1956, he reworked He Pone and Chocolate Tea and it became Mary’s Boy Child. Belafonte heard the choir’s rendition and recorded it that year, before releasing a longer version the following year. It was the latter which took the Christmas top spot.

Farian, the opportunist that he was, decided to tack a new song on the end, therefore ensuring he and Fred Jay would receive royalties.

Review

Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Love may be the 12th biggest-selling UK number 1 of all time, but it leaves me as cold as the weather that winter. This is the weakest Christmas number 1 since Little Jimmy Osmond in 1972. Farian takes a stately festive ballad and gives it the cheesy disco-lite touch. He keeps it similar enough to the original to perhaps encourage record buyers ready for some 50s nostalgia, while making it disco enough for the young at the time. The result is a tacky, boring affair. And if it wasn’t already too long, the Oh My Lord section then starts up and it seems as though Boney M are never going to stop. I love Christmas tackiness, but I find it very hard to think of any positives here.

After

Boney M’s huge sales dropped from here on in. In 1979 they reached 10 with Painter Man. But Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday peaked at three that summer and remained a kids’ holiday club staple well into the 80s. Their next album Oceans of Fantasy spawned double A-side Gotta Go Home/El Lute, which reached 12 and I’m Born Again, which went to 35. Their last new song to reach the top 40 was the interestingly named We Kill the World (Don’t Kill the World). It only got to 39 in 1981. That same year, the dancer Bobby Farrell, who mimed to Farian’s vocals, was sacked for being too unreliable.

In 1982 Reggie Tsiboe replaced Farrell but it made little difference to Boney M’s decline. Farrell eventually returned but in 1986 Farian had got bored and pulled the plug on Boney M after their eighth LP Eye Dance. For the rest of the 80s, various incarnations of Boney M existed, with or without Farian’s approval. In 1988 the ‘classic’ line-up reunited without him briefly.

There was a renewed interest in the group in 1992, thanks to Mega Mix, a number seven hit which also featured a remix of Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord. The only noteworthy member of Boney M at this point was singer Liz Mitchell, who Farian once described as the only irreplaceable member of the group. The following year Brown Girl in the Ring (Remix) took them to 38. Another remix, Ma Baker (Somebody Scream), is their last hit to date, peaking at 22 in 1999.

In 2010 Farrell died of heart failure, aged 61. Mitchell tours as Boney M, featuring Liz Mitchell (well you would, wouldn’t you?). Marcia Barrett, who sang the a cappella intro to Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord, lives in Berlin. Maizie Williams, who never sang on any original studio recordings by Boney M, now performs them live.

The Outro

Farian was the man behind another manufactured group. He formed the duo Milli Vanilli in 1988. Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus never sang a note but they became one of the biggest names of the era. He promised them he’d cover their backs but when the miming scandal broke, Farian fired them and announced they never sang for real on their records. Something that hadn’t bothered the pop world when Boney M were at large destroyed Milli Vanilli, and Pilatus was found dead in 1998 of a suspected drink and drugs overdose.

The Info

Written by

Jester Hairston, George Reyam, Frank Farian & Fred Jay

Producer

Frank Farian

Weeks at number 1

4 (9 December 1978-5 January 1979)

Trivia

Births

16 December: Actor Joe Absolom
23 December: Model Jodie Marsh

Deaths

23 December: Academic Malcolm Caldwell (see ‘Meanwhile…’)

Meanwhile…

14 December 1978: The Labour minority government narrowly survives a vote of confidence.

21–22 December: BBC One and BBC Two are taken off air when the BBC members of the ABS union decide to strike over pay. The following day, the union calls its radio members out on strike. This leads to the merging of BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 into one national radio network. From 4.00pm that day, the management runs a schedule of news and music. BBC One controller Bill Cotton begins to panic that the strike will ruin ratings over the all-important Christmas period. He prepares two Christmas schedules for BBC One, one if there is no strike, and one filled with repeats and films if there is. Luckily for him, the BBC and ABS go to the government’s conciliation service ACAS, and a deal is reached by 10pm on 22 December, with the unions getting a 15% pay rise. All BBC TV and radio services return to normal service by lunchtime on 23 December.

23 December: Marxist writer Malcolm Caldwell is shot dead in Cambodia shortly after meeting Pol Pot.

5 January 1979: Lorry drivers go on strike, causing new shortages of heating oil and fresh food. With terrible freezing conditions damaging the economy at the same time, Labour’s ‘Winter of Discontent’ had begun.

416. Wings – Mull of Kintyre/Girls School (1977)

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The Intro

Eight years after The Beatles had their last number 1 with The Ballad of John and Yoko, Paul McCartney hit big with his next band Wings. Mull of Kintyre/Girls School became the 1977 Christmas number 1 and the first single to sell more than two million units. It is the biggest selling record of the 70s and remains the bestselling non-charity single of all time.

Before

Following his departure from the Fab Four, McCartney had struggled to recapture the magic of the greatest group of all time. Two albums, McCartney (1970) and Ram (1971) – the latter co-credited to wife Linda, were ill-received, although both have enjoyed improved re-evaluation since.

He decided to begin a new band and invited session drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Hugh McCracken, both of whom had worked on Ram, to join him. Seiwell agreed but McCaracken didn’t, so McCartney asked Denny Laine instead. Laine, formerly of The Moody Blues, was working on a solo album when he received the call from McCartney. The album was abandoned straight away.

In August 1971 the McCartneys, Laine and Seiwell assembled to record the album Wild Life. McCartney reverted back to his Beatles days, on bass primarily once more. On 13 September Linda was giving birth to their second child together, Stella. Due to complications, there was a danger that both mother and daughter could die. McCartney was praying for them when the name ‘Wings’ came to mind.

Wild Life was released that December and was slated. Most tracks were recorded in one take, and it showed. Linda was ridiculed by the music press for her role as backing vocalist and keyboardist. Undaunted, Wings continued with the addition of second guitarist Henry McCullough, who had been in Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, in January 1972. They went on their first tour playing universities in the back of a van together. Attempting to recapture the early days of The Beatles, Wings didn’t perform a single track by McCartney’s previous band.

The debut Wings single, Give Ireland Back to the Irish was a controversial response to the events of Bloody Sunday. Banned by the BBC it nonetheless reached 16 on the singles chart. In what was understandably seen by many as a sarcastic response, their next single was a simple cover of children’s song Mary Had a Little Lamb. It went to nine. Hi Hi Hi‘s drugs references saw them banned by the Beeb again but it peaked at five.

McCartney decided to change their name to Paul McCartney and Wings for the 1973 LP Red Rose Speedway, perhaps deciding they needed more star power to improve sales. My Love, one of their best singles, took them to the top in the US and reached nine here. Then came Live and Let Die. Their theme to Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond reunited McCartney with Martin and was brilliant. A deserved number one, it could only reach nine.

Following another tour, Paul McCartney and Wings set to work on another album but soon McCullough and Seiwell left. Both were unhappy with Linda’s inclusion and felt Paul was too domineering. Reduced to a trio, the McCartneys and Laine decamped to Lagos in Nigeria and recorded one of their best albums. The title track to Band on the Run (1973) was a brilliant mini-medley, reaching three. Again, it deserved better. Jet, released beforehand, was a superior rock tune.

Former Thunderclap Newman guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton joined the ranks soon after. After recording an album with Paul’s brother Mike McGear and The Scaffold they released the single Junior’s Farm, which became their final release on Apple Records. As The Country Hams they released a single with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer. Walking in the Park with Eloise was a song written years before by Paul’s father James.

Known as just Wings once more, Britton left the band during the recording of their first album for Capitol Records. He was replaced with US musician Joe English. The first fruits of the sessions for Venus and Mars to be released was the beautifully upbeat Listen to What the Man Said, which peaked at six in 1975. Next album Wings at the Speed of Sound boasted their most commercially successful songs to date, Silly Love Songs and Let ‘Em In, which both soared to two. The latter is perhaps the most quintessentially McCartney 70s tune – a very catchy song about a very mundane subject matter. Someone is knocking at the door and ringing the bell. McCartney suggests someone let them in. Hmm.

Sessions for the next Wings album were interrupted when Linda became pregnant. On 9 August the McCartneys and Laine entered Spirit of Ranachan Studio at High Park Farm in the Mull of Kintyre and set to work on a song he had first laid down in 1974.

