1977 was a very successful year for actor and singer David Soul. Not only was he a co-star of one of the hottest shows of the era – Starsky & Hutch, but he topped the UK charts twice. Silver Lady is the lesser known of the two.
Before
It had nearly been his third. Inbetween this and Don’t Give Up on Us came Going in With My Eyes Open, which climbed all the way to two. The name of his LP Playing to an Audience of One, released that year, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Silver Lady could be seen as a sequel to his first number 1. Despite his pleas back at the start of the year, his lover has indeed given up on him. Soul is reduced to ‘drifting, searching, shifting through town to town’, meeting with ‘Double talkers, backstreet walkers at every turn’ in ‘Seedy motels, no star hotels’. As before, Tony Macaulay produced and wrote this, but with Geoff Stephens on writing duties too. Stephens had been in The New Vaudeville Band, who had a hit in 1966 with Winchester Cathedral. Macaulay, as has been well documented here, had written and produced quite a lot of chart-toppers in the 60s and 70s. This was to be his last. He later turned to writing thrillers.
Review
As with many of Macaulay’s number 1s, Silver Lady is OK. Decent chart fodder and fairly memorable but disposable. I prefer it to Don’t Give Up On Us as it’s a bit edgier. Soul seems to be down on his luck through his own mistakes and is regretting where he’s ended up. Trouble is, he doesn’t sound too bothered. Considering he’s an actor I’d have preferred a bit more character.
The video is good fun though. Soul all manly and hurt, wandering around all lonesome, or on a motorbike, or remembering being with his silver lady. Who, it turns out, isn’t an old woman, but a young blonde.
After
Later on that year Soul released the top eight hit Let’s Have a Quiet Night In. I haven’t heard it but I love that title. I’d like to think Soul is either reunited with his love or found someone new. Tired of his old ways, he’s now preferring to suggest they just have a night watching telly. Considering Soul has been married five times, it’s likely he prefers a bit more adventure.
One more hit followed in 1978 – It Sure Brings Out the Love in Your Eyes. For some reason Soul’s music did better in the UK, even though Starsky & Hutch continued until 1979. That year he released another LP, Band of Friends. He also starred in the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which terrified me and many people of a certain age, that weren’t old enough to have been watching it in the first place.
Soul wasn’t as prolific on TV or in the recording studio in the 80s. He had lots of bit parts, and released the album The Best Days of My Life in 1982. The following year he starred a short-lived TV series of Casablanca and a season of The Yellow Rose. From there it was mainly TV movies. The roles became fewer and Soul had become an alcoholic and developed a violent temper. He was jailed and ordered to have therapy classes for alcoholism after attacking his third wife Patti Carnel Sherman while she was seven months pregnant. They soon divorced. I hope he struggled like the character in this song afterwards. However a year later he married actress Julia Nickson and they had one daughter, China Soul, who is now a singer-songwriter.
In the mid-90s Soul moved to the UK, which revitalised his career thanks to many West End roles, including in Blood Brothers. He helped his friend, former war reporter Martin Bell, become an independent MP in the 1997 general election. That year he also released his last album to date, Leave a Light On…
In the early 00s he had cameos in Little Britain and Top Gear, plus an appearance on Holby City. 2004 saw him land replace Michael Brandon as Jerry Springer in the controversial musical Jerry Springer – The Opera. He also appeared alongside his old crime-fighting parter Paul Michael Glaser as joint cameos in the movie version of Starsky & Hutch. Owen Wilson took his role and Stiller was Glaser’s character.
The Outro
Since then Soul has occasionally surfaced in film, TV and theatre. These include a role as a murder victim in Lewis, a cameo lip-syncing to Silver Lady in the film Filth (2013) and as a coach driver in an advert for National Express. He sang along to Silver Lady.
The Info
Written by
Tony Macaulay & Geoff Stephens
Producer
Tony Macaulay
Weeks at number 1
3 (8-28 October)
Trivia
Births
26 October: Paralympian swimmer and cyclist Sarah Storey
Deaths
11 October: Architect Misha Black
Meanwhile…
10 October: Missing 20-year-old prostitute Jean Jordan is found dead in Chorlton, Manchester, nine days after she was last seen alive. Police believe she may have been another victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. It’s the first time he was suspected of a murder outside of Yorkshire.
15 October: Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, go missing after leaving the World’s End pub in Edinburgh, Scotland. The next day their bodies are found tied and strangled in the countryside. It wasn’t until 2014 that serial killer Angus Sinclair was convicted of the crime.
27 October: Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe denies allegations of having a relationship with and subsequent attempted murder of male model Norman Scott. Also on that day, Sex Pistols released Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Despite refusal by major retailers to stock the album, it debuts at number 1 in the UK album chart the following week.
An early glimpse of the biggest pop star of the 80s. But not early enough, in a way. The Jacksons, when known as The Jackson 5, were one of the most exciting and successful acts of the late 60s and early 70s. And yet despite their first four singles becoming number 1 in the US, it took until 1977 for them to reach the pinnacle of the charts here.
Before
The Jackson 5, like it or not, began with Joe Jackson in Gary, Indiana. The strict disciplinarian who allegedly put his family through years of physical and mental abuse, couldn’t make it as a professional boxer. He then failed to become a pop star after a stint in the 50s as a guitarist in the Falcons. And so he became a crane operator instead and raised a family with his wife Katherine. Rebbie came first and went on to become a singer in the 70s. Then came Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, LaToya, twins Marlon and Brandon (Brandon died shortly after birth), Michael and Randy.
Joe returned home one day in 1964 to discover Tito had been playing with his guitar without permission. Although initially furious, he wondered if his children could achieve what he couldn’t. He became the manager of The Jackson Brothers – Jackie, Tito and Jermaine, with childhood friends Reynaud Jones and Milford Hite playing keyboards and drums. Within a year Michael, then only eight, was added to the line-up on congas. Soon after Marlon joined on tambourine and Joe renamed them The Jackson Five Singing Group. In 1966 they won their first talent show. That same year Janet, the youngest of the family, entered the world.
Jones and Hite were replaced by Ronnie Rancifer and Johnny Jackson and the band performed at talent shows around the region, soon also performing paid gigs. Little Michael began to outshine Jermaine and replaced him on lead, wowing crowds with his dance moves, mimicking the likes of James Brown. He later said he paid for his talent because Joe focused his strict ways specifically on him, helping to turn his own son into a superstar but permanently damaging his own child in the process.
