1973: You better watch out if you’ve got long black hair

1973 was in many ways a landmark year in my relationship with music. To start with, it was the first time I’d kept a daily diary, a routine I’ve maintained ever since. Amongst these incredibly tedious chronicles of schoolwork, train numbers and TV programmes viewed were scribbled the top four singles each week, for most of the year noted whilst watching ‘Top of the Pops’. Why four and not three, five or any other number remains a mystery, even to me.

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.

More importantly, it no longer mattered if I missed TOTP on the Thursday evening; I need only tune in to Tom three evenings later and feed my appetite for recording the Top Four. No internet then, of course. Even when we holidayed abroad for a fortnight, I could work out the missing positions by listening to the number of places risen or dropped, as proclaimed by the presenter.

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. ‘20^th 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.

1972: All alone without a telephone, oh yeah

Looking at the first few months of the year, the charts are chock-full of songs I can remember as if it were yesterday. 1972 also marks the first time I can with certainty associate songs with a particular place. I think this has much to do with my first encounter with the technical phenomenon which was the car radio!

Not our own family car, of course. The trusty Ford Escort 1300, DPU 958G, had no such innovations. However, when I was introduced in February to trainspotting by my friend Mark Chillingworth, we would travel up to London to note the loco numbers at Old Oak Common, Kings Cross, Willesden and Cricklewood in his dad’s car; I think it was a Capri. The important thing is we could listen to music as we travelled or while we waited for the next ‘Peak’, ‘Brush’ or ‘Deltic’.

As a consequence, there are a few songs from the early part of the year which are forever linked with those hours spent lineside: Jo Jo Gunne’s adrenalin rush of slide guitar rock-blues boogie ’Run, Run, Run’, America’s trippy ‘Horse with No Name’ and Lindsfarne’s folky ‘Meet Me at the Corner’ spring to mind. I also recall listening to Neil Young’s gorgeous acoustic ‘Heart of Gold’ in my Uncle David’s car watching trains at Hampton-in-Arden. I remember just that song, no other.

Back in January there was no escaping ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’. It was the second number one for The New Seekers, an inoffensive five-piece outfit who became international stars for a year or two. The success came largely on the back of this song which itself originated as a Coca Cola commercial, famous in its own right I wasn't particularly enamoured of the song: all those "apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves" were a bit too cute for me even then. Nice harmonies, though.

Pretty soon, The New Seekers had become so big, they were selected to represent the UK in the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest. BBC TV viewers had a choice of several songs, and selected the up-tempo ‘Beg, Steal and Borrow’. An excellent choice, it ticked all the boxes to bring us our first winner since ‘Puppet on a String’. Unfortunately it found itself up against what I think was the finest Eurovision winner in history, ‘Apres Toi’ by Vicky Leandros.

Even Dad liked it, or was it that he just fancied Vicky?! Whatever the appeal, it was re-recorded in English as ‘Come What May’, and followed ‘Beg, Steal and Borrow’ to number two over here. One of the songs which didn’t make the cut for Eurovision, ‘Circles’  gave The New Seekers another top five success that year, with more hits to come in 1974. By that time, the superior singer Eve Graham had been relegated (disgracefully in the view of this twelve year-old!) in favour of the more photogenic blonde Lyn Paul who subsequently went solo. That was that, but they are very much part of my 1972 musical experience.

I was unaware of Cat Stevens as an album superstar and sex god but when he released a version of my favourite hymn ‘Morning Has Broken’ he became a household name, even in 14 Marks Close! Cat’s distinctive voice and Rick Wakeman’s wonderful ivory-tinkling, fingers flowing like a waterfall, certainly grabbed my attention. The result made even something we had to sing in a school assembly ‘cool’. Probably the first and last time that ever happened!

Orchestral recordings of TV themes were also popular early in 1972. ‘The Onedin Line’ was a must-see on, I think, Sunday nights on BBC1. For all the period costumes and storylines combining nautical commerce and family relationships, the series became synonymous with Khachaturian’s ‘Spartacus’, so a top 20 single was almost inevitable. Around the same time, ITV’s ‘The Persuaders’ theme made number thirteen. However, my favourite was ‘Sleepy Shores’, the beautiful piano melody accompanying BBC1’s early evening ‘soap’, ‘Owen MD’. Performed by TOTP’s orchestral supremo Johnny Pearson, it peaked at number eight.

These were by no means the biggest instrumentals of the year. Neither was ‘Morning Has Broken’ the only hymn. The top-seller was ‘Amazing Grace’, a bagpipe-fest performed by the Pipes and Drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. A novelty hit, perhaps, but it was pretty stirring stuff. For many, the pipes are an abomination but I found the sound of a full ‘pipes and drums’ remarkably powerful and, of course, different from anything I’d heard before. It’s still the only kind of military band music I can stomach. Watching the be-kilted hordes performing ‘Flower of Scotland’ at Murrayfield before a Six Nations rugby international can almost make me support the men in blue. Almost. In my opinion the pipes section was also the best bit of ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which came five years later.

