T Rex

Every 70s Number 2

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

I’m just about done with the 70s for the time being, but before I get on with Every UK Number 1: The 60s, here’s one more look at the decade. As usual when I finish choosing my highs and lows of a decade, I take a look at the number 2s (oo-er). Why? Well, it’s a chance to take an alternative look at the most popular songs of the decade and see how they compare with the songs that pipped them to the post. It’s long been believed that some of the greatest songs of all time missed out on the top spot. This certainly proved true in the 60s.

Will it prove to be the case for the 70s? Let’s find out. As per usual, I’ll look at each year, pick a best and worst for each year, then an overall winner and loser. Any future past number 1s aren’t included – these songs must have reached no higher than 2.

1970

Just as with the number 1 selection of this year, rock is the main genre dominating the runner-up chart position. And there’s some real beauties. Elvis Presley’s greatest song, Suspicious Minds, gets things off to an excellent start. Like the best number 2s, it’s criminal this didn’t top the charts. Folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary are next with their version of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane. This was the version that was a hit, and rightly so as the harmonies are lovely. Let’s Work Together – later a hit for Roxy Music as Let’s Stick Together – is an excellent dose of raucous blues-rock courtesy of Canned Heat. The Beatles bow out of the charts with Let It Be, which is obviously a classic, but for a change, I’m not picking it as the winner. We won’t see them again until Every 90s Number 2, when Free As a Bird was pipped to the post. Question by The Moody Blues is a lovely piece of prog rock. It’s a bit like Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well, in that it’s more like a two-parter, but both halves are great. Groovin’ with Mr Bloe was a B-side for a band called Wind that changed their name to Mr Bloe when this song became an accidental hit in the US. Although an unknown called Elton John recorded a version, it was ignored in favour of the harmonica-led soul original at last. It’s not bad. Then we’ve a couple of bangers. All Right Now by Free and Lola by The Kinks are still evergreen rock classics. Less famous is Neanderthal Man by session musicians Hotlegs, later known as 10cc. They were messing about with drum sounds in the studio when they stumbled upon their suitably primitive rock smasher. The rocksteady favourite You Can Get it if You Really Want was written and recorded by Jimmy Cliff before number 1 artist Desmond Dekker and the Aces released their version, which outdid Cliff’s. I find it a little overrated, to be honest. Then another total rock classic, and one of the greatest riffs of all time – Deep Purple’s Black Night. Patches is a forgotten soul track by Chairmen of the Board’s singer General Johnson, but blind singer Clarence Carter took it to number 2. It’s not aged well. Rounding a great year off is When I’m Dead and Gone by rock band McGuinness Flint. It’s pretty nice, and thanks to the mandolin is rather similar to Maggie May. Two of the band later departed to become Gallagher and Lyle.

The Best:

The Jackson 5 – I Want You Back

As you can see with such incredible competition, the winner of 1970 has to be pretty special. I nearly went with Suspicious Minds but few songs show the majestic uplifting beauty of pop at its best than this. It’s mad to think the Jacksons didn’t get a UK number 1 until 1977. I Want You Back, their debut, is still guaranteed to fill dance floors after all these years. Effervescent and sweet without being too sugary, it’s bloody brilliant. And whatever Michael Jackson later became, what a talent he was in 1970.

The Worst:

Mary Hopkin – Knock Knock, Who’s There

Young folk star Hopkin had recorded some great Paul McCartney material initially, including number 1 Those Were the Days, but this tune, which became the runner-up at the Eurovision Song Contest, is a big letdown. It’s perfect as a 70s Eurovision entry, and certainly better than the winner, but it’s the worst song in a very good year.

1971

Similar to 1970 but a lower rate of classics. But the first stirrings of glam are here, with the genre’s pioneers, T Rex, topping and tailing the year. The Pushbike Song by Australian band The Mixtures, is a very obvious copy of Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime, but I can’t help but enjoy it anyway. It’s followed by Another Day, which was the debut solo single by a Mr Paul McCartney. John Lennon may have slated this by comparing it to Yesterday in How Do You Sleep?, but unfairly so in my opinion. It’s a lovely single. A controversial classic next, as The Rolling Stones got to number 2 for the last time with Brown Sugar/Bitch/Let It Rock. The first track was until recently considered one of the band’s best, but in the wake of Black Lives Matter and #metoo, the lyrical references to the slave trade and rape have understandably seen this removed from the Stones setlist. Bitch is a decent track from Sticky Fingers, with a good guitar and brass riff, and Let It Rock is a so-so run-through an old Chuck Berry song at the University of Leeds. There must have been something in the air in 1971, as the next three tracks are all about death. Indiana Wants Me was inspired by Canadian country singer R Dean Taylor’s viewing of Bonnie and Clyde and is written from the point of view who murdered a man who insulted his woman, which seems somewhat of an overreaction. It’s not bad, atmospheric and ending with gunfire. Not as good as his best-known track There’s a Ghost in My House, though. Then there’s I Did What I Did for Maria by Sheffield singer Tony Christie, sounding just like Tom Jones here. This is from the POV of a widower on Death Row who is about to die for avenging the death of his wife. Interesting premise, but so-so as a song. Worth mentioning it was written and produced by 50s hitmaker Mitch Murray and Peter Callander, who wrote Georgie Fame’s 1968 number 1, The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde. They also wrote Christie’s 2005 number 1 Is This the Way to Amarillo. Then, Don’t Let It Die by Hurricane Smith. Norman Smith had been an engineer for The Beatles from 1963-65. Promoted to a producer, he worked with bands including Pink Floyd. He wrote this track as a warning abut the future of the Earth with Lennon in mind, but producer Mickie Most said Smith should release it himself. It’s pretty good, and Smith’s vocal is pretty weird, sounding slightly unhinged, even. Future glam stars The Sweet scored their first real hit with Co-Co, a catchy but cheesy calypso-style track. The New Seekers’ cover of Delaney & Bonnie’s Never Ending Song of Love is throwaway pap. Nancy Sinatra and her producer Lee Hazlewood, four years after her last number 1 Somethin’ Stupid, narrowly missed out with the duet Did You Ever, which I think is filthier than it first appears. Scottish popsters Middle of the Road followed up their number 1 Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep with Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, which isn’t quite as irritating as their chart-topper, at least but it’s throwaway nonsense. US funk rockers redbone liven things up somewhat with the spooky The Witch Queen of New Orleans. Tom Jones’s cover of a 50s track, Till, is typically overblown, but not very memorable. Marc Bolan returns to end the year with the lightweight but enjoyable Jeepster. T Rex really were on fire in the early 70s.

The Best:

T Rex – Ride a White Swan

And here’s the song that finally made Bolan, after years as a cult figure in Tyrannosaurus Rex, into a bona fide star. With only Bolan and percussionist Mickey Finn on board, it’s a fascinating bridge from the low-key whimsy of his former band into the electric, catchy pop template of T Rex’s future four number 1s and so much more.

The Worst:

Ray Stevens – Bridget the Midget (The Queen of the Blues)

Oh Ray, you really don’t do great with me, do you? On the basis of this and one of the worst chart-toppers of the 70s, The Streak, Stevens really was the master of awfully unfunny novelty crap. This is marginally better than that track, purely on the basis of a catchy piano riff. The rest is total shit. Pitched-up vocals from Stevens are meant to give the impression he is Bridget, a small, high-pitched singer. Fuck’s sake.

1972

Glam makes its presence felt with some classics and some that are best forgotten. But first, 11-year-old Scottish Opportunity Knocks winner Neil Reid with his soppy old cover of Mother of Mine. Pretty much forgotten now, unlike Don McLean’s American Pie. It’s better than his 1972 number 1 Vincent, but overfamiliarity with it makes me weary. Way too long, also. Ringo Starr! This is much more like it. His early 70s collaborations with fellow-Beatle George Harrison are well worth checking out, and Back Off Boogaloo is probably the best. Is it a Paul McCartney diss? Maybe, but it’s definitely very glam-sounding, that’s undeniable. Greek singer Vicky Leandros won Eurovision with Après Toi, and the English translation, Come What May, shows she had a great voice, but there’s not a lot to say about it otherwise. David Cassidy is next with a double A-side, Could It Be Forever?/Cherish. His voice is less irritating than it is on the number 1s he followed this up with, and I didn’t mind the former, but the latter is very wet and overlong, albeit with a nice climax (that’s what she said). I used to think Rocket Man was merely Elton John ripping off Space Oddity, but it’s grown on me over the last year or so. Great vocal and nice synth sound too. Won’t be a shock to hear I’d rather forget about Gary Glitter but unfortunately he crops up a lot now. Annoyingly though, Rock and Roll, Parts 1 and 2 still sounds good. But that’s down to producer Mike Leander. And at least Part 2 is an instrumental so we don’t even have to think about Glitter… except his voice is all over it still, particularly all those horrible yelping noises at the end… Then it’s Dr Hook and the Medicine Show’s Sylvia’s Mother. Nice idea, writing a song about a man ringing his ex to get her back, only for her mum to answer, but unfortunately the vocal is so overwrought it ruins it. Long before Jona Lewis was wishing he was home for Christmas, he was doing the Seaside Shuffle with Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs. Nice, jaunty little novelty track that makes me want to go for a paddle. After that we’ve the evergreen Children of the Revolution, a standout T Rex track that I actually prefer to his last two number 1s, Telegram Sam and Metal Guru. It’s a little different to Bolan’s usual fare thanks to the epic arrangement. Hotlegs became 10c with the release of doo-wop pastiche Donna, but it’s too similar to Oh! Darling by the Beatles, and not particularly funny. And here come the legendary Slade with Gudbuy T’Jane, an excellent ode to a woman who demonstrated a sex machine on a US chat show they appeared on.

