Paul McCartney

471. John Lennon – (Just Like) Starting Over (1980)

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The Intro

It’s one of pop’s sadder ironies that it took the shocking murder of John Lennon to give him his first solo number 1, with a song that begins ‘Our life together is so precious together’. The former Beatle had returned to music in 1980, and was talking about his hope for the new decade in his final interviews. The year instead ended with vigils across the globe for a murdered hero.

Before

‘Let’s take a chance and fly away, somewhere.’

Lennon was born 40 years previous, on 9 October 1940, at Liverpool Maternity Hospital. His childhood was famously a mix tragedy and luck. His father Alfred, a n’e’er-do-well merchant seaman, was away from home at the time. At four, his mother, Julia, gave her sister Mimi custody. Aged six, Lennon’s father visited and attempted to take his estranged son to live in New Zealand with him, but it didn’t happen and there would be no further contact between the two until Beatlemania.

Raised by the well-to-do Mimi and her husband, Lennon was considered the class clown, and would draw surreal cartoons for his school magazine The Daily Howl. He was regularly visited by Julia, who bought him his first guitar in 1956. Famously, his aunt turned her nose up at this, saying: ‘The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.’ The 15-year-old Lennon payed no mind to this and started a band – The Quarrymen. In 1957, at a legendary village fete in Woolton, Lennon met Paul McCartney and asked him to join the band.

Lennon’s mother was killed when she was hit by a car driven by an off-duty policeman who was under the influence. The trauma brought Lennon and McCartney, who had lost his own mother to cancer, closer together, but the already wayward Lennon drowned his sorrows and frequently got into fights. Now a Teddy Boy, he was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art.

Despite McCartney’s father’s disapproval, Lennon and McCartney began writing songs together. Despite initial reluctance, Lennon agreed to allow George Harrison into the band. The three guitarists’ ranks were soon bolstered by Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, even though he could hardly play. By 1960, they were The Beatles, and Lennon was their leader. They went to Hamburg for a residency, along with new drummer Pete Best. Three residences in and The Beatles, buoyed by the drug Preludin and playing stupidly long sets, became a force to be reckoned with.

Brian Epstein became their manager in 1962, and although the rebellious Lennon bristled at the idea of cleaning up their act and donning suits, he relented. When Sutcliffe decided tasty in Hamburg, McCartney took over on bass, and Best was replaced by Ringo Starr before their debut single on Parlophone, Love Me Do.

From The Beatles rise to fame, through to Beatlemania and the British Invasion, Lennon was their acerbic leader. Brilliantly witty, sarcastic, and prone to many unfortunate ‘cripple’ impressions, he and McCartney were the greatest songwriting team of all time. Writing most of their early work together, they co-wrote three number 1 singles in 1963 – From Me to You, She Loves You (the greatest 60s chart-topper) and I Want to Hold Your Hand.

In 1964 The Beatles released their first film – A Hard Day’s Night. Lennon wrote the film and accompanying LP’s title track, and also the 1964 Christmas number 1, I Feel Fine, which featured feedback from Lennon in the intro. The Beatles had begun to widen their sonic palette.

By 1965, despite being at the peak of their commercial fame, Lennon was feeling disillusioned. He was overweight, exhausted by Beatlemania and literally crying out for help, which translated into the title track of their second film – not that their screaming fans were noticing – they were too busy shaking their heads to yet another pop classic. He and Harrison took LSD for the first time, and further experimentation came from one of their greatest mid-period songs, Ticket to Ride – another primarily Lennon song, and another number 1. But in a sign that Lennon and McCartney were growing apart as songwriting partners, they disagreed on their Christmas single, resulting in the former’s Day Tripper sharing equal billing with We Can Work It Out – although Lennon came up with the pleading middle eight of McCartney’s track.

1966 was a tumultuous year for the Fab Four. An interview with Lennon about the decreasing popularity of the church was blown out of all proportion, resulting in a rare public apology, most likely forced on him by Epstein. Nevertheless, records were burned, and Lennon was threatened. All this, plus the group exhaustion with their endless touring, resulting in a decision that would ultimately change popular music. They didn’t go public with the decision, but that August, they stopped performing for audiences. Despite all this, they entered their imperial phase of studio recording. Lennon was integral in this, contributing the concept of backwards recording in Rain and then the amazing experimentation of Tomorrow Never Knows.

