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468. Barbra Streisand – Woman in Love (1980)

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The Intro

As the 80s dawned, The Bee Gees knew their second peak couldn’t last forever. But moving into writing and producing for others proved very fruitful. Superstar actress and singer Barbra Streisand initially asked Barry Gibb to write half the album Guilty. He went on to produce the whole LP and Woman in Love became her biggest UK hit.

Before

Barbara Joan Streisand was born on 24 April 1942 in Brooklyn, New York City. Her father died soon after her first birthday, and the Streisands struggled financially, with her mother working as a bookkeeper. She was also a semi-professional singer, but she was initially reluctant when her daughter showed an interest in performing. At the age of nine, Streisand had already failed an audition for MGM. But her mother came round to the idea and she helped her 13-year-old daughter record a demo.

However, Streisand’s main ambition was to be an actress. At 16 she left school and moved out, taking on a number of menial jobs to make ends meet while striving for acting jobs. She became an usher in 1960 and auditioned for The Sound of Music. Although she failed, the director was impressed and urged her to include singing on her resumé. She entered a talent contest at gay nightclub Lion in Greenwich Village and stunned the audience into silence. Returning after winning for several weeks, she decided to change her first name to ‘Barbra’. Determined to make it her way, she refused to contemplate suggestions she have a nose job to improve her chances of mainstream appeal. Her first professional engagement came in September 1960 as support for the comedian Phyllis Diller.

Streisand spent the next few years honing her act and developing her between-song patter. She made her TV debut on The Tonight Show in 1961 and her Broadway debut the following year in the musical comedy I Can Get It for you Wholesale. At the age of 21 she signed with Columbia Records, gaining full creative control, in exchange for less money. A respectable position to take, and just as well, because they wanted her debut LP to be called Sweet and Saucy Streisand. It was eventually released as The Barbra Streisand Album in 1963.

In 1964 Streisand returned to Broadway for Funny Girl, which became an overnight success. People became her first US charting single, peaking at five, and she even made the cover of Time. Streisand’s UK chart debut came in 1965 with Second Hand Rose, which climbed to 14. In 1968 she won her first Academy Award, for Best Actress, after starring in the cinema version of Funny Girl.

The British Invasion dented Streisand’s mainstream musical appeal, like many stars of her ilk. But during the 70s her fortunes improved, with a return to the singles chart in 1970 with Stoney End – six in the US, 27 in the UK. One of her signature tunes, the haunting The Way We Were from the film of the same name, became her first Billboard number 1 in 1973, yet strangely it only climbed to 31 in the UK. Her role alongside Kris Kristofferson in the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born was huge, and Evergreen (Love Theme from ‘A Star Is Born’) was her second US chart-topper, soaring to three over here. She also won an Oscar for Best Song for Evergreen.

Her version of Neil Diamond’s You Don’t Bring Me Flowers was so popular, an unofficial duet was achieved by splicing Streisand and Diamond’s recordings. When an official duet was released in December 1978, Streisand achieved her third Billboard number 1. A year later, another duet saw her cross over successfully into disco. No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) teamed Streisand with Donna Summer and was co-produced by the genius Giorgio Moroder. Back at the peak of Billboard for the fourth time, it peaked at three in the UK. Streisand was named the most successful US female singer of the 70s.

Between February 1979 and March 1980, Streisand worked on her 22nd album, Guilty. She was so impressed with Gibb’s production and songwriting, he contributed to every song, with Robin co-writing five songs, and Maurice joining them for the title track. Production was credited to Gibb-Galuten-Richardson, which saw Barry team up with producer Albhy Galuten and sound engineer Karl Richardson, who produced Bee Gees number 1s Night Fever and Tragedy. Barry and Robin co-wrote lead single, Woman in Love, and Barry was credited with acoustic guitar and arrangement.

Review

You can always tell when a song has been written by the Gibb brothers, even if they don’t record it. Their marks are all over it – all you have to do is imagine the vocals made a lot higher. This rule works here. Unfortunately, that’s about the most interesting thing I can say about Woman in Love. It’s a very pedestrian love song masked in glossy production. I don’t understand why it was so popular, other than that perhaps it was due to Streisand’s stock being so high on the back of her role in A Star Is Born (the video is simply a compilation of scenes from the film) and her duet with Summer. There’s no amazing vocal prowess on display, the lyrics are unremarkable and the tune is lacklustre. Certainly one of the lesser number 1s of 1980.

After

Nonetheless, Woman in Love was a smash hit around the world, topping the charts in the US, Australia, Spain – pretty much everywhere, in fact. The parent album Guilty was also huge, despite no further real success in the UK singles chart (the title track only made it to 34). It would be four years before her next studio LP, Emotion. In 1985, despite objections from Columbia, Streisand returned to her roots with The Broadway Album. Three years later, Streisand was in the UK top 20 for the first time since Woman in Love, with the title track to Till I Loved You – a duet with Miami Vice star Don Johnson, which peaked at 16.

The 90s started very well for Streisand. She directed, co-produced and starred in the romantic drama The Prince of Tides (1991). Places That Belong to You, from the soundtrack, saw her back in the singles chart at 17. In 1993 she announced her return to live public concerts for the first time in 27 years. At the time, she was the highest-paid concert performer ever and won five Emmy Awards. She left the limelight again for a few years, but made a triumphant return in 1996, producing, directing and starring in another romantic comedy – The Mirror Has Two Faces. From the soundtrack came the number 10 hit duet I Finally Found Someone, with Bryan Adams. Then, a year later, a duet with Celine Dion – Tell Him, soared to number three. It is to date her last top 10 single.

The new millennium began with sad news for Streisand’s fans, as she announced she was to retire from public performances. But she did return to the movie world, starring in 2004 comedy Meet the Fockers. Album releases continued, including Guilty Too, a second collaboration with Gibb, in 2005. A year later, aged 64, she announced she was to tour once more, and became one of the highest-grossing performers in the world yet again. Amazingly it took until 2009 for Streisand to make her performance debut on British TV, when she appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

In 2014, Streisand released Partners, an album featuring duets with Lionel Richie, Billy Joel and, from beyond the grave, Elvis Presley. Her last album to date was Walls in 2018, the title of which was a reference to the singer’s condemnation of President Donald Trump’s policies.

The Outro

Streisand has been a hugely successful singer, actress, director, producer over six decades. However, when it comes to pop music, there’s not a lot to recommend, other than No More Tears (Enough Is Enough). And that’s most likely down to Summer and Moroder.