The Best:

The Osmonds – Crazy Horses

Still astounds me how a Mormon boyband in effect pulled a ‘Monkees’ and decided to rock out and play their own instruments. Rehearsing in a basement, Wayne came up with the monster chugging riff, Merrill invented the melody and gave the verse vocal to Jay and Alan got the chords. Donny’s voice was breaking so he didn’t sing, but his organ was a stallion (that’s what she said), which, put through a wah-wah pedal, gave the song its hook. And what a hook. This ode to ecology had a great message, too. Their record label were understandably concerned before its release, but it did very well, particularly in the UK, and it bloody well deserved to.

The Worst:

The New Seekers – Beg, Steal or Borrow

Another Eurovision entry, this time for the UK. It came second but like the other contest entries so far, it’s pretty dull. But they perform it well. I do have a little respect for The New Seekers – they seem to have had a bit more going for them than the usual light entertainment singers of the era.

1973

Peak glam, with only a few pop songs getting a look in. T Rex are back for the last time with Solid Gold Easy Action, which is only an average Bolan track, but that’s still better than most of the competition. Very much of its time is the rowdy left-wing folk singalong Part of the Union by The Strawbs. I’ve read differing opinions on this over the years. Is it pro-unions or a pisstake. Probably the former. Either way, it’s an earworm and a reminder of days when unions held more power. The Faces next, with the rather lacklustre Cindy Incidentally. It’s no Stay with Me or Ooh La La. Sadly Glitter was at the peak of his powers this year with two more famous stompers. Hello! Hello! I’m Back Again is the least revolting of the two, and of course is better known these days for being knicked by Oasis. The Sweet are much more welcome with their two – Hell Raiser and particularly The Ballroom Blitz are great raunchy rockers, which probably went down a storm live, and bassist Steve Priest’s camp interjections are always fun. I like The Carpenters in small doses, but Yesterday Once More is a bit too saccharine, however lovely the production is. Barry Blue was perhaps too lightweight to be remembered for his glam single Dancing (on a Saturday Night), but it’s pretty good, if a bit on the retro side, something which occurred more with glam a year later. The least glam-sounding glam song here is MY FRIEИD STAИ by Slade – their comeback single after drummer Don Powell’s car crash. I like the fact they styled this song with what looks to be Satanic writing. But the song is a bit of a curio, sounding more like a Chas and Dave tune. The Osmonds are back with Let Me In, which was familiar with me thanks to The Avalanches sampling it on Since I Left You in 2000. The rock of Crazy Horses is gone and replaced with the more familiar commercial pop sound, but it’s good at what it does. Judging them by their biggest hits, it seems The Osmonds were better as a group than their various offshoots. Don’t even get me started on Little Jimmy… The black glove of Alvin Stardust is one of the most recognisable glam sights of yore, but as I discovered when reviewing his number 1 Jealous Mind, it’s actually songwriter Pete Shelley singing that and this better, more famous track, My Coo-ca-Choo. Rounding things off is Marie Osmond with an old-fashioned cover of country track Paper Roses. Mad to think this was higher up the charts that December than Wizzard…

The Best:

David Bowie – The Jean Genie

It’s also mad to think David Bowie didn’t get to number 1 during his Ziggy Stardust phase and we have to settle with this instead. Bizarrely written and recorded at the same time as another Bo Diddley soundalike, number 1 Block Buster !, Bowie missed out on the top spot. And despite being a massive Bowie hardcore fan, I said in my review that I preferred The Sweet’s song (just). Yet that didn’t win by favourite number 1 of 1973. Confused? Me too. Anyway, allegedly inspired by Jean Genet and Iggy Pop, The Jean Genie always sounds great, even when you hear it for the millionth time.

The Worst:

Gary Glitter – Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!) – Eugh. I hate to say it but despite despising this despicable chancer, a lot of Glitter songs still sound good. The guitar sound at the start of this is cool, but as usual I’m going to say it’s down to Leander. Lyrically, this is the most sickening Glitter tune to be forced to hear these days. Forever a black stain on the charts.

1974

Just as the standard of number 1s fell with the decline of glam, so did the runners-up. Even more so, in fact. The year begins with an overlong blast of circus music courtesy of Leo Sayer and his first hit, The Show Must Go On. It’s an odd little tune, with interesting lyrics but an overwrought vocal. Teenage Rampage is OK but probably the least impressive tune by The Sweet here. Then it’s the surprise comeback of The Hollies with a cover of Albert Hammond’s The Air That I Breathe. It’s perhaps best known these days for the verses being so similar to part of Radiohead’s Creep, but that takes away from the memorable chorus. Country singer Charlie Rich’s The Most Beautiful Girl is decent I suppose, if you like the genre, which I don’t much. Tiger Feet was definitely a late-glam era highlight and one of my favourite number 1s of 1974, but Mud’s The Cat Crept In just sounds like a tossed-off retread. The guitar is practically the same. The Bay City Rollers had two chart-toppers but Shang-a-Lang was the start of Roller-mania. It’s a very irritating song – I really don’t like the chorus. Finally, a song to shake things up a bit… It was This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us. Combining inventive glam, rather than its derivative aspect, with music hall and progressive pop, this is the song that alerted the world to Sparks. Produced by Muff Winwood of former chart-toppers The Spencer Davis Group, fact fans. Back to 50s-sounding glam with Showaddywaddy’s Hey Rock and Roll. The Leicester band were riding high from their New Faces win and penned this debut single. which features their name in the backing vocals. It’s terribly unoriginal, but the stomping in the chorus would have been quite fun for children I suppose. It wasn’t just rock that was low on ideas in 1974, as Kissin’ in the Back Row of the Movies by The Drifters sounds like 50s soul rather than genres like the Philly Sound, up soon. The band were unsure whether singing about picking their girl up from school when her homework was done was a good idea – imagine that happening now… Where do I know Stephanie De Sykes’ Born with a Smile on My Face from? Is it from a 90s comedy? Wherever I first heard it makes me nostalgic upon hearing it again, but can you be nostalgic for something you can’t even remember?! The Stylistics’ You Make Me Feel Brand New was more contemporary. Love the sitar at the start and tenor Airrion Love’s vocal is much more pleasant on the ears than the falsetto of Russell Thompkins Jr. Donny and Marie Osmond team up with the predictably boring easy listening tune I’m Leaving It Up to You. And the next one, Rock Me Gently by Andy Kim, isn’t much better. The electric piano gives it a nice sound, but it’s an average bubblegum pop song from one of the guys who sang with The Archies. Slade made the gritty film Flame in 1974, seemingly to prove there was more to them than the crazy outfits and excellent pop songs. Far Far Away is a decent attempt at a more mature sound, capturing the melancholy involved with life on the road. Other than the year’s best and worst, that only leaves Bachman Turner Overdrive’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. As happy and catchy as this is, I can’t hear it without thinking of Smashie and Nicey, which makes it hard to do anything but laugh at it.

The Best:

Queen – Killer Queen

I can take or leave some of Queen’s output, which has often been ruined for me by overfamiliarity. But this, their breakthrough hit, has always been one of my favourites. This super-camp music hall ditty was about a high-class call girl, and was unusual in that Freddie Mercury came up with the lyrics before the tune. It’s a song that always sounds fresh and a large part of that is, ironically, the very 70s production.

The Worst:

Gary Glitter – Oh Yes! You’re Beautiful

Oh fuck off already! I wonder if the song title came to Glitter as he stared out into the sea of children at his gigs. Thankfully, he won’t trouble us anymore after this.

1975

An interesting, varied mix this year, topped and tailed with Christmas songs. Wombling Merry Christmas is fun, even if the concept of Mike Batt and co dressing up as Wombles seems so odd in modern times. It’s a very Bay City Rollers-style sound. Ralph McTell’s Streets of London next, which is the musical equivalent of a worn, comfy pair of slippers, even if the lyrics are actually quite depressing. I prefer Gloria Gaynor’s Never Can Say Goodbye to I Will Survive. Originally recorded by The Jackson 5, Gaynor’s version is considered one of the first disco tunes. A quick blast of the Glitter sound that’s OK to still enjoy. However, The Glitter Band never actually played on the paedophile’s records, only backing him live sometimes. Goodbye My Love isn’t up to scratch though, other than the nice guitar lick. The Carpenters are back but again, there’s better songs by Richard and Karen out there. Please Mr Postman is considered a classic, but it’s not a patch on The Beatles version. The Sweet broke away from Chinnichap in 1975 and produced a re-recording of Fox on the Run themselves. Singer Brian Connolly sounds more like Noddy Holder here and there’s a nice Roxy Music vibe to the keyboards. Not bad at all. Aww, it’s Minnie Riperton’s classic Lovin’ You next, which is excellent. Co-produced by Stevie Wonder, the melody was created by Riperton as a distraction for her daughter Maya, which is what she’s singing at the end. DJs faded it out though in case it was misinterpreted as a religious chant. The birdsong was a happy accident they decided to leave in. Showaddywaddy are back with their inferior version of Eddie Cochran’s Three Steps to Heaven. The spoken-word section is laughably sinister. Now, here’s a surprise… Ray Stevens, performing a country song straight… and it’s actually not bad! I like the banjo, Stevens has a great falsetto and it builds to a rousing finale. Roger Whittaker, much like his mate Des O’Connor, is seemingly unconcerned with getting emotion into a song. The Last Farewell is a predictably wet song about sailing from 1971, which was held off the top spot by Rod Stewart’s… Sailing. Leo Sayer is back with Moonlighting, sadly not the excellent theme to the 80s US TV series, but not bad. A close second place this year is Roxy Music’s Love is the Drug. I hadn’t even realised just how devoid of sex these songs had been up to now (I’m not counting Glitter in this). Excellent slinky groove to this one. We all know Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing of course, and I’m still surprised it never made it to number 1. Sadly overfamiliarity and an air of cheese kind of spoils it these days, but it certainly is catchy as hell. Strangest song here is Laurel & Hardy’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. Apparently the silent comedy duo’s films were very popular on TV at the time and John Peel had championed this tune. Due to its age, it has an eerie, haunting melancholy to it that’s really interesting.