McCartney had bought the farm in 1966 and eight years later a piano-led demo had him tinkering with a simple song in which he sang of his love for the area. To give the finished version a suitably folksy feel, McCartney recorded his vocals and acoustic guitar outside. Laine, who is credited on the track, added backing vocals and acoustic and electric guitars and the heavily pregnant Linda sang backing vocal and also added percussion. Wanting an authentic rousing Scottish ending, Wings added Campbeltown Pipe Band on bagpipes and drums. Mull of Kintyre was wrapped up in a day.

Reviews

It was inevitable that eventually McCartney would join George Harrison in the ranks of former Beatles achieving a number 1. Little did anyone know that this would be the one to do it, let alone for nine weeks, toppling She Loves You as bestselling song. I get that Mull of Kintyre has a simplistic charm, extolling the virtues of natural beauty. That, like McCartney songs at their best, it has an inclusive quality, building to a big singalong ending like Hey Jude. That And releasing it in time for the Christmas market, when the older generation like to buy a nice tune, was a great move.

Also, clearly, for some unknown reason, bagpipes did well in pop during the 70s. Remember that an instrumental version of Amazing Grace was the biggest song of 1972?! But I cannot get my head around the mammoth success of Mull of Kintyre. It’s a bit of a dirge to my ears, too simple to leave that much of a mark. But it’s McCartney isn’t it? I can’t deny one of the greatest songwriters of all time a number 1, even if he’s made far better over the decades.

The video to Mull of Kintyre is suitably wistful, featuring Paul strumming on a fence at his farm, Linda in the background. They and Laine stride towards a place overlooking the beach, where Campbeltown Pipe Band are performing. Eventually Wings are joined by locals for a nighttime fire sing-song. Lovely.

One reason I suspect nobody was expecting Mull of Kintyre to do so well was the fact it was promoted as a double A-side with Girls School. Nobody remembers this. Before Mull of Kintyre was recorded, Wings had begun making a new LP in the Virgin Islands. Among the tracks recorded for what eventually became London Town was this track. But Linda’s pregnancy had stopped the sessions. Wings must have decided Girls School deserved equal billing.

It didn’t. Girls School is an average McCartney rocker, akin but inferior to Jet. It’s album filler or B-side material. It also has rather dodgy lyrics, telling of a boarding school where the head nurse runs a massage parlour in the school hall and when the PE teacher puts the students to bed, ‘She gives them pills in a paper cup/And she knocks them on the head’. The soaring backing vocals from the much-maligned Linda are nice, but it’s understandable why it’s been forgotten.

After

Mull of Kintyre/Girls School was released in November and was at number 1 for an incredible two months, from 3 December 1978 until 3 February 1979. It also reached number 1 elsewhere, but not in the US, where Girls School got most of the airplay. That same month sessions for London Town resumed but once again Wings were reduced to a trio as McCulloch and English left. The next single With a Little Luck, a nice little ballad, went to five. But Wings were in trouble.

Later in 1979, with new members Laurence Juber on lead guitar and Steve Holley on drums, they recorded the single Goodnight Tonight, which was their last top 10 hit (five). One last album, Back to the Egg, followed. Produced by Chris Thomas, it featured a more ragged sound and showed a new wave influence. One track, Rockestra Theme, featured members of Led Zeppelin, The Who and Pink Floyd and won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

McCartney annoyed the other members of the band by deciding to focus on a solo album, McCartney II, but the band resumed for a tour at the end of the year. Unfortunately when the McCartneys arrived in Japan in January 1980, Paul was arrested for marijuana possession. The tour was cancelled and all Paul McCartney and Wings music was banned from TV and radio across the country. Laine formed the Denny Laine Band with Holley and released a solo album, Japanese Tears in December 1980. That title was clearly a dig at McCartney’s arrest.

McCartney reunited again with Martin for the album Tug of War but Holley and Juber were told they were not needed. Laine stayed on board but was having a tough time with his marriage and angry at the flat fee he received for Mull of Kintyre. He announced he was leaving Wings in April 1981. By the time McCartney came round to promoting Tug of War, he admitted Wings were no more.

Although Wings are considered to be just the McCartneys and revolving session musicians, this is unfair, particularly on Laine, who contributed a lot over the years. Years later, Laine would occasionally perform as Wings with other members for one-off events. Laine released another album with a pointed title reference to McCartney – Anyone Can Fly – in 1982. He did however contribute to McCartney’s Pipes of Peace in 1983. He continued to release solo albums through the 80s. In 2018 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with The Moody Blues.

Seiwell went on to drum for artists including Billy Joel and Liza Minnelli and worked on film scores including Grease II. McCullough’s voice featured on one of the bestselling albums ever. It’s him you can hear on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon saying ‘I don’t know I was really drunk at the time’. McCullough continued to record and perform, dying in 2016. McCulloch left Wings to join the reformed Small Faces and formed both Wild Horses and The Dukes. But in 1979 he was found dead from heart failure, aged only 26. Britton joined power pop group The Keys in the early-80s and set up a kickboxing school. Juber continued to work in music, recording with Ringo Starr, Belinda Carlisle and featuring on She’s Like the Wind from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Holley collaborated with Julian Lennon and Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter.

Linda remained with Paul for the rest of her life, and despite her critics remained in his backing band for tours until 1993. She became an animal rights activist and founded the Linda McCartney Foods company with Paul. In 1995 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and died in 1998 aged 56.

Paul McCartney of course continues with a very successful solo career. His next number 1, with another musical giant, was also very popular but not considered to be among his best work.

The Outro

So that’s 1977 rounded up. A year that was better than the dizzying lows of the year previous. But despite the impact of punk, it made little effect on the year’s number 1s. It would take a few more years for its influence to creep in, in the form of new wave.

The Info

Written by

Mull of Kintyre: Paul McCartney & Denny Laine/Girls School: Paul McCartney

Producer

Paul McCartney

Weeks at number 1

9 (3 December 1978-3 February 1978) *BEST-SELLING SINGLE OF THE DECADE*

Trivia

Births

6 December 1977: Footballer Paul McVeigh
23 December: TV presenter Matt Baker
1 January 1978: Model Alex Leigh/Footballer Phillip Mulryne
17 January: Footballer Warren Feeney

Deaths

20 December 1977: First World War soldier Henry Tandey
25 December: Actor Charlie Chaplin
14 January 1978: Athlete Harold Abrahams
22 January: Cricketer Herbert Sutcliffe

Meanwhile…

3 December 1977: For the second tournament in succession, the England football team fails to qualify for the World Cup.

12 December: Ron Greenwood signs a permanent contract as England manager. The appointment proved controversial, as there had been widespread support for Brian Clough of Nottingham Forest.

14 December: 25-year-old Leeds prostitute Marilyn Moore is injured in an attack believed to have been committed by the Yorkshire Ripper.

16 December: The Queen opens a £71,000,000 extension of the London Underground’s Piccadilly line.

21 December: Four children die at a house fire in Wednesbury in the West Midlands. Due to the firefighter strike, Green Goddess fire appliances are sent to deal with the blaze. 119 people have now died as a result of fires since the strike began, but this is the first fire during the strike to result in more than two deaths.

25 December: The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show on BBC One attracts an audience of more than 28,000,000 viewers, one of the highest ever in UK television history.

27 December: Star Wars is screened in British cinemas for the first time.

1 January 1978: Otters become a protected species.

11 January: A storm surge in the North Sea ruins piers in Herne Bay, Margate, Hunstanton and Skegness.

16 January: After three months, the firefighter strike ends when fire crews accept an offer of a 10% pay rise and reduced working hours.

18 January: The European Court of Human Rights finds the UK government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland but not guilty of torture. 

30 January: Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher says many Britons fear being ‘swamped by people with a different culture’.

31 January: 18-year-old prostitute Helen Rytka is murdered in Huddersfield. She is believed to be the eighth victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. 

398. Johnny Mathis – When a Child is Born (Soleado) (1976)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

After 20 years in the music business, US pop crooner Johnny Mathis finally scored a UK number 1, and the all-important Christmas spot too, with a timely ballad many associate with the festive season. It’s a throwback to the stately Christmas songs of old.

