A Cookie Crumbles: Guys 'n' Dolls: "There's A Whole Lot Of Loving"

I sometimes remember the 1970s as a mostly regular time, but with jarring oppositions too. It was in many ways a bluntly realistic era, but there were a lot of very determinedly happy things to balance that out, including the smiley button (I wore a variation on it myself as a child), not to mention a lot of cheery upbeat music, including this song.  Now, I could go down the path of picking a side in the perpetual tug-of-war between oh-so-sensitive singer-songwriters and the manufactured production line of producer/songwriters/singers*, but this song would not exactly fit in to the debate.  Oh it has songwriters (Chris Arnold, David Martin and Geoff Morrow) and singers (Tony Burrows and Clare Torry) but uh, wait a minute.  It came from a commercial?  For cookies?

Yes, we have reached the stage where a song from a McVitie's fruit shortcake tv ad can be recorded and released as a hit single.  The song itself has nothing to do with cookies and a lot to do with the natural hugeness of the United States (the songwriters were American).  It’s a proper song, not a jingle fleshed out.  The loving going on is abstract; the love could be for anyone, but it’s heartfelt and the wholesome goodness of the song’s sing-a-long style matches the Hoover Dam mention.  It could be straight out of a musical, though usually there’s a bit more plot in a stage song.

I don’t know if this was expected to be a hit – but it was.  So, what to do?  On very short notice, a group of male and female singers were put together so they could appear as Guys 'n' Dolls for promotional purposes – miming the song and dancing on variety shows (one of them being Julie Forsyth, daughter of Bruce – do you see how showbiz this is?)  There was no time to re-record the song with the new group, however. It worked, at least at first.  The main problem was that the lead singer of the group, Dominic Grant, didn’t sound anything like Tony Burrows.  He sounded more like a wannabe Scott Walker, completely pointless as the actual Scott Walker existed and at this time was plotting the return of The Walker Brothers.**  

The group had its problems as you might expect and two of the six were dismissed for (I am guessing) wanting to do things in a different way. Guys 'n' Dolls were essentially there to fill the gap before The New Seekers reconvened, before the Brotherhood of Man made this kind of music uncool for a whole generation.  They had one more hit in the UK but were far more popular in Europe, where they had hits right into the 1980s.

This scam, if you like, did have one unintended consequence.  A few years after their being relieved from Guys 'n' Dolls, Theresa Bazar – the female of the pair – approached the studio bass player, one Trevor Horn, to see if he would be interested in working with her and David Van Day, the male of the pair.  He was and so they did – as the duo Dollar.  And so from late 1974, the tiny seeds of something different were being sown. 

 Next up:  keep the red flag flying, kids!

                                        

 

*There are times when I don’t mind singer-songwriters, and then there are times I just want to avoid them as much as possible.  I don’t know how common this is amongst those who grew up in the 70s.

**There are certain voices that are inimitable, and Walker’s is one of them.  There’s a song by The Herd where the lead singer does a Walker-style vocal and it’s awful.  No wonder Peter Frampton left to start Humble Pie.

A Love From Outer Space: Wizzard: "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day"

What makes a great Christmas song?  This is a debatable point, but one of the main points of Christmas (and therefore, of Christmas songs) is a sense of bounty and relief; a sense (especially in the UK, I feel) of abundance*.  Christmas is a time for pure celebration and joy, which gets the straight treatment here; indeed of all the big UK Christmas songs, this NME #2 feels the most American.

The density of Wizzard - straight out of the whole Spector/Beach Boys wall of sound - suggests plenty, to an almost ridiculous degree.  Of all the Glam Slam bands Wizzard were the ones with the most members, the most fun, and the most sincerity, I believe.  Slade's monumental achievement of getting to #1 first week with "Merry Xmas Everybody" was one thing - Noddy's voice waking the dead with good rattling cheer - but Roy Wood is taking everyone back to the early 60s via the early 70s, wishing a moribund we-haven't-had-it-so-good UK not just a happy Christmas for one day but a wish that the love (did I forget to say the best Christmas songs are love songs?  No?) the day represents would be here every day, perpetually.  The snowman brings the snow, all the better for Wood to write his name on the roof so Santa (who comes from the Milky Way - yes, Santa is an alien here) can find him. 

