Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #17: December 25th 1973 - The Old Songs Are The Best

Episode Date: December 24, 2017

A moderately special episode of the podcast which asks: so what did Tony Orlando do to get banged up for three years, then? This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, is a massively-flared, clompy-heeled, zebra-printed celebration of one of the greatest traditions of any British Christmas Day: the opportunity to force the rest of your extended family to sit through an end-of year episode of The Pops and revel in the torrent of tutting coming out of your Nana’s mouth as she works their way through the Quality Street. Fourteen chart-toppers from The Most Seventies Year Ever are trotted out, from a time when the Number One single was either astoundingly brilliant or absolute cat shit. Your hosts – Tony Blackburn and Noel Edmonds – really get into the Christmas spirit by shoving tree branches up each other’s arses and donning massive Lenny Kravitz-style scarves of tinsel as wave after wave of alternate Glam nirvana and easy-listening rubbishness floods the screen. On the downside, Donny Osmond spends Christmas alone, David Cassidy has a big sulk around Kew Gardens and we discover that Santa is actually an obnoxious American child with big teeth, but Dave Hill mutates into a Chicken Angel! Roy Wood plays a vacuum cleaner! Steve Priest radges up the grandparents of Britain in a sexy Nazi Bismark rig-out as Andy Scott whips out his third leg! And some dog-flouncing-off action! David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a gleeful ripping-down of the gaudy paper chains of 1973, veering off to discuss Jody Scheckter Racing, the infinite superiority of the Beano Book over the Dandy annual, grandparental fantasies about Roy Wood being made to peel potatoes, Opportunity Knocks winners who were massive racists, what breaks Donny Osmond’s heart, a flick through the Music Star Annual 1974, being sang at by an entire factory when you’ve had an over-long shit, and so much more, with swearing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop craze youngsters. Ho ho ho and all that bollocks. And welcome to a very special episode of Chart Music, the podcast that gets its hand right down the back of the sofa on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham,

and as always I've got two very special little elves helping me deliver this very special present to you. The first one is my good friend David Stubbs. Ey up, David. How are we? Ey up, indeed. Not so bad. Not so bad, lad.

Are we all festive and waiting for Santa and all that? Yeah, I don't know. I fucking hate Christmas, don't you? Yeah, I know. It's rubbish, yeah. It's just a big Sunday dinner that thinks it's summit. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I'm afraid to say.

My second guest is none other than the man himself, the one and only Taylor Parks. Hey, Taylor, how are we? Merry Christmas, Al. Peace on Earth. Peace on every planet, never mind Earth. Yeah, don't be Earth-centric. Come on.

So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to December the 25th, 1973. And of course, it's one of those special episodes which is broadcast on Christmas Day, which was and still is a review of the year about to end. Every band or artist that got to number one is here. It's pretty much the winner's circle, isn't it? The Christmas Top of the Pops. Chaps, how important was the Top of the Pops Christmas special to you?

Oh, it was absolutely central. I mean, I was 12, sorry, no, 12, 11 when this came out. And yeah, it was, I mean, you know, you could do that with the turkey, you could do that with the Queen's Speech, whatever. You could even possibly do it a pinch without presents. Well, as long as you had a Christmas stocking. But, you know, it was absolutely central to the day, was Christmas Top of the Pops.

Taylor, I mean, obviously you're... Were you even born then, 1973? Yeah, I was one. So I don't remember this particular broadcast. But the thing is, to be honest, Christmas Top of the Pops, it wasn't a big thing at our house because the timing of it was, I mean, it was after or during Christmas dinner. Yeah, this is the problem, yeah.

But too early for the slump, you know. So most of the time it wasn't actually watching TV at this point. It was a chance to get stuck into your presents and read an annual play play Scalextric. Actually, I never had Scalextric. I had – well, it was like everything else. I would ask for something, and I'd get the cheap imitation of it. So I asked for Scalextric, and I got Jodie Schechter Racing,

which was almost the same but a bit crappier. And instead of being actual scale X-Tric, it was named after Jody Schechter, perennial also-ran of 1970s Formula One. I mean, in fairness, this might actually have been 1979 when he did win the Drivers' Championship. But even so, it made the thing look fundamentally second-rate. Like, in the 1970s, there were Formula One drivers who were actually famous. Yeah. But this one was named after the lovable South African

whose reckless driving caused a 12-car pile-up at Silverstone and who the Grand Prix Drivers' Association actually demanded be banned from the sport and of whom Emerson Fittipaldi once said this madman is a menace to himself and everyone else and does not belong in

Formula 1 I suspect they might have chosen Jodie Schechter as a cover for how hard it was to keep the cars on the fucking track in this stupid game. So, yeah, I mean, as I've said, Top of the Pops, Christmas, you know,

a huge deal in my house. Well, it was a huge deal to me anyway. For the simple fact that it was the only chance I got out of a whole year to shove Boy George and Mark holman in the face of me no no you know what i mean yes yes yes all the families sat around you know all the extended families there yeah and it's like all right no no i've had to watch fucking highway for 50 times a year now welcome to my fucking world yeah i mean you'll you'll see in this episode actually there

was a definite sense of the gulf between the pre-rock and roll and the post-rock and roll generation. And the post-rock and roll generation would have included someone like my dad, who was about 20 when rock and round the clock and all that stuff broke. But 20 was ancient back then, and so there was a huge generation gap that extended to my dad. And then, of course, my grandad.

That was another matter altogether. We'll talk about him in a bit so what was in the news this week well opec have just announced that they're doubling the price of crude oil oh yeah oh dear 105 people have been killed in an air crash in Morocco. The PLO have just announced that they're going to commit even more acts of terrorism in the new year. It's kind of like a New Year's resolution. Ismet Inu, the former president of Turkey, has died. And so has Harold B. Lee, the president of the Mormons. Brazil's FA have made another desperate

plea for Pele to play in next year's World Cup but the big news this day is that Santa's been of course absolutely I love the way you delivered that actually that kind of listening to a tragedy earlier on it was sort of like with the cheeriness of a Gordon Honeycomb or something that's excellent work yeah yeah yeah not bad is it well I mean, I always felt sorry for people who got killed in disasters on Christmas Day because no one gave a fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it'd be on for about five minutes on the news. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, very comprehensively tuned out. Yes, yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, oh, and the Queen said something on telly. That would be the big fucking story of the day, wouldn't it? Yeah, and Sant has been, and you wanted Tin Can Alley, but he's got Super Shooting Gallery or something. I think there was a bit.

It's almost as good. Well, the whole oil crisis, I do remember that there was a kind of worry that this would kind of affect the supply of vinyl and that pop music itself might kind of be in short supply very soon, thanks to Johnny Arab. Those dastardly shakes. Yeah, absolutely.

On the cover of the NME this week, well, there hasn't been one since mid-November because there's been a printer strike and it wouldn't come back until January the 19th. So, on the cover of Music Star, which was as near as damn it to smash hits as you'll get in 1973, is a picture of the entire Osman family with a photo of a mystery man dressed as Santa with his back turned.

Later on in the magazine, we find out that it's none other than Alvin Stardust. I don't know if I want Alvin Stardust coming down my chimney though at night. That'd be fucking terrifying at my age. Well, at that point, we didn't realise... Just pointing at me. We didn't realise that, you know, he was this kind of very avuncular figure and he was trying to sort of address our tiny minds to the issue of road safety.

All that came later. And I think he was a bit of a Christian as well, wasn't he? He became a Christian later on, yeah, when he started knocking off Lisa Goddard. Absolutely. But, you know, at that time, he felt he was Sid Vicious to us at that point. On the cover of Radio Times this week is Morecambe and Wise and the two Ronnies in Saks. And on the cover of TV Times is Sid James as Santa staring at Barbara Windsor's tits. Oh, God.

The number one LP in the UK at the moment is Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. The number one single in the US is The Most Beautiful Girl by Charlie Rich. And the number one LP is also Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. So, what were we doing on Christmas Day 1973? Taylor, you were rolling about and shitting yourself.

Yeah, nothing changes. I mean mean this was Was this the year I got a doll? A doll? What it actually was was I'd seen a TV advert For one of those dolls that cries And wets itself And I was fascinated

I was fascinated by the mechanics of it Right And it had nothing to do with any sort of Maternal instincts or you know no sort of wanting to be a girl or anything i think my parents might have thought it did but to their credit they just went oh he wants a doll get him a doll but i got the cheapo version that was just a plastic doll that didn't cry and didn't wet itself so it was effectively useless to me. Oh, man, that's fucking heartbreaking.

But I was too young for it to be a big issue. David? Oh, I mean, the day would have started at 5.30 and the old massive sort of footy stocking, you know, full of various presents and things like that. You know, you had the orange at the bottom that was always uptoken. You shoved it outside and just every single piece of crap

under the sort of sun that was just... Ioking. He shoved it outside. Just every single piece of crap under the sun. It was actually even better in some ways, was getting that stocking, the first thing, than the actual big presents were in some ways. Just utter rubbish. Real sub-pound land. It would have been 10 pence land or one pence land. Bob Lund.

Yeah, exactly. Just a stocking full of absolute crap, you know, and bacon and fried bread, I think, for early breakfast, to sort of tide us over, and church, you know, Catholics and all that kind of thing. Oh, did you have to go to church? Yeah, but fortunately I had a father, McSweeney, and it was always great when you got a father, McSweeney, because he could sometimes deliver the whole thing in, like, under 19 minutes.

You know, I don't know if you've ever read that story, P.G. Woodhouse, The Great Sermon Handicap, in which they all bet on who delivers the longest sermon. Well, he would have like not been in the running at all. He was just absolutely crisp to the point and we could be out there sometimes before 10.30, you know, and it was just excellent stuff, unfortunately. So, yeah, got out of church early, got back.

But like I tell you, you know, the annuals and stuff, the Beano, the Dandy. God, I don't know why I cherish the Dandy with all these kind of ancient jokes about them. They always had a policeman called Constable Adelpate and apparently that was meant to be really funny because in the year about 1908, you know, that Adelpate meant something.

And, you know, obviously written by the kind of elderly geezers who were basically harking back to their childhoods of the 1920s or whatever. That's right. I bet Corky the Cat got up to some right larks, didn't he? Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. With a fish or a pie left on his shelf. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there was always Desperate Dan, but it was just, I mean, the Beano's, it was just, it just felt riotously funny, you know, compared to the dandy. So obviously, yeah, it piles through all of the annuals and what have you. Monopoly, of course, you know, and then, you know, a rousing seven-hour game of Monopoly with all the family, which is utterly riveting. And then, you know, punctuated by what everyone absolutely was on telly.

I'm still trying to picture Father McSweeney. Did he put his hand on your head and said you bastard get your trousers on you're saved it was great, so we were three Stubbs boys if we'd have been at public school I would have been Stubbs Major, the eldest

and it was Nick, my brother, Stubbs Minor and Tony, the youngest, Stubbs Minimus and basically I got a chopper, all well and good and my brother had been Stubbs Minor, Nick, he basically, I got a chopper, all well and good. And my brother had been, my brother Stubbs Minor, Nick, he'd been hankering for a chipper. So what my dad did in that kind of slightly cruelly sort of pranksterish way, he took Nick's crappy old bike, this kind of sort of sorry little sort of six-year-old yellow rusting type thing. And he just sort of like

sellotaped around with some sort sort of you know or put some yellow tape around certain parts of it and then just sort of felt it the word chipper up the side and then put a little bit of tinsel on it and said there's your chipper nick there's your chipper and um did he fall for it he was just gulping you know he's gulping back he absolutely fell for it and then after about five minutes of him just sort of sobbing and walking up mucus and what have you. And you felt really sorry for him, didn't you, David? Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. And then, you know, my dad pulled out the real chipper, you know, the spanking new chipper from, you know, behind the curtain and gave it to me.

