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.

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. 

The Stand-In Star: Alvin Stardust: "My Coo Ca Choo"

As the year draws to a close, this is a good time to recall how split this year has been between the US and UK charts - there was only one common #1, the unremittingly awful "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" by Tony Orlando & Dawn.  The Glam Slam, outside of Bowie (and at one remove, Roxy Music) was not getting anywhere fast in the US, and even then was, I'd guess, something of a cult for the teenagers hanging out at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in Los Angeles, for instance.  For me Alvin Stardust is a purely UK-understood phenomena, someone whose whole persona is "rock 'n' roll" at a glance, all the odd signifiers of "danger" without any of said danger really there whatsoever.

He was born in London, was Bernard William Jewry, and grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire (a town a few miles just north of Nottingham itself).  He was working as a roadie for Shane Fenton and the Fentones when Fenton got ill and died; Fenton's mom wanted the band to continue in his honor, and so they did, with Jewry taking Fenton's name and leading the band to some chart success in the early 60s.  The group broke up, leaving Jewry on his own, and by the early 70s he was given a new name by his label boss Michael Levy, and that was Alvin Stardust.  It's a bit more complicated than that, however; "My Coo Ca Choo" was written by Peter Shelley and recorded by him as well - but he didn't want to "be" Alvin Stardust, so Jewry once again stepped in and took on the task of looking moody, dressing in black leather, and generally being a rock star - a role I feel he acted as much as really was.  The song is pure glam stomp, seductive-style (though "Tom Cat! Y'know where it's at/Come on! Lets go to my flat/Lay down 'n' groove on the mat" is not exactly Bryan Ferry singing to his siren).  There is something reassuring about something so inherently safe and unthreatening appearing at this time (and how reassuring as well, that this public service ad featuring two girls can be viewed with a clear conscience even now, thank goodness.)  Perhaps the long years working in obscurity gave Jewry a sense of responsibility and perspective that others have sadly shown to have lacked; to take on someone else's part or role is in itself a situation that works best with some modesty and determination.  Stardust (and yes his name was a take on one Gary Glitter) remains one of those beacons in The Fog, a man who was pure showbusiness but somehow humble about it in a way that showed the Glam Slam to be the people's music.  How could it ever go?

Next up:  Every day?  Really?   

Burning On: Mud: "Dyna-Mite"

The main virtue of rock 'n' roll is that it's not supposed to be about technical excellence at its heart (though that can be stupefying, goodness knows) but about a kind of knowing-wink look, a sense that maybe what is happening is a little...dangerous. 

Mud aren't dangerous; certainly with this song the woman in question is explosive, but Les Gray's voice doesn't shriek or go camp - it is a plain voice (one from quiet suburban Carsharlton, no less) and poses no threat to any order whatsoever.  And so the woman's impact is tempered, made suggestive somehow, because of Gray's calm. 

This Chinn/Chapman song (rejected by The Sweet for being not quite rocking enough, I guess) sounds a little like Status Quo, a little like Suzi Quatro - when the Glam template was fresh every song was distinctive, but now that it has been worn smooth it has become a genre, as opposed to a movement.  Glam was still big enough to have real force in the charts (this was a #2 on the Radio Luxembourg hit parade) to matter and wasn't going away anytime soon (see the next two entries here) but emotionally it had to be more ooomphy than this (though the music going "on and on and on and on" with the Gray's voice going up and up each time is at least a good try). 

The sophisticated velvet goldmine era of T.Rex has given way to this handclapping/vaguely intimidating ode to a woman who can turn on a whole damn town, not just one man, with her flashing eyes and radiance - so much so that no one knows if she's "wrong or right" as she is so overwhelming.  This is again a woman-as-spectacle song (nowhere in the narration is there any interaction between the narrator and the woman) - she tells you to boogaloo and you do, and that's that.  She comes from nowhere and is beholden to no one.  She is a flash in the sky, but it's too bad the song is durably rock 'n' roll but not much more than that; this song is in The Void, as far as I can tell, for being too neat and tidy about a woman who is anything but.  She's on fire, as Alicia Keys will one day sing, and as Gray gets across backhandedly. 

Next up:  groove on me what?

Irresistible: David Bowie: "Sorrow"

As 1973 draws to a close - there are only a few songs left (for this blog, in any case) to consider - the understandable and complex idea of going backwards to go forwards is coming into play.  David Bowie's understanding of this was to do an album of covers, as if to say, hmm, yeah, the 60s was my decade too, but it's the 70s now, and what is left of the 60s?  Surely the 70s are not going to be some endless rehash of the previous decade, are they?

