1967: Counts the days into years…

I’ve written about my early exposure to the small selection of singles acquired by Mum and Dad to complement their slightly larger assortment of LPs. What I heard on the radio may also have seeped into my infant consciousness but did not survive the ‘delete’ instruction of my undeveloped brain. From about 1967, that began to change. But what was the music I listened to fifty years ago?

I daresay ‘Stewpot’ played the current hits on Junior Choice, but the songs I remember were much older, kids-focussed material. My Sixties radio memories are dominated by the likes of the tears-inducing ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ (Peter, Paul and Mary), ‘A Windmill in Old Amsterdam’ (Ronnie Hilton) and ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ (The New Christy Minstrels, but co-written by a young Burt Bacharach!).  I guess the more you heard them, the more children – or their parents – were likely to request to hear them again. And so, for good or ill, I got to hear them every week, never to be forgotten.

Actual hits would have been played, too, of course. I definitely remember hearing songs like Millie’s ‘My Boy Lollipop’ and The Dave Clark Five’s ‘Bits and Pieces’ but, as these were released in 1964, I doubt these memories dated from then; I’d have been only two years old.

Of course, television provides that visual stimulus which until then had largely been missing. Top of the Pops made the difference and, albeit in black and white, the pictures allied to the music enabled the whole pop package to perculate into my brain. Then there were The Monkees.

Amidst the cartoons, Doctor Who and Blue Peter, The Monkees was a TV show I was allowed to watch and also found entertaining. No doubt it would look absolutely terrible to my 50-something self. Part sitcom, part pop video; were there even storylines? But to a five year-old, the slapstick, speeded-up running around and the very accessible music were a winning combination.

I recall being given a magazine containing lyrics of contemporary songs. On the cover there were the familiar faces and mop-top of Messrs Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith and Tork, heads turned to face the camera from individually named director’s chairs. It may even have been the photo I found online (below)! The date must have been early 1967 because for some reason I can visualise on its pages the words for Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Sugar Town’ and Donovan’s ‘Mellow Yellow’, both of which I know made the top ten early that year.

Number one at the time was The Monkees’ ‘I’m a Believer’ and throughout 1967 and 1968 their singles peppered the charts, outselling even The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Nevertheless, for anyone my age, the band are immortalised by the opening lines of the TV show’s theme tune:- 

            “Here we come

             Walking down the street

             Get the funniest looks from

             Everyone we meet…

  
Altogether now…. 

            “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees…!”

They weren’t simply a ‘manufactured’ band of talentless kids. Indeed, they had friends in very high places, musically and culturally. And their music endures and endears to this day, with Dolenz and Tork still touring. To paraphrase their theme song’s lyric, they are no longer the young generation, but still have something to say. 

1967 has since become synonymous with hippydom. At the age of 6, the closest I got to Flower Power was picking pansies and making daisy chains. Everyone was going to San Francisco, right? No. For us, it was a fortnight in Gorleston, Norfolk. The collection of holiday slides certainly don’t capture Mum and Dad adorned with flowers in their hair, let alone stoned on LSD! It was also the year of ‘Sergeant Pepper’, the Stones being controversially in ‘Sympathy with the Devil’ and the birth of ‘rock’ as we know it.  

Obviously the whole psychedelia scene passed me by. However, had I been 16 or even 26, I doubt that situation would have been much changed. I just like to think I’d have been equipped with an enhanced appreciation of Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, The Hollies and The Beatles. Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd may have been pushing it…. 

Given their enormous fame and significance, it now seems weird that I have no recollection of The Beatles prior to ‘Hello Goodbye’, the ’67 Christmas chart-topper; probably because they didn’t appear on TOTP beyond a few promo films which obviously made little impact on me. I’m now a fan of Jimi Hendrix, a guitar genius and shy trendsetter like no other. However, at the age of six, ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘Purple Haze’ simply sounded like wild, raucous cacophonies of drums and electric guitar. I vividly recall a contemporary music-related conversation with Dad in which I slated Hendrix, perhaps the one act which made me leave the room during TOTP!  