The increasingly pioneering sounds coming out of Abbey Road contributed to the cultural zeitgeist of the Summer of Love in 1967. Although perhaps their single finest record – Lennon’s Strawberry Fields Forever, combined with Penny Lane – failed to top the charts, they were at the peak of their creative powers, releasing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And Lennon was responsible for the anthemic number 1 All You Need Is Love, too. But Lennon was lost in constant use of LSD, and later said it came close to erasing his identity. This and the loss of Epstein resulted in McCartney increasingly looking like the band’s new leader, and this started to cause problems.

Lennon’s wife Cynthia found her husband at home with the artist Yoko Ono in May 1968, after they had recorded what became the experimental LP Two Virgins. Soon, the duo were inseparable, for most of the rest of his life. This inevitably had an impact on the already often strained relationships of The Beatles, who wrote and recorded much of their eponymous double album as solo songs, which the rest of the band would merely provide backing to. Although Lennon and Ono were turned on to heroin, his decreasing use of LSD saw a return to his more fiery personality. While more experimental than ever on the sound collage of Revolution 9 and the unreleased What’s the New Mary Jane?, Lennon’s pop dominance of the band had decreased so much, he only contributed one song to the two number 1 singles in 1968, and Revolution was relegated to the B-side of Hey Jude – written by McCartney to give comfort to Lennon’s son, Julian, while his parents divorced.

While Peter Jackson’s Get Back has proved that the Let It Be sessions of early 1969 weren’t as miserable as the world was led to believe, the initial sessions were an often bleak affair, yet by the time of their last public appearance on the rooftop of Apple Studios, Lennon was in his element, offering surreal banter inbetween their set, which featured one of his best later-Beatles-period songs, Don’t Let Me Down.

Relieved that the project was over, The Beatles splintered. Relations between the four were not fab, as Lennon persuaded Harrison and Starr to sign Allen Klein as their new manager, while McCartney relented. Lennon focused on Ono, developing their new project, the Plastic Ono Band. Most of the duo’s material between 1969 and 1974 was credited to this revolving line-up, featuring, at various points, Harrison, Starr, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman and Keith Moon. Lennon and Ono married that March, resulting in the last Beatles number 1 in the band’s lifetime – The Ballad of John and Yoko. The first Plastic Ono Band release was the anti-war classic Give Peace a Chance, in July, which peaked at two. The band went on a brief hiatus while The Beatles recorded what was to be their swansong. Lennon was absent for some of the sessions after a car accident with Ono, but his raunchy Come Together was promoted to an A-side.

With Abbey Road in the can, Lennon went back to concentrating on his new band, and privately decided he was going to leave The Beatles. The grim account of heroin withdrawal, Cold Turkey, followed, then the concert recording Live Peace in Toronto 1969 was released as the 60s – and unbeknownst to the world – The Beatles, drew to a close. The dream was over.

The 70s got off to a great start for Lennon, releasing perhaps his greatest post-Beatles single, Instant Karma!, which began a long working relationship with the unhinged Phil Spector. McCartney angered Lennon, by announcing he had left The Beatles, as publicity for his first solo album. Lennon had been working through primal therapy, resulting in the raw, often painfully honest eponymous album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, one of the last lyrics of which was ‘Don’t believe in Beatles’.

In 1971, Lennon and McCartney were publicly fighting via song, resulting in the bitter How Do You Sleep? on Lennon’s best solo LP, Imagine. That August he and Ono moved to live in New York and began their association with radical left-wing politics. President Richard Nixon’s administration became determined to deport him. At Christmas the couple released their festive classic Happy Xmas (War Is Over) with the Harlem Community Choir.

Over the next few years, Lennon’s commercial standing began to drop, with he and Ono releasing the highly political but average Some Time in New York City with Elephant’s Memory in 1972. Then aLennon self-produced and released the decidedly poor Mind Games in late-1973 – although the title track is excellent. He and Ono’s marital problems resulted in their separation, and the start of an 18-month period immortalised as the ‘Lost Weekend’, in which he had a relationship with his and Ono’s personal assistant, May Pang. Lennon ran wild, often with Harry Nilsson, drinking heavily and making headlines.