The Info

Written by

Barry Gibb & Robin Gibb

Producers

Barry Gibb, Albhy Galuten & Karl Richardson

Weeks at number 1

3 (25 October-14 November)

Trivia

Births

26 October: Scottish actor Khalid Abdalla
28 October: Footballer Alan Smith
12 November: Rugby union player Charlie Hodgson

Deaths

26 October: Northern Irish playwright Sam Cree
27 October: T Rex singer-songwriter Steve Peregrin Took
29 October: Actress Ouida MacDermott
30 October: Actor Guy Bellis
3 November: Actor Dennis Burgess/Horticulturalist David Lowe
4 November: Radio broadcaster Paul Kaye/Boxer Johnny Owen
6 November: Literary scholar Nevill Coghill
7 November: Theatre director Norman Marshall
8 November: Scottish painter Gordon Robert Archibald/Astrophysicist Valerie Myerscough/Film producer Julian Wintle
9 November: Social researcher Pearl Jephcott
10 November: Journalist Patrick Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy/Painter James Priddey
11 November: Suffragette Connie Lewcock
12 November: John Chetwynd-Talbot, 21st Earl of Shrewsbury
14 November: Dance critic Arnold Haskell

Meanwhile…

28 October: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declares her government will not back down to seven jailed IRA terrorists on hunger strike in the Maze Prison, who are hoping to gain prisoner of war status.

5 November: The Yorkshire Ripper is suspected responsible when 16-year-old Huddersfield mother Theresa Sykes is wounded in a hammer attack.

10 November: Michael Foot, the left-wing Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, is elected as their new Leader.

13 November: Security guard George Smith is shot dead when the van he guards is intercepted by armed robbers in Willenhall, West Midlands.

441. Cliff Richard – We Don’t Talk Anymore (1979)

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The Intro

Remember this guy? Once a mainstay of this blog, the ‘Peter Pan of Pop’ hadn’t topped the charts since Congratulations won Eurovision in 1968. 11 years later, Cliff Richard’s comeback, which began with Devil Woman, was complete with this 10th number 1.

Before

The Shadows, who often acted as Richard’s backing band, with who he shared many hits and number 1s, decided to split at the end of 1968. Their last single together was Don’t Forget to Catch Me, which reached 21. Despite being unfashionable, he still had a large enough following to notch up plenty of hits, ending the 60s with two top 10 hits in 1969 – Big Ship (eight) and Throw Down a Line (with Shadows guitarist Hank Marvin), climbing to seven.

The 70s began with Richard fronting his own BBC series, It’s Cliff Richard, which ran from 1970 to 1976 and featured the singer with musical friends including Marvin and Olivia Newton-John. His 50th single, the intriguingly named Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha, went all the way to six in 1970. Many of Richard’s singles for the first half of the 70s were in line with his Christian beliefs – I’m not going to listen to them all to find out, but I’d put money on Jesus (1972) being a prime example.

Having been considered almost as much an actor as a singer in his peak years of the 60s, Richard gave up his film career after starring in the film Take Me High in 1973. He also had another bash at the Eurovision Song Contest that year. Power to All Our Friends finished third that year. Apparently he was so nervous during the competition he took valium and his manager struggled to wake him. It was at least a big hit, climbing to four and earning him his best chart performance for the next six years.

The next couple of years were lean for the not-very-mean machine. His only single in 1974, (You Keep Me) Hangin’ On did OK (13), but he messed up in 1975 when he chose to cover Conway Twitty’s Honky Tonk Angel. Richard recorded a video, 1,000 singles were pressed up and EMI expected it to perform well, but when Richard discovered ‘honky tonk angel’ was Southern American slang for a prostitute, the whiter-than-white pop star was horrified and insisted it was withdrawn. What on earth would God have made of it? This meant that, for the first time in his career, Richard had gone a calendar year without a chart entry.

However, it was decided that, rather than continue down the purely righteous path Richard seemed hell-bent on, he should be repackaged as a rock singer. At the time this must have seemed laughable, and to be honest I’m struggling to imagine it while typing this. But, good Lord, it worked!

Teaming up with Bruce Welch (another guitarist from the Shadows) on production duties, the nicely titled LP I’m Nearly Famous was an unexpected smash. And not only commercially – guitarists Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton were just two of the rock stars spotted wearing ‘I’m Nearly Famous’ badges in honour of the comeback kid. Although Miss You Nights (15) was a ballad, the follow-up, Devil Woman, is a classic slab of pop-rock, with a hell of a chorus. And listen, that’s Cliff Richard singing a song with ‘devil’ in it! With punk rock rearing its ugly head, a more edgy Cliff Richard was very timely.

The comeback didn’t last long though. The next album, Every Picture Tells a Story, spawned only one hit – My Kinda Life (number 15 in 1977). Perhaps feeling he must atone for his sins, Richard then released an album of Christian gospel called Small Corners in 1978. Neither that or his next pop LP, Green Light, performed well. 1978 was also the year Richard reunited with The Shadows for concerts at the London Palladium, as captured on Thank You Very Much.

Despite appearing on stage with Welch once more, the Shadows guitarist didn’t produce his next album, Rock’n’Roll Juvenile. That honour went to Terry Britten, who had worked with Richard many times in the past. Recording sessions began back in July 1978 but vocals weren’t begun until January 1979.

We Don’t Talk Anymore was recorded in one day, five months later. For some reason, Welch received production credit for Richard’s 10th number 1. It was written and arranged by Alan Tarney, a new collaborator, who also played guitar, keyboards, synthesiser and bass on the track, as well as performing backing vocals. On drums was his former bandmate in Quartet, Trevor Spencer.

Review

It’s no Devil Woman, but We Don’t Talk Anymore is a decent pop song and Richard’s best number 1 since Summer Holiday in 1963. I have to confess that I used to think this came much later in his career, and was a Stock Aitken Waterman production from the late-80s or early-90s. It’s something about that catchy, melancholic yet soaring chorus combined with a very light production sound. In its own way, it’s as contemporary as Are ‘Friends’ Electric? with its keyboard-heavy arrangement. Though not nearly as good.

Has to be said though, I’ve never heard Richard sound so passionate. I mean, it’s not exactly a raw, emotional performance – this is Cliff Richard we’re talking about after all. But he gives it a rare bit of oomph! The verses are pretty bog-standard ‘my woman has left me’ and not much to write home about – it’s all about the earworm of the chorus really, and the emotion at the end. Weird lyrical phrasing too – ‘It’s so funny/How we don’t talk anymore’. None too shabby. With The Beatles long gone and Elvis Presley six feet under, Richard could still sell records, when he tried.

The video for We Don’t Talk Anymore is as 70s as it gets, featuring Richard and band performing amid a smoky stage, Richard occasionally merging into himself through a dated but charming kaleidoscopic effect.