The biggest-selling singles act of ’67 in the UK must have been Engelbert Humperdinck. Decades before his Eurovision humiliation, he was the mum’s favourite. ‘Release Me’ stuck around in the charts for a year, an achievement unheard of back then. Then, and now, I consider it a dreary dirge. On the other hand, I did like ‘The Last Waltz’. It was the complete antithesis of ‘Release Me’; love on the dance floor, not a demand for divorce; gentle melodic piano instead of insufferably slow orchestra. 

His closest rival was Tom Jones. They may have shared the same manager, and sung similar big ballads, but their personas were worlds apart. Dad, not known for his affinity with pop, certainly sat in the Tom camp. While I don’t remember listening to any of his material prior to the dramatic intro to ‘Delilah’, I can now appreciate why the man from Treforest garnered the male vote.  

Forty years before his renaissance as the rheumy-eyed, name-dropping silver fox on TV talent show ‘The Voice UK’, Tom was a dynamic performer who could not only deliver an emotional weepie with the best of ‘em but also belt out rock and soul like few others. He really did make Engelbert look feeble. While Tommy Woodward abbreviated his name to the short, sharp Tom Jones, Arnold Dorsey had to re-brand himself with the ludicrously lengthy monicker of a long-dead German composer. Who was the man’s man? Can you really imagine Humperdinck, all wavy hair and big lips, murdering his girlfriend Delilah in cold blood? I rest my case.

There were some really classic records released in 1967. No doubt, I would have been exposed to most of them, but most only entered my consciousness in later years. The Kinks’ wistful ‘Waterloo Sunset’, The Troggs’ original ‘Love is all Around’, Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’, Cream’s ‘Strange Brew’, The Move’s ‘Flowers in the Rain’ (famously launching BBC Radio 1), Cat Stevens’ ‘Matthew and Son’, that super slice of Small Faces psychedelia, ‘Itchycoo Park’, Scott McKenzie’s dreamy ‘San Francisco’, The Young Rascals’ definitive lazy summer single ‘Groovin’; the list goes on and on. 

Instead, random songs have lodged in my memory banks from that year. I’m not sure whether it was down to the Smith connection but Alan Price’s ‘Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear’ and Whistling Jack Smith’s ‘I was Kaiser Bill’s Batman’ still resonate. You no longer hear them much on the radio but both made the top five. Price’s jaunty piano intro and the whimsical lyrics still raise a nostalgic smile, yet the package comes in at under two minutes! Surely another verse and chorus wouldn’t have hurt writer Randy Newman too much? No need for words in Whistling Jack’s hit, but check out the performer’s miming in this German TV clip. Not exactly taxing! 

Herman’s Hermits may not have been as successful in Britain as they were in the States but I recall enjoying their typically understated ‘There’s a Kind of Hush’ from that ‘summer of love’. It’s not often on the compilations. Neither is Keith West’s ‘Excerpt from a TeenageOpera’ but it made a lasting impression on me. It did reach number two here, and I can still see in my mind’s eye the singer surrounded by miming school children on TOTP. It was such a sad song about Grocer Jack, and it still sparks a tear or two. The opera itself took another three decades to materialise, but it was a wonderful, lavishly orchestrated four-minute taster! The BBC recording was presumably wiped long ago but the Germans were apparently more forward-thinking when preserving their musical archive.  

Back then, as now, some soppy ballads did hold some appeal for my young self. The Tremeloes’ ‘Silence is Golden’ is the first number one song I recall being performed on TOTP. The falsetto in the chorus was probably the defining feature of the record, which I’ve since learned covered a Four Seasons B side. The descending guitar riff and impeccable harmonies still sound good and, in true X Factor style, The Tremeloes ‘made it their own’!

Vince Hill’s sugary version of ‘Edelweiss’ was ever-present that summer, and I distinctly remember the soft-focus film accompanying ‘Something Stupid’ by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Lovely song, too, and the only one by Ol’ Blue Eyes that has ever appealed to me. 

The swirling organ of Procul Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ also evokes memories of life aged six. Now a Sixties classic, it left a mark on me, too, although the words meant nothing. Fandango? Sixteen vestal virgins? Mind you, I’m not sure if even Gary Brooker knew what his masterpiece is about. The consensus is that it’s about sex – and maybe it is. However, Matthew Fisher’s sweeping, swooping Bach-inspired keyboards and Brooker’s earthy vocals are forever 1967. See their bargain basement promo, ‘dig’ their outfits, man, and lose yourself in the music….