Before

John Royce Mathis was born in Gilmer, Texas on 30 September 1935, of African-American and Native American heritage. The family soon moved to San Franciso, California, which is where he grew up. His father Clem was a singer and pianist, and could see his fourth of seven sons had musical talent. He bought him an old piano for the princely sum of $25. In years to come his parents would run his fan club. Soon, Mathis was singing and dancing for visitors, at school and church. From the ages 13 to 18 he was given singing lessons.

But Mathis had other interests in his youth too. He was a star athlete at George Washington High School, excelling at the high jump, hurdles and basketball. At San Francisco State College in 1954 he set a high jump record that was only 7cm short of the 1952 Olympic record.

Around this time Mathis got to know Helen Noga, co-owner of The Black Hawk Club where he often performed. She became his manager in 1955 and was offered a contract with Columbia Records. He had to decide whether to sign or try out for the Olympics. On his father’s advice he chose the former and released his eponymous jazz-flavoured debut LP in 1956. His first single, Wonderful! Wonderful! followed in 1957 and was a number 14 hit in the US.

It was only the start, as It’s Not for Me to Say peaked at five and then Chances Are topped the US chart. It was followed by The Twelfth of Never, reaching nine. It later became a number 1 for Donny Osmond in 1973. A hugely successful year was rounded off with Wild is the Wind, later covered beautifully by David Bowie on Station to Station. It was the theme to a film of the same name and earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song in 1958. He repeated this achievement with A Certain Smile the following year, which peaked at four in the UK.

Mathis also released Johnny’s Greatest Hits in 1958, which is considered the first of its kind and it held the record for most consecutive weeks in the Billboard album chart until The Dark Side of the Moon overtook it in 1983. Mathis rounded off the year with his first Christmas single, Winter Wonderland, a number 17 hit on these shores. Someone was a number six UK smash in 1959. When My Love for You climbed to nine a year later, it became his last UK chart entry for 15 years.

Relations between Mathis and Noja soured and in 1964 they fought in court. He bought a mansion in Hollywood Hills that had been built by Howard Hughes, and he still owns it to this day. In 1967 Mathis established Jon Mat Records but the 60s were a lean time for his career thanks to the British Invasion. He was no longer fashionable, though he did try to appear more hip by covering Simon & Garfunkel’s The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) and the theme from Midnight Cowboy, both in 1969.

The 70s looked to be going the same way with covers of The Bee Gees’ How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? in 1971 and The Walker Brothers’ former number 1 Make It Easy on Yourself in 1972 making little impression. But then in 1975 he made a surprise return to the hit parade with a cover of I’m Stone in Love with You by The Stylistics and When a Child is Born (Soleado) topped them all on Christmas Day 1976.

The bracketed part of the title is where the tune originated. Soleado was a mainly instrumental song composed in 1974 by Ciro Dammico, aka Zacar, and Dario Baldan Bembo. Soleado was adapted and transformed into various different songs depending on the country, including in the UK, where Vera Lynn sang a version called There Comes a Day in 1975. Fred Jay, who later co-wrote hits for Boney M, was responsible for the English lyrics that Mathis made famous.

Review

So is When a Child is Born (Soleado) a Christmas song or not? Strictly speaking, no. You can easily take the lyrics and say they’re a retelling of the Nativity, with a child’s birth bringing about a ‘brand new morn’ and talk of ‘walls of doubt, crumble tossed and torn’. It all sounds very much like the miraculous birth of Jesus, particularly the reference to ‘A tiny star lights up way up high.’ As it was on my cash-in The Best Christmas Album in the World… Ever!, I’ve considered it for the season for well over 20 years. But upon re-reading the words, it seems to me it’s telling us we’re still waiting for someone to be born that can make the world a better place. It becomes clearer when Mathis recites the spoken word section:

‘And all of this happens because the world is waiting,
Waiting for one child
Black, white, yellow, no-one knows
But a child that will grow up and turn tears to laughter,
Hate to love, war to peace and everyone to everyone’s neighbour
And misery and suffering will be words to be forgotten, forever’

Ouch, that ‘yellow’ bit has aged badly hasn’t it? But the intention was well-meant I’m sure. So yes, Mathis is waiting expectantly for someone to come along and save us all. Personally, the child this song reminds me of is my eldest daughter Emmie, who was due to arrive around Christmas 2011. I love a good croon when the moment and song is right, and still sometimes belt out ‘You’re on solid ground’ triumphantly.

When a Child is Born (Soleado) is a step back to the easy listening of the past, and you can bet the older generation were glad to have a Christmas number 1 that wasn’t by those glam rock upstarts for a change. While I prefer the festive classics of Slade and Mud, I’ve room in my heart for this too. Mathis is a class performer. Just ignore, as is so often the case for me, the spoken word section.

After

Although 1977 was another sparse year for hits, Mathis enjoyed another comeback a year later thanks to a duet with Deniece Williams (herself a number 1 artist in 1977 with Free) when Too Much, Too Little, Too Late became a US chart-topper. Mathis was encouraged by this to record many more duets, with, among others, Dionne Warwick and Natalie Cole. 1979 saw Mathis nominated for a third Oscar, this time for The Last Time I Felt Like This, recorded with Jane Olivor.

In 1981 Mathis tried to update his sound and recorded an LP with Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, but I Love My Lady remained unreleased until the mammoth 68-disc box set The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection in 2017. His last hit was Friends in Love with Warwick, released in 1982.

Despite the sales dwindling, he did release material sporadically over the next few decades. Mathis has, along with Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, the longest tenure on the Columbia label. He reduced his number of live performances in 2000 but still gets out there, now aged 85. In 2003 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and has been entered into its Hall of Fame three times.

Proving it’s never too late to change course, Mathis released a country album, Let It Be Me: Mathis in Nashville. A Christmas album, Sending You a Little Christmas followed in 2013, and his last collection so far is Johnny Mathis Sings the Great New American Songbook (2017), where he tried his hand at modern hits by Adele and Pharrel Williams. After years of rumours, Mathis came out the year of its release. A survivor of alcohol and prescription drug problems, he’s done lots of commendable work for charity.

The Outro

Well, 1976 was a slog wasn’t it? Glam rock is no more and disco isn’t hitting the upper reaches as much as I’d like yet. Unfortunately 1977 is similar, but I can see at least one classic to come… perhaps the greatest number 1 of all time…

The Info

Written by

Zacar & Dario Baldan Bembo/Fred Jay (English lyrics)

Producer

Jack Gold

Weeks at number 1

3 (25 December 1976-14 January 1977)

Trivia

Births

1 January 1977: Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan
10 January: Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill
11 January: Cricketer Billy Taylor – 11 January
13 January: Actor Orlando Bloom

Deaths

14 January 1977: Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden – 14 January 1977

Meanwhile…

3 January 1977: Home Secretary Roy Jenkins announces he is leaving the House of Commons to become President of the European Commission. 

6 January: EMI terminates its contract with the Sex Pistols after only one single, Anarchy in the U.K. This was in response to the band’s infamous appearance on Bill Grundy’s Today in December and incident two days previous at London Heathrow Airport.

382. Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)

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The Intro

‘My time has come’

And how. Initially ridiculed upon its release, Bohemian Rhapsody established Queen as rock royalty. It is the third biggest number 1 of all time, selling over six million worldwide, and became the first to reach number 1 twice – for nine weeks in 1975/76 and again for five weeks in 1991/92 after singer Freddie Mercury’s death, making it the only song to be a Christmas number 1 twice. It also spearheaded the rise in popularity of music videos, had an Oscar-winning film named after it, and even has it’s own nickname. I will not be referring to it as ‘Bo Rap’ here.

Before

Before Queen there was Smile, a struggling rock band featuring guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Their singer, Tim Staffell, had befriended a fellow Ealing Art College student named Freddie Bulsara. The movie Bohemian Rhapsody contains many factual inaccuracies, and Bulsara joining Smile was the first. He didn’t stand and audition in broad daylight, he was already a fan when Staffell quit in 1970 to form Humpy Bong with former Bee Gees drummer Colin Petersen. Taylor’s friend Mike Grose became Smile’s bassist and soon after their first gig that June, Bulsara suggested they change their name to Queen. At the same time, he became Freddie Mercury. Several bassists later, John Deacon joined in February 1971.

