Interlude #1: Fleetwood Mac: "Albatross"

While this blog is ostensibly about #2 songs in the UK chart (and the NME, and the Luxembourg...I am using them all to get a greater focus on what was happening and also to point out that a chart is a construct, just like time itself) I will occasionally be taking a little rest stop - as we did in the summer of '73 itself, to have grape juice and bologna sandwiches - and look at what is to come.

Now, this song was a #1 hit in 1969 and by all rights I shouldn't be talking about it here; but look, here it is again at #2, a woozy swoon of a song, part straight-up blues, part Shadows ease and gentleness.  And that's fine, I don't really have much else to say about it, save for the fact that Fleetwood Mac - not in this exact configuration - are on their way to becoming, I would argue, the defining band of the 70s.  Yes, I know that is a huge proclamation, but I feel it's true.  Other bands or musicians may also qualify here (I have written about one of them over at Then Play Long recently) but none has the punctum - for me, anyway - of Fleetwood Mac.  Perhaps that is because I am from California, and that just as I was leaving, they were arriving...

...or I should say, on their way to arriving.  If the 70s can be described as a period of comedown, struggle and then renewal and success, then Fleetwood Mac are indeed the defining band of the time.  In the summer of '73, when this was at #2 and people wondered if the band even existed any longer on TOTP, they might have been surprised (or...not) to hear that not one but two guitarists had left the group*, that a wayward American called Bob Welch had heard they needed help, and showed up, giving them direction and (un)wittingly predicting their future:  California.  Welch was from Los Angeles and sensed that Fleetwood Mac would do better there than in blokey-bluesy-UK, where the band could stretch out and perhaps find its feet.  This was for the future; right now Fleetwood Mac were still in the UK, though they were gaining popularity in the US and with Welch's influence were starting to sound more American as well.  About this time they were recording Mystery To Me (one of many, many albums of the 70s to have an awful cover**) which includes "Hypnotized" - a song Welch wrote that that got a lot of airplay without actually becoming a hit.  It shares a certain laid-back charm with "Albatross" but is far more jazzy than Shadowy; it paves the way for "Dreams" a few years later, and the general eerieness that hangs over the band in general.  It is also understated; the general received opinion of the L.A. band Haim is that they sound like Fleetwood Mac, but nobody ever seems to mention which one; let me be the first one (if I am the first one) to say they they remind me of the Bob Welch-era Mac, and it is a shame that Welch never got to hear them, as I think he would have liked them.  It is also a shame, depending on how much stock you put in it, that while Fleetwood Mac are in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, Welch's heroic carrying of the band somehow didn't count - he's not included in the long list of band members.  He belongs with them all, and it is sad to see he's not there. 

In any case, like Fleetwood Mac my family were in transition; moving from Los Angeles to Canada, Oakville specifically.  It was a hot summer; the summer of Watergate hearings, of ex-Beatles at #1 in the US.  A time when a lot of people could sense that something had happened somewhere that was wrong, but couldn't do very much about it.  "Will It Go Round In Circles" sang Billy Preston, while Dr. John lamented that he was in the right place, but at the wrong time.  The Fog was dealt with in different ways in the US & the UK; the US tried to stick a happy face on it, or at least get it out, confessionally, into the open.  The UK put its faith in the Glam Slam, in the eternal party that is rock 'n' roll itself.  That will continue shortly, but next:  what?  A dog can't fly a plane!    



   

*Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer had both left by now, Peter Green had already left before them.

**Truly, the music had to do the selling with this one.  A beast eating a birthday cake?  Huh?   

The Promise: Springwater: "I Will Return"

It happens every so often; now that we are in The Void it happens with alarming frequency. I don’t know this song; in fact only in doing this blog have I been exposed to this song at all, which really must mean it has been forgotten by almost everyone, even radio programmers.  A #2 NME hit, an instrumental, a marker – once – of some kind of emotional barometer. It is lovely, plaintive, sorrowful, but with that title, something of a promise as well. 