"Sorrow" started its way towards Bowie rather modestly as the b-side of The McCoys' version of "Fever" - which brings the nigh-legendary figure of Rick Derringer into the MSBWT story, amongst other things.  It was The McCoys who did it first, and The Merseys (Tony Crane and Billy Kinsley, formerly of The Merseybeats) then covered it and had a hit with it in May 1966.  A line from the song appears in The Beatles' "It's All Too Much" ("with your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue").  The song (written by Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and future Blondie/The Go-Go's producer Richard Gottehrer) is a typical lament about a girl who is "acting funny" and who "never does" what she should (she plays "high class games" - are these the same ones that the woman in "It's All Over Now" plays, I wonder).  The song (an NME #2) is in two parts - the first, wherein he presumably leaves her because she brings nothing but, well, sorrow, and after the saxophone solo, where he is alone and missing her and her "OWNLEY" things - blond hair in particular.  He's unable to sleep, his mind wanders in the song as he tries to find her, unable to resist the pull of her, even if she's bad news for him. 

It is a low-key song, slightly nervous, as if the narrator acknowledges that the object of his desire is possibly "the devil's daughter" but that she has a pull on him that is hypnotic, languorous and will not let him be.  It's not like "Eloise" in its absolute high-pitch of romantic obsession - Bowie is trying to keep a lid on that, but it is as if, with the strings and his own delicate singing, that he is hooked on her sorrow, that he would rather be with her than with someone who was more conventional.  It could be that "Sorrow" is a song looking back at the 60s themselves - dangerous, fluctuating, self-important and utterly compelling - as something that can only be lamented, remembered and sought for, but never recovered.  Not entirely; not completely. 

The 60s are going to keep resonating as the 70s go on - in some parts of the UK the 60s only really begin to happen in the 70s; there is a time-lapse going on, a reluctance to move ahead.  But considering late '73, who wouldn't want the 60s all over again?  Bowie seems to be warning against such thinking, though, and his emotional distance here breaks down pretty quickly - he may be cold or cruel in other ones on the album, but this is a moment of reflection and loss; of wanting and ache.

Next up:  if it can't be shiny, it's dirty.        

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.

Getting To Everyone: Slade: "My Friend Stan"

And now, back to the Glam Slam; and yet, this is where the toll of such a sustained effort begins to show.  They had had a tough summer - Don Powell, their drummer, had been in a very bad car accident and spent most of the summer recuperating; in order to record this song he had to be helped to his drum kit.  This led to (or perhaps encouraged) Slade's next hit to be a piano-based arched eyebrow of a song, as opposed to a roaring stomping recorded-in-an-air-hangar beast that they usually provided the UK public with (the US public, despite Slade's best intentions, never did respond to them in the same loyal way).  It is a sly song, full of innuendo, sung by Noddy Holder with his usual gruff cheer; in trying to figure out who is who here.  Stan's father making him "work all night" means he can't do "it" right (no points for knowing what that means). 

"And from the way you blacked my eye/I know that you're the reason why" is the constant phrase (used after the next verses, wherein his friend Pete is weak and his friend Jack's got an ache in his back) - but who is being addressed?  If it's a girl then why is she hitting the narrator?  And why is she fixing everyone's ties (whatever that means) and otherwise "gettin' to him"?  I know I am asking a lot from what is essentially a novelty song about sex, but the song - I can't help but feel this - also has a subtext of The Man vs. the ordinary guy, who is being worked hard, is being exhausted, even becomes sick due to what The Man demands; and hence it is a political song, or at least whenever I hear it, it becomes one.  Slade stand squarely in favor of the working class; and here Slade, I feel, are talking straight to them, signifying if you will, about what is happening and how The Man is "gettin'" to everybody, fixing them up but good...screwing them over?

Again, I don't want to make too much hay of this song - but at this point in '73 I sense a rebelliousness underneath a lot of UK life, a willingness to try something new, along with resignation and The Fog.  Slade were to bounce back from this (a #2 hit for them was a miss, at this point) with a huge hit, their last one - and while the Glam Slam era continues here, it is ever-so-slowly disappearing...to be replaced by something that is, at this point, yet to exist.  Stan, Jack and Pete are all linked by someone, sure, but is it a woman, or is it something more...sinister?

Next up:  them's the limits.