The year marks my first recollection of the Eurovision Song Contest. For the next ten years or so this was to be a highlight of my TV calendar, but had it not been for the child-friendly ‘Puppet on a String’ maybe it would have been different. Sandie Shaw set the UK on the road to much Euro and domestic chart success. Compulsive viewing, but not in the tongue-in-cheek, so-bad-it’s-good way it can be now. Bare-footed Sandie won in’67, Cliff Richard was runner-up to Spain the following year with another Sixties standard ‘Congratulations’, then came Lulu’s share of the first prize with ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’ in 1969.

Someone at the BBC must have considered the importance of UK cohesion given that Scotland (Lulu), Wales (Mary Hopkin) and Northern Ireland (Clodagh Rogers) each had a representative between 1969 and 1971 with diminishing returns. We weren’t to triumph again until The Brotherhood of Man in ’76.  

But I digress. Back to the Sixties… 

Apart from individual songs, did I consider any artists as being above the rest? Well, yes. The Monkees were fleetingly at the top, but I also remember describing two others as my personal favourites. With such a daft name, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky. Mick and Tich tickled my fancy. They were always on Top of the Pops around that time, but the first song I can recall hearing was ‘Zabadak’. Nonsense lyrics but great percussion and a number three hit. They finally topped the chart with ‘Legend of Xanadu’ a year later. Dave Dee’s mock whip-cracking is preserved for posterity but it’s their number eight follow-up ‘Last Night in Soho’ which I remember watching on TOTP, complete with shots of night-time traffic. 

Nevertheless, for years I claimed The Bee Gees as my top group. It began with the time in autumn 1967 when ‘Massachussetts’ first came out. Robin Gibb’s gentle vocals and his strange habit of cupping his ear are fresh in my mind, and of course it’s two and a half minutes of gorgeous melody and strings. ‘World’ was the closest the group came to the psychedelic sound of the Summer of Love, complete with minor chord piano and even a few discordant wails of rock guitar. Along with the next year’s ‘Gotta Get a Message to You’ (note Robin’s hairstyle; not only did he sound like a lovesick spaniel but he looked like one, too) it’s one of my fave Bee Gees hits. 

There were several other beautiful ballads from the Gibbs in the late Sixties and early Seventies. I don’t recall hearing them all at the time, although I must have done, but nobody writes sad songs like Barry nor sings them like Robin. Most were so touching you want to give him a cwtch in that roll-neck sweater, although his ethereal howl on solo hit ‘Saved by the Bell’ makes the song almost unlistenable. Even his mother once said that his voice “still makes me go cold when I listen to him” which sounds like a criticism but as presumably meant as a compliment! Strange to think Robin had gone from delinquent pyromaniac to purveyor of perfect pop in just a few years and was still only seventeen when crooning ‘Massachussetts’.

Of course, big bro Bazza had many memorable moments on lead vocals. His tender tenor was ideal for the introspective, sentimental and the sincere, songs like ‘Words’ and 1969’s ‘First of May’. His trademark falsetto scream would not be heard on record for another several years. 

The Bee Gees crop up regularly on my musical soundtrack, not just in the Sixties but throughout the Seventies and even the Eighties. Never really ‘cool’ but, in my opinion, their musical legacy is probably amongst Britons second only to that of The Beatles.

And so the Summer of Love gave way to the revolutionary fervour of '68. Read the next instalment to find out what this six year-old was doing instead of demonstrating on the streets of Paris...

My Early Years and Influences

There’s an old tongue-in-cheek saying: Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. I used to agree but these days it’s becoming weirdly trendy. The reminiscing and contemplation of the ageing process no longer seems to be the preserve of crusty pensioners like me. Two of the biggest hits of 2016 and 2017, Lukas Graham’s soporific ‘7 Years’ and Ed Sheeran’s spirited ‘Castle on the Hill’ dwell on the subject and it must be youngsters buying, downloading and streaming them.

