3, 2, 1: Mud: "Rocket"

And so we return to the increasingly awkward subject of the Glam Slam.*  I say awkward as it is coming towards its natural end here in August 1974, when Mud's "Rocket" only gets to #6 in the UK charts (it is here as a Radio Luxembourg entry).  Yes, there's more of the Glam Slam to come, and Mud do keep having hits - but if you look around the charts, things are starting to change. 

The awkwardness of Glam rock is not a problem in Mud's time - back to that in a moment - but now.  I have already written at length about its most notorious figure, and that put together with other people's even more notorious behaviour has put a damper on the fun.  I will let Stewart Lee, of all people, explain, from this blog entry on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: 


"I don’t really like this whole album much.  I have a quite visceral response to it. It makes me feel physically sick throughout and I’ve not enjoyed living with it. It’s not Bowie’s fault, but because of all that Jimmy Savile Top of the Pops footage that whole early 70s glam rock guitar sound now just makes me think of children being harmed.  That’s what it reminds me of, and I can’t get past it, which is awful, but people get a similar thing with Wagner. Something becomes associated in your mind with something and you’re stuck with it, sadly. There’s not much you can do about it. It’s pavlovian."


That is what the revelations have done; they have made the ears close, the eyes wince, the whole body revolt.  Please note this is after Bowie's death, and that I don't think he's alone in feeling awful in listening to something that happened to be Glam, which was, to say the least, a time when some men thought they could get away with anything. 

Meanwhile, it's August 1974 and this thing called dance music is starting to appear - it's fresh, it's sensuous, and it will soon be called disco and once it does, it becomes the new glamorous music. Soon whatever Glam Slam heroes that are left will be making disco music, or at least trying, including Mud.

But to the song!  It is pure Chinn/Chapman cheese, melting in the Elvis-isms of Les Gray's voice, rocking away while the story of Abigail Rocketblast (so she named herself; I wonder if the unseen teenager in Abigail's Party is named after her).  This Abigail wants to be a movie star, and the narrator talks of her going out to Hollywood - "this here's the story" says Gray at the beginning.  At sixteen she is ambitious, and she rejects her blue jean past for the world of fancy restaurants minks and fast-talking agents.  "Second verse" says Gray, fourth-walling the whole way...

Does Abigail become famous?  No, alas, she doesn't, and the narrator, who remembers her from back when, says they were using her, and now she's just in a regular diner, hanging out, and guess who is there to remember her?  Who is there to launch her now?  He calls her Rocket and is going to "launch" her soon.  Along the way are odd Russian-monks style background vocals, a straight-ahead guitar solo and a breakdown at the end of Elvis hip-swinging doo-waaaah, as if the word "launch" actually stands for something else.  She's a rocket alright, going straight to the moon.  It's cheese, like I said, but for Mud it's relatively sexy cheese. 

The Wedding Present, in their gallant attempt to destroy the charts in 1992, did their own version of this song as a b-side, and it's done in their rough Leeds style, with more "come on, come on" and less Elvis.  It's a faithful version, and it's odd to hear Gedge sing a happy song (there is no breakdown at the end; it stops, after a few more impassioned "come on COME ON"s).

So what to make of the Glam Slam era?  With Bowie now held even higher, it is hard to see how it could be seen in hindsight as nothing but a launching pad for him, while it was fun-while-it-lasted for everyone else, who did what they could before disco and then punk superseded it as sources of glamor and even shock.  Mud still exist, with no original members; Les Gray is gone, and guitarist Rob Davis went on to write songs done by Kylie Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Rachel Stevens. (They are all really good, too - Come And Get It by Rachel Stevens being better than you'd expect.)

Something as infectious as Glam can never really go away, but besides being the subject of Simon Reynolds' next book, it has mutated into other things, with the come-on-cheer-up-Britannia aspect having curdled into something indigestible, unless you are able to separate those men from the Chinn/Chapman fromage that some can still remember with great fondness, despite everything. 

Next up:  Philadelphia, here we come.


*Please note I was using this term before the untimely death of Prince; a man who certainly was glamorous himself.

Beware The Clown: Leo Sayer: "The Show Must Go On"

And so, dear reader, we come to the end of 1973; and here is the first hit of Leo Sayer's career, a song that is about...wanting to escape.  That he is a pierrot figure, a scary clown, adds to the unease of the song (as does the banjo somehow).  He has more than had it with the fat cats and their cigars and fancy cars (which reminds me of "Folsom Prison Blues") who are making him perform in front of an audience that wants his blood, that seemingly will not let him out of the theater alive.  He chose this life, he admits, but he has been used and abused, has broken all the rules; he is the misfit, the outsider, on the high wire precariously balanced between freedom and near death, it appears.  Must the show go on?  No, he says.  He won't let the show go on*.  Just how he is going to do this he doesn't say; that he has got down to this point, where he has been pushed and taken advantage of so many times that he has to say it, is the point.  (How many narratives are there from the early 70s of this kind - the lone person standing up and saying no?) 

Sayer's naturally anguished voice suits this song (a #2 on the Radio Luxembourg chart) - he wrote it with David Courtney, and it was produced by Courtney and Adam Faith, who may or may not have suggested the pierrot costume to Sayer as a way for him to stand out from the Glam Slam crowd.  (Just as Gilbert O'Sullivan had dressed as a school boy when he was first seen, for much the same reasons.)  In any case, the "masquerade" is seen as a sham - could that masquerade be the rock scene itself?  I think so.  And while that show went on, it largely continued in the world of albums, as opposed to the increasingly confusing and baffling world of the singles charts - singles which, as I will explain in the next entry, are getting more and more difficult for me to write about.

This song also stands as a kind of one-man strike anthem, a testament to anyone who feels they too have been used and have been wasting time, to make some kind of stand.  And so the three-day-week comes in, the lights dim and The Fog settles in for the foreseeable future.  Sayer won't have any of it, and being dressed as a scary clown emphasizes how he is the fool that speaks the truth, who feels compelled to do something, and it may well be something violent for all we know.  The Fog cometh; the creeping, surrounding, uneasy-making mid-70s are here, and Sayer's is the last voice of defiance before they begin.

Next up:  power, corruption and lies.

*When Three Dog Night covered this they changed the lyric to "the show must go on" which shows the fundamental difference between the UK and US mindsets.  Sayer wasn't too pleased, apparently, but that's American optimism for you, in the face of Watergate.

Root Down: Ike and Tina Turner: "Nutbush City Limits"

If the whole late 60s/early 70s vibe, in albums anyway, was the constant longing for home - to find a home, to go back home, to be confused as to where or what "home" meant anymore - well, for Tina Turner her hometown was Nutbush, Tennessee, and she has her own song here (Ike Turner wrote the music but for whatever reason let Tina have the full credits) to explain just why she isn't there anymore.  Or does she?

