Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #10 - February 5th 1970: Tony Blackburn’s World-Famous Kneecap-Warmers

Episode Date: August 31, 2017

The tenth episode of the podcast which asks: when did vest and pants go from being an instrument of self-expression to a punishment for leaving your games kit at home? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, sees us going back further than we’ve ever been before, to a time where Beatle wigs are still in Woolworths and nobody seems to mind that the BBC have taped some horse racing over their coverage of the Moon Landings. And what delights await us, as we see a show still in its embryonic stage and groping – but not in a DLT manner – towards the format we all know and love. As always, the music therein is a proper lucky bag of randomness – the serious bands are away doing albums, so the void is filled with loads of songs that never even get a sniff of the Top 30, a folky Sixtiesness that refuses to go away, and tons and tons of the purest pop. The Jackson Five cause an older-than-usual audience to do berserk and forget that a cameraman is looking up their micro-minis, John Lennon allows us to be a fly on the wall at an Apple board meeting, Pans People let the Dads down big style, and Cheryl Vernon stands outside a church, waving flowers about with a face like a smacked arse. And Tony gets a silver cup. And Peter Marinello is intimidated by a girl with eyelashes like huntsman spiders. Al Needham is joined by Neil Kulkarni and Taylor Parkes for a Stan-out-of-On-The-Buses-like leer at the dawn of the Seventies, breaking off to talk about our fathers’ love of dog food, why Country Dancing was a thing in West Midlands schools, the toys we never got and still want, and being disappointed to discover that colour TV was just a load of dots, really. And all the swearing you could possibly want. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music Chart music Hey, I'm you pop crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest edition of Chart Music

the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the settee of a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and as always, I'm joined by two people who know far more about music and can talk about it better than I can. First up is Woo Neil Kulkarni. Afternoon, Al. And my second guest is Taylor, the hairy cornflake, Parks. Oh, you're too kind. How are we, chap? Back at work, gutted about that.

I'm sweating my bollocks off today again, Al. I don't know why it suddenly got sunny. I know, it's terrible, isn't it? It's terrible. Every time we record, the weather's dead nice. Lovely weather outside, everyone having fun. Three rather squalid individuals talking about pop music. But are they really having fun though, Neil?

That's true, that's true. Now then, we've got loads of new people listening to this shit, and if you're one of those new listeners, thank you very much. We're breaking all records on the chart music front this month, and we all know what we're on with by now, don't we? We take one episode of Top of the Pulse from back in the day and pull it to absolute bits. This week, I'm responding

to a request by Neil and Taylor and picking out one of the earliest episodes of Top of the Pops in existence from February the 5th, 1970. You called this one, didn't you Shabs? Yeah, well, I mean, basically because I think I've been quite familiar with a lot of the footage from the kind

of 70s episodes, from about 73 onwards. But before that, it was just a real blank spot for me. It's almost as if the first bit of Top of the footage from the kind of 70s episodes from about 73 onwards but before that it was just a real blank spot for me it's almost as if the first bit of top of the pots that i remember sort of seeing on in programs was perhaps t-rex from later on a little bit later on than this so um just wanted to see what the show was like before the one that we're familiar with in a sense yeah the same it's got a different feel to it in those days. They hadn't quite got that sort of chummy 12-year-old's birthday party feel together.

So although Top of the Pops started broadcasting on New Year's Day 1964, the BBC's policy of wiping the vast majority of recorded programmes immediately after broadcast and not recording live shows at all means that there are no existing copies of full-length episodes of Top of the Pops before Boxing Day of 1967 and only five episodes of the 60s have been preserved

and two of those have no presenter audio. This policy even extended to the BBC's coverage of the first moon landing with only one minute of live coverage still believed to be in existence. And according to rumour, hours of footage of the moon landing were almost immediately taped over with horse racing coverage. Fucking BBC, what were they like then? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah, there's sort of a good excuse for it,

which is that a videotape in those days cost about £28 billion. Yes, yeah, there is that. They had to reuse them. But at the same time, they were quite bureaucratic about it. There's a famous story about Peter Cook when he heard that they were going to wipe the whole series of Not Only But Also.

Went to the BBC and said, no, don't do it. And they said, no, we've got to do it because we need the money for new tapes and he said alright I'll buy you a new tape give me that old tape and I'll buy you a brand new one

and they still wouldn't do it so it no longer exists and this is because the BBC were under pressure from right wing newspapers to be possemonious so yeah another excuse to say fuck the Daily Mail and fuck the Daily Express. Don't worry though, because

every Queen's Christmas speech since the 50s is still in existence. Thank God for that. That's actually upsetting about the moon landings nearly getting white though. Did they actually get white? Yes, they did, yeah. You look around for BBC footage, there's hardly any of it. There's one full episode of, I think it's Panorama,

the day after, that's on the BBC iPlayer website where people argue about whether it was worth the cost or not. And, you know, they were probably right because NASA could have given that money to the BBC to preserve all these episodes at the top of the pops. I think we'd be a far better world if they had done that. See, the moon landings is why I'm called Neil, like a lot of people born around about that time. Yeah, really?

Yeah, because, I mean, my parents had my sister in 69, very close to when the moon landings happened. They didn't know she was going to be a girl. 1969, very close to when the moon landings happened. They didn't know she was going to be a girl. With a complete lack of imagination, they just saved the name Neil up, because Neil was very current with Neil Armstrong and everything, up for three years until I was born,

and that's why I'm called Neil. Gutted that Buzz wasn't the first one down there. Yes. Buzz Kulkarni, that would have been a fucking amazing name. Second only to Chilly Kulkarni, I think. That would have ruined anyone. Yes. fucking amazing name second only to Chilli Kulkarni

I think that would have ruined anyone so 1970 music wise what are we saying chubs that rundown that happens at

the beginning of the show is awesome there's so many great records in there and quite a variety in there

as well which I like to see there was Harry J and you know Liquidator and things like that in there as well I loved also to see there was harry jay and you know liquidator in there as well um

i loved also the way with the rundown that the the the font and the color that they chose i know it's black and white but um what i didn't know is something that i've recurrently felt whenever i've watched top of old top of the pops episodes is not not having seen the photos of the bands before um they're like unique almost top of the pots and what i didn't realize was that from about 64 onwards a guy called harry goodwin was hired to basically create those rundowns and the images for those rundowns yeah and he basically took photos of every band that was in the top 40 from about 64 to about 73 and that's why those images are kind of unique there are some

of those images in the rundown that i've never seen of those bands right um so i really enjoyed the rundown and looking at the chart it's surprising how i know there's always one that you don't know in these rundowns but it's it's surprising how for something so long ago i think most of us would know like 95 of those tunes i I would have thought. Yeah. I mean as far as music in February of 1970 goes, the LPs released this month include Morrison Hotel by The Doors, Black Sabbath

by Black Sabbath, Funkadelic by Funkadelic and Moondance by Van Morrison. So you know, there's a lot of decent shit going on there but obviously we're not going to see that in the singles charts. It was one of those times where most of the interesting music was happening away from the charts there wasn't a lot of uh rock there weren't a lot of rock singles and pop singles that were particularly great around that time it was mostly most of the good music in the charts is soul, which was going through a decent patch.

But it is a lull, but it's really interesting to discuss. As time goes on, the 60s become slightly less interesting. And the 70s only become more fascinating the further we move away from them. But 1970 is a funny year because these last few years before the oil crisis were technically the best years to be alive, certainly in the West, in human history. Everything was there for you. in human history you know the heart everything was there for you you know very little to complain about um relative to any time before or since um and nobody was happy at all because all the basic

stuff that people have been fighting for all through the 60s had had either happened or in the process of happening and all the more ambitious stuff had been basically put back to a later date because it had proved impractical. So everyone was just kind of stuck there in this terrible situation of having most of what they need and not very much of what they want. And there's a sort of a slightly beaten down feel to these years, you know, until a bit of poverty and turmoil and misery came back to wake everyone up again.

When you look at it now, this little period of slightly stale decadence has got its own feel and it's quite interesting to look at from so many years away. Yeah, I mean, I have this kind of, as a lot of us do, have this sort of innate resistance to that kind of narrative that things were better at some point. And I normally resist it, especially when it's part of my lifetime in a sense so if somebody's got golden memories of the 90s i'm always sort of first up saying i was there and it was shite but when something happens i don't know before you were born um i i have to say i watching this episode i was kind of enraptured throughout i loved this episode there

was no moments like the later 70s episodes where I have no problem calling out something as being shite. I'm just kind of entranced by perhaps the fact that it was before my time to a certain extent. And I think we repeatedly, on these podcasts, we talk about these lulls in pop music. And I think we talked about that when we did the 75 episode and also the 79 episode and we certainly talked about in the late 80s episode it tends to coincide with those moments when this thing that you've mentioned al teen hysteria yeah that word hysteria hysteria isn't really part of this episode pop is quite sophisticated in this episode and glam certainly isn't even on the horizon to a certain extent.

I think we can probably coincide those lulls that we feel, those slight lulls, and it's only a slight lull in this episode, with those times when pop becomes like a sophisticated thing that pleases grown-ups and kids to a certain extent. And that's what you see on this episode. There's no kind of

mind-melting moment as there would be later on in the decade. I really like the weird feel of this period um it's it's got a sort of a like a plain chocolate feel to it you know what i mean it's like it's quite a quite a quite a uh a dark adult uh feel to it um it's not there's nothing fizzy and uh like neil was saying there's nothing sort of fizzy and exciting about it. But it's interesting. I mean, basically, the feel that I get from this is we've been to the moon and it turned out it was just some rock that's a long way away. And down here, it's still raining.

So what do we do now? There is a sense of pop music spinning its wheels a bit. But, you know, there's still enough energy there to keep it going but it's a weird time it's before that sort of you know depressing kind of Watergate Sweeney

70s so you've still got it's like all the 60s stuff have just moved into the mainstream so all these sort of way out styles like blending with the great british anti-style so you enter this era of drab flash like brentford nylons bed sheets the color of blancmange and crimson and navy blue carpets and like shit rust bucket cars the shape of clogs but they're bright orange and uh you know paisley y fronts and stuff it's uh yeah a really strange that's like you watch monty python it's really got this feel to it you know so a very specific, and it's hideous and really interesting.

It is, isn't it? Well, it is. It's the death face of optimism. It's the twisted final expression on the face of optimism when they find it after two weeks lying alone in its flat. So, Pop Craze youngsters, stay with us as we enter Top of the Pops, the Bourneville years. In the news this week,

it's revealed that the UK has secretly flogged 100 chieftain tanks to Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. Egyptian frogmen have just sank a 900-ton Israeli ship. A rogue tiger has been tranquilised with a gun at Heathrow Airport. Jack Mills, the great train robbery victim, has just died. But the big news this week is that councillors all over the country

are trying to get the film The Killing of Sister George banned as it's about lesbianism. Quite right too. It's a fucking cracking film that is. It is a great film. On the cover of the NME is Viv Stanshaw, Booker T and the MGs and Jean Pitner. It was around about the time when it still had a

newspaper front page feel about it. No smash hits obviously so the cover of the TV Times is Alan Wicker with the Bluebell Girls. So what else was on telly that day? Well, BBC One has run Bill and Ben, Play School, Jackanore, Blue Peter,

Hector's Ass, Nationwide and has just finished 10 minutes of Tom and Jerry. BBC Two has also run Play School at 11 o'clock in the morning and then it's shut down until 7 o'clock in the evening. It's currently showing In This Case an educational series

for managers. ITV has run programmes for schools in the morning and have put on Skipper, Magpie and Crossroads. Right now they're screaming the 1951 film Where No Vultures Fly. The story of a game warden in East Africa who's had enough of killing animals and wants to be mates with them instead.

So, yeah, not a lot of competition today for Top of the Pops. No, not in the slightest. I mean, you know, nothing on in the afternoon at all, I'm guessing. No. This is pre-Crown Court days for television. It is. It's the days when everyone had jobs and were happy alright then Pop Craze youngsters

it's time to go back back back to February the 5th 1970 don't forget we may coat down your favourite band or artist

but we never forget they've been on top of the pubs more than we have Müzik Although this episode was broadcast in colour, only a black and white version exists. Colour TV had been a thing in the UK since the mid-60s, but the only colour programmes then were American imports. It wasn't until 1967 that BBC Two broadcast Wimbledon in colour, but the first colour services in the UK came in November of 1969,

when the colour TV licence came into being. By this time, there are only 200,000 colour tellies in the UK, and it wouldn't be until 1976 that there were more colour TVs than black and white ones, meaning that we're watching what the vast majority of the audience of 1970 will be watching. Chaps, can you remember when you first had a colour telly in the house? I remember the first thing I ever saw on a colour telly was an episode of Bagpuss.

Wow. This would have been mid-'70s, kind of late-'70s. Good introduction. It blew my mind. Obviously, I have no idea of the colours involved. You never knew before then that frogs were green. And cats were red and white. Exactly.

The startling pinkness and whiteness of bagpipes. I can only compare it to the first time I ever got glasses. I was only seven. I was only seven. And, you know, you do that thing as a kid of just struggling being being blind and then you eventually get glasses and you're massively upset about it but I remember putting them on and it was like a drug experience it was like suddenly seeing everything for the first time and seeing bagpuss was just a revelation in colour but I think you're right most people didn't get colour tellies around our way sort of until i'd say late 70s actually 77 i

seem to recall getting a colour telly yeah it seemed to be a real class dividing line didn't it yeah like video recorders would be later i think we had a colour telly quite early which is weird because my dad was not one for gadgets like by the early 80s when everybody else was getting CB radios and Breville sandwich toasters and soda streams and stuff, I'd be, oh, please, no. But I think we got a Colatelli quite early because one of my first memories is crawling right up to the screen and putting my eyes right next to it to see what it looked like close up and seeing the dots seeing the color dots um and unfortunately that i mean i grew up to be a

critic it's like you know it's like the weakest link in the weakest link in every chain i always have to find it it was it was just a load of colored dots taylor um just wanted to say i'm always tickled by the story of your dad eating some pedigree chum yeah what it was it it's the most out of character thing that i can ever remember him doing um i mean he was like i mean he wasn't a boring man, but he was quite straight-laced in some ways. And, yeah, this came up the other day because we were talking about brains faggots. Yeah. And as a kid, whenever we had brains faggots for tea, I always used to cut one in half and push one of the halves over with my knife

so that it was like the Pedigree Charm advert, where they put the dog food out of the tin and with my knife so that it was like the pedigree chum advert where they put the dog food out of the tin and cut it in half solid nourishment good solid meaty nourishment cross section it looks great and

yeah and it reminded me of the time when we had a dog and my dad had a fork full of pedigree chum to see what it tasted like. And he reported that it was horrible. My dad used to eat dog biscuits.