In a way, this makes the song a plea for deliverance from the ordinary into the extraordinary - if Slade are asking you to look to the future, Wizzard are asking that love and abundance be part of everyone's lives, that the bells should ring and ring, that it should be like this every day.  (The absurdity of this is what makes the song British, I feel - he wishes it could be like this, whereas Slade are "well, here it is, Christmas, have fun while you can" Wizzard want this to go on and on, and of course there's a children's choir because who doesn't want Christmas to end as a child**?)  The snow arrives, glowing cheeks light the way, romance is also in the air - this isn't altogether a throwback to a decade previous but a kind of Utopian 70s thing, as an ideal to hold up as the 70s begin to buckle down into The Fog and good cheer is desperately needed. Christmas began as a celebration of the birth of (if I may say so) a revolutionary figure; and something of that has rubbed off here.  So it is no surprise that this is one of the most enduring British Christmas songs and it is apt that Wizzard, that multi-instrumental Glam band that Roy Wood led, are leading the way as Friendly Forebears for New Pop.  This is revolution, kids-choir-and-sleigh-bell style.  

Next up:  the end is nigh...


*In the US there's Thanksgiving, which doesn't exist in the UK, so I feel some of its qualities are celebrated at Christmas, more or less.

**Well, maybe not all kids, but most, methinks. 

How Dare They: 10cc: "Donna"

The whole story of music in the 70s seems - even at this early stage - to be one where people either are working within some kind of framework as to what music could be/has been and those who just blindly do whatever they think is right.  Which is to say, there are art school grads who have ideas, and there are those who know when a song has a hook and a melody and is bound to be a hit.  It is very rare to have both of those represented in one group, but 10cc were that group, and from the start they were going with/against the grain at almost all times. 

10cc were basically Hotlegs - remember them? - with Graham Gouldman, now returned from his foray into American bubblegum and ready to work with his fellow Mancunian friends to subvert what rock 'n' roll was and perhaps make way for The New.  They were named by Jonathan King (he wanted something a bit subtler than Shag, I guess) and encouraged by him to become a group, though that looked to be something the others - Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Eric Stewart - were going to do anyway.  Hotlegs did have other singles, one of which was heard by one Neil Sedaka, who went all the way to work with them in Strawberry Studios - first on Solitaire and then on The Tra-La Days Are Over, a final album with his co-writer Howard Greenfield; thus the Brill Building came to them, so to speak.  By the time that album was out, 10cc were a going concern. (Thus, 10cc played on the original of "Love Will Keep Us Together" which would eventually be answered by another Mancunian band who also recorded in Strawberry Studios a few years hence.) 

10cc were an unpredictable bunch; not really glam, not proto-punk, certainly not, though they wore enough denim, HRS*; they get compared to Steely Dan these days, but the supercool elegance of that duo was a whole different thing altogether.  10cc were what they were, and got away with things because no one could quite figure them out.  Prog rock is where some slot them, Art rock others, but they weren't like Yes or Roxy Music, both of whom were starting to make waves at this time. I point all this out to show that excessive categorization of bands ultimately leads nowhere, as every band essentially is different, and that near-arthritic care to categorize takes all the fun out of things, after a while.

"Donna" is a song that both celebrates and subverts the old style; you can't do that without loving the old style of pop and being able to do it well - unlike, oh, Frank Zappa (whom 10cc are also compared to) there is no sense of snideness or meanness to the song.  "Donna" is a song which they did in part because they could see the 50s revival all around them and wanted to gently poke fun at it/head it off at the pass, and make it modern.  Thus the frankly ridiculous lyrics:  "You make me stand up/You make me sit down" and the usual angst about the phone.  Lol Creme is utterly straight when he is singing...just about...as is the reply from drummer Kevin Godley, who provides a second perspective on the girl in question:  "Donna waiting by the telephone/Donna waiting for the phone to ring."  Donna waits for that phone to ring (as it does in the song) and the declarations of love are there, complete with the touching "Donna I'd stand on my head for you."