It wasn't known to the general public at the time, but is now very well known - that Tina was in an abusive and volatile marriage with Ike*, and during those last years (things were bad at this time, and about to get worse, with Ike's alcoholism and cocaine addiction) I have no doubt this song played a big part of her eventual self-liberation.  Because, famously (and not too long after this clip from the Cher show) she left Ike with almost nothing to her name, nothing but her Buddhist belief and a sense that she had had more than enough.  "Nutbush City Limits" is a song about roots, beginnings, what makes a person a person - in this case, growing up in a small town (it's not actually a city).  You get the idea it was a place where not much happened (it's a "quiet little community") where people went certain places on certain days ("You go to store on Friday/You go to church on Sunday") and yet the song is so funky that you just know the rest of the week is a push-and-pull between self-respecting neatness and propriety ("Twenty-five is the speed limit") and the gin house where, if you are arrested for drunkenness, you don't get bail, just salt pork and molasses.  There are clear lines in Nutbush ("You go to fields on weekdays/And have a  picnic on Labor Day") and if you are young Anna Mae Bullock then you either fit in or you don't; but as someone once said, a beginning is a place to start and how many musicians have come from places like this?  Almost all of them, I imagine (and even if they didn't, they will say they felt as if they did).  Tina sings this with pride - this is her town, her roots, something Ike cannot take away from her - and as narrow and regulated as it sounds, this is where she is from, quite literally - and while there is no way she could go back to it, it's within her.  The most significant line for me is "You have to watch what you're putting down" - i.e., if you don't conform in some way then you just have to leave, though as it happened Tina left due to family turmoil and was brought up in several different towns, Nutbush being one of them.  Maybe Tina wrote this as a reminder that she was, before she'd gotten onstage in St. Louis to sing with Ike, a person of her own, shaped by experiences and places and that that was worth remembering, in and of itself. 

That this song was done by her several times more (and was done as part of Brian Johnson's audition for AC/DC, and was covered by Bob Seger - it brings the rock and the funk**) shows how important it is to her, how maybe writing it was her first step in finding herself (if I can use 70s psychology speech) and liberating herself from Ike.  Is she still there?  I can't help but think it's a fond song, a proud one, a song about overcoming limitations and actually appreciating those limitations as solid, near-tangible things.  It's not nostalgic in any way, but a badge of toughness; if I survived there, I can survive this.  Life outside the sequin/high-heel shimmy does exist; and sure enough, she learns about Buddhist prayer and somehow makes it through.

Next up:  even doing a cover, he's all the rage. 

*Summed up for me and countless others in the movie What's Love Got To Do With It? in the "Eat the cake, bitch" scene. 

**This was a #2 Radio Luxembourg hit, and the last real hit the couple had in the US pop chart - a bigger hit in the UK, despite/because of its subject matter, I think.

When I Was Young: The Carpenters: "Yesterday Once More"

It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes it does:  a single edit of a song definitively is the wrong way to hear the song:  "Yesterday Once More" is perfectly okay in its gosh-how-nice-to-hear-the-old-songs-on-the-radio way, but the full effect and meaning of the song come through in the album version, from The Carpenters' Now & Then from 1973.  Sure enough, the Carpenters did this song as they themselves liked hearing old songs, but the oldies medley - "Fun, Fun, Fun," "The End Of The World," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Deadman's Curve," "Johnny Angel," "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes," "Our Day Will Come" and "One Fine Day."  With scarily accurate Tony Peluso-imitates-a-DJ segues, it is more than a little eerie, especially if you grew up in Los Angeles, as Richard and Karen Carpenter did, as I did, on and off.  When Richard writes of their delight in hearing the old songs, I can't help but feel that as Baby Boomers they were part of a massive wave that was able to sit back and look at their youth fondly; but I can't also help but notice that there were plenty of reasons to look back.  The songs here are all from the early 60s, a time of optimism and youth and opportunity - a time before responsibility, before the draft, before the living room war, before anyone was assassinated, and certainly before Nixon and Watergate and this new thing, the oil crisis.  This is music from an idealized/idealizing time (American Graffiti was one of the biggest movies in the US in '73) and that nostalgia was shared in the UK, though for different reasons.  

From what I can tell, the liberation of the 60s didn't hit the UK until the 70s, but then so did the various burdens as well.  A lot of you, dear readers, experienced these things firsthand, and as the UK drifted into The Fog, various forces of that situation have to be picked apart, which is hard - as it is such an ugly time that walking into it is kind of scary, even now.  Now- there's an interesting word - starts to suffer as The Fog approaches, and nostalgia - a preference for the past, takes a certain hold.  This song is about preferring the past to the present ("And the good times that I had/Makes today seem rather sad, so much has changed") and about how the narrator would rather sing along/cry along to old songs, relive them as closely as possible, almost turn the radio into a time machine - than deal with the present.  

Perhaps it's just my own youth, but when I remember listening to the radio - something I did an awful lot of in the late 70s/80s, I cannot say that I want to relive those times, as such.  (A lot of the songs I remember fondly either don't get played, or the full version doesn't get played, or invariably I remember the 12" single that also doesn't get played, etc.)  The idea of being nostalgic for the 70s or 80s is a lamentable one to me, seeing as how miserable most of it was - not for me personally, but on a worldwide-global-nuclear-war-any-day-now way, which filtered down into a lot of anxiety and almost not taking music on too personally.  The songs The Carpenters have are all either good-natured or kind of creepy by turn, inherently early 60s in their sense of public fun and danger, the whole Cold War thing being turned into paranoia of a thousand eyes in the night, the broken heart being the real end of the world.  In a way it suggests that in previous apocalyptic times, the radio was the refuge; the safe place, before everything went wrong - or should I say, got much much worse - sadder, really. 

Here Karen* sings of songs that were hits when she was just eleven or twelve, and her alto voice of longing wishes to bring back those times, as bad as she knows they were, as they were at least preferable to now; and as far as I can tell so did many other Baby Boomers just hitting their 20s, faced with the unpleasant fact that the go-go 60s were definitely over and this new...thing called the 70s was unfortunately here to stay, and seemed to be getting worse every time you looked around.  So why not look back?  It's easy, it's comforting, and - I can't emphasize this enough - an awful lot of other people the same age were doing the exact same thing, making it a kind of rite of passage, if you will.  This song marks that time, a time when nostalgia was not quite yet being commodified (Happy Days was just around the corner though) and the thought of anyone ever being fashionably retro in an early 70s way would have seemed absurd** to say the least.  The Fog that overtakes the UK charts starts to form here, in a time when people spent way too much time looking back - not the Glam kids, no, but those a bit older, who remembered what once was and were feeling sadder, powerless even, the snap and joy of the 60s gone, replaced by a world that seemed colder, meaner, and so on.  Nostalgia always does well in times like those; it is thanks to the squeaky-clean oddness of The Carpenters that they forgive this sentiment and also, with the long medley, show how incrementally strange and gone the past really is, never to return.

Next up:  why look back when you can dance?

 

*How odd is it to note that Karen Carpenter and Suzi Quatro were about the same age?

**I can appreciate the term "retromania" but that implies a kind of joyous intensity that nostalgia, which verges on a listless, vague moroseness, suits this song much better. 

