2004-05 - My shadow's the only one that walks beside me

These were difficult years for me. In addition to the emotional pain of my protracted split from Kim, I was enduring frequent physical pains as a result of a flare-up of my Crohn’s Disease. They undoubtedly affected my life and work throughout 2004, culminating in major surgery that November, and a slow recovery during the first few months of 2005.

Other dramatic moments also affected me. As a member of staff, especially based in Broadcasting House, I was inevitably caught up in the shenanigans which arose from Tony Blair’s disgraceful abuse of the BBC to cover up his wilful lies and misleading of the country over the Iraq War with the ‘dodgy dossier’. Popular Director-General Greg Dyke was sensationally forced to resign in February 2004. On Boxing Day, as I lay on my bed in Basildon Hospital, I was touched terribly by the pictures of the horrific tsunami aftermath in Thailand. The following summer I arrived in London just an hour after the terrorist attacks on the Tubes and buses. But life goes on.

There were shockwaves in the music industry, too. Singles sales plunged further, crumbling under the weight of technological advances. Of course by this time I was well versed in emails and the internet. I’d even invested in a PC and, despite its lingering air of embarrassment, used it for online dating. Our vocabulary was evolving. On top of all this, there were the mysteries of (mostly illegal) file sharing, downloads and videos ‘going viral’. 

The first official Download Chart was introduced in September ’04 and, despite fears of the traditional chart being over-run by even crappier nonsense than was already there, the two sets of consumers proved to be pretty similar when it came to musical tastes. 

The nadir of chart history probably occurred at the beginning of 2005. That manifested itself in the marketing ploy commemorating the 50^th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s first record. Someone had the bright idea of re-releasing all of the Elvis number ones in chronological order, week by week to build up fans’ own box sets. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ duly topped the chart again, followed immediately by ‘One Night’. Despite sales barely scraping 20,000, this duly became the official 1,000^th UK number one single. I braced myself for another fifteen weeks or so of rock’n’roll torture. I reckon the Top of the Pops production team were even more concerned. Presley’s estate had never granted the BBC permission to show Elvis recordings so what could they do in the usual climactic number one slot? One week they were even forced to hire a tribute band! Luckily, only three of these posthumous performances made it to the top for a second time, and contemporary artists were allowed a look-in. Mind you, if none of them could shift 21,000 copies in any particular week, they clearly didn’t deserve to top the charts either.

In each of these two years, only two singles sold more than half a million, half of them being mega-charity records. Band Aid 20 was the 2004 Christmas number one, but the biggest-seller of 2005 was one of those weird bolts from the blue. I’d never liked Tony Christie’s 1971 belter 'Is This the Way to Amarillo?’ I’d never much liked comedian Peter Kay either, not having seen his cult Channel 4 sitcom Phoenix Nights, nor any of his stand-up routines. However, when the Bolton comic revitalised the record, miming with the aid of numerous B- and C–list celebrities marching with him on walking machines against increasingly bizarre backcloths, even I had to smile and sing along.

OK, so the appearance of Jimmy Savile, still alive and not yet revealed as the predatory pervert we now know he was, casts a stain on the memory of the video. But it’s more entertaining to remember Ronnie Corbett falling off his machine or Jim Bowen, against all odds, somehow staying upright. Neither are still with us, but I hope this is unconnected with their gym equipment experiences. Anyway, the record raised millions for Comic Relief. The video spawned countless amateur copies, many cleverly choreographed, going viral on a youthful YouTube. Peter Kay has successfully used the song as a crowd-pleasing filler in live shows ever since. As for me, I no longer hear the opening “‘Sha-la-las” with dread; rather with an automatic smile on my face.

The Gallagher brothers are hardly known for their laugh-a-minute demeanour. Yet their eighth and final number one hit, ‘The Importance of Being Idle’, was unusually wry and jaunty. While the vocals were Noel’s and the guitars reminiscent of The Kinks, the record was also memorable for its video. This featured a mime-and-dance tour-de-force from Rhys Ifans in funeral director garb. It followed all the previous Oasis chart-toppers by spending just one week at the pinnacle. I guess it’s because the band’s legion of fans tended to flock to the shops, High Street or online, in the week of release. All the same, for this most successful of groups, it’s quite an amazing sequence. There were to be more lengthy and lucrative tours but no further major hits. 

Oasis did at least last the best part of 20 years. But that’s a meagre career span compared with Eighties icons The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and Depeche Mode. Each enjoyed a return to form in 2004-5 with respective singles ‘Flamboyant’, ‘Breathe’ and ‘Precious’. The latter was the best of them; indeed I rate it amongst their top three singles of all time.