Queen were playing to tiny audiences in the early 70s, but set to work on their eponymous debut. Queen was released in July 1973, with production by Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony. It was a mix of heavy metal riffs and progressive rock, featuring tracks including debut single Keep Yourself Alive and My Fairy King, containing a mention of ‘Mother Mercury’, which is where the singer’s surname originated from. Neither Keep Yourself Alive or second single, also from the album, Liar, charted.

A month after the LP’s release they set to work on its sequel, Queen II, while supporting glam rockers Mott the Hoople on tour. When their next single was released shortly before the album, it rocketed to number 10. Seven Seas of Rhye showcased a more sophisticated production, very-70s fantastical lyrics, and was very catchy. Queen II, incidentally, features the Mick Rock photo of the band in Marlene Dietrich poses, which would prove the inspiration for much of the Bohemian Rhapsody video.

The third album, Sheer Heart Attack, got them noticed in the UK and abroad. A more eclectic collection, its first single, camp pop anthem Killer Queen just missed out on the top spot at two in the UK and was their first US hit. Now I’m Here got to 11 in the UK.

Queen’s star was rising ever higher, but they were broke and unhappy with their management deal with Trident Studios. They broke away and with Elton John’s manager John Reid taking care of business, they set to work on their fourth album A Night at the Opera.

Usually Queen’s songs germinated in the studio, but Mercury had it in mind to join together three song fragments, some dating back to the late-60s. Chris Smith, keyboardist in Smile, said that Mercury played him a tune he was working on called The Cowboy Song, which featured the lyrics ‘Mama, just killed a man’. Producer Roy Thomas Baker once recalled Mercury playing him the opening section on the piano, stopping abruptly and saying ‘and this is where the opera section comes in!’.

Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor rehearsed Bohemian Rhapsody and other songs from A Night at the Opera at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-75. The recording of the single began on 24 August at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, but due to its elaborate nature was also recorded at Roundhouse, Sarm East Studios, Scorpio Sound and Wessex Sound Studios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBqMbefDgys

Review

There have been many interpretations of the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. Is it Mercury dealing with personal issues? May has suggested it was, but that he never actually said so to the other band members. Could he be talking about his homosexuality? He hadn’t come out to his then-partner Mary Austin at that point. Taylor said on a BBC Three documentary about the song that he thought the subject matter was ‘fairly self-explanatory’ with ‘a bit of nonsense in the middle’. It’s definitely worth noting that when Queen released a Greatest Hits in Iran (the first official pop release ever in that country), they included a booklet with translations and explanations of the songs. It says that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic, ‘Bismillah’, and so regains his soul from Satan. So perhaps we really are meant to take the lyrics literally.

Where does one start with a review of Bohemian Rhapsody?! It’s almost too big to even have one. I first heard it on a cassette compilation as a child, and back then, strangely, I didn’t find it too weird. Maybe childhood in the 80s was so constantly weird, a nearly-six-minute-long single about murder and the devil didn’t seem that strange. The thing I found ‘very, very frightening’ was the video. Growing up, Mercury’s look was short hair and moustache. Seeing him looking different, lined up in that famous formation with the others, I found them all ghostly and unsettling, but Mercury especially. At first, I didn’t even believe they were the same person.

How strange that this stitched together prog-influenced epic should somehow become a monolith of pop music. The nearest thing to it in 1975 is 10 cc’s I’m Not in Love, another lengthy symphony, but at least that has a relatable message at its core. Bohemian Rhapsody just screams ‘album track’. So why has it not only endured, but grown in stature?

It may well be as basic as: it’s fun to sing along to, from power ballad to surreal opera to rock anthem and back to ballad, it’s as eclectic as it gets. Like I’m Not in Love, it’s beautifully produced and sounds great through good speakers. It also shows how far production had come since The Beach Boys similarly landmark moment Good Vibrations in 1966 (Brian Wilson was very complimentary about Bohemian Rhapsody). And the moment in which the opera section turns to rock is always a total joy and release of energy and tension. May’s guitar work throughout is excellent, not just when he rocks out either, he does a great line in maudlin accompaniment as Mercury describes his woes.

Of course, Bohemian Rhapsody is really all about Mercury. What a voice. Anyone can attempt and enjoy singing along to this track, as I’ve already said, but nobody could perform it with the prowess of Mercury. And as downright odd as the opera section may be, it’s a great display of an amazing vocal talent. Not that it’s only Mercury at that point – he takes the middle range, with May on the low notes and Taylor on the high. To create the virtual choir took 180 separate overdubs and three weeks alone to finish. The tape was worn out several times, resulting in repeated transfers. The piano Mercury plays is the same used by Paul McCartney on another lengthy number 1 classic, Hey Jude.

My opinion of Bohemian Rhapsody has changed several times over throughout my life. I loved it in my teens and 20s, and spent much of my 30s thoroughly sick to death of it, and feeling there were many better ‘weird’, long songs out there that did what it does better. I was wrong to an extent, and in my 40s, I love it once more. I’m no superfan of Queen, and can take or leave some of their material. But this is fantastic and deserving of its status.

Back to the video. It does annoy me when this gets the credit of being the first promo for a single. It’s simply not true. Promos were being made in the 60s. The Beatles made loads, for example. And Queen! What is true is that they became more and more popular, and more adventurous in the wake of this number 1. You may well see more and more appearing on this blog. According to May, they decided on a video to avoid miming a complex song on Top of the Pops and were touring at the time anyway. I wonder what Pan’s People would have made of it?

It was filmed in November 1975 at Elstree Studios and directed by Bruce Gowers. The spooky effect in which Mercury’s face repeats on ‘Magnifico’ and ‘Let me go’ is a very simple trick in which a camera is pointed at a monitor, creating visual feedback. I stumbled across it as a teenager while playing with my camcorder and it blew my mind. After the many hours spent recording the song, the video was ready in five hours and rushed to the BBC for its debut on Top of the Pops.

After

Despite pressure from EMI, Queen wouldn’t cave in and edit Bohemian Rhapsody, thankfully. Radio 1 DJ Kenny Everett, a close friend of Mercury, was instrumental in its initial success. He promised the band not to play the song in full at first and he would tease listeners by playing snippets. Eventually he played it in full 14 times in two days, and fans were asking in shops for it before its release.

The Outro

Bohemian Rhapsody‘s nine-week run was the longest concurrent stint since Paul Anka’s Diana in 1957. An incredible achievement, particularly for such a bold experiment in pop. It even reached nine in the US, which was also unexpected. Perhaps another reason it did so well is the sense I get after reviewing 1975’s number 1s that with depressingly few exceptions, it was a rather drab year for pop. With glam gone and disco yet to make its mark, few songs stand out or push the envelope other than this or I’m Not in Love, and Space Oddity is six years old at this point. 1976 would be another poor year, although ABBA were about to make a big return. Weirdly, Mamma Mia would finally dislodge Bohemian Rhapsody, a rather odd event considering the latter’s ‘Mamma mia let me go’.

The Info

Written by

Freddie Mercury

Producers

Roy Thomas Baker & Queen

Weeks at number 1

9 (29 November 1975-30 January 1976)

Trivia

Births

5 December 1975: Snooker World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan
12 December: Gymnast Jackie Brady
19 January 1976: Actress Marsha Thomason
21 January: Spice Girl Emma Bunton

Deaths

29 November 1975: Racing driver Tony Brise (see below)/Racing driver Graham Hill (see below)
5 January 1976: Beatles roadie Mal Evans
12 January: Writer Agatha Christie
13 January: Actress Margaret Leighton

Meanwhile…

29 November: Two-time Formula One world champion Graham Hill, 46, dies in an air crash in Hertfordshire. He was piloting a plane in thick fog containing five other members of the Embassy Hill team who all also died, including Tony Brise.

5 December – The Government ends internment of suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland. 

6-12 December: IRA members on the run from police break into a London flat on Balcombe Street, taking the residents hostage. The siege ends after six days with the gunmen giving themselves up to the police.

11 December: Donald Neilson is arrested in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire on suspicion of being the ‘Black Panther’, believed to have carried out five murders in the last two years.