Here Comes Everybody: T. Rex: "20th Century Boy"

Lately I have been reading Rob Sheffield’s Talking To Girls About Duran Duran, and in it he discusses how girls respond differently than music in their fandom than boys; that girls, fickle as they can be, are hugely loyal to artists and bands they love – that love, even if slightly ironized by time, never really goes away.  (This kind of love can verge on the possessive; certainly in the 50s and 60s it did.)  Sheffield’s book concerns itself with the 80s, so I have no idea how loyal T. Rex’s female fans were, or even if they had many female fans – I am guessing they did, or how else would “Trextasy” happen?  If fandom is like an addiction - it needs new singles all the time to feed it and keep it going – then this was the last ecstatic song, one that was rock enough for the boys (more on them in a minute) and feline enough for the girls.  (Of course, many girls were caught up in this time in the David vs. Donny brouhaha, and I will be addressing the latter’s whole family in the next entry.) 

“I walk like a rat, crawl like a cat, sting like a bee*” he claims, and while I am not sure any girl would be interested in someone even remotely like a rat, but there is such swagger in the song that it doesn’t matter; the growling guitar announces itself immediately, and the band and backing singers (including a very audible Gloria Jones) make a wall of noise that could break down anyone’s resistance.  Is he trying too hard?  It can seem that way (to those who prefer the more laidback T.Rex of yore) but this is not a song that could be done with subtlety.  Who the friends are who are saying “it’s just like Robin Hood” are or just what is like Robin Hood is beyond me – and doesn’t it sound like he’s saying “rock ‘n’ roll” almost, instead?  This is about as pagan as Bolan gets here – after all, the song is about the 20^th century, it’s about being a “toy”** - an object of fun and desire, created for mischief (maybe this is where Robin Hood fits in).  If he is screaming at the end, he ends it by drawling the lyrics, as if he is Elvis and for sure this time he’ll get to the top spot…only to be confounded by little girls who want a nice ballad on one hand, and boys who want to make noise on the other.  (This was an NME #2.)  But the older girls needed that pure adrenaline wave of a hit, and this song - which is like an essence of T. Rex - was more than enough, for now... 

But the boys who were his fans were loyal, perhaps more loyal than the girls; an amazing number of them went on to form bands, as if imprinted by Bolan at some important stage in their development.  What they went on to do varied from Goth (Peter Murphy) to Socialist Pop (Dr. Robert), from Stadium Rock (U2) to Indie Subversives (Mark E. Smith, Johnny Marr) to Punk itself (practically everyone).  Glam was a movement as such, but there always has to be a heart of a movement, someone who can appeal to girls and boys, who can epitomize what it’s all about – and this song for me is at the center of it all, of the whole Glam Slam. 

Serious, funny, sexy – this song has been covered all over the place, even by good ol’ 80s Canadian band Chalk Circle, a band who were usually quite serious but here they cut loose - well, as loose as they were ever going to get.  Even if you make fun of the whole rock ‘n’ roll concept (and Chalk Circle certainly know this is an Elvis song, through and through) it’s still an effortless song, with the kind of swagger that can be heard right down to Suede and Oasis. 

But for now this is one for the girls; even if they’re not screaming anymore, this song was theirs once too, and not just the dreamy boys who would go on to make a very different noise to come.

Next up:  just a normal family from Utah, that’s all.

*Or is it “Crawl like a rat, talk like a cat”?  That’s what I think he’s singing, but since he switches it around, I’m not sure. 

**I just realized what this song is leading to, but we won’t get to that song for some time.  That song was at the center of a whole other movement, which I will be discussing in a while over at Then Play Long.    

The Slam Beginneth: Slade: "Gudbuy T'Jane"

And now we have reached the very end of 1972; a year in which rock 'n' roll was pronounced dead, and then was found to be more alive than ever, due to a rag-tag combination of groups which didn't have much in common but a determination to show that rock - traditional or new-fangled or some combination of the two - was being introduced to a whole new generation, ones who were mere toddlers, if that, when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were raw acts with their first singles and albums.  I feel it's important to point out that it was pre-teens/early teens who were the cause of this scene, because there is a gap about to appear - not just between what the older siblings are listening to and their younger brothers are buying singles-wise, but also between the UK and US charts.  If someone was, say, 13 at this time and this song was their first single, then they (un)wittingly found themselves part of the Slade Army* and part of something that was about to happen that was uniquely British:  the Glam Slam of 1973.  This simply didn't happen in the US (oh, there were hits here and there; "Get It On" was already a hit, and there were a couple to come, but besides the New York Dolls there wasn't much going on). 

I am going to pause now, before getting back to Slade, to try to figure out why this was the case.  It could be down to the circumstances outside of the music itself.  There were just as many Grade 9 kids bored out of their minds in the US as here, not to mention rock writers who were eager for anything raucous to come along and wake them from their singer/songwriter-prog rock stupor, but it didn't happen.  This is in part due to the almighty forces of HRS**, which raised boogie to a gold standard of achievement and looked askance at anything artificial or too gussied up as disrespecting the music, which was always the main thing.  HRS was huge at this time, and the fact that it was full of good ol' boys who were badasses (particularly from the South) meant that the rebellious side was taken care of, as well.  Grand Funk Railroad and The Edgar Winter Group were going to have #1 singles in '73, and in the wings were everyone from Ted Nugent to Aerosmith, not forgetting Kiss themselves.  For anyone who was ever embarrassed to read Patti Smith' s fannish appreciation for this stuff (going out with one of Blue Oyster Cult, praising Johnny Winter) - well, it was the main thing, the big rock deal, at the time

The opposite side of all this was the soul/r&b resurgence that Greil Marcus describes so well in Mystery Train; music about hope and despair, telling truths and reflecting the increasingly (justifiably) troubled nation's condition after the exhausting end of the 60s, as well as the shady White House and the still-ongoing war in Vietnam.  Part of the music was political, part sensual; Marvin Gaye, Sly & the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, The O'Jays; this was music to help the nation get to grips with itself, with what was happening and give it some sense of perspective.  That a lot of it you could dance to helped, of course; this time is the roots of both disco and hip hop, both styles bringing not just the funk but positive messages of unity and strength at a time when everything looked bleak. 

The UK reaction to bleakness - the economy, the oil crisis, strikes, the IRA - was to dress up and sing songs like this one.  What is it about?  I don't know.  I sometimes think it's just working-class rah-rah about saying bye-bye to a stuck-up girl who looks down on him.  That she is "painted up like a fancy young man" and wears "forties tip boots" means she's a...glam kid herself?  Is she a cross-dresser?  Whoever Jane is, "she's a queen" (hmmm...) and has gone off, a dark horse who he keeps repeating is "so young."  So maybe it's just about a young girl who is full of herself and the song is saying, well, good riddance?  That's about as much as I can figure - that Slade are full of songs about Us vs. Them (in this case, Us vs. Her) and if you're a teenager your whole life is made up of such moments, moments when someone decides (or has already decided) they are too cool for you and are going to leave, get up from that lunch table/study area/wherever and go someplace else.  This is a song of joy and relief from those left behind, the rejected, the working-class who don't need to be spat upon by those who have bespoke suits and think they're so great. 