The second most popular single in 1972 was, apart from a few vocal interjections of the title, also a novelty instrumental, and one which can still bear repeated listening. Lieutenant Pigeon’s ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ was a real slow-burner, taking nine months to fly to the heights, eventually selling almost 800,000 copies in Britain alone. Apart from the instantly recognisable drum and penny whistle intro, the song was basically honky-tonk style piano, with the main man’s 60 year-old mum Hilda playing the basic keyboard rhythm. Many turned their noses up at it, but ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ was another of those (almost) lyric-free records which make you smile. A guilty pleasure? Definitely not; I feel no guilt about expressing my pleasure at listening to it whatsoever!

Pianists who could sing (and write) were also starting to appear. Listening to the charts, I’d never have identified Elton John with the controversial rocker or tantrum-prone gay activist with whom we have become familiar in recent times. Back then he was a young bloke in silly glasses who sang slow songs at a grand piano. They were good songs, of course, with ‘Rocket Man’ one of my favourites, and ‘Crocodile Rock’ later illustrating he could do the up-tempo stuff, too. Lynsey de Paul also stood out. Not only with her attractive face, trademark beauty spot and blonde hair, but ‘Sugar Me’ boasted an unusual blend of rhythm piano and a solo gypsy violin section. Apparently we have her then boyfriend Dudley Moore (yes, as in Dud ‘n’ Pete) to thank for her singing her own composition. She was also partly responsible for one of my 1973 favourites, of which more anon…. 

Another Top of the Pops regular at the piano in the early Seventies was Gilbert O’Sullivan. His early image comprised a pudding basin haircut, cloth cap, braces or skinny tie and shirt emblazoned with a giant letter G, and it was with this appearance that I first remember him performing ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’. Like Keith West’s ‘Grocer Jack’ in 1967, this song made an instant impression not because it was a happy pop foot-tapper. Quite the opposite, it has always stirred me to the brink of tears, and that was before my own mum died. It made number three in the UK and, although eclipsed in terms of chart position that November by the merrier ‘Claire’, ‘Alone Again’ is my definitive Gilbert O’Sullivan song.  

I remember Mum buying one of those ‘Best of’ LPs featuring a session singer recording Gilbert’s early songs. I hadn’t realised he had already written so many agreeable tunes with likeable lyrics, like ‘We Will’ and 'Ooh Wakka Doo Wakka Day'. There were more to come, and I clearly recall a car journey down to Nan and Grandad’s in Southampton in 1973 singing along to ‘Get Down’. 

Slow songs, then and now, tend to be like Marmite. I’ve mentioned ‘Apres Toi’ as one of the good examples from 1972. I could also list David Cassidy’s ‘How Can I be Sure?’, Don McLean’s ‘Vincent’, Nilsson’s all-time classic ‘Without You’ and Peter Skellern’s ‘You’re a Lady’. The latter was extraordinary thanks to the singer’s obvious North East accent and generous helpings of ‘Hovis’ ad-style colliery band backing. A glorious crescendo of piano at the end, too. 

Two years after ‘Back Home’ demonstrated that football fans could and would by records by their heroes, Chelsea and Leeds United got in on the act. ‘Blue is the Colour’ can still be heard at Stamford Bridge and is probably the most enduring club pop song in history. Shame it’s a rather dull military march and it was released as I was switching my allegiance to QPR, but it made three in the charts. Leeds brought out their own single to drum up support for their FA Cup Final appearance in 1972. Name-dropping all the squad (very small in those days) and manager Don Revie, it sounded more tuneful than Chelsea’s hit. It worked insomuch that Leeds beat Arsenal at Wembley (always a plus in my view!) but failed to reach the top ten. 

With no obvious contenders for my favours, I still held up The Bee Gees as personal favourites, even though they had been absent from the charts for a year or so. To my relief, they were back together again in 1972 and took ‘My World’ into the top twenty. Boasting one of those plaintive Robin vocals, it’s a sadly neglected Gibb Brothers ballad. History has been kinder to the brilliant follow-up ‘Run To Me’ but it’s ‘My World’ which I remember listening to that Spring. Weirdly it was another three years before The Bee Gees next ventured into the UK charts.

Although the rock/pop era was still in its relative infancy, the record-buying public were already going retro. Cliff and, with much greater success, Elvis were still going. Neil Sedaka and The Drifters were enjoying a renaissance. Fifties compilations were outselling most contemporary artists and re-releases of early Sixties hits were doing well. Even my toddler-era twister, ‘Let’s Dance’ returned to the Top Ten that autumn. Nevertheless, it was Don McLean’s thoughtful paeon to Buddy Holly on ‘the day the music died’ which grabbed the attention. I watched only the abbreviated version of ‘American Pie’ on TOTP but you really should see the full-length acoustic tour de force recorded elsewhere on the Beeb.

Don McLean stalled at two but a genuine rock’n’roll icon went all the way. Chuck Berry found a new fanbase at the end of the year but it was hardly rock’n’roll! Instead he topped the chart with a novelty singalong, ‘My Ding-a-Ling’. It didn’t really appeal to me, but then I probably didn’t appreciate the ‘double entendres’, at least not at first. Mary Whitehouse and chums inevitably attempted to get the song banned. They only part-succeeded. TOTP was forced into a compromise solution.