He said, don't worry, son, there's your chipper. And then he said to my youngest son. I were right about that seat, though. I know. Yes, absolutely. But then, you know, after having done that, and then he said, he turned to Tony and said, here's your new bike. And he gave him the crappy

old chip thing that he just said. My brother Tony has never forgot that and I think it's sort of driven him to this day, is that. He actually did that for real? Yeah, he did.

Yeah. That was his present? Yeah, it was. Yeah. Oh man, that's fucking harsh. Yeah. Well, it's more Yorkshire.

It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, it's almost Biffa Bacon-ish actually in terms of the cruelty. Well, it's more Yorkshire. It was, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's almost Biffa Bacon-ish, actually, in terms of the cruelty. What, he fucking hit him over the head with a bike? No, I don't know. Tony is a cunt on the side of everything like that. But he might as well have done, you know. I was five.

And so I think this is the year that I got a cowboy outfit with some guns. I got an action man with one of them tanks that you put it in. And the scale was all fucked up. So he'd actually be sitting in the turret with his arms dragging along the floor as you pushed him along. Which I never worked out how that worked. I think I got Escalado, or we might have already had Escalado. You know the horse racing thing that you clamp to a table

and then you turn a handle and then the table gets scratched up and your mum hits you. And of course, on Christmas, we always used to go over to my non-hours, which was great because they had a colour telly. And so, yeah. And the, I mean, the problem with Top of the Pops, I mean, this one's a quarter past two.

So the big worry was that we wouldn't finish Christmas dinner before it started because Christmas dinner at our house always depended on what time me dad and me grandpa got out of the pub. Because traditional Christmas was all the blokes fuck off to the pub, all the women are in the kitchen, and all the kids are just rolling about on the floor going, oh, my God, it's fucking Christmas. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm not sure we ever prioritise like that. I don't, I really can hardly remember watching these because it was always, like I say, it's before the slump when you crash from all the sugar and fell asleep in front of the man with a golden gun. It was, yeah, I'm too busy setting up the track of Jodie Schechter racing, I suppose. But yeah, this year I'd have got a rattle or something

and don't really remember it, which is a shame because, of course, this was an austerity Christmas. This was a harder Christmas than we have known since the war. And it's one of the nice things about watching this Top of the Pops, the sheer determination to be as shiny as possible in the face of this. Yes, definitely, yeah. I mean, we're talking about a country where this year they switched on the lights on the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree

and then had to switch them straight back off again to save power, which must have been such a beautiful moment. This is when the Christmas issue of The Spectator, 1973, speculated on the realistic possibility of a military coup in Britain. That's right, yeah. With all these generals in little tanks

and the fucking knuckles dragging on the floor. Yeah, go around Hughie Green's house. But yeah, this is, I mean, the living standards in Britain at this point were closer to East Germany than West Germany. And the oil crisis had just debagged the 60s. But it was still a country that hadn't yet been defeated in the mind, which we can see from this.

I mean, it was horrible and it was brilliant. And sometimes you couldn't separate one from the other. But this top of the pops that we're about to discuss is packed with 1973 right this could only be more 1973 if the lights went out halfway through this is you know i mean it tastes of double diamond and dry rot but you can what you can see all the way through this is the the that particular kind of unsafe freedom uh and weird raw creativity of the time i love 1973 i think it was the most 70s year of the 70s um and only a shame that i was rolling around in a fucking nappy and missed it so what else was on telly today oh fucking hell how long have you got bbc one has started the day with a documentary about canadian wildlife followed by a cartoon

version of oscar wilde's the selfish giant then it's family communion from wimborne minster in dorset then harry seeker makes an appeal on behalf of the national council for one parent families at half past 11 it's two full hours of a stocking full of stars presented by michael aspel and featuring members of blue peter roy castle the goodies the osmonds vision on and in their words top soccer stars and then just before top of the pops it's a christmas black and white minstrel show oh great yes it's just what you want isn't it bbc2 is kicked off with play school followed by to earth from heaven reflections for christmas morning by the bishop of gloucester. Then they pile into the film White Christmas, followed by a documentary about the annual horse race at the

Palio in Italy, and a cartoon version of A Christmas Carol featuring Alastair Simm and Michael Redgrave. And then it's a Christmas What's My Line with David Jacobs, Kenneth Williams, William Franklin and Nanette Newman. ITV have commenced broadcasting with Rainbow, followed by Leslie Crather presenting A Merry Morning from the Airedale General Hospital in Keighley, then a Christmas morning service from the Roman Catholic Chapel in Harrogate. See, David, you can stop in and watch that.

The film Lad, A Dog, which was Lassie with a cock, basically. Ed Stupot Stewart acting as Ringmaster in Chipperfield's Christmas Circus, and have run the glories of Christmas against Top of the Pops, featuring Patrick Cargill, Diana Coupland, Les Dawson, Arthur English, Pat Phoenix, Melvin Hayes, Bob Munkass, Gordon Honeycomb, Patrick Troughton and Fred Truman, portraying assorted Dickens characters, finishing off with the nativity read by Princess Grace of Monaco.

Fucking hell, they're dragging the big guns out this day, aren't they? That sounds like a light entertainment version of the Wild Geese. All right then, Pop Craze youngsters, it's time to stop fannying about because it's that time again. Don't forget, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget they've been on top of the pops more than we have. The show opens with the bottom half of the screen covered by a festive cartoon of the Top of the Pops logo covered in snow with a monkey and an elephant in winter woolies

singing from hymn sheets, a parrot walking about in the snow and the words Merry Christmas and the top half consisting of the kids getting down. Oh, they pushed the boat out already, aren't they, on this one? Yeah, also you say kids, but the bit of the audience, you see they look a little bit too old. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, they do.

It's a bit weird. And they're dancing in front of a silver foil ash tree, which is just wrong. Yes. Yeah, it looks a bit chilly in there, you know. It's really getting into the 1973 mood already. They do have that look that you always get with Top of the Pops audiences.

They look very subdued and resentful, like they've been busting against their will. Yeah, but this time they've been given some decent tinfoil hats, haven't they? Like tinfoil top hats. Like, I don't know, an episode of Space 1999 set at the Epsom Darby. So your hosts for this very special episode are Tony Blackburn and Noel Edmonds.

Tony, in a black, white and red tank top over a spotty brown and beige shirt, looking like he's been dressed by his mam was relegated from the breakfast show slot to the 9 to 12 slot in july of this year while edmunds in a relatively tasteful for 1973 flowery fawn shirt brandishing a branch of something that isn't holly but he claims that it is moved up from the weekend morning slot into blackburn's chair oh that's not right can you actually imagine these two together for real on christmas day bitter and pregnant pauses it's a bit bit tense isn't it yeah i've got a horrible feeling that

tony would get the clive anderson treatment off edmunds and his head would be thrown off a balcony at some point. Edmunds being to Blackburn's professional life what Richard O'Sullivan was to his personal life. You have to feel for him a bit. Yeah I can imagine Edmunds stomping out at one point to go and have a ride in his helicopter just to think about things and ruminate. The thing is also when they're standing next to each other, normally when you see Tony Blackburn with that horrible smile and stuff and that weird haircut, he looks really weird and unpleasant. But when you put him next to Edmunds, he looks like just a normal nice fella. It's like Edmunds standing there with that haircut like a walnut whip you know basically if you could if you could only saw off the top of his head

so his brain was poking out exposed to the air then from the back he'd look just like a walnut whip i just want to kind of resent now certainly is, is that you think, I mean, whatever the talk, the banter, you know, holding up a branch and saying, oh, I'm branching out. I mean, it's like maybe they worked all this out beforehand, but I doubt it. I think they're obviously arrogant enough to think that like the stars that they were, that kind of the verbal stardust that would emanate from, you know, that they could just do it off the top of their heads and it would just be great. They could just wing it because it would naturally be spontaneously superb. And it's just this wretched... I mean, banter isn't even an appropriate word. It's some sort of vaporous subspecies of banter.

It's just awful. But of course, they're right at the time. I didn't mind. I mean, the world was kind of made for me in 1973, every kid like me. Everything in the world was absolutely great. I wasn't remotely disaffected I was a very unalienated

kid and because I just you know stuff like this was served up was absolutely grey and I didn't mind at all that you know they were just there to signify Christmas top of the pops you know I wasn't sort of sitting back like some sort of Glaswegian audience you know saying okay then entertain me they were right

they could get away with it because people like me lapped it up. Yeah. I don't think my nono and grandpa would have got much humour from this, to be honest. I mean, my nono was more of a Pete Murray kind of woman. And she'd just see two sort of lads with chip pan haircuts, as she called them, shoving branches up each other's arses.

Not a good start for them. And I can already see her pulling on a fag and disapproving, which made it even more entertaining for me, obviously. Yeah, it's a lovely scene, isn't it? It's very, very redolent of 1973. You've got a bloke in this orange and green cardboard top hat with a face shaped like a dagger. And then there's this blonde girl on the left who,

had she lived in Paris or Rome at this time, would have been fabulously glamorous. But because she's in London, 1973, she has to wear a bad yellow blouse and a slightly clumpy haircut and misses out. That was always what informed the British experience in those days, this sense of missing out slightly, you know what I mean? It's like we're making do.

So Blackburn holds up a multicoloured origami star and says that he took it from the door of Edmonds' dressing room. Do you think there was a little barb in that comment? Yes, undoubtedly. Yeah, and Edmonds almost blanks him as well. He just kind of goes, oh, yes, the star. Yeah. If you look at the way their eye contact's going backwards and forwards

all through the whole show, but particularly this exchange, it's quite awkward. I think Tony is looking at Noel a bit more than Noel is looking at Tony. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of cringing all the way through it. Maybe they didn't prepare anything because they refused to speak to each other outside of the confines of the program you see i mean that's it but finally they introduce

come on feel the noise by slade we've already discussed slade in chart music's 8 9 and 16 so we'll just say that this is her first single release in 1973 and the follow-up to Goodbye to Jane, which got to number two in December of 1972. On its release in March of this year, it went straight in at number one. The first single to do that since Get Back by The Beatles in 1969. Slade, they pretty much had 1973 by the throat, didn't they? Yeah. I mean, it didn't squeeze me. That did the same thing. No one remembers Squeeze Me, but that must have been 1973, surely.

Yes. Yes, it was. I suppose you couldn't have three Slade, you know. So what did Slade mean to you, David? I absolutely, I loved them. And I've still got an immense fondness for them. They were probably my favourite group was Slade. The one thing that occurs to me now is,

we were talking the other day about Randy Crawford's voice, but, you know, you've got to put Noddy up there. I mean, especially on this one, it's a voice like an absolute lathe. I mean, I like to be able to think I can sort of imitate a little bit, but I can't get anywhere near what he does there. I mean, it just seems, you know, unconquerably, unconquerable, especially, you know, the pitch of his voice and that sheer sort of

raucous pebbled ash sound that he gets is, it's unique. It's one of the great voices in, I mean, I suppose it's not exactly subtle, but it goes to a place that, I mean, nobody else does. Wasn't there a story that while they were recording this, I think it was this one, John Lennon was in the studio.

It's one of these singles that they recorded in New York anyway. At the record plant. Yeah, John Lennon was passing and got on their mic and said, this is great, the singer sounds like me as he was leaving the studio. Yeah, you can hear a lot of john lennon in uh in noddy older i think no but yeah but i think noddy goes further has to be said yes yeah slade on a set that looks like they've drained evil kenevil swimming pool for students as it is with red silver blue and white tiles launched into their first number one of the year and you know we've

got to come to at some point what's dave Hill wearing this time yeah or like it's like a chicken angel right it's like whatever chickens have instead of angels yes it's hard to say really I mean because um I at the time I I I would have dressed like that in a trice yeah I mean I mean, amongst your peers at school, David, did you detect any note of effeminacy amongst Slade? Well, yeah, but it's that classic sort of bricky glam thing, isn't it? There was this sort of weird mix of like... It was all the Adrian Street type sort of thing, where it's adopting kind of gayness and effeeteness

as if to sort of show how super are they oh we're so fucking hard we're dressed like this and what are you fucking going to do about it we'll fucking get a fucking smack in the mouth if we do a fucking bray if you start going like that we'll be in fucking puffs like there was that kind of thing and the end of it

yeah it was really hard, it wasn't really like the 80s it was was where, you know, clearly, you know, there was about, you know, like, there was about sort of gayness in a real sense. It wasn't really, it was just, it was just like to piss off the granddads, basically. And did it work?

