It’s not a comprehensive record. If I
missed the chart run-down during the programme one week, there are gaps.
However I never seemed to miss the end, because the number one was always
there. After August I was relieved to have a fall-back option.
While staying in our Marazion guest
house during the family holiday in Cornwall, we would have evening meal in the
dining room which would sometimes have music playing over a speaker system. On
the first Sunday I was intrigued to hear playing what sounded like a Top 20
show. Dad said this was played on Radio 1 every Sunday at 6pm. How he knew,
I’ve no idea, but this sparked a relationship with the programme for many
years.
It changed its length, presenter and
format on numerous occasions but in 1973 it was only an hour long. The host was
Tom Browne. Unlike the excitable chatter of a Tony Blackburn or Dave Lee
Travis, Browne’s voice oozed from the wireless like creamy hot chocolate and,
along with the BMRB jingle, remains synonymous with the UK singles chart and
became a must-listen every Sunday thereafter.
1973 was also the year when, as
mentioned earlier, I was introduced to the hits of yesteryear. In addition to
the Sunday evening Top 20 rundown, I could now write in my notebook top tens
from previous years, too, thanks to the discovery of Jimmy Savile’s Sunday
lunchtime show.
At that time, because the concept of
an official sales listing of ‘45s’ was in its relative infancy, barely two
decades. I think the format was in one week to feature hits from 15 and 5 years
ago, and the next from 17 and 10 years ago. The producers seemed to take 1956
as the start date for more reliable singles charts.
Thus to complement the delights of the
contemporary pop scene, I could immerse myself in what people were buying and
listening to (even by Mum and Dad) in 1956, 1958, 1963 and 1968. Now I could
appreciate how the likes of Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and The Beatles had
started their careers. I realised that older artists such as Perry Como and
Neil Sedaka, who were enjoying success in ’73, had been around in the Fifties,
before I was born. Wow!
I didn’t like everything I heard, but
The Double Top Ten Show opened the door to a whole new world of music. As well
as furthering my musical education, it satisfied my greed for facts and figures,
leaving me with a legacy as a very useful member of pop quiz teams! These
Sunday lunchtimes also left me with enduring affection for artists such as
Lonnie Donegan, The Shadows and The Beach Boys, as well as a few who were still
around in 1973, including The Rolling Stones. Mick, Keith and the boys have
barely registered so far in this memoir. For all the classic riffs and Jagger’s
howling, bluesy vocals, the first hit I recall enjoying was in 1973, the
haunting piano ballad ‘Angie’. Imagine my shock upon discovering recently that Keith
Richards wrote the song about his battle with heroin.
Back then, Ronnie Wood had yet to join
the Stones and Kenney Jones was not part of The Who. Instead, they were, with
Ian MacLagen and Ronnie Laine, very active members of The Faces. After two very
successful years as a solo artist, in ’73 Rod Stewart toured with his old booze
buddies and bandmates and produced some great songs like ‘Stay With Me’, ‘Pool
Hall Richard’ and, my favourite, ‘Cindy (Incidentally)’. Even the guitars seem to be laughing and
larking around! Of all Rod’s extensive back catalogue, I tend to remember the
Faces era with particular fondness.
I was also taking note of another
Seventies megastar, David Bowie. As I’ve written before, albums were not on my
radar. Therefore I was blissfully unaware of the ten weeks Bowie spent atop the
LP charts with ‘Aladdin Sane’ and his collection of covers, ‘Pin Ups’. On the
other hand, I did listen to his singles offerings, always remarkably diverse
but especially so that year.
From the pulsating dance beat of ‘JeanGenie’ to
the piano-laden ‘Life on Mars’, Bowie was always interesting. In the autumn, a
soulful cover of ‘Sorrow’ also made the top three, but I confess to preferring
the cheeky re-release of an embarrassing (to Bowie) Sixties recording of
‘Laughing Gnome’. Let’s face it, nobody of my age would ever comprehend the
lyrics of your typical Bowie composition, but a 12 year-old would instantly
‘get’ lines such as “Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee-hee. I’m a laughing gnome and you can’t
catch me”! In fact I think Catherine and I knew just about all the words and,
for all Bowie’s cool image, the single reached the top ten at the same time as
‘Sorrow’.