Apparently the main objection was to the showing of young audience members exuberantly singing along to the chorus so, hilariously, I remember those shots replaced by cutaways to Rolf Harris using a marker pen to draw the ‘silver bells hanging on a string’ in scenes appropriate to the lyrics The literal words, of course, not the sexual interpretations! In the end, Chuck managed to get it up to number one, penetrating the December market but was knocked off the pinnacle in time for Christmas by a nine year-old Little Jimmy Osmond bragging about being a ‘Long Haired Lover from Liverpool’. That was deemed perfectly acceptable. Eh?!

1972 saw the rise of the ‘teenybopper’. Mass hysteria at the merest suspicion of a pop star hadn’t been experienced since the early Beatles heyday. Suddenly we had not one, but three young icons sending girls into raptures. Michael Jackson had solo singles backed by his brothers, and it was a similar story for 14 year-old Donny Osmond. It was also the year when David Cassidy emerged from his TV ‘Partridge Family’.

When I moved up to the Mayflower School at eleven, I noticed that most of the girls seemed to be pinning large badges on their blazers. A few may have featured groups but, in the main, they advertised their favours for either Donny, David or Michael. The school soon cracked down on this disgraceful act of rebellion but couldn’t stop them buying their records.

Cassidy was by then in his twenties but I think that was played down at the time. While he could easily pass as a teenager, David certainly had a more mature voice than his contemporary teen idols, and he achieved his first UK number one with an excellent cover of ‘How Can I be Sure?’ Jackson was a mere 13 when he wowed the girls with ‘Got to Be There’ and ‘Rockin’ Robin’ and, like the Bee Gees, he was to be a near-constant on my musical soundtrack for the next two decades.

However, in 1972 and 1973, The Osmonds stole the show when it came to wowing the teenage girls. Already well-established in the USA, they really took the UK by storm, with 14 year-old Donny at the forefront. Personally I could not understand what the fuss was about but many of my female schoolfriends certainly did! ‘Puppy Love’ topped the charts for five weeks and there followed several similar covers of early 60s love songs. In contrast to Neil Reid’s experience, not even the inevitable voice breaking stemmed the young Mormon’s popularity. Unlike Jackson and Cassidy, Donny has somehow avoided the decline into personal disasters, and good on him!

He still recorded with his older brothers and, before they settled for prototype Westlife status with decent ballads-on-stools, they released the one Osmonds song it was acceptable for boys to like. They may have sported some awesomely daring flares but ‘Crazy Horses’ was a rare foray into rock for the Utah Mormons. Unusually Jay sang lead vocals, assisted by Merrill, while Donny appeared to play keyboards. I just have to forget that it’s The Osmonds and enjoy a cracking rock song!

August 1972 marked the momentous period of my debut trip abroad. Travelling on a Monarch Airlines Boeing 720B from Luton to Gerona (as it was then spelt under Franco’s anti-Catalan edict), we enjoyed a fortnight on the Costa Brava. In addition to the unaccustomed heat, sights and smells there were also the foreign sounds to savour. 

Amongst those was the music blaring out from the hotel or any number of neighbouring bars and cafes. The music wasn’t necessarily Spanish but inevitably repetition breeds familiarity and certain songs became inextricably linked with the location. Yes, I was experiencing for the first time the phenomenon of Euro Pop, the Summer Holiday Hit!

At Lloret de Mar, it was definitely the futuristic synthesiser rock instrumental, ‘Popcorn’ by Hot Butter. It reached number five over here but topped charts all over Europe, presumably after all the French, German, Dutch and Swiss returned from their summer hols by the Med. Whenever I hear the ‘pop-pop-pop’ melody I see the view from our hotel balcony and smell the Ambre Solaire. 

The following summer we remained in England and there were no discos or bars around Marazion to leave my ears with sonic imprints of Euro dance. Instead, it was left to whatever was riding high in the charts. If there was one Holiday Hit it would have to be Gary Glitter’s ‘I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am)’. In 1974, we headed for Spain again, where it was proved that the Holiday Hit doesn’t always equal Summer Classic. At Salou, the over-riding musical memory was of Sylvia’s awful ‘Y Viva Espana’! A year later in Mallorca, it was The George Baker Selection’s version of ‘Una Paloma Blanca’, a definite improvement. Good or bad, they were never to be forgotten, just like the holidays themselves. 

Despite all of the above, the principal musical influence of 1972 had to be Glam Rock!  

Having missed most of 1971’s TOTP, T Rex’s rapid rise had passed me by. With Marc Bolan’s transformation from fey folk hippy to shaggy-permed rock god, there was no escaping them in ’72. I wasn’t too keen on ‘Telegram Sam’ but I have always loved their next single. ‘Metal Guru’ was near-perfect, with a genuine melody, an instantly attention-grabbing intro and superb production. My only criticism is that, at barely two and a half minutes, it’s much too short. 

T Rex really were in their pomp that year, but ‘Metal Guru’ proved to be their last number one. On the other hand, David Bowie was just starting to make a huge impression. Despite his androgynous ‘Ziggy Stardust’ persona, I don’t particularly remember him in 1972. Roxy Music’s ‘Virginia Plain’ was for some reason more memorable. Brian Ferry’s sparkling black suit and distinctive vocals plus Andy Mackay’s rippling tenor sax (or was it oboe?) stood out for me. For others it may have been Brian Eno’s synthesizer (and ludicrous hairstyle) but for me his thunder had already been stolen. 

