1969 – I Want to Look inside your head

Towards the end of their career as a Fab Four, The Beatles were no longer churning out fun, family-friendly singles. At least, not in the UK. However, one of their ‘White Album’ tracks, ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ displaced The Scaffold from the top spot. However it was recorded not by McCartney, Lennon et al but by Marmalade. With its catchy beat, simple story, memorable chorus and cheery ending, I really took to the song.

As it turned out, 1969 has a roll-call of number ones like no other year. Even today I can honestly say I like every single chart-topper and I’m pretty sure that’s unique. Almost all have stayed with me from the time they were originally released, too. They also represented a real mish-mash of genres.

Following ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’ I didn’t have long to wait for another immortal instrumental: ‘Albatross’. While I didn’t realise it at the time, this was a million miles from the blues material Fleetwood Mac’s favoured blues material in those days when guitarist Peter Green led the group. Who cared? It’s such an evocative record. The guitar swoops and glides like the bird in the title, the bass and percussion represent the rhythm of the waves below and I recall trying to imitate the melody with my seven year-old voice. And probably failing. Nevertheless it’s a timeless track. Even now I often resort to running ‘Albatross’ through my head, to drain my brain of extraneous thoughts when struggling to settle down to sleep.

In 1969, there were a few Country-tinged numbers which appealed to me, long before I knew what Country music was, nor that I hated it! Dean Martin’s ‘Gentle on My Mind’ and ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town’ by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition both peaked at number two. The latter resonates more with my older self, thanks to its bitter-sweet tale of a crippled Vietnam ‘vet’ but the old Brat Packer’s record has stuck in the memory for some reason. Glen Campbell’s ‘Wichita Lineman’ also has the power like few other songs to conjure up love, longing and loneliness in a hot, dusty landscape.

Another musical style introduced to me that year was reggae. Or was it reggae? The ska sound passed me by in the preceding years but who cared what name was given to the music?  Desmond Dekker’s intriguing unaccompanied vocal intro to ‘The Israelites’ really grabbed the attention. Not just mine, because the single dislodged ‘I Heard It on the Grapevine’ from its number one position. Naturally I couldn’t grasp the Jamaican accent. Indeed it is only today that I learned that the opening lines were "Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir" and not, as I’d first thought, "Wake up in the morning, safely for breakfast”!

 While on the Caribbean theme, this was the year when Booker T and the MGs released ‘Soul Limbo’. Not with much success (the single peaked at 30) and I certainly don’t recall dancing to it at the time. Nevertheless, it would definitely be part of my musical soundtrack for many summers to come, as the theme to BBC TV’s cricket coverage. (Sighs wistfully….)

Motown was also riding high. It wasn’t prominent on my own radar, but I would definitely have been exposed to the likes of Stevie Wonder (‘Yester Me, Yester You, Yesterday’), Marvin Gaye (‘I Heard it on the Grapevine’), The Four Tops, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson (‘Tracks of my Tears’). Even now, I’m not a fan of Motown, but I have to admit there were some crackers emerging from Detroit that year.

The Beatles were well on the way to disintegration by this time. Nevertheless, they continued to storm the charts. ‘Abbey Road’ was the biggest-selling album and ‘Get Back’ the second most popular single of the year. With no TOTP performances to speak of, they hadn’t transferred their global superstardom into young Michael Smith’s musical consciousness. Until April 1969, that is. I remember seeing the footage of the famous Apple building rooftop concert performance, featuring Billy Preston on keyboards. Probably several times, as it topped the charts for six weeks.

Then there were the Rolling Stones. ‘Honky Tonk Women’ was their big hit of 1969, featuring that entrancing soft drum 'n' cowbell intro, but it wasn’t that which sticks in the memory. Instead it was a news item about the death of Brian Jones and, a few days later, the sight of Mick Jagger wearing what resembled a skirt for their legendary free Hyde Park concert.

So what made a song stand out for me that year? It wasn’t quantity, that’s for sure. Artists like The Hollies, Stones, Cilla, Dylan and Wonder were stalwarts of the singles charts for much of the decade. Yet for all that exposure, they didn’t really get me going. I don’t think it was necessarily about quality either.  I don’t recall enjoying Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, Elvis’s tear-jerker ‘In the Ghetto’, Harry Nilsson’s ‘Ev’rybody’s Talkin’’ or Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’; each tracks I have come to really appreciate. No, it was more about a connection borne of quirkiness.

