The A-Z of my singles collection Part 7

So, let’s start Part 7 with a set of classic tracks from a whole range of genres. Haircut 100 were a short-lived but very good band fronted by Nick Heyward. His excellent song writing and fresh faced appeal made them irresistible to female record buyers in particular. Over the years I have grown to appreciate their records more and more, but at the time I only picked up Favourite Shirts (Boy meets Girl), a typically catchy and sunny track. Hall and Oates were an American duo who had a Top 10 single with I Can’t Go for That followed by a Top 5 smash in the UK with the brilliant Maneater. They had a real feel for a chorus, and could inject attitude into the simplest phrases. They had more success in their native land but their 80s singles definitely bring memories flooding back. The quiet Beatle George Harrison had a massive hit with Got My Mind Set on You, a brilliant track accompanied by an equally brilliant video. It was a track produced by Jeff Lynne, and this collaboration led a year later to my favourite supergroup of all time, The Travelling Wilburys. As with a lot of Jeff Lynne’s productions, the kitchen sink is thrown in, followed by the bathtub but it all works somehow! Heart had their biggest hit with Alone, a record that reached Number 3 in May 1987. It is an archetypal power ballad, and I was, and remain a huge fan of power ballads. You will spot a good few of them in the singles collection! Much as I enjoyed Temptation by Heaven 17, it was Come Live With Me that really captured my imagination. Glenn Gregory sounded excellent on both tracks, but his world weary delivery just took this song to another level. With memorable lines like ‘I was 37, you were 17’ and ‘If half the things they say are quarter true of me’ it got me dancing and it fascinated me as a piece of storytelling, the perfect combination. Is there a more perfect American summer song than Boys of Summer? As soon as you play it, your imagination puts you in a car travelling down a long straight American road with the top down. It is atmospheric and simply exudes cool as befits Don Henley, perhaps the most effortlessly cool member of The Eagles. It is an incredible piece of music. Finally, we go from 80s cool to 60s cool with the classic ballad from The Hollies, He Ain’t Heavy (He’s My Brother). It finally reached the top of the charts in September 1988, 19 years after its first release, when this song featured in an advert.

Well, this was a massive surprise! How have I only got one Housemartins single? It is my favourite track of theirs, a fantastically melancholy look at the price of ‘progress’. Build is the cry of the people not so much left behind by progress, but treated as collateral damage. Next time you listen have the lyrics or lyric video to hand. Whitney Houston is simply an icon and I have two of her singles, along with both of her albums on cassette – now sadly unplayable as I no longer have a cassette player! Anyway, The Greatest Love of All and I will Always Love You are the tracks that to me epitomise her brilliance. Neither require any further introduction, but I always feel that the former is perhaps unjustly overshadowed by her other tracks.

We now come to a piece of my personal history, the first single I ever bought. I am sure that some people did strike gold with the first single purchased with their own money, but I bet most people actually bought a record with a cringe factor like Billy Howard’s King of the Cops and try not to admit it. I loved it at the time, or I wouldn’t have bought it, but looking back now, it is a gimmicky song that is objectively awful with Howard performing poor impersonations of American cops from TV shows of the era. As it is, there are two things very much in its favour. The B Side, Bond is a Four Letter Word is very funny even now with a very good Sean Connery impersonation. More to the point though, it introduced me to the thrill of deciding which single to buy, taking it out of its cover and watching it spin on that turn table for the very first time. That still lives with me every time I get a new single or album.

Red River Rock by Johnny and the Hurricanes was a permanent fixture on the jukebox at the Crispin, my local pub, and when I saw it on the trusted Old Gold label I snapped it up. It’s a Rock n Roll instrumental with virtuoso guitar work that is extremely infectious. It got played pretty much every night my friends and I were at the pub and we all loved singing along to the tune. Take a listen and you’ll see what I mean. Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick was probably my gateway into punk with its funny lyrics, the utterly unique Ian Drury and the fantastic work by his band The Blockheads. During their career they produced song after song steeped in the London experience as their predecessors The Kinks did and their successors Madness would do.

Rebel Yell was Billy Idol’s biggest hit along with White Wedding, both of which made Number 6 in the charts. The chorus was a proper singalong and it’s still a song that makes me smile. Imagination were one of my favourite funk bands of the 80s and their biggest hit Just an Illusion was a Number 2 hit which was kept off the top spot by the Goombay Dance Band! Shades of Vienna and Joe Dolce there! It was a song that had a brilliant tune and a superb performance from Leee John (yes there were three ‘e’s in his first name!) which made it one of the most instantly recognisable dance tracks of the time. In the Heat of the Night was released 6 months after their biggest record, and although it stalled outside the Top 20 it was another excellent track from a band that really deserves to be better regarded. Jermaine Jackson, like the rest of the family was very much in the shadow of his younger brother MIchael, but Do What You Do is smooth, beautifully sung and a song that Michael himself would have been happy to put his name to I would think. Only one single from 80s Mods The Jam, but what a single. Going Underground is an absolute belter of a track with a thumping bassline, excellent drumming and socially conscious lyrics delivered with real passion. Swing the Mood has none of those attributes, but it was definitely interesting to hear big band jazz in the charts!

Now we come on to Billy Joel, the Piano Man himself. All five of the singles released from his Innocent Man album were Top 30 hits, and the album itself reached Number 2 in the album charts. To say I was obsessed with the album was something of an understatement. I had all five of the 7 inch singles as you can see, the first three Uptown Girl, Tell Her About It and An Innocent Man on 12 inch singles and the cassette version of the album itself! If we had had different coloured versions of any of the above I would have bought those as well. When CD came along I collected all of his studio albums on that format, and I would almost certainly pick up the vinyl of Innocent Man for a reasonable price nowadays! He is quite simply up there with The Boss in the pantheon of American artists of the 70s and 80s for me, and up there with Elton John as the best piano player of his era.

Speaking of Elton John, I have a number of his singles as you can see. My two favourite tracks of his in the 70s are there, in the shape of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the original version of Candle in the Wind. (As an aside I do wish he hadn’t rewritten it, let alone released the 1997 version which was frankly mawkish in the extreme.) From his excellent 1983 album Too Low For Zero perennial favourite I’m Still Standing and the rather overlooked Kiss the Bride which only reached Number 20 in the charts, believe it or not. It was the start of a run of tracks that sent Elton John back to the charts on a regular basis. The three other singles here include perhaps my favourite song of his, the gorgeous Nikita. Sad Songs and Passengers were also very good, but Nikita just stands out for me as one of the pinnacles of his career as a balladeer.

See you next time for Part 8!