During that time he released Walls and Bridges, featuring one of his best solo songs, #9 Dream. Elton John featured on Whatever Gets You thru the Night – his first US number 1. Lennon had made a bet that that if the single topped the charts, he’d perform live with John, which he duly did. Lennon and Ono were reunited in 1975, and he co-wrote and performed on David Bowie’s first US number 1, Fame. But following Rock ‘n’ Roll, a covers album, in 1975, Lennon went on hiatus to help raise his and Ono’s son, Sean, and would only record the occasional demo when inspiration took hold.

When McCartney released the single Coming Up in 1980, Lennon was impressed and even said so publicly, with the former Beatles having made amends and occasionally meeting during the 70s. Then in June, Lennon was involved in a sailing trip which was hit by a storm. As all the crew fell ill, Lennon was forced to take control, and the incident affected him profoundly. His confidence restored, and with a newfound zest for life, he decided to release a new album with his wife – their first since Some Time in New York City.

Ono approached producer Jack Douglas with a batch of demos, and that August they started recording in secret at New York City’s Hit Factory, as Lennon was concerned the sessions might not be good enough. By September they were more confident and went public that they were back. The newly formed Geffen Records was successful, thanks in part to David Geffen making it clear he regarded Ono’s contributions as the same quality as Lennon’s.

With its warm, nostalgic 50s feel and lyrics about rejuvenation, it made perfect sense to place (Just Like) Starting Over at the start of Double Fantasy, and to make it his comeback single. The song’s origins began with the demo recordings Don’t Be Crazy and My Life. Lennon wrote Starting Over, as it was originally called, in Bermuda, and despite being recorded on 9 August, it was one of the last songs to be completed for the album, mixed at the Record Plant on 25 and 26 September. Featuring on the recording are David Bowie’s guitarist Earl Slick, Hugh McCracken, also on guitar, King Crimson’s Tony Levin on bass, keyboardist George Small, Sly and the Family Stone drummer Andy Newmark and Arthur Jenkins on percussion. Providing the doo-wop-style backing vocals are Michelle Simpson, Cassandra Wooten, Cheryl Manson Jacks and Eric Troyer.

Review

(Just Like) Starting Over (the extra bit in brackets was added to avoid confusion with Dolly Parton’s Starting Over Again) begins with a deliberate callback to Mother, the opening track on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band 10 years previous. Whereas the bells that toll on Mother are slow and foreboding, and reminiscent of a funeral bell, the ringing here is light and airy, and (sadly ironically) herald a hopeful, optimistic Lennon, softened by years of time as a father and absent from the music business. His fire seems to be gone, he’s retreated into the rock’n’roll of his youth, and he’s perfectly content with that. And so am I.

Lennon might not have thought (Just Like) Starting Over was the best track on Double Fantasy, but it’s one of the strongest on what is otherwise a pretty average album. Had he not been out of the public eye for so long, this track wouldn’t have had that added poignancy, and wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Rock ‘n’ Roll, that ropey collection of mostly poor covers that soundtracked his youth. Gone is one of the best voices of his generation, as Lennon ramps the pastiche levels up even more by singing in a style that brings to mind Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. Sure, this idealistic vision of Lennon and Ono is schmaltzy, saccharine and most likely somewhat false, but it’s rather charming and lovely. And of course, in hindsight, those lyrics are desperately sad. Thumbs down to the awfully mixed backing vocals, though. Was it a failed attempt by Douglas to capture that echoey 50s sound?

After

(Just Like) Starting Over was released in the UK on 23 October, and a day later in the US. Riding on a wave of goodwill as the world welcomed back an old friend, the single was Lennon’s strongest performing record in the UK since Happy Xmas (War Is Over), which had reached four in 1971. It peaked at eight, and although reviews for Double Fantasy were warning that Lennon had lost his bite (and he was looking older than his years and was painfully thin), the future looked bright. He and Ono had recorded enough material for a follow-up, and with his confidence returning, maybe we’d see some of that fire return. Of course, we’ll never know.