Allegedly a gig by the band at Harlem’s Apollo Theater earned them their first celebrity fan. Gladys Knight was impressed and sent a demo tape to Motown Records, which was rejected. As was a recording of Big Boy, which became their debut single when Joe signed them to Steeltown Records in 1968. That July they supported Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers. Taylor was blown away my Michael and arranged a taped audition with Motown. Founder Berry Gordy Jr refused to sign any more ‘kid acts’ after Stevie Wonder, but he too couldn’t deny they had something special. They finally signed with Motown as The Jackson 5 in 1969.
It was decided that The Jackson 5 had a better chance to make a big first impression by claiming they were discovered by Diana Ross from The Supremes. Michael was billed as being eight, even though he was 10. Gordy had high hopes for his latest signing, even going so far as to assemble a crack team of songwriters specifically to create hits for The Jackson 5. He dubbed them The Corporation. And they certainly achieved their aim.
Their debut single, I Want You Back, was released that October. This effervescent funk and pop was one of the last great songs of the 60s, eventually topping the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1970. It peaked at two in the UK, which is criminal. Their debut LP, Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, didn’t need Ross’s name to sell it after all. Second album ABC‘s title track was another stone cold classic and another US number 1, as was The Love You Save and ballad I’ll Be There, which came from their imaginatively titled Third Album. No act had ever achieved four number 1s with their first four singles before. And before the year was out they released a fourth album, Jackson 5 Christmas Album, featuring their energetic take on Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
Jacksonmania was everywhere, and they overtook The Supremes as Motown’s bestselling group. The label made the most of it, licensing all manner of merchandise, including stickers, posters, colouring books and even a Saturday morning animated series. Michael’s star appeal was too big to limit to just the group and so he also began a solo career in 1971, reaching the top in the US with his ode to a rat, Ben. To a lesser degree of success, Jermaine followed.
Unfortunately, this tied in with the start of The Jackson 5’s commercial decline. Never Can Say Goodbye and Sugar Daddy went top 10 in the US in 1971 but after that their singles hovered around the bottom reaches of the top 20 in the US. In the UK they had two singles reach nine in 1972 – Looking’ Through the Windows and Doctor My Eyes. The Corporation split in 1973, which hardly helped matters. The title track to Dancing Machine in 1974 marked their foray into the emerging disco scene, and earned them a number two in the US. But the slide continued afterwards.
In 1975 The Jackson 5 released their final LP on Motown – the ominously titled Moving Violation. Joe and his sons were tired of low royalty rates and wanted greater creative control. They announced their decision at a press conference to garner interest from other labels. It worked. In June 1975 they signed with Epic Records for a much greater royalty rate. Well, most of them did. Jermaine had married into the Gordy family so decided not to rock the boat and remained with Motown. Joe replaced him with Randy, the youngest of the Jackson boys. As they were under contract with Motown until 1976, Gordy threatened to sue over the use of their group name, so they became known as simply The Jacksons.
Their eponymous album came out in 1976, and it looked like they’d made a wise move. They were teamed up with expert hitmakers Gamble and Huff and signed to their subsidiary, Philadelphia International Records. First single Enjoy Yourself was their biggest hit in two years, and then came Show You the Way to Go. Written and produced by Gamble and Huff, it featured Michael on lead and he joined the others on backing vocals too. Tito played guitar, Randy played bass and the rest of the music came from their label’s house band of session musicians, MFSB (meaning Mother Father Sister Brother).
Review
How strange that of all those initial massive pop hits by The Jackson 5, it was this more subtle track that gave them their only UK number 1. On first listen, you’d be forgiven for thinking, this is an album filler at best. But Show You the Way to Go is, for me, fascinating. It’s a strong sign The Jacksons were growing up, and Michael in particular. No longer the squeaky voiced cute little boy, he was maturing into just as talented an adult star and the others were fading into the background. Michael makes tentative steps into his signature sound, with the yelps and improvising pointing the way. Showing the way he’d go, in fact.
But then the song has this weird structure, where it sounds as though it’s coming to a natural end, but carries on. It’s even in the single edit and it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard in a number 1 before. It should make for a total mess, but Michael saves it with his interjections. The yelping on the fade out is of note too. It surely can’t have been performed in one take, which means it must be studio trickery – so is it early sampling? It almost sounds like 90s techno. So yes, what on first listen is far from an obvious chart-topper, makes for an intriguing listen. The other Jacksons deserve mentioning too. Those backing vocals, warm and comforting, work so well with the tenderness of the tune.
After
In a curious reversal of fortunes, this period in the Jacksons saw greater chart success than in the US. Their 1978 classic Blame It On the Boogie was a number eight hit here, didn’t even crack the US top 50. By this point they had been given total creative control, and the parent album Destiny was a huge success. It also featured the excellent Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), written by Michael and Randy. And soon after the former’s solo career really took off thanks to 1979’s Off the Wall album.
In 1980 The Jacksons’ album Triumph lived up to its name, especially thanks to the disco epic Can You Feel It (number six in the UK), written by Michael and Jackie. But there was no escaping the fact that Michael had become a superstar and the rest of the brothers couldn’t match his talent and magnetism. Not that there appeared to be any bad blood. In 1983 on the US TV special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, The Jacksons reunited with Jermaine. It was the show on which Michael’s ‘Moonwalk’ to Billie Jean made headlines around the world.
In 1984, with Jermaine back on board, they recorded their bestselling album yet, Victory. However, it was essentially a collection of solo recordings. Their final UK top 20 single, State of Shock, was mainly a duet between Michael and Mick Jagger. Despite the success, this proved a tumultuous year for the group. Famously, while filming a Pepsi commercial with his brothers, Michael suffered burns to his scalp. Their tour was marred by Jackie suffering a leg injury, ticket issues and friction within the family.
Understandably, Michael felt it was time to concentrate purely on his own career. Marlon left soon after to go solo too, before quitting music entirely. One more album followed in 1989. The remaining four released 2300 Jackson Street and the title track featured Michael and Marlon as well. But it sold poorly and the brothers went on hiatus.