What, for fun? Not as an experiment? Oh yeah, for kicks. Yeah, we had a dog and everything and you know, when he was lobbing the dog biscuits out, there was always one left for him. Yeah, we had a dog and everything and, you know, when he was lobbing the dog biscuits out, there was always

one left for him. Was it those pastel coloured bone shaped ones? Yes. Yeah, because they look really nice.

They do, don't they? I had Bob Roberts chocolate drops, I think, which were for dogs because at that age you kind of just

want to get chocolate no matter how you can. Exactly, yeah. And because I lived in an old people's home they had a massive block of cooking chocolate right in the pantry that they had and i used to go in there and shimmy up a little ladder and chew a little bit off the corner nice it's my

charlie bucket moment the other great dad food story at our house was when my mum went away for a week or so and she left some steak out for my dad and she rang him up. She said, did you have that steak? And he said, yeah, well, I had both of them. And she said, eh? He said, yeah, yeah, the first one was really nice. Second one was really fucking thin

and really hard to chew. And she just said, that was the blotting paper underneath the steak. He fucking fried it. He fried the blotting paper of the steak and ate it with some chips. Top breeders recommend it because it's very fast nourishment.

Yes, it's number one it's top of the pops bombarded with flames lights weird camera effects and pants people doing a rhythmic gymnastic display in little tennis shorts as the fourth top of the popsops theme, known on Wikipedia as Unknown Brass Track, plays in the background. And there's a sort of a Tony Blackburn cutout with moving eyes and mouth. Rather like Heaven Forfend, some fiend had pulled off his skin to drape over some wheels and cogs and wires to create a sort of rudimentary animatronic DJ with makeup like a little dolly.

Frightening, isn't it? It's like a ventriloquist dubber. And they would do this for all of the DJs who presented Top of the Pops at the time, which means that yes, there is a Jimmy Savile version of this floating about. And that is fucking terrifying. I bet it is. But I mean, the opening title sequence

is quite abstract. And I wouldn't say it's an experimental movie, obviously. Pans people doing this kind of almost Hitler Youth kind of movement. Yes, it is, isn't it? I was going to say that. But there's a few moments in this episode where you get the sense that the production staff, they're allowed to say that. Oh, sorry, mate. But there's a few moments in this episode

where you get the sense that the production staff, they're allowed to just experiment. Experiment's the wrong word because it implies something challenging or something. It's just a little bit of fun here and there. But there are just these odd, inexplicable moments that your sense would have been ironed out of the show only a matter of a few years later.

And because we're very early in 1970, like a lot of the show only a matter of a few years later and because we're very early in 1970 like a lot of the show the title sequence has this thing of still feeling like the 60s ultimately like the 70s haven't really been kick-started the theme tune what do we reckon on it well it's it's easy listening essentially it's it's it is yeah it's like a library track. I mean, it's the sound of young, thrusting excitement and pop music, according to 50-year-old men. Yes, it's the kind of thing you can imagine Simon D playing in his Jaguar. Yeah, it's like when you see an old film and there's a scene where people are dancing to that instrumental rock music

that was apparently really popular among hippies yeah it's like that but a bit more swinging, yeah I suspect it sounded pretty old and dead at the time. So the host for this week is Tony Blackburn

at this moment he's the breakfast show DJ making him the undisputed kingpin of Radio 1 as a matter of fact 6 days after this episode was moment he's the breakfast show DJ making him the undisputed kingpin of Radio 1 as a matter of fact six days after this episode was broadcast he's featured on the Man Alive documentary The Disc Jockeys as he goes about his business of the day

all the time moaning about his £40 a week salary which would be £605 a day that is a bit mingy isn't it? but £150 a day for judging beauty contests as well. Well, yes, there is that as well. Yeah, he doesn't really mention that, does he? Because what better judge? Who better to judge human beauty

than Tony Blackburn? My favourite bit in that is where they show him doing his terrible jokes and stuff for a minute, and then the narrator comes on and says the show is unscripted like just in case you thought they had the team from Sid

Caesar's show of shows working on this. That documentary's amazing. It is isn't it? It still gives you that sense really that Radio 1 and pop music was in the control of a particular class of people I mean quite a few public school educated people and yet music was in the control of a particular class of people. I mean, quite a few public school educated people.

And yet you still get the feel that chance played a bigger part then in getting a job in any way than it would now. Out of the cabal of people who present Radio 1, they just look like a lot of... What you get is a certain sense of just just strange men who wouldn't fit anywhere else enacting their imaginations in these kind of little squalid rather squalid looking rooms roscoe seems the most outward going but but kenny everett and tony blackburn they seem like i mean tony blackburn in particular um the programme kind of emphasises what a strange man who doesn't want friends

because he might disappoint them and leads this strange kind of Travis Bickle-like existence. Yes. David Travis Bickle, if you will. Fucking hell, imagine that. Yeah. Some nights after I do a show,

I have to wipe the comb off the seat. You can still also get a certain sense of snobbery about pop. I mean, Kenny Everett and John Peel in that show really kind of see pop as a trite thing. And there's a sense already, I think, where you can tell that Kenny Everett wants a TV deal and wants to get on television to fully enact what he wants to create. Yeah.

I mean, this would be like the first time that the curtain had been pulled back on Radio 1, really. You know, anyone's actually looked at it properly. Yeah, half the curtain. Because it had been going. Yeah, it had been going. It had been going for, what, two and a half years or something. But all of a sudden, we see the guts of the station exposed

and the actual lifestyles of the DJ. I mean, we see Tony Blackburn, he's got his sports car. Roscoe's got his big chopper and he's kind of like going around the motorway and chatting up everything in a skirt. Kenny Everett is already coming over as massively weird. There's Jimmy Young, of course, who's just Jimmy Young. Is John Peel in it? I think he was, wasn't he?

Yeah, he was. John Peel seems like the sanest person in it, admitting he's got VD. Yes, as always, when it comes to these things. Talking down Radio 1. It is terrifying to see this collection of misfits. I mean, Kenny Everett is obviously miles beyond everyone else in terms of

his sonic imagination and stuff but whenever you see him being interviewed he's so self conscious and so obviously unhappy it really gives you the creeps Jimmy Young dressed as a wedding guest.

Yes. And someone, they say to him, do you listen to much music when you're away from the studio? And he snaps, not really. And if you listen to two hours every morning, neither would you. It's like an alien talking. And then you get this lady of a certain age,

this middle-class lady of a certain age, talking about him the way people talk about fascist leaders. Like, well, I think people like him. And then Roscoe is like this ego running on his own juice. It's like there's no talent or there's nothing there of any kind. No, just a lot of shouting, isn't there? He's just shouting these incoherent noises and basically bagging his chest in front of a load of mini-skirted

girls. It's like, DJing in those days was like Tinder with cheat codes. It's like you just walk in and just go, ah! Also, the disturbing thing about Roscoe is he looks, especially from the side, he looks a lot like Ondine from the Andy Warhol films.

This won't mean anything if you haven't seen the Chelsea girls, but all the way through it I was expecting him to shoot meth into his wrist and start slapping people. I suspect they do that if they turn the cameras off. Also, Roscoe drives a van with his own name written on the side. Yeah.

Which I've never seen anything like that before. But still. Well, apart from Sco never seen anything like that before. But still. Well, apart from Scooby-Doo. True. But still, Tony Blackburn is the most disturbing presence on this. Yeah. When he admits that he has no friends, but in the same breath, is very keen to let us know that his girlfriend is a bunny.

I think we're meant to assume a Playboy bunny, but I don't know. There's a lot of odd bits with Tony. When he goes to that record industry thing at nightclub, I was just delighted to see two people carrying a plate from what must have been a buffet.

I'm sorry, I'm sad enough to have paused the video to see what was on the plate well it's entirely cake it's just different types of cake um which just really struck me as hard but really i mean when i think about it i couldn't help thinking about the teaching staff that i got eventually in school similarly called culled from a public school background and I think if you just get a set of individuals, especially

at Radio 1 it's accentuated who obviously have been at some point in their lives, in their childhood or their adolescence, deeply lonely and I think that's fundamental to a lot of the people involved in Radio 1. If you get those people together and also add the lunacy that comes

with a public school education, what ensued later that we all know about now was perhaps a bit inevitable. But what was odd about the documentary was that it was not a kind of friendly look at Radio 1. It was like a post-Marxist critique of Radio 1. Yes, it really was, wasn't it? It was really, really quite deep and intense with these figures like Tony Blackburn who. Yes, it really was, wasn't it? It was really, really, you know, quite deep and intense

with these figures like Tony Blackburn who were just, in a sense, yes, he was a product. In fact, he admitted he was a product. But you sense that psychologically these people were just enormously fragile. I mean, those Man Alive documentaries around about that time

were fucking brilliant. They did one about, called The Ravers. They did that amazing Hells Angels one in 1973. Yeah, skinheads. The truth about skinheads and hell's angels which is incredible and what was the other one they did all dressed up and nowhere to go about the youth of newcastle in 1972 which is incredible because it's about these like it's it's about the gang wars between skinheads and the hairies as they were known and everyone in it looks fucking rock the skinheads look rock

the hippies look fucking rock the interviewer sociologist he looks fucking rock you wouldn't argue with him about semiotics or any of that shit he'd fucking batty ya and it's a welcome to this week's top DJ Tony Blackburn

well everybody welcome to this week's top DJ, Tony Blackburn. Hello everybody, welcome to the wonderful world of Top of the Pulse once again, and I shall be unveiling my world-famous kneecap warmers a little later on in the show. Right now, here's a lovely record, and it's number 21 this week. It's called Venus, and it comes from Shocking Blue. We go straight into the top 30, and a huge blue screen, because it would have been blue screen at the time before green screens came in, features cutouts of the faces of the bands and artists.

One cock-ups. Blackburn announces that he'll be unveiling his world-famous kneecap warmers later on, but first he introduces a lovely record, Venus by Shocking Blue. Formed in The H netherlands in 1967 shocking blue had a few regional hits in holland throughout the late 60s but it wasn't until they replaced their male singer with mariska veres that they accumulated international attention with this song venus it's up nine places from number 30 to number 21. I love this record. It's fucking mint, isn't it?

I love Shocking Blue. This isn't even their best one. That's the thing. Really? Yeah. Send Me A Postcard is better. Love Buzz is better. They were a great group. It's really often overlooked Dutch music from this time.

Neder Rock. Yes. It doesn't have the sort of streamlined vistas and open horizons of like german music from the time um but it's it's really got something of its own it does that very dutch thing of organizing itself intelligently within a very limited space like it's really simple music, but there's just something about the way it's arranged that is quite ear-catching and unusual.

Basically, it's just very simple riff-based music with a bit of a psych overlay, but it's got that blues-lessan thing going on and it sort of simultaneously makes it more distinctive and more pop than like the american bands from that period um i mean when they on some of their stuff that it turns out a bit too much like the worst that can happen here like a less funky jefferson airplane but on all the singles they're they're really something um and also the the singer looks like the girl that many of us wanted to walk into every house party of our youth you know

like hip and foxy but kind of approachable provided that that you were wearing Chelsea boots. Yeah. I mean, we immediately get to see the audience, and there's not many blokes about. The first glimpse of the dancers is that row of dancers who's behind those kind of bars. Yeah. Like a go-go prisoner's soul blockage. Yeah, but holy hell, they look amazing.

Yes, they do amazing yes they do yes the the clothes in this episode are just astonishing i i completely um echo what taylor said about shocking blue because i'm only familiar with the singles love buzz is just an amazing song uh an amazing production and they're not the lovely thing about this song is is as taylor says you can it sounds like an old blokes thing to say about music, but you can hear everything. You can hear each little element. And I think Top of the Pops, even though we kind of say it's reaching a zenith later on,

perhaps in the 70s, there's a sort of zenith of production values here. I think it's beautifully directed. The way that the camera... One thing that used to frustrate me later on with Top of the Pops is when it cuts to the bassist when the guitar solo is going on or it cuts to the drummer when he's not doing it. This seemed to demonstrate a real awareness of the song and an understanding of it

and the movement of the cameras and everything was perfect for it. So it's almost like a perfect little pop video of this song, I think. Yeah, they come over really well, the band, don't they? Because we've seen in the 1975 episode a Dutch band, and they came off as, like, clog-wearing bumpkins in leopard print. But this band look cool as fuck, don't they?

I'm wondering if the Dutchness of this band would have been mentioned at all at the time, whether anyone was aware of that fact. Well, Tony Blackburn doesn't mention it, does he? Yeah, but he doesn't know anything about anything. He's not into it. Yeah, that's true. The thing I love about Shocking Blue as well

is they haven't forgotten that beat music has got its roots in R&B. So even though their style is quite dry and cool and emotionless, the rhythm section are playing really smoothly and neatly on this record. So you still get that sense of movement and a groove. It doesn't plod like a lot of records from 1970. So even though it sounds cool and emotionless,

it's still sexy and suitable for dancing to. Yeah. I think you get that with a lot of music from this period fundamentally because an awful lot of these players um and drummers and bassists in particular i mean they'd have been playing since the early 60s wouldn't they so they'd have been playing like mainly r&b covers and black american covers early on in their early on in their in their musical career and constantly they've just developed feel and groove yeah so so many records that would otherwise perhaps be mediocre are fantastic because they just have that that

wonderful groove to them and this is one of them yeah uh the band are playing uh on a stage uh with a background of um kind of like stitched together um tinfoil panels which makes them look like they're performing inside a weather balloon it looks great and it's kind of got traces of the moon landings. Yes. It's like a landing craft. That's right, yeah. They're not even the best nether rock act. That's the incredible thing.

Who should I be listening to? The greatest ever being Panther Man. Yes. You know Panther, right. He wore a PVC Panther outfit and sort of went with his claws. And a bit of a Batman sort of mask thing. Yeah, yeah, and held a little toy Panther for extra Pantherness.

And his record, Panther Man, is unbelievable. I'm sure it will turn up on the video playlist now. It certainly will. It's what a record though isn't it fantastic you couldn't ask for anything more panthery than that you can take me for a walk

in the moonlight you can take me for a walk in the zoo I have yet to hear this I look forward to hearing it I think you'll like it so the following week Venus jumped up to number 10 and got as far as number 8. The follow-up, Mighty Joe, only got to number 43 in May of 1970

and they were done in the UK. The band split up in 1974, but Venus got to number 6 when it was covered by Bananarama in 1986 and is now the accompaniment for a women's razor advert spin me spare you do itller Lucifer Mix me a portion and breathe Merlin

mix me a dream We go straight into the next record with a bit of flashing lights and no introduction. What the fuck is that all about? It is odd, isn't it? He is the man who needs no introduction, apparently.