The Best:

Greg Lake – I Believe in Father Christmas

Combining sombre folk with Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kiljé Suite, this is one of my favourite Christmas songs. Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Greg Lake wrote the music and his former King Crimson bandmate Peter Sinfield wrote the lyrics as a protest at the commercialisation and loss of childhood belief in the festive season. Despite, or perhaps because of the downbeat, contemplative mood, it’s really beautiful and in sharp contrast to the usual party tone of other Christmas classics.

The Worst:

Guys ‘n’ Dolls – There’s a Whole Lot of Loving This sounds like it belongs on an advert for biscuits. And that’s exactly what it was. Recorded by session singers including Edison Lighthouse‘s Tony Burrows, this was used as a jingle for McVities. Such was its popularity, the group Guys ‘n’ Dolls were quickly formed to record a new version. However, they didn’t get their voices on this single as they weren’t assembled in time, so Burrows and co’s voices remain. There’s not a lot else to it other than the resemblance to Brotherhood of Man.

1976

Hmm, so this is interesting. The number 1s of 1976 were one of the worst years of the 70s, all in all. The standard of the runners-up is higher. In fact, there isn’t a truly awful track. Sailor are best known for Girls, Girls, Girls, but A Glass of Champagne did better at the time, and it’s not bad at all – albeit, a little bit too much of a Roxy Music pastiche. There were some weird phenomenons in the 70s, one of which was the CB radio craze which resulted in the novelty hit Convoy, credited to CW McCall (alias of Bill Fries). It’s, like all great novelty tracks, very catchy, and McCall’s voice was perfect for the part. Love Really Hurts Without You was Billy Ocean’s first of many hits. He’d do better, but it’s a well-remembered slice of soul, sounding very Motown. More soul follows courtesy of Barry White’s You See the Trouble with Me, co-written by Ray Parker Jr (Ghostbusters). It’s alright, but is sorely lacking the sex you’d expect from the Walrus of Love. I certainly haven’t had enough of Silly Love Songs – it’s one of my favourite Wings tracks. It’s a close runner-up for best of the year and is the cheeriest ‘Fuck you’ to Macca’s critics you’ll ever here. Love the harmonies in the breakdown near the end. A Little Bit More is one of Dr Hook’s (as they were known by then) best-known songs and I prefer it to Sylvia’s Mother, but those lyrics can’t help but sound a bit, well, rapey. Paul McCartney had a very good 1976 as Wings are back again with Let ‘Em In. I really like this tune, but unfortunately, it shows the problem with McCartney at times without John Lennon to bounce off. You’ve got this cool, moody music, set to lyrics about friends and family… just… knocking on his door, or ringing the bell. Shame. One of my favourite Rod Stewart songs is The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II) so it’s great to be reminded of that. Far removed from some of his more laddish tendencies, this is Stewart being sadly inspired by the killing of a friend of his band Faces. It’s a beautiful tune and a subject matter realty with sensitively. Or at least, Part I is. Part II is OK, but it’s a complete rip-off of The Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down. The Real Thing are only really remembered for their great chart-topper You to Me Are Everything, but Can’t Get By Without You is also a good stab of disco, soul and funk. It must have surely inspired the theme to US 80s cop drama Hill Street Blues, which is what I thought it was when it came on. You Make Me Feel Like Dancing is one of Leo Sayer’s better tracks – he’s well-suited to this bright and breezy disco tune. Queen very nearly made it two Christmas number 1s in a row, and Somebody to Love has similarities to Bohemian Rhapsody. But it’s not as inventive. Nonetheless, it’s one of their most famous songs and a real rock anthem.

The Best:

Candi Staton – Young Hearts Run Free

Over lunch one day, Candi Staton’s producer David Crawford apparently asked the soul singer what was going on in her life and she told him about the abusive relationship she was struggling to find a way out of. Crawford took notes and promised her he’d write a song that would last forever. He achieved that with Young Hearts Run Free, which to me is the very definition of ‘bittersweet’. Set to a lovely upbeat disco backing, Staton isn’t jealous of the young people she sees in love, she just hopes they don’t end up like her. Many of the millions who’ve danced to this over the years may not have noticed how bleak the lyrics often are, which makes the beauty of the melody that much more effective. One of the best disco songs of the decade.

The Worst:

Demis Roussos – When Forever Has Gone

The Greek singer-songwriter was very big in 1976. OK, he was very big in general, but Excerpts from ‘The Roussos Phenomenon’ (EP), a spin-off from a hit BBC documentary, was the first EP to top the charts. This was the follow-up, but it’s not as good as the title track to that, Forever and Ever. It’s a bit sickly. Not by any means diabolical, but as I said, 1976 was a good year for number 2s.

1977

Disco is easily the most popular genre in a very strong year, full of great soul tracks that lit up the dancefloor. One of the best kicks things off. Heatwave’s Boogie Nights, written by Rod Temperton, has an amazing jazz-funk intro and outro, which opens out into a cool groove. David Soul’s Going in With My Eyes Open came between his two number 1s that year. It’s a rather bog standard ballad and the worst of the three tracks. Red Light Spells Danger by Billy Ocean is better than his last entry here. It has a great moody bassline and weird vocal effect to ramp up the tension. Then it’s the magnificent Stevie Wonder at the peak of his powers with his tribute to musical greats, in particular Sir Duke Ellington. Very nearly my pick for 1977. Southern soul singer Joe Tex’s biggest hit was Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman) and rightly so. The bass is excellent here and I love the groove in the extended outro. Greg Lake’s back with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer this time. Their version of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man is a surprisingly punchy piece of prog rock, and is easy to enjoy. Lo and behold, here’s a Boney M track I don’t mind. If I ignore the cheesy interjections, Ma Baker is a nice disco tune and once again, a large part of that is down to the bass. Showaddywaddy return, once again with their feet firmly in the past, this time with a cover of Marv Johnson’s You Got What It Takes. Mediocre. Back to the disco next with the excellent Magic Fly. This one-hit wonder for the French band in spacesuits was highly influential, on fellow countrymen Air and Daft Punk, to name just a couple. Highly recommended. Black is Black had been a number 2 for Los Bravos in 1966 and here it is, revamped for the dancefloor by French vocal trio La Belle Epoque. It works well, with rhythmic strings and an usual echo on the vocals. Queen serve up another rock anthem at the end of the year. We Are the Champions is understandably one of their most famous tunes, and though some find it on the smug side, there’s no denying its mass appeal. A team of scientists declared it the catchiest pop song of all time in 2011.

The Best:

Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen

Here’s a timely tune. Created for the Silver Jubilee, the highest charting punk song of all time is being rereleased for the Platinum Jubilee. Sadly, its scabrous lyrics are more relevant than ever, as Johnny Rotten sings ‘And there’s no future/In England’s dreaming’. Words that could very easily be aimed at the horrendous, post-Brexit government led by our worst Prime Minister of all time, Boris Johnson. There’s enough proof out there to suggest that God Save the Queen was actually number 1 in the week of the Jubilee, but the establishment and music industry got together to ensure Rod Stewart was at pole position to save face. I prefer disco to punk nearly always, but this is an important moment in music that shouldn’t be forgotten and shook up pop culture forever.

The Worst:

Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – The Floral Dance

As weird 70s novelty hits go, this is a doozy. An instrumental track that had lyrics when originally recorded in 1911, this version was rearranged by a West Yorkshire brass band and shot up the charts at Christmas. Why, I’ve no idea. If anyone could tell me, please do. Such was its popularity, Radio One DJ legend Terry Wogan recorded a version soon after. Though less successful at the time, it’s the better known of the two now.

1978

After such a good year, 1978 is a big disappointment. It’s nearly exclusively 50s and 60s throwbacks, which I’m not too keen on and it’s also the year of Grease, which I actually love. I know, this is confusing… Doo-wop revival nine-piece Darts are first up with Come Back My Love, originally from 1955. It left little impression on me. New wave makes its debut here as Blondie scored their first hit with Denis. It may be a surprise that despite how great the New Yorkers undoubtedly are, I’m not that keen on this. Could be because it’s a cover of a 1963 doo-wop song, originally called Denise. Sadly it’s the only new wave tune to make it to number 2. Darts again with The Boy from New York City, which was originally from 1964. This is actually OK – possibly because it’s by renowned hitmakers Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. Then it’s, er, The Smurf Song by Father Abraham. Originally only 1,000 copies of this promo for the Belgian children’s characters were made. It somehow became huge because, er, it was the 70s. I loved the 80s animated series as a child, but this is just weird. Best of the bunch so far is a song I don’t think I’d ever heard before. Substitute had been a Righteous Brothers song three years previous but this version was by South African all-girl rockers Clout. It’s got a great chorus, really infectious. Darts are back for a third time and we’re in the doldrums again. Unlike their previous hits, It’s Raining was an original. However, it’s still retro and poor too. I like Rose Royce’s disco-soul ballad Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, mainly due to the early use of the LinnDrum. It’s followed by Boney M and again, not a bad one by their standards. Rasputin is probably their best song. Songs from the Grease soundtrack were everywhere that year, with You’re the One That I Want and Summer Nights enjoying 16 weeks in total in the top spot. Sandy was kept from the top spot by the latter. This John Travolta solo song was written specifically from the movie and it’s pretty fun, especially his naff way of singing ‘why-aye-aye-oh-why’.