While we were soaking up the rays and ‘Popcorn’ in Lloret, a landmark record had soared to the top back in the UK, with a title guaranteed to appeal to every schoolchild in the country: ‘School’s Out’. The guitar riff chimed with the Bowie/Ronson sound but Alice Cooper’s slightly scary image and growled vocals stood out from the rest. Along with the words, of course. I was between junior and senior schools that summer so Mum was stocking up my bag with the required paraphenalia. ‘No more pencils, no more books’? Far from it! Nevertheless, it all made for some joyous playground singing, ironically once we were all back in school which had not, after all, ‘been blown to pieces’.

I’m not sure whether Chicory Tip count as a Glam band, but their number one single ‘Son of my Father’ certainly fitted in with the prevailing stompy dance beat. What set it apart, however, was the innovative electronic keyboard sound. An early composition success for Eighties Moog-meister Giorgio Moroder, it was a brilliant slice of early Seventies pop. I remember first seeing the group on TOTP and thinking the lead singer was Barry Ryan. An easy mistake to make, as Peter Hewson’s hairstyle and pouty pursed lips made for an obvious comparison. But the music was very different and I loved the growling intro and bouncy synth bridge. It still sounds good today.

Also on an upward trajectory were Sweet and Slade, who were evolving into top-class pop groups. Sweet were beginning to benefit from Chinn and Chapman’s writing and, by the time ‘Wigwam Bam’ hit number four in October ’72, the familiar ingredients were in place. Brian Connolly was in silver, there were liberal sprinklings of glitter and guitarist Steve Priest’s flamboyance threatened to steal the show every time they appeared on TOTP.

Talking of glitter, the summer offered our first sighting of Paul Gadd in spandex and platform boots. Already 28, Gary Glitter was well on his way to UK superstardom thanks to ‘Rock and Roll (Parts 1 and 2)’. It was the largely instrumental Part 2 which proved more popular, although it stalled at two in the charts.

Like Sweet and Gary Glitter, Slade were yet to have their finest hour. Nevertheless, they had already topped the chart in 1971 with ‘Coz I Luv You’. In ’72, they released a sequence of loud stompers which settled into a familiar formula of guitar riff, crowd choruses, Dave Hill’s ferocious fringe and Noddy Holder’s vocals. Then there were their deliberately mis-spelt song titles which sent shivers through the education system with each new Slade release! I think their TOTP performance of ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ (sp, punct., see me…) provided us with our first sighting of Noddy’s famous mirror-studded hat, one of the most enduring images not only of 1972 but the entire decade.

Glam rock encompassed a look, sound and, above all, sense of fun which was to light the fuse for my renewed and revitalised love of pop in the following twelve months.

1970-71: You can stretch right up and touch the sky

History has not been kind to the Seventies. While we look back on the Sixties in black and white, and the Eighties in pastel colours, TV clips suggest the decade in between was experienced in various shades of brown.

The UK economy seemed to be permanently in the red and with the Cold War in full swing, future prospects looked black. It was the decade of my teenage years, unspectacular though they were. With the family, I moved to a new town and new schools; O levels, A levels, illness and, right at the end, the difficult transition to university. Thank goodness for music!

It’s easy to summarise the Seventies as simply classic rock, glam rock, disco and punk. Yes, they formed significant chunks of those years but the glory of music is that we all have different tastes, and so the charts – album or singles – reflect that diversity. Glam, disco and punk certainly touched my life but there was far more to Seventies music than these three genres.

The Beatles may have split but John, Paul, George and Ringo were still very much in evidence. Nevertheless Lennon and McCartney gave way to a new genius songwriting partnership in Abba’s Anderson and Ulvaeus, and Bowie, John/Taupin, Lynne, Lea/Holder, Stewart, Bolan and Cook/Greenaway were also now raking in the UK royalties.

Yet while Slade, Rod, T Rex, Elton and co were undoubtedly familiar faces on Top of the Pops, in many ways the performers I most associate with the Seventies are 10cc, Showaddywaddy, Status Quo and Hot Chocolate. Not necessarily my favourites, but part of my teenage years as much as acne, unattainable girls and Maths homework. Short-lived crazes like Rollermania, ska, Glitter, Osmonds and Grease punctuated the decade but the fun of recalling the 70s comes in the rich supporting cast of songs and artists that entertained me through the age of beige.

But the decade didn't have the brightest of starts. Looking back at what was in the charts at the start of 1970, there was plenty to look back on with fondness. However, without the benefit of the Double Top Ten Show or even Google and YouTube, the artists and titles start to look more and more obscure. 

There were some really big hits at the start of the decade, yet most failed my personal memory test. I can’t believe I made a conscious decision to stop watching TOTP nor was I banned by Mum and Dad! We moved house in November 1970, so perhaps the upheaval played a part. Nevertheless, we moved just up the road to Billericay, Essex, not to a cave in deepest, darkest Borneo so I must still have heard the chart music at the time. 