Well, there is that, yes. It's Barry Ryan in his new single, Magical Spiel. Born in Leeds in 1948, Barry Ryan and his twin brother Paul signed to Decca Records at the age of 16 and had three top 20 hits in a row before their chart career started to peter out in late 1966. In 1967, Paul Ryan was starting to burn out as a performer and when he heard a demo of MacArthur Parker, a party hosted by Richard Harris, he decided to quit performing and become a full-time songwriter for his brother.

A year later, Barry Ryan got to number two with Eloise, which was number one in 17 countries, sold over a million copies, and was only held off the top spot in the UK by Hugo Montenegro's version of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. This is the follow-up to The Hunt, which got to number four in October of 1969, and is backed by The Candy Choir.

It's just been released and has no chart placing. One thing about this show, apart from the fact that it's, you know, 50% longer than the average Top of the Pops episode at 45 minutes, is that there's a lot of tunes

that are not in the charts yet. Yeah, why is that? Is that just pure payola? I have absolutely no idea. Maybe it could be Top of the Pops producers trying to plan in advance and assuming that things are going to get into the charts before they do. It's a strange assumption with this particular record, Magical Spiel.

Which, I mean, I need telling. Do I like this or not? That's exactly the same as me, yeah. Exactly the same. I can't tell. I'm sure some hipster now would love it it's for me it's right on the edge of shiteness there's there's kind of there's no discernible there's far too much clever clever shit obviously i'm gonna love lyrics like edipus who loved his mom elvis his sweet shower bank and stuff like that and just the general shouting of

lucifer is always to be encouraged. But I'm not sure if I like it or not. I'm not sure if I like this record or whether it actually is a pop record or whether it's a sort of proto-prog record that I should kind of disregard. I don't know. Taylor, do you like this record? Well, there's a lot of uncertainty about this record because it can't decide whether it's

trying to be camp or whether it just is uh it's like i think i'd like it more if he'd taken it a bit less seriously or a bit more seriously yeah because at some level this is obviously a comedy song uh if you look at the words and the general overwrought nature of it but it's not actually funny but at the same time you can't take it completely seriously so yeah I have no idea whether I like this or not I like it better than

his other stuff like I've never been a fan of Eloise because it just is a big sort of puffed up nothing that could have been good if they'd worked on it a bit harder. This has got some guts to it. It's got a more exciting sound to it and he's a pretty good singer and stuff.

But it's... Yeah, I've... I had to play this one about five times and I still couldn't decide whether I liked it because I didn't know this record before. I'd not heard it. Yeah, well, I played it once and immediately thought it was catch it and I still couldn't decide whether I liked it because I didn't know this record before I'd not heard it yeah well I played it once and immediately thought it was cat shit and

I played it since and nothing's detracted me from that initial view he's kind of like he's flanted about like a Will Tapperson Jim Morrison isn't he he's got he's got a kind of open black shirt and he's got

regulation 1970 massive belt buckle. He's all in black and he's backed by a band called Candid Choir who were sort of mid-60s also runs. And yeah, I'm not feeling it at all. That said, I can think of innumerable 90s kind of singers in shit indie rock bands who would kill to look like Barry Ryan. Well, yes.

And I kind of love the way also that... That must be Paul Ryan on the keyboards, I'm guessing. I believe it is, yes. Yeah, I like the way he counts in. He does that one, two, three, four changes if they're really playing it. Yeah, to a mind song. Yeah, and there's a lovely bit near the end as well. This kind of weird doubling

effect, where slightly bigger versions of the band play right behind him. On the blue screens, yeah. Yeah, I'm guessing it's on a screen, but because of the black and white rendering of it, it just looks really, really surreal. But yeah, it didn't leave me cold, so much as just confused.

The other funny arrangement of musicians is that the left-handed guitarist gets to stand outside of the little enclosure into which the rest of the band have been kettled. And I don't know why, because let's face it, it's not because he's the good-looking one.

It might just be because Barry looks better standing next to him. Yeah. And there's the two dads on saxophone as well, isn't there? Up the front. Yeah. Yeah. To me, what this feels like is a bit of a throwback to sort of the late 60s.

So about 1968, you start to get this thing where the so-called progressive bands have moved away from singles and they're concentrating on albums so there's a space to be filled in the charts so you end up with a very particular kind of post-psych slightly show-busy pop yes you get a lot of guys with sort of haircuts like Tarot from Ace of Wands, wearing like green long collared satin shirts and stuff, you know.

And it seems like a bit of a throwback to that. And also this, the lyrics are amazing. It's like M is for Magdalene, A is for Alchemist, G is for the Grecian gods of light. I is for the ice of love.

C, the clouds of Aphrodite. S is for Superman. P is for Purify. I is for the incest of the ram. O, Oedipus, who loved his mum. Come on, Paul, it's mum, isn't it? But also, that's E. E is for Oedipus.

Yeah. When you look at it, yeah, because it spells out magical spiel, right? E. Presumably that's a joke, but, like, with so many things about this record. That would look really weird on an infant school wall, wouldn't it, as a poster?

Teaching the kids how to do the alphabet. Yeah, but what's funny about this is the fact that it's got all the bullshit stuff together. Like, in one lyric. You walk down the street and you pass those clinics, or so-called clinics, which offer herbal healing, chiropractic, ear candling. All these things which have got nothing in common. Yes, ear candling.

Nothing in common. No shared roots, the only thing they have in common is that they're bollocks which you think would be a dead giveaway to anyone going, hmm why am I getting ear candling in the same shop as I'm getting, yeah B is for bollocks, I think what Taylor said earlier about wishing that he'd either taken it

less seriously or more seriously is absolutely spot on the sense I get, I mean, I think you're meant to imagine what he's singing about and you're meant to kind of see these things in a sense when you're listening to them. But actually what I see listening to these lyrics and looking at these lyrics is I see him, Paul Ryan,

in a room, perhaps a bit high, writing a song about magic and just stuffing it with as many sort of abstruse references as he can. Yeah, Ouija boards. It's massive laziness, really, on this part. It really is. It's sympathy for the devil

for Mirabelle readers, isn't it? That makes it sound better than it is. Yes. Yeah, it is. And you're right. I mean, if he was in a devil costume with all, you know, with a curly tash and a pointy beard and he was mincing about a bit, that could have been something.

But the BBC are going all out on this, aren't they? There's a huge background. But also to the side, there's these big kind of like panels. Did you notice them? You hardly ever see them of big screens of a blonde woman and it looks like she's all she got all blood down her

face like a you know horror movie kind of thing it was instant recall of the front cover of Carrie which I've mentioned before yes yeah that wasn't disturbing but doesn't that backdrop stay for somebody else as well I'm sure somebody else

I think it might even be the Temptations later on are singing it's a different image I think it's a go-go dancer for them I managed to miss that in my five viewings I must have been transfixed by his piratical belt

and of course the word spiel Must have been transfixed by his piratical belt. Yes. And of course the word spiel, that's not going to be a commonly known word. I never heard of that word until Minder came about. It's not a word commonly associated with the occult either. No, no. So I mean the overall impression to me is kind of like Dennis Wheatley book club With free amulet Yeah but it's not in love with the occult

And it's not taking the piss out of the occult enough Well you wouldn't would you You don't fuck about with Satan on top of the pops So two weeks later Magical Spiel enter the charts At number 49 And drop straight out again Oh Satan

You've gone back on your deal. The follow-up, Kitsch, got to number 37 in May of 1978 and after a number 32 hit with Can't Let You Go in January of 1972, Barry Ryan retired from the music business to work as a photographer. There it is, the new one there. And that comes from Barry Rana. That's called Magical Spiel, and that is going to be definitely a smash hit. Hope you're all fitting well this week.

Here's a lovely record at number four from Peter, Paul and Mary, Leaving on a Jet Plane. All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go Blackburn speculates that Magical Spiel is definitely going to be a smash hit The first thing he's got wrong tonight After inquiring as if we're all right, good on you Tony, he introduces the next song Leaving on a Jet Plane by Peter, Paul and Mary. Formed in New York in 1961, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stuckett and Mary Travis recorded their eponymous debut LP A Year Later which sold over 2 million coppers in the US and was number one there for six weeks. In 1963 they played at the

March on Washington where Martin Luther King dropped his I Have a Dream speech and carved a living as folky interpreters of Bob Dylan tunes throughout the 60s starting with Blowing in the Wind, their first UK hit which got to number 13 in October of 1963. This song, a cover of the 1966 John Denver tune, is the first appearance on the UK charts since the Times they are a-changing in October of 1964 and was the Christmas number one of 1969 in the USA and it's up this week from number nine to number four. They're nowhere near Shepherd's Bush at the moment so the BBC have apparently sent a film crew down to Heathrow Airport to film some planes. Taylor, this is a little taste

of the Golden Oldie picture show here, isn't it? Yeah, this is why bands started making proper videos, because they were sick of having their records humiliated by being played over stock footage or hastily shot scenes of a model walking around a garden, which is what most of these Top of the Pops clips were like. And you think, what's the point of this? You watch Top of the Pops to see bands.

You watch Top of the Pops to see how bands and singers present themselves, not to look at what is basically an interlude film while hearing the record through your shit TV speaker, which at that point would have sounded worse than the one in your transistor radio. This is also one of two records on this Top of the Pops mentioned in Dex's Midnight Runners Reminisce Part 2, wrongly dated to the summer of 1969,

proving that all of Kevin Rowland's reminisce in that song is obviously balls because he's completely misremembered when these records were out. No, it was early 1970s so yeah so much for that. Kevin. This record's a bit of a cheat

because basically it's a vehicle for harmony singing and this sort of precise folk accompaniment, which almost fools you into thinking it's a good song, which it's not. The tune is totally monotonous, and the lyrics are pretty soupy. And it's actually quite a tribute to PPM,

that they managed to fashion a not unpleasant record out of it i've not heard denver's version so i can't comment on that i've always been bugged by this song fundamentally for one of the lyrics there's so many times i've let you down so many times i've played around i tell you now they don't mean a thing that seems particularly weaselly like Richard Pryor said I fuck them but I make love to you

that always goes down the tree chaps I think it's very petty of you actually to get uptight about something which meant nothing like very small minded on your part yeah, by the way I'm fucking off, see ya I mean the BBC

have totally got the wrong end of the sticker haven't they because the song is about the pain of leaving someone and they've gone oh it's a song about going on a plane great, the lyrics didn't go I'm leaving on a jet plane, isn't it brilliant look at the comfortness of this gone, oh, it's a song about going on a plane. Great. You know, the lyrics didn't go, I'm leaving on a jet plane. Isn't it brilliant?

Look at the confidence of this seat. Oh, look, it goes right back. There's a film on. Yeah, but Alex, the power of visuals. That's the thing. When I was watching this, it kind of turns the song into a love song to jet planes. Yes. Which is actually quite effective.

And there's a lovely moment that perhaps it's just me um uh i think there's a line in the song isn't it kiss me and smile for me and and at that precise moment they have just a shot of the very very front of the plane yes almost like it's smiling oh like jimbo and the jet set yeah you know when you were kidding like maybe this is just me but all all cars have faces, don't they? Yes. So, you know, it brought that to me. And it brought me fond memories of the air show.

And I just thought, well, thanks for the air show. But it's the power of black and white, I think as well. I think if I'd seen this in colour now, it would be fairly nondescript, boring, dull footage. Yeah.

Black and white just makes, I don't know why, but Black and White just made this video into a sort of love song to jet travel. I think they bought this footage. I don't believe the BBC sent someone up in a light aircraft to fly next to a jet and film it out the window. You're probably right.

So the following week, Leaving on a Jet Plane jumped up to number two and was held off the top spot by this week's number one however a few months later peter yarrow was convicted of taking improper liberties with a 14 year old fan and was jailed for three months and the band split up but in 1981 on the last day of his presidency jimmy car Carter granted him a full pardon. They would annually reform for one-off tours and permanently reform in 1981 until Mary Travers died in 2009. I don't know when I'll be back again. Oh, we're having so much difficulty getting those planes out of the studio. That's Peter, Paul and Mary there.

We want you to watch now because we're going to pick out the best dancer and we're going to judge during this one because we're going to see the kids dancing here in the studio. So the number 30 sound, the first new entry this week and the only new entry, Jackson's Five and a number called I Want You Back. I Want You Back. Blackburn, with a load of young adults standing about behind him,

announces that the kids are going to have a dancing competition. One thing I want to note here is that they're not crammed round him. They're just standing listlessly about, aren't they? The idea of the kids huddling around the presenter, we're not seeing that here, are we? No. Well, for most of his links, he's in front of that chroma key or what the BBC uniquely called colour separation overlay background. Yes.

Like quarantined away from... Yes. But then he suddenly pops up in their midst and they don't seem to know quite what to make of him the other thing about Tony Blackburn in this is he's wearing those clothes that are almost nice but not quite what he looks like is that

he's gone hunting for those sort of nice late 60s early 70s spy thriller clothes in charity shops but as was often the case he's only been able to find stuff that's kind of in that style but made for grannies so yeah and i used to get this right for a start you know there's cycles in charity shops most of the clothes in charity shops are from about 20 25 years prior to the current date so when i I was young, you'd go to a charity shop

and it was wonderful. It was like you'd have all these clothes from like 68 to 73 and you could just look fantastic. But you still had to sift because there was an awful lot of these kind of cheapo granny clothes. And you used to see a lot of would-be trendy blokes walking around dressed like a 65-year-old woman from 1974. You know, or in those sort of...

And also people forgot that suede jackets and leather jackets weren't just for trendy rock and rollers. Like, you'd get those ones with a front bit cut out to show your tie. I've got one of these. Yes. Where it's like a suede jacket with a sort of like a big square cut out of the front. So you can still, like for teachers and academics. Like you see people like Dr. Bronowski

used to wear these on TV all the time. Sybil Fawlty. Yeah. I mean, what he's wearing is he's got this kind of tweedy jacket and underneath he's got a roll neck jumper which a woolly one

a woolly roll neck jumper he must have been sweating his tits off in that studio under those lights and he must have had some pretty severe love bites on that neck there's a sense in which

the audience when you do see them with Tony they don't really think he's that special or there wasn't that you know later on in Top of the Pops when you get kids next to people like Dave Lee Travis Noel Edmonds you do see them with Tony, they don't really think he's that special. No. You know, later on in Top of the Pops, when you get kids next to people like Dave Lee Travis,

Noel Edmonds and the rest of it, they're almost sort of, you know, open-mouthed in all that they're near to these people. Yes. You get no sense of that with Tony Blackburn in this episode. And as we'll discuss later, the question is, are these kids or not? And what a song they're going to dance to, I Want You Back by the Jackson 5.

