My Musical History Part 4

My Musical History Part 4

1975 – Marking Time

Looking back on 1975, it was a year where things finally settled down after a lot of upheaval in the UK. That said, the same problems were still there but just less obviously than before. Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister and most people seemed to like the avuncular Northerner whatever their politics. I liked him but mainly, I think, because of Mike Yarwood’s impression of him. Yarwood was one of the biggest stars of the time, and politicians like Ted Heath and Denis Healey were his stock in trade. His Saturday night show rivalled Morecambe and Wise in popularity, and his affectionate send ups of the major politicians of the day were something of a contrast to the far more satirical treatments of politicians in the 80s.

Cricket captures my imagination

 Outside of politics 1975 was the first Ashes series I had ever seen, and I was instantly captivated. I had been a big fan of the 40 over Sunday League cricket that was shown every week on BBC2. These days most of the cricketers from the England team and pretty much every county cricketer in the country could walk past with no one recognising them. Back in 1975 I could have identified Brian Brain, Bradley Dredge, John Dye, Geoff Humpage and Eifion Jones, along with many other county stalwarts, instantly. That summer two England players captured my imagination. The tall, immensely talented and charismatic Tony Greig, one of the few all rounders to also captain England successfully, was my sporting hero of the time and remains so to this day. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year for that year, however, was a bespectacled, prematurely grey batsman from Northamptonshire called David Steele. I had never seen anyone with more determination than him. He kept the Aussies at bay far better than other, supposedly, more talented batsmen and my admiration for him knew no bounds. I clearly wasn’t the only person who took to him, and by the end of the summer he was a national hero despite England’s narrow loss to Australia.  

TV Programmes for children – or perhaps not!

There were still only three channels in those days, although in some families I knew that effectively went down to two as the parents refused to watch ITV! As a latchkey kid I was able to choose for myself. Children’s TV at the time was dominated by the BBC, but I still had some favourite ITV series. One of them that I watched avidly was The Tomorrow People, about a group of young people with special powers, which had the creepiest title sequence in children’s TV at the time. It was groundbreaking in its treatment of ‘minority’ groups, and in Series 3 along with the talented Elizabeth Adare as Elizabeth M’Bondo, a rare black character on children’s TV, they added Dean Lawrence as gypsy character Tyso Boswell. This wasn’t done in a tokenistic way, and it was explained that The Tomorrow People, or Homo Superior were likely to come from either gender and any racial or cultural background. It was years ahead of its time, socially and culturally and is well worth checking out as long as you can allow for the 70s style ‘special effects’! As well as this programme, I loved the supernatural series Shadows, with an episode called ‘The Waiting Room’ with Jenny Agutter being a particular standout.

I was allowed to stay up one night a week until 10pm to watch a series that became my introduction to TV cop shows. It arrived without fanfare on January 2 1975 and quickly became a huge favourite across the UK. The Sweeney with John Thaw and Dennis Waterman was absolutely unlike anything else I had ever seen, and I loved it. The theme tune was exciting, the stories were fast moving for the time and the acting was top notch. A lot of the themes, perhaps fortunately, went over my head (!) but for the time it was impossibly exciting, and I loved the rough and ready humour of the two leads, even if my dad in particular laughed at comments that didn’t seem funny! Later in 1975, the BBC started a new series called Angels which starred Julie Dawn Cole, who I had a crush on when she played Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My crush intensified when she appeared as student nurse Jo Longhurst and she became the first picture on my bedroom wall and every article I could find about her was cut out of the paper or the Radio Times as soon as it was allowed! I was a huge fan of Angels until she left at the end of Series 3, at which point my obsession with it mysteriously vanished!

Here come the Rollers!