Like the enduring Basildon boys, Morrissey never made it to the top of the UK singles charts, either with The Smiths or solo. However, he came pretty close with ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’, the first single from his seventh studio album You Are The Quarry. It was typically controversial in its political theme but, despite its lack of airplay, went straight in at three. For all that, I preferred its successor, ‘First of the Gang to Die’. I remember seeing this performance on Later…. Morrissey seemed so effortless and precise in his vocals, raising him even higher than his already lofty position in my estimation, if not for his dodgy politics then as a singer.

I also appreciated releases by a couple of former boy band members. OK, so Robbie Williams was by then better known as a solo star. Whatever his origins, the 2005 Intensive Care album gave us one of his more divisive singles. On first hearing, it was hard to fathom what to make of ‘Tripping’. With no proper intro, it dived straight into a Clash-like ska rhythm. Huh?! I hung on in there and was rewarded by an uplifting chorus and, for all its eccentricity, a strangely engaging song. Was it all about drugs, as suggested by the title? I don’t know. However, credit to the Robster for trying something different.

Blue were taking a break, leaving some of their members to forge separate careers. I liked Simon Webbe’s ‘No Worries’ single, although the “I just know your life’s gonna change” line, sung by Yvonne John Lewis, is the best bit about the song. Webbe’s vocals make the record sound like superior Lighthouse Family fare but it was surprisingly good. More surprising perhaps was his failure to extend his discography beyond two albums. Meanwhile, Westlife survived the departure of Brian McFadden in 2004 and droned their way to yet another stodgy chart-topping ballad. ‘You Raise Me Up’? No, it just got me down.

Busted’s tour support act, McFly usurped their bosses’ crown and proved even more successful. Debut ‘Five Colours in Her Hair’ was pure pop gold and the follow-up ‘Obviously’ was almost as good. Incredibly, they went on to notch another sixteen top ten hits. While Busted’s James Bourne contributed to some of their early tracks, it was Tom Fletcher’s songwriting and pleasant voice which proved decisive. Furthermore, the eager, easy-going personalities of Tom, Danny, Dougie and Harry appealed to kids and adults alike, helping them become charity song stalwarts. It amuses me to recall Mum telling me she liked their version of ‘Don’t Stop Us Now’, released for Sport Relief two years later. I doubt she’d ever heard the Queen original, but the melodic intro probably did it for her. Actually, I’d even go so far as rating their live performance of the song at Wembley as approaching the quality of Freddie et al. Praise indeed!

I can’t vouch for the quality of their musicianship but O-zone also enjoyed a big hit in 2004. ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue – unless you speak Romanian – but it did have a catchy chorus and boast the USP of being the first, and probably last, band from Moldova to make the top three over here! Six months after breaking Europe they disbanded. Such is pop!

The mid-Noughties were filled with American pseudo-punk bands, from Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy to emo idols My Chemical Romance. However, in 2004, Green Day reminded us why their template could not possibly be improved upon. That was on account of the album American Idiot, unleashed that September with the single of the same name. Expletive-laden and provocatively political, it bowled me over from the dramatic opening riff to the sudden ending. Its three minutes are as powerful and energetic as anything ever recorded. TOTP accorded them the accolade of a live performance in the Television Centre car park, with the rest of the gig available on the red button. I took advantage and loved it.

Four other tracks were released as singles but my favourite has to be ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, one of the very best rock ballads. It peaked at number five at Christmas but deservedly hung around for months. Billy-Joe Armstrong’s kohl-eyed, round-faced rock rebel look never seems to change, even in the second decade of the 2000s. Will he ever succumb to the ageing process? Who cares? As for the album, it was described variously as rock opera and concept album, telling a story of working-class love and life in a post-9/11 President Bush America. It was begging to be made into a stage musical and, five years later, this became reality. Another five years, and it crossed the Atlantic, landing at Cardiff. Angie isn’t familiar with the band so we didn’t buy tickets. Another regret. 

Last year I happened upon an interview with Green Day in which Billy-Jo and co spoke fondly about working with Dave Grohl many years previously. Nothing surprising about that; everyone who has worked for the Foo Fighters front man has nothing but nice epithets to say about him. However, the programme reminded me of another broadcast I watched in 2005 when The Foo Fighters released the double album In Your Honour. For all Grohl’s ‘nicest man in rock’ persona, I’ve rarely heard a track of his which had the ‘Wow!’ factor. ‘Learning to Fly’ came close – but no cigar.