29 December 1975: The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act 1970 come into force.

2 January 1976: Hurricane-force winds of up to 105mph kill 22 people across Britain, causing millions of pounds worth of damage to buildings and vehicles.

5 January: 10 Protestant men are killed in the Kingsmill massacre at South Armagh, Northern Ireland, by members of the IRA who used the alias ‘South Armagh Republican Action Force’.

7 January: The third Cod War continues, with British and Icelandic ships clashing.

18 January: The Scottish Labour Party was formed by a group of disaffected Labour MPs. It disbanded five years later.

20 January: Emily Jackson is stabbed to death in Leeds, and police believe she may have been killed by the same man who murdered Wilma McCann in the city three months previously. It is revealed that Jackson was a part-time prostitute and the unidentified killer becomes known as ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’.

21 January: The first commercial Concorde flight takes off from Heathrow. 

29 January: 12 IRA bombs explode in London’s West End. They are the first in the city in over a year.

362. Mud – Lonely This Christmas (1974)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

Christmas 1974, and anyone refuting the claim glam had become too in thrall of the past would have been hard pushed to defend Mud’s second number 1 of the year. Rushing together an Elvis Presley spoof for the festive market, they took Slade’s Christmas crown with Lonely This Christmas.

Before

To say the preceding 12 months had been good for Mud would be an understatement. They started the year with 1974’s biggest seller, and one of my favourite chart-toppers, Tiger Feet, then a number two with the inferior soundalike The Cat Crept In, and a respectable number six with Rocket. They also released a cover of In the Mood under the name ‘Dum’, which failed to chart.

The well was perhaps starting to run dry for Chinnichap’s songwriting, but they’d had a very impressive run over the last few years, and seeing the excitement the chart battle between Slade and Wizzard caused in 1973, they no doubt thought one of their acts could be in with a shout. If they could pull it off, it would be their third number 1 of the year.

There was some strong competition though. Mike Batt’s Wombles had enjoyed a good year and Wombling Merry Christmas was bound to do well, plus there was Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet close to the top spot. Elvis too.

Speaking of which, how can you talk about Lonely This Christmas without comparing it to the work of ‘the King’? Although you could point out it’s more akin to his early-60s work than 50s material – Are You Lonesome Tonight? is the obvious song to note – there’s also his cover of Blue Christmas to consider, which he recorded in 1957. And of course, singer Les Gray’s voice was similar to Presley’s in general and it gave him an excuse to be the country’s best-selling Elvis impersonator over the holidays.

Review

Now Lonely This Christmas is no Tiger Feet, nor is it of the same class as Merry Xmaƨ Everybody, but I’ve always been fond of it, and the sheer nerve of releasing it amuses me. The clip below, from Top of the Pops, of Gray miming sincerely to a sinister-looking (aren’t they all?) ventriloquist puppet is a classic, bizarre TV moment. Mud have always struck me as charming chancers who somehow lucked into being in the right place and the right time, and the sight of them struggling to keep a straight face when performing this proves it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAZjiLeDWlc

It’s not for everyone. It certainly doesn’t have the universal appeal of Slade or Wizzard’s festive classics, and the only way you could get emotionally attached to it would be if you really were unlucky enough to be going through a break-up with someone, and even then, you can’t, because the whole song is a joke, and you’d feel like you were being laughed at. But come on, it’s Christmas, a time for taste to go out the window. Embrace the tackiness, like a nation exhausted from elections and terrorism did at the time. It’s also quite a funny way for Chinnichap’s chart dominance and number 1s together to come to an end, although there was Mud’s final number 1, produced by them, to come.

The Outro

So that’s 1974. An eclectic mix of pop, late glam, with a welcome return of some reggae and soul into the mix. Things were about to steadily slide downhill as the 70s progressed further. It seems the more the country slid into the economic doldrums, the worse the singles chart became.

The Info

Written & produced by

Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman

Weeks at number 1

4 (21 December 1974-17 January 1975)

Trivia

Births

6 January 1975: Radio DJ Jason King

Deaths

21 December 1974: Artist James Henry Govier

Meanwhile…

22 December 1974: A rotten year for Conservative Party leader Edward Heath ends with his London home bombed by the Provisional IRA. Fortunately he wasn’t in but only cheated death by 10 minutes.

24 December: Former Labour government minister John Stonehouse is discovered living in Australia after having faked his own death. He is quickly arrested by Australian police, who initially believe that he is Lord Lucan.

6 January 1975: Brian Clough, the recently sacked former manager of Leeds United, is appointed manager of Second Division strugglers Nottingham Forest.

14 January: 17-year-old heiress Lesley Whittle is kidnapped from her home near Bridgnorth in Shropshire.

341. Slade – Merry Xmaƨ Everybody (1973)

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The Intro

‘IT’S CHRISTMAAAASSSSSSS!’. It’s not. It’s currently mid-August 2020 and we’re coming to the end of a blistering heatwave, which, if you know the story behind Slade’s final number 1, you’ll know is how the song was recorded. Little did they know it would become not only the most famous of their six number 1s, it would become perhaps pop’s greatest festive staple.

And yet, in summer 1973, the future of the band looked in doubt. While Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me was at number 1, drummer Don Powell was in a car crash that killed his girlfriend Angela Morris and left him in a coma for nearly a week. Luckily he successfully recovered, although he still suffers acute short-term memory loss and sensory problems.

Before

Back in 1967 when Slade were The ‘N Betweens, Noddy Holder had written a song called Buy Me a Rocking Chair, with the very psychedelic chorus ‘Buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by/Buy me a looking glass, I’ll look you in the eye’. Despite liking the chorus, the verse needed work, so they scrapped it. Speaking to the Record Mirror in 1984, bassist Jim Lea recalled he was taking a shower in New York in 1973 when he came up with ‘Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?’. Lea remembered Holder’s chorus and thought the two could fit together well, and producer and manager Chas Chandler had been nagging them to write a Christmas song. Holder thought the idea had legs, and penned the lyrics at his mother’s house in Walsall in one draft. They played the finished song to Chandler on acoustic guitars.

As hinted at earlier, Slade recorded Merry Xmaƨ Everybody in the middle of a September heatwave in New York while on tour there. Powell had returned to the fray at the Power Plant, where John Lennon had just finished recording his album Mind Games. Lea didn’t look back on the recording fondly, claiming the others weren’t as interested in him at rehearsing, though he did acknowledge Powell was still recovering and his memory was shot. Lea put in the most work, laying down the bass, piano and harmonium (the latter on loan from Lennon). They weren’t happy with the first completed mix as they wanted a bigger sound for the chorus, so they re-recorded it down a corridor, getting baffled looks from passers-by (Slade were virtually unknown in the US). After five days, the song was complete.

With several months to go until they could release their hopeful festive number 1, Slade released a compilation, Sladest, and new single MY FRIEИD STAИ (which looks slightly satanic). For the first time since Christmas 1972, they didn’t get to number 1. It was a departure from the usual Slade formula, but they had to change tack at some point, and it’s a nice little song. So, were they going to miss out on the Christmas top spot for the second year in a row?

Of course not. Merry Xmaƨ Everybody became the first Christmas-themed Christmas number 1 since Harry Belafonte’s Mary’s Boy Child in 1957, and couldn’t have come at a better time. As everyone knows, the UK was going through a particularly grim time in late-1973. You’ve only got to look down at the ‘Meanwhile…’ section to see the Three-Day Week was about to begin, and the first post-war recession had started. Plus there was the OPEC oil crisis, and the IRA could strike at any moment. Glam acts like Slade and Wizzard were sorely needed to keep spirits up, and they did the job then and still do close to 50 years later. ‘Look to the future now, it’s only just begun’. How we could do with some of that optimism in winter 2020.

Review

One of the most important factors that explains the magic of Merry Xmaƨ Everybody is its inclusivity. It’s less rocking and more poppy than previous material. It’s aimed at all the family, with mentions of Granny ‘up and rock and rolling with the rest’. ‘ In 1971 Lennon asked ‘So this is Christmas, and what have you done’, in 1973 Slade said ‘everybody’s having fun’. There’s a nod (pardon the pun) to Christmas songs of old with the reference to ‘momma kissing Santa Claus’.