Oh, it absolutely worked. Yeah, with my granddad it did. I mean, you know, it'd just be fulminating when you kind of watch any of these things. You'd watch and you'd look at, like, Dave Hill and it was always the same. Seven days jankers they'd have got in my day. Seven days jankers. So did you watch this with your granddad? Can you remember who you watched it with? sit watching just his sort of blood pressure rising you know she's kind of having to sit endure all this stuff in the kind of the bigger easy chair yeah and his item that's my item and you know and i think you kind of and the thing is i think you kind of enjoyed it really you could easily have sort of gone down the pub or left the room but no and it was always the same he just he was locked in no that's well yeah i mean you know but i just think that he just actually sort of secretly very much enjoyed fantasizing about poor old Dave Hill and all these kind of people and Alvin Stardust having to

peel potatoes. On the wheel. Jankers. Jankers being, I think, if you're in the RAF, it was like a short stretch in jail of some sort. Seven days, Jankers.

In a silvery top hat. Cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush. But obviously it was a huge thing in the wrestling world at the same time agent street was you know it was the most was it the one and it was the they knew that the thing that most hacked off uh you know men of a certain age was like um was that kind of effeminacy and of course the other thing as well the other great thing about it that wound up people even more was that, you know, if you punched yourself up

a little bit, girls would like you. But it was all well within the sort of bounds of heterosexuality. Yeah. You know, there was, I didn't really,

I mean, I didn't really have a concept of homosexuality until 1975 when the world's first gay appeared, which was Quentin Crisp, of course, the naked civil servant. You know, before that, it was just something nonexistent, as far as I was concerned.

I mean, I was only 11, and probably as far as a lot of people were concerned. So this song, is it their best? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's really up there, definitely. What's interesting about it is the production is very hard and thin, and the vocals sound really distant, and all the power comes from the sort of unfussy aggression of the actual performance. But it's all driven by the percussion and the bass line,

like something offside three of the White Album, which I suspect is where it's derived from. It's got that sort of sparse feel to it which is really unusual for a song that's kind of anthemic you know and of course when oasis covered it they uh quotes improved it in the dumbest and most obvious way which just turn all the guitars up and fill in all that space, which changes it from a speed record with all this detail and space to move around it into a cocaine record. So it's more superficially euphoric, but ultimately it's brain rock. And it's that propulsion that you can hear on this record from the rhythm and the bass line that White Rock sort of lost as it got whiter.

Because it all comes from R&B. And that's why this sounds better than any attempt to do something like this from the last 20 or 25 years. But you can't top this. It's like anyone who doesn't feel something for Slade is missing the point of what it means to be English, I think. Which is not to say that we should all walk around dressed like chicken angels and tramps from the future with sort of haircuts like medieval simpletons.

It's this refusal to take anything seriously other than the need to experience joy which can only be attained through obliterative derangement. And this is the saving grace of our people as well as part of the problem simultaneously so that's it but that tradition of irreverence and scabrous disrespect right which is one of the few things i'm genuinely really proud of proud to be english right um that comes from that place as well whether it's basically good-natured like as with the as with the slade or or more madness or early beatles you know or menacing with the as with the who and the sex pistols or

something in between like packs of kids running running a mock on cross chattel ferry but i think now now more than ever when we're being encouraged to fall back on worshipping the monarchy and trusting the upper classes to run the place without the civilising influence of Europe, it's important to recognise this and remember it and respect it and appreciate that this is a cold, hard country with fields of potatoes not vineyards you know and uh if we if we must be on our own in this world we have to find the positives in uh this crude and drunken island and and chief among them is this particular kind of brutal celebration that you see in this clip i mean there's no conceivable way that slade could have been italian no it's not it just no and if they could have been german but they would have looked the same but they would have meant something completely different that'd be absolutely i mean there should be a little edward elgar should be disinterred to write a little stirring soundtrack to that little homage there, I think. But, yeah, I mean, you know, it's Dennis the Menace, it's Bother Boys, it's Football Hooligans and Slade.

And it was just, you know, obviously at a certain point, you know, why English rock was getting very kind of polarised, you know. And this is sort of, free figuration would have kind of happened with punk in his own way, I suppose. of polarised, you know, and it's a sort of free figuration would have kind of happened with punk in its own way, I suppose, because, you know, people like Pink Floyd and even Led Zeppelin and whatever, you know, had very much entered into this sort of, graduated into the sort of realm of albums and would never have, like,

you know, thought to sort of descend or condescend to appear on top of the pops. And there were a lot of, yeah, kids of a certain age who did, you know, who wanted a rock music that was theirs, you know, that had a kind of a sort of a terrace aspect or whatever. And Slade were tailor-made for them. Actually, I'm going to zoom in a bit further on this.

This isn't just about Britain. This is about the West Midlands. I think it's hard to get Slade on a deepish level or, you know, however deep the level that you could get Slade. on a deepish level or, you know, however deep the level that you could get slayed. If you're not familiar with the region and its cheery lack of sophistication, although… Oh, come on. Come on. Don't do Crossroads, Dan Taylor. I know. But the thing is, Wolverhampton is a special case, to be honest, right? Because, I mean, I'm talking about a lack of sophistication.

I mean, Wolverhampton, compared to wolverhampton the rest of the region might as well be 17th century amsterdam viennese coffee shop before the nazis i don't know al i don't being from east but being from east of the imaginary wall erected just past burton uponweed. I don't know if you ever got this, but even to other West Midlanders, Wolverhampton is, you know, how can I put it? You know how everyone in Europe loved Fawlty Towers? Yeah. But in Spain, they changed Manuel and made him Portuguese.

Well, for West Midlanders, Wolverhampton is our Portuguese Manuel. Right. What the rest of the country thinks about the West Midlands, we think of Wolverhampton. Let me just break in there, Taylor. In Spain, Manuel is either Italian or Mexican. Oh, that's even better.

So in Spain, Manuel was from Wolverhampton. So, come on, feel the noise. We stayed at number one for four weeks until it was usurped by the 12th of Never by Donny Osmond. The follow-up, Squeeze Me, Please Me, also entered the charts at number one in June of this year and they'd have one more number one single in 1973. Oh, wonder what that was.

In 1983, a cover by the American band Quiet Riot went to number five in America, but Slade thought it was cat shit and refused to have anything to do with it or them. When their lead singer Kevin Dubrow went on to be a DJ in the 90s, he interviewed the wrestler William Regal, who mentioned that he was a Slade fan as a kid. When Dubrow mentioned that he'd made Slade a load of money by covering their songs, Regal pointed out that Slade had made his band even more money, and the interview ended with Regal

pulling Dubrow over the desk and choking him, knocking his wig off in the process. Oh, I love William Regal. Come on, feel the noise Girls, wrap the boys Fantastic. That's right there. Just branching out here. That was a good one, wasn't it? Branching out.

You've gone mad, haven't you? I'll tell you what we're going to have now. Somebody who did so well this year. Donny Osmond singing a number called Young Love. Applause Music Music Music Music Music

Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music. I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a man, I'm a I know I fell mine. Blackburn holding the branch that Edmonds had at the beginning. Do you wonder if he'd actually kind of like had a fight with him about it while Slade was on? Yeah, it would be lovely to have had a camera sort of, you know, train on them throughout the... Oh. And of course, what happens in those circumstances is,

I've seen it when people are interviews or something like that people are just absolutely stony in those little pauses in between of which of course in TV coverage there are a great many so they have to keep their powder absolutely dry but yeah definitely you suspect but you never know there's probably as we've

sort of suspected it could well be kind of deep wells of animus between Blackburn I Edmunds. Yeah, I think Blackburn's gone, you've had my job, I'm having your brunch. Yes, yes, very possibly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and Edmunds has gone off for a cry or something. We can only hope so. Possibly like that.

Or it's just like, I'm going to take this. You know, he's probably said, this is a great comedy prop. I can do some business with this. I don't think you're up to it, Edmonds. Yes. What did he say again? Oh, I'm branching out. Yeah, there you go.

And then when Edmonds is thinking, damn, I wish I'd thought of that. The best thing about this intro is that, you know, in the previous clip, there was that ugly bloke in a top hat. Well, now they've found an even uglier bloke in a top hat that Tony's actually talking to. And the first ugly bloke in a top hat well they've now they've found an even uglier bloke in a top hat that tony's actually talking to and the first ugly bloke in the top hat is standing behind them looking really cut out like he's been sort of aced out a bit and uh the best of the best bit is when he he

he says to this bloke you've gone mad haven't you still bashing away at this mental illness motive yeah he always uses for humor and the bloke does all that anyone could do in those circumstances and sort of makes a face and looks the other way and he introduces a video of young love by donny Osmond. Born in Ogden, Utah in 1957, Donny Osmond was the younger brother, at the time, of the Osmond Brothers, a juvenile barbershop quartet who were discovered at Disneyland by Andy Williams in the early 60s and put on his TV show. After making his debut on the show at the age of five, he was bolted onto the group and by the beginning of the 70s was pushed as a teeny bop idol to the chagrin of his brothers. By 1972, Donnie was spun off as a solo artist and his first single, Puppy Love, was number one for five weeks in the summer

of that year. This song, a cover of the 1956 Standard, which was a hit for the Crew Cuts and Tab Hunter, was the follow-up to The 12th of Never and was number one for four weeks in August and September. Before we go into this video, why is he being given cover versions all the time? I don't know. I'd not really know. I suppose I'm not one of the world's leading Osmondologists, I suppose I'm not one of the world's leading Osmondologists, so I haven't really devoted a lot of thought to the matter. But I think perhaps it was this issue of familiarity. Cover versions represent familiarity, and new songs are not familiar.

And just take an old, trusted standard and give it that kind of lovely Osmond gloss, and you're on to a winner. Maybe they just rang up all the songwriters they knew said you fancy writing a song for donny osmond and they were like yeah never live it down what this record sounds like in fact is one of those have your lyrics made into a record records you know like where you'd send off your some dog roll to a po box and a bit of cash and they get some hack singer to bash it out over a pre-recorded backing track um it's got that weird generic feel to it you know what i mean like blind man's penis and all that it's um i suppose so anyone who doesn't know what blind man's penis is is going to be like, what the fuck is he talking about?

Look it up, it's really good. It's strange, really. So Donny Osmond at that point, he would have... Again, it was a sense of sort of tribal warfare and Donny Osmond was, you know, utterly... It was like Dennis the Menace and Walter and he was definitely in the kind of Walter the Softy camp along with Bertie Blenkinstop and Jeremy Snodgrass and and people like that as far as i was concerned yeah well yeah he

was bash street kids but same but yeah the same principle um yeah very much like that he just belonged to that kind of world of girls and mums and old people and you know and softies generally of course it's a bit alarming when i realized that apparently he could do a bit of karate could donny osmond that messed with my mind um my mind. In fact, he used to occasionally do a little thing where he'd break tiles on stage using his karate skills. That's right, yes. In his Elvis jumpsuit. So, you know, it did actually kind of scramble my brain a bit. And of course, also, he realised that, you know, soft as this music was, and soft it is, there's no doubt about it, Osmond mania. I mean mean it's brutal i mean you

know and i just i took the jarred cartoons you know as as being kind of as gospel you know which showed all these kind of like hard-bitten police emerging with like black eyes and sort of ties askew and um from the fray of a kind of you know on osman's sort of airport airport arrival um and all these like you know screaming screaming girlies or whatever. Were girls a thing in your world at the time? I mean, in the sense that did you go to a mixed school? Yes, I did. I'd have been at junior school at this point.