This new album featured one typical heavy rock CD alongside a more mellow acoustic record. Together Grohl described them as “the bottle and the hangover”! I don’t know what I was watching back then (Jonathan Ross, possibly?) but the band performed live a song from each. When Grohl stepped up with just an acoustic guitar with no other accompaniment, I saw a different side of the Fighters, which I guess was the whole point. He was probably singing his old composition from the early Nirvana days ‘Friend of a Friend’. These days it has come to represent a Kurt Cobain tribute but for me it merely showcases Dave Grohl’s many and varied talents. 

Green Day apart, I was more into the emerging indie rock sound emanating from every corner of Britain – and Finland. Starting with the latter, The Rasmus breathed some new life into a traditional rock genre with ‘In the Shadows’ but in January 2004, it was Scottish band Franz Ferdinand who made the headlines. ‘Take Me Out’ certainly grabbed the attention. The snappy guitar and deadpan vocals in the opening minute had a touch of the Nineties about it, then the chords slowed and we were into what sounded like a completely different song. I can’t pretend I found the melody particularly appealing but as a modern splash of guitar rock, it worked a treat. 

Franz Ferdinand were definitely at the arty end of the spectrum. Singer Alex Kapranos was for a while a food critic for The Guardian for heaven’s sake! My natural inclination was for something more earthy, more engaging. Enter The Kaiser Chiefs! ‘I Predict a Riot’ wasn’t a big hit but once heard, never forgotten. Of course the chorus has lived on amongst football crowds. Not in anticipation of Seventies-style mayhem but mocking a chunky opposition player with ‘riot’ replaced by ‘diet’… 

‘Every Day I Love You Less and Less’ subverted the usual idea of a relationships song and ‘Oh My God’ had a delightful languorous swing to it. I remember watching them do Glastonbury and appear, sweaty and swaying, for a live post-gig interview. Whether Ricky Wilson was actually drunk on alcohol or euphoria, I couldn’t be sure, but he delivered entertaining answers, unusual for a pop star. I went on to buy their 2005 album Employment, which still bears up.  Rather too many “OhhhhhHHHHHs”, perhaps, but there were few duff tracks.

2005 was also the year in which The Stereophonics finally achieved a number one single. ‘Dakota’ seemed to spring from nowhere. More than a decade later, it still feels fresh; a twenty-first century classic. They haven’t really come close since and, on hearing on the radio, it’s a track for which we still raise the volume to yell “I don’t know where we are going now”. 

The Welshmen had been going too long to be media darlings but The Arctic Monkeys ticked the boxes of musos eager to find fresh faces and new exciting music. They rode the crest of the technological wave on which new artists could promote, market and distribute their work in seconds. The internet was already an amazing thing. The Sheffield quartet typified the new DIY rock band trend, and the back-to-basics video for ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ further played to this elemental image. As for me, I hated it, but you couldn’t avoid it.  

Madonna may have been 47, almost old enough to be Arctic Monkey Alex Turner’s granny, but she still looked good on the dancefloor, too. Her 2005 disco track ‘Hung Up’ was another in her line of retro-modern dance fusion singles, sampling Abba’s arpeggio keyboard hook from ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’. An eleventh UK number one was the inevitable conclusion. The video also ensured that nobody else could ever again wear a pink leotard and make it their own. For all the ubiquity of manufactured dancers with vices like Girls Aloud and the Pussycat Dolls, Madonna still had more talent and charisma in her left ankle than a hundred Cheryl Tweedys or Nicole Scherzingers in their whole gyrating bodies.

Madonna had been around seemingly for an eternity, but Britain was churning out more young female singer-songwriters. KT Tunstall was already a multi-instrumentalist, music graduate, professional songwriter and almost 30 years old when she recorded her debut album Eye to the Telescope. It brought her intriguing blend of folk, blues, pop and rock to the world and sold a million in the UK alone. The beautiful ballad ‘Other Side of the World’ had evident echoes of Dido at her best, but it was the up-tempo ‘Suddenly I See’ which seemed to be on the radio all the time and had my feet a-tapping.

Jemma Griffiths was another Celt with a degree (in law!) under her belt. Born in Penarth, and furthering her musical education as DJ, agent and promoter around Brighton, she finally broke through with her Finally Woken album. Like Moby before her, she’d used her professional experience and instincts to license all tracks for use on TV, which helped break her in the States. She came to my attention in July ’05 as Jem performing the bouncy ‘They’ on TOTP. Her breathy voice needed multi-layering but she owned the stage to the manor born, a talented free spirit with an ear for a killer pop tune. ‘Just a Ride’ and ‘Wish I’ sounded equally refreshing and yet, at the time of writing, she has inexplicably failed to dent the top fifty again. I bought the album yet remain the only person in my circle (admittedly with a feeble radius) who has ever heard of Jem. 