Slade tried and tried to get somewhere in the US, only to find that...the kids wanted to love them but couldn't understand them.  They didn't dress normally and what was the lead singer saying?  Poor Noddy Holder yelled and hollered from one concert hall to the next and no one could figure him out.  The subtle movements underneath the stomp may have put the kids off as well; this was not the crushing power of Led Zeppelin as much as the fleet-footed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Which is to say that Slade were rock enough for Lester Bangs, but not enough for the kids who wanted guitar solos, drum solos, and head-walloping beats, as well as something...sexy for the ladies.  Slade didn't really have any of that, and what they did have was too odd; they just right in the UK, where their rebellion and refusal to be anything but themselves was cherished, where the response to so many crises was more screeching, more ridiculous outfits, more misspellings and so on.  But that ladies component should never be ignored; an American girl of 13 is going to respond to Robert Plant or even Elton John in a way she never could to Noddy Holder, and that was that.

And so it was that the Glam Slam of 1973 began, with the US unable to understand what made the UK rock; for the next year or so I will be writing about Glam a lot, and trying to comprehend just why it was so big.  I know in part it's because it's the second part of rock 'n' roll UK style; but the insanity (going since T.Rex got to #1 with Electric Warrior) is peculiarly British, and not many in the US ever really caught the contagion, so to speak.  Maybe they were too busy mellowing out, if they weren't rockin' out, or too busy getting down to care for either of those.  In any case, in the UK things are looking up on the excitement front; suddenly there are singles worth saving up for, worth getting for Christmas, ones that are LOUD and confident and can scare any number of cares away. 

In the fallout from the 60s, people were starting to take sides; the sides would become sharper in '73, as if something had taken over the UK singles-buying populace, like a fever.  For those of you who enjoy hot chart action, I will be introducing yet another prominent chart into this mix, so that I can write about the year in as much detail as possible - the Radio Luxembourg chart #2s will be included from here on, for the next few years.  I am not exactly sure which song comes next, but the Glam Slam will continue soon, and a certain man who will actually be understood by Americans will appear sooner rather than later.          



*I have no idea if there was a Slade Army (I know there was a Kiss Army) but if there was ever a band who could muster one up, it's this one.

**Hard Rockin' Shit, which is what Slade ended up supporting across the US, logically but also kind of unfortunately. 

Guys and Dolls: The New Seekers: "Beg, Steal or Borrow"

And now we are back into The Void; but something else is afoot as well.  When I think of the 70s in a word-association kind of way, I think of one word – glamour.  But I think of another too:  equality*.  Balance.  A sense of things evening out; of the scales finally coming to some sort of rest. 

On the one side there are the glam hordes, and on the other, there’s bands like this – The New Seekers – who are solid family fare, an aural equivalent of a whole wheat sandwich and an apple for your lunch.  They are, indefatigably, good in that healthy way which no doubt helped them at Eurovision, where this song, as it does here, came second.  (I get to the winner in a short while, don’t worry.)  Their coordinated outfits and similar hairstyles (and lengths!) all add to a kind of glamorous uniformity, like so many dolls on display, gleaming and bright and sparkly and happy, buoyantly happy in that way that a band who’ve just had a huge hit earworm single could only be.  Their joy negates any actual desperation in the song, as if they would never have to beg or borrow for anything else in their lives – why should they? – with their floor-length gowns and velvet suits.  I am guessing that against this wall of happiness most other Eurovision contestants didn’t have a chance, and I’m also guessing there was a certain group in Sweden taking close notes on their harmonies – they too had two female and two male singers, and wanted to win Eurovision themselves. 

But back to the idea of balance – there was the glam rockers on one side, the wholesome (and overwhelmingly girl-friendly) families of Partridge and Osmond on the other, with T.Rex there in the middle, appealing to everyone.  I don’t want to make this into some kind of battle between good and evil; between the awesome forces of rock fighting the cheery battalions of pop.  By now anyone truly interested in such battles has stopped buying singles and is buying prog albums instead.  The balance here is one of gender:  nothing more, nothing less.  I know that boys liked the two women in The New Seekers (Lyn Paul and Eve Graham) but I’m talking about other gut-level instincts here; ones that are attracted to the silly otherworldly and loud glam side, or the someone-help-me-pleas of the boys, along with odes to love like this one.  Right now there is something for everyone, the scales balance, and T. Rex keep both sides more than happy.  That this song is in The Void is probably due to its near-win at Eurovision; it’s a nice song, the kind of song (written by Tony Cole, Steve Wolfe and Graeme Hall) that serves its purpose but doesn’t stick like the Coke-ad-rework “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing,” (the hit that was in part why they had such confidence at Eurovision) for instance**.  The UK was unafraid to send current hitmakers to Eurovision at the time; it sent Cliff Richard yet again the next year with the oompah-dumb (in a likable way, but still) “Power To All Our Friends” which resides even further down The Void than this song does… 

Pop was ever thus; but somehow in balancing things, extremes had to be reached, limits tested; the safe middle was exactly where a lot of eager-to-be-thrilled boys didn’t want to be.  I’m going to explore that idea in a while, but first there are a few more songs including two which are also odes in their own way; a celebration of the now and a pause to ponder the past, present and future.

Next up:  the man of the moment.

*The struggle for equality from my American perspective is in the feminist movement; that movement still exists, but crucially as a girl in the 70s it was important that I simply knew that it was there in the first place.  In the UK, as far as I can tell, things were different; I will be getting back to this in a future post.

**North American readers will know that they recorded the main theme to the 70s kid-liberation classic Free To Be… You And Me - a work which sadly remains unheard of in the UK to this day, as far as I can tell. 

Cheer From The Past: Middle of the Road: "Soley Soley"

I have spent the time away from you, dear readers, pondering the differences between the US and UK with special attention given to musical nostalgia; specifically the cd compilations easily available at supermarkets and why they exist and who those who put them together think (or perhaps hope) might buy them.  Such compilations don't, so far as I know, exist to such an extent in the US or Canada; there the music of the past is left to those who remember it firsthand.  Here, the past - and that's any decade before the 90s at present* - has its time being hashed and rehashed, in ever-more baffling compilations that pick carefully through the past for what I guess they want as the "Oh! I remember that song" effect.  This isn't to say that those in North America don't hanker for the past; but the view is that the music of now is what is vital. (I am more than aware that in the 70s there was a full-on craze for the 50s, but thankfully it didn't last all that long.)   

In the case of "Soley Soley" - a song I've never heard before, until now - it appears on a recent compilation of bubblegum-era pop called Honey Honey, and I am trying and failing to think of an equivalent compilation in US terms.  Nostalgia for the early 70s is, shall we say, not that common.  A nation still at war, a nation just about to hear about this place called the Watergate hotel, is not going to want to look back, having effectively gone through a lot of soul-searching and further crises in the meantime.  I can't say the UK was in such a great state either, as anyone who remembers it knows very well.  Maybe these compilations exist to prove that the past wasn't so bad, but I still think there is something a bit weird about them, even though they do serve a function, and that is to be unofficial bits of history for those who don't remember, or who do but don't have the time to track down the music.  In juxtaposition to the new releases, they seem to say to the browser that you can have the past or present, and isn't the past a more cozy place, even if you didn't enjoy the time itself very much?  That is a dangerous place to be, and it no doubt has some people pacing, Number Six-like, back and forth wondering how they can escape the music.**

But back to Middle of the Road - this was their last big hit, written by Fernando Arbex and lead singer Sally Carr, Arbex being a Spanish songwriter (thus, if it sounds Spanish, that's why); produced by Italian Giacomo Tosti, like their other hits, it got to #2 in the NME and it is as warm and Abbaesque as anyone could wish, the sort of Eurohit that sounds good whether you can understand the lyrics or not; a cup of good cheer that is of its time but deserves better than to be in the Void, remembered only by a compilation.  Middle of the Road didn't like to think of themselves as bubblegum - they were reluctant to record "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep"***- but their Mediterranean via Scotland vibe was bubblegum-ready anyway.  Bubblegum as a force was ebbing away slowly at this time, with the warring families - Partridges vs. Osmonds - about to take over what was left of the territory, while a whole new beast, heralded by T.Rex and Slade, is putting on its makeup and costumes.  The good cheer of "Soley Soley" is about to be amplified and speeded up and blasted, ironically, into the future.  That is for later this year; now it is January, and this brings some warmth to what is going to be a frazzling and fractious year, a year when rock fights nostalgia.