It is utterly possible that the songs haven’t stayed with me because, as I listen now, they were just awful. Well, let’s be charitable; they are not to my taste, either aged ten or fifty-five. There was a lot of stripped-back rock or blues, boring Motown and yawn-inducing MoR material which did nothing for me. It’s like there was a bleak backlash against the colourful ‘60s. Even had I been ten years older, I doubt very much I’d have been enamoured of the album artists so beloved of ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ or John Peel’s radio show. Atonal claptrap like Captain Beefheart? No, thanks! 

It is perhaps symbolic of the mostly chronic state of the music scene that a few snippets lodged tightest in my brain came not from hit singles, films or even TV commercials. They weren’t even proper songs. Rather, advertising jingles, although for public information films. In February 1971, Britain experienced a one-off seismic shift to a decimal currency and, to ensure the population was familiar with the new coins and how they related to the old ones, the BBC broadcast a series of short films called ‘Decimal Five’. They were sprinkled with ditties performed by my old friends The Scaffold telling us things like “One pound is a hundred new pennies, a hundred new pence to the pound”. It must have worked because I can still sing a few of them forty-five years later! Perhaps Roger McGough can be called upon to write more of the same should the Brexiteers contrive to take Britain back to the world of shillings, crowns and the thr’penny bit. 

Anyway, I’m going to concentrate on the stuff I know I liked, with a passing nod to acts I remember and which made even my younger self cringe ever so slightly! The first new number one single of 1970 is a perfect place to start the story, one which very soon veers into bizarre territory. 

Edison Lighthouse came from nowhere to the pinnacle with ‘Love Grows (Where my Rosemary Grows)’. Indeed, the group was so obscure they didn’t even have a fixed line-up. The voice belonged to session singer Tony Burrows and it’s him on the above vintage TOTP clip. Persevere through the embarrassing Tony Blackburn intro and footballer Peter Marinello (whatever happened to ‘the new ‘George Best’?!) prize-giving and enjoy! ‘Love Grows’ is an under-rated Seventies classic, unashamedly happy. It works ‘cos it makes you smile.  

It also stands out for me because the very same Mr Burrows cropped up in no fewer than four different groups who achieved top ten status in the early part of 1970. Four times he performed twice on a single TOTP. One minute he is as part of the long-forgotten White Plains and - would you believe it? – with the original version of Brotherhood of Man. He then crops up as one of The Pipkins, who released the quirky ragtime-esque ‘Gimme Dat Ting’. 

The UK music scene was beginning to become even more incestuous. The front man appearing on the TV broadcasts for the White Plains' ‘My Baby Loves Loving’ and BoM's ‘United We Stand’ clips were both Roger Greenaway, who co-wrote the songs with Roger Cook. Not sure why he took prime miming duties, because the voice belongs to Mr Burrows. However, it is Greenaway’s falsetto on ‘Gimme Dat Ting’. It gets even more complicated…. 

If Lennon and McCartney were the go-to songwriters of the Sixties, Cook and Greenaway were similarly prolific in the early Seventies. In 1970 and 1971, the likes of Andy Williams, Cilla Black, The Hollies and The New Seekers owed a lot of UK sales to the two Rogers. Greenaway may have limited himself to lip-synching on TV but his partner sang (without the studio help of Tony Burrows) in another band, Blue Mink. 

I distinctly recall watching them on TOTP performing ‘Melting Pot’ written –naturally - by Cook and Greenaway. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t seen a group fronted by a white man and black woman before. He didn’t have much of a voice, to be honest, but Madeline Bell most certainly did, even if I didn’t appreciate it at the time. Dad quite liked her, though! I probably didn’t ‘get’ the multiracial co-existence message either, but it’s a likeable dollop of British soul. I also enjoyed ‘Banner Man’ which reached number three the following year. A good old brass band foot-tapper, it was to provide an appropriate backdrop to the opening titles of the Nineties film ‘East is East’.

Shocking Blue’s ‘Venus’ (later given an Eighties update by Bananarama) and Pickettywitch’s ‘I Still Get that Same Old Feeling’ also got me jigging about in the Spring of 1970. Not because of the hot pants-clad singers, of course; it was always about The Music! These were further examples of straightforward, no-frills pop-rock, shorn of Sixties or Eighties-style orchestration and assorted gizmos. Sergeant Pepper, it ain't. You could imagine your average Spanish hotel band doing a passable imitation. 

Christie’s ‘Yellow River’ was another very catchy tune, simple but danceable. I don’t really recall them on TOTP but YouTube has revealed some interesting videos. There’s a performance of the song by one of my late-Sixties favourites and chart regulars The Tremeloes. Apparently they recorded it but didn’t want to release it as a single. Returning to the subject of musical incest, their guitarist-keyboardist was the brother of the group-who-became-Christie’s drummer. Jeff Christie had written the song so the producer (my namesake Mike Smith!) added the writer’s vocals to the original backing track and the rest is history. The Tremeloes must have been kicking themselves! 