Oh, right. Yeah, no, no, no. So were the girls at that school into the Osmonds? Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it was all, you know, there were the girls and one or two soft boys who joined in the girls' games. So who was more popular at the time then,

Donny Osmond or David Cassidy? I think it was probably about equal, really. Dishy David Cassidy. I'd say it was pretty equally divided. I don't think there was any sort of sense of the Cassidyites and the Osmondians or anything like that. Osmonoids, I would say. Yes, Osmonoids indeed, yeah, yeah.

You know, it's like, if you went to Slay, you were probably also into the Sweet. You know, there wasn't a sort of City United thing going on. stone fireplace in a brown shirt with letters on it as he smiles a lot and wanders around a dead plush living room with all fake snow on the windows and a christmas tree because mormons actually do do christmas you know they weren't aboos or fags or anything like that but they love satsumas and and uh and after eight minutes it's a lonely christmas for donnie though isn't it it is isn't it video he's spinning around in this empty room singing to himself at christmas i can sympathize i would i would have i could identify with i would have liked it better if he'd just had two cards on the mantelpiece

i was watching this i was trying to think is he better or worse than Bieber? Right? Like, and it's hard to say. On the one hand, Donnie's essential dullness and piety at least mean that he never made quite such a tit out of himself. And he did appear on at least one genuinely great record. Yes. On the other hand, Bieber gets to work with more talented people and he's paired up with selena gomez whereas donnie was paired up with someone who looked a bit like selena gomez but it was his own sister and it's spending that much time with your

sister um just looks fucking weird it's like those blokes who try and climb over the wall of Buckingham Palace. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, you spent a lot of time with your sister. They were very close. Yes, yeah. Yes, that was always a little bit disconcerting. Yeah, when they'd sort of stare. You know, they'd sing romantic songs, staring lovely into each other's eyes.

And I thought, this Mormon faith's a bit lax,'t it um but uh there's always confused with johnny osmond of course didn't he i mean there was the osmonds and of course i really like the osmonds and in crazy horses and stuff like that um well i mean all the kens must have been really pissed off by now yeah yeah the four ken osmonds yes because they're seeing what they're seeing the keyboard player being pushed to the front. And then, oh, their little sister's come along now and she's having a career. And then that little fucker. Yeah. Osmond Minimus.

He's got a number one record. What about us? I mean, the Osmonds, I mean, they did have, as you said, they did have number two with Let Me In. But, you know, the Osmonds as a band are definitely on the wane by 1973. I mean, I'm sure that it was a bit like, you know, the way that like the Jermains and Tito's and Randy's felt, you know, in the Jacksons, obviously.

I mean, Randy especially. Yeah. Yeah, but the difference is that Michael was by far the most talented one. Whereas, is that really true of Donny? I mean, it's hard to say, isn't it? It's hard to know how to gauge that. I mean, this is a fucking crap record.

There's no way that you can, it doesn't matter which way around you hold the picture, this is a terrible record. I mean, the version of this song that I knew as a kid was by Tab Hunter, whose name always seemed hilarious to late 80s acid heads living in a town that didn't have much acid in it but this is the worst version of it the way the way he hits the word devotion on the first chorus like a young Marvin Hagler. It's just, this is not a sort of delivery.

And then the sheer insincerity with which he gazes into the camera at the end as he sings the word emotion. It's amazing. Imagine if you had to trust this bloke for some reason. You know what I mean? Imagine, give it to me straight, Donny, what's the prognosis? And you get a performance like that, that'd ruin your Christmas.

Yeah. It's like taking a shot of hairspray straight in the mouth, isn't it, this time? Talking of annuals, as we were before, I happen to have on me Music Star Annual 1974. Music Star would have been the best music magazine to ever work on

because you wrote about all the stars of the early 70s, but you just made shit up. You didn't even bother interviewing them. So there's loads of stories in it. I mean, on the cover, I mean, this would be a nice guide as to the pecking order of 1973 in the world of young girls

because it's all a load of love arts and the two biggest love arts are David Cassaday and Donny of love arts and the two biggest love arts are david cassaday and donny osmond and then the next biggest are rod stewart then michael jackson then brian connelly and at the bottom is boa and it's packed with gorgeous color pics pics with an x of course okay yeah and so here we have an article called things i love and things that break my heart by donna so things i love include the moon utah the morning sunshine you music rainbows flowers music star because it's such a great magazine rain wind trees

kindness rocks and joking but you know let's not let's not you know let's he's not a two dimensional character things that break my heart. A tear. A bird with a broken wing. Unkindness. Not meeting you. Oh, dear. Seeing the countryside ruined by freeways.

Parting. Violence. And war. the heat death of the universe so you know i mean there's a lot going on in donny's head at the minute and also another article donna make his heart pound by being yourself and always being totally honest with him by making him a super tie-dyed t-shirt in his favourite colours. By painting a tiny little flower on your cheek that matches your eyes. By planning an evening of popcorn, apple cider and some good talk. Apple cider?

Apple cider, yeah. Get pissed, basically. This is the weird thing. There was this innocent idea in the 1970s that cider was a soft drink. I remember Mickey out of Lush saying, how did I become, you know, I started drinking. I was about 12 or 13. I used to go round to my friends' house. Would you like Coca-Cola or would you like cider?

She'd say, well, I'd have some cider, please. People didn't seem to realise it had an alcoholic content. I think American Americans when they say apple cider they mean something different yeah strong bow do they Ned Flanders

drinks it so yeah Donnie's top of the tree at the minute isn't he but basically both him and David Castle they're just conduits for this frightening raging nascent sexual energy yeah generation aren't they yeah definitely the like of which hadn't been i mean it's not that it hadn't happened before when he had frank sinatra in his young days and johnny ray and people like that but um it didn't feel

like it and i suppose you know obviously the beatles but um they've been a bit of a hiatus really and so it was you know it it did actually feel disconcerting. It felt like it was something happening for the first time at the time. It's the first time I've been aware of that sort of thing. So the follow-up to Young Love, a cover of Nat King Cole's When I Fall In Love, was in the charts this week at number four and would be the last top ten hit for Donnie as a solo artist

until 2004 and Breeze On By. In the summer of 1974, Donny was lumped in with his sister Marie, and they'd have four chart hits in the UK over a period of two years. Johnny Osmond there. And the number that was heard in China is Egg Fu Yang. Now, this next young lady showed us her 48th crash. She got... in her Daytona Demon. She's going to can the can? After Edmonds makes a really shit joke about the song being called Egg Fu Young in China, fucking hell,

he points out that the next act showed us her 48th crash earlier in the year, Suzy Quatro with Can The Can. Born Susan Quattrochi in Detroit in 1950, Suzy Quatro was the daughter of a part-time jazz musician and played percussion in her dad's band as a kid at the age of 14 she joined her older sister's band the pleasure seekers who released a couple of local singles in the late 60s after receiving two offers one from electro who wanted to turn her into the next janice joplin and won from Mickey Most. She moved to Britain in 1971 and her first solo single, Rolling Stone,

got to number one in Portugal. She spent 1972 supporting Thin Lizzy and Slade and this is her second single which got to number one for one week in June of this year. Before we go any further, we've got to go back to that intro. She showed us her 48th crash. Do you think Edmonds was being a bit surreptitious there?

Cockney rhyming slang. Exactly, yeah. Oh my goodness. No, I don't think he did. I had no idea what he was talking about. Words were just tumbling randomly from his mouth. I don't even want to think about Noelel edmunds contemplating suzy quattro's genitals moving swiftly on uh i mean right at the beginning

of this song it's got to be pointed out that there's one fat ginger beardo lad in a tank top just about to throw down some moves before noticing the camera rushing towards the stage and he gets the fuck out of the way that was great we're seeing a lot of tank tops aren't we in this episode oh i'm so glad that it was this one because i like all our bigots but this is the best one because it's just like all the others but more so um this is the most direct and the most metallic and uh unreal and remorsel. It's like you can tell the sort of aggression in this record is only make-believe. And with hindsight, it seems completely logical that this sort of black leather hellcat surrounded by these genuinely rough-looking biker blokes would actually be really nice and smiley and charming and just a really

nice woman um but it works even better that way um because there's that sort of giddiness to it because it's uh it's like a fantasy record there's this weird transported ecstatic feel which you didn't really get from bona fide early 70s greaser rock right it's been buffed and sharpened up and made into upper music rather than downer music basically um for which we have to thank chin and chapman uh not for the first time as ever knowing when the house needs to be built up from the foundations and when it just needs a coat of paint. Yeah. Although Suzy Quatro's pre-fame stuff is great, you know, pleasure seekers.

Yeah, it's really good. Not all of it. I mean, they were very obviously, you know, they were formerly a pretty straight 60s dance band and they do sort of, you know, a bit of Motown type stuff. But there's a few of the tracks where they let loose, where it's like sort of real garage punk stuff. And it's genuinely good. What a Way to Die is a brilliant record. But this is the perfectly streamlined, aerodynamic version of the same feeling, you know. And it's one of the best illustrations of what can happen

when you see pop music as a collaborative thing and you don't get embarrassed or uptight by how much your producers can contribute and you just do your bit with complete conviction. Yeah, I would agree with that, definitely. I mean, I think it's a great example of a piece of sort of pop artifice and i think that you know the fact that it is you know that is kind of inauthentic that it is kind of been sort of crafted and sort of smoothed out you know by sort of professional pop experts as it were in chin and chapman it

is really what makes it um you know i mean But it wouldn't work if it was just that. That's the thing. It's the fact that you need this really fiery band. Oh, absolutely, yeah. You need to have the relationship with the original, but it's not complete. But it's the mixture of, I suppose, the formally authentic and the artifice in it.

And it's like a lot of things. We were talking about what does can the can mean? It doesn't really matter. I mean, a lot of.... We were talking about what does can the can mean? It doesn't really matter. I mean, a lot of what we see throughout this show in terms of the way that people dress or whatever, I mean, it isn't rooted in anything. It's just these bizarre sort of creations made up on the spot that have not really got much going for them except outlandishness.

Well, I mean, let's get into the lyrics, David. I mean, I've been sitting there and working it out and it has to be one of the most batshit lyrics ever for a number one song. I mean, the verses are basically saying, okay, your boyfriend's an eagle and your mammy's a tiger and your sister's a cat and both of them want to get into his nest

so you've got to scratch their eyes out first. Yeah, it's just, it's saying, don't... Right, hang on, not finished, not finished. And the chorus, there's three explanations. One of them is, put a can in a can, which is, it sounds like something that Yoko Ono would write on the back of a fucking John Lennon LP. It's very much like, make bread out of toast.

Yeah. Or, I always thought, put your man In the can meant you know Bin him off because he's been shagging Your tiger mam or something Or if you were an American You'd probably assume that The lyric put your man in the can Is basically saying

You know give him some bumhole love And keep him on side could be yeah or or banish him to the lavatory is another one yes or there's also you know give an emerging kraut rock group the sack i mean there's all kinds of uh um possible things i gotta say a lyric uh that's just telling you to try not to let your boyfriend bang your mum and your sister, shows a depressing view of human nature. And also is disappointingly repressed and conventional, I think.

But you can't hear any of these lyrics anyway, because there's more important things in the mix. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I didn't listen to the lyrics at all. I mean, I don't really listen in the mix. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I didn't listen to the lyrics at all. I mean, I don't really listen to the lyrics much now, to be honest. I mean, I just see everything as a kind of sort of sculpted noise, really, and all the significances on the surface. I suppose that's always been the way that I've listened to stuff like that.