That same summer, animated ‘artists’ enjoyed considerable success, but with mixed critical response. I’ll start with the positive. When Damon Albarn found a post-Blur collaborator in artist and designer Jamie Hewlett several years earlier, the virtual band Gorillaz enjoyed actual chart success. I wasn’t so impressed. However, when they released ‘Feelgood Inc’ in May 2005, I was converted to the cause.  I couldn’t really relate to the ugly-but-cool Gorillaz bandmates. I left that to my fifteen year-old niece Rachel. But the captivating combination of rock, electro, hip-hop and bruising bassline was topped off by the astonishing animation. The synth-backed sequence of the floating windmill island still gets me moist-eyed and generously goose-pimpled. The follow-up ‘Dare’, with Shaun Ryder, had a more conventional structure, and went to number one, but for me it’s ‘Feelgood Inc’ that has the edge. 

At the pond life end of the spectrum, Crazy Frog’s ‘Axel F’ must surely go down as one of the most irritating three minutes of – I hesitate to ascribe the term music – amphibian turd in the history of mankind. Thank you, Erik Wernquist! Harmless attempts at sound effects became associated with a creepy computer animate character. With mobile phone ringtones becoming big business, the frightful frog’s “A ring ding ding ding d-ding” was taking over not only the radio airwaves but also seemingly the very air that we breathed.

Everyone wished there had been a tadpole murder when ‘Axel F’ robbed Coldplay of a first number one single in June. The event allowed Chris Martin to show he did, after all, possess a sense of humour. Appearing on, I think, the Jonathan Ross TV chat show, he opened a performance of their superior ‘Speed of Sound’ with a gritted teeth “ring ding-a-ding” rendition! He acknowledged Coldplay’s nemesis again at Glastonbury and probably on subsequent occasions too numerous to mention. 

After the split from Kim, I filled my Saturday mornings listening to Jonathan Ross’s show on Radio 2. The network was rapidly building a reputation for personality-led radio, playing music for my age group. The evening schedules remained full of fodder for pensioners but newly-promoted Controller Lesley Douglas was transforming Radio 2 into a commercial-free haven for thirty- and fortysomething Radio 1 exiles like me. Jonathan Ross was the star signing. He may have come at a price but was worth every penny. I looked forward to his broadcast over breakfast and it was sometimes difficult to switch off to do the weekly shop. ‘Wossy’ is nothing if not a master of the anecdote, and his life was ripe for an endless stream of funny and credible stories, accompanied by producer Andy’s helpless giggling.  

Of course, it wasn’t all about the chat. Radio 2 could break new music acts, and it was on one of those Saturday mornings when my ears were first treated to ‘Somewhere Only We Know’. Hmm. Sounded good. It must have been a song I’d heard but long forgotten. Jonathan back-announced the artists as Keane. I soon realised Keane were a band, on the road to conquering Britain with their brand of piano-led pop rock, out-Coldplaying Coldplay.

The multi-platinum album Hopes and Fears is one of my all-time favourites, containing so many excellent tracks. ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ was an instant success with me, marked by Tom Chaplin’s high tenor vocals and Tim Rice-Oxley’s fervent keyboard rhythms. And yet ‘Everybody’s Changing’ has become perhaps their signature piece and a song I never tire of hearing, or singing along to. For all that, it may well be the album finale ‘Bedshaped’ which was their concert performance highlight, be it at Glasto or the 2005 Live 8 charity mega-gig. 

Writing of which, I was with BBC colleagues at the Radio Festival in Edinburgh that July. Hordes of horseback riot police were on every corner in case of civil unrest linked, not to our event, but the Gleneagles G8 summit. Midge Ure had organised for Murrayfield the final Live 8 concert to further focus hearts and minds of people and politicians to Make Poverty History. At our venue, Midge had actually set aside a ticket for every delegate to attend straight after the conference ended. Wow! Fantastic! Only problem was the fact that I had no place to stay that night and a non-transferable train ticket booked for that afternoon. I therefore had to decline. 

That may have been disappointing but it turned out to be fortuitous. Had I delayed my return until the following morning, my train would not have reached London. The 7/7 bombings caused a public transport lockdown, closing not just the Underground network but also all the rail termini. I did watch much of the rain-soaked concert on telly, though. 

One of the top songs for the waving lighter brigades, including those being soaked at Murrayfield, was ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol. The track may have subsequently become purloined by the loathsome Leona Lewis, and the band more famous for the drearily monotonous ‘Chasing Cars’, but it’s easy to forget how popular and influential the original was. The verse is so sad and mournful but with the “Light up, light up….” refrain, the mood lifts and – well – lights up into a symphony of hope in the face of adversity.