After

Cliff Richard fared better in the 80s than the 70s, regularly appearing in the upper reaches of the charts. But it would be seven years before his 11th number 1, for which he shared billing with a series named after one of his most famous chart-toppers…

The Info

Written by

Alan Tarney

Producer

Bruce Welch

Weeks at number 1

4 (25 August-21 September)

Trivia

Births

14 September: Rugby league player Stuart Fielden

Deaths

27 August: Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (see ‘Meanwhile…’)
28 August: Doreen Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne
29 August: Painter Ivon Hitchens

Meanwhile…

27 August: Lord Mountbatten of Burma, cousin to the Queen and uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh, was assassinated by a Provisional IRA bomb while on board a boat when holidaying in the Republic of Ireland. His 15-year-old nephew Nicholas Knatchbull and boatboy Paul Maxwell were also killed, and Dowager Lady Brabourne died from injuries sustained a day later.
Also that day, 18 British soldiers were killed in Northern Ireland at the Warrenpoint ambush.

30 August: Two men were arrested in Dublin and charged with the murder of Lord Mountbatten and the three other victims of the bombing.

2 September: Police found the body of 20-year-old student Barbara Leach in an alleyway near Bradford city centre. She was to be named as the 12th victim of the Yorkshire Ripper.

5 September: The Queen lead mourning at the funeral of Lord Mountbatten.
Also on this day, Manchester City paid a British club record fee of £1,450,000 for Wolverhampton Wanderers midfielder Steve Daley.

8 September: Wolverhampton Wanderers broke the record by paying just under £1,500,000 for Aston Villa and Scotland striker Andy Gray. 

10 September: British Leyland announced production of MG cars would cease in the autumn of 1980. 

14 September: The government announced plans to regenerate the London Docklands through housing and commercial developments.

21 September: A Royal Air Force Harrier jet crashed into a house in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, killing two men and a boy. 

435. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive (1979)

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The Intro

US soul singer Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic I Will Survive was originally an afterthought, a B-side, with little studio sheen added. It’s now considered a feminist and LGBTQ+ anthem and is a karaoke mainstay.

Before

Gaynor was born Gloria Fowles on 7 September 1943 in Newark, New Jersey. Music was a constant in her youth, with her father Daniel singing and playing ukulele as part of a nightclub group called Step ‘n’ Fetch-it. The Fowles were a large, poor family – five boys and two girls, including Gloria. Four brothers formed a gospel group but she wasn’t allowed to join them. The family moved to a housing project in 1960 and a year later Fowles graduated.

She became a singer in a local nightclub and within a few years she was part of jazz and R’n’B group The Soul Satisfiers. In 1965, as Gloria Gaynor, she released her debut single She’ll Be Sorry. It was produced by Johnny Nash, later to have a UK number 1 with Tears on My Pillow (I Can’t Take It). It was Nash who had suggested she change her name.

Nothing came of it but Gaynor spent years becoming experienced at performing live. Then in 1973 she was signed to Columbia Records by Clive Davis and released another flop, Honey Bee.

Gaynor hit pay dirt when she signed to MGM Records and released debut album Never Can Say Goodbye in 1975. The first side consisted of a remake of Honey Bee, plus covers of soul classics Never Can Say Goodbye and Reach Out, I’ll Be There. Thanks to an uncredited Tom Moulton, this record contained a historic first – it was the first album to consist of one long continuous mix of the tracks. This earned Moulton the title ‘father of the disco mix’. The title track became a hit single, peaking at two in the UK and nine in the US. Reach Out, I’ll Be There then reached 14 on these shores.

It began to look like Gaynor would be a flash in the pan as singles from Experience Gloria Gaynor didn’t grab the attention of the public. One exception was a cover of jazz standard How High the Moon, which climbed to 33 in 1975. Her next few albums – I’ve Got You (1976), Glorious (1977) and Gloria Gaynor’s Park Avenue Sound (1978) all bombed.

Gaynor’s next LP, Love Tracks, was recorded for release in November 1978. A month before that came the single Substitute. Her label Polydor thought this former Righteous Brothers track would be a worldwide hit as it had been for South Africa girlband Clout. However, several DJs – including Richie Kaczor of Studio 54 – began taking note of the B-side, I Will Survive, instead.

It had been written by two former Motown producers, Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren. The latter had co-written three Jackson 5 US number 1s – I Want You Back, The Love You Save and ABC. After being sacked by Motown, Fekaris was unemployed and wrote the lyrics to I Will Survive after seeing a song he’d written for Rare Earth being used on TV. He took it as a sign things would work out. And they did.

Fekaris and Perren formed their own production company and made Reunited with Peaches and Herb, which became a hit. Afterwards they decided to give I Will Survive to the next singer they worked with. Gaynor was the lucky one.

https://youtu.be/ARt9HV9T0w8

Review

On Gaynor’s previous hits, her voice was pitched up in order to make her songs faster for playing on the dancefloor. And as with most disco songs, the productions would feature a more polished, layered production. It’s interesting to consider whether I Will Survive would have been treated the same way had it been considered for the A-side originally. I’m not sure it would have the same power if it had been.

The highlight of the track is Gaynor’s raw, soulful performance. You really feel the hurt and anger in her voice and the message of the song suits an untamed vocal without any studio trickery. Though the performance is raw and the production understated, the piano at the beginning and the strings after the chorus do a great job of adding to the drama of the song.

Pop songs about love going wrong often portray the ‘loser’ as weak. Even the icy cool Debbie Harry lets the mask slip briefly in Heart of Glass. But what Gaynor does is fool us into thinking she’s not over her heartbreak during those opening lines. But once she sings ‘And I grew strong, and I learned how to get along’, the song moves up a notch, and from then on, Gaynor sounds like someone you shouldn’t mess with as she belts out those lyrics to I Will Survive.

Obviously, I Will Survive has survived and will always be considered one of the highlights of the disco era. It’s an alluring theme for a song, that of empowerment for the underdog, so there’s no wonder it was adopted, as previously mentioned, by feminists and the LGBTQ+ movement, both fighting back against an era in which political correctness wasn’t high on the agenda of mainstream culture.

However, although there is a lot to enjoy here, I Will Survive is not up there with my favourite disco songs. A lot of that, to be fair, isn’t down to the song, or to Gaynor. It’s the way it’s been done to death over the years by the media. It’s all the parodies. It’s drunk people bawling it when leaving the pub, followed by It’s Raining Men. It’s just a bit tiresome, sadly.

I used to wonder why Gaynor’s performance seemed slightly weird in the video to I Will Survive. It was filmed at the New York discotheque Xenon. Her stance is unusual and she looks genuinely pained. She was. Giving the song a whole new dimension is the fact that in 1978 Gaynor fell over a monitor on stage during a choreographed tug-of-war with her dancers. She was paralysed from the waist down and thought she would never walk again. Surgery helped Gaynor back on her feet but she recorded the song, and the video, in a lot of pain and wearing a back brace. It wasn’t until further surgery in 2018 that the pain went away.

As for the rollerskating dancer in the video, that was Sheila-Reid Pender from skating group The Village Wizards. Gaynor and Pender were filmed separately and didn’t meet until 2014 at a book signing event held for Gaynor’s autobiography, We Will Survive.