I recently received Simon Goddard’s
book Ziggyology as a Christmas present.
persistence paid off, and from reading I have learned a lot about Ziggy’s role
in the early Seventies cultural landscape, the evolution of the striking
Starman and his Spiders from Mars (including the even cooler Mick Ronson, whose
fuzzy guitar sound tops anything from the Seventies), his rise and sudden
rock’n’roll suicide at the Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973. However, the name on
the records, the radio announcements and the printed page said not ‘Ziggy
Stardust’ but ‘David Bowie’ and so the whole alien-art-rock phenomenon left me
untouched. In my own musical landscape, Ziggy was a mere ephemeral butterfly;
it was David Bowie who is remembered.
Many consider David Bowie to be the
definitive embodiment of Glam Rock, at least in the UK. However, for those of
my age, Marc Bolan has a strong claim to that status. By 1973, though, T Rex
were on the wane. ‘20th Century Boy’ reached number three in April
but from that point it was downhill all the way for Bolan, musically and
personally.
T Rex’s mantle as kings of glam was
passing to a new collection of groups. There can be few years so utterly
dominated by a cartel of half a dozen or so acts from a single genre. Slade,
Sweet, Wizzard and Gary Glitter had eight number one and five number two
singles between them. Add Suzi Quatro, plus the aforementioned Bowie and T Rex,
and you had a mightily strong stranglehold which only Donny Osmond and siblings
could breach with consistent success.
What appealed to me most about this
motley crew was their apparent sense of fun. They always seemed to enjoy
themselves on TOTP, performing with a smile on their collective faces. When
Noddy Holder, a consummate easy-going performer, urged us all to ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’,
it was hard not to respond by going ‘wild, wild, wild’! Noddy’s “Baby, baby,
Bayyyyy-behhhhh!” lit up the scene throughout February and it remains one of my
favourite intros of all time. In the autumn, they probably found more favour
with teachers everywhere when ‘My Friend Stan’ came out, correctly spelt! A
lighter, piano-driven number, it stalled at two. This proved a brief blip
because their next single performed slightly better….
The Sweet advanced to the elite when I
first experienced ‘Blockbuster’ on the telly in January 1973. First, the
sirens, then the ubiquitous ‘dum, dum, dum, der-der-der dum, dum, dum’ Bo
Diddly guitar riff, followed by ‘Ah-ahhhhhh. Ah-ahhhhhhh’. Brian Connolly
pouted beneath that unique blonde thatch, almost bursting out of his silver
two-piece, mic stand grasped horizontally with both black-gloved hands…. The
intro to Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’ encapsulates
for me what made ‘Top of the Pops’ so exciting in its heyday. The band never
hit the same heights again, although ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Ballroom Blitz’ came
close.
However, I must confess that my
allegiance that year was to Gary Glitter.
There, I’ve said it. Of course, I wasn’t to know what GG was getting up
to in his spare time then and in subsequent years. Nevertheless, 1973 was his
heyday in the charts. Like Noddy Holder and the members of Mud, I loved the
fact that he never seemed to take himself seriously on or off stage. His music
and lyrics won’t stand up to much critical scrutiny but this was pure pop in
extravagant entertaining form.
Gary’s first releases of the year each
reached number two. Written with Mike Leander, ‘Do You Wanna Touch?’ and
‘Hello, Hello, Good to be Back’ were almost interchangeable. At least the latter
featured the deliberately mis-heard line Catherine and I loved to sing: “Did
you miss me (yeah!) while I was away? Did you hang my teacher on your wall?”