Number two hits can and do stand as correctives to the number one songs; but this song seems to stand for The New as oppposed to being The Old.  Friendly Forebears that they were, the song had to not just be accurate but good, and not just those but also successful; maybe people bought this because they thought it was like "Oh! Darling" by The Beatles (yet another group 10cc get compared to) and indeed some people mistakenly thing of this as a riff on that and nothing else.  But it's not, because this isn't some simple tribute - it's pop being used, in a sense, against itself, the 50s ballad being warped sweetly to show how silly it is, and how complex even a simple phone call can be.  In the nicest way possible, they are basically saying we cannot go back; as much as some might want to, alas.**     

10cc were to go on subverting and inventing song ideas/conventions for some time; using Strawberry Studios as their lab, they would mess around and try things out and push boundaries, both politically and sonically.  Sadly I don't get back to them here, but know that for the next few years they are always there somewhere, an active agent against dullness and mediocrity, against simple nostalgia and 'normal' perspectives.  I hear their legacy in a few bands from Manchester - Everything Everything have their inventiveness, The Smiths their sense of going against the grain.  (Hot Chip owe a lot to them too, especially in their lyrics and genial non-glam looks.)  In their original line-up they only lasted a few years, but they showed what could be done, and how ambition and playfulness can lead to some pretty amazing songs.

Next up:  automobile armageddon! 

 

*Hard Rockin' Shit, which was more Allman Brothers/Foghat territory.

**I wonder sometimes what the Teddy Boys thought of Glam and of this song too - did they feel as if they were being...mocked?  Or were they too busy hating people for buying a (not very good) song by Chuck Berry? (With the Teds it's actually a question as to whether they ever mentally left the 50s in the first place.)

Think Primitive, Act Local: Hotlegs: "Neanderthal Man"

It is, by now, late summer 1970; the new decade still beckons, but the 60s still hang over the year in certain ways that in two months will (sadly) be over. The bubblegum overlords Kasenetz & Katz have struck a deal with some Mancunians earlier this year that have seen their modest studio in Stockport, Strawberry Studios, fitted with some state-of-the-art equipment, all the better so that they may record there for the production team (instead of going to NYC to do the recording there). The bubblegum contingent are especially interested in one of them, ex-Mindbender Graham Gouldman, as he has been writing catchy and successful songs for others for years, and K & K want to make themselves more credible by having him on board. This doesn’t really work out that well, but as Gouldman is away on business, the other three – Eric Stewart (also an ex-Mindbender), Lol Creme and Kevin Godley (who were in The Mockingbirds together and knew Gouldman from school days) are at Strawberry Studios, eager to mess around and see what they come up with.  The 70s, at least in Mancunian terms, is about to get started.

The song starts with the drums and goes from there, though not too far – it is a drumtastic song with guitars, recorders and voices, the voices secondary to the beat. The beat is a slow shuffle*, not really funky as such but it catches the whole ‘back to basics’ movement of the time, only with one little caveat; it is impossible (especially knowing what is going to come from these musicians) just how much of this song is plain old songwriting in the ‘give the label/people what they want’ and how much of it is some kind of oblique commentary on the HRS man’s man’s mans world hooey that definitely still existed at this time, in Stockport and elsewhere. (The women in the video all look as if they are extras from The Flintstones, had it been a live-action tv series and not a cartoon.) Look at their faces (Eric Stewart going so far as to wear sunglasses indoors, that’s how nonchalant he is) and you can just see them veer from serious to kind of amused to near blank, and the song itself gives no real hint as such as to how seriously you (can) take it.