After

The song was a global smash and topped the charts in many countries. It came along just in time, as by the end of the year the disco backlash, mainly a thinly veiled excuse for homophobes, racists and sexists to vent anger, had begun.

Hits were few and far between from then on. Let Me Know (I Have a Right) climbed to 32 in the UK in 1979 but it was four years before her next success. She became a Christian in 1982 and distanced herself from what she considered a sinful past. Then in 1983 her version of I Am What I Am also became adopted by the gay community as an anthem and climbed to 13 in the UK chart.

For the rest of the 80s Gaynor continued to release music but nothing troubled the mainstream. DJ and producer Shep Pettibone remixes of I Will Survive were released in 1990. They didn’t chart, but Phil Kelsey’s remix in 1993 coincided with a nostalgic interest in disco and peaked at five. With Gaynor back in the public eye she turned to acting in the late 90s, with cameos in That 70s Show and Ally McBeal.

The Outro

Gaynor continues to release albums sporadically, and of course, I Will Survive has been revisited many times over her career, with remixes, Spanish language versions and lyrics sometimes rewritten to reflect her Christian beliefs and also referencing tragedies such as Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017. Her most recent album, the roots gospel collection Testimony, earned Gaynor her second Grammy, 20 years after her first.

There’s been many covers of I Will Survive over the years and the rock version by Cake in 1996 is well worth a mention.

The Info

Written by

Dino Fekaris & Freddie Perren

Producer

Dino Fekaris

Weeks at number 1

4 (17 March-13 April)

The Info

Births

9 April: Actor Ben Silverstone
10 April: Singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Deaths

19 March: Actor Richard Beckinsale
23 March: Footballer Ted Anderson
24 March: Founder of Tesco Sir Jack Cohen
30 March: Tory MP Airey Neave

Meanwhile…

17 March: Nottingham Forest defeat Southampton 3-2 at Wembley Stadium to win the Football League Cup for the second year running. 

18 March: Three men are killed in an explosion at the Golborne colliery in Golborne, Greater Manchester. 

22 March: Sir Richard Sykes, ambassador to the Netherlands, is shot dead by a member of the Provisional IRA in the Hague. 

28 March: The Labour government loses a motion of confidence by just one vote, which forces a General Election.

29 March: Prime Minister James Callaghan announces a General Election will be held on 3 May. Having missed the chance to call one before the Winter of Discontent swayed public opinion against Labour, all the major opinion polls point towards a Conservative win, which would make Margaret Thatcher the first female Prime Minister.

30 March: Tory Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave is killed by an Irish National Liberation Army bomb in the car park of the House of Commons.

31 March: The Royal Navy withdraws from Malta. 

4 April: 19-year-old bank worker Josephine Whitaker is murdered in Halifax. Police believe she is the 11th woman to be murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper. 

418. Brotherhood of Man – Figaro (1978)

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The Intro

Brotherhood of Man took their perceived similarity too far with their second number 1 Angelo. When their next single tanked they followed it up with another song named after a man with a similar name to Fernando. It paid off yet again and gave them a hat trick of chart toppers.

Before

The quartet had released Highwayman after Angelo but scuppered a major chance of promoting it on the 1977 Royal Variety Performance by electing to play the former instead. Figaro was their first release from their seventh album B for Brotherhood. As usual, singers Lee Sheriden and Martin Lee penned the track with producer and manager Tony Hiller. I don’t want to be cruel and call them a low budget Stig Anderson, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus but…

Review

I was incredibly scathing about Angelo and couldn’t believe it when I saw they topped the charts a third time with what was bound to be another Fernando rip-off. So, put it down to very low expectations but I was pleasantly surprised by this. That’s mainly down to it not actually sounding like a straightforward ABBA copy. And I’m all for a bit of wah-wah guitar and the bawdy brass and song’s theme put me in mind of some kind of politically incorrect 70s British comedy film.

Figaro is a lecherous Spanish waiter intent on pursuing the opposite sex. The dirty dog is constantly at it, winking at the girls with his guitar and wandering the beaches looking for prey. The idea came about when Hiller’s daughter returned from a holiday with tales of real-life Figaros trying to romance her and other young ladies. It’s total throwaway nonsense of course, but it’s better than other Brotherhood of Man songs Angelo and Save Your Kisses For Me. Was the title this time around a reference to Bohemian Rhapsody?

After

Brotherhood of Man’s downfall came soon after. The next single Beautiful Lover was the last time they troubled the charts, peaking at 15. A compilation LP, Twenty Greatest, did at least give them their biggest album chart placing at six.

Hiller set up Dazzle Records in 1980 and signed his group but perhaps due to missing Pye’s promotional budget, they stopped selling well. They signed with Warwick Records. No, I’ve never heard of them either. Sheriden opted to leave in 1982 to study for a degree in music. He was replaced by Barry Upton, later a songwriter for Sonia and Steps.

Encouraged by the huge success of Bucks Fizz, Brotherhood of Man signed with EMI in 1982 and Hiller had high hopes of ripping off another Eurovision-winning group. A year later Hiller, Lee and Upton wrote a tune for A Song for Europe for Hiller’s male/female trio Rubic (how early 80s!) but they came fifth. When Upton decided to leave in 1984, the whole group called it a day.

However in 1985 Sheriden returned with Lee, Nicky Stevens and Sandra Stevens for a one-off TV reunion and decided to continue. They became stalwarts of the nostalgia circuit, becoming regulars at Butlins and other holiday camps. As well as their hits from the 70s they performed tracks like 1999 by Prince. That I have to hear.

The Outro

As 2000 dawned they cut back on touring but two years later they unveiled their show The Seventies Story, a nostalgic look back at the decade that brought them their glory years. They still tour now, sometimes with the current incarnation of Bucks Fizz and are often wheeled out for Eurovision-related shows, remaining one of the most successful winners of the competition.

The Info

Written by

Tony Hiller, Lee Sheriden & Martin Lee

Producer

Tony Hiller

Weeks at number 1

1 (11-17 February)

Trivia

Births

12 February: Welsh rugby player Gethin Jones

Meanwhile…

13 February: Anna Ford becomes the first female newsreader on ITV. Also on this day, an opinion poll conducted for the Daily Mail shows the Conservatives 11 points ahead of the Labour government, with an election due by October next year. The quick turnaround for the Conservatives, who last month were behind Labour, is believed to be due to Margaret Thatcher’s recent negative comments on immigration.

17 February: 12 people are killed by the Provisional IRA in the bombing of the La Mon restaurant in Belfast. It was one of the most horrific incidents in The Troubles, with some bodies left melted and unrecognisable by incineration.