The basic format was then given a twist for
‘I’m the Leader of
the Gang (I Am)’. The revving motor bike and clarion call to “come on, come on”
were theatrical in the extreme and provided the soundtrack to the summer. This
was followed by the slower ‘I Love You Love me Love’
which outsold every
other glam rock single. You couldn’t help smiling at Glitter’s
jokey entrances on TOTP, whether reclining on a crescent moon or, in this case,
attached to the back of a golden heart!
Roy Wood’s extravagant floor-length
wig and genuine beard almost as long were also Top of the Pops staples that
year. Back then I wasn’t aware of his work with The Move and Electric Light
Orchestra, but Wood’s latest incarnation Wizzard were also at their peak in
’73, claiming their only two chart-toppers, the brilliant ‘See My Baby Jive’
and ‘Angel Fingers’, as well as that other perennial favourite ‘I Wish it Could
be Christmas Every Day’. There may have been others prancing around behind him
on TOTP but we all knew that Mr Wood wrote, sang and played most of the
instruments. Wizzard were part rock’n’roll, part glam, part explosion in a
make-up factory and a whole load of fun.
Chinn and Chapman didn’t only write
and produce hits for The Sweet. The ‘Chinnichap’ stompy sound and guitar riffs
also provided success for Suzi Quatro, Mud and Smokey. Suzi Q’s USP was, of
course, her gender. There were no other female rockers around at the time and,
squeezed into black leather, she had a great image. She always seemed to be
playing an over-sized bass but she admitted it was actually her who was under-sized.
Suzi was also American, but she fitted
right in with the glam rock vibe in ’73, topping the charts in June with ‘Can
the Can’. Catherine and I preferred the follow-up ’48 Crash’
although the following year’s ‘Devil Gate Drive’ is probably her best single.
Of all the pop stars of that year, Suzi must be the only one I have met,
although ‘stood next to’ is perhaps more accurate!
Mud started the year looking a bit
glam, achieving Top 20 status with ‘Crazy‘ and ‘Hypnosis’, but I took notice
when they released ‘Dyna-Mite’. Suddenly they became drapes’n’shades lads,
doing that thumbs-on-the-belt, hip-swaying rocker dance. OK, so Rob Davies
retained his earrings and flares, but Mud became a group, like Slade, it was OK
for boys to like.
Alvin Stardust was an altogether
different creation. Nevertheless, when his towering quiff, tight costume and
distinctive, uncomfortable-looking microphone grip first appeared on TOTP late
in 1973, we didn’t bat an eyelid. What I hadn’t realised then was that the
original Alvin Stardust was the stage name of Pete Shelley who both wrote and
sang ‘My Coo-ca-choo’. Shane Fenton/Bernard Jewry was promoted to be the face
of Stardust in his place only after the song charted! It was intended as a
one-off but became the first of several chart successes for the ‘new’ Alvin
Stardust. ‘My Coo-ca-choo’ was hardly a work of musical genius but sold
shedloads, deprived of a number one position only by Slade and Gary Glitter. He
did, at least, top the chart a few months later with ‘Jealous Mind’ but, as the
formula was repeated through the next year or two, the law of diminishing
returns set in.
My 1973 diary records that one of my
favourite songs of the year was ‘Dancing on a Saturday Night’ by Barry Blue.
He wasn’t really designed to be a pop star but, like his songwriting partner
Lynsey de Paul, he enjoyed a short-lived chart career. His real name was,
amusingly, Barry Green, but there was never going to work in the era of glam
rock.
Glam was undoubtedly at the pop end of
the rock spectrum, but the album charts were cluttering up with the prog
rockers like Yes and Genesis and what are now familiar classic rockers like
Deep Purple and Led Zep but none of them meant anything to me whatsoever. The
one prog rock band I was aware of was Focus. This was entirely down to the
success of their single ‘Sylvia’. Lashings of guitar, whirling organ and weird
falsetto wailing took it to number four.
Blues rock was still in vogue, too.