But, yeah, but it does, you know, I mean, as Taylor says, you know, there is perhaps a slight sadness to the lyric. But susie quattro herself i don't think was a feminist i think that she was she's one of those kind of tomboyish tigerish women who doesn't really have much with something i think she sees it as a kind of weakness really and i think she regarded feminists and people like that and campaigns women's rights as as um political and therefore sort of rather sheep-like in their tendencies you you know, following a particular line. I think she felt that she was some sort of beyond a feminist because, you know, she was striking out alone

and, you know, a trailblazer or what have you. I mean, this performance, though, it is going to be a non-art confuser, isn't it? Because there's all these blokes who look like women and then there's a woman who looks sort of like a woman, but, you know. Would you tell Len Tucky that he looked like a woman to his face? He's a big fella. He's also not a man you would advise to wear a skin-tight leather outfit.

But equally, he's not a man you'd openly mock for wearing one, which is probably how he got away with it. I don't know if you remember, in Tigran Scorcher at the time, the comic, the sort of sports comic, there was a character called Talon of the Track. Yes, Joe Talon. Joe Talon, Joe Talon, remember, yeah. And she was like, she ran this kind of speedway crew.

The Ospreys, yeah. Yeah, the Ospreys, yeah. But she herself wasn't allowed to race because she was a woman, you know. So she had all these kind of geezers who just went out on the track and had to do the business set under her sort of titular direction. The Ospreys, yeah. Yeah, the Ospreys, yeah. But she herself wasn't allowed to race because she was a woman, you know. So she had all these kind of geezers who just went out on the track and had to do the business set under her sort of titular direction. But occasionally she would race them and she would beat them. It's just that the rules didn't allow for her to ride. So, you know, so...

And I always felt that, like, yeah, that Susie Quattro was always the kind of... Very much the Jo Tallon of the 70s glam pop scene. Yeah, she wasn't a penny race, was she? Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely. Or a grandma in Billy's boots. No, no, absolutely. Grandma Dane. Oh, yeah, well, absolutely not.

The other thing that needs to be pointed out is that that keyboard player's got his instrument set far too low. Yes. There's just, you know, he's probably got a better platform going on as well, and he's just reaching down for the keyboard. And it's just like, oh, God, you're really going to fuck your back up in later life, mate. There's a problem, though, with those little electric organs, right?

We've talked in the past at some length about the difficulties of performing from behind a keyboard. But it's not so bad if you've got a big Hammond organ or something that you can sort of hide behind and rock backwards and forwards and it's like an impressive bit of gear. Whereas those electric organs that you hear on a lot of 60s and early 70s records, they sound great and they're really piercing and they've got an exciting sound, but they look like a toy. So if you're on stage in your biker outfit prodding at one of those, visually it's a bit feeble. So the follow-up to Can The Can, 48 Crash, got to number three in August,

and her last single of 1973, Daytona Demon, got to number 14 in November. She started 1974 with her second number one, Devilgate Drive, in February of that year and eventually appeared on Happy Days as Lafonza's girlfriend's sister, Leather Tuscadero. Here is a record now that got some number one. I suppose we could call it the surprise hit of 1973. It's called Eye Level, and here comes the Simon Parker. APPLAUSE Blackburn, without the branch that he won off Edmonds,

introduces what he feels was the first surprise number one of the year. Do you think Blackburn got it snatched back off him off Noel, or do you think the floor manager came over and gave him a stern talking to and told him to give it back? Almost certainly, yeah. Yeah, me too. So anyway... He hasn't admonished them.

So he introduces what he calls the first surprise number one of the year, Eye Level by the Simon Park Orchestra. This, of course, is the theme tune to Van der Valk, the Thames television series about a detective in Amsterdam. It was composed by Jan Stuckart, loosely based upon a German-Dutch nursery rhyme, by Jan Stuckart loosely based upon a German Dutch nursery rhyme and was performed by an orchestra led by Simon Park who was born in Market Harbour in 1946. It was originally released in late 1972 and got to number 41 but when the second series was broadcast this year it was released again and this time it got to number one for four weeks in September and October.

The B-side is Distant Hills, which Park co-wrote. Anybody know what Distant Hills is? A theme from Crown Court. Oh, you bastard. Yeah, I've got it. Indeed. Ooh. What? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- Yeah.

Yeah. Was it that one? Because I assumed... Oh, was it... Yes, it's more likely to be that one, wasn't it? Yeah. The less severe, yes. The ones when... It might have been both of them mashed together, though.

Yeah. Because they tend to deliver rather dubiousious not guilty verdicts in these cases. If anyone doesn't remember Crown Court it was always a sort of scripted case but the jury came to a real verdict at the end of each one. And it was the theme tune to being off school sick, wasn't it? Yes,

of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unbelievably they've not gone for the easy option of rebroadcasting a video of the performance. They're here in a video of the performance they're here in the studio and the bar bill for this episode must have been fucking colossal absolutely yeah they'll have a right old jolly up definitely is this live i doubt it because just because of the difficulties of uh of micing them up while they're on camera. I don't think it will be. So, Van der Voel, do you remember it? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I remember it very vividly because, you know, the charts, what was number one? It was like the changing of the seasons. It was like the weather. And I think everyone was conscious of what number one, what was number one at that time. It was not knowing what was number one at that point was like not knowing who was prime minister.

It was really in the realms of ignorance like not knowing who was prime minister. It was really in the realms of ignorance if you were unconscious of these things. And I think in a sense, you know, at that point, pop music on top of the pops, it did represent a very, very kind of broad... You know, it wasn't just pop. Pop was just part of it. There was also stuff like this.

There was also this vast audience that was listening to Radio 2 and Sing Something Simple and Semperini Serenade and all that part of it. There was also stuff like this. There was also this vast audience that was listening to Radio 2 and Sing Something Simple and Semperini Serenade and all that kind of stuff. They were very active as record buyers, and clearly something like this. And stuff like this was part of the enemy world, the old folks, the MR types, the Radio 2ers, the Vince Hill fans.

the MR types, the radio tours, the Vince Hill fans. It was that whole world that, you know, still had us, you know, still casting a kind of dark pull over popular culture. The great thing was at this point is that the deal was back in the 70s that you had the sublime and the ridiculous, if you count this as ridiculous, it was kind of ridiculous that, you know, people had actually gone out and bought this. But there was this wonderful trade-off. I mean, eventually Pop got to a point of just, all that's on is this sort of

healthy and efficient sort of mediocrity. You don't get these kind of wonderful, whatever, lieutenant pigeon type, you know, anomalies anymore. And you don't get David Bowie doing Starman either. You know, you don't get these two wonderful extremes. And I think one of the things you see in this episode overall, and you've already seen it, are the kind of extremes, really.

And it was kind of better then, because the reason you have the sublime is because more things were tolerated, more things were waved through. And so, you know, the trade-off for the really great stuff was the Simon Park Orchestra now and again. And also, it's got to be said that, you know, music's

never been more available than it is now but you'd hear so much more music back then simply because you know you'd have radios on in your factory your factory might have its own radio station um you know radio was on everywhere and you know the charts were for everyone everybody could add a stake in the charts. And, you know, if a load of people decided at the end of an episode of Van der Volk and it popped up and said, oh, the theme tune's available,

a shitload of people would go out and buy it. Because, you know, I mean, the viewing figures for Tally were fucking ridiculous compared to what they are now. I mean, there could have been, I don't know, 16 million people watching an episode of Van der Volk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I remember even at the time,

having the sort of feeling that people get these days when, like, say, the Brexit vote occurs, bloody young people, yeah, you've got all the kind of the right ideas, you're a progressive order, but you don't bloody turn up to the polling station. And this is what I was thinking about the Sweet thing. I think that, like, Sweet fans hadn't been committed enough. Yeah, it was all right, kind of, you know,

sort of like, you know, worshipping the glamour, that kind of stuff, but you weren't committed enough to go out to the record shop. And whereas the old folks were, you know, they would have gone. They would have gone down to Woolies reliably, okay? You know, this is the trouble. They may be reactionary, but they're more reliable.

Yeah, all the Odins would have gone down to Boots or W.H. Smith, wouldn't they? Yeah. In their droves. That's right, yeah. But, I mean, the TV show, do you remember that? Because I remember it being on

simply because, I remember it being quite popular because it was set in Amsterdam. They could get away with a bit more. You know, they could do better drugs and prostitution. Yeah, I've tried watching a few because they're all on YouTube,

but it's really, it's quite a standard, slow, 70s detective series, which I generally like, but it's, and also the fact that it's quite a standard, slow, 70s detective series, which I generally like, but it's... And also the fact that it's set in Amsterdam, right, which appears to have been chosen as a location because it is at least a bit more exotic than Rotterdam or Utrecht. I mean, it's not that picturesque, really.

The later ones are better because they're done entirely on location, on 16mm film, so they've got that dismal Cold War feel. But really, no one who's ever seen Frenzy can take Barry Foster seriously as a policeman, even a Dutch policeman. But I don't really remember it from the time. In fact, because I'm too young to remember 1973, really I know this music as the theme from the late 70s advert for Alton Towers.

Right. Which is sort of appropriate because it does capture the feeling of standing in a queue for an hour and a half. It's not, I mean, unusually for a 70s hit hit this really is bad for all the reasons that serious music fans of the time would have given you right in that it's designed to be bland and unobtrusive yeah um and it masquerades as something close to serious music or at least classy you know where in fact it's pure chintz yes it's music that requires conducting yeah yeah and it's got that air of by someone who looks like a trendy english teacher well he looks he

looks like if richard stilgoe was in the strokes and also nowadays all those musicians would be in black right they say just turn up just wear black because it's 1973, they're all in mustard roll necks. Yeah. Like the dad on the box photo of Blow Football or Connect Four. Yes, definitely, yeah. Or Think Once, Think Twice, Think Bike. It's like a 1973 idea of neutral, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. You can imagine sort of, your dad doesn't listen to this, you might learn something. Yeah. The thing is that this record has that air of smug superiority because whatever else it is it isn't noisy right there's no noise of any kind on this record right in the sense that the the sound is smooth and airless and entirely without energy but also it doesn't create any kind of movement in the brain right it doesn't

ring any bells it doesn't break anything or or light anything up it doesn't cause anything unexpected to happen right no noise nothing extraneous is created it's just this it's just what it is in its corner but that's understandable because it's actually a bit of library music it's um it was just written for dwarf to DeWolf to be used as library music. And, yeah, it's a Dutch tune, isn't it? Pre-Provo, pre-Kruijf, 20th century Netherlands. Yeah. Yeah.

I had a mate who worked for DeWolf once, not writing the music. He just worked for the company. It was one of the last places in britain where you could smoke at work but he used to get copies of all these albums where the tracks were called like loud party music or peaceful reflection things like this but every now and again you get something really great and strange like music by people who really knew what they were doing and were able to be inventive um outside respectable forms of music uh but that doesn't really apply to eye level no there's total football and there's total bollocks yeah by this time i would have uh i'd have got really bored and i would have nipped back to the

table to see if there's any matchmakers or sausage rolls or whatever. And yeah, my parents and me, I mean, our own grandpa would be going, oh, this is that tune off that programme. What's it called again? And they'd be there for fucking... Yeah, at no point do they mention Van der Valk. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But a record like this, it felt like I was being implicitly told off When a record like this came on This is how it should be done You can tell the difference between the men and the women Because there were no women Well if there were any You'd be able to tell there were women

They wouldn't be wearing tangerine tank tops Unfortunately there were no women up to snuff A sophisticated piece of music like this I'm afraid Unbelievably this was the second biggest selling single of 1973 and the first television theme tune to get to number one in the uk the only other ones are miami 7 by s club 7 suicide is painless by mash teletubbies and bob the builder fucking out all the great theme tunes that never got a sniff of the charts. It's upsetting, isn't it?