392. Demis Roussos – Excerpts From ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’ (EP)

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The Intro

As is well documented, the summer of 1976 in the UK was full of long, lingering days of seemingly endless sunshine. And this was perhaps a factor in pushing Greek singer and unlikely sex symbol Demis Roussos to number 1 for a week that July. And with not one, or two, but four songs! For the first time in my blog, I’m reviewing an EP, rather than a single. A very rare occurrence in the singles chart.

Before

Artemios Ventouris-Roussos came from a Greek family but was actually born in Alexandria, Egypt on 15 June 1946. His father was a classical guitarist and both his parents were amateur actors. Roussos was raised in Alexandria and as a child he studied music and joined the Greek Church Byzantine choir. He was heavily influenced by jazz and traditional Arab and Greek Orthodox music. When his parents lost their possessions in the Suez crisis they moved to Greece, where his mother came from.

Roussos joined a band known as The Idols when he was 17. It was around this time he first got to know Evángelos Papathanassíou and Loukas Sideras, his future bandmates in Aphrodite’s Child. The former was better known as Vangelis. He then joined a covers band called We Five, based in Athens.

In 1967 Roussos, Papathanassíou, Sideras and Silver Koulouris became Aphrodite’s Child, a progressive, psychedelic rock band who released three LPs over five years. Their final release, 666 (1972) was a mammoth, mad double album opus based on the Book of Revelation, featuring the excellent, sprawling The Four Horsemen. Vangelis and Roussos remained friends after the split and would occasionally record together before and after Aphrodite’s Child, including the film score to Sex Power in 1970 and Magic in 1977.

With his impressive, distinctive tenor, Roussos was groomed for solo stardom before the band had split. His debut album On the Greek Side of My Mind (Fire and Ice) spawned the single We Shall Dance in 1971, which became a hit in Belgium and the Netherlands. Over the next few years he grew increasingly popular across Europe (and in size) but not in the UK. It took until 1975 for him to crack the chart here, with Happy to Be on an Island in the Sun, which reached five.

BBC TV producer John King became fascinated by the singer and so he made the documentary The Roussos Phenomenon. In 1976, Roussos’ UK label Philips decided to make the most of this interest and released Excerpts from ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’ EP, rounding up some of his best-known European hits that featured in the documentary. It became the first ever extended play record to reach number 1. Fans of Aphrodite’s Child be warned, you’ll find precious little that sounds like The Four Horsemen…

Reviews

First up is the most well-known Roussos track. Forever and Ever, sharing its title with a number 1 by Slik earlier this year, was originally released in 1973 as the title track to an album. It reached number 1 in Belgium and Mexico. It’s the highlight of the EP and despite being considered somewhat laughable by many, I have a soft spot for it. Yes the production, by Roussos himself, is a bit tacky but the backing vocalists in the opening create an earworm and Roussos’ voice, though not for everyone, is impressive. There are three reasons I like this opener. 1: My dad is known to burst into it with no warning, and only now do I know what the song is. 2: It’s famously used in Mike Leigh’s 1977 TV play Abigail’s Party (replacing José Feliciano’s Light My Fire from the theatre version). 3. One of my favourite singers, King Creosote, performs a hauntingly lovely cover. He has a similar vocal quality and it works great here.

Sing an Ode to Love is a keyboard-led ballad, originally the opener of his 1975 album Souvenirs. The proggy phasing sound in the first half is pretty interesting but once the military drums and choir kick in, it all sounds a bit too Eurovision for my liking.

So Dreamy was his most recent track, originating on 1976 album Happy to Be… It’s very, very similar to Forever and Ever, and inferior. The backing vocals are way too much and already I’m starting to tire of Roussos’ voice.

My Friend the Wind was released as a single in 1973, where it went to number 1 in Belgium and the Netherlands. The second best song here, it’s also the most traditionally Greek sounding of the four. It’s perhaps overlong but a nice tune.

After

In spite of, or maybe thanks in part to, Roussos’ flamboyant/ridiculous image, as seen above, the Greek giant had a few more UK hits, most notably the follow-up to this EP, When Forever Has Gone, which peaked at two. Actually, while on the subject of his image, if you ask me he looks pretty damn cool on the front of the EP at the top of the page. Anyway, Kyrila, released in 1977, was his last chart entry here, at 33. He continued to do well in Europe though, particularly Belgium and the Netherlands.

Roussos struggled with his weight throughout his life, particularly during the early-80s. In 1980 he weighed over 23 stone. He began a diet that enabled him to lose over eight stone in under a year and in 1982 documented his issues by co-authoring the book A Question of Weight.

In 1985 he spent his 39th birthday held hostage as he was among the passengers on TWA Flight 847 from Athens to Rome that was held by alleged Hezbollah terrorists. However Roussos and four other Greeks were released after five days while most of the others remained for 17 days. He was unharmed and even thanked his captors for a birthday cake at a press conference afterwards.

Roussos continued releasing music and touring throughout the rest of the 80s and the 90s, even though his hits tailed off everywhere. He returned to the UK for a tour on the back of Forever and Ever – Definitive Collection in 2002. It was noted that his voice was no longer the powerful force it once was. Roussos’ final album, Demi, was released in 2009. Greece mourned when one of their most famous exports died on 25 January 2015 from stomach, pancreatic and liver cancer, aged 68.

The Info

Written by

Forever and Ever/Sing an Ode to Love/My Friend the Wind: Stélios Vlavianós & Alec R Costandinos/So Dreamy: Robert Rupen & Stélios Vlavianós

Producer

Demis Roussos

Weeks at number 1

1 (17-23 July)

Trivia

Births

19 July: Actor Benedict Cumberbatch

Deaths

21 July (see below): Diplomat Christopher Ewart-Biggs

Meanwhile…

17 July–1 August: Great Britain and Northern Ireland compete at the Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They take home three gold, five silver and five bronze medals.

21 July: Christopher Ewart-Biggs, UK ambassador to Ireland and civil servant Judith Cooke are killed by a Provisional IRA landmine at Sandyford, Co. Dublin.

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.

381. Billy Connolly – D.I.V.O.R.C.E. (1975)

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The Intro

‘The Big Yin’ had a number 1? Really? Yes, Glaswegian giant of comedy Sir Billy Connolly covered country icon Tammy Wynette’s break-up song, turned it into a ditty about his dog and topped the charts. How very 1975.

Before

To say Connolly came from humble beginnings is rather an understatement. William Connolly was born at home in Anderston, Glasgow on 24 November 1942. This home had no hot water, and he was bathed in the sink. His father was in Burma during the Second World War and afterwards, in 1946, his teenage mother abandoned him and his older sister Florence for a new man. Considering the circumstances at the time, he has never felt ill will towards his mother and said he would have done the same. They were raised by two aunts, but not happily, as they resented the children. His father eventually returned, and physically and sexually abused his son until he was 15.