Another power ballad beloved of all but the most pop-adverse radio stations in the mid-Noughties was Daniel Powter’s ‘Bad Day’. However, for a heartwarming, heart-melting romantic message, the simple approach is often the best. That was the thrust of Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘These Words’ which topped the chart in October 2004. After exhausting the traditional inspirations of classical poets, etc, she settles quite rightly for the most trustworthy source of all:

“These words are my own
From my heart flown
I love you I love you
I love you I love you!”

She emerged that autumn from the shadow of brother Daniel to become a genuine star in her own right. ‘These Words’ may have been a hip-hop ballad but back then Natasha could be forgiven anything. The Yanks preferred her follow-up ‘Unwritten’, reminiscent of Natalie Imbruglia or a loved-up Alanis Morissette, but our own chart-topper was endearingly British and all the better for it!

Another example of a delightful no-frills love song was ‘Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing’ by Katie Melua. Not a title which shrieks passion and romance, but the sweet lyrics explain that for all the so-called facts and figures we learn, the only precise truth is that “I will love you ‘til I die”. Ahhhh. And yet I also loved this latest Melua-Batt collaboration from her second album Piece by Piece. A few years later, Mum asked me if I was familiar with the songstress. She had apparently been featured on BBC Essex and Mum proceeded to request Melua albums for Christmas. Not sure I had a sweet enough tooth to bear the piles of sugar heaped into an entire album but this was a rare occasion when our musical tastes overlapped.

I’ve no idea what Mum thought of James Blunt. Nevertheless, during the summer of 2005, most people I knew had an opinion, and it was generally rather negative. His second single ‘You’re Beautiful’ was a real Marmite song. Love it or hate it, the song haunted the summer airwaves for months. Unusually, it entered the chart outside the top ten and climbed slowly to the summit, staying there for five weeks. For all its chart dominance, it didn’t even sell half a million copies, but it carved a niche deep in the British consciousness.

Here was a bloke so posh he’d ridden horses in the Life Guards, was a son of an army colonel and with a family tree traceable to tenth century Danish monarchy. At 31, he was quite late to pop superstardom but that’s where he was heading. One minute he was supporting Katie Melau and Elton John, the next he was headlining around the world, selling 11 million copies of debut album Back to Bedlam.

Back to the chart-topping single, where do I stand? Well, I considered it one of the best love songs I had ever heard. Another simple structure, plaintive lyrics charting the singer’s yearning for a woman’s affections he cannot possibly acquire. Women loved him. Apart from being a man (formerly) in uniform, here was someone unafraid to reveal his romantic side and lay his heart bare. It’s a trait common in male balladeers in recent years but for a few years Blunt blazed the trail. He even became the first Brit to top the US chart since Elton’s Diana tribute in 1997.

I did adore the song but I was no fan of Mr Blunt. I found his voice so tiresomely weedy and reedy, it didn’t deserve to sing lyrics as powerful and heart string tugging as ‘You’re Beautiful’. He hasn’t claimed another really successful single although I felt 2008’s ‘Carry You Home’ merited at least a top three spot, not a dismal twenty. His 2017 reincarnation as a Sheeran soundalike didn't quite reap the expected rewards either.

At Christmas 2005, I did my best to avoid a feeble but popular song about a child’s ride on his father’s JCB and Shayne Ward’s shitty X Factor-winning ballad ‘That’s My Goal’. However, shitty X Factor-winning ballads were to become inescapable for the next decade. Meanwhile, my life and career were bound for new challenges beyond the reach of even Simon Cowell.

1977 – He got an ice pick, which made his ears burn

This is a year lauded as a special one in the history of music. Punk rock spelled the end of prog rock, although it was the death of Elvis which left a gaping hole in rock’n’roll. As for me, there was less of a feeling that the sands were shifting in such a momentous way. After all, I had more important things to worry about – like ‘O’ levels.

It transpired that 1977’s biggest sellers followed each other to the top spot from January to March. For all the new genres, David Soul seemed to create one of his own. Already popular as one half of TV’s detectives ‘Starsky and Hutch’, Soul set about dominating the UK singles charts with some rather plaintive piano ’n’ strings love songs led by ‘Don’t Give On Us Baby’. I preferred the slightly rockier ‘Silver Lady’, a number one in October.

Leo Sayer achieved his greatest success with another dreary ballad, ‘When I Need You’, and ABBA’s march to near-global supremacy with ‘The Name of the Game’ and another four minutes of pop perfection in ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’. Cue shots of snowy landscapes, front- and side-on close-ups and bittersweet lyrics. A-ha-ahhhh.