I mean, can you imagine if we lived in a world where the theme tune to the Sweeney and Starsky and Hutch had got to number one? Yeah, Juliet Bravo. Oh, can you just imagine what Pants People and Legs of Co could have done to them? Yeah. The Simon Park Orchestra never troubled the

charts again, but a version of this song with lyrics called And You Smiled was released by Matt Munro, which got to number 28 this month. As Tony said at the beginning of the program, 73 was a very good year for the Osmonds. We go right down to the junior end of the family, Jimmy. Jimmy! Jimmy! This cunt. Born in Canoga Park, California in 1964,

little Jimmy Osman was the ninth and last Osman spawn and was the first of them to get a gold record when he had a hit at the age of five in Japan with My Little Darling. His first British single, If Santa Claus Were My Daddy, failed to chart in late 1971, but the follow-up, a cover of an obscure 1969 Christopher Kingsley song, became the Christmas number one of 1972 and stayed there for five weeks, keeping solid gold Easy Action by T-Rex and the Gene Genie by David Bowie off number one. I think he became quite a nice chap in the end, Jimmy Osmond, didn't he? I think he was sort of set about that. He did, but let's not talk about then.

Let's talk about the now of 1973. First thing I need to ask is what the fuck is this doing on? Because it's last year's Christmas number one. This would be like your mum and dad wrapping up last year's Wizarding Chips annual and giving it to you again. It's got no right to be on here yet. It was number one in January of 1973, but no, it's done. It's time's passed.

Absolutely. I mean, it was number one for weeks and of 1973 but no it's done it's time's passed absolutely i mean it was like it was number one for weeks and weeks it was about 10 or 12 but it was like the winter of 1947 it was just it wouldn't fuck off yeah i mean we used to stand around in our schoolyard freezing our little knackers off just standing around in circles at playground where we've been just pitchforked out into into the yard we'd just stand around fantasising about the various ways in which we'd bray the shit out of little

Jimmy Osmond if someone like the contingency ever strolled into our kind of playground we'd just sort of like you know

we'd each share our kind of fantasy about what I would like you know inflict these sort of drawn out acts of

violence on his person was there anyone equally as famous who you'd want to beat up more at that time well I who you'd want to beat up more at that time um well i mean i would like to beat up donny osmond but then part of me realized that

he might be a humiliating reversal actually um so um i think you know best you know little jimmy was more my own size really um so um yeah yeah and he was beat up a ball i mean you know obviously he was yeah you know the word you, the clues in the word little. Again, there's a sense of like being slightly told off, you know what I mean? Why can't you be a kind of smart, entertaining little song and dance boy like this wearing a nice jumper? Well, kids never like other kids who are on telly.

That's just a hard and fast rule, isn't it? No, of course not. It's, yeah. Jimmy Osman was like the kid on Cracker Jack who'd win double or drop like 12 weeks in a row and he just got sick of seeing him and you were jealous of him and you fucking hated him it's hard to comment on this record it's it's almost embarrassing to discuss it at all or certainly to discuss it in the way it demands because it's like crossing the crossroads isn't it it's it's like it's the dust of what was once low-hanging fruit it's like it's like an easy target that isn't there anymore

because it's been shot to pieces by rookies but still when you're confronted with this cross between Davey Jones and Augustus Gloop it's can't help it. It just angers up the blood. It's like, he looks like if the mid-60s Brian Wilson had an evil miniature robot version of himself which he sent out to do murders.

Also, it's hard to think of anything original to say about it because this record's been designed to be what it is which is a nauseating shit show it's not like someone's tried or it doesn't seem like someone's tried to write a genuinely charming children's song and missed the mark it seems like it's this song's been built from the most basic elements of obnoxiousness right yeah somebody thought it's like somebody thought that on the good ship lollipop was too much like gimme shelter

it's almost like it's yeah and he's presented almost as a parody of the of the archetype of the fat annoying spoiled american kid you know yeah So the only surprise here is that he's not wearing a fucking bow tie and honking a klaxon. It's like he's puking up high fructose corn syrup in an Arby's. Yeah. I mean, there were great wars going on. And I absolutely agree with Terry. It does sound as though it's been deliberately and maliciously calibrated

to raise the hackles of any sort of decent thinking, especially a young person. But this is like the war that was going on between kids and grown-ups, and it was just, you know, that any kid at all should do anything like this was just an act of absolute treachery, basically. It's a quizzling, isn't it? Yeah, he was,

absolutely, you know, and then, you know, he would have been shot, but he certainly would have had the shit kicked out of him, obviously, you know, in more sort of if it had been you know he would have been shocked well they certainly have added the shit kicked out of him obviously and you know in more sort of if things had gone a certain way but um um yeah and it was it was the very fact again this sort of reproach them with that there were some certain types of kids or whatever who grown up was mysteriously admired and thought were wonderful but who just made you know everyone else's want to puke their ring um you know other kids or whatever. And it just felt like, yes, he was definitely... I mean, letting the side down is an absolute understatement.

But it's like listening to Lord Haw-Haw or something like that. I am trying to think of positives for this. But I mean, this song is obviously... He's tinier Tim, isn't he? Tiniest Tim, even minimus the saving grace of this actually is how funny this video is oh yeah sprung on you in a certain mood like i can't get through the first three seconds of this clip without laughing hysterically, which puts it ahead of many things in life, you know. And it's therapeutic to watch little Jimmy Osmond and, yeah, to think like the school bully for two and a half minutes,

which is completely unavoidable and it feels completely harmless and calming to think up terrible ways of ruining his day. It's like he's like a human stress ball.'s like he's like a human stress ball like he looks like a human stress ball and and acts as one it's like what's well okay i was gonna say what's he gonna do get his big brother on you but as we've heard it's yeah that might actually be a bit dangerous but then again he had lots of big brothers didn't he i mean they could do some damage on mass at least you know i bet they fucking hated him even more.

Yeah. But if they all came at you at once, you'd be like Tim Roth in Jurassic Park, The Lost World. The greatest bit of this video, of course, is where he appears as Santa at the end. There's like a tiny little beardless Santa in a slate. It's like the idea of this beaming homunculus coming down your fucking chimney.

Oh, man, that's terrifying, isn't it? Christ alive. It's like he's, surely he's, anyway, he's better suited to going up the chimney. Like either making himself useful as a sweep or on the end of a pole as a brush where he belongs yes um or better still as black smoke i mean my non-art would have loved this oh he's such a nice young lad he's always got lovely air he what he combs his hair he's not

like you and i'd just be there just hating hating the the world. You know, this is like Santa has just shat on my bed on this Christmas day and fucking rubbed it in with his arse. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But I suppose another thing about it, it's like a lot of things, though, in the culture of that, in the pop culture of that point, is it's long-haired lover from, it's complete nonsense.

It's a bit like, you know, you say the can, the can. You know, it's nonsense, arbitrary nonsense, but it doesn't matter. Like so many things were in in pop culture at that time. And he's not really long-haired in a serious sense. His balls haven't dropped. He's obviously not a lover. And he's certainly not from Liverpool.

Oh, can you imagine if he were? Can you imagine a scouse Jimmy Osmond? Yeah. Also, one of the things he offers to do in the I'm Your Man-like lyric is cut his hair. Yeah. I mean, well, it defeats the object, doesn't it? Well, yeah. This relationship's a bit full-on for someone his age, I think.

I think what he's saying is he'll be anything that he wants him to be, basically. Yeah. But we just all want him to be dead. Violently dead. Crying. For some reason, he doesn't offer that as an option. Is there anything, anything else to say? Yes, there is.

Who the fuck bought this? Who's the target audience for this? Yeah, I'd say your gran, but there's not enough record-buying grans to make this number one for that long, is there? No. I mean, would it be girls who just wanted a fucking chubby toothy dollar?

So the follow-up tweedle d got to number four in april of this year he did a record called that oh yes dum dum dum dum dum dum dum you just instantly picture the illustrations yeah from and it's yeah it is isn't it just thank christ there wasn't two of it it it's true i mean he really was trying to rub feces in our ear canal at that point definitely i think at this point we are effectively stamping on the head of an unconscious little jimmy osmond we should probably probably stop before it's too late let's let's let's just walk away and think about what we've done so the follow-up tweedle d got to number four in april of this year and he'd have one more hit in 1974 with i'm gonna knock on your door and he was done as a chart act he'd go on to appear in fame for a couple of episodes in the early 80s and then became the lead singer of the Osmonds earlier this decade.

Fucking hell. And he's still the youngest person ever to have a number one in the UK at the age of nine. So, I mean, this is the low point of the show, isn't it? This Top of the Pop swings back and forth between the ghastly and the divine all the way through. But it's about to swing so wildly

that the entire population of Britain gets whiplash. So let's leave this cunt in the fireplace and move on. I'll be your long-haired lover from Liverpool And I'll do anything you ask I'll be your clown or your puppet or your April Fool

Cut my hair or even wear a mask I'll be your valentine and you'll be mine And things will be cool Oh! That's little Jimmy Osmond right there. Have you noticed that this year it's been sort of... And things will be cool one blockbuster so Edmunds and Blackburn are absolutely encrusted with tinsel, looking as if they're being strangled by a glam boa constrictor. Edmunds points out that 1973 was a year of glam rock, while Blackburn announces that him and Edmunds are going to try to out-glitter all the groups from here on in.

Yeah. But then he introduces Blockbuster by Sweet. We've already discussed Sweet in Chart Music No. 6, so we'll just say that this is a follow-up to Wig Wham Bam, which got to No. four in October of 1972, and it got to number one for five weeks from January of this year. Halla-fucking-loo-ya, here we go.

Yeah. This was the absolute stuff. And, yeah, and it was, it was, you were almost, like, sort of gasping for cultural air, you know, in this one, isn't it? It's just, this is just rising to the surface, you know, it was, you know, when you were a kid at that age, I mean, things like this aren't just great records. I mean, they are absolutely vital.

You feel like, you know, you just shrivel away and die in a sort of perma 1950s, if you will, into things like this. I mean, you know, you just needed these sort of eruptions of colour and light and noise just to sustain you, really. At this point, I would have been off my fucking tits dancing to this. You know, as I've said before, Scotto Minford School, Thursday dinner time disco, half a pee to get in. I'd be with the rest of the Rudy guys

as I was the only white member of that collective. And we'd be dancing in a stylistic fashion to everything and then this song would come on and all bets were off and everyone would go fucking mental. Right from the siren. Yep. Which American listeners might not know

because when it came out over in America they took the siren off because it was an American police car siren. And while we're doing that my parents parents and my non-Iron grandpa will be looking at the screen going, what the fuck is this? Exactly, yeah, yeah. Never mind a whole month of jankers for this one. Yeah, definitely.

Especially Steve Priest. Now, what he's doing there, he's wearing a sort of Bismarck-type hat, isn't he? It's almost like they're thinking of coming out in a Nazi uniform when they say, perhaps a bit much. So he thinks, well, let me do something offensively German. Yeah, and just the sight of that, David, just the sight of that would set the grandparents off big time. And then later on, you notice the swastika armband.

Oh, right. Yeah, so yeah, it does connect. But he dressed as a Hitler on the original Top of the Pops appearance for this record. He had a Hitler moustache and a sort of a peak cap, sort of like an SS, but with an actual Hitler moustache. Yeah. Well, he's toned it down for this one, at least. Well, he's toned it...

It's merely Kaiser Wilhelm, isn't it? You know, World War I and doesn't quite have the same connotation, perhaps. Yeah, but it's meaning the same thing. I mean, it's done in exactly the same spirit as when the punts wore swastikas, not because they had actual Nazi sympathies, but they just knew it would piss off their dads and granddads.