Lennon’s comeback single had slipped to 21 here, and six in the US by 8 December, but promotional work continued for Double Fantasy, released a few weeks prior. At around 5pm, he was stopped outside his home, the Dakota building, by a random fan. Lennon was photographed signing a copy of his new album for the grinning Mark Chapman, and then left with Ono for a session at the Record Plant. At approximately 10.50pm Lennon and Ono returned and were walking through the archway of the Dakota, when Chapman shot him twice in the back and twice more in the shoulder at close range. Lennon was pronounced dead less than half an hour later.

Shocked, confused and in mourning, the world chose to pay tribute to Lennon, who had soundtracked the lives of so many, by listening to his music. In much the same way his hero Buddy Holly’s It Doesn’t Matter Anymore became a posthumous chart-topper after his untimely death, (Just Like) Starting Over inevitably began to sell once more. 12 days after his death, Lennon had his first solo number 1. Such was the magnitude of his loss, it wouldn’t be his last.

The Outro

In 2010 Ono and Douglas released Double Fantasy Stripped Down, which was an attempt to wipe away the studio sheen of the original album. The version of (Just Like) Starting Over is thankfully free of those odd backing vocals, and is OK but pretty inconsequential.

The Info

Written by

John Lennon

Producers

John Lennon, Yoko Ono & Jack Douglas

Weeks at number 1

1 (20-26 December)

Trivia

Births

20 December: Footballer Ashley Cole/Footballer Fitz Hall
21 December: Scottish actress Louise Linton

Deaths

20 December: Locomotive engineer Roland Bond/Footballer Tom Waring
22 December: Magician Lewis Ganson/Physician Thomas Cecil Hunt
23 December: Playwright Frank Norman/Anglican bishop Ambrose Reeves
25 December: Comedian Fred Emney/Explorer Quintin Riley

Meanwhile…

26 December: Sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk became known as the ‘Rendlesham Forest Incident’ – the most famous reported UFO sightings in the UK.

296. George Harrison – My Sweet Lord (1971)

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The Intro

John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the greatest pop songwriting partnership of all time, together or separately writing 17 number 1 singles for The Beatles. But George Harrison has always been my favourite member of the Fab Four. Sardonic, mystical and more level-headed than the others, ‘the Quiet One’ blossomed at the end of his time in The Beatles. He had matured into a great songwriter, and I’ve always liked an underdog. Something was the first dance on my wedding day, and my youngest daughter was born to Here Comes the Sun. I even have the latter tattooed on my right arm.

Despite his new-found confidence and prolificness, it must still have come as a shock to the other three members of The Beatles that it would be Harrison who would score the first solo number 1 and biggest seller of 1971 with My Sweet Lord.

Before

Born 25 February 1943 in Wavertree, Liverpool, Harrison was the youngest of four children. His father Harold was a ship’s steward and his mother, Louise, a music-loving shop assistant. Fascinatingly, when Louise was pregnant with George, she would listen to a show called Radio India every Sunday, hoping that the sounds of the sitar and tabla would make her baby peaceful.

As a child, Harrison liked artists including George Formby and Cab Calloway, until in 1956 he had an epiphany while on his bike. He heard Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel blaring from a house, and was hooked. At first his dad was apprehensive, but relented and bought him an acoustic guitar. He formed a skiffle group called The Rebels, and one day on the bus to school, he befriended an older boy called Paul McCartney.

Two years later, Harrison was accepted into McCartney’s group The Quarrymen following initial skepticism from founder John Lennon. By the time the group had become The Beatles and settled on the legendary line-up, Harrison was their lead guitarist.

In their early recording years, Harrison would usually get a song or two to sing on each album, either a Lennon-McCartney original like Do You Want to Know a Secret? (from first LP Please Please Me) or a classic rock’n’roll track such as Roll Over Beethoven from the follow-up With the Beatles. It was on this album that he made his songwriting debut, with the typically sulky, downbeat but interesting Don’t Bother Me.

His influence would start to really be felt on the band when recording 1965’s Rubber Soul. By this point he was a fan of folk rock from the US, but had also become interested in Indian music through the filming of that year’s film Help!. His track If I Needed Someone, a Byrds soundalike, was one of that album’s highlights (he later said this was his favourite Beatles album).