Following on from Jo Jo Gunne in ’72, there was more slide guitar to be enjoyed
on songs including Nazareth’s ‘Bad, Bad Boy’, Hudson Ford’s ‘Pick up the
Pieces’ and Medicine Head’s ‘One and One is One’. I also enjoyed ‘Roll Away the Stone’ by Bowie
proteges Mott the Hoople.
Autumn 1973 was the first time Status
Quo twelve-bar boogied into my life. They weren’t new, of course, and at the
time I didn’t particularly like their brand of rock, nor Francis Rossi’s long,
greasy hair. So long was the guitar
intro to ‘Caroline’, and so limited my musical horizons that I actually thought
this was Heavy Metal! Exposure to genuine HM put me right on that matter and
Quo were to become like comfortable denim and trainers for another decade or
so.
Another record that took time to grow
on me was Ike and Tina Turner’s ‘Nutbush City Limits’. That funky sound was too
heavy for me back then but the pulsating ‘wow-wow’ guitar rhythm and synth solo
eventually ground me down. One intro which never fails to get you in the gut is
heard on Thin Lizzy’s debut, ‘Whisky in the Jar’.
Not typical of later fare, this version of an old folk song nonetheless
certainly put Phil Lynott and Irish rock on the UK map. More of them later!
Just because ‘heavy’ wasn’t normally
to my taste didn’t mean that ‘light’ always floated my boat. Perry Como was
already in his 60s but had a couple of number two hits. Actually, the songs
were new, but suited the old crooner to a ‘T’. Not me, though! Two of the
year’s biggest selling singles were Dawn’s ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole
Oak Tree’ and Peters and Lee’s ‘Welcome Home’. Catchy, no doubt, but they’re so
full of sugary sentiment, I can feel my teeth rot just thinking about them.
Many of the Osmond clan’s 1973 records
had a similar effect. Little Jimmy’s execrable ‘Long Haired Lover from
Liverpool’ and sister Marie’s appalling country-lite ‘Paper Roses’ had me
reaching for the sick bag. Even my twelve year-old self could tell that Marie
couldn’t sing! However, I had a sneaking regard for Donny’s re-hash of Tab
Hunter’s ‘Young Love’ and The Osmonds’ ‘Let Me In’. The former topped the
charts for a month but the way the latter crashed the charts at four made a
bigger impression. A lovey-dovey ballad, led by Merrill’s soulful vocals, it
was all super-smart clothes, ultra-slick moves and stools, a blatant template
for their inferior musical descendents, Boyzone and Westlife. Those Mormon
brothers have a lot to answer for...
That other teeny-bopper idol, David
Cassidy, enjoyed his last really big hit late that year. He arrived in the UK
to hysteria, and we were subjected to a promo film of him at Heathrow and
strolling around Syon Park to ‘Daydreamer’ for weeks on end. I remember the
Blue Peter programme welcoming David into the studio straight from the airport,
a real coup for star-struck John, Pete and Lesley and which made a change from
making things out of sticky-backed plastic.
For many, Easy Listening is synonymous
with Carpenters. They somehow escape the sheer naffness of a Tony Orlando or
Peters and Lee by the quality of Richard’s production and Karen’s voice. Their
earlier work like ‘Close to You’, ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ and ‘Goodbye to Love’
had not registered with me but when I heard the first line of ‘Yesterday Once More’ I was entranced.
How anyone of any age can hear Karen Carpenter’s voice and not melt into jelly
is beyond me. Looking back, what surprises me particularly is that it was the
favourite song of 1973 for a twelve year-old who in the main was far more into
the music of Wizzard, Mud and Gary Glitter.
The attraction must have been the
vocals, lush backing, gorgeous verse melody and – well – “Ev’ry sha-la-la-la,
ev’ry woh-oh-woh-oh”. Four decades later it’s the sentimental lyrics which
resonate even more than the tune. I’m not now convinced it’s even my favoured Carpenters track but a song about
nostalgia creates its own nostalgia; it takes me back to the summer of ’73,
such a happy time. We also enjoyed singing along to the follow-up single, ‘Top
of the World’. It may have been country pop but its lively melody and Karen’s
crystal-clear delivery appealed to all the family.