That the studio was partly owned by Stewart and Gouldman meant that these musicians – currently known as Hotlegs, but their more famous name will be 10cc – had the chance to work and experiment and mess around; there are some bands who enjoy doing this, and this is one of them. (They don’t really get going as a group as such for a while, running the studio and being the in-house band for whoever wants to use it, Neil Sedaka being the most famous guest in the early 70s.) This freedom is vital to understanding how music evolves, from this rather primitive song to things far more complex, away from any pressures from managers or labels; this is, in a way, the first step towards the kind of autonomy musicians have today**. Owning part of the means of production may have been a headache at times (due to a bad deal they didn’t make that much from this huge hit) but they kept on going, finding out that they worked well together, a joy in and of itself.  Whether this was a send-up or just a happy result of experimentation is hard to say, but under the auspices of bubblegum, a new band is about to be born; one that is bound to its surroundings and own inspirations and ideas far more than any producer or label.  Neanderthals?  Hardly.

*Speed this up a little and hey presto, there’s “Loaded” by Primal Scream, more or less.

**The Rolling Stones had a studio but it was mobile, theirs, and not part of a community (besides other rock groups); Strawberry Studios was open for anyone, from aunties to orchestras, to come by and use for a nominal fee. Tony Wilson admired them for keeping things local when they could have gone elsewhere; Joy Division would work there in the future, under the guidance of Martin Hannett.

Who Is Who: Mary Hopkin: "Knock Knock Who's There?"

There are certain songs which are hits at the time and stay hits, and others which are typical of their time and yet somehow point towards the future; I can't say I knew this song before I heard it (it is yet another step in my understanding UK culture) and it is a song that seems to look back to the wide-eyed, expectant time before The Beatles and ahead to something quite different.

The narrator is eager, willing something to happen, even if it's just in her imagination and she knows nothing will really happen. Yet, when she closes her eyes, she gets the "strangest feeling" - a feeling that may be instinct, may be pleasant or unpleasant, though with Hopkin's voice it of course sounds as if it could only be a good thing, and she certainly sounds welcoming enough. (The song's writers, Geoff Stephens and John Carter, are the guys in tuxes in the back, as was the custom at Eurovision at the time.) John Carter's own demo of the song points up the fact that maybe the teardrop on the window and the strangest feeling are more disturbing and that to imagine someone knocking on the door is, come to think of it, kind of delusional. No one just knocks on a front door and steps in unless the person inside has invited them somehow; even if what the narrator is inviting in is an abstract - Love - well, that is equally odd, as Love rarely responds to such passiveness...

...so what is going to come in, what is really awaited? An actual person, romance, Love? The 70s themselves could be in this room already, with Hopkin as its voice, and her tremendous eagerness for something, anything to happen is as hopeful and naive as the new decade itself. Who knows what is going to happen? That something will comes through in the music, all curlicues and confident, swooping like a bird from note to note.

This same room will occur again (I know I've mentioned it before in conjunction with Hopkin, but this time it's even more pertinent) in 1977, a room where her voice comes back as that welcoming spirit to perhaps comfort a man who cannot leave his room, who is scared of what is outside and yet is waiting; waiting for a gift that is mysterious, one which doesn't come from a knock on the door but from the inside, from a place where that strange feeling starts. Hopkin longs for Love to come and relieve her from solitude, but here solitude is required, it seems, for anything to happen at all. That Hopkin is there may also point back to the optimistic delusion of this song, and Bowie sings more to himself, when he bothers to sing at all.

"Knock Knock Who's There?" got second place at Eurovision (as it does here) and for all I know it may have been some influence on Bowie at the time; it sounds like a much simpler and happier song than it really is. This is not a new thing in pop, but it will start to happen more frequently as something that is for now nameless begins to find its roots and slowly begins to grow, with Stephens and Carter two of its friendly forebears. The 70s has more of them in store, as pop begins to grow in two distinct ways - the dull and predictable, and the strange and lovely. This song belongs to the latter, all black and sparkling, contradictory and yet united.