Connolly did at least take solace in discovering the joy of being able to make people laugh while a young schoolboy of seven, and at 14 he fell in love with the music of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. He left school a year later with two engineering qualifications – one belonging to a boy named Connell. Taking up odd jobs until he was old enough to be an engineer, he was ruled overqualified and so he became a boilermaker at a shipyard. Shooting up in height as a teen, he soon towered over his father and earned the ‘Big Yin’ nickname.

In his late-teens during the early-60s Connolly attended the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and began modelling himself on the folk singers that performed there. Following jobs including building an oil platform in Nigeria, he decided to become a folk musician and bought a banjo. In 1965 he and guitarist Tam Harvey became The Humblebums and they began touring the pubs. In 1969 they were approached by a singer named Gerry Rafferty and they became a trio. After recording one album that year (First Collection of Merry Melodies), Harvey left. Connolly and Rafferty released two more albums before they split in 1971, with Rafferty going on to release, among others, Stuck in the Middle with You (with Stealers Wheel) and Baker Street.

So, Connolly was a folk singer on his own now, and he became known for his charismatic stage performances, where the introductions to the songs were as lengthy and entertaining as the music. In 1972 he made his comic debut with a revue called Connolly’s Glasgow Flourish. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe then beckoned, and his first solo album, Billy Connolly Live! was released, a mix of comedy and songs. But it was the 1973 double album Solo Concert that propelled Connolly to the mainstream. Sell-out gigs followed, and in 1975 came the first of a record 15 appearances on Parkinson, in which an edgy joke about bikes changed his life forever.

Connolly was by then signed with Polydor Records and had released The Welly Boot Song. Next up was a timely rewrite of Wynette’s 1968 hit D.I.V.O.R.C.E. Timely because she had just divorced George Jones and had been number 1 with Stand by Your Man, also from 1968. In the original, Wynette is heartbroken and determined not to tell her four-year-old-son that his dad will soon be elsewhere, so she spells out the word, and several others, including ‘C.U.S.T.O.D.Y’. It’s all very maudlin, so ripe for spoofing.

Review

Connolly made it about a dog that was going into ‘Q.U.A.R.A.N.T.I.N.E’ because it’s bitten him, caused he and his wife to have an argument, in which she bit his arse, and then the dog bit the vet too. As a result of which, Connolly has decided to get a D.I.V.O.R.C.E. Yes, all a bit silly really, and it hasn’t aged well at all. Held in by the need to make it family-friendly, Connolly doesn’t get the chance to be let off the leash. Although, there is the line ‘She sank her teeth in my B.U.M. and called me an effin C’. I’m guessing he’d say ‘cunt’ when performing this live. So without the shock element, it’s not very funny.

Also, why would you need to avoid saying ‘quarantine’ in front of a dog anyway? I mean, I know this isn’t meant to be realistic, but the whole thing is rather pointless, and isn’t helped by Connolly constantly bursting into laughter. You can’t deny Connolly has bucketloads of charm, but I don’t like to think of him seeming so smug about something so unfunny. I doubt you’d get away with the closing line of ‘Oh I must admit that dog is acting Q.U.E.R. queer’ these days either, but that’s with 45 years of hindsight.

After

Further similarly tame spoofs followed, including No Chance (the awful No Charge, originally) in 1976 and In the Brownies (yep, In the Navy) in 1979. He served as Elton John’s warm-up man on a US tour in 1976, but he bombed. By then he was living like a rock star himself, using cocaine and alcohol in large doses, and collapsed in a studio, and shocked comedian Pamela Stephenson with his self-destructive ways backstage in 1979. They fell in love and began an affair. That same year, Connolly became the first non-Oxbridge member of The Secret Policeman’s Ball.

As the 80s began Connolly was now concentrating almost solely on comedy. 1985 was to be an eventful year. He went teetotal, starred in the British film Water, sang the rollicking theme to Children’s ITV series Super Gran (released as a single) and divorced his first wife after four years separated. He also introduced Elton John at Live Aid. In 1989, Connolly and Stephenson married.

After several false starts, the Big Yin finally conquered the Big Apple and the rest of the US in the 90s. He starred in stand-up TV specials and landed a part in the sitcom Head of the Class and spin-off Billy. In 1994 World Tour of Scotland, for the BBC, followed the comedian around his home country, and spawned Billy Connolly’s World Tour of Australia a year later. He even provided his voice to a character in Disney’s Pocahontas (1995). Connolly was fast becoming a jack of all trades, and won critical acclaim and BAFTA nominations for his role in 1997 historical drama Queen Victoria, alongside Dame Judi Dench.

Further ‘World Tour’ series followed in the 00s, and roles in Hollywood films The Last Samurai (2003), Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). He also voiced a character in Brave (2012) and starred in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in 2014.

The Outro

In 2013 Connolly announced that he had undergone minor surgery for prostate cancer, and was also in the early stages of Parkinson’s. Since then, the disease has progressed and has caused Connolly to retire from live stand-up, aged 78. Connolly has been a singer, artist, actor, playwright and boilermaker, but it his outrageous comedy for which he will be remembered mostly. Let’s hope he has many years left to enjoy his retirement.

Trivia

Written by

Billy Connolly

Producer

Phil Coulter

Weeks at number 1

1 (22-28 November)

Trivia

Deaths

25 November: Actress Moyna Macgill
27 November: Co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records Ross McWhirter (see below)

Meanwhile…

27 November: The Provisional IRA assassinated Ross McWhirter, co-founder with twin brother Norris of the Guinness Book of Records. He was shot dead for offering reward money to IRA informers.

378. David Essex – Hold Me Close (1975)

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The Intro

Since David Essex’s first number 1, Gonna Make You a Star, he had, with the help of producer Jeff Wayne, remained a top 10 mainstay. His next single Stardust was the theme to the sequel to the film That’ll Be the Day (1973). In Stardust, as before, Essex was the lead, playing wannabe pop star Jim MacLaine. This time his rise and fall took place through the 60s and early-70s. It’s not a bad song, but tries too hard to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of Rock On. Stardust reached seven in the singles chart, and the film, released in October 1974, did well, but Essex felt it was inferior to That’ll Be the Day.

Before

Next, Essex and Wayne set to work on a concept album of sorts. All the Fun of the Fair was a schizophrenic collection which touched upon Essex’s fascination with fairs as a child. Among the album’s personnel was session guitarist extraordinaire Chris Spedding, who had featured on the number 1 Barbados, and soul group The Real Thing, who would soon go from supporting Essex to having a number 1 in their own right with You to Me Are Everything. First single Rolling Stone went to five.

Ironically, Hold Me Close, which became Essex’s second and last number 1, was almost an afterthought in production. With record label executives waiting in the studio reception to hear the album in full, Essex banged out two vocal takes, and the mix was made in only half an hour.