“I Will Return” could be applied to so many things at this time, including the dying dream of the 60s.  That is how I hear this – as a farewell and a guarantee that what once was will come back, evolved and perhaps even mutated somewhat, but it will indeed return.  Of course it can work on the level of young people leaving home for the first time; of lovers who are parted, for whatever reason; even as a song of grief over the death of someone, and the griever’s longing for some proof their loved one is still alive in some way.  In order for something new to happen separation of all kinds is necessary; the 70s can’t really start until the 60s are mourned properly, and that mourning will take some time.  This song is just a tiny part of that general feeling of loss, and hope for renewal and rebirth, and signs of that rebirth are all over the chart at this time, from Slade to John Kongos – something slightly scary (not forgetting Redbone here) is coming to take its place, something big and insouciant and loud…something that has its roots in the 60s, but stomps into the 70s with no time to look back, as its momentum is too strong. 

Yet for now, this plays as the leaves fall; as the first wave of baby boomers have already left university and have headed out into the world, expectant and hopeful, knowing that in order for something to start, something else has to end.  The promise of return here is a harbinger of sorts, though at this point, one of the harbingers is on the King’s Road, fixed on the past rather than the future, which is still a puzzle, not yet a way out; another has just released an album called Hunky Dory, which won’t catch on for another two years.  “I Will Return” has been forgotten as indeed something did indeed return; and so it enters the Void like an invitation to a going-away party or a box of old money that is no longer in use.  Phil Cordell (aka Springwater) may have only had one UK hit (his main successes through the years came from abroad*), but it came at just the right time, between the dying of one decade and the beginning of another.

Next up:  whatever happened to the Housewives of Valium Court?

*Cordell was a multi-instrumentalist who had been in a band called The Prophets and they recorded a few sides with Joe Meek; "I Will Return" is in some ways as emblematic an instrumental of its time as "Telstar" was, though less well remembered. 

4/4 On The Floor: Mr Bloe: "Groovin' With Mr. Bloe"

The imperative to dance is one of the main things about music; so much of it is meant to be part of a celebration or release of one kind or another, an escape from ordinary, everyday life. There is an almost equal imperative that the music played for said times be special, different – again, not what you would hear regularly on the radio or in the charts. People like to set up these rules and be strict about them, as any space that acts as a true escape has to be patrolled for any malign outsider influence. The party, as such, cannot be spoiled.

However, music is an oceanic experience and songs have a way of showing up, being played, of persisting until those who once didn’t want to hear them now welcome them, hopefully realizing that it was folly to try to keep the song out, that it belonged to them the entire time.

The Northern Soul movement is just what it sounds like – dancers in Northern England going to discos and clubs to dance to soul music from the 60s and 70s. While their Southern middle class hippie counterparts were getting high and listening to The Moody Blues or Led Zeppelin, the working class Northerners were dressing up and doing a few uppers in order to dance for hours and hours to 4/4 stomping songs that were open, welcoming and – quite vitally – theirs. This music didn’t make the charts, though many of the artists – particularly the Motown ones – were getting to be fairly well-known, due to Dave Godin’s (and BBC 1 DJ Tony Blackburn’s) tireless efforts to get Motown into the charts. Northern Soul dancers liked obscurity, liked rarity, appreciated the DJs who would go to the US to find ever-more-obscure songs for them to sweat and spin to, over many years – at this time the main place to go was The Twisted Wheel in Manchester, though the Wigan Casino and Blackpool Mecca were two other places where the DANCE DANCE DANCE (pausing to drink and towel yourself) imperative reigned supreme.

However it may surprise you to hear that this song, so obviously meant to be appreciated and danced to by the Northern Soul contingent, was rejected because…it was too popular! The original version, done by the US studio group Wind (only in the late 60s could a band even try to get away with a name like that) was the b-side to “Make Believe.” “Groovin’ With Mr. Bloe" was written by Bo Gentry, Bernard Cochrane, Paul Naumann and Kenny Laguna (whom we will get back to in a decade or so). Any semblances to “Mony Mony” by Tommy James and the Shondells are not a coincidence; bubblegum was still in vogue and this song may well have been rejected by the purists for being a ‘bubblegum’ version of their own thing. Mr. Bloe was a studio group put together by Dick James, and Elton John famously was part of it, though it is Zack Lawrence on the piano here and not Elton (though Elton is on other songs by them and appeared, according to my husband, on TOTP to perform this song). Mr. Bloe, as such, is Harry Pitch, who plays the harmonica (though some say it's Ian Duck; studio bands are shifting, mysterious things at the best of times). A UK studio creation was always going to be trumped by some obscurity found by a crate-digging DJ somewhere in Atlanta, and thus this wasn’t a Northern Soul hit at first…