In 2017 I listened to every Christmas number 1 in one sitting and wrote about it here, and came to the conclusion Merry Xmaƨ Everybody is the best festive chart-topper of all time. I pointed out the production is lacking all the trimmings such as sleigh bells etc, and I think that’s another reason it’s stood the test of time so well. It doesn’t need them, as Holder’s ‘IIIIIITTTTT’S CHRIIIISSSTTTMMMMMASSSS!’ at the song’s conclusion gets the childhood joy of Christmas Day across like nobody has before or since.

After

Slade won the chart battle with Wizzard, who actually only reached number four in Christmas week, but nevertheless the sense of competition between the two glam rock outfits helped to create the battle for christmas number 1 that the media have latched on to ever since. The singles chart for Christmas week was now an event, and that’s thanks to Slade. Which is entirely appropriate, when you consider how glam’s low-budget sense of fun, bordering on the tacky, is Christmassy like no other genre.

Slade’s biggest seller was also a great way for the band to finish their run of number 1s. Six within just over two years is pretty impressive and puts them up there with some of the biggest acts of all time. Their fall was slow and steady, but there were also unexpected twists and turns.

1974 began with the release of the LP Old New Borrowed and Blue, which showcased a more piano-led sound and even a ballad as a single, Everyday, which went to number three. Much of the year was spent filming their film Slade In Flame, a surprisingly gritty drama about the rise and fall of a fictional group called Flame, played by the members of Slade. It was released in November, and although it was critically acclaimed (it has gained somewhat of a cult following in recent years), and the first single from the soundtrack Far Far Away reached number two, the theme song How Does It Feel only made it to number 15. Thanks for the Memory (Wham Bam Thank You Mam), in 1975, was their last top 10 hit of the 70s.

Understandably feeling they had peaked in the UK, in 1975 Slade decided to move to the US and try and hit the big time there. They toured with rock acts like Aerosmith and ZZ Top, and released an eclectic album. Nobody’s Fool, but not only did they fail to make much of an impact, their UK fans accused them of selling out.

By the time they returned to the UK in 1977, punk and the subsequent new wave rendered Slade very unfashionable. Their contract with major label Polydor had ran out and instead they signed with Chandler’s Barn Records. They performed single Gypsy Roadhog on Blue Peter and found themselves banned by the BBC due to its drug references, but the notoriety couldn’t help them up the charts. The next album, Whatever Happened to Slade, was an all too appropriate name.

As the band slid into irrelevance they would release singles based on football chants (1978’s Give Us a Goal) and covers of cheesy party classics (Okey Cokey in 1979) and some material failed to even reach the top 200. Disagreements between Lea and Chandler resulted in the former and Holder producing their back to basics album Return to Base in 1979. It was another failure, and the band briefly went their separate ways. Lea formed a new group, The Dummies, with his brother Frank, poor Dave Hill resorted to driving couples to their weddings in his own Rolls-Royce to make money (it didn’t work), and Holder was briefly considered as AC/DC’s new singer following the death of Bon Scott, but he still thought Slade may have a future and reportedly turned the Australian rockers down.

In 1980, Slade had some luck at last when Ozzy Osbourne cancelled his headlining appearance at Reading Festival late in the day. Organisers rushed around looking for a last-minute replacement, and asked Slade. All but Hill were keen, but the only way he could be persuaded was when Chandler visited him at home and pointed out it could be their big farewell gig. To Hill’s surprise, they went down a storm. The split was forgotten about, and they acted fast to keep the momentum going. Showcasing a sound more in keeping with heavy metal, therefore pleasing the Reading Festival crowd, 1981’s We’ll Bring the House Down (title track to their next album) became their first top 10 hit in six years, and they returned to larger venues after years of touring small clubs and universities.

Slade and Chandler finally parted ways and they signed with RCA Records, who released their heaviest material yet, Till Deaf Us Do Part. That Christmas saw the first of many re-releases of Merry Xmaƨ Everybody, which reached 32. RCA began to demand hits from the band, and set them to work with producer John Punter. The resulting album, The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome, was released in December 1983, and featured two decent tracks. Power ballad My Oh My very nearly gave them their second festive chart-topper, but was held at bay by The Flying Pickets’ version of Only You. It was followed by Run Runaway, a fair stab at a Celtic-flavoured, Big Country-style sound.

Unfortunately, Holder wasn’t keen on Punter, and troubles in his private life resulted in a cancelled tour. They tried again for another Christmas single, All Join Hands (an inferior retread of My Oh My), but it couldn’t crack the top 10. And the final decline began, with a mainly synth-led album in 1985, Rogues Gallery, followed by a cheap Christmas cash-in LP, Crackers – The Christmas Party Album, along with the umpteenth release of their final number 1. It would take more than returning to deliberately mis-spelling their material to return Slade to form, and You Boyz Make Big Noize, released in 1987, was their final album. They did (sort-of) return to number 1 with Wizzard and lots of other festive hits, courtesy of Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers’ sampling them on Let’s Party in 1989.

In 1991 the Slade fan club organised a 25th anniversary show, and it was the last time they played live. Radio Wall of Sound, recorded for a compilation, was their final chart hit. In March 1992, Holder finally called it a day, and Lea, his much underrated songwriting partner, couldn’t see a future for Slade without their singer. He retired too, leaving Hill and Powell to form Slade II.

Slade II have continued since with various other members, and made the news in 2003 when convicted serial killer Rosemary West announced her engagement to bassist Dave Glover. Glover claimed this was a misunderstanding and he had only written to her about her case, but Hill of course sacked him. In February 2020 Powell claimed he had been sacked by Hill via a rather cold email, which Hill denied. He was all set to start Don Powell’s Slade but suffered a stroke, and with live music practically comatose post-lockdown, it remains to be seen if we end up with two separate Slades on the road.

Lea has largely remained out of the public eye, other than making solo album Therapy in 2007, and revealing he had been treated for prostate cancer.

Holder became a national treasure following Slade’s demise, taking up acting and making a decent job of it in ITV comedy drama The Grimleys. He has presented radio shows, documentaries, and made numerous cameos on TV. He reportedly loved Vic Reeves’ portrayal of him in the Slade at Home sketches on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer in the early-90s, but Hill wasn’t so fond of Bob Mortimer’s portrayal of him as a disapproving mother figure.

All four members of Slade attended Chandler’s funeral in 1996, and in 2010 had a group meeting to consider a farewell tour, but nothing came of it. It’s unlikely they will ever play together.

The Outro

Slade deserve more credit. Yes, this final number 1 is the best Christmas chart-topper of all time, but before then they released some excellent singles too. Holder had one of the best rock voices of all time, and together with Lea, they wrote several classics. The flamboyant Hill was mainly responsible for their showmanship, and Powell fought back from a near-death experience and continued to belt out the beat. They may have lacked in innovation, but like all the best glam acts, they sparkled and rocked the nation during stormy years.

1973 was by and large very similar to 1972 for number 1s, but better. There was still some old-fashioned pop doing very well, and Donny Osmond and David Cassidy catering for the teens, but there were also glam classics that have stood the test of time.

The Info

Written by

Noddy Holder & Jim Lea

Producer

Chas Chandler

Weeks at number 1

5 (15 December 1973-18 January 1974)

Trivia

Births

18 December 1973: Historian Lucy Worsley
24 December: Comedian Paul Foot/Chef Matt Tebbutt
12 January 1974: Spice Girl Melanie C
15 January: Radio DJ Edith Bowman
16 January: Model Kate Moss

Deaths

12 January 1974: Princess Patricia of Connaught

Meanwhile…

19 December: The 17.18 Paddington to Oxford express train was derailed between Ealing Broadway and West Ealing. 10 died and 94 were injured.

31 December 1973: As a result of coal shortages caused by industrial action by the miners, Prime Minister Edward Heath’s energy-saving measures, the Three-Day Work Order, came into effect at midnight, making for the darkest New Year celebrations for decades. Commercial consumption of electricity would be limited to three consecutive days, TV broadcasts would end at 10.30pm on alternate nights for BBC and ITV, and most pubs were closed.

1 January 1974: But it wasn’t all bad news, as New Year’s Day was celebrated as a public holiday for the first time.
Also that day, the Northern Ireland Power-sharing Executive is set up in Belfast.