The Best:

Olivia Newton-John – Hopelessly Devoted to You

OK, this is a surprise I guess. Like I said, not a fan in general of 50s/60s rock’n’roll tributes, or musicals in fact. But seeing Grease at a young age left its mark and you can’t deny the power of nostalgia. This Olivia Newton-John vehicle was another that didn’t feature in the original musical. It was written by Shadows member John Farrar and was a last-minute addition for the film. There are a few better songs technically in this section (although not that many, poor year in general), but it’s fun to belt out, so it wins, OK?

The Worst:

Showaddywaddy – I Wonder Why

The Leicester retro rock’n’roll act’s cover of a Dion and the Belmonts 1958 hit is lazy, it’s not a great song anyway and I’ve definitely had my fill of this genre now.

1979

As with the number 1s, 1979 is a strong year for runner-ups, thanks largely to new wave. One of the most famous bands of the decade brings things down at either end of the year though, surprisingly. But we’ve a disco belter in the Village People’s In the Navy. I think I may actually prefer this to Y.M.C.A. London new wave outfit Squeeze have a strong showing with their two biggest hits. Cool for Cats, at number 2 the day I was born, is my favourite of the two with its excellent disco groove and cockney vocals from Chris Difford. He should sing more often. Also love the synth breakdown from Jools Holland. Some Girls by Racey is infectious, even if it is a bit naff. Chinnichap’s mark is all over it, but it seems a bit old-fashioned and naff for 1979. Nonetheless, I have a soft spot for it. One of my favourites of the year is the ironic one-hit wonder Pop Muzik by M, aka singer/musician Robin Scott, who reminds me of Bryan Ferry. Which is also ironic as he’s followed by Roxy Music with the classy, melancholic Dance Away. Squeeze returned with the nicely acerbic working-class humour of Up the Junction. Then there’s a gear change with the wonderful lovers rock classic Silly Games by Dennis Bovell. I’ve loved this track since it took centre stage in Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock and that vocal by Janet Kay is amazing. More reggae to follow, but Can’t Stand Losing You isn’t one of The Police’s better tracks if you ask me. I prefer their number 1s that year – Message in a Bottle and especially Walking on the Moon. Not sure what to make of BA Robertson’s Bang Bang. It doesn’t feel like authentic new wave but it is a quite good facsimile, I guess. Blondie return with Dreaming, one of their less famous hits but one I enjoyed as the theme to the final series of The Deuce. Runner-up for track of the year is Queen’s effortless Elvis tribute Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Apparently Mercury had it down in five minutes. The final number 2 of the decade was ABBA’s naff ballad I Have a Dream. It’s one of their most famous tracks but this is the side of ABBA that turns me off – that Europop anthem sound leaves me cold. How horrible that Westlife’s cover of this was the final number 1 of the 20th century.

The Best:

Elvis Costello and The Attractions – Oliver’s Army

My favourite track by new wave firebrand Elvis Costello, Oliver’s Army is probably the world’s only glossy pop track about The Troubles. The addition of piano flourishes to remind the public of ABBA’s classic Dancing Queen adds to the brilliance of this tune, inspired by seeing young British soldiers patrolling the streets of Belfast. Costello notes here how, wherever the war (and others are certainly noted), ‘they always get a working class boy to do the killing’. Oliver’s Army has been controversial of late, much like Brown Sugar, due to the lyric ‘Only takes one itchy trigger/One more widow, one less white nigger’. Despite somehow passing censorship on the radio for more than 30 years, in 2013 BBC 6 Music began removing the phrase. This caused controversy, with fans of the song noting its anti-war message. ‘White nigger’ was a slur used against Irish Catholics and Costello’s grandfather was called it while serving the British Army. In 2020 Costello pointed out that censorship only served to highlight the phrase and so he announced he would no longer perform the song and asked radio stations to not play it. I can see both sides of this and it’s hard to know what’s best. Nonetheless, it’s a great song.

ABBA – Chiquitita

ABBA. Infuriating. Dancing Queen is one of the finest number 1s of the 70s and the had an amazing hitrate. But they also came out with some crap. I Had a Dream I’ve already noted, but they opened 1979 with this pap, inspired by the far superior Simon and Garfunkel track El Condor Pasa (If I Could).

The Best 70s Number 2 Ever is…

Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen

It’s a common belief that punk changed the landscape of pop music, putting an end to staid MOR and prog rock. While this has been exaggerated somewhat (it amuses me to discover that ELP overtook the Sex Pistols at number 2 after the Silver Jubilee), hearing this in the context of the biggest hits of the decade really does hammer home how scary and exciting this must have sounded in 1977. Yes, punk didn’t set the charts alight too much after this, but its influence is soon seen in all the new wave that came in its wake and set the scene for the 80s. And as i’ve already pointed out, the message of this song is sadly more relevant than ever. As the Platium Jubilee begins, the UK has never been more divided. What a shame there’s no equivalent to punk and the Pistols in 2022. A Disney+ biopic doesn’t count.

The Worst 70s Number 2 Ever is…

Gary Glitter – Oh Yes! You’re Beautiful

There may have been worse songs in the 70s, but no other artist sickens in the way Gary Glitter does. And this time there’s little you can say that’s positive about the song either. Glam at its most mundane – in slave to the 50s, with a lyric that can’t sound anything but sickening in 2022. A symbol of everything that was wrong with the 70s. Lazy… derivative… tasteless… fake… played by Jimmy Savile on the radio, no doubt. Rotten to the core.

The Outro

As usual, my journey through the number 2s of the 70s often mirrored the chart-toppers. We’ve rock holding centre stage at the start, with a fascinating mix of classics. Then glam becomes the biggest scene and it’s exciting at first, before running out of steam a few years later. However, things get interesting in 1976, because for the first time that I can remember, the number 2s are of a higher standard in general than the number 1s. And 1977 is a hell of a year, full of disco classics and lesser-known soul and funk tunes for the dancefloor. Boney M, whose chart-toppers I dissed, come out of this better. 1978, the year in which the biggest selling songs of the year started to get more interesting thanks to new wave, instead fares badly here, thanks to the seemingly never-ending array of 50s revival acts. Thankfully, we go out with a bang once more with 1979. In general, the standard of the 70s number 2s is interesting, but not as high as the 60s.

Right, that’s it for this blog for the foreseeable. I’ll be back to announce the release date of the next book eventually. Wish me luck!

412. Elvis Presley – Way Down (1977)

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The Intro

After a very successful comeback in the late 60s, Elvis suffered a slow, ignoble decline throughout the 70s. It took his demise for him to achieve his 17th UK number 1, which pointed the way to what could have been if he had returned to form once more.

Before

A live recording of The Wonder of You was Presley’s final chart-topper in his lifetime in 1970. Soon after he was the subject of documentary film and accompanying album Elvis: That’s the Way It Is. It was during this time that he first began to wear the jumpsuits that would become an emblem of his fall from grace. He also began moving away from the roots sound of his Memphis sessions to less inspirational material. Not that it had any impact on his UK sales at that point – he continued to chart in the top 10 for a few years yet. Presley ended the year meeting President Nixon. Both paranoid men at this point, ‘The King’ slated The Beatles, something that still upset Paul McCartney decades later, who felt betrayed after the band had met him back in 1965 and got on well.

In 1972 another documentary film, Elvis on Tour, won the Golden Globe for Best Documentary Film. It was to be his final cinema release before he died. The single Burning Love became his best known song of the final stretch of his career and reached seven in the UK. The same year, he and Priscilla separated. To some who knew him, it was a blow from which he never recovered.

1973 began promisingly. The TV special Aloha from Hawaii was a global smash and the accompanying album his last US number 1 in his lifetime. But his health was deteriorating dramatically. He was hospitalised twice and spent three days in a coma the first time. That October his divorce was finalised. Despite all the drama, he was committing to an ever-increasing run of live shows.

In 1974 he arrived for a concert at the University of Maryland by falling out of his limousine to his knees. Heavily drugged, he spent the first half an hour of the performance holding his mic stand like it was a post and slurred so badly, members of his band were crying. Increasingly garish in his outfits and singing to an ever-ageing generation, he became rock’n’roll’s answer to Liberace. The supercool Presley of his comeback in 1968 was a distant memory. His pop material began slipping from the charts as his waist expanded. Despite this, he did have some hit singles – Promised Land in 1974 (number nine) and My Boy in 1975 (number five).

In 1976 came Presley’s penultimate LP. From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee featured the single Hurt, an acclaimed cover which hinted at the turmoil behind the tragic, bloated man he had become. RCA had sent a recording studio to Graceland and he recorded enough material that year for one more album. Moody Blue‘s title track was a country hit in the US. But as 1977 came around, he was rapidly getting worse. Concerts were cut short, if they happened at all, and Presley slurred so badly he was intelligible at times.

Review

Despite the concern over the state of Presley, nobody knew Way Down would be the last single released in his lifetime. So that title proved rather ironic. It’s a strange beast, because the opening is really promising. It sounds as if The King was about to discover disco! The lyrics are pretty exciting too. Presley is about to get it on with someone and is likening the passion he’s feeling to a sin, so the ‘way down’ in question isn’t about him being buried but associating sex with the devil. Which is still an appropriate way for Elvis to go out considering his faith in God running parallel to his love of women. Girls in fact, if all the stories are true. Yes another musical icon, one of the biggest of all time, was allegedly a paedophile.