Music and TV were brought together in Children’s TV by the single series of Shang-A-Lang which took its name from a single the previous year by the hosts the Bay City Rollers. It showcased two tracks a week from the Rollers themselves and a huge number of guest stars, who had singles to showcase, appeared on the show over the 20 week run. A spot on Shang-A-Lang was a guarantee of a new entry or a rise in the charts and everyone from Cliff Richard and The Scots Guards to Slade and Marc Bolan appeared on the show. The fact that I was a boy meant I had to keep my love for the Bay City Rollers secret, but it was one show I was determined not to miss. They had had 4 Top 10 singles in 1974, but 1975 was when Roller mania was everywhere. Two Number Ones and a further Top 3 entry were the tip of the iceberg as concerts became massive events and their albums sold in their hundreds of thousands. Tartan was all the rage and virtually every girl I knew was obsessed by them. Bye Bye Baby was Number 1 for six weeks and the biggest selling single of the year, but my favourite track of theirs was their other chart topper of 1975, Give a Little Love. It featured Les McKeown’s finest vocal performance, and it also had a tune that, to my 10 year old self, was as good as anything I had heard up to that point. The combination of that with the heartfelt lyrics made it a song that I stopped to listen to every time it was played on radio or TV. Their success couldn’t have carried on at the same height as it was in 1975, but it was still a shock when they virtually disappeared from the mainstream less than 12 months later.

Steps to chart success

One of the groups who appeared on the show were Showaddywaddy who were in the Top 5 in June with their remake of the Eddie Cochran number Three Steps to Heaven. It was a superb remake with a fantastic vocal performance from Dave Bartram and the booming tones of drummer Romeo Challenger calling out the ‘Steps’. Another remake, Heartbeat, also made it to the Top 10 in September. This proved to be a double edged sword for Leicester’s finest as their self-penned tracks around this time struggled to make an impact and the record company proclaimed that cover versions were the way to go. Given that December 1974 saw Hey Mr Christmas creep up to Number 13, to become their highest charting self-written song since their debut hit Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll reached Number 2, the record company had a point. However, they were savvy enough to write all of their B sides which guaranteed them 50% of the royalties on the sales! Unusually, the Showaddywaddy tracks were credited individually to every member of the band which meant an 8 way split and none of the issues caused by having songwriters in the band who were getting far richer than the musicians.

The Wombles continue to expand my horizons

The Wombles were still very high up in my affections in 1975, and the tape of Keep on Wombling was already having to be tightened up using an HB pencil to keep it from distorting! It is fair to say, however, that in terms of the singles they didn’t have the impact they deserved. Wombling White Tie and Tails, a tribute to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was a song I adored that didn’t make it into the Top 20. Lyrically it was superb, introducing me to the word ‘syncopation’ for instance, but the music could have been fitted in to the score of Top Hat and no one would have noticed the difference. SuperWomble just crept into the Top 20 whilst their final track of the year Let’s Womble to the Party Tonight was released in December and combined Big Band style verses with a Showaddywaddy style chorus, but bafflingly barely entered the Top 40 before it dropped out again. Yet again, this little snapshot of the music of The Wombles shows the dazzling array of styles that children were being introduced to by one of this country’s best and most underrated music artists. Mike Batt had far more success with his infectiously brilliant theme tune for 1975’s new Saturday night variety show Seaside Special. Summertime City became one of the songs of that summer and reached Number 4 in August.

Story Songs

I will finish this year with a roll call of songs that reintroduced me to the story based music I had first come across in 1972 through Don McLean. First of all was Streets of London by Ralph McTell, a Number 2 hit in January. It is a song that contrasts beautiful music and despairing lyrics in order to look at the plight of the homeless. Each verse is a vignette that created a flesh and blood character that you could see in your mind. It touched my heart and opened my eyes to the way that people could find themselves in a position like that, and even at the age of 9 I thought that something was wrong with a city that could see a situation like that on its streets. Nearly 50 years later I still do.

Then in the summer came The Last Farewell by Roger Whittaker, a singer-songwriter who had previously had a chart hit with Durham Town. The Last Farewell was the lament of a sailor who was going off to sea and was telling his wife how much he loved her. It immediately conjoured up the picture in my mind of a sailor in Drake’s Navy going off to fight the Spanish Armada. Why? I don’t really know, but I do know that the scene was vivid and unforgettable. It was a song that was popular around the world and is in a very exclusive list of around 50 singles that have sold 10 million physical copies worldwide!

1975 ended with Queen at Number 1 with Bohemian Rhapsody, a song I would grow to love years later. At the time? Let’s just say I was very unhappy that Laurel and Hardy failed to reach Number 1 with The Trail of the Lonesome Pine!! Childhood memories are a funny thing occasionally.

Next time, it’s the long hot summer of 1976!