324. Little Jimmy Osmond with The Mike Curb Congregation – Long Haired Lover from Liverpool (1972)

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The Intro

What fresh hell is this? By installing nine-year-old Little Jimmy Osmond as Christmas number 1, the UK record-buying public’s collective nervous breakdown of 1972 was complete. The Osmonds were the biggest pop sensation of the year – but this was a step too far.

Before

James Arthur Osmond, born 16 April 1963, is the youngest member of the family, born in Canoga Park, California. His brothers were already TV stars as regulars on The Andy Williams Show at this point, and Jimmy was taught by tutors, his parents preparing him from a young age to follow them into the music industry.

Long Haired Lover from Liverpool was originally a single by Christoper Kingsley (credited on the Osmond version as Christopher Dowden for some reason) from 1969. I’m assuming the title is a reference to The Beatles, then still a going concern. It’s almost identical to the Osmond version, though as it’s sung by a grown man, it’s not as irritating. Examining the vinyl label suggests the backing singers on the original are the same as Osmond’s version, namely The Mike Curb Congregation. Curb, a film score and TV theme writer, had formed the group in the 60s to sing on his work. In 1969 he had merged his company with MGM Records, which soon became home to The Osmonds. He also co-produced this abomination.

The original version bombed, but Jimmy’s mother Olive heard it as it was distributed by MGM, and a horrible, terrible idea formed. It was a cute little tune… her boys had cornered the market in teenage girls… Christmas was around the corner, the boys were about to visit the UK… Jimmy could release it as a single!

Review

A few years back I listened and reviewed every Christmas number 1 in one sitting here. I rated Long Haired Lover from Liverpool as the worst of the 70s, and I stand by that. Comments included ‘Jesus Christ. That’s the only thing I can say about this that’s remotely festive, but it’s not meant as a compliment… It’s memorable I guess, but so is a bout of diarrhoea’. Nothing has changed since then to change my opinion, and although there have been plenty of weird choices in 1972’s number 1s, this still stands out as particularly stinky.

Osmond’s voice is just awful – but he was only nine (still the youngest person to ever have a UK number 1), so his parents are to blame. And the fools who kept this at the top of the charts for five weeks. FIVE WEEKS?! You can almost excuse it happening in the silly season, but for a month afterwards? And it kept David Bowie, T. Rex and even his brothers from number 1 with The Jean Genie, Solid Gold Easy Action and Crazy Horses respectively. The only plus point is it’s over quick.

After

Amazingly, Osmond scored further hits with Tweedle Dee and I’m Gonna Knock On Your Door (none of these songs fared anywhere near as well in his home country). His recordings became sporadic as the Osmond empire declined in popularity, and in the 80s he moved into management, though he would still occasionally appear on stage with his siblings. He opened the Osmond Family Theater and became president of Osmond Entertainment, running their merchandise and producing TV.

Since the new millennium began, Osmond has been a pantomime mainstay in the UK and appeared on TV time and time again, including I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, Come Dine with Me and Celebrity Masterchef. He seems a thoroughly nice guy, and we all do silly things in our youth, so lets forgive him for this aberration.

The Outro

1972 must rank as one of the weirdest years for number 1s to date. Lots of the ‘grown-up’ stars were still concentrating on albums, and although glam rock ensured great releases by Slade and T. Rex, it wasn’t as huge as it was to become. At least January 1973 was a blockbuster month…

The Info

Written by

Christopher Dowden

Producers

Mike Curb & Perry Botkin Jr

Weeks at number 1

5 (23 December 1972-26 January 1973)

The Info

Births

29 December 1972: Actor Jude Law
18 January 1973: Kula Shaker singer Crispian Mills – 18 January 1973

Deaths

24 December 1972: Art historian Gisela Richter
15 January 1973: Scottish novelist Neil M Gunn
19 January: Northern Irish actor Max Adrian

Meanwhile…

1 January 1973: A big day for the UK, as it officially entered the European Economic Community along with the Republic of Ireland and Denmark. Membership refusals in 1963 and 1967 had both been vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle. Edward Heath later said entry into the EEC was his greatest accomplishment as Prime Minister.

11 January: The BBC’s Open University awarded its first degrees.

19 January: Super tug Statesman was sent to protect British fishing vessels from Iceland’s ships in the Cod War.

22 January: British share values fell by £4 billion in one day.

25 January: English actor Derren Nesbitt pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife Anne Aubrey after she told him she had been having an affair. They divorced a few months later.

307. Benny Hill (Arranged & Conducted by Harry Robinson, with The Ladybirds) – Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) (1971)

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The Intro

1971 was a real mixed bag of a year for number 1s. There was early glam, reggae, pop, a former Beatle, and bookending the year were novelty songs by two popular TV comedy stars. The Christmas number 1 belonged to Benny Hill, a once much-loved comedian who became incredibly unfashionable before his death in the 80s. But in 1971, people wanted saucy innuendo in their comedy, and Hill was one of the best at that.

Before

Alfred Hawthorne Hill was born 21 January 1924 in Southampton. His father and grandfather had both been circus clowns. After Hill left school he worked at Woolworths, a bridge operator and a milkman. It is unknown whether he drove the fastest milkcart or not.

In 1942 Hill was called up for World War Two, and trained as a mechanic in the British Army. He also served as a mechanic and searchlight operator in Normandy before being transferred to the Combined Services Entertainment division before the war ended. Having decided a career in showbusiness was for him, he changed his name to Benny Hill in honour of his favourite comic, Jack Benny.

Hill struggled on the radio and stage, but found his home on TV, achieving his big break after sending scripts to the BBC in 1952. The Benny Hill Show of the 50s wasn’t that different from its 80s version, a mix of music hall, parody and bawdiness. Bar a few brief spells with ATV between 1957 and 1960 and again in 1967, he remained with the BBC until 1968.

Jackie Wright, the little bald man who Hill liked to slap on the head, joined his troupe in the 60s. I hope his head was insured for all those decades of slaps.

Within that time he also appeared in films, most notably Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and The Italian Job (1969).

The Benny Hill Show became a Thames Television show in 1969 and ran intermittently for 20 years. It is this version he is mostly remembered for, gurning and saluting away next to scantily clad girls, running around to Boots Randolph’s Yakety Sax. This very British show became popular overseas too, with Hill acting as an ambassador for the famous British seaside postcard brand of humour.

Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) began life as a song on a 1970 edition, as you can see here. Most of the double entendres are in place, with only small differences like Ernie’s age being 68 rather than 52. Releasing records was nothing new for Hill, who had been releasing comedy singles sporadically since Who Done It in 1956, and Ernie was just one of the tracks that made up his Words and Music album, released earlier that year. It’s unlikely he had an inkling as to how popular it would become.

Inspired by Hill’s time as a milkman for Hann’s Dairies in Eastleigh, Hampshire, the song is written as a Wild West-style ballad about the adventures of Ernie Price, whose milk cart is pulled by horses, sung by Hill in a comedy Cornish accent and joined by his regular backing group, The Ladybirds. Ernie and bread delivery man ‘Two Ton’ Ted from Teddington are feuding for the heart of Sue, a widow at number 22 Linley Lane. Cue the smut.

Review

I can remember Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) being played to me at school when I was pretty young, and most of the innuendo was lost on me, despite growing up watching Carry On films. Looking at the lyrics now, I can see that’s because it’s not actually very rude at all. Granted, there’s reference to crumpet, and these lines are a bit saucy:

‘He said you wanted pasturised
Coz pasturised is best
She says Ernie I’ll be happy
If it comes up to me chest’

But other than that, Hill manages to skirt anything too risqué. And that might be why it became so big. If anything, it’s more a song for children in the style of 1968 Christmas number 1 Lily the Pink, so timing had a lot to do with it. I can’t imagine adults sat around listening to this and laughing hysterically in 1971… perhaps 1961, but I may well be wrong. And it certainly doesn’t make me laugh in 2020, yet it still has a certain charm… a relic of a bygone age, perhaps helped by the promo film above, co-starring Henry McGee and Jan Butlin.

What doesn’t make me laugh is the fact that one of our worst ever Prime Ministers, David Cameron, has declared this one of his favourite songs ever on more than one occasion. But you can’t blame Benny Hill for Brexit.