Still, someone must have bought this, and now comes the oceanic part: it was kids. Kids don’t care about purist rules and regulations, kids just want to have fun and dance and feel good, and this is one of the top songs in this whole blog for just that. Cheery, warm, welcoming, utterly unpretentious, this is what kids in Dundee and Manchester* and everywhere else wanted, and what in seven years or so the dancers in Wigan and Leeds would see the light and get on the floor for – that prime imperative of dancing for the sheer love of movement finally trumping any other need…

…and at the same time, this song wasn’t exactly ignored in the South either; one singer-songwriter used it in ’77 as the basis for this song, proving that even if you move to Berlin there is still that inspiration of dance, of clapping and spinning and twisting, keeping the faith in a music that is a joyous release, a sunshine haven on a rainy night.


*This was a favourite of Morrissey’s at the time and later covered by The Associates in 1990 and The Fall in 2003, though UK soul group Humbug did a cover version with lyrics that's almost as good as the original. I cannot help but note that in two years a certain Italian will do his own stompy harmonica song which may never be accepted by Northern Soul fans as one of their own, but really should be. Look at all the stomping and dancing going on here!

A Woman in the Background: Jet Harris and Tony Meehan: "Scarlett O'Hara"

The past is sometimes just the past; I sometimes wonder why it is that people would ever worry about it being 'hunted' or 'mined' when the past is like a vast cave that in reality most people are happy to consign to, well, their own past. There have always been periods of unease that can create (later on) nearly inexplicable crazes for this decade or era or that; while other times collect dust, or are overshadowed.

Jet Harris and Tony Meehan left The Shadows - they were the rhythm section - and had immediate success with "Diamonds" (much later sampled by Chipmunk in a song that was about being aspirational without talking about pushing himself to the limit). The follow up was this, a Jerry Loudon composition that takes the Gone With The Wind heroine and makes her into something of a cool 60s "dolly bird." It is a jaunty instrumental, rocks just as hard as The Shadows could, with that cool man-about-town edge that Harris simply exuded (what is it about bass players?) - a cool that was unfortunately aided and abetted by his troubled life, including a chauffeur-driven limo accident that left him and his then-girlfriend Billie Davis in a mess, both physically and other ways (she was 17 at the time, he was married*).

As incredibly popular as Harris and Meehan were, it is a sad fact that they - and so many other UK acts from this time - are more or less forgotten** (save for Brian Matthew's Sounds of the Sixties) by what I call State Radio. There the past is lovingly and almost obsessively catalogued and enshrined; and yet perhaps this is part of the problem itself - the past as a museum cannot fly beyond the lives of those who remember the music in the first place, who were there. In popular received history The Beatles simply own the charts now, with everyone else running a poor second,



*In case it needs underlining, we are in the 60s now, when being a ladies' man was very much in vogue; how much embarrassment this caused I don't know, as keeping things secret was just as in vogue.

**Cliff Richard and The Shadows did do a tour and new album recently - a single of theirs scraped into the Top 40 for a week and left again, but the tour was a rip-roaring success. But they are the exception here.

Faraway In Time: Percy Faith: "Theme From 'A Summer Place'"

And now, as is almost always the way, a Canadian enters the number two scene with the most guileless, carefree breezy ease - Percy Faith was a bandleader who personified easy listening and this song certainly sums up the easy listening flutes-and-strings aplenty approach, one which works quite well with the rather torrid storyline of the movie A Summer Place; coolly seductive and yet coy, floating above the hubbub of emotionally complex lives, this song - which sounds much like a boat being set into motion from its moorings down a placid stream - is not just sexy because it's the soundtrack to Troy Donoghue and Sandra Dee falling in love (and making love, for that matter). It is sexy because it brings a certain openness to itself; not since Dean Martin has a song been so...there and yet not there. Dare I say the song almost laughs, in its pink chiffon way, at the tribulations (the sensations) in the story? Well, this is still the time of relative innocence in this decade and a time for looking back, in the dead of winter, to the heat of summer and its simple joys. A boy and girl fall in love, they are the future; problems are eased and there is a happy ending, despite all indications. The world responded in kind to this and made it a kind of anthem of hope, if I can put it that way, for a whole new decade; slow dancing and swaying to the music, eyes closed.