Review

This information perhaps explains one of the problems with Hold Me Close. Now, Essex was a proper bona fide working-class Londoner, but he definitely played up to stereotypes and laid on the friendly cockney schtick too much at times on this vocal. And that, combined with Wayne’s cheesy production, makes this number 1 seem light years away from the edginess of Rock On. Essex’s transformation to light entertainment star was complete. Which, knowing now that the LP this comes from was all over the place stylistically, is a shame. Mind you, Essex, still popular all these years later, is probably fine with that. He’s very likeable, and despite my criticism, I can’t dislike Hold Me Close too much, it’s good at what it is.

Soon after this, Essex’s chart sales tailed off somewhat, although Oh What a Circus reached three in 1978. But he did take on a role in the original theatre run of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita. It was also the year he appeared as the Artilleryman on Wayne’s huge concept double album, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, an idea the producer had been working on for years. Now a star in his own right, Wayne went on to be a prolific writer of music for TV, including the TV-AM and Good Morning Britain themes of the 80s. The War of the Worlds has spawned a remake and a theatre show.

After

The 80s started off well for Essex with a lead role in motor-racing film Silver Dream Racer (1980) and a song from it, Silver Dream Racer (Part 1) motoring to number four. In 1982 his seasonal single A Winter’s Tale did very well, reaching two in January. It’s been a festive favourite ever since. Tahiti, in 1983, is his last hit to date, reaching eight. As his music slowed, his theatre and TV roles were increasing, and Tahiti came from the West End show Mutiny!, which he co-wrote and starred in. He was the lead in BBC One’s gentle 1988 sitcom The River, which I enjoyed as a nine-year-old but I dare say it won’t have aged well.

Essex was still releasing albums to mixed degrees of success throughout the 90s, and rounded off the millennium with an OBE in 1999. He played a kind-hearted nomad in an episode of Heartbeat in 2000, a subject close to his heart due to his gypsy roots. He had been Patron of Britain’s National Gypsy Council before moving to the US.

The Outro

In 2005 he was a guest vocalist on dance group St Etienne’s album Tales from the Turnpike House, and was due to join the cast of EastEnders in 2006 but couldn’t fit the time needed into his schedule. He eventually joined the soap in 2011 as Eddie Moon for several months. 2008 was a big year for Essex, with the stage debut of his jukebox musical All the fun of the Fair, based on his back catalogue. It had a West End run two years later. In 2013 he starred in and wrote the score for Traveller, a film in which his real-life son Billy Cook played a half-gypsy searching for his true identity. Now aged 73, Essex still has that boyish smile that charmed so many in the 70s and beyond. Rock on.

The Info

Written by

David Essex

Producer

Jeff Wayne

Weeks at number 1

3 (4-24 October)

Trivia

Births

5 October: Actress Kate Winslet
9 October: Actor Joe McFadden

Deaths

22 October: Historian Arnold J Toynbee

Meanwhile…

9 October: The IRA strike again. An explosion outside Green Park tube station near Piccadilly in London kills one person and injures 20.

13 October: Motorcycle producer Norton Villers in Wolverhampton closes down due to bankruptcy. 

23 October: Another IRA bomb, this time intended for Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser, kills oncologist Gordon Hamilton Fairley.

366. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel – Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) (1975)

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The Intro

Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) is one of the best examples of a song where the original intention of the writer is largely ignored by the masses. Like REM’s The One I Love, a spiteful song that has, because of its title, become popular at weddings, for example, with little attention paid to the lyrics. Steve Harley’s number 1 is to most a song about positivity, about enjoying yourself, about seeing the ones you love and soaking up the good vibes. For Harley, it was a giant ‘fuck you’ to the original Cockney Rebel, who dared to question his authority. He showed them who was right, and how, with this glam rock classic.

Before

Harley was born, ironically, Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice on 27 February 1951 in Deptford, London. His father was a milkman and his mother a semi-professional jazz singer. He contracted polio aged two, and between the ages of three and 16 he spent a total of four years in hospital. Aged nine, Nice began classical viola lessons, and guitar a year later. While recovering from major surgery in 1963, aged 12, he fell in love with literature, enjoying the poetry and prose of giants including DH Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and the lyrics of Bob Dylan, all of which would influence his music as he grew older. At 15 he wrote an autobiographical poem called ‘The Cockney Rebel’.

At 17 Nice left school and became a trainee accountant at the Daily Express before making the move into reporting, working for a variety of regional newspapers in Essex before settling with the East London Advertiser. Becoming disillusioned, Nice moved into the folk club scene in 1971, performing on line-ups featuring John Martyn and Ralph McTell, and busking on the underground He grew his hair and refused to wear a tie in his day job, and got the sack in 1972. His replacement was Richard Madeley.

Before the year was out, Nice’s stage name became Steve Harley, and he decided to form a glam rock band. The original Cockney Rebel consisted of Harley as singer, his friend from the folk scene Jean-Paul Crocker on electric violin, Stuart Elliott as drummer, Paul Jeffreys on bass and Nick Jones on guitar. Jones was quickly replaced by Pete Newnham but Harley decided Cockney Rebel were not going to be your average glam rock outfit. They ditched guitars and Milton Reame-James became their keyboardist. Labels were soon showing an interest in their demos, and they signed with EMI Records.

The first Cockney Rebel LP, The Human Menagerie, was released in 1973. Debut single Sebastian was a number two hit in Belgium and the Netherlands but never troubled the UK charts. Harley set to work writing a hit single, and proved he could when Judy Teen soared to five in 1974. With Alan Parsons, he co-produced follow-up album The Psychomodo, which featured number eight hit and inspiration for a classic 80s advert, Mr Soft.

By the time that single had reached the top 10, Cockney Rebel effectively didn’t exist. Harley has always maintained the understanding within the group was that he was the songwriter, but Crocker, Reame-James and Jeffreys chose to quit after demanding they be allowed to contribute. While Harley searched for a new band he released his debut solo single Big Big Deal, which proved to be anything but. Shortly afterwards, with Elliott back on drums, he hired guitarist Jim Cregan, who had played bass for Family, keyboardist Duncan Mackay and bassist George Ford. To ensure everyone knew where they stood this time around, the group was renamed Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, and they recorded their first album together, The Best Years of Our Lives.

Harley penned Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) within days of the original Cockney Rebel split. Harley was distraught and very bitter, and had the idea to write a dark blues song in order to get his feelings off his chest. One day in November as the new group were recording, Harley performed Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) as a slow dirge. Parsons saw something in it but suggested they speed it up and rephrase the chorus and Harley agreed. One of the masterstrokes was the addition of tacets before the verses, which is the deliberate use of silence. As Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis wisely noted, the space between the sounds can be as important and effective as the music. It added drama to the song, and although it’s been played to death so it’s impossible to imagine hearing it for the first time, it will have left the listener wondering what was on Harley’s mind next.