Harrison became ever more fascinated with Indian culture and music, and Love You To on Revolver and Within You, Without You on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band helped turn their fans on to both – and many other bands too. And me – it may sound hard to believe, but it was The Beatles’ Indian-influenced songs that really got me into the Fab Four. I can remember the exact moment, in fact – I tranced out to Harrison’s Blue Jay Way at a friend’s house (completely without the aid of drink or drugs, I should add) and became obsessed. His first ever B-side, 1968’s The Inner Light, also marked the end of his overtly Indian material within the band.

The Beatles began splintering while recording their self-titled double album that year, and Harrison quit at one point, but two of his four tracks that made the final cut, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Long, Long, Long, were among the album’s best.

His songwriting went from strength to strength from here on in. Something was his first A-side, and famously Frank Sinatra called it the finest love song of the past 50 years. After Abbey Road had been released, they had discussed continuing, and Lennon suggested Harrison should be allowed an equal share of songs on their next album – something McCartney disagreed with.

Harrison had already released two solo albums before The Beatles split – the 1968 film soundtrack Wonderwall Music and the experimental Electronic Music the following year. He was stockpiling songs all the time, recording a beautiful demo of All Things Must Pass during Beatles’ sessions. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he decided his first post-Beatles album, produced with Phil Spector and named after said track, would be triple-length.

Among those songs was his first solo single, My Sweet Lord. First written in December 1969, it was influenced by his production duties on Radha Krishna Temple’s Hare Krishna Mantra. Harrison was a guest, along with friends Eric Clapton and Billy Preston on Delaney & Bonnie’s European tour. He ducked out of a press conference and began vamping on an acoustic guitar, alternating between singing ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Hare Krishna’. Whether he was aware he was doing it to the tune of He’s So Fine, a 1963 hit for The Chiffons, we’ll never know, but he was also deliberately influenced by the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ rendition of Oh Happy Day.

At the time of writing My Sweet Lord, Harrison wasn’t intending on going solo, so he offered it to Preston, whose second album, Encouraging Words, he was producing. With the Edwin Hawkins Singers providing some great backing vocals, Preston’s version is more overtly gospel, with the backing chant being mostly ‘Hallelujah’.

Letting someone else record it was one thing, but Harrison was nervous about doing it himself later in 1970. He wanted to sing about needing a direct relationship with God, and for others to be able to do so too, whatever their religion, and so he reintroduced the Hare Krishna mantra to the song, as well as the third verse of the Guru Stotram an ancient hymn in praise of Hindu spiritual teachers:

‘Gurur Brahmā, gurur Viṣṇur 
gurur devo Maheśvaraḥ 
gurus sākṣāt, paraṃ Brahma 
tasmai śrī gurave namaḥ.’

This translates as:

‘I offer homage to my guru, who is as great as the creator Brahma, the maintainer Vishnu, the destroyer Shiva, and who is the very energy of God.’

Opening with a low-key strum (in general, this is a pretty lo-fi recording by Spector’s usual standards) that’s much more ‘Harrison’, his version comes to life with some nice slide guitar work that’s also unmistakably him, before he begins singing. Harrison is earnest, pleading almost, for God, in whichever form, to come into his life. As cleverly noted elsewhere, it’s almost like Harrison is on his way for a first date, nervous but keen to find romance. I prefer the choice to build the song up, keeping the backing vocals until later – it helps create the ‘epic’ atmosphere such a song deserves. Critics of My Sweet Lord complain that the backing vocals smother it, but I can’t agree with that. They make it such a joyful song of love and devotion, and I’m speaking as an atheist.

My Sweet Lord had an all-star role call of collaborators. Among those making an appearance at Abbey Road Studios were Preston on piano, Clapton on acoustic guitar, his Derek and the Dominoes colleagues Bobby Whitlock on harmonium and Jim Gordon on drums and percussion, Ringo Starr on the same, Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Joey Molland from Badfinger on acoustic guitars, their drummer Mike Gibbins on tambourine, Klaus Voorman from Plastic Ono Band on bass, future Dream Weaver hitmaker Gary Wright on electric piano and Ravi Shankar collaborator John Barham providing the beautiful string arrangement. It is unknown, however, who played on the selected takes. I could always make out Harrison’s voice among the backing singers – what I didn’t know until now is that it’s purely him, multi-tracked and credited to ‘the George O’Hara-Smith Singers’.