Next up:  the original Aw Wee Choirboy.    






* My guess is that the 90s won't become part of this whole cycle until the 20s, at least.

**Number Six eventually puts the speaker in the fridge, an option not open to most people. 

***They apparently were a little tipsy when they recorded it, which is indeed why it sounds like that.  The band continued to be popular in Europe but had no more big hits, as their label apparently took against them being produced outside of the UK; and so while they appeared on Top of the Pops after this, their real business was elsewhere, from Europe to Brazil and beyond.

Being Bold: T. Rex: "Jeepster"

And now, dear readers, we have reached the end of 1971; some may rue this, but some may not, knowing full well what is to come.  The brown suede maxi-skirtedness of this year, loved by some, is about to be replaced by a new year, and to see us into this different time is…T. Rex.  Yes, they started out ’71 and here they are to finish it, with a boogie so simple and even off-handed that the band didn’t want it put out as a single, didn’t even considerate single material, but the label felt otherwise, mainly because by this time T. Rex were huge.  I cannot even begin to imagine the legions of kids and pre-teens who latched on to T.Rex, real fans, ones who were not about to be conned into thinking anyone else really mattered.  T.Rex inspired them, many of them becoming musicians as a result, all going their very different paths but all starting here. 

T. Rex by this time, lest we forget, had already had two number one singles, a number one album with Electric Warrior , and one of those singles was even a hit in the US (I grew up knowing it as “Bang A Gong”); all this with a style that went right back to the essence of what rock ‘n’ roll was about – cars, girls, boogie with an extra added sense that Bolan was not quite like everyone else.  Not superhuman, just different, glamorous – as glamorous as the vampire he is at the end of this song, wanting to “Ssssssss-suck ya!” (apply own metaphor of your choice).

But the beat for me is the primal thing – just off-kilter, not quite the Bo Diddley beat but not that far away from the clave either; a seductive waltz of sorts, a kind of roughness that sounds paradoxically smooth as well, due to the long notes both sung and played in the song*.  The total effect is a knockout:  Bolan could be singing anything here and it would be a smash, but his lyrics are the icing – from the title on down.  The elegance of “I’ll call you jaguar if I may be so bold” – (Bolan considered this song to be “very funky” and a step above general love song lyrics**) must have had some effect as well, if only to show that rock/pop did not have to be predictable, clichéd, generic.  The self-consciousness that rock/pop has about itself now – one that will be dramatized in this blog in the coming year – is best dealt with by just making good music, and Bolan was writing songs that he hoped would last.

Number two hits are often in opposition to the number ones, and this one is a fine example, for many reasons.  Benny Hill had the Christmas number one with a song that was silly and full of double meanings (as you’d expect) – strictly for the kids, kids too young to need or understand the grooviness of T.Rex, the importance of Bolan’s hair, the glamor.  Hill went right for the obvious, Bolan took the obvious and made it fresh, made it new. 

Rock ’n’ roll has lasted long enough to be considered its own art form; regular pop, for lack of a better term, continues right alongside the fall-and-rise drama to come, as rock increasingly is albums-only stuff and pop, which, if I can put it this way, is the essence of the whole thing, (the beating heart, as Huey Lewis sort-of sings later) has to figure out what the hell to do with itself.  T.Rex stand as the inspiration to not just another generation but to other musicians and songwriters, who figure this glamor thing doesn’t just belong to elves, but belongs to everyone.  The battle coming up is between those who rue the past and those too busy looking for a new costume to think about anything else; in the meantime, T.Rex remind everyone just what it is they are fighting about, in the first place. 

Next up:  when in doubt, get your own tv show.   

*It is more than possible that he picked up some of this from the Os Mutantes hit “A Minha Menina”; Bolan spent a lot of time and money buying and listening to records, when he wasn’t busy writing and recording his own.

**Bolan goes back to Gene Vincent, as he says, for “The wild winds blow/upon your cheek/the way you flip your hip/always leaves me weak.”

Just You Wait: Ashton, Gardner and Dyke: "The Resurrection Shuffle"

As the 60s turned into the 70s, there were a lot of musicians who had been working as sidemen that decided to take their own shot at fame, however transient that would be.  Some were more successful than others; at this point there’s more than a few who are gearing up, waiting in the wings, or are cult figures, yet to break out into the mainstream.  In a way the 70s are open country as the dominant band of the previous decade – The Beatles – have gone their separate ways, have broken into their constituent parts.  Something new is forming, but has yet to really jell, and in the free-for-all atmosphere one-hit wonders are bound to happen, even more than usual. 

Ashton, Gardner and Dyke were all experienced musicians – two of them worked with George Harrison on Wonderwall – and after a flop first single, they came up with this song (an NME #2), which itself sounds like a grab bag of hip signifiers of the time, V-signs, blown kisses and backbones slipping.  I’m not sure what ‘heavy leather’ has to do with anything, but this is a warm-up, in its way, for what is to come.  It’s loud, fast, defiant, masculine – horns and piano lead the way here.  It’s a rave-up reveille for the new troops of bands to come, all hey-now jiving and dancing.  (Tom Jones covered it, of course.) 

After the psychedelic haze of the late 60s, rock is going back to its early 50s basics – get up, have fun, the lyrics say, and come alive again*.  So it is a pity that these guys never got another hit, though they kept going for another year or so.  Something this upbeat and salutary can’t really be repeated, though, but I can’t help but think of this as a kind of blueprint for a lot of what is about to come.  There comes a point, I should add, when rock dramatically dies and then comes back to life; and this is a prediction of that, more than anything else.  It’s a portent, and in this time when no one really knows what is happening, a good one.

Next up:  did someone say pre-rock? 

*I doubt if resurrection is being used here in its Christian sense.  Though rock music was starting to get hip to Christianity (or is that the other way around?) at this time, a far cry from Jerry Lee Lewis having to be talked into doing “Great Balls of Fire.” 

Going Out On Top: Spencer Davis Group: "Gimme Some Loving"

And here we are, dancing wildly on the edge; the crowning song of the beat boom rightly belongs to the hardest working band out there, the Spencer Davis Group. The band (even in this...Swedish?...version) is tight, Steve Winwood sounds as if he's much older than 19, and the kids are raving in the sweating club, the emblematic Hammond organ conjures up all sorts of images of what 'groovy' and 'Swinging' could mean...