And that was it until September 2001, when all six reunited for two concerts filmed for TV, celebrating Michael’s 30th anniversary as a solo artist. Then in 2009, Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Randy began filming a reality TV show centred around their plans to reform and record a new album to celebrate 40 years in showbiz. Everything changed a few days after filming in June when Michael died. It was turned into a series and named The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty. The surviving Jacksons recorded backing vocals for Michael’s previously unreleased This Is It, intended as the title track to his big comeback. Instead it became his epitaph.
There was talk of a reunion tribute tour and album from The Jacksons but it never transpired. Jermaine and Jackie released new music though. Then a tribute concert was in the running, to the extent Jackie, Tito and Marlon appeared alongside Katherine and LaToya for press conference. But Randy and Jermaine issued their own statement denouncing the idea as it was planned to coincide with the manslaughter trial of Michael’s doctor Conrad Murray. It went ahead anyway and in 2012 Jermaine joined the trio for the Unity Tour, which ended in 2013. In 2018, Joe died.
Although Michael had at times publicly spoken about the abuse suffered at his father’s hands, his brothers are always quick to jump to his defence. Whether this is a case of joint Stockholm syndrome, we’ll never know. At time of writing, Jermaine, Jackie, Tito and Marlon are publicising a political reworking of Can You Feel It.
The Outro
Obviously, there will be plenty more Michael Jackson to follow in due course, but I’ve decided to give The Jackson 5/The Jacksons and relevant solo careers a deeper listen. Forever overshadowed by Michael, for good and bad reasons, I feel it’s time the band’s career was reappraised away from the controversy of their most famous member’s life.
The Info
Written & produced by
Gamble and Huff
Weeks at number 1
1 (25 June-1 July)
Meanwhile…
26 June: Jayne McDonald is found battered and stabbed to death in Chapeltown, Leeds. Police suspect she is the fifth person to be murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper. McDonald was a 16-year-old shop assistant, not a prostitute, which brought a new level of revulsion to the Ripper’s crimes from the media.
1 July: Virginia Wade won the Women’s Singles title at Wimbledon.
Following the rightful success of one of the greatest singles of all time – namely Dancing Queen, ABBA were becoming superstars. They followed it up with another of their most famous songs. But Money, Money, Money didn’t become their fifth UK number 1, narrowly missing out by peaking at two. Their fourth album Arrival was chock full of hits though and was mined further.
Before
Knowing Me, Knowing You was recorded on 23 March 1976 at Metronome Studios. It marked a turning point in the band’s career. Gone was the jollity and Europop stylings of Waterloo. This was where things got interesting. Although we’re not at the point in which the two couples were getting divorced, relations in the band had become strained. As Björn Ulvaeus wrote the lyrics, you would imagine he and Agnetha Fältskog were already having problems. Originally the song had the working title Ring It In and then the prophetic Number 1, Number 1. As with most tracks on Arrival, it featured Rutger Gunnarsson on bass (he also looked after the string arrangement) and Ola Brunkert on drums.
Review
I’ve always been more interested in the soap opera-style drama behind ABBA than the majority of the songs I’ve heard by them. It’s fascinating that a superstar group of two couples could end up cataloguing their breakups so poignantly. Give me that over the cheesiness of their early years anytime. So I’m a big fan of Knowing Me, Knowing You.
‘No more carefree laughter’, the opening line, is a very effective signpost that ABBA were in trouble, despite years of success still to come. Anni-Frid Lyngstad takes the lead here and she commits a great performance, documenting her walk through a silent, empty house alone, remembering the good times. Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson’s production fits the glacially cold mood perfectly (as does the opening of the video, the sun beaming down in the winter snow) and then the chorus is ABBA at their best.
Somehow, despite years of association with Steve Coogan’s immortal comic character Alan Partridge, you can still hear it and be impressed, not amused at the fact the chat show host adopted such an inappropriate song as his catchphrase. It stands head and shoulders above any of the other 1977 number 1s so far. It also captures the sadness of the inevitability of the split. They know each other so well, she can see there is no going back this time – ‘this time we’re through’.
Great backing vocals from Ulvaeus too, echoing Frida’s sentiment well. Just to remind us ABBA haven’t totally given up on glam, there’s a very memorable solo after the choruses, with Ulvaeus coming over all Mick Ronson. Fältskog interjects in verse two with some sexy whispering. To be fair Fältskog could make anything sexy, even divorce. I realise that, speaking as someone who likes to point out how he doesn’t generally get all the fuss about ABBA, I’ve had nothing but high praise indeed for the last two singles I’ve covered. Andersson also looked back in 2004 and called them some of ABBA’s greatest work.
One thing that doesn’t get mentioned about ABBA is how iconic their videos are. Knowing Me, Knowing You was, like most, directed by future Academy Award nominee Lasse Hallström. Simple, yet effective, those shots of the members confronting each other face-to-face or back-to-back are as memorable as the song itself.
After
Knowing Me, Knowing You was rightly one of the biggest-selling songs in the UK of 1977 and began a second run of three consecutive chart-toppers in a row for Benny, Björn, Frida and Agnetha. It’s been covered by a diverse range of acts including Cilla Black, A-Teens and Right Said Fred. And as already mentioned, it took on a whole new life as the theme tune to Knowing Me, Knowing You… with Alan Partridge, the radio and TV series that introduced us to one of the greatest comedy characters of all time.
The Info
Written by
Benny Andersson, Stig Anderson & Björn Ulvaeus
Producers
Benny Andersson & Björn Ulvaeus
Weeks at number 1
5 (2 April-6 May)
Meanwhile…
2 April: The legendary horse Red Rum wins the Aintree Grand National for the third time.
11 April: London Transport’s Silver Jubilee AEC Routemaster buses are launched.
18–30 April: The Embassy World Snooker Championship moves to Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, where it attracts TV coverage for the first time.
23 April: National Front marchers clash with anti-Nazi protesters in London. Also on this day, prostitute Patricia Atkinson is murdered in Bradford. Police believe she is the fourth woman to be killed by the Yorkshire Ripper.
29 April: British Aerospace is formed to run the nationalised aviation industry.
5 May: The Conservatives make gains at local council elections, including winning the Greater London Council from Labour.
It may have seemed a little bold for ABBA to release a Greatest Hits in March 1976. However, their label Polar decided to due to the many cash-in compilations labels scattered around the globe were releasing in an attempt to cash-in on the fact that they were becoming huge. And with two UK number 1 singles to their name and plenty of hits elsewhere featured, it proved a wise move. It became their first number 1 album on these shores.