Harrison announced in October 1970 that there would be no single before the release of All Things Must Pass, but Spector and bosses at Apple disagreed and thought My Sweet Lord had real potential. Harrison backed down, and the single was released in November in the US, then in January 1971 in the UK. It only took a fortnight to climb to number 1.

After

My Sweet Lord went on to sell millions, and All Things Must Pass was a huge-selling album. While Lennon and McCartney were busy sending each other coded insults via respective albums Imagine and Ram, Harrison, for a time looked like he would be the most successful solo Beatle of all. It didn’t work out that way, but he wouldn’t have wanted it to anyway. It may not be his greatest song, but it’s certainly up there, and if anyone deserved some time in the limelight, it’s the Dark Horse.

The Outro

In 2002, Harrison’s debut single was re-released posthumously and went to number 1 once more. A very fitting tribute. I’ll look at the rest of Harrison’s life and career, and the controversy regarding this song, when we get to that point.

The Info

Written by

George Harrison

Producers

George Harrison & Phil Spector

Weeks at number 1

5 (30 January-5 March) *BEST-SELLING SINGLE OF THE YEAR*

Trivia

Births

30 January: Actor Darren Boyd
31 January: Northern Irish TV presenter Patrick Kielty
2 February: Singer Michelle Gayle
3 February: Playwright Sarah Kane
13 February: Singer Sonia
16 February: Actress Amanda Holden/Actor Steven Houghton
23 February: TV presenter Melinda Messenger
24 February: TV presenter Nicky Hambleton-Jones
1 March: Classical composer Thomas Adès
3 March: Satirist Charlie Brooker

Meanwhile…

3 February: Gritty British crime thriller Get Carter, starring Michael Caine, premiered in Los Angeles.

4 February: Car manufacturer Rolls-Royce went bankrupt.

11 February: The UK, along with the USA, the USSR and others, signed the Seabed Treaty, which outlawed nuclear weapons on the ocean floor.

15 February: Decimal Day! People all across the UK and Republic of Ireland were left confused when currency went decimal, despite public information films like this explaining beforehand.

24 February: Home Secretary Reginald Maudling announced the Immigration Bill, which would strip Commonwealth immigrants of their right to remain in the UK. The bill was of course supported by Enoch Powell, but the controversial former shadow cabinet minister continued to demand a massive voluntary repatriation scheme for the immigrants.

1 March: An estimated 120,000 to 250,000 “kill the bill” protesters went on strike against the 1971 Industrial Relations Act in London.

170. Cilla Black (Accompaniment directed by Johnny Pearson) – You’re My World (Il Mio Mondo) (1964)

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Three months since her first number 1, Anyone Who Had a Heart, Cilla Black was at number 1 again, with You’re My World. This ballad was an English language version of the Italian Il Mio Mondo, written by Umberto Bindi and Gino Paoli. The original was not a hit, but George Martin saw enough in it to commission it as Black’s follow-up.

The new title and lyrics came from Carl Sigman, who specialised in rewriting lyrics and turning them into UK hits, several of which – Answer Me, It’s All in the Game and The Day the Rains Came – went to number 1.

I think I made my feelings towards Cilla fairly clear in my last blog on her, while at the same time being pretty complimentary about Anyone Who Had a Heart. I couldn’t deny the quality of the song and considered Black’s performance stronger than the Dionne Warwick original. However, You’re My World (Il Mio Mondo) is inferior, and shows up Black’s weakness as a singer. Although this actually worked in her favour last time around, my ears weren’t so keen this time.

Black starts low, which is manageable, but at about a minute into the track, her voice explodes into what sounds like a impression of a caricature of her voice – the kind you’d get on Spitting Image in the 80s. Lyrically, You’re My World (Il Mio Mondo) is nothing to write home about – not compared to a Bacharach and David song, anyway. It’s your average overblown love song in which the singer bigs up her lover to be some sort of godlike figure. As average as it is, it’s saved by an epic George Martin production, which builds from stabbing strings at the beginning (which do suggest Cilla may be some sort of deranged obsessed lover/murderer) into full-blown orchestral loveliness courtesy of Johnny Pearson and female vocal trio The Breakaways. Her future husband and manager, Bobby Willis, also sang on the recording.