Way Down is ultimately a disappointing farewell thanks to how disjointed it is. The disco boogie of the verses is replaced by a boring chorus that’s rather hollow and symbolises the emptiness of the Vegas years. JD Sumner’s deep ‘Way on down’ sounds like a spoof of the backing vocals of The Jordanaires that appeared on many of Presley’s greatest work. It’s fascinating in the way it signifies where he may have headed next though. And for another clue, consider the fact Mungo Jerry’s Ray Dorset wrote disco classic It Feels Like I’m In Love with Elvis in mind. Kelly Marie took it to number 1 in 1980.

After

The same month Way Down was released, Presley was filmed at two concerts, to be made into a TV special, Elvis in Concert, broadcast after his death. He was in such bad shape it was only aired once and is unlikely to ever be officially released. On 26 June he performed for the last time, at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. On 1 April Elvis: What Happened? was published. This book, written by three fired bodyguards, was the first time his drug addictions were made public. He had offered money to the publishers to halt its release. By this point, he was suffering glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage and an enlarged colon, each possibly caused and definitely made worse by his drug abuse.

On 16 August, Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis to start another tour. That afternoon his girlfriend Ginger Alden found him lying dead on his bathroom floor. She later said it appeared he had fallen off the toilet and not moved from the spot. The official cause of death given was cardiac arrest. Over the years opinions have differed to what happened but some believe it was a phenomenon known as the Valsava manoeuvre – he basically was so constipated he suffered a heart attack while straining. What a way to go.

The world went into mourning. There had never been a pop star like Presley but he spawned millions of imitators. Two days after the death of Elvis Presley, his funeral was held at Graceland. Outside the gates a car hit a group of fans, killing two. Way Down began to climb the charts and was soon number 1, remaining there for five weeks.

The Outro

It feels like I’ve spent years writing about Elvis. I started this blog in 2017 and when I reached the year of 1957 I was so relieved. Not exactly what you’d call a hardcore fan, it gave me a new sense of understanding of the seismic shift he caused in music and pop culture. He’s come back on and off ever since, for better or worse. And he’ll be back again posthumously eventually – though not for a while.

And yet his star is fading. His fans are dying and his significance lessens with every passing year. Stories of his fondness of teenage girls not exactly helping matters. And nearly 10 years of glitzy Vegas shows while still alive have remained the archetype of the fallen hero.

But watch an early clip of him swivelling his hips to Hound Dog. Listen to him crooning Can’t Help Falling in Love. Performing That’s All Right on the comeback special Elvis. Or Suspicious Minds in 1969. When he was good he was very, very good.

The Info

Written by

Layng Martine Jr.

Producer

Felton Jarvis

Weeks at number 1

5 (3 September-7 October)

Trivia

Births

4 September: Gymnast Zita Cusack
8 September: Freestyle swimmer Gavin Meadows
12 September: Singer-songwriter James McCartney
15 September: Actor Tom Hardy

Deaths

4 September: lllustrator Lynton Lamb
6 September: Mathematician John Littlewood
14 September: Conductor Leopold Stokowski/Welsh rugby league player Jim Sullivan
16 September: T-Rex singer-songwriter Marc Bolan
25 September: Sculptor William McMillan

Meanwhile…

16 September: The UK had another star to mourn. Glam rock icon Marc Bolan of T-Rex died in a car crash in Barnes, London, two weeks before he turned 30. See here for more information.

19 September: FA Cup holders Manchester United were expelled from the European Cup Winners’ Cup after their fans rioted in France during a first round, first leg game with AS Saint-Etienne five days previous that ended as a 1-1 draw.

26 September: Entrepreneur Freddie Laker launched his budget airline Skytrain. The first single fare from Gatwick to New York City cost £59 compared to the normal price of £186.
Also on this day, UEFA reinstated Manchester United to the European Cup Winners’ Cup on appeal. But they were ordered to play their return leg against AS Saint-Etienne at least 120 miles away from their stadium at Old Trafford. 

3 October: Undertakers went on strike in London, leaving more than 800 corpses unburied.

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

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The Intro

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

Before

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

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

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

Review

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

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

After

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

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

The Outro

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

The Info

Written by

Christopher Dowden

Producers

Mike Curb & Perry Botkin Jr

Weeks at number 1

5 (23 December 1972-26 January 1973)

The Info

Births

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

Deaths

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

Meanwhile…

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

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

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

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

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

313. T. Rex – Metal Guru (1972)

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The Intro

With a triumphant ‘Aaaaawh yeah!’ to kick things off, Metal Guru was a return to form after the lacklustre Telegram Sam. It was their fourth number 1 single, but it was to be their last chart-topper, and Bolan would be dead only five years later.

Before

March 1972 was a busy time for the band, with two nights headlining at the Empire Pool, Wembley, filmed by Ringo Starr, who was to direct a T. Rex film, Born to Boogie. That same month the group began recording their third album The Slider. It was made at Château d’Hérouville near Paris, France, after Elton John suggested it as a way to avoid paying tax. Produced once more by Visconti, it captured T. Rextasy at its peak, but the fall was to be steep.

Metal Guru was rightly picked to be the opening track and gets the LP off to a blistering start. Bolan had been inspired to write about religion, and when explaining the message behind the song, proclaimed to believe in a god but wasn’t religious. Metal Guru was to represent all gods. Its mentions of the guru sitting in an ‘armour plated chair’, ‘all alone without a telephone’ create a vague image of a godhead who can communicate without the aid of BT, but as usual it’s an excuse for Bolan to conjure up some brilliant lines, and some terrible ones, even within the same verse. Consider;

‘Metal Guru has it been, just like a silver-studded sabre-tooth dream
I’II be clean you know pollution machine, oh yeah’

First line, brilliant, second, not great.

Review

Fortunately the music behind Metal Guru is better. No great change to what had come before, but the similarities aren’t as obvious as Telegram Sam, and the sound is bigger and more muscular without sounding bloated, which it often became once Visconti stopped working with Bolan. The ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ chant brings to mind the end of Hot Love, but rather than comparing it to past glories, you’re likely to notice how much Panic by The Smiths sounds like it, which Morrissey and Marr did deliberately, both being huge T. Rex fans.

After

Metal Guru enjoyed a month at number 1, and with a new album set for release later that summer and the film to follow, it seemed T. Rex would be around for a long time to come. The Slider is very much Electric Warrior Part Two, but that’s no bad thing, and with tracks like Baby Strange, it’s a great glam time capsul. But Born to Boogie, released in December, was a surreal mess of a movie, blasted by critics but loved by fans. It was Bolan’s very own Magical Mystery Tour.

Children of the Revolution was released inbetween the two projects, and although it was another excellent single, but it missed the top spot. They also recorded fourth album Tanx. Finally moving on from the sound of the last two LPs, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman were ditched as backing vocalists and replaced with a gospel sound. It’s patchy at best.

Much better was the standalone single 20th Century Boy, released two months after Tanx in March 73. Muscular and sparky, it’s the first T. Rex song I ever heard, and still my favourite, thanks to its use in a Levi’s advert starring Brad Pitt in 1991, having been re-released at the time.

Although Bolan shouldn’t be criticised for finally trying to develop his sound, it came too late. His friend/rival David Bowie was now racing ahead thanks to his Ziggy Stardust creation, and Slade were the most popular glam outfit. Bolan was also putting on weight, no longer that attractive, elfin glam god. 1974 album Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow – A Creamed Cage in August was credited to ‘Marc Bolan & T. Rex’. The line-up was expanded to feature second guitarist Jack Green and pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole, and Bolan’s lover Gloria Jones featured in backing singers The Cosmic Choir. It’s an interesting listen, but the magic was getting harder to find. They were dropped in the US before the album could be released, and drummer Bill Legend quit.

Soon after Bolan’s already huge ego became out of control. He sacked Visconti and Mickey Finn left the group. The single Zip Gun Boogie was released as a solo single but performed so badly he took on the T. Rex mantle again.

He produced the next album Bolan’s Zip Gun (1975) himself, and it was savaged. The music press mocked him for his weight gain and he became a tax exile in Monte Carlo. The production became even more far-out on Futuristic Dragon, featuring disco backings and even a sitar. It also performed badly, but it’s a pretty interesting listen.

Single I Love to Boogie, also released in 1976, was a return to a simplistic sound, and with punk on the rise, suddenly a comeback was on the cards. Bolan slimmed down and toured with punk pioneers The Damned. He set to work on Dandy in the Underworld, released in March 1977 to critical acclaim.

Six months later, he was even fronting his own TV show. Marc, broadcast over six weeks on ITV, saw Bolan introducing some of his favourite new punk bands including The Jam and Generation X, as well as T. Rex performing old and new songs, albeit miming. The final episode featured none other than Bowie, then producing some of the most adventurous music of his life, produced by, ironically, Visconti. Both singers were glad to see each other and wrote a song together, Madman, before recording the show. In an eerie symbolic premonition of what was to come, during their duet, Bolan tripped on a microphone cable and fell off the stage. This final episode of Marc was broadcast on 20 September, four days after Bolan’s fatal accident.

According to Vicky Aram, a former nightclub singer who had been invited to discuss recording with Bolan after a party, she was driving behind Bolan’s Mini, being driven by his girlfriend Jones and with Bolan beside her, when the Mini hit a steel-reinforced fence post after failing to negotiate a small humpback bridge near Barnes, south-west London. She found the car near a sycamore tree (now a rock shrine). Bolan had died from a horrific head injury due to an eye bolt in the fence, and Jones was severely injured.

Of the classic T. Rex line-up, only Legend remains. Guitarist Steve Currie played with Chris Spedding before moving to the Algarve in Portugal, where he too died in a car crash in 1981 in Portugal. Finn played as a session musician for The Soup Dragons and The Blow Monkeys before his death in 2003 of possible liver or kidney failure.