Other songs I remember hearing with at best indifference, at worst downright antipathy, include ‘Wand’rin’ Star’. Taken from the popular musical ‘Paint Your Wagon’, it wasn’t exactly targeted at nine year-olds. Lee Marvin wasn’t even singing! We kids did love to mock the gravelly vocals but couldn’t fathom why it topped the charts for three weeks. It felt like a lifetime.

It was displaced by a song which many consider an all-time great, an opinion I don’t happen to share. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ has a beautiful first half, undoubtedly, but then it outstays its welcome, over-long and overblown. It bored me then but the public couldn’t get enough of Simon and Garfunkel. The album was the biggest seller not only of 1970 but also the following year. 

In May, the great British public had inflicted upon it the first of a seemingly endless stream of songs by football squads designed to build support for ‘our boys’ as they seek success in this or that competition. In 1970, England’s World Cup Squad were bound for Mexico, confident of retaining the Jules Rimet trophy. I can picture now the massed ranks of Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks et al miming way to ‘Back Home’. While I loved football, I didn’t really see the point of the players singing. In hindsight, it wasn’t the worst football song ever released. After all, I can still remember the tune and some of the lyrics. England didn’t win the World Cup, of course, but they did have a number one single.

Some time that summer, musical memories fade. I have no contemporary recollections of chart-toppers like Elvis Presley’s ‘The Wonder of You’, Freda Payne’s ‘Band of Gold’ or Smokey Robinson’s ‘Tears of a Clown’. I have since watched Free’s stoned TOTP performance of ‘All Right Now’ numerous times but it stirred nothing from my personal databanks. Similarly ‘Lola’ by The Kinks or the two classic rock tracks ‘Black Night’ and ‘Paranoid’, which were in the top four simultaneously that autumn. I wouldn’t have liked Deep Purple or Black Sabbath anyway; far too heavy for nine year-old me.

The absence of the big hits from my consciousness continued well into 1971. None of T Rex’s early glam rock glories, neither solo debuts by Paul McCartney (‘Another Day’) or Elton John (‘Your Song’) nor the MoR radio staples by Carole King and James Taylor. However, I must have been exposed to the charts via TV and Radio because some musical memories have survived. Indeed, there were two monster summer hits which were impossible to miss. 

I’ve no idea what the weather was like in June and July, but in 1970 the air was filled with the sound of Mungo Jerry’s ‘In the Summertime’. A simple structure, lots of easily imitated ‘da-da dee’s and of course the writer-singer Ray Dorset was so readily recognisable thanks to those sumptuous sideburns (or sideboards, as we called them).

A year later, the Scottish group Middle of the Road brought out one of the last great ‘bubblegum’ singles, ‘Chirpy ChirpyCheep Cheep’. The lyrics suggest a sad song, so why the bird song reference? That mattered not one jot. Everyone could sing along and to this day it remains for many a guilty pleasure. Note Sally Carr’s nervous-looking performance on TOTP, broadcast on my tenth birthday.

Another record in the Mungo Jerry mould emanated from Australia. With lots of ‘shhhh’s and ‘uh-uh-ahhh’s, ‘The Pushbike Song’ may not ride high in the pantheon of rock classics but The Mixtures took it to number two, thwarted only by George Harrison’s all-conquering  ‘My Sweet Lord’ early in 1971. It certainly appealed to young cyclists like me. 

As I mentioned earlier, I think ‘TOTP’ had lost its grip on me at this time but another programme which featured contemporary hits – after a fashion – was ‘Crackerjack’. Aimed squarely at junior school-aged kids, it was broadcast on Fridays at five to five, with a wound-up squealing audience of children. I was quite jealous when one week a few friends attended a recording. 

During the show, there would usually be a silly sketch routine punctuated by the stars singing (very badly) excerpts from current pop songs with the script written around the titles. I’m pretty sure ‘The Pushbike Song’ featured, and I can definitely remember hearing bastardised versions of Lobo’s ‘Me and You and a Dog Named Boo’ and Tony Christie’s ‘Is this the Way to Amarillo?’ on ‘Crackerjack’. 

By the end of 1971 my relationship with the older children’s Thursday night show was being repaired and the Christmas number one became a personal favourite for years to come. It was one of those songs, with an unforgettable accompanying video, which I could hear and watch over and over again. It was also one of those rare records with lyrics I could remember and recite at will. I still can. Thanks be to Benny Hill, ‘Ernie’ and let’s not forget his horse whose “name was Trigger, and he pulled the fastest milk cart in the West”. While the downtrodden hero was killed (by a lethal combination of Two Ton Ted’s rock cake and stale pork pie) and thus lost the love of his life, it was also somehow reassuring that Ernie could gain his ghostly revenge…. 

Perhaps this comedy gem shone a light to pierce the gloom of the previous two years. Certainly 1972 was to herald a lighter brighter era in pop. I’d somehow missed out on the likes of ‘Maggie May’, ‘Hot Love’ and ‘Brown Sugar’ but for me, ‘TOTP’ was now back in my heart where it belonged.

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.

1968: We’d sing and dance forever and a day

In 1968, while the Americans were slaughtering Vietnamese civilians, Eastern European risings were being crushed and Western European students were revolting, I was still at Ingrave Primary School and continuing my musical education with Top of the Pops. The sudden flowering of my interest in music the previous year in some ways put ’68 into the shade. Nevertheless, there are still songs, performances and artists which have stayed with me.