A period of big musicals was set in motion by Evita. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber had enjoyed some hits from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ but they were dwarfed by the popularity of the Act 2 scene-stealer, ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’. Julie Covington’s beautiful rendition was in the top ten for seemingly forever. Accept no imposters like Madonna or assorted Pussycat Dolls! I wasn’t a fan of the song but it’s an undeniable giant of West End musical theatre. Years later I was to see a lot of London musicals but somehow Evita has always eluded me.

Winter was setting in when I first heard a new record by Paul McCartney and Wings. I was happy to say aloud that the simple celebration of rural Scotland would never be a hit. Ever the man with his finger on the pulse of British pop taste, I was proved wrong as never before or since; ‘Mull of Kintyre’ sold two million copies in the UK alone! Not even ‘Sgt Dave Hutchinson’ (aka D Soul) could compete with acoustic guitar, an ex-Beatle and bagpipes.

In contrast to the above, the lens of retrospective specs reveals that there were indeed some pretty pivotal singles released. At the time, I just took them at face value. And that was just the ones I heard. The Clash wouldn’t have been seen dead performing ‘White Riot’ on TOTP, nor do I recall watching Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Don’t Stop’; neither managed to scrape in to the top 30.

Until 1977 all of my favourites tended to be top-tenners. However, while freed from school class attendance obligations during the exam period, I listened to Radio 1 shows beyond the usual Top 20 and Jimmy Savile. I think it may have been Tony Blackburn following the Noel Edmonds breakfast show, so I became familiar with his irritating ways and preferences. Of course, he probably had little say in the tracks played, as there were new releases besides those who’d already climbed the charts. As a result, I got to know, and like, a lot of singles which, despite heavy airplay, were left languishing in the twenties or thirties.

For example, another of the tracks from Fleetwood Mac’s epoch-making ‘Rumours’ album was ‘Dreams’. I loved the soft rock rhythm, the bassline and, of course, Stevie Nicks’ idiosyncratic vocals. I dispute her assertion that “thunder only happens when it’s raining” but it was a cracking record all the same. Yet it peaked at just 24 in the UK.

Another mostly British band who crossed the Atlantic to achieve success were Supertramp. I’d been drawn to a previous hit ‘Dreamer’ and in ’77, it was the turn of the less manic ‘Give A Little Bit’. Even more surprising today is the realisation that David Bowie’s evergreen ‘Heroes’ was another song whose class didn’t translate into contemporary sales. Robert Fripp’s legendary guitar work sounded so, well, heroic, and for me Bowie’s voice was never better. Yet by far his biggest hit of the year was ‘Sound and Vision’, the first half of which was instrumental. I had a friend who really loved Bowie, then seen as way ahead of his time. Perhaps, but that just meant most of us hated his material.

I had a few friends who raved about American country rockers The Eagles. I never really shared their enthusiasm, but they were never far from my ears or eyes in 1977. It was the year when the album ‘Hotel California’ was released. I didn’t really like the first single, ‘New Kid in Town’, but the title track boasted that intriguing lengthy intro and that (then) unusual guitar duet by Joe Walsh and Don Felder at the end. I’d no idea it would become such an iconic rock song, but it eased into the UK top ten, and the performance in this clip from the same year captures their languid LA style to perfection.  

Talking of classics, Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling’ and Joe Walsh’s ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ made little impression on me or anyone else. However, the year gave us two British rock-pop staples by home-grown giants. Queen’s ‘We Are the Champions’ and Status Quo’s ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ were top three singles which appealed to me, although they hardly blew my mind.

The voice of Lionel Richie is so familiar now, it feels like we were born with it in our brains but probably the first time I heard it was in 1977 on The Commodores’ ‘Easy’. It may have been ‘easy on a Sunday morning’ but on the Sunday evening chart show it was a bit of a yawnathon. The only redeeming feature was that guitar solo!

Manhattan Transfer topped the chart in March with ‘Chanson d’Amour’. Their 40s pastiche didn’t appeal to me at all and I was surprised that a few classmates actually sang along to it. It did introduce the saxophone as a supposed instrument of gratuitous sophistication to pop, for which the Transfer should grovel for forgiveness. ‘Chanson…’ already had a French title. There was no need to add a sax solo; the record was pretentious enough as it was! Thank goodness for ‘Baker Street’ and ‘Will You’ for delivering the sax from jazz and pop hell! 