...and there is something sweet, too, in a band from Birmingham - right in the center of the country - uniting everyone in the face of a cold and uncertain winter (Cathy Come Home had just been aired on tv; unemployment was rising yet again). The effervescence of the mid-60s was slowly wearing off, for various reasons; obviously the party continued for many, but even from this version I get that something more contemplative and not quite as simple is around the corner for Winwood. There are only so many nights you can pound out foot-stomping classics - even one as elemental and contagious as this one - without wanting to vary things up a bit, expand what you can say and how you can say it. In short, this is another club banger, from a band used to making people dance, and there is no topping it (though the Winwoods' last single with them - "I'm A Man*" - is as fitting a goodbye as possible). Both of these songs were produced by Jimmy Miller, an American who had drifted (anyone know how or why?) to England (see also Tony Visconti and Joe Boyd - here beginneth the era of Americans helping to push UK music forward**). He got to work with The Rolling Stones with his success here - making a song sound as if it was the apex of the boom itself, the figurative end of the long hard week so many bands had had so far, zooming through the years, riding on their own hard work and good luck and love of music.

I hope I am not getting too sentimental about this time, but the joy and innocence and simple good times of the mid-60s should not be forgotten; they help to define the decade as a whole and are the only way the late 60s make any real sense. By now, John had met Yoko; drugs were in wide use, LSD in particular being what the self-consciously cool types were dropping; those mutant energies were growing stronger and would not always be satisfied with a simple "boom-boom-boom-boom-BOOM-boom." That is sad, maybe, but expanding minds were going to change the way music sounded, the way it sold, even the way it was performed.

For now we are going to leave the sweaty club, the land of a thousand dances, happy to hear this pounding out and even now I can hear the giddy "Hey" and hands clapping in unison. Goodbye mid-60s, you won't be forgotten.



*Forewarned: I will be including as many songs from my wedding cd on this here blog as possible, because I can. I hope you enjoy them!

** Shel Talmy, producer of the early singles by The Kinks and The Who, is also American. This makes me wonder just how British the British Invasion was, sometimes...

Taking Off: The Yardbirds: "Heart Full of Soul"

And now, an important crossroads...this blog has, effectively, reached the mid-point of the Sixties itself. Merseybeat is effectively gone, folk rock is on the rise, and guitarists are starting to buy gadgets that make their instruments sound different - the days of slashing speakers are over, and the fuzz box becomes the first of many pedal effects every band either has already or is going to get soon. Not only are guitars amplified now, but they are sounding warmer, fuzzier and dirtier, in part because guitarists like to experiment and in part because other instruments are starting to attract their attention. In the case of The Yardbirds, they wanted a sitar on this song, but Jeff Beck couldn't quite master it in time, so he got a fuzz box and made his guitar sound like one instead. Clearly, merely playing a song in the suddenly old-fashioned way isn't quite enough anymore.

And thus at this near-legendary point in time, the blues roughness that so many UK bands (The Yardbirds coming up following the wake of The Rolling Stones, who are about to launch their own fuzz box anthem) wanted to get into their songs is just there, and every garage band everywhere immediately saves up its nickles to get one, either in sheer imitation or because they want to make themselves sound even dirtier and rougher than their UK counterparts.

The song itself is by Graham Gouldman* and it has odd echoes and a rather menacing vocal from Keith Relf - his girl is gone, he has no idea where she is and he seems to be talking to someone - WHO? - about how he will never make her sad, "if she'll have me back again." Pretty basic stuff, but between the acidity of the guitar and Relf's voice there is something indeed beyond mere love here - it is as if his pleading is desperate yet cool at the same time, Relf trying to be suave behind his sunglasses while he's actually nearly crying. There is a creeping aloofness coming into rock at this time** and the tensions here for once aren't between a squaresville singer and his band but within the singer's psyche itself, as his band dutifully try to play what he can't sing. And the screaming girls want to put him out of his misery, as they do with all groups at nearly any time. But it's now that the whole decade slides into a harder, louder and rougher phase and the concepts of what is "pop" and what is "rock" start to become more and self-evident - though at this time it's all still pop, no matter what effects are used. For now.



*He also wrote their hit "For Your Love" which has a harpsichord on it (you see what I mean?) - a song that one member of the group deemed too "pop" and so he left in a huff to play the blues for a year amongst other purists. His name? Eric Clapton.

**Check out the near-magisterial aloofness of The Byrds, who were #1 at this time.

Past, Present and Future: Them: "Here Comes The Night"

Once again we are with a man who is alone, looking out the window. There is someone he is thinking of, and there she is...

...he used to try to interest her in things, please her as best he could; movies, cafes, just hanging around his place listening to jazz and blues sides. But for whatever reason, maybe he was fooling himself, maybe she was fooling him, it ended. He knows that she left him for another guy, one who maybe dressed a bit sharper or had a different accent - is she really that superficial? Then he checks himself, wonders if he isn't just as superficial, in his ways. Would he have wanted her had she worn a bandeau or had green eyes? He can't move away from the window, knowing it is wrong but unable to stop. He won't do anything, as he watches them go along, watches them go in and turn the light on; it is all too vivid and he cannot stop now, but it is as if he is watching himself. Another version of himself, veritably a doppelganger, not in looks but in results. She is swinging from man to man as if she were at a dance and there is nothing that can be done about it. All this time the night encroaches, he is alone, things are getting darker and darker...all the time he veers between the emptiness of the night and the near-puppet-like show he is watching, too hapless and just plain down to do much of anything but maybe drink and listen to the blues...


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This is the first time this blog has gone to Northern Ireland, Belfast in particular, and politics aside (or perhaps...not), there is a point to the shifts in the song from the dreaded and inevitable night and the girl and her guy, going about their affair - it can be said that any area with tensions will create great music, not that anyone really wants tensions, of course. Van Morrison grew up in a house full of music courtesy of his father's varied record collection of country, blues, jazz and folk and was playing guitar from 11, saxophone a few years later and he started playing in bands as soon as anyone would have him. But above all this is his voice; here he brings in the whole scope of jealousy, doubt, resentment and acceptance. He blows hot and cool, is self-reflective, bitchy and oddly warm. Sung by someone else this could be ho-hum; however Them* make it a full picture even though we are there with the man as he watches, keeps watching even though he shouldn't. Unlike other songs, he does not wish he could be with her still, but then why does he watch if she did him wrong? This is what the night cannot answer, and he cannot answer himself, either. The song is a big illustrated question mark. There is no way out of this, besides the growing darkness...

The b-side to this is a rough blues called "All For Myself" (written by Morrison; "Here Comes The Night" is by Bert Berns). It is the answer to the a-side, or maybe the true feelings he has and knows he shouldn't have, despite himself. I mention it as I had assumed (wrongly) that "Gloria" was the b-side here, a song that is the direct opposite of "Here Comes The Night" - there he sits and anticipates her arrival, her every action, before they meet; but he is in much the same place, and the anticipation is just as exciting as her being with him, maybe even more so. He is saved in this song by her presence, just as here he is somehow lost, unable to see anything in the darkness besides her. I will mention it anyway as it is Morrison's gift to garage bands everywhere, and eventually would be turned on its head by this woman, who in '65 is still a fan and not yet a performer.