Spawned by Joe and Catherine Jackson over the 50s in Gary, Indiana, the Jackson 5 were formed on Michael Jackson's 7th birthday and were put through the local talent show mill. By 1967, they had won talent competitions at the Regal Theatre in Chicago and the Harlem Apollo and were spotted by Gladys Knight, who sent a demo tape to Barry Gordy at Motown, but he knocked them back. They eventually signed with Steel Town Records, a hometown company, and released two minor singles, Big Boy and We Don't Have To Be Over 21, in 1968. Well, that sounds a bit ominous, doesn't it?

But they were turned down... Heavy rotation on Radio 1 at the time. But they were turned down again by Motown after an audition, but Barry Gordy changed his mind and bought them out of their Steel Town contract. In October of 1969, this song, their Motown debut, was released.

Followed two months later by the debut LP, Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5. Fucking hell, Diana Ross is the David Van Day of Motown, isn't she? It was originally considered for both Gladys Knight and Diana Ross, but was selected as the perfect introduction for the Jackson 5. It's currently the US number one single, and a new entry, the highest new entry, and the only new entry this week at number

30. Well I mean what a fucking tune I mean an everlasting undying immortal classic that will still light up any floor that you play it on it's just a brilliant brilliant record and you can tell really it's such a strong song

that Berry Gordy kept it for the Jackson 5. He was absolutely adamant that they were to have it and not Gladys Knight and Diana Ross. Because anyone who was going to laugh at that song had a monster hit on their hands. It's just a brilliant record, top to bottom. Every single aspect of it.

So good that you don't notice the strangeness really of Michael Jackson singing those lyrics at his age at that time. And a song that for me pinpoints an emotion that needs writing about in songs. It's a great thing to touch upon, this sense that you've missed out on somebody and that you're just desperate to get them back and you had an opportunity and you blew it, which is what the first verse of the song is about. Coupled with the Funk Brothers just on such amazing form throughout the track, it's just, yeah.

What can you say? It's just a solid gold classic. Is this the best debut single ever? It's got to be up there, hasn't it? I mean, we see a lot of bands, a lot of bands around this time groping around for new directions because the 60s is over. There's a lot of earnestness and a lot of sort of grim drive towards the mainstream rock 70s and all the denim and the drab hair.

And then this, coming at the start of the decade, is a sign that there is going to be another 70s. And that black american music is not finding it hard to reset itself for the new era and that if you utilize all the new freedoms and new technologies just to make pop records and you don't forget what dancing really is i.e not waving your arms about in loon pants, and you keep all the old rules that actually worked, then you can move with the times quite naturally instead of having to force it.

And this, yeah, this is just obviously one of the most perfectly cut diamonds of the 70s, despite the fact that quite a lot of the singing is quite badly out of tune. Nobody ever mentions it because it doesn't fucking matter. So, I mean, the most danceable record ever, but look at the way these people are dancing to it. I mean, women must outnumber men by about 15 to 1 here.

Yeah, and they look fucking amazing. There's a lot of hot pants and there's a lot of stupidly short skirts that show off your drawers even if the wind changes, you know those kind of on the buses skirts that's actually what I've got scribbled down on this bit of paper

it says impossible Carnaby street visions of youth and beauty filmed with the utmost disrespect by a leering cameraman like Stan from On The Buttons it is frightening and I think this is a

mixture of the general public and hired models and dancers, that's what it looks like to me because there's a really big discrepancy between the look of different people some of them quite clearly have just come from, you know, Boreham Wood really big discrepancy between the look of different people. Yes, there really is. Some of them quite clearly have just come from, you know,

Boreham Wood. And then there's others who have been brought in from their Kensington flats, you know. Yeah. And that mix is reflected in the different dancing as well. Yes. The more go-go-girl type dancers you do sense were bought in for this. They're sort of like permanent motion machines. They have a dance, they stick with it, and they just do it.

Yes. Irrespective of what the rhythm of the song is. Yeah. And you see certain people who are just on settings almost. Like some of them are doing the swim, and some of them are doing the hitchhike, and some of them are doing the hully-gully and the frog and all these moves.

Whereas the less sort of resplendent looking people, in a sense, are actually dancing to the record. but you only really catch glimpses of them what you mainly get is this array of kind of yeah just frugging madness that doesn't actually seem to to you know coincide with the groove that's actually being laid down in the record i think the difference is is that some of them uh are dancing and don't give a fuck, whereas others are really aware that if they do anything a bit too frenetic, their skirts are going to go up. Yeah, but it's too late because Top of the Pops

has thoughtfully built a little gantry for them to dance on so that the cameraman can stand underneath. Yes. This is before the word upskirt had been coined yes that's basically what we're looking at here yeah um yeah the camera is a giant mirrored shoe isn't it the thing is you could you can see the logic right of the fact that there's almost no men in the audience because i guess aside from the obvious letter uh lecherous logic there's almost no men in the audience because I guess aside from the obvious lecherous logic, there's the fact that both sexes

and sexualities and so on, pretty much everyone is happy to look at attractive young women dancing. Yeah. Whereas straight men don't want to watch straight men dancing. No. They never have done and they never will.

No. But it is a little bit yeah it's um maybe it's just in retrospect the thought of certain other djs on other weeks going through these people yeah yeah yeah oh and it has to be said that the handful of blokes there to a man look like fucking shit on a stick don't they? This is what I was going to say There's a wannabe John Lennon who's just starting on his beard

There's a bloke who just genuinely looks like he's wandered in from the canteen or something He hasn't dressed up, he hasn't washed his hair Danny from Whipnail and I lookalikes, basically. Yeah.

To be honest, though, my favourite person in the crowd is there's a sort of a short-haired modette or proto-skinned girl who's obviously on speed. Yes. And the rest of them are like, you know, healthy living

or maybe they've had a little toke or something. This girl is out of her face, obviously on are like, you know, healthy living or maybe they've had a little toke or something. This girl is out of her face, obviously on like, you know, her mum's blues or something, even though it's 1970. She's going crazy with these bug eyes and mouth hanging. She's my favourite. When you look at episodes from, say, 66, you can see... You can't see tribes as such, but you can see the mob kids and you can see certain different types of kids, in a sense.

You don't really get that here, but you do in the peripheries. That girl that Taylor's on about was particularly noticeable. Two black girls at the back are particularly noticeable as well. And the guy, like... I mean, the guy with the tash,

who just looks he looks like Derek Smalls that's Final Tap basically and there's one who looks like the cover of the Joy of Sex as well and then at the end Tony Blackburn comes on and leers into the camera

and says you can get arrested for some of the moves they're making and I thought no Tony you can get arrested for some of the moves they're making. And I thought, no, Tony, you can get arrested for some of the moves your mates are making. So the following week, I Want You Back soared up to number 12 and eventually got to number two, held off the top spot by Wandering Star by Lee Marvin. Fucking British people.

The follow-up, ABC, got to number eight in June of 1970. Fucking stupid British people should have been number one. And the band would have two more top ten hits in 1970 with The Love You Save and I'll Be There, all of which would be number one in the USA. They stayed at Motown until 1975 until they rebranded as The Jacksons, scored their only UK number one in June of 1977,

which show you the way to go, and hung around as the jacksons scored their only uk number one in june of 1977 which show you the way to go and hung around throughout the 80s whenever michael was at a loose end Aren't they fabulous? You can get arrested for some of those movements they're doing there. I said it. That's the new one there from Jackson 5. And right now we've got John Lennon and Yoko out of that white bag to do their new one, which is called Instant Karma. Instant Karma. While Looker Pie Pie by The Meters plays in the background, fucking genius song,

Blackburn announces that John Lennon and Yoko Ono have climbed out of their white bags and introduces a film of instant karma by the Plastic Ono Band. Formed in 1968 when John Lennon started knobbing Yoko Ono behind his missus' back, the Plastic Ono Band was the vehicle for their collaborations and his first toe in the water for a solo career away from the Beatles. Their debut single, Give Peace a Chance, got to number two for three weeks in July of 1969, held off the top spot by Honky Tonk Women by the Rolling Stones. Instant Karma was apparently written in an hour and recorded on the same day, January 27, 1970, nine days before this edition of Top of the Pops,

with the assistance of George Harrison, Klaus Vorman, Alan White and Billy Preston and produced by Phil Spector. This is a follow-up to Cold Turkey which got to number 14 in November of 1969. It's not even scheduled for a release until Friday February the 6th, the day after this episode and there's montage footage provided by Apple Records of Lennon and Ono doing their pc pissing about thing now to me this sounds like the first song that was recorded in the 70s yeah well as soon as it comes on it's like oh like your parents have just walked into the party right it's really strange it's like only a couple of years before this was like the hottest ticket in the world and then suddenly

after i want you back it seems so even though this is a fantastic record i mean it really it's an amazing single yes it is but it suddenly seems so boring that you have to put down i want you back and attend to the narcissism of these scruffy, junky millionaire 30-somethings or nearly 30-somethings in John Lennon's case. I mean, it's horrible. And the video is clips of what they were doing at the time. There's bits from the filming of

Apotheosis, which is a Yoko Ono film where they put a camera in a hot air balloon and sent it up into the cloud. Which is just another fucking interlude film, but posing as art. Yes. And the interview that ATV did when John Lennon was Desmond Morris' choice

as man of the decade, and they wonder why he went mad. Right. And clip of them preparing to be interviewed by the journalist Gloria Emerson, which is a famous clip where she sits down with John and Yoko and tells them what most people now would tell them, that they're making fools of themselves. uh message of the beatles in favor of this sort of absurd self-righteousness and this asinine sloganeering and uh furious refusal to deal in detail because he doesn't understand

the detail of what he's talking about and will not sit down and learn it oh wait till you are imagined dog oh yeah i mean it's... But then, in response to this, he becomes very aggressive and says, well, I'm sorry, love, if you liked A Hard Day's Night and you want me to be cute, but I've grown up. And it's like...

He's like a 14-year-old who's just got into vegetarianism. It's really horrible because he was mad. At this point, he was mad. It goes a bit Chris Needham, doesn't it? Fuck you if you even think about that that kind of shit gets me down but he was completely mad

he'd broken his brain in 66, 67 from too much LSD and he was never psychologically stable again this is like you don't have to go to sort of embroidered rubbish like the Goldman book for that this is more you don't have to go to sort of embroidered rubbish like the goldman book for that this is more or less common knowledge among serious beatles fans who uh don't treat it as a

religion you know and a grown-up grown-up and realistic i mean yeah he he was never quite right again it's it's it's sad but when you see this kind of narcissistic sanctimony coupled with the relatively low intelligence, or rather the low level of actual understanding and knowledge of the world, because although he was naturally bright and obviously had an incredible imagination, he didn't really know very much, John Lennon. He wasn't educated and he had a sort of a

psychedelic incuriosity about facts and detail like he's only got his cock out on the cover of two virgins because yoko asked him to count up to 11 it's there's a lot of a lot of rubbish talks about john lennon not not least by Yoko Ono that whole John and Yoko myth their marriage was basically dead by 1973, it's just a load of crap to promote the brand I mean I'm talking

about one of my childhood heroes here but it's important to get these things kick over the statues Taylor well yes quite Neil, good song though isn't it it's a to get these things kick over the statues Taylor well yes quite Neil good song though isn't it it's a fucking great song and of course I'd say it's great

it's a great record the production on it Phil Spector's production on it the kind of 50's slap back echo he puts on everything and the big drums I think you're absolutely right in saying it sounds like the first one that feels like it's part of the 70s. And perhaps, I mean, I don't think it was a direct influence.

But in that sense of a slight 50s throwback to it, there's a sort of T-Rex-ness to this record that I've always liked. And you know Slade will listen to this and go, no way up. Maybe so, maybe so, yeah. And you can bet it was a direct influence on Bolan as well. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean,

it's always been a surprising and sort of startling sounding record for what, I mean, Phil Spector did, and then I suppose this was the audition to get Phil Spector on the Let It Be album. Yes. So, but like I say, I mean,

as ever with any of Lennon's work, you have to kind of balance the musical pleasures you can get with the fact that he's just an utterly sort of terrible, not terrible human being, that's a bit harsh, but difficult to stomach, let's put it that way, the sanctimony, as Taylor was mentioning. But I mean, yeah, when it all comes down, I mean, it's like how many people in pop groups

are that smart or that good you know i mean it's for all i talk about this sort of you know feel good solipsistic degraded uh dishonest idea of radicalism you know this sort of which led directly to the intellectual and moral degeneracy of the i mean i, I sound like William F. Buckley, you know what I mean? Basically, when John Lennon opens his mouth and sings the chorus on this record, who gives a fuck? It's amazing. But the actual film...

I mean, you'd sooner want to see him with a band there, wouldn't you? This song, Instant Karma, would always turn up on John Lennon best-ofs as the years went by and I was surprised as a teenager to learn that the Beatles are still sort of extant at this time when this song came out

for me this was always one of the first of his solo ones and consequently the time that the Beatles are over so it's kind of a surprise also in the video to see Paul McCartney appear because he is in there somewhere. Have you seen the full length of the film of the balloon trip Taylor? Does it get any better than the very few snippets

that we see here? No it gets worse because it starts off the balloon is in this nice little market town near his house and then it takes off and then you just see clouds for about you you know, for the duration of the film.

It's not that interesting. It's only, like we were saying, the magic of that Peter, Paul and Mary clip where most people hadn't been on an aeroplane so it was quite interesting

to look at. Most people hadn't been up in the sky so, you know, they might want to look at some clouds for a bit. But no. By the the way if you put this on the video playlist right if anyone needs to know anything about john and yoko from this period and and what a complete disaster and an insult to the intelligence they were

there's a clip on youtube, which I think is titled John and Yoko look tired during interview, which is them being interviewed by a German or a Dutch film crew or something on the set of Let It Be. So it'll be about a year before this. So they were having lots of fun there. Yeah, and they're out of their faces on smack.

And halfway through, John Lennon has to go off and puke. And I can't do it justice. You just have to watch it. The sub-needhamness of it is beyond belief. No offence, Chris, if you're listening, but you know what I'm talking about, right? It's like kids. They're like kids, you know.