So I feel like I’m in good company as I float back in time recalling the music which, if not actually shaping my life, has defined it and provided the backdrop through childhood to adulthood and on to adult-acting-as-childhood! Music has always been an important part of my life, especially when growing up. A snatch of an old song can easily whisk me back to a particular place and a specific point in time. A melody can even conjure up a scent (garden flowers, car polish!), sitting on a school field, a holiday picnic or dancing with friends at a village hall disco.

In articles or autobiographies, it seems de rigeur for musicians or pop stars to cite their parents’ musical tastes as their own major influences. However, I can’t say that’s true in my case. Dad always preferred classical music and opera, what Grandad Grimble called ‘bellyache music’! He also liked his old-school jazz from the likes of Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, and enjoyed listening to Benny Green’s Radio 2 show on the old songwriters from the forties and fifties. None of that has rubbed off on me at all! Mum was more into the heyday of Hollywood musicals like ‘Carousel’ and ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’, a taste inherited in part from her own parents. What few records we had in the house were predominantly LPs (never ‘albums’!) associated with shows or films they had attended together, mostly during courtship. As I discovered after Mum’s death, their first date had been to the cinema to see ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’, and so the theme was played at her funeral.

I was born in 1961 and, from an early age I became familiar with the scratchy soundtracks to ‘My Fair Lady’, ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Mary Poppins’. However, I don’t recall liking them much myself. I was more enthusiastic about playing the handful of ‘45s’ dating back to the early ‘60s. I’m told I danced the Twist at the age of one to Chris Montez’s ‘Let’s Dance’, and this was played more than any other. There were also Helen Shapiro’s ‘Walking Back to Happiness’, Little Eva’s ‘Like I Do’, Frank Ifield’s ‘I Remember You’ and a couple of EPs featuring Mark Wynter/Joe Brown and the trio of Kenny Ball, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk. The best known was probably ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles. I once let curiosity get the better of me and asked why this was in the collection, apparently so at odds with her primary musical preferences. She replied simply that it was because everybody else was buying it!

All of these were played frequently on a heavy boxed record player. We could stack up to six 45s at a time but since we probably had no more than that number in total, there was never a danger of overloading the equipment.

At Nan and Grandad Smith’s house in Southampton, an upright piano was a familiar fixture in the dining room. However, my sole musical memory was hearing a few Fifties-vintage 78rpm records like Perry Como’s ‘Catch a Falling Star’ and Harry Belafonte’s ‘Banana Boat Song’ played on their radiant radiogram. This was a vibrantly varnished piece of furniture, containing the only shellac 78s I recall holding in my young hands. I reckon It was under strict supervision; those big black discs were notoriously brittle!

As far as vinyl is concerned, family-purchased music took a sabbatical thereafter. Consequently, it was left to me to plough my own furrow where musical tastes were concerned, based on what I heard on the Light Programme (later Radio 1) and saw on ‘Top of the Pops’.

I’d been watching the Beeb’s weekly TV pop show at least since the age of five, my memories stretching back with certainty to 1967. On the radio I can recall sitting in the kitchen over weekend breakfasts listening to ‘Junior Choice’, a request show broadcast simultaneously on the new networks Radio 1 and Radio 2. I remember only Ed Stewart presenting it but apparently Leslie Crowther was the host prior to February 1968.

The grown-ups had their own request programme, Radio 2’s ‘Two Way Family Favourites’. On air later in the morning, I think, this was more to Mum’s liking. Linking Forces personnel abroad with their families back home, the music seemed to emanate from prehistory: I hated it!

So it was really left to telly’s TOTP to drive my musical education. Long before I started my own diary in 1973, I had no means of recording what I heard. Pop was ephemeral and with a young child’s developing brain, some melodies stuck, some were discarded. It sometimes takes something later in life to jolt memories back to life. In the mid-Seventies, we discovered Radio 1’s ‘Double Top Ten Show’. This became as integral a part of our Sunday lunchtimes as Mum’s roast dinners. We now know that Jimmy Savile was not only an idiosyncratic DJ but also a sexual predator on a huge scale. Nevertheless, it was his programme which for many years introduced me to a whole new world of music, of which more later.