*"Them" are mostly studio musicians here, including a young Jimmy Page on guitar.

All By Myself: The Supremes: "Where Did Our Love Go"

At first it was horrible, but at least she had been able to cry. Now she was blank; a blank, numb figure out in the humid, swampy city dense with foliage and trees dropping ripe fruits. There was a chance, a window, but it was closed now, he gave her the things he was going to give her and then walked away, plain as that. The blankness didn't go away, despite all she could do to distract it, and the city seemed quiet, still, her steps the only thing she could really hear. He said he would call, and now she could wait.

It was all she could do. The voices urged her to look, to keep looking, but there was nothing to really find. The wall-like air was like a mobile prison. Others did things, but all she could hear were her own steps, solitary in the street, in the shops, in the museum; and it wasn't supposed to be this way at all. Everything had been so perfect it had been making her giddy, but now she could only smile wanly. A city full of monuments to greatness sopped up her need to belong, if only temporarily, to something. He said he would call; this promise seemed unlikely but she had to hang on to it, even if she knew he wouldn't. She had no way to write to him, and anyhow, writing was what had gotten her into trouble in the first place; he was away on the weekend and was unreachable. So she sat and looked out the window, her godmother once again apologizing for the heat. But the heat wasn't the problem. What had happened? She could not just sit and mope, but had to go out there and lose herself, before heading back on the train, where her sadness would slowly turn into anger, then defiance. In truth, it already was, and she was determined to enjoy herself, heat or no. But the underlying sadness was slow to go away.



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To an American's eyes, the early 60s UK charts seem rather resistant to Motown; it is as if some unknown force is keeping its relentless hit machine at bay. However with The Supremes the UK finally succumbs and (according to the NME) this nearly got to the top. It is only appropriate it did so well, as the clapping comes right out of the stomping of "Bits and Pieces" - as does the general lyrical misery, though the angry march of the DC5 turns into the desolate clomping cheer of this song, one that The Marvelettes had turned down for sounding too childish; and they warned The Supremes not to take Holland-Dozier-Holland's orders (for they wrote the song) without a fight; thus they made the song simpler and thus more sophisticated. It stands for a failed relationship, to be sure, but it also mourns for something indefinable that has been lost, happiness perhaps, innocence most certainly. Something has been thrown out and the rest of the 60s is merely a process of trying to replace it, if that is possible. Could music itself be the answer?

A Young Girl Shall Lead Them: Millie Small: "My Boy Lollipop"

Where there is a will (and some willing backers) there is a way; and so it was that pirate radio began, Radio Caroline the rebellious daughter playing her records just loud enough off the southern English coast to get the attention of not just the aforementioned bored teenagers but their moms as well. It all started when one man couldn't get his artist (Georgie Fame) on to the playlist at Radio Luxembourg; he got an old passenger ferry and rigged it up to be a floating station, complete with places for the DJs and staff to eat, hang out, and sleep (as best they could).

The monotony of British state radio was broken up, as suddenly pop was available not just for an hour but all day, and into the night. The effect on the charts was not immediately apparent; but here we are in May of '64 and all of a sudden there is a veritable English civil war going on between the government's idea of proper music (Vera Lynn, Mr. Acker Bilk) and what the public wanted to hear. (This is also when the old-school Rockers and the hip young Mods had a huge and in some ways parallel fight, the Mods being the pirate stations, of course.)

The old order was indeed being challenged and millions listened to Caroline and others as they sprang up around the coast; and this song was the first proof of their power. It is a song as sweet and swinging as the object of Millie's affections - and importantly for this blog, it's not from the US or UK but Jamaica. The wave of late 50s immigrants brought their music with them - bluebeat, ska - and with this massive hit pop music in the UK essentially changed overnight, even if the musicians themselves didn't always prosper. Was the UK ready for a different beat*? OH yes it was, and Caroline was instrumental in getting this heard and thus giving the fledgling Island label its sea legs. The kids and moms (not to mention Mods) were most definitely alright. Would the government find a way to fight back? Soon, but not this year...



*Late in '64 The Beatles showed their effortless cool in picking up ska and doing it their way; it would take reggae to bring a lot of other UK musicians into the Jamaican groove.

The Choice Is Yours: Del Shannon: "Swiss Maid"

As it sometimes happens, there are strange and lovely things to be found in the most unexpected places, places that seem almost innocuous, at first...

So here we are, after a couple of sweaty dances, bumping along in a thump-a-thump way through Switzerland. "One time, a long time ago" a young woman sits/stands atop a mountain and wonders and waits for someone to notice her - her father tells her one day she'll go down to the valley and meet someone; but instead she ups and dies unhappy, pining her heart out. A simple enough story, save for the ending...

And this is where the figurative floor of the swimming pool, if we are walking along it, slips; we are floating; we are still in water, still upright, but the floor of the song is gone...

And it's all because Del (covering a Roger Miller song here, btw), after causing us listeners to care about a fictional woman's death as only he can, sings...

"If she did or not I really don't know...I'd rather think she'd found her love, wouldn't you rather think she did find love, somewhere, someway..."

And thus the fourth wall is not just acknowledged but the regular way of telling a story in a song is casually and deliberately broken down. To say this is extraordinary is putting it mildly; suddenly to turn to his audience and ask them to think of this woman and her story and think of it differently, to in essence ask them to write their own ending - these are not exactly new in storytelling, but it nevertheless feels as if something new - postmodernism? - is in the air. Del's clear compassion for this lonely girl (oddly emphasized by all the girls yodelling behind him) makes us agree with him - it would be better if somehow she had met someone, gone to the valley and found her man.

When I first heard this song it just sounded strange; but this is the point - before I expected it - that a song can in effect double up against itself, that the imaginative power of the songwriter opens up to include his audience. It is practically an invitation for others to write their own songs, which is the big difference in the 60s. And it starts here.

Life Vs. Death: Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen: "Midnight in Moscow"

And so we are in 1962; a year when the past infiltrates the present and thus, the future. This is, after all, a traditional song played in a relatively traditional way; but it would be a mistake to think this as some kind of throwback to an older, perhaps wiser time in the midst of show tunes, pop music and so on. The traditional music (known as trad, as opposed to modern, jazz) craze was tied quite specifically in the UK to the anti-nuclear movement, a movement which grew out of the late 50s dismay with the Cold War and in the UK's involvement in the production of nuclear weapons. Every rebellious movement needs music of some kind, and trad jazz - for reasons that will become apparent - was the choice of the campaigners and followers of the CND - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The world in 1962 was on the brink; people sensed that the arms race was getting far worse and much closer to home than they would like, and everyone alive knew about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, not to mention the newly built Berlin Wall. Post-war peace was beginning to look more like the run-up to yet another war.