The Outro

Bolan’s star shone relatively briefly compared to some musical legends, but it also shone brighter than many. Were it not for him, who knows if glam rock would ever have happened. He took a potentially moribund decade and made it fun, sexy and cool. Pop had been declining ever since The Beatles had split, and Bolan brought it back to life. It’s likely that his 1977 comeback would have been short-lived, as his musical range was limited, but we’ll never know. What we do know is that T. Rex at their best – Hot Love, Get It On, Metal Guru, 20th Century Boy – have not only aged extremely well, they sound better than ever, all these years later. For as long as there is the teenage dream, there is Marc Bolan, and there is T. Rex.

The Info

Written by

Marc Bolan

Producer

Tony Visconti

Weeks at number 1

4 (20 May-16 June)

Trivia

Births

23 May: Cricketer Martin Saggers
3 June: Footballer Steve Crane
4 June: Actress Debra Stephenson
7 June: Athlete Curtis Robb

Deaths

22 May: Poet Cecil Day-Lewis/Actress Margaret Rutherford
28 May: Edward, Duke of Windsor (see Meanwhile…)

Meanwhile…

22 May: The Dominion of Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka.

24 May: The final stretch of the M6 motorway opened between junctions 6 (Spaghetti Junction) and 7 north of Birmingham.
Also that day, Glasgow-based Rangers FC won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, beating FC Dynamo Moscow 3-2 in the final at Camp Nou in Barcelona. Celebrations were marred by a pitch invasion from their supporters, which led to the team being banned from defending the trophy next season.

26 May: State-owned travel company Thomas Cook & Son was privatised.

28 May: 35 years after he abdicated the throne, the controversial royal Edward, Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, died of cancer at his home in France.

30 May: The Official Irish Republican Army declared a ceasefire in Northern Ireland.

1 June: Hotels and boarding houses became required to obtain certification when the Fire Precautions Act 1971 came into force.

3 June: A Protestant demonstration in Derry turned into a battle.

5 June: The funeral of The Duke of Windsor was held at Windsor Castle.

309. T. Rex – Telegram Sam (1972)

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The Intro

After the success of their second number 1, Get It On in the summer of 1971, T. Rex released possibly the first glam rock album, Electric Warrior, in September. It featured some of Bolan’s best material, including Jeepster and Cosmic Dancer. T. Rextasy was peaking.

Before

After their contract with independent Fly Records ended, they signed with EMI. It didn’t stop Fly from releasing Jeepster as a single though, and it would have been Christmas number 1 that year, were it not for Benny Hill’s Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). Despite this probably being rather embarrassing for the sensitive Bolan, he’ll have been buoyed by the success of the renamed Bang a Gong (Get It On) in the US as 1972 began. And the band were back in their studio to work on next album, The Slider.

Telegram Sam was the first fruits of that LP to be made public. Showcasing their new beefed-up sound, it featured Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman on backing vocals once more, along with producer Tony Visconti. It was inspired by Bolan’s manager (and drug dealer) Tony Secunda, Bolan’s ‘main man’.

Review

It may have enjoyed a two-week run at number 1, but Telegram Sam is the first sign of Bolan’s well beginning to run dry. Yes, the sound is heavier, but it’s really just Get It On all over again, only not as good. And the lyrics, where they used to sound inspired and were never less than interesting, are Bolan-by-numbers. He reels off a list of bizarre characters – in addition to Sam, there’s Bobby, Golden Nose Slim and Purple Pie Pete, who are all excuses to come up with increasingly bizarre rhymes. Take Pete:


‘Purple Pie Pete Purple Pie Pete
Your lips are like lightning
Girls melt in the heat’.

Not great. The self-referencing line in the last verse, ‘Me I funk but I don’t care/I ain’t no square with my corkscrew hair’ is better, though.

The Outro

There’s still great stuff to come from T. Rex at this point, their fourth and final number 1 Metal Guru among them, but here was a sign that Bolan was happy enough to stick to a limited formula and while that was fine for now, he’d soon be behind his contemporaries.

The Info

Written by

Marc Bolan

Producer

Tony Visconti

Weeks at number 1

2 (5-18 February)

Births

9 February: Footballer Darren Ferguson
11 February: Footballer Steve McManaman

Meanwhile…

9 February: Prime Minister Edward Heath declared a state of emergency as a result of the miners’ strike. A three-day week had already been imposed, and power supplies were turned off for many for nine hours from this day.

306. Slade – Coz I Luv You (1971)

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The Intro

“Get down and get with it!” Wolverhampton glam rockers Slade are one of the most fondly remembered bands of the 70s. Six number 1s between 1971-73, 17 consecutive top 20 singles, and according to The British Hit Singles & Albums, they were the most successful British group of the decade for singles sales. And I’m only just getting round to mentioning Merry Xmas Everybody, which I picked as the greatest Christmas number 1 of all time here.

Before

All four members of Slade grew up in the Black Country area of the West Midlands. In 1964, drummer Don Powell, born and raised in Wolverhampton, was in a band with Dave Hill (born in Devon) called The Vendors. Meanwhile, Walsall’s Noddy Holder was guitarist and occasional singer with Steve Brett & the Mavericks. who released three records on Columbia in 1965.

The Vendors became The ‘N Betweens and gained momentum, supporting The Hollies and The Yardbirds, among others. Meeting on a ferry on the way to separate gigs in Germany, Powell and Hill tried to persuade Holder to join The ‘N Betweens, but he declined. Once they were all back home though, Holder changed his mind and became their lead singer. They had recently recruited multi-instrumentalist Jim Lea on bass, too.

By 1966 The ‘N Betweens had moved on from blues to a more R’n’B sound. They released their first single, a cover of The Young Rascals’ You Better Run, in 1966, produced by Kim Fowley, arranger of Nut Rocker.

They didn’t return to a studio for a few years, but in 1967, with flower power at its peak, Holder worked on an unnamed song with a chorus that went: ‘Buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by/Buy me a looking glass, I’ll look you in the eye’. Six years later it became Merry Xmas Everybody.

A local promoter alerted the band to Jack Baverstock, head of A&R at Philips. After spending a week recording their debut album Beginnings in the label’s studio, he offered them a deal with Fontana Records – if they changed their name. Despite misgivings, they became Ambrose Slade, inspired by Baverstock’s secretary, who had named her handbag ‘Ambrose’ and her shoes ‘Slade’… as you do…

Beginnings and instrumental single Genesis sank, but on the plus side, they found a new manager in Chas Chandler, former bassist with The Animals, who helped Jimi Hendrix rocket to fame. It didn’t mean instant success, but Chandler did set them on the right path, telling them they needed more original material and a new image. They adopted the skinhead look in an attempt to keep up with prevailing trends and as The Slade they released the single Wild Winds Are Blowing, which tanked.

A new decade, a new name: Slade. They featured on Top of the Pops in 1970 with their cover of Shape of Things to Come, but to no avail. They added lyrics to Genesis and reworked it as Know Who You Are, but neither that nor November’s LP, Play It Loud, got anywhere either.

Finally, their fortunes changed. In 1971 Chandler suggested they record one of their most popular live numbers. Their cover of Bobby Marchan’s Get Down with It (later covered by Little Richard) – retitled Get Down and Get with It, came out that May, and it climbed to number 18 in August. And for good reason, it’s an electrifying performance, particularly Holder’s raw vocal, and really captures an infectious, fun, live sound.

Slade were already growing their hair long once more when Chandler demanded they come up with a follow-up themselves. One evening Lea turned up at Holder’s house with his violin and an idea for a simple song, along the lines of T. Rex’s Hot Love, and half an hour later, they had written their first number 1.

They played Because I Love You acoustically to an enthusiastic Chandler the next day, who confidently predicted it would be their first chart-topper. He booked them into Olympic Studios in Barnes. Slade were less keen on its chances, thinking it too soft and poppy, until they were allowed to add foot-stomping to the rhythm. They also decided to change its title, and Holder came up with the idea to misspell it to fit in with their dialect. Thus, Coz I Luv You, the first of their songs littered with spelling errors, was born.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gufUfvpg5XA

Review

Coz I Luv You is a nice signpost to the full-on glam sound Slade songs yet to come would feature. It doesn’t have the immediate ‘wow’ factor of Hot Love or Get It On, but it’s a great introduction to what was to come. It’s interesting that they all thought it was too lightweight, and maybe the footstomping really did make the difference, but this track actually has a bit of a sinister edge to it, thanks to Holder’s vocal styling. Inadvertently or not, he makes ‘Don’t you change the things you do’ sound like a threat, and Lea’s violin at times adds to the slightly uneasy feeling.

After

Soon Slade developed their more raucous, straightforward take on Bolan’s glam rock. They were never bothered with maintaining a cool mystique like he was, and began to also be known for their ridiculous glam outfits, before going on to become national treasures. For now though, they were just a slightly weird rock band who had finally made the big time.

The Outro

Coz I Luv You would later be covered by fellow Black Country musicians, indie band, The Wonder Stuff.

The Info

Written by

Noddy Holder & Jim Lea

Producer

Chas Chandler

Weeks at number 1

4 (13 November-10 December)

Trivia

Births

22 November: Olympic rower Cath Bishop
1 December: Actress Emily Mortimer
5 December: Triple jumper Ashia Hansen

Deaths

17 November: Actress Gladys Cooper

Meanwhile…

22 November: Five children and one adult die after becoming stranded for two nights in blizzards on the Cairngorm Plateau. It is still regarded as Britain’s worst mountaineering accident.

2 December: The Queen’s yearly allowance was increased from £475,000 to £980,000. I’m sure millions of republicans were very pleased for her.