The first four new number one singles of the year were among them. The Beatles had hogged the top two spots over Christmas and the New Year before ‘Hello Goodbye’ suddenly plunged to number eight, allowing Georgie Fame to hit the top. I wasn’t aware of the trendy Beatty/Dunaway film but Fame’s ‘Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’ stood out. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the movie but simply told the story of the romanticised armed robbers with the help of brass, banjo and lots of police sirens and gunfire until ‘finally, together, they died….’

The Love Affair’s ‘Everlasting Love’ was pure pop melody but I don’t remember what the group looked like. Many years later, they appeared on stage at Billericay’s Firework Display, presumably as part of a Sixties nostalgia tour. Obviously they mimed to ‘Everlasting Love’ and the follow-up ‘Rainbow Valley’ but it failed to stir any visual memories.

However, I quite liked Manfred Mann. I do recall them topping the chart with ‘The Mighty Quin’. After a few years as a blues band fronted by Paul Jones, they’d reinvented themselves as an innovative pop group with singer Mike d’Abo. In 1967 I’d liked ‘Ha Ha, Said the Clown’, presumably the title and chorus appealing to children of my age, and the trademark piccolo also appeared in ‘Quin’. Not so long ago I watched a BBC4 broadcast of an entire TOTP which, by some miracle, had survived the zealous wiping that destroyed so much of the Beeb’s archive. The Manfreds topped the bill that week but I was amazed how many great artists had appeared on that single programme in not-so-glorious black and white.

I think that was the episode which marked the nation’s first exposure to Status Quo. I don’t remember them at the time but the clip has been shown probably more often than any of their other kazillion TOTP appearances. Hilarious! The Move enjoyed a lot of success in the late sixties and there on the show was ‘Fire Brigade’ together with ‘whoo-ooo’ sirens. I reckon Amen Corner were in there somewhere, too. ‘Bend Me, Shape Me’ would have appealed but I have a stronger memory of their 1969 number one, ‘Half as Nice’.

Back then, it could take several weeks for a single to climb the charts. Indeed, unless you were The Fab Four, that was the norm. Then along came Esther and Abi Ofarim and the global hit ‘Cinderella Rockefella’. I remember them on TOTP looking like an Israeli Sonny and Cher. Their Twenties-meets-the-Sixties fashion and an irritatingly catchy banjo-driven melody struck a chord and it progressed up the charts 32-2-1. I’m not a fan of Israel but at least the nation stopped fighting Arabs long enough to produce three fun minutes of kitsch pop.

In contrast to the Ofarims, a couple of true classics took their time advancing to the top. Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ hit the peak in its twelfth week on the chart and went on to out-sell everything else that year. I’m pretty sure ‘Satchmo’ wasn’t on TOTP himself but the Beeb had to put out the same old film of trees, flowers and people shaking hands, saying “How do you do?” for weeks on end. It was a double A-sider with ‘Cabaret’, the theatrical show of which had transferred to the West End that year. Nevertheless, it was the optimistic, life-affirming antidote to the world seemingly at war with itself which had us all smiling and swaying. Deprived of airplay by racist radio stations, it didn’t even make the American Top 100. Over here, even this six year-old would have known the most famous and probably most badly imitated last two words of a song ever sung: “Ohhhh, yeeehhhhhhhh”.

Another of my favourites from ’68 was Hugo Montenegro’s orchestral version of Ennio Morricone’s theme for ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, which took ten weeks to reach number one. The Clint Eastwood spaghetti western now ranks amongst my favourite films of all time. Yet for a chunk of my childhood, alongside ‘Massachussetts’, it was my most cherished record. I loved the two-note woodwind whistle (appropriated by Jimmy Savile for his catchphrase), the ‘wah-wah-wah’s, staccato ‘rep, rup, rep’ grunts, whistling and flamboyant trumpet, underpinned by a melody and rhythm you could actually dance to. I’m not saying I did, but it demonstrated to my young self that a record didn’t have to feature words to be enjoyable. Indeed, it certainly wasn’t the last instrumental to grasp me in its power. A shame there aren’t many around these days.

A TOTP performance of which I have a crystal-clear memory is Bobby Goldsboro’s debut rendition of ‘Honey’. The presenter (I forget which) announced him at having risen to number two, so I can now date this to the first week of June. To this world-weary fifty-something, this paeon to a dead girlfriend, complete with the dreaded angelic choir (I hate all records which resort to that!) now makes me cringe. However, it’s a decent enough song which also did well when it was re-released in 1975.

Coincidentally it was kept from the top slot by another Sixties classic revived in the mid-Seventies: the Union Gap’s ‘Young Girl’. That was another record I remember vividly. Given its theme of a man’s love for a – well, young girl - I do wonder if it would evade the modern censor in the era of Operation Yewtree. Of course, like many songs, you make of it what you want, and it’s essentially a great pop record.