Before
As well as a mix of their early hits and lesser-known tracks in the UK, there was a new song, released as a single. Although it wasn’t strictly speaking, ‘new’. Fernando had first featured on band member Anni-Frid Lyngstad’s debut solo LP Frida ensam in 1975. Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus had originally called it Tango but at the last minute they renamed it Fernando after a bartender working at a club in Stockholm, Sweden, allegedly.
This Swedish version had lyrics penned by ABBA’s manager Stig Anderson and Lyngstad is singing to a heartbroken Fernando, attempting to console him after he has lost the love of his life. The chorus translated as:
‘Long live love, our best friend, Fernando. Raise your glass and propose a toast to it; to love, Fernando. Play the melody and sing a song of happiness. Long live love, Fernando’
When it came to ABBA recording the song, Ulvaeus decided to take a different tack. He was lying outside one summer night and gazing at the stars when he hit upon a brainwave. Fernando became about two old freedom fighters who fought in the Texas Revolution of 1836, who reminisced about days of old one night in Mexico.
Review
Fernando is one of ABBA’s best-known and biggest-selling singles, but it’s my least favourite of their number 1s. I find it leaden and overwrought and I’m not really interested in hearing about what two 19th-century soldiers have to say. Give me their relationship drama and we’ve something to work with. It also suffers coming straight after Save Your Kisses For Me, which meant 10 weeks of tedium at number 1 on repeats of Top of the Pops and again, it makes me relieved I wasn’t a pop fan in 1976. Having said all this, I’d be a liar if I didn’t say the chorus was very memorable.
ABBA starred in a memorable, suitably dramatic video for Fernando, sat around a campfire looking very serious and gazing into each other’s eyes, as you can see above. ABBA made lots of videos – I’m not sure if they ever actually promoted on Top of the Pops in person? As well as a month as UK number 1, Fernando topped the charts across the globe. It became the longest-running number 1 in Australian history (14 weeks) for more than 40 years until Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You went one better in 2017.
After
ABBA made a Spanish-language album, Gracias Por La Música, in 1980 and Fernando was a natural choice for an LP aimed at Latin American countries.
The Outro
So, ABBA had scored two number 1s before we even reach the half-way mark of 1976, and the best was yet to come.
9 May: 20-year-old prostitute Marcella Claxton is badly injured in a hammer attack in Leeds.
10 May: Following months of rumours of his involvement in a plot to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott, Jeremy Thorpe resigns as leader of the Liberal Party.
19 May: Liverpool win the UEFA Cup for the second time by completing a 4-3 aggregate win over Belgian side Club Brugge KV at the Olympiastadion in Brugge.
27 May: Harold Wilson’s Resignation Honours List is published. It becomes known satirically as the ‘Lavender List’ due to the number of wealthy businessmen awarded honours.
1 June: UK and Iceland end the third and final Cod War. The UK abandoned the ‘open seas’ international fisheries policy it had previously promoted.
And how. Initially ridiculed upon its release, Bohemian Rhapsody established Queen as rock royalty. It is the third biggest number 1 of all time, selling over six million worldwide, and became the first to reach number 1 twice – for nine weeks in 1975/76 and again for five weeks in 1991/92 after singer Freddie Mercury’s death, making it the only song to be a Christmas number 1 twice. It also spearheaded the rise in popularity of music videos, had an Oscar-winning film named after it, and even has it’s own nickname. I will not be referring to it as ‘Bo Rap’ here.
Before
Before Queen there was Smile, a struggling rock band featuring guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Their singer, Tim Staffell, had befriended a fellow Ealing Art College student named Freddie Bulsara. The movie Bohemian Rhapsody contains many factual inaccuracies, and Bulsara joining Smile was the first. He didn’t stand and audition in broad daylight, he was already a fan when Staffell quit in 1970 to form Humpy Bong with former Bee Gees drummer Colin Petersen. Taylor’s friend Mike Grose became Smile’s bassist and soon after their first gig that June, Bulsara suggested they change their name to Queen. At the same time, he became Freddie Mercury. Several bassists later, John Deacon joined in February 1971.
Queen were playing to tiny audiences in the early 70s, but set to work on their eponymous debut. Queen was released in July 1973, with production by Roy Thomas Baker and John Anthony. It was a mix of heavy metal riffs and progressive rock, featuring tracks including debut single Keep Yourself Alive and My Fairy King, containing a mention of ‘Mother Mercury’, which is where the singer’s surname originated from. Neither Keep Yourself Alive or second single, also from the album, Liar, charted.
A month after the LP’s release they set to work on its sequel, Queen II, while supporting glam rockers Mott the Hoople on tour. When their next single was released shortly before the album, it rocketed to number 10. Seven Seas of Rhye showcased a more sophisticated production, very-70s fantastical lyrics, and was very catchy. Queen II, incidentally, features the Mick Rock photo of the band in Marlene Dietrich poses, which would prove the inspiration for much of the Bohemian Rhapsody video.
The third album, Sheer Heart Attack, got them noticed in the UK and abroad. A more eclectic collection, its first single, camp pop anthem Killer Queen just missed out on the top spot at two in the UK and was their first US hit. Now I’m Here got to 11 in the UK.
Queen’s star was rising ever higher, but they were broke and unhappy with their management deal with Trident Studios. They broke away and with Elton John’s manager John Reid taking care of business, they set to work on their fourth album A Night at the Opera.
Usually Queen’s songs germinated in the studio, but Mercury had it in mind to join together three song fragments, some dating back to the late-60s. Chris Smith, keyboardist in Smile, said that Mercury played him a tune he was working on called The Cowboy Song, which featured the lyrics ‘Mama, just killed a man’. Producer Roy Thomas Baker once recalled Mercury playing him the opening section on the piano, stopping abruptly and saying ‘and this is where the opera section comes in!’.
Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor rehearsed Bohemian Rhapsody and other songs from A Night at the Opera at Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey in mid-75. The recording of the single began on 24 August at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, but due to its elaborate nature was also recorded at Roundhouse, Sarm East Studios, Scorpio Sound and Wessex Sound Studios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBqMbefDgys
Review
There have been many interpretations of the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody. Is it Mercury dealing with personal issues? May has suggested it was, but that he never actually said so to the other band members. Could he be talking about his homosexuality? He hadn’t come out to his then-partner Mary Austin at that point. Taylor said on a BBC Three documentary about the song that he thought the subject matter was ‘fairly self-explanatory’ with ‘a bit of nonsense in the middle’. It’s definitely worth noting that when Queen released a Greatest Hits in Iran (the first official pop release ever in that country), they included a booklet with translations and explanations of the songs. It says that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic, ‘Bismillah’, and so regains his soul from Satan. So perhaps we really are meant to take the lyrics literally.