4 December: The highest death toll from a single incident in The Troubles to date took place when 15 people were killed and 17 injured in the McGurk’s Bar bombing. The Ulster Volunteer Force are believed to have been behind the bombing.

302. T. Rex – Get It On (1971)

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The Intro

Moving fast to make the most of his long-awaited stardom, Marc Bolan returned to the studio to make a new T. Rex LP while Hot Love peaked at number 1 in March 1971. The result, Electric Warrior, is considered the first glam rock album.

Before

Drummer Bill Fifield, who had made his debut on the last single, became a full-time band member and was renamed ‘Bill Legend’. This may have affected Bolan’s relationship with percussionist Mickey Finn, who apparently was hired more for his looks than musical ability in the first place. Although he contributed to Electric Warrior, he is absent from Get It On.

While in New York, Bolan asked Legend to work with him on drum patterns for a new song inspired by Chuck Berry’s Little Queenie. Returning to Trident Studios, Tony Visconti was back on production, and Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan returned for backing vocal duty.

Two progressive rock musicians were also involved, with King Crimson’s Ian MacDonald providing baritone and alto saxophones, and Rick Wakeman on the piano. In 2010 he recalled on BBC Radio 2’s The Glory of Glam that he was desperate for work to pay his rent when he bumped into Bolan on Oxford Street, who offered him the session. When he turned up, Wakeman pointed out to Visconti the track didn’t need piano, and the producer suggested he did some glissandos. Wakeman noted Visconti could do that, and he replied ‘You want your rent, don’t you?’. Wakeman earned £9 for those little touches of sparkle.

Review

Built around that formidable Berry riff, steeped in sexuality and with some brilliant lyrics, Get It On is the sound of an artist at the top of his game. Coming after the last two number 1s, it’s a blessed relief, and it might well be the ‘coolest’ chart-topper up to this point.

It’s less polished and not as weird as Hot Love, and not as raucous as a lot of the glam rock to come, including 20th Century Boy (my favourite T. Rex single), but it’s such a groove. Yes, the riff is stolen (and would be ripped off again by Oasis with Cigarettes & Alcohol), but Bolan makes it totally his own, albeit with a cheeky ad-lib of ‘And meanwhile, I’m still thinking’ from Little Queenie itself during the fade-out. He comes on to his ‘dirty and sweet’ girl with some startling comparisons, the best of which are ‘You’ve got the teeth/Of the Hydra upon you’ and ‘Well you’re built like a car/You’ve got a hubcap/Diamond star halo’ (Bolan was a big fan of cars).

For the hardcore Tyrannosaurus Rex fans who remained faithful, there’s also a ‘cloak full of eagles’. Not that there were many of those left – the more the teenagers flocked to T. Rex, the more they accused him of being a sell-out, and it was Get It On that finally turned John Peel off. He dared to criticise it on air, which finished their friendship. They only spoke once more before Bolan died.

After

Released on 2 July as a taster for Electric Warrior, it only took three weeks for Get It On to become the second of four T. Rex number 1s. It also became their only US hit, climbing to number 10, retitled as Bang a Gong (Get It On) to avoid confusion with a recent hit by jazz-rock band Chase in the States.

The Outro

Get It On would be covered by 80s supergroup The Power Station (featuring Robert Palmer and members of Duran Duran and Chic) in 1985. It was a hit, but the beefed-up sound robbed it of its charm.

The Info

Written by

Marc Bolan

Producer

Tony Visconti

Weeks at number 1

4 (24 July-20 August)

Trivia

Births

2 August: Northern Irish footballer Michael Hughes
9 August: Newsreader Kate Sanderson
18 August: Electronic artist Richard D James, aka Aphex Twin

Deaths

27 July: Northern Irish footballer Charlie Tully

Meanwhile…

29 July: The UK officially opted out of the Space Race when its Black Arrow launch vehicle was cancelled.

6 August: Chay Blyth became the first person to sail around the world east to west against the prevailing winds.

9 August: British security forces in Northern Ireland detained hundreds of guerrilla suspects and put them into Long Kesh prison – the beginning of their internment without trial policy. In the subsequent riots, 20 died, including 11 in the Ballymurphy Massacre.

11 August: Prime Minister Edward Heath took part in the Admiral’s Cup yacht race, which Britain won.

15 August: Controversial showjumper Harvey Smith was stripped of his victory in the British Show Jumping Derby by judges for making a V sign.

298. T. Rex – Hot Love (1971)

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The Intro

In March 1971, singer-songwriter Marc Bolan appeared on Top of the Pops to promote T. Rex’s second single Hot Love, as shown below. His stylist, Chelita Secunda, had suggested he wear glitter under his eyes, and it was this appearance that spearheaded the glam rock movement and gave Bolan the stardom he had strived for. Forget ‘Mungo-mania’ – ‘T. Rextasy’ was the first true pop phenomenon in the UK since ‘Beatlemania’. Pop was rejuvenated.

Before

Bolan was born Mark Feld on 30 September 1947. He was raised in Stoke Newington, East London until the Felds moved to Wimbledon in southwest London when he was a young boy. Around this time he, like so many of his contemporaries, fell in love with rock’n’roll, particularly stars like Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran. He was only nine when he was given his first guitar and he formed a skiffle band, and soon after he was playing guitar for Susie and the Hula Hoops, whose singer was 12-year-old Helen Shapiro, who would have two number 1s in 1961 with You Don’t Know and Walkin’ Back to Happiness.

Feld was expelled from school at 15 and around this time became known as ‘The Face’ due to his good looks. He joined a modelling agency and appeared in catalogues for Littlewoods and John Temple wearing Mod getup just as The Beatles were first making waves.

In 1964 Feld made his first known recording, All at Once, in which he aped Cliff Richard. Next, he changed his name to Toby Tyler when he became interested in the music of Bob Dylan, and he began to dress like him too. His first acetate was a cover of Blowin’ in the Wind.

The following year, he signed with Decca Records and changed his name to Marc Bowland, before his label suggested Marc Bolan. First single, The Wizard, featured Jimmy Page and backing vocalists The Ladybirds, who later collaborated with Benny Hill. None of his solo singles, in which he adopted a US folk sound, made any impact.

Simon Napier-Bell, manager of The Yardbirds and John’s Children, a struggling psychedelic rock act, first met Bolan in 1966 when he showed up at his house with a guitar, proclaiming that he was going to be a big star and wanted Napier-Bell to work with him. Bolan was nearly placed in The Yardbirds but was placed in John’s Children as guitarist and songwriter in March 1967 instead. The group were outrageous, and Bolan proved to be a good fit, writing the single Desdemona, which was banned by the BBC for the lyric ‘lift up your skirt and fly’. Only a month later, they toured as support for The Who but were soon given their marching orders for upstaging the headliners (Bolan would whip his guitar with a chain). John’s Children also performed at The 14-Hour Technicolour Dream at Alexander Palace that month. Yet by June Bolan had left the group after falling out with his manager over their unreleased single A Midsummer Night’s Scene.

Bolan formed his own group, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and after one rushed, disastrous gig, he pared the band down to just himself and their drummer, Steve Peregrin Took, who would play percussion and occasional bass alongside Bolan and his acoustic guitar. For the next few years, Tyrannosaurus Rex amassed a cult following, with Radio 1 DJ John Peel among their biggest fans. Bolan’s fey, whimsical warbling could get a bit much at times, and I speak as a lover of 60s psychedelia, but the signs of a very talented singer-songwriter are there right from their debut single Debora and first album, the brilliantly titled My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair… But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows (1968), produced by Tony Visconti. Peel even read short stories by Bolan on their albums.

This was the last album to feature Took, who had been growing apart from Bolan, who was working on a book of poetry called The Warlock of Love. Bolan’s ego didn’t take kindly to the thought of Took contributing to songwriting, so he replaced him with Mickey Finn for fourth album Beard of Stars, released in March 1970. David Bowie’s follow-up to Space Oddity, The Prettiest Star also came out that month, with Bolan on guitar. The single tanked.

As the new decade dawned, Bolan was outgrowing Tyrannosaurus Rex, and was simplifying his songwriting while reintroducing an electric band setup to the mix. Visconti had been abbreviating the band’s name to T. Rex for a while on recording tapes, and while Bolan didn’t appreciate it at first, he decided to adopt the name to represent the next stage of development.

While preparing to release their first material in their new incarnation, Bolan replaced The Kinks as headlining act at the Pilton Festival at Worthy Farm, the day after Jimi Hendrix died on 19 September. 50 years on, it’s known as Glastonbury Festival, the king of the UK festival scene.

T. Rex released their first single, Ride a White Swan in October. This, simple, catchy layered guitar track caught on, and finally Bolan had a hit on his hands, narrowly missing out on the number 1 spot due to Clive Dunn’s Grandad in January 1971. T. Rex’s eponymous debut also went top 10 in the album charts. Bolan was now famous, but he needed to capitalise and go one better to avoid being a one-hit wonder.

Hot Love was recorded on 21 and 22 January at Trident Studios – the week Ride a White Swan peaked at number two. Seizing the moment, Bolan decided to flesh out T. Rex’s sound and adopt a classic four-piece line-up. With new bassist Steve Currie making his recording debut, Bolan and Visconti hired Bill Fifield as drummer, leaving Finn relegated to just handclaps. After helping out on T. Rex, this single saw the return of Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman on backing vocals. The duo had been founding members of The Turtles, and as Flo & Eddie had recently been part of Frank Zappa’s group The Mothers of Invention. Kaylan and Volman’s slightly unhinged harmonies became an integral part of the classic T. Rex sound.

Review

Although Ride a White Swan served notice that Bolan was moving on from his old self-limited sonic boundaries, the lyrics were still very much the Tolkien whimsy of your average Tyrannosaurus Rex track. Hot Love featured a more simplistic, direct lyrical approach. Bolan is merely telling you about his lover.