I learned about artists previously unfamiliar to me from the fifties. I knew a bit about Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley; after all they were still chart staples. However, I was now becoming aware of Lonnie Donegan, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, The Shadows, Little Richard, Connie Francis and their ilk. I didn’t like all of it, but I lapped up this new musical universe opening up before my ears each Sunday. There I’d be at the dining table, chewing on my roast, notebook and pen at the ready, assiduously jotting down the top tens. I’d then do the same over tea with the current Top 20s announced on Sunday evenings.

While it was undoubtedly fascinating to hear what people were buying before I was born, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Savile’s radio show was that I was finally able to put a month and year, and often an artist’s name, to songs already lodged in my memory banks, provenance unknown. ‘Honey’ by Bobby Goldsboro? Ah, yes. I could remember watching him sitting alone on a stool miming his tear-jerking ballad on TOTP, and now I knew it was in 1968. There were lots of similar scenarios, memories unlocked from maybe only five years earlier, and they were revelations.

It can be difficult to distinguish genuine memories of contemporary listening from what I have unearthed since. I’m pretty sure that I don’t remember actually listening to material from before 1966-67. Reminiscences from around that time are blurred with snatches of song experienced more recently on the radio, archive TV shows and YouTube. In many cases, I can recall, in the words of Carpenters, “every sha-la-la-la, every wo-oh-wo-oh”. For others, it may be a few dusty sequences of ancient Top of the Pops performances dredged not from the internet but my own personal brain vault.

This memoir aims to focus not on a history of pop music but those real memories, and how they are interwoven with my own life, from childhood to adulthood. They aren’t all about the big number ones or the classic albums; sometimes it’s the more minor hits which stick in the mind. There may be a connection with a time and place; often there is no obvious reason at all.

Because I didn’t grow up in a record-buying environment, those contemporary memories have been nurtured by popular radio and ‘Top of the Pops’, perhaps with a splash of ‘Whistle Test’, Eurovision and a host of Saturday night variety shows across the years. The seven-inch single ruled. LPs, aka ‘33s’ or ‘albums’, are conspicuous by their absence. We never bought them in the family, and it was a long time before I dipped a toe into the deep, murky waters of the 12” vinyl, where the familiar tracks rubbed shoulders with the obscure fillers. 

Unadventurous soul that I am, when I did progress from merely sifting through the album racks to parting with money for their contents, it was mainly in the shallows of ‘best of’ collections. Safety-first buying, I know, but on occasions those compilations revealed tracks I hadn’t known about or had forgotten. Hidden treasures can still be discovered.

And guilty pleasures can be re-discovered. Nobody expects songs we loved at the age of eight to remain amongst our favourites four decades later. Yet, I still have fond memories of, say, many Sixties and Seventies hits and still get enjoyment from hearing them. Maybe it’s the nostalgia factor, maybe the possibility that what attracted me at the time continues to work its magic.  

Of course, there’s no winning formula for what makes one song a perennial favourite and another in the same genre a personal object of hate. Nobody would have a personal roll-call of raves identical to anybody else’s. Moreover, my most recent attempt to draw up my own all-time favourite fifty – some time in the late eighties/early nineties, I think – would be totally different from one I’d compile now. And not necessarily because it would be full of more recent material. Fortunately this is not about lists! 

I find it impossible to categorise my musical tastes. A bit of classic rock, Seventies glam, late Eighties dance, Nineties Britpop, maybe. Yet many of my favourite artists probably would not fit snugly into any of the above. Also, what I might enjoy listening to on a chilled-out evening at home may contrast starkly with music I’d bop to on a night out or sing along to on a lengthy car journey. The CD compilation producers have finally cottoned on; you can now acquire bargain 5-CD sets on just about any genre imaginable. Although, of the 100 ‘hits’, only about 30-40 are songs you’ve heard of, it’s usually great value for a tenner 

So what follows is the soundtrack of my life. An ordinary, unremarkable life, perhaps, but it’s my life. It’s not just about the stuff I’ve loved, either. There have been plenty of tracks assailing my ears no matter how hard I tried to avoid them. Still, more often than not, this reminiscence is about stuff that has meant something positive, life-affirming. The music may appear on other people’s personal soundtracks, too. I’d be surprised if it didn’t. Nevertheless, if I get as much pleasure from writing about these songs and artists as I did when hearing them for the first time, it will be a worthwhile experience.