Those weekday breakfasts spent listening to Radio 1, delaying another summer session of tedious revision, also left me with some real turkeys filling my head. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alessi’s ‘O Lori’, Tony Etoria’s ‘I Can Prove It’ and ‘You’re Gonna Get Next To Me’ by Bo Kirkland and Ruth Davis. Yuk! There were some goodies, though. At the end of June, Hot Chocolate finally achieved number one status with ‘So You Win Again’. Even then, we all knew that Errol Brown et al had never topped the singles charts so perhaps the great British public heard the new song and bought it out of sympathy. It wasn’t their best, but a reliable mid-tempo ‘lost love’ number which I couldn’t help liking either. 

Less successful was ‘Heaven on the Seventh Floor’, the latest in a line of unassuming lively ditties from Paul Nicholas, but Smokie reached five with ‘It’s Your Life’. Back then I was unfamiliar with Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s prog rock reputation. I didn’t even know what prog rock was. Nevertheless, if ‘Fanfare of the Common Man’ was anything to go by, I’d sing its praises. The radio edit soared like Keith Emerson’s keyboards to number two, but if TOTP had featured the full eight minutes of their frost-filled performance in the Montreal Olympic stadium, I would surely have re-considered.

Considerable airplay was also given to Boney M’s ‘Ma Baker’. Their third consecutive top-tenner, I loved it. Opening with that snarling "Freeze, I'm Ma Baker, put your hands in the air! Gimme all your money", it opened out into a great dance track. German producer-guru Frank Farian had assembled a visually-arresting quartet of West Indian singers and dancers, the most notable being Bobby Farrell and his afro. His gyrations rarely appeared to be in time with the music, and he famously mimed to Farian’s vocals. I recall watching a clip from a German TV show where Boney M sang ‘Daddy Cool’ live. It became crystal clear why Farrell didn’t sing on the recordings. All he needed to do was get five words in tune but no, he was hopeless! 

Hot Chocolate were followed at the top by a record which undoubtedly did make my jaw drop when I first heard it. Donna Summer’s previous hit ‘Love to Love You Baby’ had been banned because of its unambiguous groans and sighs. However, when ‘I Feel Love’ launched into that synthesizer sequencer line, I felt I had been transported into the future. Indeed I had. Giorgio Moroder’s productions were no strangers to the charts but, assisted by Donna’s sexy voice, this innovative use of the Moog and key changes influenced a new generation of musicians, let alone clubbers or ordinary listeners like me. It was disco, but not as we knew it.

Tavares, Trammps and Rose Royce had more conventional disco hits, not really to my taste, but one of my favourite up-tempo hits of 1977 was Heatwave’s ‘Boogie Nights’. A rare British giant of the genre, this was another record which grabbed you by the throat on first exposure. It sounds quite tame nowadays, but in Spring 1977 that funky growling guitar line seemed really heavy. Their moves in this video are laughable, but it was the sound which blew me away.

It wasn’t only Giorgio Moroder pioneering electronic music in the charts. In France, a twenty-something composer and synth wizard released his LP ‘Oxygene’ to an unsuspecting world. The fourth ‘track’, ‘Oxygene IV’ captured the imagination. It sounded so clean, so crisp, so… new! Totally instrumental, of course, but it led to a new genre of boring-bloke-behind-synths-with-laser-show concerts. Later open-air gigs attracted crowds of a million-plus but not sure how many of them would have seen Monsieur Jarre actually doing his thing. It made four in our charts, and the album also did rather well.

Yet it wasn’t even my favourite French electronic instrumental of the year; that was Space’s ‘Magic Fly’. The helmets in the video were a precursor to the shy, mysterious image so beloved of twenty-first century dancemeisters Daft Punk but the synth melody, bass and drums, together with the visuals, made for such a futuristic package I was instantly hooked. A shame that it was held at number two for three weeks in September, but it was perhaps understandable given the circumstances which began on 16^th August. 

I distinctly remember sitting in a rather austere hotel restaurant in Rimini having breakfast. We were talking about the previous night’s awesome firework display marking the Feast of the Assumption. Then, whether it was seeing the front page on someone’s newspaper or other Brits in our group telling us, I forget, but that was the morning we discovered that Elvis Presley had died.

It was more of a shock to Mum who, while hardly a rock’n’roller, was the same age as Elvis, and who had probably been a major part of her musical soundtrack through the Fifties. My generation was less attached to him and his music, but his singles had continued to sprinkle the charts throughout my life. Apart from the re-released ‘Girl of My Best Friend’ in 1976, I hadn’t liked any of them particularly. However, I knew from the Jimmy Savile show how much of a legend he had been; all those groundbreaking chart-toppers such as ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘It’s Now Or Never’ plus tearjerkers like ‘In The Ghetto’.