After

Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) held firm for four weeks, even stopping T. Rex from having three number 1s in a row with Jeepster. Hill only released one more single, Fad Eyed Fal in 1972. Meanwhile The Benny Hill Show rattled on, with a film compilation of highlights from 1969-73 called The Best of Benny Hill released in cinemas in 1974. Despite some old-fashioned racism poking fun at the Chinese, this was unbelievably still being shown every now and then until recently.

As the 80s dawned, the show began to feature the ‘Hill’s Angels’, sexy ladies who would dance and appear as comic foils for Hill. But this was the decade in which such ideas looked increasingly outdated as alternative comedy grew ever more popular, and acts like Ben Elton led the way as the media began to disown him.

Looking back, the campaign against him seems too aggressive. Yes, he had enjoyed a good innings and it was high time he made way for more PC, sophisticated comedy by the end of the 80s, but the likes of Elton suggesting he was to blame for people being raped and violence against was unfair. More often than not, Hill was being chased by the girls, not the other way round… ok, all their clothes fell off… but still…

The Outro

The Benny Hill Show was finally taken off air in 1989. A quiet, private man when the cameras were off, he disappeared from the public eye completely.

It looked like he might be due a comeback in 1992. Thames began airing edited compilations of repeats due to public demand, and he was on the verge of signing with Central Television, but his health failed him. He had a mild heart attack that February, and on 22 April he was found dead in his armchair in front of the TV. Hill had died aged 68, two days previous, and one day after another old-school comedy giant, Frankie Howerd.

The Info

Written by

Benny Hill

Producer

Walter J Ridley

Weeks at number 1

4 (11 December 1971-7 January 1972)

Trivia

Births

23 December 1971: Socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson
25 December: Singer Dido
5 January 1972: Conservative MP Philip Davies

Deaths

12 December: Footballer Torry Gillick/Scottish footballer Alan Morton
21 December: Pilot Charles C Banks

Meanwhile…

29 December 1971: The United Kingdom gave up its military bases in Malta.

30 December: The seventh James Bond film – Diamonds Are Forever – was released. It saw Sean Connery return to the role after George Lazenby declined to come back.

4 January 1972: Rose Heilbron became the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey.

294. Dave Edmunds – I Hear You Knocking (1970)

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The Intro

As 1970 drew to a close, November’s number 1s seemed to symbolically bid farewell to the 60s. So, what next? Glam was around the corner, but in the meantime, the Christmas number 1 looked back to pop’s past, as Welsh singer-songwriter spent six weeks at the top with a cover of a 50s R’n’B tune.

Before

David William Edwards was born in Cardiff on 15 April 1944. Musically gifted as a child on the piano, at the age of 10 he formed The Edmund Bros Duo with his elder brother Geoff. They both formed The Stompers around 1957, with Dave on lead guitar and Geoff on rhythm. From there the younger Edmunds had brief stints in several groups before becoming lead singer of rockabilly trio The Raiders, who formed in 1961.

In 1966 Edmunds, following a brief spell in The Image, shifted to a blues-rock sound and formed a short-lived outfit called Human Beans, who mutated into the trio Love Sculpture. Their second single, a novelty high-speed reworking of Sabre Dance, which climbed to number five after getting the attention of DJ John Peel. After two albums Love Sculpture split in 1970.

Edmunds returned to Wales and learned how to recreate the sounds of the R’n’B and blues songs of the 50s by himself, and made plans to record a cover of blues classic Let’s Work Together by Wilbert Harrison, until he heard Canned Heat’s version. Around this time he worked with Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets, helping the 80s hitmaker score his first recording contract.

Fortunately, Edmunds heard Smiley Lewis’s I Hear You Knocking while driving, and noted he could use the backing track he’d already recorded for Let’s Work Together and make a cover of Lewis’s song. It was also a track he knew from Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets’ repertoire.

The original, written by New Orleans bandleader Dave Bartholomew (who had co-written the 1959 Elvis Presley number 1 One Night) and released by Lewis in 1955, is a straightforward slice of piano-driven 50s R’n’B, but Edmunds went full on blues-rock. He played every part on his version, using heavy compression to create an unusual, direct sound.

Review

Edmunds’ I Hear You Knocking is a quirky choice for Christmas number 1, but of course, being at the top of the charts on 25 December wasn’t an ‘event’ back then. The weird production is attention-grabbing to begin with. Most unusual of all is the vocal track, which sounds like it’s being sung down a bad phone line, or is coming out of a damaged transistor radio. I’m not sure if Edmunds was aiming for a dated 50s sound, but if so, it doesn’t quite come out like that. It gets a bit annoying after a while, whatever the intention.

The chorus is memorable, and the slide guitar is effective, and I enjoy Edmunds’ shouting out ‘Smiley Lewis!’ and other rock’n’roll star names from the 50s in the instrumental break. I can see why listeners would have enjoyed a bit of basic blues-rock for a while. Not sure how it stayed at number 1 for six weeks, though.

After

Despite the success of I Hear You Knocking, it took Edmunds two years to release his debut album, Rockpile, which was mostly a collection of more oldies. He had left it too late to capitalise. Or maybe he wasn’t bothered about doing so anyway. He spent the next few years producing rock and blues acts like Brinsley Schwarz, Foghat and The Flamin’ Groovies. However, his two singles Baby I Love You and Born to Be With You reached the top 10 in 1973.

In 1974 Edmunds had a brief role in the David Essex film Stardust, and helped with the soundtrack. A year later came his second solo LP, Subtle as a Flying Mallet. Then his friendship with Nick Lowe from Brinsley Schwarz resulted in their new group Rockpile. Due to being on different labels they were unable to record until 1980 but would guest on each other’s solo material for the next few years.

In 1979 Edmunds scored his last top 10 hit with Girls Talk, written by Elvis Costello. Rockpile only recorded one album, 1980’s Seconds of Pleasure, before splitting up due to arguments between Edmunds and Lowe. Edmunds went back to mainly producing, and worked with big names including Paul McCartney, Status Quo, Stray Cats, The Everly Brothers and kd Lang. He had a US hit with Slipping Away in 1983 though, written and produced by ELO’s Jeff Lynne.

Edmunds went into semi-retirement in the mid-80s, but he did tour with Ringo Starr & His All-Star Band in 1992 and 2000. After a couple of albums released online, he began touring in his own right again in 2007. Edmunds performed I Hear You Knocking on Jools’ Annual Hootenanny in 2008 and then Sabre Dance in 2009. His last album was On Guitar… Dave Edmunds: Rags & Classics in 2015, featuring instrumental covers. After a final show in July 2017, Edmunds retired from music.

The Outro

1970 was an interesting, eclectic year for number 1s, with several well-remembered chart-toppers. Lots were in thrall to the past, though, with the departure of The Beatles leaving the music world wondering what to do. Fortunately, T. Rex were now on the scene, having scored a number two hit with Ride a White Swan. Marc Bolan would soon have his first number 1.

The Info

Written by

Dave Bartholomew

Producer

Dave Edmunds

Weeks at number 1

6 (28 November 1970-8 January 1971) *CHRISTMAS NUMBER 1*

Trivia

Births

29 December 1970: Singer Aled Jones  
31 December: Welsh rugby union player Louise Rickard
1 January 1971: Football referee Andre Marriner/BBC newsreader Suzanne Virdee
5 January: TV presenter Jayne Middlemiss
7 January: TV presenter Joanne Malin

Deaths

26 December: Olympic athlete Lillian Board(see below)
31 December: Composer Cyril Scott

Meanwhile…

26 December: Olympian athlete Lillian Board, died in Munich, West Germany, after a three-month battle against cancer. She was 22.

31 December 1970: Although Paul McCartney had announced his departure from The Beatles earlier in 1970, it was made official when he filed a lawsuit against the other three on this day to dissolve their partnership.

1 January 1971: The Divorce Reform Act 1969 came into effect, which allowed couples to divorce after a separation of two years (five if only one agrees). This ruling resulted in a sharp rise in divorces over the next two years.

2 January: The new year got off to a shocking start for football fans when a stairway crush at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow during a match between Rangers and Celtic killed 66 and left many more injured.

3 January: BBC Open University broadcasts began.

8 January: Uruguayan left-wing urban guerrilla group Tupamaros kidnapped Geoffrey Jackson, the British ambassador to Uruguay, in Montevideo. He was held captive until September.