You know, they live in that culture. But disturbingly, this is the clip where Steve Priest actually looks like a sexually attractive woman. Yes. Perhaps a rather naughty, horsey, ex-public schoolgirl with slightly outré bedroom interests. And it's a bit peculiar to have just sat through

Susie Quatro spitting out this super hot sex rock and think nah I prefer that bloke from this suite and for that to be based on heterosexual priorities it's really unnerving it's terrifying isn't it

and he's camping it up big style in this one, isn't he? Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, because normally, you know, the camera will just cut to him when he says, we just haven't got a clue what to do. But even when it's a wide shot, he's there and he's just giving a little wave to the camera with his fingers. Just on a full dad bait mission yeah

absolutely i've seen that specific look in the eyes and that specific kind of smile before but only ever on women who wanted to go to bed with me so yeah yeah it's an interesting watch, this. Yeah, it sounds. The thing is, obviously I was too young to remember 1973, but this, it doesn't matter, this stands outside time as a record so good that it blasts away all the pain and responsibility of thinking and caring and you know transforms the whole tired and dusty world into a cartoon where everything that happens is simple enough and big enough to be noticed and understood by an eight-year-old child and everything is overstated and impossible to miss.

And this isn't an easy thing to pull off. But what it does is it allows a genuine temporary lifting of the pull cast by death over life. Because for three minutes, death is a joke, the same as life is a joke. And this is a better record than the Gene Genie by Miles. Yes, it is. joke and this is a better record than the gene genie by mile yes it is yes it is and you know it i mean people talk about them having the same riff but it's only mannish boy and about a million jimmy reed songs you know it's like it's not like they invented it

anyway uh except with with those 1966 paul mccartney octave leaps on the bass, like paperback, right? But, yeah, I don't know if a better single was released in 1973. I don't think it was. Well, I don't think this is even the best suite record of 1973. I think Ballroom Blitz is better. Again, I keep coming up with this thing about sort of,

I mean, this was the era of like you know Angel of July and Smash you know and Mashed Potato and there was this feeling of like the inauthentic that the confected and the artificially almost like you know and there's a definite sense about this record

that it is just something that's been kind of created in a kind of pop lab drawing on or influenced by certain sort of inverted commas, real elements or whatever, you know, obviously the big steal from Gene Genie, as Taylor's mentioned. But it's great for all that. I mean, you know, that's not intended as a criticism at all.

And what you get is something kind of extraordinary that's very much kind of of the time, and it's very sort of fleeting. I mean, there's pop music before, there's pop music afterward. There's never quite pop music like this. There's obviously pop music that attempts a sort of neo-glam type thing. But it's just this sort of, it's just this weird, weird moment in pop history that stuff like this happens. Have you seen that documentary about them? It's on YouTube.

It's called... The schools one. I don't know what it is. It's called All That Glitters. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it was a schools programme. Okay. the schools one I don't know what it is it's called All That Glitters yeah and it's yeah it was a schools programme okay

because it highlights again how good they actually were as a rock band but also how desperate they were for everyone to

know that yeah there's a lot of talk in it about how they paid their dues and how they can deliver as a

live band and all this sort of stuff and it never ends well that no it doesn't you get a band whose showmanship is on such a high level and such a big part of their appeal and they get touchy or funny about this stuff it's like you you you end up making a more percussive song-based third album that flops or something actually in the case of the suite you end up making amazing records like Action.

But, you know, it can't last and it never ends. They started writing their own material in the end, didn't they? It wasn't Love Is Like Oxygen and all that. Yeah, yeah. And if you hear their album, they've got an album live at the Rainbow, I think it's in 1973. And they're really good. And if you listen to this record,

the break in this with the stop-start drums on it, that's not easy, you know, to play that and to play it with the confidence that you hear on this record. I mean, it's not Emerson, Lake and Palmer, but these weren't a bunch of dopes, you know what I mean? And it's like for one beautiful year they were comfortable you know being being a a hard rock band that played this kind of pop music but but they may

it's probable i think that's probably that they may have sort of chafed against what you know some of their sort of you know the very idea that they weren't a real rock band they weren't a real this they weren't probably that you know there's emphasis on like oh we've earned us but proper that, you know, there's emphasis on like, oh, we've earned us, but all that slightly dull kind of rock stuff that musicians take a bit too much pride in. So, I mean, all the attention obviously has gone on Steve Priest, but let's not avoid the majesty of Brian Connolly in a skin-tight gold jumpsuit with a massive tiger head on the front.

And also Andy Scott, who halfway through the song reveals a third leg. Did you notice that? Yes. During the guitar solo he's got this kind of like zebra print moo moo on and underneath it he pulls out a third leg and drapes it over the neck of

his guitar and then you know he plonks it on the floor and he's just kind of like walking around like a glam Rolf Harris. the neck of his guitar and then you know he plonks it on the floor and he's just kind of like walking around like a like a glam rolf harris people nowadays don't see why it's better for a band to look like this than a bunch of male models who've just rolled out of bed right it's because and what it is because nowadays people only understand laughter as a form of derision. Right. It's inconceivable that you might laugh warmly with rather than at a band wearing stupid clothes.

And that's a terrible thing to lose. And also nowadays there's this just desperation to be as real as possible. And it's like, no, fuck being real. I'm real. Real can be really shit a lot of the time i want people who i want to see people who are not real who come from fucking the planet wow yeah and this is this is these these are the fucking representatives of that planet to my mind and they they always have been and they always will be they are from the planet wow you know

and there's the cartoon planet wow and there is this sort of sense of just being this artificial creation that only exists in this place in time that has no real relationship to reality and nor should it etc etc and yet at the same time um paradoxically a sense of realness does kind of shine through in patches you know a sense of these kind of being kind of like brickies and being sort of normal blokes uh you know that normalness does shine through um despite all of that um whereas sometimes you know in in when people are sort of striving for that kind of um authenticity that realness whatever there is that it is there's there's no sense of um the meaning ordinary human beings at all the only bad thing in this entire clip is where the camera picks out someone's bald patch in the audience,

which is the only thing that breaks the illusion of time as a frozen moment. So Sweet would follow this up with three number twos on the bounce. Hellraiser, Ballroom Blitz and Teenage Rampage. Blockbuster, Blockbuster, Blockbuster. Just a few months ago, it was the 500th anniversary program for Top of the Pops. We had a lot of international stars jetting in from all over the world, and dawn came. A very special presentation of Tire Yellow Ribbon from the 500th. Thank you. I'm coming home, I've done my time

Now I've got to know what is and is it mine Edmunds introduces a video clip of the 500th episode of Top of the Pops, sadly erased by the BBC, which features the next song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Born Michael Cassavetes in New York in 1944, Tony Orlando was a doo-wop singer in the early 60s before becoming general manager at Columbia Records and then the manager of CBS's publishing wing. However, by the early 70s, he was keeping his hand in as a singer and formed Dawn with Toma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, and had a number one hit in the summer of 1971 with Knock Three Times.

This is their first chart hit since What You Doing Sunday, which got to number three in August of 1971, and it stayed at number one, sorry, and it stayed at number one for four weeks in April and May of this year, keeping Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again by Gary Glitter and Hellraiser by The Suite from the number one spot. I mean, I always wondered when this was on, I mean, this song was fucking everywhere uh that summer i mean i remember this song reminds me of my 1973 summer holiday which was on the robin hood camp uh in chapel st leonard's everything was robin hood themed there was a robin hood camp uh there was uh the maid marion club

um there was little john's arcade and there was a chip shop called The Friar Tuck Inn. Everything was Robin Hood themed except for the direction in which the money was travelling. Yes, definitely, yeah. Definitely, yeah. That place is now called Club Tropicana, the Maymarion Club. Oh, man, it used to be my playground.

I fucking loved it there. And this song was sung over and over and over again. So yeah, I mean, before we pile in on this, I can't hate this song because it's one of my dad's favourite songs. It's one of the first pop records I remember, even though I don't remember it being out because my mum used to sing it to me when I was little.

This is Hold Me Close by David Essex so I do still hate it though I don't think I exactly hate it I was always I think I was always kind of intrigued by it for a reason to go into but one thing though I think I heard this record more than I ever actually saw it performed because it actually looking at this again it came to me as a surprise that um the ethnicity of Dawn and of Tony Orlando himself, because this always struck me as the whitest, most Caucasian creation of any kind ever made. It makes a picket fence look like Bessie Smith. It's just so, so white.

Stop playing, you people are, yeah, yeah. That's the first shocker. He looks like Melchester Rovers' mercurial South American signing. He does, doesn't he? Yes, he absolutely does, yeah. And yeah, he's got two backing singers, although they're not the women who are singing on the record. Right, yeah.

And they do look very much at work with their air hostess smiles. I mean, the thing that confused me about Dawn was I'd look at them and go, well, which one of those women is Dawn and what's the other one's name? For a super professional jobbing singer, which is what he was, Tony Orlando is lazy as fuck. Right. He's singing live here.

And he just sort of throws his voice casually towards the higher notes and he usually misses and lets the note just slide back down again like one of those sticky plastic octopuses that you yes a window and then it slides down and then finally splatters onto the carpet that's what his singing's like he's not really interested he doesn't take any pride in his work. And when he does that little ad lib about how it's the 500th Top of the Pops, and he can't even remember what it is he's supposed to be talking about. He goes, oh, and the whatever it is,

500th anniversary of something. He's just done a load of shit. And so I don't see why I should either. The most entertaining thing about this clip is at the start when the camera's moving towards the stage yes see allowing the audience whispering to his mate mockingly while sporting the most spectacular vpl of 1973 he looks like he's trying to smuggle a giveaway sign out of the studio yeah i mean with this song you know the grown-ups have won again haven't they yeah but i was intrigued by it i can't say

that i hate this record because what was he in prison for yes we kind of gloss over this i mean was it you know is he a sex offender is it um yeah is it how long has he been in prison you know 20 years, 30 years? Did he sort of, you know, burn down an orphanage? Did he? No, it was three years. Yeah. I mean, what's, you know, what?

I mean, knowing the laxity of prison sentencing. Well, yeah, of course. He had the revolving door. Yeah. It was the, yeah, that's right, the revolving door justice system. Could have murdered someone's non-on. Yeah, okay. So it's been three long years, of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Surely. Yeah. Could have murdered someone's non-on And got slapped on the wrist Yeah Surely he would have fried If it had been anything too bad I suppose Yeah He's not fairly white So that significantly increases The chances of him heading for the big chair

That's true But apparently the song is based on a Civil War tune, so apparently he was a prisoner of war in a Confederate prison. But then why would he be on a bus? Perhaps a verse discussing this, well, I suppose it would have prolonged the whole song, unfortunately. Might have just helped out a bit,

because I was all a bit mystified. It's just like, you know, what did he go down for and um David you you know we've already discussed the fact that you assumed Terry Jacks actually did have a terminal illness yeah yeah uh so I mean and this is a year before that so you know did you actually think he was a criminal do you know what I think yes do you know what that that that yes that stirs a memory I suspect they did that he decided to kind of write a song about his recent experiences. That, yeah, and perhaps, you know, as part on the road to redemption and all that. But still, the fact that he was coy about his actual offence didn't really, it didn't seem to sort of, you know,

I just felt that on the kind of the many steps to redemption, I think one of them is acknowledgement of your crime. And sort of like to gloss over it the way he does in this record. It seems to me that he's perhaps not really kind of come to terms with things. Yeah, but I mean, you've seen enough episodes of Porridge to know that you don't talk about what you've done. Yeah, but he's not... Mr Barraclough wouldn't take that point of view very kindly, David. Yes, no, no, no, see you here, Orlando.

Yes, yeah. My attitude to'll see you here, Orlando. Yes, yeah. My attitude to this record is summed up by that shot about halfway through where you see that half the audience are standing with their backs to the stage with their arms folded. Yeah. It's brilliant. I'm with them and not with the lad with the lemon yellow T-shirt with Bedlam written on it,

who's bopping gently. So, Tie Yellow Ribbon became the best-selling single of 1973. The follow-up, say, has anybody seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose? Got to number 12 for three weeks running in September of this year and they'd only have one more UK hit in 1974 but by this time they started their own TV show in America. The song would later be used in 1981

when the US embassy hostages returned from Iran and in 1983 by supporters of Benigno Aquino in the Philippines but he got assassinated when he returned there so it didn't go too well for him, that one. Now the whole 500th anniversary's a cheer And let me hear you cheer Cos they can't believe what they see A hundred yellow ribbons around the old oak tree

Have come and gone Tired of that yellow tree Tired of that yellow tree Isn't that lovely? That was Tony Orlando and Tire Yellow Ribbon around the old oak tree. And I open up in Panama, but it's East Ham tomorrow, and that's a song I should be ruining twice daily. So I hope you'll come along and see me.