But kids who, certainly in L know but but but kids who certainly in lennon's case who've spent the last 10 years being told they're the king of the fucking universe you know it's horrible to watch horrible just to watch a a rotting brain what's also kind of odd i mean the time frame that you mentioned al that this i mean this is nine days after it was recorded um you know and it's released 10 days after it's recorded that's staggering really i mean i know now we're used to grind tracks perhaps being released on the day that they're recorded but at that time they sound like it yeah they do sound like it that's possibly what's good about them but you know you just you just think a cumbersome industry that takes time 10 days um, that is, I'm not saying impressive,

but it's startling how quickly they got that record out there. I mean, especially for something that just still does sound electrifying. It's amazing what you can do when you own the record company and your word is the word of God. Yeah, and you've laid off the smack for a bit. But this is him making a power move, isn't it? Yeah. As far as the...

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Television audience of the day will be concerned that the Beatles are still a thing. Yeah, they only exist on paper.

But what's quite interesting is after the Beatles have effectively stopped recording as a band, really John and Yoko have been off making those kind of charlatan avant-garde albums, where it really is just a load of stupid noises, you know. And Paul McCartney's off recording his solo album, and he's just got the four-track or eight-track machine or whatever it is in his front room, and he's just doing the lovely Linda and all this sort of stuff. And he's not taking it seriously.

But what's really funny is then instant instant karma comes i mean cold turkey had been out before but cold turkey is not a commercial record it's no an amazing record but it's not really a pop song as such it's it's obviously quite challenging and stuff but then instant karma comes out and uh suddenly mccartney goes oh right yeah i'd better record maybe i'm amazed and he goes into abbey road studios and uh does a couple of tracks for his first solo album uh that are recorded properly and are um fucking amazing um and it's like yeah paul you know if you just tried that bit harder for the whole album, it might not have been such crap. I mean, what I'm familiar with with Instant Carver was not this video.

It was the Top of the Pops appearances that presumably were actually the week after. That's right. Where John is kind of freshly shorn, isn't he? He's got a short haircut. So Top of the Pops, still not too big, or still not irrelevant to the Beatles, or former Beatles.

The following week, while it was still outside the charts, Lennon and Ono played the song in the Top of the Pop studio, the first live appearance by any Beatle of Top of the Pop since 1966 and Paperback Writer. The week after that, it entered the charts at number seven and nudged up to number five, its highest position. Two months later, the Beatle split up and the Plastic Ono

band LP was released in November. The follow-up single to Instant Karma, Power to the People got to number 7 in April of 1971. You're on the Rue de la Plastigona band. They're a genuine pair of kneecap warmers. Are those the sort of things you wear down Carnaby Street? I don't think so. You don't think so? I think they're absolutely magnificent.

Anyway, we're going to have much more easy for you right now. A number called Everything I've Got. And this, of course, comes from Billy Preston. All that I've got I want you to know Every day of my life I'm gonna give it to you The camera zooms in on the knees of a female audience member wearing a pair of woolly bands with the letter T stitched into them.

Blackburn asks her if they're the sort of thing she wears on Carnaby Street. She says no. Looking suitably chastised, he introduces All That I've Got by Billy Preston. Born in Houston in 1946, Billy Preston was a self-taught organist who joined Little Richard's band at the age of 16, where he first met the Beatles in Hamburg in the early 60s. After joining Sam Cooke's band and releasing the solo LP's 16-year-old soul and the most exciting organ ever, he became a member of Ray Charles' band.

In 1969, while the Beatles were in disarray over the recording of the late B-LP George Harrison linked up with Preston after a Ray Charles gig and invited him over to Abbey Road to help them finish the LP off. He was part credited with the Beatles on the Get Back single, the only non-Beatle to bag

a credit on an official Beatle release This is the follow up to That's The Way God Planned It, which got to number 11 in August of 1969. It was only released six days ago on

Apple Records, so it's not in the chart. As we've seen, Billy Preston played on Instant Karma, so do you think this appearance is part of a deal to

get John Lennon on top of the pubs? Probably a tie-in, yeah, in some regard. It's the only way of explaining it because i mean for me it's fairly mediocre record i didn't know that he played with ray charles but that explains a lot because this is ultimately a ray charles tune it sounds like a ray charles tune

it is just slightly funked up yes um billy preston for me means little apart from not actually his work with the beat, but the stuff he plays on Stones records at the time. He plays on Sticky Fingers, he's on Can't You Hear Me Knocking, and he's on I Got The Blues. He plays some great stuff on those things. The only moment to be salvaged from this, for me,

because it's fairly dull, was the moment where he steps to the mic and he steps away from the keyboard, and he does some kind of cod James Brown moves. He does the funky chicken and he does a few other things. I think the term is socking it to him, Neil. That's right, sorry. Correct terminology.

But yeah, that was a great moment. Other than that, fairly dull, I think. Yeah, it's sort of straining for the same euphoria as the Jackson 5, but it's much more trad and churchy. So it just doesn't seem vital and modern. But at least we get a performance. I mean, he puts in a hell of a... I mean, this massive chicken dance,

which just comes out of nowhere. And it's like... Also, it was nice to see him leave his instrument for the last 30 seconds and have that little cover, because it's like the drummer out of Imagination when he used to come out from down the road. But yeah, it's hard to know what to say about this record, because it's just what it is.

It's a very straight sort of pop gospel type song. And it's effective, but it doesn't do anything unusual, and it doesn't really let loose at any point, which is the same problem as a lot of stuff on Apple. If you listen to pretty much everything that was released on Apple, it's all quite slick and proficient, but none of it's really very remarkable. It's like, as A&R men, the Beatles didn't really have a clue.

No, I mean, there's nothing here that Georgie Fane couldn't have done, really, is there? Apart from the chicken dance. But it's not dislikable. It's sort of because Billy Preston's sunny personality does kind of come across. You know what I mean? His personality is so sunny that he could walk into the Let It Be sessions and make the Beatles smile. Yes.

In fact, he kept that sunny personality right up until he was arrested for sexual assault in the early 1990s. The only other effect on this performance is that there's some kind of chroma key on the keyboard, making it look like he's caged some girls underneath it. That bit looked great. You just see some legs.

That bit looked absolutely great. Not decapitated, but people cut in half basically reflecting in the bottom of his keyboard yes but ultimately it's a record made by a musician and i think that's what's most dull about it and it seems really out of place in 1970 even though it's early 1970 well i mean in comparison to the jackson five that we've heard earlier it sounds impossibly dated so the following week and for every week since all that i've got failed to make the charts he would just fail to make the top 40 again without

a space in september of 1972 and he wouldn't make the charts again until january of 1980 when he got to number two with with you i'm born again with syrita and billy preston died in 2006 and yeah all the things that Taylor said earlier Once again, we go straight into the next song, which is Hitchining a ride by vanity fair formed in rochester in 1966 the avengers recorded demos with joe meet before changing their name to the sages and then vanity fair spelt f-a-r-e their debut single a cover of the stingrays i live for the sun got to number 20 in october of and after two flop singles, they got to number

8 in August of 1969 with Early In The Morning. This is a follow up to that song and it's up from number 23 to number 16. Gentlemen, comment. I vacillate between sort of liking it, almost loving it. It's got an odd ska

kind of feel, an almost reggae thing because of the choppy guitar and i like the beach boys yeah like harmonies as well but there was something in the performance that made me resent it slightly and that was just the amount of smirking that was going on um as if this pop froth was kind of beneath vanity fair they're happy to have a hit but you know they kind of wanted it to be known that they were slightly taken by the piss. Intrigued also by the lead singer appears to be wearing a pinafore dress.

Yes. Yeah, the outfit's horrible. I wonder what colour they were. I think tangerine or something. Yeah. And not for the first time, there's also a lot of choice sort of black onyx signet rings.

Yes. Being displayed as well. The recorder presumably being there because they heard Manfred Mann do it on Mighty Quinn. Yes. They thought that'd be a good idea. So I'm not sure. Again, like with the Barry, what was his name? Barry.

Ryan. Barry Ryan tune. Can't figure out if I like this or not. No, I don't. There's a lot of this stuff hanging around in sort of late 60s, early 70s, filling a space, you know, in between 60s pop and glam. It's bands that aren't quite proper bands,

either because they're session men put together or because they're just a bit creepy and sort of sub-rock and white bread. But this is no Love Grows grows it's no son of my father it's not even a moldy old dough it's certainly not it's sports and social club music you know what i mean it certainly is isn't it yeah that's exactly what i was thinking played by yeah played by some geeks like this is what serious rock fans and jazz heads and classical music buffs think all pop music is um and the singer has that same worried smile as the lead singer out of shawaddy

do you know what i mean that's that kind of sort of smile and they're dressed like a church band. And I don't... Hitching a ride. Hitching a ride has got that sort of funky sort of boho connotations. It's like... Yeah. No, hitching a ride is not something these people have ever done. You wouldn't hitch a ride this close to the middle of the road. It's just...

Nice. No, they are horrible, really. And also, why is it spelt Vanity Fair, F-A-R-E? It's one of those things where you think, well, there doesn't seem to be a pun or anything. No. Do you remember that group Manson in the 90s? Yes. Where it was like Manson, but with M-A-N-S-U-N.

Yeah. It was always like, did they just not know how to spell it? Is this just a mistake? Because otherwise, what... i don't know yeah this is this song is co-written by in fact it's one of two songs on this top of the pops co-written by the imbecile who wrote how do you do it the rich imbecile who wrote yes how Do You Do It for the Beatles. Well, no, for whoever, but it was for the Beatles, and they turned it down, and Jerry the Pacemakers did it.

You're talking about Mitch Murray here, aren't we? Mitch Murray, yeah. Ultra hack, yeah. Never wrote a note worth whistling. Yeah. A thumb goes up, a car goes by, it's nearly 1am and here am I hitching a ride

hitching a ride is essentially he wants to get over to his missus you know transport links in Rochester

yeah not people have horses but I mean social club you were right there Taylor

I was reaching for opportunity in Oxband oh yeah that too yeah matching uniforms yeah Social Club. You were right there, Taylor. I was reaching for Opportunity Knox Band. Oh yeah, that too. Matching uniforms during a time when matching uniforms had gone out of fashion. Yeah, and you can imagine them auditioning for the committee.

Yes. I mean, it's very much like that. So, the following week Hitch and Arrive dropped four places to number 20, haha, but then jumped back up to number 16 the following week,itchin' a Ride dropped four places to number 20 haha but then jumped back up to number 16 the following week but no further after two more singles that failed to make the UK charts they concentrated on the European market and fell apart in 1975 thumbs down It's a good ride and that of course comes from

Ballaston Fair. Okay, here's a lovely record It's sent to the number 25 this week from Judy Collin It's called Both Sides Now and here to dance to it are the lovely Pans People Thank you. I've looked at clouds that way Blackburn, superimposed on chroma key again, introduces Pans People as they dance to Both Sides Now by Judy Collins. Born in Seattle in 1939, Judy Collins spent the 60s as a folk singer with a reputation for introducing her lesser-known peers to international attention, being one of the first singers to cover Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and Joni Mitchell. Both sides now, the first commercially recorded version of the Joni Mitchell song was actually recorded in 1967

and when it was released in the US in 1968, it became a top 10 hit and won the Grammy for Best Folk Performance in 1969. As she's not knocking about in the country at the moment, Pants people have been drafted in for this song, which is up from number 28 to number 25. Song or dance routine, chaps?

I've got little to say about the song, to be honest with you. Dance routine, however, I have got something to say. Shall we start with the song then and then move on to the important bit? Yes, let's. All female sung Joni Mitchell covers are like all male sung Dylan covers. In that they're softer and worse and somehow seem to be missing part of the point.

Even if the person doing the singing was perfectly clued into what was going on. It just doesn't capture what was going on it just doesn't capture what was on the original the only one who could ever pull it off with joni mitchell was sandy denny who does a very convincing i don't know where i stand on the radio sessions album right she sandy denny had interesting things of her own to say so she didn't bother doing anymore but um yeah it's weird, this record. It's got that tinkling music box folk rock backing that you get on a lot of old Elektra Records stuff from the late 60s.

It's on the first Tim Buckley albums and some Monkees stuff as well and Stone Ponies. And it's a very 60s sound. And as Joni Mitchell herself prepared to reflect and define the 1970s, this seems like a record that's stuck in a recent but suddenly very distant past. But it's a three-year-old song, isn't it, almost? Yeah, and it's not one of her best. Joni Mitchell's one of those people where her best-known songs are among her worst.

Yeah, Big Yellow Taxi. Yeah and yeah big yellow taxi and this one it's not really what she's all about there's a sort of tweeness of expression um and really it was as soon as she dropped that tweeness of expression that uh the real stuff started to happen yeah a joni Joni Mitchell cover, I mean, it's essentially pointless because it's not got Joni Mitchell on it. And it's Joni's toughness that's crucial to sort of the enjoyment of her music. So this is lacking that. And I mean, it's an all right song,

but she would go on to make much better ones. Donald Trump's completely fucked this song now, hasn't he? Anyway, less of that nonsense. Come on, let's talk fucked this song now, hasn't he? Anyway, less of that nonsense. Come on, let's talk about this performance. Yeah, we've got Pans people looking like most of my primary school teachers. And they've got floral maxi dresses and brown leather Victorian knee boots, which has really popped. You look slightly ahead of its time, in fact.

Even though it's in black and white, you know they're brown, don't you? Yeah. Although it loses quite a lot from being in black and white because when you look at the intricacy of the greys in those patterned clothes and the backdrop, but then that would have been 85-90% of the audience watching in black and white.

That's right. It's a bit of a fuck you. It is, isn't it? I've got got down there it looks like a catwalk show for the latest laura ashley collection yeah it's a lot of flouncing about in in dresses that cover up you know the things that the dads want to see dads have been let down big time here haven't they they have been a bit um yeah i mean but then again know, just looking at the audience, I mean, I think there's been a lot of daddisfaction this episode. I would argue that they're actually midi dresses.

I don't think they're maxi dresses. Oh, midi, maxi, what's the fucking difference? When you look at this, it looks like a load of mums. It looks like a load of sort of our mums. But, you know, Those dresses were... The only thing I could claim for them is that in a sense, women who wore those dresses

at the time were separating themselves off from their mums. Because their mums would have still been in twincet and pearls and stuff like that. Or miniskirts. But I think you can draw a direct line from this to Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.

Of course, you have to wait until 1977 for that, but it has a little touch. Yeah, I mean, one thing worth noting here, pants people are six-handed in this one, because Flick Colby's currently in the role of player manager, isn't she? Oh, really? Ah, which one's Flick? I don't know. The one in the long dress.