Where does one start with a review of Bohemian Rhapsody?! It’s almost too big to even have one. I first heard it on a cassette compilation as a child, and back then, strangely, I didn’t find it too weird. Maybe childhood in the 80s was so constantly weird, a nearly-six-minute-long single about murder and the devil didn’t seem that strange. The thing I found ‘very, very frightening’ was the video. Growing up, Mercury’s look was short hair and moustache. Seeing him looking different, lined up in that famous formation with the others, I found them all ghostly and unsettling, but Mercury especially. At first, I didn’t even believe they were the same person.
How strange that this stitched together prog-influenced epic should somehow become a monolith of pop music. The nearest thing to it in 1975 is 10 cc’sI’m Not in Love, another lengthy symphony, but at least that has a relatable message at its core. Bohemian Rhapsody just screams ‘album track’. So why has it not only endured, but grown in stature?
It may well be as basic as: it’s fun to sing along to, from power ballad to surreal opera to rock anthem and back to ballad, it’s as eclectic as it gets. Like I’m Not in Love, it’s beautifully produced and sounds great through good speakers. It also shows how far production had come since The Beach Boys similarly landmark moment Good Vibrations in 1966 (Brian Wilson was very complimentary about Bohemian Rhapsody). And the moment in which the opera section turns to rock is always a total joy and release of energy and tension. May’s guitar work throughout is excellent, not just when he rocks out either, he does a great line in maudlin accompaniment as Mercury describes his woes.
Of course, Bohemian Rhapsody is really all about Mercury. What a voice. Anyone can attempt and enjoy singing along to this track, as I’ve already said, but nobody could perform it with the prowess of Mercury. And as downright odd as the opera section may be, it’s a great display of an amazing vocal talent. Not that it’s only Mercury at that point – he takes the middle range, with May on the low notes and Taylor on the high. To create the virtual choir took 180 separate overdubs and three weeks alone to finish. The tape was worn out several times, resulting in repeated transfers. The piano Mercury plays is the same used by Paul McCartney on another lengthy number 1 classic, Hey Jude.
My opinion of Bohemian Rhapsody has changed several times over throughout my life. I loved it in my teens and 20s, and spent much of my 30s thoroughly sick to death of it, and feeling there were many better ‘weird’, long songs out there that did what it does better. I was wrong to an extent, and in my 40s, I love it once more. I’m no superfan of Queen, and can take or leave some of their material. But this is fantastic and deserving of its status.
Back to the video. It does annoy me when this gets the credit of being the first promo for a single. It’s simply not true. Promos were being made in the 60s. The Beatles made loads, for example. And Queen! What is true is that they became more and more popular, and more adventurous in the wake of this number 1. You may well see more and more appearing on this blog. According to May, they decided on a video to avoid miming a complex song on Top of the Pops and were touring at the time anyway. I wonder what Pan’s People would have made of it?
It was filmed in November 1975 at Elstree Studios and directed by Bruce Gowers. The spooky effect in which Mercury’s face repeats on ‘Magnifico’ and ‘Let me go’ is a very simple trick in which a camera is pointed at a monitor, creating visual feedback. I stumbled across it as a teenager while playing with my camcorder and it blew my mind. After the many hours spent recording the song, the video was ready in five hours and rushed to the BBC for its debut on Top of the Pops.
After
Despite pressure from EMI, Queen wouldn’t cave in and edit Bohemian Rhapsody, thankfully. Radio 1 DJ Kenny Everett, a close friend of Mercury, was instrumental in its initial success. He promised the band not to play the song in full at first and he would tease listeners by playing snippets. Eventually he played it in full 14 times in two days, and fans were asking in shops for it before its release.
The Outro
Bohemian Rhapsody‘s nine-week run was the longest concurrent stint since Paul Anka’s Diana in 1957. An incredible achievement, particularly for such a bold experiment in pop. It even reached nine in the US, which was also unexpected. Perhaps another reason it did so well is the sense I get after reviewing 1975’s number 1s that with depressingly few exceptions, it was a rather drab year for pop. With glam gone and disco yet to make its mark, few songs stand out or push the envelope other than this or I’m Not in Love, and Space Oddityis six years old at this point. 1976 would be another poor year, although ABBA were about to make a big return. Weirdly, Mamma Mia would finally dislodge Bohemian Rhapsody, a rather odd event considering the latter’s ‘Mamma mia let me go’.
The Info
Written by
Freddie Mercury
Producers
Roy Thomas Baker & Queen
Weeks at number 1
9 (29 November 1975-30 January 1976)
Trivia
Births
5 December 1975:Snooker World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan 12 December: Gymnast Jackie Brady 19 January 1976: Actress Marsha Thomason 21 January: Spice Girl Emma Bunton
Deaths
29 November 1975:Racing driver Tony Brise (see below)/Racing driver Graham Hill (see below) 5 January 1976:Beatles roadie Mal Evans 12 January:Writer Agatha Christie 13 January:Actress Margaret Leighton
Meanwhile…
29 November: Two-time Formula One world champion Graham Hill, 46, dies in an air crash in Hertfordshire. He was piloting a plane in thick fog containing five other members of the Embassy Hill team who all also died, including Tony Brise.
5 December – The Government ends internment of suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland.
6-12 December: IRA members on the run from police break into a London flat on Balcombe Street, taking the residents hostage. The siege ends after six days with the gunmen giving themselves up to the police.
11 December: Donald Neilson is arrested in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire on suspicion of being the ‘Black Panther’, believed to have carried out five murders in the last two years.
29 December 1975: The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act 1970 come into force.
2 January 1976: Hurricane-force winds of up to 105mph kill 22 people across Britain, causing millions of pounds worth of damage to buildings and vehicles.
5 January: 10 Protestant men are killed in the Kingsmill massacre at South Armagh, Northern Ireland, by members of the IRA who used the alias ‘South Armagh Republican Action Force’.