The weird and wonderful Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band trumped just about everybody else when it came to quirky names. While they have since become infamous for some of Vivian Stanshall’s sonic and visual excesses, ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’ was a more traditional pop song and reached number five. Neil Innes wrote and sang it, with enough space oddity to get my young feet tapping. It also looked and sounded funny!

Thunderclap Newman also had a memorable moniker. The band was formed by Pete Townshend and took its name from the eccentric keyboard player he recruited. They topped the chart that July with one of my all-time favourites, ‘Something in the Air’. For many, it probably tapped into the feeling of social change, even revolution. I just loved the melody, the strange structure of the song and, of course the drop in key to the minute-long bar-room boogie piano interlude. Lovely upbeat ending, too, as if the listener has emerged from the darkness into  a paradise of peace and love, man.

Television pictures were starting to feature disciples of Hare Krishna. Chanting processions of simple russet-clothed singers were becoming common on the streets of London, inspired by George Harrison’s involvement in Eastern religions, their music and pacifist outlook. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s many years since I last saw or heard Hare Krishna supporters on Oxford Street. Nevertheless, it seems like only yesterday when I watched the ranks of Radha Krishna Temple in the TOTP studio performing their Harrison-produced Hare Krishna Mantra. With their shaven heads, they were visually striking but the song itself was really catchy and it went to twelve in the charts. I remember Catherine and I trying to sing the words. I’m sorry, guys, but we really had no intention of offending the movement when we chuckled over the misheard line ‘Harry la-na, Harry Dishcloth’….

Another group with a distinctive look was Jethro Tull. When lead singer Ian Anderson gave that crazy-eyed stare through his wild hippy hair, it certainly left an imprint on this eight year-old. Tull’s other USP was Anderson’s instrument of choice. I can’t recall any other famous rock or pop flautist before or since. I may not have particularly liked or disliked ‘Living in the Past’ or ‘The Witch’s Promise’ but Ian Anderson’s brand of folk rock, flute-playing and strong vocals were very much part of my ‘69/’70 memories.

1969 also featured two cracking pop songs which resonate now as much as they did then. They are particularly important because they are part of a rare breed; those that make me smile. Not because they are comedy songs. Indeed, in my experience, singles intended to be hilarious rarely work!

The opening accordion on ‘Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?’ is one of those awesome moments in pop history. It could have been so cheesy, yet Peter Sarstedt’s bittersweet rags-to-riches tale of his beloved ‘Marie-Claire’ is truly magical. I remember not the ‘backstreets of Naples’ but the singer’s amazing thatch of dark hair and drooping moustache. Less a style, more a construction. Strumming his guitar and singing words you could listen to and understand, it got under my skin. If the intro was wonderful, the repeat for the ‘outro’ was even better.

Sarstedt’s song was the fourth biggest seller of the year in Britain but was easily eclipsed in that department by a band like no other. In fact, they didn’t even exist! Despite being a bunch of cartoon characters, The Archies succeeded in ‘recording’ one of the greatest ‘bubblegum’ records in musical history: ‘Sugar Sugar’. Poor Top of the Pops! After eight weeks at number one, even I was becoming fed up with the same animated ‘performance’ at the end of the show. That blasted frog! Nevertheless, the song’s simplicity – in melody, lyrics and beat – is its strength. The child-friendly cartoon created the visual stimulus but the song is classic pop.

And so the Sixties came to an end. Not with a blast of The Beatles or a whirl of psychedelia but with ‘Two Little Boys’ by Rolf Harris. The Aussie entertainer’s resurrected sad tale of childhood chums meeting again on the battlefield prevented ‘Sugar, Sugar’ from taking the Christmas top spot and bridged the decades. 

That wasn’t such a pivotal moment for everybody. For me, 1^st January 1970 didn’t signify the death of the hippy dream or the fading of an age of innocence; it just meant I turned eight and a half! However, while I had lapped up the music of the last few years like a hungry young puppy, the new decade would soon threaten to herald a mini Dark Age as far as pop was concerned.