It all seems quite benign, Ah, which one's Flick? I don't know. The one in the long dress. It all seems quite benign because, you know, they're all kind of like proper young girls about town, but there's something about this sort of weird, oldie Englishness that if this was happening

out in the country, you'd start to get a little bit nervous. Do you know what I mean? You start to feel like Edward Woodward dressed as a policeman. Yes, yes, yes. Frighteningly looking for the salmon

of knowledge. But as I say, watching this in black and white is completely pointless because it's like a riot of grey. I bet if this was in colour, it'd be like a Stan Brakhage film, if that means anything to anyone. But yeah, as it is, you feel a bit cut off from it

and the actual routines just like a load of mums walking about themselves waiting for the kids to be chucked out of school isn't it but then all coming together in a circle as though Edward Woodward's in the middle of it yes well there is a bit of that appeal to in a circle as though Edward Wood was in the middle of it.

Yes. Well, there is a bit of that appeal to that folksiness, that kind of rural England sense. Maybe it was just my school being odd, but did you ever do... It probably was just my school being odd. Were you ever taught... We had lessons in barn dancing

at my school. Yeah, country dancing. We had lessons in barn dancing, and of course Yeah, country dancing. What? We had lessons in barn dancing and of course nobody wanted to do them because it involved touching girls. I mean, we were young. What I mean by that is obviously if we were 15 or something

that would be a different kind of fish. How old were you at the time? I think I was about 9 or 10. Right, and what was it about the West Midlands that thought that kids of that age needed to know about barn dancing? I think, I think personally it was tied in with a sort of vague hippiness

that also gave birth to things like the woodcraft folk and things like that. Right. A kind of attempt to recover things that they felt were being lost. But, yeah, inexplicably, every week for about an hour, we did barn dancing in our school hall. This is what it's reminding me of. Yeah. With us it was called country dancing and it would alternate with music

and movement. Yeah we did music and movement. Pretend to be a tree and all that. Yeah we were more progressive than your lot. It's just all dreamt up by teachers with a CND sticker on the back of their Volkswagen Beetle. You know what I mean? Atomcraft 9 Dank

the only thing I can remember of this was we did a play or something one summer when I was about 8 which involved a chimps tea party and it was to the medley of Irish folk music by Steel Eye Span, can't remember what it was called

and they got about, there was about 8 kids doing it but they only had about four monkey masks but luckily the local texico garage was doing a promotion where if your dad bought a couple of gallons of petrol you get this really thin card planet of the apes mask so you'd have you'd have these kids looking like soldiers in Planet of the Apes, dancing around, pretending to drink tea out of the pot. But yeah, 70s were a very fucking strange time, weren't they? You wouldn't be able to do musical movement lessons now.

I mean, to start as the dress code for those. I just remember doing those lessons in my vest and pants. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, vest and pants. But at some point in the 70s being in vest and pants went from being an expression of freedom to a punishment. Because forgetting your kit

prior to that had been a way of getting out of games. That's all it was. We need to return to vest and pants being an instrument of self-expression. But not for me because I'm too old for that shit and I look fucking horrible. So the following week, both sides now would nudge up to number 23 and would get as high as number 14. The follow-up, a cover of Amazing Grace, would get to number 5 in February of 1972

and spent 42 weeks in the top 40 and her final chart appearance came in 1975 when her cover of Sending the Clowns got into number 6. She also had a turbulent affair with Stephen Stills. Yes. Yes she did. That was fun. He seems like a nice man

doesn't he yes from Judy Collins dance by pants people okay about a couple of weeks ago the very first dance Congress when it was Vernon. Here she is dancing to this lovely record. Tony, not cramming any women into his face as would be the style in future episodes of Top of the Pops, announces that the winner of a previous dancing competition, Cheryl Vernon, is going to do a turn for us in the following film, described by Blackburn as this lovely record. It's actually called Wedding Bell Blues by The Fifth Dimension.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1965 and originally called The Versatiles, The Fifth Dimension. Formed in Los Angeles in 1965 and originally called The Versatiles, The Fifth Dimension were a vocal group who were produced by Bones Howe, backed by The Wrecking Crew, and recorded songs written by Jimmy Webb and Burt Bacharach. It wasn't until 1967 that they broke the American charts with the Jimmy Webb song Up, Up and Away, which got to number one in America, but they did nothing here until May of 1969 when they got to

number 11 with a mash-up of Aquarius and Let the Sunshine In from the musical Hair. This song which was number one for three weeks in America in November of 1969 is a cover of a 1966 Laura Nairo tune. Coincidentally the singer of this version Marilyn Marilyn McCoo, is engaged to fellow band member Billy Davis. So from that disappointment, I think the balance has been restored in this, hasn't it? Taylor, would you like to describe this film to us?

Well, first of all, before it starts, there's a girl sat next to Tony Blackburn who's either been at her mum's mandrax or is looking out for Apollo 13. Yes. Because I've never seen anything like it. Or she's just trying to zone out Tony Blackburn.

But she still seems happier than the girl who's won the dancing competition and got to have her own film of her dancing on top of the pop star. Yeah. Because she seems so pissed off to be having to do this. It might just be that she's got a sulky face or she's trying to follow the rule that beauty shouldn't smile. She's a bit Pog Spice, isn't she, this girl?

Odour Cheryl. Very sulky. I mean, a lot of it is just a projection of a publicity shot of the fifth dimension onto her naked, undulating stomach. Yes. Possibly because they couldn't get her to look at anything other than like a slapped ass um the best bit is when is when there's a thing of like it's it's a shot of her lying on her back filmed from above with stuff moving around her face it's basically it's like

the video to sledgehammer yes sort of 15 years early but it just looks like someone with a fan blowing flower petals all over them, she hates it, you can see her face going like oh god what's this, these things going in my eyes, what is this I mean she can dance and she looks good but

she's not Ms Charisma and yeah the whole thing's a bit depressing. The bit when the petals are flying on her face and they reverse it, don't they? There's a bit where it goes backwards. A bit like the opening credits of Tomorrow's World, but with kind of like a Dave Lee Travis-style beard

and hairstyle of flowers. And they turn a fucking industrial fan on her, don't they? They do. The reverse bits work though they work like a sort of my bloody valentine video or something like that but actually i mean taylor mentioned earlier stan brakage was it that yeah you know a name i didn't i actually have that written down here for this because it knows odd coincidence but it again a moment of just i'm not saying they're creating any great artistic work here but just yeah just giving because it knows odd coincidence. But again, a moment of just, I'm not saying they're creating any great artistic work here,

but just, yeah, just giving them five minutes to be experimental. I don't think we'd ever see that again later on Top of the Pops, to be like this. I mean, even imagining this in two years' time on Top of the Pops, you cannot imagine it. It wouldn't happen. No. In about a year's time or something, Mick Rock will make the video

for Life on Mars, which is an amazing video. It's not similar to this, but these are a load of close-up shots of Bowie looking astonishing. And Top of the Pops refused to screen it because it was just a bit too unsettling. And yet, a matter of a year before,

this, which is unsettling, actually. It's floral but cocky isn't it? Because of her unfriendly like Taylor said, she looks really pissed off unfriendly and it gives it a really odd vibe I think. You can see why

you can see why Bill is as in the song, is a little bit reluctant to tie the knot Yes definitely yeah. Well she's standing as in the song, is a little bit reluctant to tie the knot. Yes, definitely, yeah. Well, she's standing outside a church wearing a wedding veil, a crop top, a pair of drawers with a fringy belt, and, you know, standard issue go-go white boots. And she's basically got two bunches of flowers

and she's just madly waving them around with a face like a smacked arse. I mean, it is the kind of outfit that, I don't know, you can imagine George Best's wedding looking a bit like this. And you can imagine her having that very same expression after she got married to George Best and he fucked off, you know, making a big pyramid of champagne glasses

or, you know, shagging anything that moved. The whole thing would have been massively transformed if she'd have cracked a smile. But it's the massive hostility to the universe that comes across. That's the most palpable thing you get. I find that quite attractive in women though. I've got to admit.

Yeah, that sort of dead-eye contempt for whoever is pointing a camera at them or whoever is staring at them. Yeah, it's a dead-eye contempt for whoever is pointing a camera at them or whoever is staring at them. Yeah, it's a good thing. It works. But it's still preferable to the actual, the actual official video for this song

is that band, Fifth Dimension, on a stage like an Ed Sullivan type stage. Yes, and it was Ed Sullivan as well. Right, I see. And the singer is singing this song at the bill who's mentioned it, like you say, was in the band. The rest of the band haven't got anything to do.

So what they have to do for the entire song's duration is stand around doing that, hey, what's going on? Yes. Just kind of mess their arms about vaguely. So preferable to that, but still a very strange little artefact. Yeah, and one thing that needs to be mentioned, that obviously she won the dancing competition two weeks before,

so the following week, they decided to pick this song to make a film about, and in the interim period, the song's actually dropped down two places in the charts. No, three places. It's gone down from number 25 to number 28.

So, yeah, let's talk about the song. I think this song's fucking brilliant i love it i've never heard it before and it's like this is fucking all right this is actually like this version a bit more than the laura nero original because it's yes uh oh i said her name wrong dinner laura nero for years i i only found out about a year ago that it's not oh well there we go then i only found out just now thanks so i think mission to explain people i think i like this version more because it's even though the fifth dimension are kind of horrible uh because it's less yeah less self-aware and it is what uh her version is trying to be you know which is like

a sort of a commercial soul track um i mean i wouldn't have liked to have heard them having a go at Poverty Train or you know a lot of her other songs but I think they do this a little bit better than she does this is also incidentally the second of those records mentioned in the Dex's Midnight Runners song that sweet record

Wedding Bell Blues lovely I mean to me my knowledge of the fifth dimension is Up, Up and Away, which was essentially Sly and the Family Stone for Knicks and voters. But this, I think, is extremely

decent pop. It's a great song by Laura Nero. Nero, I think. Right, I see. I think it's their third Laura... I'm going to say Nero, Iero I think I think it's their third Laura I'm going to

say Nero I'm sorry it's Force of Abbott I've never properly investigated her because I hear such great

things about New York Tenderberry and other albums and I think I had one of her albums on Vida but I've never properly dug her

out what should I listen to Taylor yeah well a lot of her stuff she developed a lot her early her early records uh kind of like this like uh a little bit more sort of uh like a

neurotic carol king you know and then by the time you get to like new york tenderberry it's sort of spaced out a bit like a lot of female singer songwriters even uh were sort of um following joni mitch Mitchell in that thinking, oh, wow, you can spread out a bit and do something a bit more individualistic and a bit weirder. She's not one of my absolute favourites, but I think you'd really like her, yeah.

Okay. Do you think pants people are a bit fucked off about this development? I think with their perma smiles, they're going to be looking at this thinking, this is not competition. So the following week, Wedding Bell Blues jumped back up to number 16,

its highest position. Well done, Cheryl. But it was the last hit they'd have in the UK, and the band eventually split up in 1975, when Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, now married, went off on their own, and they'd have a number 7 hit in April of 1977 with You Don't Have To Be A Star. Thank you. By tomorrow, you'll be home again All my sorrow will be over then

Once again, we go straight into the next tune, By Tomorrow, by Sandy Shaw. Born in Dagenham in 1947, Sanda Goodrich was a part-time model who was spotted by Adam Faith at a charity event and signed to Pi Records in 1964. Her debut single flopped, but the second, a cover of Always Something There To Remind Me,

got to number one in October of 1964. She scored another number one in June of 1965 with Long Live Love, and after a series of diminishing returns, jumped on the Eurovision bandwagon in 1967 with Puppet On A String, which she won and got a third number one with it. After a number six hit in April in 1969 with Monsieur DuPont her chart career was on the wane again and this single is the follow-up to Think It All Over which only got to number 42 in May of 1969. I mean the first thing I noticed as the camera panned in is that one of the blokes

has decided to have a go at chatting up some of the ladies there and he's, as is the norm, in top of the pops, he's having no look at all, is he? Yeah, good luck with that. They look a bit business class, those. Yes. So this song, I mean, Sandy Shaw, I mean, the first thing

that sprang to mind, seeing her rig out, Flake advert gypsy. She looks like one of the hippies in Carry On Camping. Yes, she really does. Terrible. This thrown together, and all the girls in the audience, like, you know, the punters are wearing this really on-the-money stuff for early 1970. Like, they've got these 20s styles that we're in,

or those amazing sort of sex kit and go-go outfits. Then Sandy comes on and she looks like a hippie from, like a sitcom from 1982. Yes. You know what I mean? Yes. Just this sort of really, really bad.

Like Ken's girlfriend in Citizen Smith or something like that. I like a scarf that's got a kind of Bieber look to it but everything else is a bit of Tara Ben Tovin for me so yeah

but I was intrigued as to what people thought about this song do you mean us or people in general you, you, you two because I liked it this song because... Do you mean us or people in general? You, you, you, you two. Because I, I liked it and I've got a feeling I might be on my own here. I kind of thought it had a nice sort of, it's obviously going for that kind of dusty Springfield. Oh, you bastard. I was going to say

that. Sorry, man, but it's going for that. Not entirely successfully. It is. It is a Mitch Murray tune, but I kind of liked it. I'm intrigued to know why you don't like it if you don't like it. Well, my first impression was, hmm, somebody's been listening to Dusty in Memphis. Yeah, very much. But again, it's the, you know, I mean, I remember the first chart music we did

and Cella Black was on. And we were talking about, you know, all these kind of like British female 60s icons having a really tough time of it in the 70s and I think we can already see it here two months into the new decade Sandy Shaw's like oh god I've got to evolve

I've got to mature and what we're hearing here is two Ronnies pop isn't it? Yeah I think the problem with it, all our early singles have got that coldness and starkness that you got in a British studio in those days. Yeah. And it really works for them.

But, yeah, trying to move with the times. You know, Dusty went to Memphis and she could pull it off because she had the voice for it. Yeah. But, first of all, Sandy's voice isn't really suited to this music. It's suited to that brassy kind of British music. And secondly, this is very audibly not recorded in Memphis. This is a bunch of British session men in Pi Studios.

Dusty in Mansfield. Yeah, he's trying to sound Soulful and groovy but You know instead of playing that sort of Mod schlager which is what her early Stuff is The one good thing on this record Is the bassline Which is these sort of grinding cogwheels

Of this very Sort of Very loud in the mix harsh bassline But yeah it's It's yeah, it's all right. Yeah, it's a nice enough song, but it's not fit for top of the pops. No, possibly not. I mean, the thing is...