7 January: The third Cod War continues, with British and Icelandic ships clashing.
18 January: The Scottish Labour Party was formed by a group of disaffected Labour MPs. It disbanded five years later.
20 January: Emily Jackson is stabbed to death in Leeds, and police believe she may have been killed by the same man who murdered Wilma McCann in the city three months previously. It is revealed that Jackson was a part-time prostitute and the unidentified killer becomes known as ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’.
21 January: The first commercial Concorde flight takes off from Heathrow.
29 January: 12 IRA bombs explode in London’s West End. They are the first in the city in over a year.
Paul Simon was the brains behind Simon & Garfunkel’s impressive catalogue of folk and pop, including 1970 number 1 Bridge over Troubled Water. He continued to have success after they split, but it was Art Garfunkel who scored not one but two solo number 1s.
Before
You can find a profile of the duo in the blog I linked to above, but I’ll briefly touch on Garfunkel’s early years here.
Arthur Ira Garfunkel was born 5 November 1941 in New York City. He was of Romanian Jewish descent. His love of singing began in first grade, and he would often sing in synagogue. His father later bought him a wire recorder and he would spend his afternoons singing, recording, and playing it back to listen for flaws and learn how to improve. Such was his obsession, he performed for four hours at his bar mitzvah in 1954.
It was in sixth grade that Garfunkel first crossed paths with Simon, in a production of Alice in Wonderland, and Simon apparently first became interested in singing after hearing Garfunkel in a school talent show.
Between 1956 and 1962 they recorded together as Tom & Jerry, but Garfunkel released his first solo record, Beat Love, in 1959, under the name Artie Garr. When he and Simon graduated, he went to Columbia University, becoming heavily involved in sports and a capella group the Columbia Kingsmen.
Simon & Garfunkel reformed in 1963, and the rest is history, and in my blog. But it’s also worth noting that although Simon wrote everything, Garfunkel did get involved in the production side. He also wrote the Canticle in Scarborough Fair/Canticle, would work out how the material would be sung, and was credited with the arrangement on The Boxer.
After the break-up in 1970, Garfunkel avoided music for three years. He starred in two Mike Nichols films – Catch-22 (1970) and Carnal Knowledge (1971). He then spent 1971 to 1972 teaching geometry in Connecticut. But following a greatest hits album and a one-off reunion with Simon at a benefit concert for presidential candidate George McGovern, he decided to go solo.
Garfunkel’s debut solo LP, Angel Clare, was released in 1973. Co-produced by the singer and Simon & Garfunkel producer Roy Halee, it featured covers of material by Van Morrison, Jimmy Webb and Randy Newman. Simon contributed guitar on one track, and it also featured Jerry Garcia and JJ Cale on guitars, plus members of The Wrecking Crew including Hal Blaine. A single from it, Webb’s All I Know, was a big hit in the US, reaching nine.
I Only Have Eyes for You was the first material to be lifted from Garfunkel’s forthcoming second album Breakaway. Another album of mostly contemporary covers, this single was unusual in that the song dated further back. It was written by multi-Oscar winner Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin for the 1934 musical movie Dames. The most famous version came from influential doo-wop group The Flamingos in 1959.
Review
You can’t really go wrong combining as beautiful a song as this with the always-lovely singing of Garfunkel. And with a lush production from Richard Perry (who produced Without You), it’s a song you can wrap yourself in like a warm blanket. Having said that, it might not be to everyone’s taste. Some may find it overdone and too schmaltzy, and if so, they’d likely prefer the version by The Flamingos. I’ve got room in my heart for both though.
The Outro
This version seems to be mostly forgotten in 2020 – indeed, until now I had assumed Garfunkel had only scored a number 1 with Bright Eyes. Perhaps because The Flamingos song has such a reputation for being a classic. But this is worth your time, especially if you like Simon & Garfunkel.
The Info
Written by
Al Dubin & Harry Warren
Producer
Richard Perry
Weeks at number 1
2 (25 October-7 November)
Trivia
Births
27 October:Novelist Zadie Smith
Deaths
27 October:Royal Air Force officer Frederick Charles Victor Laws
Meanwhile…
30 October: West Yorkshire Police launch a murder investigation when 28-year-old prostitute Wilma McCann is found dead in Chapeltown, Leeds.
6 November: A pub rock group called Bazooka Joe performed at Saint Martins College. Their support band were performing for the first time. They were called Sex Pistols.
Philly soul group The Stylistics notched up many hits in the 70s, thanks largely to the unique falsetto of Russell Thompkins Jr and slick production of Thom Bell. But by the time they had a number 1 in the UK their fortunes were sliding in the US and they had a new production team.
Before
The Stylistics came about when two Philadelphia vocal groups merged in 1968. The Monarchs – Thompkins, James Smith and Airrion Love, joined forces with James Dunn and Herb Murrell of the The Percussions. Two years later they recorded debut single You’re a Big Girl Now, written by their road manager Marty Bryant and Robert Douglas from their backing band Slim and the Boys. It became a regional hit for Sebring Records and got them signed with Avco Records. They re-recorded it and it reached seven in the US Billboard R&B chart in 1971.
Avco approached Bell to be their producer in the hope he could work his magic on them the way he had with The Delfonics. However he was unimpressed with their audition and only agreed to work with them because he liked Thompkins voice. Avco gave Bell creative control and so he built most songs around Thompkins. Within the year they were number three in the Billboard Hot 100 with You Are Everything. Two of their best-known hits followed in 1972 – Betcha by Golly, Wow and I’m Stone in Love with You, which were their first entries in the UK charts, at 13 and nine respectively.
The hits kept coming over the next few years, notably, in the UK, notably Rockin’ Roll Baby, reaching six in 1973, and most famous of all, the classic soul of You Make Me Feel Brand New. This duet with Love reached two here and in the US, where it became their biggest hit. But it was one of the last songs that Bell was involved with, and they split in 1974.
That same year they were teamed up with songwriters and producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, better known as Hugo & Luigi. Together they had co-written or co-produced big hits in the 50s and 60s including Twistin’ the Night Away, Shout and, and George David Weiss, Can’t Help Falling in Love. Also thrown into the mix was songwriter, producer and arranger Van McCoy. He had co-written the classic I Get the Sweetest Feeling in 1968. He became a pop star in his own right shortly before arranging Can’t Give You Anything (But My Love) when his disco smash The Hustle, produced by Hugo & Luigi, lit up the charts earlier in the summer of 75.