BOO!: The Move: "Night of Fear"

And appropriately, we have left the warm, hazy sunshine and stumbled into what seems to be its opposite - it's dark, it's windy, something - who knows what - is causing chills and hallucinations. What on earth has happened?

The Move came out of the tough Birmingham scene (whence previous MSBWT subject The Fortunes ["You've Got Your Troubles"] also came) and they wore their freak flags high. If you sense that these men - Roy Wood, Carl Wayne and later Jeff Lynne - were interested in bringing classical music into rock, you'd be absolutely right. In this case it's nothing less than Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, in specific the culminating part (best known to Americans as when the fireworks happen at Independence Day concerts). The Move had originally been a covers group (doing The Byrds, Motown, 50s rock 'n' roll - whatever appealed to them and their audience) and were already known for being outrageous onstage and off, with various things getting the literal axe, including a television, a Cadillac and a bust of Hitler. Their manager encouraged Roy Wood to write songs, and then they started to have hits, including this one.

What is happening here, clearly, is a bad trip. Paranoia is one of the natural side effects of mind-altering drugs, and with good reason. If you can't perceive what is going on around you accurately, then anything can become...anything, with possibly more than just scary consequences. Green and purple lights, cold blood and howling winds would make any ordinary night a night of fear, but there is nevertheless a jauntiness here that comes as a kind of security blanket, as if the band are saying that yes, some trips are going to be bad but you will survive them. How many heard the warning and understood it I am not sure; it could also serve as a general come-down song after the explosion of energies from '64-'66, that the past (represented by Tchaikovsky) can either be a hindrance or a comforting reminder, depending on how you hear it. Musicians are now listening to others and bringing their work in, and here we have a past master being dropped into the present, helping to jolly along a song about sheer terror.

Already the crossroads are present, confusing and misleading those who try to read the signs too quickly. Whimsy mixed with menace: the sinuous "Sunshine Superman" turns into the night when hobgoblins all too easily become apparent, Halloween happening way too soon. Psychedelia was starting to open up and reveal all kinds of things, good and bad. But could this fear be better than something else?

One of These Men Is Not Like The Others: Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders: "Game of Love"

In '65 the explosion of '64 was deepened and widened; groups still had chances to hop in for their moment of glory while the British Invasion was still fresh, and Wayne Fontana (named after Elvis' drummer, btw) and his Mindbenders - who had only been going for a couple of years, with middling success - had their one big hit with this song. Now, the song is simply a come-on in a jaunty frat house way, the sort of song that is dumb and probably sounds best if you're a bit sideways. (So much of the British Invasion sounds, in retrospect, to be a big loud and Other distraction for Americans trying not to think about Vietnam and other societal ills; this was a #1 in the US.)

But if you notice, there is an element of schism here, Fontana trying his best to be as American as possible, Eric Stewart (the other singer) sticking Popsicle sticks in the spokes of Fontana's bike. You just know in watching this that there isn't going to be another follow-up smash, as while Stewart isn't exactly making fun of Fontana (this isn't as bad as Poole vs. Tremeloes), there is something going on that is somehow proof that the weirdness of the Sixties has begun, and once again the lead singer is left out. The Mindbenders went on to some success (with "Groovy Kind of Love") and Stewart and later band member Graham Gouldman eventually started 10cc. This song is the seed for them, or one of them anyway, and I like to think of it as a Friendly Forebears song (written by Clint Ballard Jr. who also wrote "You're No Good" and "I'm Alive"), so cliched and obvious that it almost makes fun of itself as it goes along, and Stewart gets this.

It is as if pop is both able to be the straight man and the sly stand-up at the same time here, a doubling effect that will grow more complex as the decade goes on. Of course I can say this with the benefit of hindsight; in '65 this was in the top ten in the UK at a time when the chart was in flux - on one side the deceased Jim Reeves, Val Doonican and The Seekers and on the other, The Kinks and The Animals; this kind of genial dumbness was getting squeezed out, though being fundamentally indestructible it will, thank goodness, never go away. The pirates win out next time, however, with a song that would never be played on "official" radio.