"Anyone who doesn't like jazz has no real feeling for music, or people." This was first heard onstage in 1956, and it pretty much sums up what many young people (not teenagers, but not thirtysomethings either) felt, particularly those who were restless, rebellious, tired of the old UK and all it stood for and represented. Jazz was a simple wordless refutation of it all, representing staying up late, getting buzzed this way or that, and above all not conforming to whatever the 'establishment' thought was proper. Trad jazz nights went on into the wee hours, people took drugs and danced, flirted and fell in love - all with that special intensity of people who want to have a good time in the face of what looks like eminent destruction, not to mention madness. An insistence of life over death, ultimately; and if the CND is still in existence now, it is due to the failure of successive governments to see how pointless nuclear weapons are, not the CND's quiet and persistent efforts to get Trident, for example, stopped.

So trad's rise to number two here shows that the public is starting to catch on, whether or not they knew (I think they must have known) the context of the song - the nuclear clock is poised minutes before midnight, and a guy is missing his gal.

"Stillness in the grove, not a rustling sound/Softly shines the moon, clear and bright/ Dear, if you could know/How I treasure so/This most beautiful Moscow night."

Is this a song of not just love but solidarity? Written by and treasured by Russians in the 50s (and loved ever after), covered by Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen here, but I can well imagine a slightly older Jimmy Porter playing it to himself on a lonely night, to give himself some solace one cold Midlands evening. It is music that transcends and laughs in the face of danger and meaninglessness; it is the reason jazz meant so much to those born in the 30s. That it was such a hit everywhere shows that maybe things were going to be all right, after all.

Of Sausages and Self Sacrifice: Jimmy Dean: "Big Bad John"

A man and his son look at the marble stand near the new mine, in silence; it is a quiet, nearly windless day somewhere in Tennessee, perhaps West Virginia or Pennsylvania. Mining country, a place of stoicism and endurance. They look at the inscription and the boy blinks and then the father begins to recount the story. Was he a bad man? Well, you wouldn't want to cross him, there were rumors...about New Orleans, but New Orleans is a place, a world away from the green grassy hills here. He came here to get away from all that. Maybe he did something so bad he needed to get away from the world, to literally go underground. The pitiless labor of the mine is not something you do on a whim. But he did it, and he did it well, and nobody bothered him much and everything was fine...until...that day. Like that one, dad? he asks. Yes, much like it. John just stood there and held that roof and everyone scrambled up to the sky for their lives. And he remained? Yes, and he remained. A slight pause. Was he a good man after all that? Yes, he was. Was he happy? A longer pause. I read a man once who talked about mining, in his way. The labor, endless labor of it. "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." He wasn't in the habit of quoting Camus out loud, but the Algerian knew what he was talking about. Was Big Bad John's life absurd? Not in the least. He didn't treat it that way. But yes, he died as happy as a man could be expected to, in such a short time. Self sacrifice, you know, is a tricky thing. To give your life for others is the most profound thing of all. They walked away slowly down the road.

It is absurd, in its way, to know that Jimmy Dean went on from this and other country hits to being a maker of sausages; but perhaps after positively existential hits like this one, the more tactile and solid world of food appealed to him. A quiet, shy drifter comes to town and saves many men (courtesy of Lee Hazelwood, of course - this is a soul record of sorts, by the way); an amiable Texan starts a food company to give literal nourishment to the U.S. Dean's voice is authoritative and yet admiring; and yet another bad-man-comes-good story is added to the many that America has already given the world. 1961 comes to a close, on a note of seriousness of purpose, as if something is about to happen. And in a way, it is.

To Be True To One Woman: Cliff Richard and The Shadows: "A Voice In The Wilderness"

And now, the 60s. Specifically January 1960, which happens to be when my parents got married, when Plath and Hughes were back in London, and when young Cliff Richard was busy being the number one pop star in the UK.

Every decade begins tentatively, with a kind of happy apprehension - things may get better, will definitely change, hope for all the best. And yet decades rarely 'end' right at their chronological end; it takes a while for any decade to really find itself, so to speak. (Though some might argue, and I'd agree with them, that the 30s and the 90s were pretty definite from the start - and of course with the change of the millennium, the 00s have been fairly separate as well.) Being caught between two sides is far more the usual in these '0' years, and 1960 is no exception, and this song, which I expected from its title to be fairly straightforward, fits right in.

"A Voice In The Wilderness": it comes from the Bible, to be sure. But it also comes from a movie called Expresso Bongo and already you can sense something's up. The song starts out in a descending and vaguely sultry way (I can't help but think of Hank Marvin in this manner, especially after seeing a certain cover of his), and then the heartaches begin - his heart is heavy, his arms are blue, he is all alone thinking of you - you the girl who has left him in what can only be called 'lover's quarrel' circumstances. Except this may be more than just a quarrel...

"Have faith in your darling, the voice seemed to say
Be true to her memory, she'll come back one day
And though there was no-one, nobody to see
A voice in the wilderness brought comfort to me"

How odd that someone who is missing someone isn't either looking for her or being consoled by an actual human being, or even a dog. This voice is, by the way, "the voice of true love" so at least he's not, well, crazy; but the phrase "her memory" made me think of how maybe in this quarrel he was more than just "unkind"; maybe this quarrel led to the poor girl's death. I see Cliff sitting in an empty room, desperate with loneliness, not unlike Heathcliff (who he would portray on stage in the 90s), blank with grief and arrogant with heavenly consolation. She will come back, she will; in a song I don't get to write about directly so I'll have to mention it here. Meanwhile the song's sultry despair and late-night aura carry on, and Cliff is happy to wait and be attended on by...somebody.

(I should also note at this time Cliff realized he could have a girlfriend or he could have lots of female fans. Being ever-industrious, he chose his fans, a choice he has yet to reverse.)

The Sun Will Shine: Nat King Cole: "Smile"

And now we have the first confluence of two previous number two performers/writers - Nat King Cole and Charlie Chaplin. "Smile" was written for Modern Times and then seemingly forgotten about, and then made a hit in '54 by Cole and has been covered consistently ever since, by those you would expect (Michael Buble, Holly Cole) and those who undoubtedly took the song other places (Michael Jackson, Sun Ra).  It is the oldest song here so far, and the most-covered.

As a song it is a little sweet, but completely sympathetic, and Cole sings it with an understanding - a compassion - that makes it like an aural big hug. He knows you want to cry; he knows smiling is hard (as opposed to pretending, which is easy) and he asks you to just try to smile - even a little smile will do. If your heart is aching or breaking, if it's been cloudy for days, a smile can make everything worthwhile (cue The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme, which is one of many distant relatives of this song). Cole knows, Cole has most definitely been there (again, there are ironies here of a black performer singing about smiling while your heart is broken) and Chaplin’s swoony tune gets a great deal of dignity from the gentle wisdom in Cole’s voice.

1954, of course, is the ‘official’ Last Year Before Rock in the United States (yes, I know the first ‘rock’ record was already old news, but I grew up with the constant bombardment that it all began in ’55) – and so “Smile” is also an example of a song that would go out of fashion in the US (the UK was a bit slower in this regard, due to cultural differences, not to mention the boom of a certain excitable music that is just getting started). Out of fashion because the ultimate point of rock was that if you wanted to cry, you should cry and only smile when you felt like it. (Rock as the ‘sensibility’ in Sense & Sensibility.) Young rebels in the next decade would rather be sneering, but there is a literal physical truth to what the man sings – smile and you do feel better. Ultimately, the smile you are giving to the world isn’t as important as the smile you give to yourself.