Nostalgia has always been a part of
music, with old songs constantly re-released. 1973 was no different from any
other year. It was only four years since ‘Albatross’ topped the chart but for
some reason Fleetwood Mac brought out their wonderful instrumental. I duly
rated it one of my favourites of 1973. Another, albeit less successful, sixties
record given a new lease of life was Al Martino’s ‘Spanish Eyes’. A real
old-school singer, Al nevertheless won our hearts. It peaked at five yet
remained in the top 30 for ages. It was also to be repeated by various hotel
bands during several subsequent summer holidays in Spain!
An even bigger hit was The Simon Park
Orchestra’s ‘Eye Level’. I
didn’t watch ITV’s police drama series ‘Van Der Valk’, but its theme was a slow
burner which mysteriously leapt to number one in September and proceeded to
sell over a million copies. It was the sort of instrumental you could sing
along to. It didn’t matter that it was classical music, played by violins,
brass and woodwind, it sounded delightful and to this day makes me smile while
listening.
I think there aren’t enough songs
which have that effect on me these days. As a child, jaunty tunes and/or funny
lyrics were very appealing. I’ve already mentioned ‘Laughing Gnome, but there
was also a re-release of the novelty song ‘Monster Mash’ by Bobby ‘Boris’
Pickett and the Crypt Kickers and The Strawbs’ ‘Part of the Union’. Simultaneously
loved by trade unions and their critics, the latter was just a jokey singalong
with a big bass drum and pub piano instrumental bit in the middle. Given the
subsequent decline in the union movement, the lyrics might seem even more
archaic now than they did at the time!
Even those masters of vintage radio
comedy The Goons had an unlikely top ten hit in 1973 with their 1956 recording
of ‘The Ying Tong Song’. You might think that would have appealed to me. But
you’d be wrong. A bunch of grown men behaving like stupid children? What’s
funny about that? Well, having supposedly grown up myself, I now totally get
the whole ‘adults wanting to be silly’ thing!
10cc were highly successful in the
Seventies. Like The Beautiful South in the Nineties, they weren’t in the
vanguard of latest trends but steered a clever path of their own with a unique
brand of pop which was difficult to pigeonhole. In June 1973, they had their
first number one with ‘Rubber Bullets’. I liked it immediately; it sounded
different from anything else I’d heard. The juxtaposition of Lol Crème’s
squeaky falsetto, Kevin Godley’s baritone lines and crafted harmonies with
those quirky words was a winner for me.
There were other, one-off winning
singles that year. Anne-Marie David made it two successive Eurovision successes
for Luxembourg as ‘Tu te Reconnaîtras’ swept aside
Cliff’s foot-stomping ‘Power to All Our Friends’. Maybe I had a pre-teen crush
on the singer but I like to think I liked the song, too! Carly Simon did have
more chart success in later years, although her UK hits were spasmodic.
However, it was early ’73 when perhaps her most talked-about song reached
number two over here. I may not have appreciated what – or who?! – it was
about, but ‘You’re So Vain’ has always sounded good.
I can’t finish this section without
the soundtrack to Christmas. Possibly the most-loved festive 45s of all-time
were released that year – and I’m not talking about Elton John’s ‘Step Into
Christmas’, which deservedly stalled at 24. No, 1973 concluded to the
sleighbells of Wizzard’s ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day’ and, smashing
in at number one, Slade’s masterpiece, ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’.
It set the standard for all
season-themed music and nothing has ever come close. The song even transcended
Glam Rock and while it wasn’t the last single of the genre to top the chart, it
marked the beginning of the end. Pop should be about music to sing along to, to
dance to, to chat to your mates about. It should entertain and make life seem
good. In each respect, in my eyes, that made 1973 the pinnacle of Pop.
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