Taken as read, much of T. Rex’s lyrical output can seem childish, sometimes even ridiculous, yet most of the time Bolan pulls it off, and he does so here. I’ve always admired the chutzpah of the lines ‘Well she ain’t no witch and I love the way she twitch – a ha ha’ and the charming camp of ‘I don’t mean to be bold, a-but a-may I hold your hand?’ but I’d never noticed the ludicrous ‘I’m a labourer of love in my persian gloves – a ha ha’ before. My favourite lyric of recent memory, right there.

There’s no point spending too much time dissecting Bolan’s words though, it’s more about the feel they add to his songs, and Hot Love feels sexy, which isn’t a label you could ever give his Tyrannosaurus Rex material. It’s fascinating to me how a voice that’s so fey, singing such daft words, can at the same time be so sensual.

The tune displays a key ingredient of glam rock – 50s rock’n’roll. Bolan has updated a simple bluesy riff and, thanks to the input of Visconti’s glossy studio sheen and string arrangement, updated it for 70s audiences. Kaylan and Volman’s backing vocals keep a certain strangeness in place and stop things getting too smooth, but this is a high definition Bolan that hadn’t been heard before, and Hot Love is just one reason why Visconti is rightly one of the most famous producers of all time.

The second half of Hot Love shifts into a ‘La-la-la-la-la-la-la’ Bolan, Kaylan and Volman singalong, akin to Hey Jude, but faster and weirder. It’s a real earworm, and no doubt helped it to number 1, but I find it goes on a bit too long, and I prefer the first half personally. Having said that, it really does show up the previous number 1, Baby Jump, as lumpen and turgid by comparison. A much-needed breath of fresh air in the charts, to put it mildly.

After

Released on 12 February on Fly Records, Hot Love rocketed up the charts, in part thanks to those famous Top of the Pops appearances. Bolan displayed star material in spades, and was perhaps the first musician since Elvis Presley to prove that image could be a vital ingredient in pop. Looking every inch the rock star with his glitter and guitar, he made glam rock about appearance as well as the sound, and other acts like Slade and friend/rival Bowie were watching and taking notes.

The Outro

The 70s were often a drab, moribund decade. Glam rock may have been a peculiarly British phenomenon that didn’t catch on elsewhere in the way Beatlemania did, but in the UK it was sorely needed, and brought about some of the best number 1s of the next four years. Bolan was integral in this.

T. Rex would prove to have a formula that Bolan couldn’t advance much from, and his star burnt out quick, but in the early 70s he gave pop the kick up the arse it needed. There are better T. Rex songs. However, Hot Love is one of the most important number 1s of the decade.

The Info

Written by

Marc Bolan

Producer

Tony Visconti

Weeks at number 1

6 (20 March-30 April)

Trivia

Births

23 March: Scottish actress Kate Dickie/TV presenter Gail Porter
27 March: Scottish racing driver David Coulthard
31 March: Cricketer Paul Grayson/Scottish actor Ewan McGregor
2 April: Cricketer Jason Lewry
3 April: Conservative MP Douglas Carswell
11 April: Liberal Democrat MP John Leech
16 April: Actress Belinda Stewart-Wilson
18 April: Scottish actor David Tennant

Deaths

20 April: Actor Cecil Parker

Meanwhile…

1 April: All restrictions on gold ownership were lifted in the UK. Since 1966 Britons had been banned from holding more than four gold coins or from buying any new ones, unless they held a licence.

11 April: 10 British Army soldiers were injured in rioting in Derry, Northern Ireland.

15 April: The planned Barbican Centre in London was given the go-ahead.

18 April: A serious fire at Kentish Town West railway station meant that the station remained closed until 5 October 1981.

19 April: Unemployment reached a post-World War Two high of nearly 815,000.

27 April: Eight members of the Welsh Language Society went on trial for destroying English language road signs in Wales.
Also on this day, British Leyland launched the Morris Marina, which succeeded the Minor.

295. Clive Dunn – Grandad (1971)

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The Intro

The first number 1 of 1971 had narrowly missed out on the 1970 Christmas number 1 spot, and although it’s not fit for much, it would have made a more fitting yuletide chart-topper than I Hear You Knocking. Grandad, by comedy actor Clive Dunn, was a canny grab at the purse-strings of pensioners and children, and in that sense was an early pioneer of the novelty Christmas song market. Factor in Dunn’s popularity as doddery old Lance Corporal Jones in BBC One sitcom Dad’s Army, and there’s little surprise it spent three weeks at number 1.

Before

Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn was born in Brixton, South London on 9 January 1920, meaning he had only turned 51 on the day his one-hit wonder about life as an OAP hit pole position. Both his parents were actors, and his cousin was Gretchen Franklin – better known as Ethel in BBC One soap opera EastEnders. Dunn had small roles in films while at school in the 30s, appearing alongside comedy actor Will Hay in Boys Will Be Boys in 1935.

Dunn’s acting ambitions were swept to one side when he served in World War Two for real, joining the British Army in 1940. He served in the Middle East until 1941 when he and hundreds of others were forced to surrender. Dunn was held as a POW in Austria for four years, but stayed with the Army upon his release, until 1947, when he returned to acting.

Fast forward to the mid-50s, and Dunn had found his calling in comedy roles, making several appearances alongside Tony Hancock on ITV and his classic radio series Hancock’s Half-Hour. In the early 60s he took on a role that would define the rest of his career, playing a comical 83-year-old man in ITV sitcom Bootsie and Snudge. He was only 38 at the time.

This made Dunn a natural choice to star in Dad’s Army as the nervy butcher Jones in 1968. As one of the youngest members of cast he could take the brunt of any physical comedy. The role in Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s sitcom made Dunn one of the most popular comedy stars of the era.

In 1970 Dunn met top session bassist Herbie Flowers at a BBC party. Flowers was a founding member of Melting Pot hitmakers Blue Mink and played bass on David Bowie’s Space Oddity (number 1 on its re-release in 1975). Upon discovering his occupation, Dunn allegedly challenged Flowers to write him a hit song.

So Flowers went away and with Dunn’s Dad’s Army character clearly in mind, he wrote a novelty song written from the point of view of an old man looking back at his youth. However, he was stuck for a chorus, until his friend Kenny Pickett (singer with 60s rock band The Creation) called round. Ringing the doorbell, a standard ‘ding dong’ chimed, and Flowers had the simple but scarily effective hook he was looking for.

Review

Over a leaden backing featuring ukelele, Flowers’ bass (I assume), and parping brass, Dunn recalls penny farthings, penny dreadfuls, ‘talking things’, and best of all, how ‘Motorcars were funny things, frightening’, when he was a lad. At the exact point you’re hoping his nurse will interject and give him his medication or clean him up, in comes a sickly kiddie choir, thankfully kept to a minimum, singing ‘Grandad, grandad you’re lovely/That’s what we all think of you’. Let’s be grateful they didn’t overdo it, unlike the similar Christmas number 1 of 1980, There’s No One Quite Like Grandma. Incidentally, co-producer Ray Cameron, is comedian Michael McIntyre’s dad.

It’s rotten, cynical stuff, but at least Flowers made up for it. He’s played on hundreds of hits over the years, and among other things, was a member of CSS, T. Rex and Sky. He also performed on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, but most notably, he was the man behind the bass line on Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. So we can forgive him.

We can forgive Dunn too, such was his charm. He was a staunch socialist too, who would argue with Conservative voter Arthur Lowe over politics, so he’s alright by me (although he did have a brief flirtation with Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists in his youth, which he regretted). He was also known for his friendliness towards autograph seekers.

After

Dad’s Army ended in 1977, and two years later Dunn found work playing – what else? – an old man in BBC children’s series Grandad. Despite the obvious similarities, it was unrelated to his number 1. When his role as Charlie Quick ended in 1984, Dunn retired and moved to Portugal.

The Outro

It blew my young mind, growing up on repeats of Dad’s Army in the 80s, to know that Dunn was one of the youngest cast members and one of the few still alive. But even he got old for real eventually, and he died as a result of operation complications on 6 November 2012, aged 92.

The Info

Written by

Herbie Flowers & Kenny Pickett

Producers

Peter Dulay & Ray Cameron

Weeks at number 1

3 (9-29 January)

Trivia

Births

12 January: Artist Jay Burridge
15 January: Actress Lara Cazalet
20 January: Take That singer-songwriter Gary Barlow
21 January: Scottish snooker player Alan McManus
29 January: Sports broadcaster Clare Balding

Deaths

24 January: Northern Irish dramatist St John Greer Ervine
28 January: Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott

Meanwhile…

12 January: The Hertfordshire home of Robert Carr, Secretary of State for Employment, was bombed, but nobody was injured.

14 January: Extremist group The Angry Brigade claimed responsibility for the bombing of Robert Carr’s house, in addition to planting a bomb at the Department of Employment offices at Westminster.

20 January: UPW General Secretary Tom Jackson led the first ever postal workers’ strike took place. Workers were insisting on a 19.5% pay rise.

21 January: After collapsing in March 1969, a newly reconstructed Emley Moor transmitter in West Yorkshire starts again. It became Britain’s tallest freestanding structure, a concrete tower standing at 1084ft.

23 January: The first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, in Singapore, gave Britain permission to sell weapons to South Africa.

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

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The Intro

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

Before

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

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

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

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

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

Review

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

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

After

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

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

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

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

The Outro

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

The Info

Written by

Dave Bartholomew

Producer

Dave Edmunds

Weeks at number 1

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

Trivia

Births

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

Deaths

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

Meanwhile…

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

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

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

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

3 January: BBC Open University broadcasts began.

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