Television programmes were also leaving a musical mark on me, other than TOTP, of course. I would have been very familiar with themes for programmes such as Z Cars, Doctor Who, Get Smart, Blue Peter and such like. I was probably allowed to stay up for Cilla Black’s Saturday night BBC1 show by 1968, and for years I’m sure she would sing ‘Step Inside Love’ at some point in the programme. The theme song wasn’t a favourite of mine but I couldn’t escape it.

The same goes for the theme to ’White Horses’. I grew up with a succession of dubbed European children’s drama series. When the Beeb had little money in the Sixties, children’s TV seemed to consist purely of Blue Peter, Crackerjack and ‘Tales from Europe’. I didn’t really like these old-fashioned (even then) continental productions; it’s just that before ‘The Magic Roundabout’ and the boring news for grown-ups there was just nothing else to watch. However, I do remember ‘White Horses’, which was made by German/Yugoslavian TV and was about a girl who went off to Lipica, famous for its Lipizzaner horses. A bit girly, perhaps, but Jacky’s pleasant signature tune made up for it.

Sometimes, it’s the quirky acts which left an imprint, and none were quirkier than Don Partridge. Long before every busker tried to be the new Ed Sheeran or Amy Whitehouse, a trip on the London Underground might well bring you into contact with a one-man band. He (almost certainly a he) would play an acoustic guitar, to which a harmonica and maybe kazoo were attached. A bass drum and cymbal, worked by the feet, would rest on his back, while his left elbow could tap a rhythm on the offbeat. The result could be very entertaining and I remember seeing my first one-man band live. Then Don Partridge appeared on TOTP, launching a briefly bright career with his catchy composition ‘Rosie’, reaching number four. ‘Blue Eyes’ went even higher. There were other hits, too, before he ditched the heavy kit to become a more conventional, albeit less successful pop star. He soon reverted to busking and later slid into semi-retirement in the aptly-named Peacehaven on the Sussex coast.

Two teenage artists were also memorable in their different ways. I wouldn’t have watched ITV’s ‘Opportunity Knocks’ so missed Mary Hopkin’s success on the show. However, once Paul McCartney took her under his wing, and released ‘Those Were the Days’ on the brand new Apple label, even I knew who she was. With the long blonde hair, strumming a guitar and crystal-clear voice, the girl from Pontardawe became a global star.

‘Those Were the Days’, with its Russian folk heritage, even displaced The Beatles’ own ‘Hey Jude’ from the number one slot and kept it at bay throughout October. Quite an achievement because I rate 'Hey Jude' to be the Beatles masterpiece of masterpieces. The Fab Four got their own back in 1969 when ‘Get Back’ kept Hopkin’s ‘Goodbye’ (written by McCartney) at two. The following year, she was a runner-up once more, this time in the Eurovision Song Contest, where another pretty songstress, Dana, took the main prize. Young Mary disappeared from the charts for good, marrying producer Tony Visconti and having a family. However, she helped make that Autumn ’68 sequence of chart toppers such a great one.

Barry Ryan never topped the singles chart but I’ll never forget his five-and-a- half-minute opus ‘Eloise’. For some reason I do recall seeing him on TOTP with his brother Paul, although not the songs themselves. Paul quit performing but continued to write, and ‘Eloise’ was the Ryans’ crowning glory. The production was OTT right from the dramatic orchestral intro, but Barry’s voice was equal to it. I can picture him on TOTP, dark-haired and sad-eyed, but I wouldn’t mind betting this promo film was also played. Lots of fish-eye lens, evocative seaside shots – and the singer looking rather cold and awkward atop an extra from ‘White Horses’ alongside a Catherine Deneuve lookalike. Rubbish video, but one of the great Sixties musical epics!

While Eloise apparently floated off into the surf, a very different female ascended the charts and into my heart. No, not Kylie! Not yet, anyway. I’m referring to ‘Lily the Pink’, The Scaffold had already had a hit with ‘Thank U Very Much’ but this amusing ditty telling the story of how Lily’s ‘medicinal compound’ had changed the lives of assorted characters (including Ebenezer, thought he was Julius Caesar; Mr Frears and his sticky-out ears) was tailor-made for children like me. We all knew the words, verse and chorus, and the music-hall-style production guaranteed it a Christmas number one.

With Beatle Paul’s brother Mike McGear the lead singer, John Gorman’s comedy antics and the wonderful words of Roger McGough, The Scaffold were more than just another Liverpool pop group. They even had Tim Rice and a pre-fame Elton John on backing vocals and rock god Jack Bruce playing bass! Lily the Pink’s soul may have ascended ‘up to heaven’ but this remains one of my favourite Christmas chart-toppers and an integral part of my childhood.

In 1968, Otis Redding was sitting on a ‘Dock of a Bay’, Dusty Springfield was celebrating the ‘Son of a Preacher Man’, Julie Driscoll’s Wheel was on Fire, Andy Williams couldn’t take his eyes off you and Simon and Garfunkel’s tale of ‘Mrs Robinson’ were all in the charts yet one of my best remembered songs was ‘Little Arrows’ by Leapy Lee.

Like ‘Lily the Pink’, this was a rather daft, almost comic record, and Lee’s bouncy delivery endeared it to me. Good enough to make number two, it’s another in the line of 1968 favourites. Could 1969 possibly follow that?!