Review
There’s no escaping the fact working with Hugo & Luigi was considered a step down for The Stylistics, despite their new producers having an impressive pedigree themselves. I have mixed feelings about Can’t Give You Anything (But My Love) because it’s grown on me and if it is less slick, it’s a great chorus and has bags of energy, and Van McCoy’s arrangement, while very similar to The Hustle, doesn’t overpower the song and complements it well. The lyric is hardly original, a poor guy tells a woman he may not be able to promise much but his devotion.
Not only that, I’m not actually a fan of Thompkins’ falsetto. I love falsettos, but his is overdone I find. He gets away with it here though. You do have to wonder what is the point of the other singers though, there’s a great video of the group performing this on a rooftop, and the choreography is hilariously messy. But it’s all good fun in a rather cheesy, dated 70s way.
After
Although they were lucky if they scraped the top 50 in America in this era, the UK hits continued for a while for The Stylistics. Na-Na is the Saddest Word reached five, Funky Weekend climbed to 10, and an inevitable cover of Can’t Help Falling in Love hit four in 1976. $7,000 and You, in 1977, was their last chart entry. Their next producer was Teddy Randazzo and the group felt they were looking out-of-date next to disco. They ended the 70s with a small role in the film adaptation of the musical Hair (1979).
The Outro
The Stylistics were reunited with Bell in 1980, but couldn’t recapture the magic. Dunn left that year and Smith a year later. Raymond Johnson was recruited but when he left in 1985 they became a trio. To date, their last album was Love Talk, released in 1991. They continued to tour until 2000 when Thompkins left. Line-up changes have continued ever since, and Thompkins formed The New Stylistics in 2004.
The Info
Written by
Hugo & Luigi & George David Weiss
Producers
Hugo & Luigi
Weeks at number 1
3 (16 August-5 September)
Births
22 August: Actress Sheree Murphy
Meanwhile…
16 August: Football hooliganism was on the rise in the 70s, and on the opening day of the English league season, hundreds of fans were arrested at games across the country.
19 August: The campaign for the release of George Davis, convicted of armed robbery, culminated in Headlingley cricket ground being vandalised, causing the scheduled test match between England and Australia to be abandoned.
21 August: The unemployment rate reaches the 1,250,000 mark.
27 August: 14-year-old Tracy Browne is badly injured in a hammer attack on a country lane at Silsden, near Keighley.
Here’s a number 1 that is very 1975. Typically Tropical’s Barbados combines two of the decade’s crazes in the UK – the package holiday, and political incorrectness – earning itself the status of a summer smash. Holidays overseas were getting ever cheaper, resulting in songs like Y Viva Espana by Sylvia Vrethammar becoming huge, and controversial sitcom Love Thy Neighbour, about a black couple moving next door to a racist, was an ITV mainstay.
Before
Typically Tropical were two Welsh audio engineers, Jeff Calvert and Max West, who worked at Morgan Studios. Based in Willesden Green, London, Morgan was used by some of the biggest stars of the 70s, including Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd. In 1974 Calvert had returned from a holiday in Jamaica, and felt inspired. He and Hughes penned Barbados in two hours, sitting down with a piano and a guitar before heading to Morgan to put a demo together. On the strength of that demo they signed a three-single deal with Gull Records, and Barbados was to be the first.
Now known as Typically Tropical, they recorded a proper version, and used a fine roll call of session musicians, including guitarists Chris Spedding and Vic Flick, legendary drummer Clem Cattini (been a while since we’ve heard of him) and Blue Mink’s Max West and Roger Coulam on keyboards.
Review
Oh dear. If you’re equipped with the knowledge that the men behind this are two white Welshmen pretending to be black, it makes it pretty hard to stomach. Talk about racial stereotyping… the intro begins with ‘Captain Tobias Willcock welcoming you aboard Coconut Airways Flight 372’… The song is sung from the point of view of a Brixton bus driver who can’t wait to be back on the island, reunited with his girlfriend ‘Mary Jane’. It’s a joke about ganja, get it? You know, because he’s black? Awful.
What can I say in its favour? Well it’s a decent tune, so much so, it went to number 1 again when the Dutch Eurodance outfit Vengaboys reworked it into We’re Going to Ibiza! in 1999. I expect you’re more likely to hear that than Barbados on the radio anymore as it’s more PC, and that’s certainly fair enough. If it wasn’t for the stereotyping, I’d actually prefer Barbados, as I couldn’t stand the Vengaboys at the time.
After
On the strength of reaching number 1, Typically Tropical made the album Barbados Sky. Two singles came from it, Rocket Now and Everybody Plays the Fool but they failed to chart. They also released songs as Captain Zero, Calvert & West and Black Rod between 1975 and 1979, but they sank too. They did however score a hit when they wrote Sarah Brightman’s I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper in 1978.
The Info
Written & produced by
Jeffrey Calvert & Max West
Weeks at number 1
1 (9-15 August)
Meanwhile…
14 August: Hampstead entered the UK weather records with the highest 155-min total rainfall at 169mm.
15 August: Olive Smelt, a 46-year-old woman from Halifax, is severely injured in a hammer attack in an alleyway.
With a thud resembling a human heartbeat it begins, and then the ethereal, icy voices float in around a warm, liquid electric piano line, enveloping the listener in a never-before-heard aural ecstasy. I’m Not in Love is not only 10 cc’s best number 1, it is their masterpiece, and one of the greatest chart-toppers of the 70s.
Before
Following the success of Rubber Bullets in 1973, the Mancunian quartet proved they weren’t a flash in the pan when The Dean and I reached 10 in the hit parade. Joined by second drummer Paul Burgess, they embarked on a UK tour before returning to Strawberry Studios to work on second album Sheet Music. Released in 1974, it featured the singles The Wall Street Shuffle (another number 10 hit) and Silly Love (24). Sheet Music helped the band make inroads in the US.
However, 10 cc were struggling financially. They were still signed to Jonathan King’s UK Records and haemorrhaging money due to a meagre royalty rate, so they needed a bigger label. Fortunately, they had a song that would blow the minds of record company executives.