You’re My World (Il Mio Mondo) helped firmly establish Cilla as the country’s biggest female singing superstar, and it was a huge hit in several countries. However, despite the fact she had many other smashes in the UK, and is the country’s biggest-selling female solo artist of the decade, it was her final number 1.

She divided opinion even then. In 1965 Randy Newman called her version of I’ve Been Wrong Before the best cover anyone had ever performed of his material. The same year, when her version of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin was beaten to the top by The Righteous Brothers’ cover, The Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham took out an advert in Melody Maker to deride Cilla’s performance.

Nonetheless the hits continued, including, among others, her theme song to the film Alfie, written by Bacharach and David. By the end of 1966 she had begun making inroads into television, with her own TV special and an appearance on Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Not Only But Also. Epstein had arranged for Black to star in her own series for the BBC shortly before his death in August 1967. Relations had become somewhat strained, with Black feeling Epstein had stopped giving her career the attention it needed. Bobby Willis took over as her manager, and her career improved in 1968 with the number eight hit Step Inside Love, written by Paul McCartney as the theme to her series Cilla.

Other than Cilla, and some attempts at comedy (seeing her attempts at being funny on TV when growing up, I can imagine these were pretty bad), the 70s were relatively quiet for Black. Bill Cotton asked her to consider becoming Bruce Forsyth’s replacement on The Generation Game in 1978, but Black declined and Larry Grayson got the job. She may have subsequently regretted doing so, as the early 80s saw her reduced to cabaret shows.

However, an appearance on Wogan in 1983 went down so well, she found herself in demand once more. Many of the generation that had grown up buying her music were now parents and in need of Saturday night entertainment in front of the box. It’s the Cilla that presented Surprise Surprise from 1984 and Blind Date from 1985 that I grew up with. Ironically, when Blind Date was in development, camp comedian Duncan Norvelle presented a pilot in 1985, but John Birt had reservations about Norvelle’s humour. He clearly wasn’t as open-minded as Bill Cotton in 1978 when Larry Grayson took on The Generation Game.

I was an avid TV viewer as a child, and would watch anything put in front of me, but despite enjoying both shows, I was firmly on my dad’s side in being irritated by her catchphrases and singing, even as a six-year-old. But the fans outweighed the critics and Black became a national treasure and the highest-paid female performer on British television. My mum even appeared in the audience on Surprise Surprise once, and my cousin also featured and won on Blind Date. My main memory of that is of us visiting her house shortly afterwards and discovering her parents had a parrot that liked swearing.

By the turn of the century, both long-running shows were struggling with viewing figures, and Cilla left London Weekend Television. She appeared on many panel shows and had a cameo in ITV comedy Benidorm. 2013 saw ITV celebrate her 50 years in showbiz with a one-off special, The One and Only Cilla Black, hosted by fellow scouser Paul O’Grady. In 2014, Sheridan Smith starred as the singer in the well-received three-part ITV drama Cilla, focusing on her relationship with Willis, who had died in 1999.

In 2014 Black stated she wanted to die when she reached 75, as she couldn’t stand to suffer into old age like her mother did. She was already suffering with rheumatoid arthritis, and her eyesight was failing. She was 72 when she fell and died of a stroke at her holiday home near Estepona, Spain on 1 August 2015.

Her funeral was a star-studded affair, with Cliff Richard singing at the service and a eulogy from O’Grady. As her coffin left the church, the Beatles song The Long and Winding Road was played. Paul McCartney, who had been instrumental in bringing the girl-next-door-turned-national-treasure to the public eye, believed Cilla’s 1972 version of his song was the definitive one.

Written by: Umberto Bindi & Gino Paoli/Carl Sigman (English lyrics)

Producer: George Martin

Weeks at number 1: 4 (28 May-24 June)

Births:

Actress Kathy Burke – 13 June 

Meanwhile…

16 June: Keith Bennett had turned 12 only four days before he went missing. He was on his way to his grandmother’s house in Longsight, Manchester when Myra Hindley pulled over in her Mini and asked Bennett for help with loading some boxes, in return for a lift home. Her friend Ian Brady was sat in the back when he got in. They drove to a lay-by on Saddleworth Moor, where Bennett walked off with Brady. The following day, yet another missing persons investigation for a child opened in Manchester.