This is a problem with female artists of that era. The women that came up in the early 70s were all American singer-songwriters. Yeah. And your Dusty Springfields and your Cella Blacks and your Sandy Shores are reliant on songwriters. Yeah. And your Dusty Springfields and your Cella Blacks and your Sandy Shores are reliant on songwriters. Yeah, and Sandy fell

between two stalls a bit because if you're just a singer at this point, you either have to go down the Dusty and Memphis route and, you know, really sing. Or, you know, like Lulu. Well, Lulu's career died for a bit

and then she sort of came back with these sort of doing like Man with a Golden Gun and stuff like these really sort of slightly camp punchy songs and Sandy can't really do either of those she's sort of a woman out of time yeah I mean because those early

songs are fucking brilliant by this time what she probably needs is another sort of successful production line in a sense I mean, because those early songs are fucking brilliant. Oh, yeah. They are. By this time, what she probably needs is another sort of successful production line, in a sense. I know what you mean. There is this thing whereby if they're not singer-songwriter-y types, what do they do in the 70s?

And the most successful sort of female performances that I've seen on Top of the Pops in the 70s tend to be either emerging from the Motown stable or they're emerging from the reggae sort of stable over in Jamaica

so things like Susan Cadigan and stuff like that that we talked about in the past that works because she is kind of searching for a role here

but you know at the beginning of it it's not introduced is it and it goes in straight in I mean that to me as a Top of the Pops watcher for many

years, is still a massively unsettling thing, not to know the name. It is, isn't it? Not to see the name. And I'm wondering whether it's a reflection of perhaps Top of the Pops was still considered almost an extension of the Radio 1 family in a way. It kind of reflects more of a

not a radio sensibility, but this thing where I guess now and then, DJs at the time would play one record and then play another, and they wouldn't necessarily say exactly what it was. So maybe it's an extension of that, I don't know. So this performance did absolutely nothing for the song and it failed to make the charts. Sandy Shaw would never trouble the charts again until May of 1984,

when she was backed by the non-cuntish 75% of the Smiths for a cover of Hand in Glove. However, she would spend the 70s popping up on various TV shows such as The Good Old Days and an appearance in 1972 on an unnamed BBC show where she performed the most

cod reggae song ever about being a black woman who lived in Clapham. You've heard this, haven't you chaps? What's it called? I haven't heard that. You've not heard this? No. It's cod reggae in batter with white sauce.

by tomorrow there from sandy shore and before that we have the fifth dimension here's a record that shot up to the number 13 sound this week beautiful one from the temptations i can't get next to you hold it everybody hold it hold it listen Blackburn pops up in front of an op-art kaleidoscope background and introduces Can't Get Next To You by The Temptations. Formed in Detroit in 1960 as The Primes, The Temptations signed to Motown on a side label in 1961, but it wasn't until David Ruffin joined the group in 1963 that they got moved on to the main label. They scored a number one hit in the US with My Girl, which only got to number 43 over here the following year, and they had a run of hits in the US throughout the 60s,

but by 1967, David Ruffin started going around thinking he was Summit, demanding that he be chauffeured around in a mink-lined limousine and that he get a name credit a la Diana Ross and the Supremes. And he was sacked. In 1968,

inspired by the rise of Sly and the Family Stone, the Temptations switched to a psychedelic soul route and they recorded the LP Diana Ross and the Supremes join the temptations fucking diana ross again and a track from that lp i'm gonna make you love me got to number three in the uk in february of 1969 they had their first uk top 10 hit on their own in april of that year when get ready a track recorded in 1966 got to number 10 this is the follow-up to Cloud Nine, which got to number 15 in September of 1969,

and it's up from number 20 to number 13. Okay, it's a shame it's... I can't get next to you, actually, because out of the runner singles that The Temptations had at the time, it's probably... I mean, it seems strange calling it a weak link because it's still a great record,

but when you think about the singles they were about to unleash like psychedelic shack and ball of confusion i mean what a year ball of confusion and just my imagination in that year and then next year of course popper was a rolling yeah what a fucking astonishing set of singles that was and any temptation is best of really is is you know i wouldn't consider anyone i hate that i don't consider you music fun if you don't listen to this but fuck me those are some of the most amazing singles ever um this song i like the fact that it kind of showcases each individual temptation uh their sort of individual vocal style which is always nice and anyone into hip-hop of course when they hear the intro to this

record is straight in the middle of night in the living bay sets uh by public enemy and temptations are an absolute sample gold mine for this but uh i'm for i wouldn't say it's a bad song but considering what surrounds it what surrounds it what came before and what came after you know in a matter of months they're going to drop all the confusion and it's just that record is just fucking astonishing yeah in comparison this is a bit more conventional, a bit less psychedelic than they would go on to be. And Papa Was a Rolling Stone, which is about a year away from here,

is still, I think, one of the most staggering records ever made. This full version is up there with Isaac Hayes' productions from the time. So, yeah, great band. I will always love the Temptations but this is possibly the weak link in their singles of that year yeah I mean the thing that struck me from that introduction was how little success they had in the UK in the 60s yeah I think part of the problem for the Temptations is that they were always the third best of the Motown male vocal groups which still makes them incredibly good but

there's a sense in which they're wearing shameful bronze you know what I mean yeah this has never been one of my favourites and these are more outfits that really don't work in black and white and I always recoil from float on

type vocal arrangements where singers with differently pitched voices introduce themselves in turn it's always a bit chicken in a basket but yeah I mean the temptations they're amazing but and as a live performance this is great because they're battling against the BBC orchestra here

aren't they? You can definitely hear that there's a moment of total non-syncness where it all falls apart, really. And then the lead singer just grabs it by the scruff of the neck and gets it back. So the following week, I Can't Get Next To You would drop one place to number 40. For fuck's sake, man.

They'd probably flown all the way on that plane that was leaving on a jet plane. Driven past some mad fucking woman waving some flowers about outside a church to go on top of the pubs for nothing. The follow-up, Psychedelic Shack, would only make it to number 33 in June of this year, but they would get to number 7 in October with Ball of Confusion and number 8 with Just My Imagination in July of 1971.

They would keep going right through the 70s and would score a number 12 hit with Treat Her Like a Lady in November of 1984. There it is, From the Temptations. Here's a guy who's come all the way from America, specifically for the opening of a brand new film called Butch Cassidy and the Sundowners, in which he sings this particular number. So here's the original version,

which has been top of the American hip-hop parade for quite some time. It isn't quite there now, but it's been there for a number of times. Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head from B.J. Thomas. CHEERING While The Horse by Cliff Nobles plays in the background, there you go, there's your third reference to Dex's Midnight Runners, Blackburn points out that the next act has flown over from America

specifically for the opening of the new film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundowners. Fucking hell. Everything wrong. Yeah. At least he didn't say David Cassidy and the Sundowners. You know, you've got to give him that. And the song

he introduces is Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head by B.J. Thomas. Born in Hugo, Oklahoma in 1942, Billy Joe Thomas was the lead singer of BJ Thomas and the Triumphs in the mid-60s, and he went solo in 1968 and landed a number

five US hit in 1968 with Hooked on a Feeling. The following year, he was approached by Burt Bacharach and Hal David to record Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tony, after it was turned down by Ray Stevens and Bob Dylan.

The song has just finished a four-week stint as the US number one in the previous month, and it's already at number 41 in this week's charts, but it's the Sasha Distel version that's at number 41 in the charts. Have you heard that Sasha Distel version? I don't think I have. It's horrible. You can imagine.

Just imagine Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head sung by Sashie Distell. That's what it's like. Even though it's an old and friendly song, there's some true grit

about BJ Thomas. He looks like a man who's... He's got the rugged face of a man who's fought his way to the top of the Christian pop world only to be plastered with enough hairspray to blind every rabbit on earth and pushed out into this world

made out of bako foil and teenage beauty queens dressed like sexy clowns and yeah he does look like he's quite keen to get off there he's got this really determined professional sincerity but he's clearly thinking shit

he just wants to go yeah initially when you first see him as well, it's like quite a close-up of his head. He's got kind of these granite features. He looks initially like some sort of giant, like Robert Wadlow or something. But I think Taylor's right.

There's a sort of... And it's crucially... I mean, I would say that Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head is one of the lesser kind of Bacharach tunes. But the thing is with those songs, any Bacharach David song, it's just instant warmth and sunshine just sort of piped into your cells in a way. It's just a lovely thing. And, you know, not to fucking plug anything,

but I've sung these songs live on stage in the past. The band that we did some Bach-rack tribute night were there. The Moon Bears, Pop Rage Junctions, check them out. And this song was one of the ones that I had to do. And singing it, you realise with back-rack songs that the crucial thing is the emotion's there. It's there in the chords and it's there in the song. And the crucial thing you can't do is ornament it in any way.

All you've got to do is hit the notes with the right voice. So you need a voice that's slightly worn, that can crack a little. And that's why Dionne Warwick's so successful doing backtrack songs. And that's why BJ Thomas is as well. There's a kind of elderly sadness to his voice. It kind of suggests a lot.

And there's a kind of Grizzly adams pioneer sadness to it i really really like um a lesser baccarat number but still absolutely magical yeah well neil's dead right about what these songs demand of singers it's very like uh if you speak to a really good actor about shakespeare this is what they'll tell you about shakespeare that you don't really act it you what your job is to find the rhythm in the lines and to know where to put the emphasis and then it takes care of itself right bad shakespeare is when people try and how am i you know how am i going to do this role that's not how you do it but it's impossible for me to be objective about this song because when i was three i had a little fisher price music box which played it so to me this song is like my mother's face or the sensation of being tucked up in bed and i don't expect anyone else to understand

or share that feeling uh in fact our eternal inability to do that for each other is uh the basis of human loneliness and a big part a big part of why we all spend the few years we have on this planet in emotional darkness but it also this song has popped up a few times at emotionally turbulent points in my life purely by chance and I have this terrible feeling that I'll hear it on a passing car radio or something on my way back from the doctors on the day that the test results don't come back clear.

I'm going to be shitting myself about you all day now. I might even indulge in the irony of having it played at my funeral. If just to bring home to the mourners if any that you are indeed shut up you are indeed never gonna stop the rain by complaining so even that is futile and it's all we have

taylor you mentioned the music box that played this. Yeah. So I just got a memory because you said Fisher-Price. Yeah. Did anyone have... You know, I'm sure you're the same. There was one toy you fucking wanted and you didn't get. Evil Knievel. Yeah, and then you find somebody who's had one and they just pour disappointment on it

because they say, oh, shit, it fell over. Yeah, Tim Canally. The one I wanted... Ah, I've gutted, man. Have have i preempted oh right no no i wasn't gonna ask about crossfire or tin can i was actually gonna ask and this is a bit childish maybe it was um beneath you guys but i always wanted do you remember frog chorus oh frog chorus was a keyboard yeah frogs on it and you played the keyboard and the frogs opened their mouths and made a sound i'm guessing it was just a

shit glockenspiel, but I've always been curious as to whether it was any good or not. They had one at my play school. Oh, right. Wow. Except, of course, one of the frogs was broken. Obviously, yeah. Yeah, it is basically

a bit of plastic in it that goes ding, ding, ding. Another dream girl. I bet Paul McCartney had fucking hundreds of them. So two weeks later, BJ Thomas' original version would enter the UK chart at number 38 and would drop out again the following week, which was the one and only time that he troubled the charts. Meanwhile, the vastly inferior Sasha Distow version would get to number 10. BJ Thomas would be

a chart regular in the US throughout the early 70s, and he bagged a number 1 with the longest titled chart topper in history, Hey Won't You Play Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song in April of 1975. And hey, Al, I've just realised, this

is the song where the woman with the blood coming down her face is still in the background. Yes. So yeah, very strange. Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe she was just caught out in the rain. I'm getting a slayer earworm now because of raining blood.

So... Hello everyone, from BJ Thomas. You've probably read in the papers that Peter Maranello has just been signed to Arsenal for the fantastic fee of £100,000. And we're very lucky to have him with us here on Top of the Pops to present tonight's prizes. Over to you, Peter. Hello. Well, you've been chosen as the best dancer here. What's your name? Linda. Linda. Well, congratulations. I'd like to present you with the records.

Thank you very much. Hello. What's your name? Celia. Your eyes are fabulous. Thank you. I'd like to present you with these records. Thank you.

Okay. Finally, we get to find out who the winner of the dancing competition is and the prize is awarded by none other than Peter Marinello. Born in Edinburgh in 1950, Peter Marinello had played two seasons for a burning in the late 60s and was touted as the next George Best when he was transferred to Arsenal for a club record £100,000, which would be £1.5 million today. Fucking hell, what would that get you? Peter Marinello.

Yes, nowadays. Yes. Marinello, looking like a Caledonian Richard Beckinsale, sapped of all self-confidence, makes small talk with a petite blonde called Linda and gives her a bundle of records and then talks to Delia,

who apparently has been given some records for having the world's stupidest fake eyelashes. This is a strange thing to have in Top of the Pops, isn't it? It is a strange thing. And differing reactions from Peter Marinello to both girls. The girl who's blonde, I don't know, it's like he's weighing up her age or something as he's speaking to her and he decides to leave well alone. And then the girl with the astonishing eyelashes, he's not cracking onto her or anything.