The instrumental break was originally to be a saxophone, but Cregan had the idea to play it on his guitar and give it a flamenco feel. Harley has noted since how difficult it’s been over the years for band members to perform live, as it was in fact three composite takes. The addition of female backing singers was another masterstroke. As well as Yvonne Keeley, Linda Lewis and Liza Strike there was Tina Charles, who would be number 1 a year later with I Love to Love. After having them sing the chorus, Harley liked the idea of having them add some ‘oooh la la la’ as a nod to Rubber Soul-era Beatles. The excitement grew throughout recording. Harley’s revenge was going to be very sweet. When the finished product was played to EMI’s head of A&R, Bob Mercer, he was blown away and uttered only two words. ‘Number one.’

Review

It might be considered a ‘glam’ tune, but to me Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) is pure pop brilliance from that memorable intro to the fade. Parsons deserves more credit for wrapping Harley’s barbed lyrics inside a shiny chart-friendly package. Not that Harley doesn’t deserve all the credit he has received over the years, once Parsons set him on the right path. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I am among those who has misunderstood part of this song over the years – it’s only now that I discover it isn’t ‘I’ll do what you want, running wild’, but ‘Or do what you want, running wild’. Which is a key part of Harley’s message to Cockney Rebel Mk1 really. By all means, come and watch me now, see how well I’m doing without you, it’ll put a smile on my face… or just do what you want, because I don’t care really what you do anymore.

Perhaps Harley and Parsons’ success in making a pop classic did too good a job in masking the real message, as the backing vocals, as great as they are, distract from the lyrics. I’ve also only just discovered he makes it explicit who his ire is directed at, the second line being ‘And pulled the rebel to the floor’ – an obvious reference to Cockney Rebel. Of course, you could argue that Harley is being precious and needs to get over himself, but even then you’d be hard pushed to argue what a great, slick tune this is, and that it never gets old.

In 2015 it was reported the single had sold around 1.5 million copies, and the Performing Rights Society have confirmed it as one of the most played songs in British Broadcasting history, and over 120 covers, and counting, have been recorded.

After

Fresh off the back of their number 1, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel released The Best Days of Our Lives, which reached five in the album chart, and Mr. Raffles (Man, It Was Mean) was a top 13 singles hit. However, Harley produced the next album Timeless Flight alone, and it was a failure. More experimental than their previous LP, the critics slated it and its singles tanked. The final album by the band, Love’s a Prima Donna, fared better thanks to a faithful and timely cover of The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun. Released in the long, hot summer of 1976, it was their final hit, reaching 10.

Harley featured on The Alan Parsons Project’s album I, Robot in 1977, and that July he announced Cockney Rebel were no more. He moved to America to work on his debut solo album, but Hobo with a Grin, released in 1978, fared badly. It featured his friend Marc Bolan’s final studio performances before his shock death. When his next album The Candidate also tanked a year later, he was dropped by EMI.

The 80s were, in Harley’s own words, his wilderness years. When The Best of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel was released in 1980, along with a reissue of Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), he formed a new Cockney Rebel. Over the next few years they had failure after failure, despite working with big-name producers like Midge Ure and Mike Batt. However, Andrew Lloyd Webber was planning a single to promote The Phantom of the Opera, and Batt suggested Harley audition to be the male voice on the title track. Harley succeeded and together with Sarah Brightman they had a number seven hit on their hands in 1986. He starred as The Phantom in the video, and won the audition to play him on stage, but the role was given to Michael Crawford instead.

1986 also saw the debut of an advert that fascinated and terrified my six-year-old self in equal measure, which Harley was inadvertently responsible for. Trebor had rewritten Mr Soft as the soundtrack to an advert for their Softmints, and asked Harley to record it, but he declined and an effective soundalike was used. The quirky, catchy song was perfect for this bizarre ad, as you can see here. So successful was the long-running campaign, Mr Soft was re-released in 1988. Years later when Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was used to advertise Viagra, Harley wittily remarked that Mr Soft would have been more appropriate.

In 1989 another Cockney Rebel incarnation was created and Harley would flit between solo and band work for years to come. Upon its fourth reissue, Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was back in the top 40, thanks to its use in a Carlsberg advert. It reached 33. Only two years later it was in the public eye again thanks to it being featured in The Full Monty. Harley branched out into radio work in 1999 when he became the presenter of Radio 2’s nostalgic The Sounds of the Seventies. It was so popular he would end up presenting it all year round until it ended in 2008.

Harley became involved with the charity Mines Advisory Group in 2002, later becoming an ambassador. The first album released under the Cockney Rebel name in 29 years, The Quality of Mercy, saw the light of day in 2005. A 30th anniversary remix of Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) was also released that year, and the original garnered attention yet again in 2015 when Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May began a campaign to download the song to help Harley pay for a speeding fine. He reunited with the most successful incarnation of Cockney Rebel for a tour performing The Best Days of Our Lives in full, also in 2015.

The Outro

The Cockney Rebel leader unveiled his sixth solo album, Uncovered in 2020. Consisting of some of his favourite material by other artists, he released The Beatles’ I’ve Just Seen a Face as a single, but the intended tour was postponed due to COVID-19.

And what became of the original Cockney Rebel? Elliott remained as Harley’s drummer throughout his career, and Jeffreys and Reame-James had some success in the prog rock band Be-Bop Deluxe, while Crocker performed with his brother in obscurity. Jeffreys was among those who died in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. He was with his bride returning from their honeymoon.

Of MKII, Cregan became a session musician, working mostly with Rod Stewart. Mackay appeared on Kate Bush’s first three albums and George Ford went off the radar. He died in 2007.

The Info

Written by

Steve Harley

Producers

Steve Harley & Alan Parsons

Weeks at number 1

2 (22 February-7 March)

Trivia

Deaths

22 February: Violist Lionel Tertis
26 February: Police officer Stephen Tribble (see ‘Meanwhile…’, below)
28 February: Writer Neville Cardus
3 March: Theatre organist Sandy MacPherson/Poet TH Parry-Williams

Meanwhile…

26 February: 22-year-old Metropolitan Police officer Stephen Tibble is shot and killed after giving chase to a fleeing Provisional IRA member.

28 February: The Moorgate tube crash kills 43 people and injures 74 when a London Underground train failed to stop at the Northern city Line’s southern terminus and smashed into its end wall. It is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground. 

1 March: Aston Villa, chasing promotion from the Football League’s Second Division, win the Football League Cup with a 1-0 victory against Norwich City at Wembley Stadium.

4 March: Comedy acting legend Charlie Chaplin, 85, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. 

7 March: The body of teenage heiress Lesley Whittle, who disappeared from her home in Shropshire in January, is discovered in Staffordshire. She had been strangled on a ledge in drains below Bathpool Park near Kidsgrove. 

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.