I’m Not in Love was written in 1974 and stemmed from Eric Stewart’s wife Gloria complaining that he didn’t say ‘I love you’ to her enough. So he went away and tried to think of a clever way of saying it without making it explicit. A very 10 cc thing to do. The lyric about the picture on the wall hiding a ‘nasty stain’ refers to a photo of Gloria that he had used in his bedroom at his parents’ house
He wrote most of the melody and lyrics on the guitar, and asked Graham Gouldman to help him finish it in the studio. Gouldman suggested some different chords for the melody and came up with an intro and bridge. After two or three days they had a bossa nova guitar-led version to present to the other band members Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. All four worked on recording the first version, with Creme on guitar, Gouldman on bass and Godley on drums. Stewart later recalled Godley and Creme didn’t like it, particularly Godley, who said ‘It’s crap.’ Stewart was taken aback and asked for something constructive to work with, and Godley told him to ‘chuck it’. So the original demo was wiped, which is a shame as it wold be fascinating to hear how the song developed.
Stewart and Gouldman instead helped Godley and Creme with Une Nuit a Paris, but Stewart noticed staff at Strawberry Studios were singing the melody to I’m Not in Love, and suggested they try again. Godley remained sceptical. He and Creme were considered the more ‘arty’ of the band, while Stewart and Gouldman came from a more ‘pop’ angle. Godley relented on the condition they ‘totally fuck it up’ and not use instruments, relying on voices instead. I’m Not in Love was back on.
Am acoustic guitar guide track was recorded first in order to help with the melody, but they then concentrated on creating a wall of vocal sound. Stewart spent three weeks recording Gouldman, Godley and Creme singing ‘ahhhh’ 16 times for each note of the chromatic scale, creating a ‘choir’ of 48 voices for each note. To keep the voices running through the track, Creme suggested tape loops, having become obsessed with them since Revolution 9 from The Beatles. Stewart created 12 , each 12 inches long, to play through separate channels of the mixing desk.
Godley backed down on the ‘no instrument’ rule, but they were kept minimal. Stewart played the electric piano, Gouldman used an electric guitar for the rhythm melody and Godley borrowed Creme’s Moog synthesiser for the heartbeat drum sound. For the bridge and middle eight, Creme played the piano and replicated some lyrics that were rightly omitted: ‘Don’t feel let down. Don’t get hung up. We do what we can – do what we must.’ Gouldman added a nice touch of bass, and a toy box was double-tracked out of phase for the middle eight and fade-out.
It’s interesting to note that after spending so much time on the production, they decided Stewart’s guide vocal couldn’t be improved on. It was so heartfelt they kept it in. Godley and Creme recorded the backing vocals. That haunting keyboard that comes in when Stewart sings ‘It’s just a silly phase I’m going through’? It’s not, apparently a keyboard, but a chorus of treated kazoos.
The recording was just about finished, but Godley felt it was lacking something. Creme remembered when testing the grand piano mics that he, apropos of nothing, said ‘Be quiet, big boys don’t cry’. Stewart soloed the line, and they felt they had something, but not the right voice. While considering this, their secretary Kathy Redfern entered the studio and whispered ‘Eric, sorry to bother you. There’s a telephone call for you.’. Creme jumped up and said she had the perfect voice. It took some coaxing but Redfern put down the famous whisper, and I’m Not in Love was complete.
Review
A common criticism of 10 cc is that, while they were clearly uncommonly stuffed with talent and brimming with ideas, their songs lacked heart and soul. You can’t say that here. I’m Not in Love was one of the most beautifully intelligent songs yet to top the charts, and a fascinating glimpse into the male psyche. Here, Stewart is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his feelings, but he can’t stop the tide of emotion he feels. He may claim it’s a ‘silly phase’ but he doth protest too much, to the extent of being arrogant and cold. ‘Don’t think you’ve got it made’ is a pretty cocky way of making his point and telling the muse not to tell her friends suggests he’s ashamed of loving her.
Try as he might though, he can’t stem the tide of emotion, represented by the gorgeous sound of the celestial choir, a million voices telling him ‘don’t fight it, feel it’. Just at the point it sounds like it will completely overcome him, he comes up with another comeback, but the voices remain, and will always return. The ‘Be quiet, big boys don’t cry’ section is inspired, and it seems too good to be true that it was a happy accident. Or maybe Creme subconsciously said it because that is the very essence of the song? This man is unable to reveal his true feelings, be they love or hurt, because he was told as a child to ‘man up’. And a lifetime of thinking like that is doing him harm. When he sings ‘You’ll wait a long time for me’, it’s through gritted teeth.
Production-wise, I’m Not in Love is light years ahead of most if not all other number 1s from 1975. A lush mix of prog-rock and pop with far-out effects, but yet very commercial at the same time. Godley and Creme did a great job of fucking it up, and the use of the choir is so good it sends shivers down my spine, but at the heart of I’m Not in Love is a great pop song, with a beautiful performance from Stewart.
After
10 cc’s manager Ric Dixon invited Nigel Grainge, head of A&R at Mercury Records to Strawberry to hear the track and he was blown away. With the rest of the album The Original Soundtrack in the can, they signed with the label for a million dollars. This infuriated Creme – as far as he was concerned, 10 cc were about to join Richard Branson’s fledgling Virgin label, but he and brother-in-law Stewart were on holiday with their wives.
10 cc released Life Is a Minestone as a preview of their forthcoming LP The Original Soundtrack and it reached seven. 10 cc knew they had a great song to follow it, but at six minutes-plus, how was I’m Not in Love going to fare as a single? Stewart refused to edit it at first, but backed down and they made a four-minute version for the radio. I’d advise not bothering with the edit. It’s pretty clumsy. Fortunately, it began selling well, so well in fact, public demand meant the full version began to be played instead.
The Outro
Not only were the band vindicated when it spent a fortnight at number 1 in the UK, it also went to two in the US. A year later Godley was telling the NME that I’m Not in Love was his favourite 10 cc song, a far cry from the ‘crap’ judgement he originally had. By the time 10 cc had their third and final number 1, he and Creme were no longer members of the group.
The Info
Written by
Eric Stewart & Graham Gouldman
Producers
10 cc
Weeks at number 1
2 (28 June-11 July)
Trivia
Deaths
2 July:Actor James Robertson Justice
Meanwhile…
30 June: UEFA reduces Leeds United’s ban from European competitions to one season on appeal.
5 July: 36-year-old Ann Rogulskyj from Keighley, West Yorkshire is badly injured in a hammer attack in an alleyway.