No, he's not. He's terrified, isn't he? He is terrified and slightly interested as well, I think. It is a strange thing to have. As if those eyelashes are going to jump off her eyes and sink the teeth into his neck. Well, I reviewed Peter Marinello's autobiography a few years ago for When Saturday Comes. Well, it was terrible in both senses. His life story is quite depressing and faintly tragic, which is the worst kind of tragic. And also it was horribly written. But he goes on about this and he talks about uh going on top of the pops and he talks about when he reviewed the singles in melody maker

this what yeah um this very week i think it was yeah because his single of the week was instant karma right that suggests it was he was on a big PR push at the moment. So this was the highlight of his life, right? From reading his book, the two highlights of his life appeared to be this week when he went on top of the Pops and the offices of Melody Maker. And then a point in the 80s where he opened up a failed nightclub and on opening night, Eddie K kidd and vicky michelle

that is that like the the uncrowned king and queen of the aventures but the thing is thing about this clip is it's so painful because he's not shy as such but he's very awkward and he's also very physically self-conscious which is very unusual in a professional sportsman. Normally they carry themselves with an enormous amount of physical self-confidence and the first shot we see of him he's stooping and it's part of talking

to a girl who's much shorter than him but it also he looks bent over like with the weight of his big money transfer pressing down on his shoulders and you can tell it's all going to go. And those records. Don't forget the records. Yeah, and those records, which he can barely hold because he's so skinny. But, yeah, when he talks to Linda, who's won the dance competition,

they're both like that, and they're like two children left alone in the house. You know, they'd be clinging to each other. Should we put the music centre on while everyone's out yeah but then when he turns to that the statuesque woman with the the huntsman spider eyelashes yeah it looks like she's going to eat him alive but then she's kind of nervous and shaky as well in the presence of this dweeb that she's towering over yeah um and you think yeah this sort of the collapse she looks like a very confident woman but this collapse of confidence in the face of celebrity like even a duff big money arsenal signing is so overwhelming even at the after a decade which saw off a lot of other forms of deference and

subservience the this deference to celebrity is uh is still there and you can really see how unscrupulous older men would be operating in this environment um and you know i mean there's nothing wrong in principle with men in the music business taking advantage of the opportunity it can offer to have sex with attractive young women. I mean, you know, as long as everybody's happy, then good on you. But when I worked in the music business, the one thing I would say for myself, and there's not many things I would say for my younger self, there's not many things I would say for my younger self but I've ran a mile from this kind of trembling impressionable uncertainty because it's not nice to these sort of you'd meet these girls with eyes like moons you know full of vodka and just juice and you just think Christ if I if I was a cunt you know what I mean horrible and but you realize that for a lot of blokes around at

the time even those that weren't actually in rapists or child molesters no this is the turn on the the frightened rabbit look and the the sort of the horrible power game and the incomplete agency of these girls the fact that they didn't understand the game that was the point for them that was what drew them and yeah it cures you of nostalgia Absolutely, everything you're talking about is kind of what Roscoe symbolises

in that documentary that we were on about earlier he's very much playing that game isn't he? Yeah and that moment, sorry to go back to that documentary we talked about for about 45 minutes but there's a moment of the real contempt in that where john peel comes in because he's using the studio that roscoe's just been in and we've seen roscoe holding court with all these young women and john peel picks up a bit of paper off the desk and goes oh there's a phone number here is this is this for you i'm no doubt some young woman throwing herself at you. And Roscoe

sort of looks at it and turns around to his producer and reads out the number and says, does that mean anything to you? And the bloke goes, no. And he just screws it up and throws it in the bin. So Peter Marinello would only play 38 league games for Arsenal and score a mere three league goals.

Thank you very much there, Peter. And do you know something? We have won, once again, the NME Top of the Pops Award. It has become number one in the television section, hasn't it, once again? And from the NME, I'd like to present to you, Maurice Kinn. Thank you very much. Tony, for the fifth consecutive year, Top of the Pops has been voted the best television show, and it gives me a great pleasure to give you this cap on behalf of the New Musical Express.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Lovely. Thank you very much. So, after Blackburn thanks Peter Marinello in an accent that all Scotsmen love English people to do, he himself is awarded a prize, theme top of the pops award no toner is actually the nme readers poll award for best tv show and in attendance to present it is morris kin the owner of the nme who bought it for 1500 pounds in 1952 when it was called the accordion

times and new musical express oh we're seeing everyone in this episode aren't we strange moment of basically product placement for the anime to a certain extent um well yeah i was kidding interesting figure i mean he kind of bridges lots of different eras and you know when he started at the enemy he was hiring people like michael winner to write for them um uh so yeah i mean one another thing that i found out about morris kin was that his most prized possession was a letter from john major um which john major wrote to him when he was prime minister um saying thank you for your years of editing the enemy i religiously bought the enemy and read it cover to cover. So, yeah, John Major. Wow. Wonder when he stopped.

But yeah, John Major, music press writer. What else The Enemy is going to vote for? Because there aren't any of the pop music shows on telly. Yeah, what else is there? Do you think John Major was apparently one of the 30,000 readers who stopped reading the

paper after Paul Morley's interview with Jerry Garcia? Maybe so. readers who stopped reading the paper after Paul Morley's interview with Jerry Garcia. Maybe so. John Major is responsible though for my favourite political quote ever which was when you're up against the wall it's time to turn around and start fighting. I do like that quote.

But yeah it's odd Morris King being on this. Yeah he's certainly not ahead is he to use the parlance of the era. He's just some middle-aged bloke in a suit, which is probably what the current owner of the NME looks like nowadays. I have no idea if anyone owns it. It's always hilarious when you see music journalists from the 60s

because they did have some young writers who knew their pop and rock and soul but mostly the people doing the personal appearances were the senior staff who were who were like the the NME staff a lot of them were old Denmark street people and Melody Maker had a lot of old jazz guys and stuff um so you know it's like when you see the NME poll winners concert and it's like here's the editor of the NME and he looks like Philip Larkin or something, you know. And you see that clip of Led Zeppelin on Nationwide and Ray Coleman of Melody Maker comes on and he looks like second place in a Michael Fish lookalike contest that Michael Fish himself had also entered. It's really

horrendous. Yeah. Horrible. So there you go. Right now we've gone to the number one, so I'm going to slam one for the second week of the evening, Edison Lighthouse and Love Grows. 🎵 Oh, my love grows, where my rosemary grows, and nobody knows that thing. Formed in London in 1970, yes, the same 1970 that we're in now, Edison Lighthouse were a band that were hastily formed as a vehicle for lead singer Tony Burroughs, who was also the frontman at the time for White Plains and Pipkins and the original Brotherhood of Man. man at the time for White Plains and Pipkins and the original Brotherhood

of Man. They only came together when this song made the charts and Burroughs needed a band for its original appearance on Top of the Pops. This is its second week at number one. I quite like this. Kind of sounds like a Motown tune from a few years earlier with a little bit of Credence style

rock in there as well. That... Like that bit. It's a great confection, but it ends up leaving me, I don't know, a little cold because of one little thing that annoys me

and that's the drawn out note that goes at the end of the chorus. And nobody knows, but... I don't like that bit for some reason. It bugs me. It feels laboured and it makes the song lose its energy.

But yeah, I mean, in comparison to the other things that Tony Burrows was doing at the time, I'd say it's better than Gimme That Thing, which I remember distinctly for some reason because that record stuck around for a while. Yeah, but then so would stabbing yourself in the bollocks with a fork. Well, quite. And yeah, so it doesn't float my boat that much

because of that long drawn out note. But other than that, in a sense it's dated because the kind of groove of it, it does feel like a sort of 66 or 67 record. Yeah. And it feels a bit like an old Motown record in parts of it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a good tune. If you're going to do it, good tune if you're gonna do it uh do it like this just do it just be slightly too old and not a real band and commercial to the exclusion of everything and anything else and maybe just maybe you might end up with a an in a sense incredible record which which it's about, objectively, it's about a hundredth as good as I Want You Back, but it does have something of that uplifting,

transporting feel about it. Because, well, even though it's an obvious confection, just the demands of the day mean that it's got this primitive undertone. It's got this uh primitive undertouch got those sort of cousinettes cats bubblegum guitars and the really thin medium wave friendly strings yeah and it's massively compressed and especially on this top of the pops where everything is i don't know whether that's just uh from the tele recording or because it's gone through whatever it is everything sounds very thin and powerful

and compressed on this top of the pots, and it really suits this record. I mean, really, the sound of early 70s records is umami. It's this very sort of deep, rich, there's a lot of mid-range. It's quite a dark sound. And this is much more like Sherbert. This is like a throwback to to 60s records

you have to feel like, you listen to it you feel like you have to shield your ears from the light squinting across Andalusia with one hand up to your eyes but I love this record and also

I like the fact they've got a name like Jefferson Airplane or Mumby Grape, but better. Yes. It's fantastic. Take them from Eddystone Lighthouse, which I believe is in Cornwall or something like that. It spoiled it when I heard that. Yeah.

But also, you know, they did a load of other records, didn't they, with different people on them? Yes, they did, yes. Well, Tony Burrows did anyway. Yeah. No, but Edison Lighthouse did as well. They got a different singer in and different bands. Yes, they did, yeah. And also, when they show their dancers,

we see Linda bugging away, winner of the dance contest, invested with this new confidence of being a winner. Yeah, but wondering about what song she's going to have to dance to and you know whether to smile or not I feel bad for the girl next to her who's filmed from a gynecological angle

it's like they might as well have given them stirrups you know what I mean it's like this lingering shot of tomorrow's laundry it's like I mean it's not my idea of of sexy you know no and it's it's also not my idea of uh acceptable the sound quality this sorry to drag it away from important stuff but the sound quality is key because i think like

taylor's suggesting i mean the the thing is all the elements of this song, they don't leap out at you as such, but they're noticeable. The guitar lick is noticeable. I don't know whether I'd want to hear this song on my big speakers, you know, in nice stereo. It is one of those tunes that for me is always going to sound best cranked loud on AM radio. On a car radio with a coat hanger stuck in the hole.

Yeah, because all those elements really sing out. It does coalesce, don't get me wrong. It's not a bitty record, but it really sounds great in this kind of format, in a way. So, Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes will spend another three weeks at number one until it was usurped by wandering star by lee marvin tony burrows would get to number 10 later this month

with united we stand by the brotherhood of man number nine the following month with my baby loves loving white plains number six in april we give me that ding pipkins and he would appear twice on the same episode of top of the pops on two separate occasions fronting two separate bands although Burroughs never recorded under the name Edison Lighthouse again the band formed around him decided to carry on but the only other chart action they got was in January of 1971 when It's Up To You Petulia got to number 49. There you go, number one from Edison Lighthouse. Enjoy yourself. That's all we've got for you, I'm afraid.

Be back at the same time next week, won't you? Thank you very much for watching. Be back at the same time for another edition of Top of the Pops. Bye-bye. So what was on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One follows

this episode with Softly Softly Task Force. Coverage of the 1970 European Figure Skating

Championships from Leningrad in Sports Night with Coleman and 24 Hours has yet another panel debate about the permissive society. 1970 European Figure Skating Championships from Leningrad in Sports Night with Coleman. And 24 Hours has yet another panel debate about the permissive society. BBC Two is just finishing an episode of Call My Bluff with Antonia Fraser and Clive Dunn. Then it's Enoch Powell on the Money Programme.

Followed by an episode of The Six Wives of Henry VIII. ITV has an episode of Max, with Max by Graves, Danny LaRue and Geoff Love. Alan Wicker hangs around with the Bluebell Girls in Wicker in Europe. And they finish up with an episode of Hadley. So chaps,

what are we talking about in the pram or the womb or the twinkle of a dad's eye tomorrow? Get me to an incubator, quickly. Two years premature. I think it would have to be billy preston because that was the only actual performance where someone did something physically memorable you know did you see that guy who leapt up from the piano and did a massive chicken dance i think i might be talking about the petals in the face of that dancer for that video. And also maybe just the fact that Peter Marinello was on it.

Yeah. I'll probably be talking about that. Yeah. I mean, to my mind, this was an episode that was kind of saved by black Americans. I mean, I think the most memorable things on it were all, you know, the two Motown acts, Fifth Dimension, and even Billy Preston, even though the song wasn't up to much. There was a bit of charisma about him. So what are we buying on Saturday? Fifth Dimension and even Billy Preston, even though the song wasn't up to much,

there was a bit of charisma about him. So what are we buying on Saturday? I'd be buying Sandy Shaw, you lot wouldn't. I'd also be buying Temptations, Jackson 5 and John Lennon, I think. Lennon, S Blue, J5, E Lighthouse. Possibly the Temps, yeah. We know that in a few years to come come Top of the Pops are going to be pushing out tracks that are not

in the charts yet but at least they'd say look this is a tip for the top or this is an album track but in this episode they've pushed out like five records there were four flops and they kind of fucked up Peter Marinello's career as well.

So, you know, we've seen a 45-minute episode and we're never going to see an episode as long as this again, apart from the specials and the Christmas shows. Do you think it was too long? I think it sustains. I think it's all right because it comes across really as more of a kind of horrible phrase, but like a music show rather than a chart show.

It's more like something like fucking Later or something without that cunt doing his boogie woogie piano playing um so it it's kind of all right but but it is totally different to seemingly just the top of the pops in just a few months or a couple of years later because really you get no sense from this um you get a sense of britain to a certain extent but you don't really see any kids the audience they just look you know they've got that please sir kind of kidness to them like you know definitely about 30 and they look cool in a way they look like they're london clubbers but they you don't get that sense of you know kids from the provinces being in that audience kids from you know not from from the provinces being in that audience, kids from, you know, not from London being in that audience.

So the whole episode has this kind of sophistication to it that doubtless includes parents as well. But there's no clear demarcation in this episode, really, between kids' stuff and grown-up stuff. There doesn't seem to be any record that would have antagonised anyone. Now, we're a year away here from what? I mean fucking Virginia Plains out in a year and Hot Love is just down the pipe a few months down the road but here the 60s still

seem to exist in a sort of tremendously sophisticated way. When I clicked on an episode that said 1970 I was actually expecting a bit more ineptness than I got. It was actually a really really slick and effective production. It's a very adulterated episode of Top of the Pops, isn't it?

It is, yeah. But I mean, basically, you remember when we were talking about like, I think it was a 1979 episode, and I think it might have been Pricey said, oh, well, the 80s actually started when Gary Newman did this in 79. There's a sense here that have the 60s finished yet? Not entirely sure. I mean, maybe I'm putting too much on Mark Bolan's

back because I'm a big fan, but to me, the 70s start kind of with hot love later on that year. And in a sense, Lennon unintentionally perhaps has prefigured at least the sound of that kind of thing

with the slight 50s throwback of Vince McMahon I agree with that. on this episode. So that brings another episode of Chart Music to a close, don't forget you can get us on www.chart-music.co.uk www.chart-music.co.uk

You can come and join us on Facebook at facebook.com slash chartmusicpodcast and you can join us on Twitter chartmusic T-O-T-P Thank you very much for listening to the episode as always, but special thanks to Taylor Parks.

Great pleasure as always, Al. And special thanks as well to Neil Kulkarni. Thank you, Neil. Cheers, Al. Really enjoyed that. Thanks for listening, everyone. Hope to see you soon. My name's Al Needham. A is for Alchemist.

L is for Lucifer. Shut up, music. Hello there, Sandy. Hi there, honky tonk. Hello there, Sandy. Hi there, honky-tonk. I'm a tramp, but I'm dandy. Keep my monocle quite handy. I know my etiquette and manners are just right.

Just like Burlington Bertie, I rise about 10.30. And at night, I retire for the night. I stroll down the strand with the times rolled in my hand. All the smiling morning faces I acknowledge. I pass hotel blocks and porters, the surly army quarters where they serve them for the soup and bowl of porridge. When they say that Rick is dead, just that I have gone to bed. Don't you worry, cause it really couldn't happen. Because Rick is alive, you can ask Leroy and Clive.

We are alive and well and living down in Klapa. லீராயின் கிளைவ் நாம் வாழ்த்தும் நாம் குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழந்து குழ You are a big boy. Come on, shake it. Don't break it. Wrap it up, not take it. Shanti, you're a liberated and educated woman. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.