His voice and charisma were unmistakeable, even to a child of the ‘60s and ‘70s like me. It’s just that his music didn’t speak to me the way it had done to the previous generation. Unsurprisingly, sales of his recent compilations soared, and his new single ‘Way Down’ predictably went to number one. It didn’t change my opinion of his music but there was no escaping it for a few weeks. There was also the dreadful by-product in the form of the commemorative single ‘I Remember Elvis Presley’ by Dutch producer-singer Danny Mirror. Thousands of people fell for it and it went to number four. It was simply WRONG!

The Fifties and Sixties had already generated huge LP sales that year. The Shadows, Slim Whitman, The Supremes and others all led the album charts. Prog rockers like Pink Floyd, Yes, ELP and Genesis were also in the mainstream. Despite the hiccup of post-Presley grief purchases, the scene was set for a new set of rockers to register their protest against the old guard of music and politicians. They were, of course, the Punks. 

This isn’t a history of pop so I’ll focus on my own belated introduction to the strange world of sneers, safety pins and two-minute bursts of frenetic energy. Malcolm McLaren had been marketing his pet band The Sex Pistols for a while, but it took the nation’s preoccupation with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee to provide the fertile seedbed from which a powerful brand grew into the mainstream with alarming speed.  As the Union Flag bunting mushroomed around the streets of Britain, and pressure mounted on all of us to commemorate Liz 2’s twenty-five years on the throne, it was a clever move to release a snarling alternative anthem appealing to the working classes unimpressed by the real thing. The Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ featuring Johnny Rotten’s biting vocals was banned by the BBC and the main record stores and famously thwarted from taking the number one position in Jubilee week by Rod Stewart. Much as I enjoyed ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’, I would have appreciated the opportunity to hear the record everyone was either talking about or desperately trying to ignore.

When I did manage to catch it, I realised it was nothing special. The follow-up, ‘Pretty Vacant’ was far superior. I recall the TOTP presenter - Kid Jensen, I think it was – linking another doomed and forgettable Cilla Black effort with this film. ‘I also quite liked ‘Holidays in the Sun’, another single from the ‘Never Mind the Bollocks…’ album. However, it was really only the descending guitar riff, ripped off The Jam’s ‘In The City’ and the first verse. The rest degenerated into Johnny wailing on about the Berlin Wall. Eh?

Punk rock was hardly aimed at comfortable middle-class kids like me, but it did have an impact on many teenagers in leafy Billericay. I remember waiting to go into a class and one of the girls – well spoken and certainly no wild child – was raving about a Damned gig she’d been to the night before: “They were gobbing and everything!” she enthused. It was obvious that there was a new world order in pop music. 

TOTP had to change, too. Blackburn, Edmonds, Savile and their ilk needed to give way to presenters like Jensen, Mike Read and Peter Powell. The latter actually appeared to like the New Wave bands he was introducing, and his enthusiasm rubbed off on teens like me. Nevertheless, it was DLT who did the honours for probably the most memorable live TOTP performance EVER. His words were apposite; the world really wasn’t ready for John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett’s ramshackle rendition of ‘Really Free’! It only scraped into the top 30 but was a talking point in our sixth form common room. 

If Otway and even the Pistols had a fairly short singles chart shelf life, the same wasn’t true of The Stranglers. I first saw them on TOTP in around June, Jean-Jacques Burnel bounding around miming to ‘Go Buddy Go’, wielding a guitar with no strings! At least they didn’t wreck their set. They had an ugly reputation for concert violence and even been banned from the Exeter University Great Hall after one fiery gig. A great shame because they were great musicians and songwriters. They were hardly young tearaways, either; drummer Jet Black was already pushing forty! I didn’t appreciate some of their other early hits like ‘Something Better Change’ and ‘Hanging Around’ until later, but ‘No More Heroes’ was in my opinion one of the best records of 1977. With Hugh Cornwell’s superior vocals, J-J’s filthy bass sound and Dave Greenfield’s swirling keyboards to the fore, it had that punk vibe but a great melody, too. The following year or two gave us more terrific hits like ‘5 Minutes’, ‘Nice ‘n’ Sleazy’ and ‘Walk On By’. The Stranglers were notoriously lazy lip-synchers, though. Cornwell and Burnel never seemed to take their TV performances seriously, but I suppose that was part of the image. They were punks and so obviously didn’t care! They also demonstrated that with some quality songs I could be a bit of a punk, too. In spirit, at least.

The Stranglers thus became my favourite band. But the song I accorded the title of favourite song of the year could not have provided a more dramatic contrast. It was Berni Flint’s sweet ‘I Don’t Want to Put a Hold on You’. Acoustic guitar, no instrument destruction, an artist graduating from ITV’s ‘Opportunity Knocks’. Definitely not the new wave. My musical tastes were as broad as ever.