Right now, though, we're going to outglitter them, I promise you that. Gilbert O'Sullivan's had a fantastic year. This is a lovely one called Get Down and Dance to It, the very lovely Pans Peoples. There they are. Yeah, this is a lovely one called get down and dance to it the very lovely pans people Blackburn, next to someone wearing a terrifying mask of a fat woman's face with big round pink glasses, continues his threats to out-glitter everyone and shows the panto he's in. to outglitter everyone and chills the panto he's in.

Cinderella at the East Ham Granada with Ann Aston of the Golden Shot and Olive out of On The Buses. That's a fucking pretty decent line-up, isn't it? Yeah, although East Ham in 1973 was no place for the likes of Tony Blackburn to linger. So I hope he had a very big car taking him as far away as possible

after every performance. Well, this is the panto he was doing when he had a moan on the radio about the miners' strike because it was interrupting his panto rehearsals. This is what we've got to look forward to, everyone, when Corbyn gets in, upsetting Tony Blackburn in the twilight of his life then he introduces Get Down by Gilbert O'Sullivan we've covered Gilbert O'Sullivan in chart music number three so we'll just say that this is the follow-up to Claire which was number one in 1972

and this got to number one for two weeks in April of this year. Because Gilbert can't make it back to the UK Pans people are drafted in to perform the song which started life as a warm-up instrumental during his stage show and mutated into a song about his girlfriend jumping into his lap while he's trying to have his tea and shitting on his carpet. We're going to discuss the performance.

But, you know, Pants people could have had to dance to Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool or Donny Osmond or some shit like that. Thank God Gilbert O'Sullivan couldn't make it back into this country. Well, I mean, you know, you say that. I just wonder how much notice they were actually given, you know, in order to kind of throw together, you know, flick always throw together a routine. We've touched before on the sort of literalness of some of these pan people's routines and i think

this is perhaps the um supreme example of that um yeah um obviously i was a muster a few hounds as well i suppose but uh yeah um i mean you know this this is a famous infamous clip really i think with the early disappearance of the pooch in the middle. But, you know, they're not phased. I mean, you know, the show must go on. I think everybody listening to this knows what happens here, but Pans people in flamsy skirts, silver platform heels and fluffy cardigans have been required to dance

for the benefit of five dogs who were sat on a bench. And 20 seconds in, the dog in the middle clearly says bollocks to this in dog language and fucks off. He just flounces off, doesn't he? Yeah. Well, I suppose he is. I mean, maybe he's been trained to do it.

Maybe he is the bad dog that we don't want around, you know. So maybe he's dismissing himself. If he was the bad dog, then Babs or someone would be seen rhythmically rubbing his nose into a dog turd or something. And being punished. But the other dogs, they're kind of good dogs

really, aren't they? They're extraordinarily good dogs in fact. They're doped up, aren't they? They've been doped up. It's the 70s, no one gave a shit. They just filled them full of fucking Valium. These stupid, fucking doped up. It's the 70s. No one gave a shit. They just filled them full of fucking Valium. These stupid fucking doped up beasts with their tongues hanging out. Fucking idiots. Oh, no, I can't.

No, I can't accept that. I was supposed to be slightly embarrassed when that one steps off the podium and pisses off. But he's my favourite because he's the one who's got some self-respect. But like I say, I would agree with that, but it did just occur to me that perhaps this is all part of some sort of, you know, that he's playing the role. That at a certain point

he's received a prompt to depart the stage like the bad dog in the song who isn't wanted around. Oh, fucking hell. David, you've fucked with my mind there. Well, no, this is it i think for years you know we've seen this as a renegade hound whereas um i don't know i don't know yeah he does he does time stepping down off the podium for the bit where the record goes get down get down get

down so it's possible he's just too well yeah, yeah, yeah. That's absolutely, yeah. And maybe it's the others that are sort of staging a sort of passive-aggressive, sarcastic display, in fact, you know. Yeah. Because, I mean, you know, all of their behaviour, they're sitting there, so it's like, what are you saying? I mean, you know, you're giving this ridiculous lecture about my kind of listening to misdeeds. Look at us, we're just sitting here, we're innocent,

we're just sitting here. What's, you know, what's the problem? You know, you're making yourselves look ridiculous with your accusations i mean you know we couldn't couldn't find yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah but the white dog is watching the dance and he seems vaguely interested in it whereas the others are just staring at the space thinking about bones or wondering wondering what was in that bowl of pal that they were given off an hour ago. Possibly, yeah. Also, they're at a slight angle. You remember the painting in Goodfellas, you know, where he goes,

Joe Pesci goes around with a slipper, got the geezer in the boot, and they go around and have dinner at his mum's. And then there's some of the painting I think she's done. You're like, one dog's facing that way, the other dog's facing the other. It's a bit like that. Do you think a floor manager ripped that branch off Tony Blackburn when he went back for it again and the dog just went to fetch it? Yes, quite possibly, yes.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's another possibility, yeah. Or he could have hurled it in frustration and then, you know, obviously the dog would have obeyed its natural instincts to fetch. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. there's a wealth of theories or it could have just jumped down and uh leapt at noel edmunds throat yeah that would have been great wouldn't it there's a quote from uh flick colby where she said i hated those mutts i wanted cute little poodles and ended up with stinky, mangy old dogs. They were just useless. I can't accept that.

Same problem she had a few years later when forming Zoo. Yes. Can we talk about Pan's People now? Oh, it's about time, isn't it? I mean, Christ, it's been a long, long time since we've spoken about Pan's People. We've gone through episodes where there's been no dancers and we've gone through episodes where there's been fucking zoo. And it's like, oh, girls, welcome back.

Here to cleanse me of thoughts of Steve Priest. Yes. Yes. Sweet, sweet heteronormativity. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, my dad and my grandpa would have been going off on this one. Oh, they used to embarrass the fuck out of me. Every time, if there was anyone attractive on the telly,

or we'd be in a car, and me dad would go, oh, she's a bit of all right, isn't she, Al? That lovely, and the C word was used quite often. Crumpet. Oh, of course, yeah. Oh, she's a lovely bit of a crumpet in shiar al and oh i would get so embarrassed so i guarantee you halfway through this performance i would have stomped off and sat on the stairs outside the living room and i and just felt really embarrassed and you know i that embarrassment I've carried through my life I don't chat up girls

I'm terrible at it because I just see it as something that's embarrassing yeah this is the strange thing I don't know the same sort of way we're actually pants people who like you say this kind of conduit for all this sort of fucking salivating

sexism on the part of this much older generation I think genuinely had an effect on people like me that just came of age into the 1980s i think that's why we're all kind of all big overcoats and stuff and we're sort of you know sort of you know and eschewed medallions and stuff like that you know and uh you know we're almost affected a sort of a you know a sort of asexuality of sorts you you know, because just precisely because of, like, seeing our elders leering over Pans people, it had a very formative effect. Yeah.

It was like, yeah, we did chat up, yeah. No, because the thing was, I actually did fancy Pans people, and it was like, oh, my God, they can read my mind. Because one thing I really wanted to do when I was five was go out with all five of Pans people and walk into the school playground with them holding one finger each on my hand yeah and i don't know what we'd do after that but you know i didn't think that far yeah and even now i look at them and i don't go oh you know i'm not i'm not

pulling a um a roger d'altre yeah yeah but it's, yeah. But I can't think of pants people in a sexual way. No, not at all. I just want to go out with them in old hands and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, back to the routine. I mean, however cheesy this is, and it fucking is, because of the lyrical content, it could have been a lot, lot worse, couldn't it?

It could have been smell the glove yes come to life it's it's a very very contemporary 2017 look they've got there as well though isn't it it's like quite often they you know look very much of their time but you know you can see jade out of little mix wearing this stuff it's uh i think they look great and they're so obviously the best of the dance troops you know like legs and co were better drilled and arguably sexier but they were sort of they didn't have as much personality uh ruby flipper were clearly ahead of their time yeah didn't really have a chance to bed in did the rudy flipper and we've not we've not we've not discussed them yet we haven't come across an episode with them on yet and yet that'll be interesting for me i just

think for me i just one of the great sadness of this time is that we're living in an era when members of pan's people are dying of old age yeah merry christmas yeah that's not right is it but the thing is about pan's people what even though I only really fancy one of them, they do create this... Which one? I don't know her name. It's not Beautiful Babs. It's one of the Darkhead ones, but I don't know.

I bet it's Louise. Cherry Didi. I don't know which one's which. No, it's Louise. She's my favourite. She's gorgeous. Oh, it sounded like Max then, out of Heart to Heart.

She's gorgeous. Yeah, and when you met her it was moida yes even i really fancy one of them they create this sort of gentle glow of everyday eroticism you know what i mean which is much easier on the heart than the spiteful aggressive sexuality of their 21st century equivalents you know it might be less exciting but it's better suited to christmas afternoon definitely and we haven't even discussed the song yet have we gilbert your favorite the amazing thing about gilbert o is just how i like all these records sound like for someone with protections to being sort of a serious songwriter um almost all his hits sound exactly the same uh and the first one wasn't very good you know I like the bit in this where it says you give me the creeps when you jump on your feet

so get down get down get down That's a brilliant line. I'd like to hear Nick Cave do that or typo negative. But the idea that Gilbert could tell anyone else that they give him the creeps when he wrote and performed the song Claire is a little bit rich. Or we could get into a huge discussion about Claire But we're not going to We'll keep our powder dry on that But you know the idea that you could Sing a song about your girlfriend

And compare it to a dog Enough people go Oh yeah that's a good song I'll buy that And get it to number one Comedy sexism was partly his thing though wasn't it You know that song A Woman's Place It's yeah It's worth a listen was partly his thing though, wasn't it? You know that song, A Woman's Place? It's, yeah.

It's worth a listen. And thank God, you know, he didn't call his girlfriend a bad cat in this. Can you imagine what a fucking nightmare that would have been to choreograph? Or bad elephant or tarantula or something. I mean, this could have been far, far worse. I think they picked the right animal here. So the follow-up, Ooh Baby,

would only get to number 18 and he finished off 1973 with Y.O.Y., which we've discussed before. Get Down eventually got to number seven in America after the record company put it out when they realised that it wasn't about oral sex. That's a great criteria for a record being released. They'd never heard of John Noakes in America, have they?

They'd heard of John Holmes, but not John Noakes. But I mean, you know, so many songs in the 70s, people thought they were about oral sex. And because they were British, they weren't. I remember an interview with I think it was Francis Rossi of Status Quo that you know people assumed that Down Down was an

oral sex song and he just said oh it was the 70s nobody had oral sex then people weren't hygienic down there Bad baby, bad dog baby Bad baby, bad dog baby Oh, isn't that nice? And lovely dogs, you know, they're gun dogs. They've been rifling the canteen for hours and hours and hours. The revolvers, of course, were Pan's people.

Boom, boom! Thank you, Mr. Blackburn. It's you and I against the rest, you know. Have we done it? Have we outglittered the rock glam stars of 73? We have definitely outglittered. You do realize of 73? We have definitely out-glittered. You do realise this is the testing time because Mr Glam is about to come out. Is he really? He's got no chance with this lot.

I wouldn't have thought so. He couldn't have done it. He couldn't have thought anything up to beat this. So, from Tinsel and Gretel to Gary Glitter, he's the leader of the gang. Thank you. Edmund, Blackburn and the surrounding kids are now practically buried under an avalanche of tinsel by now looking like they're wearing that massive scarf Lenny Kravitz once went out in and they introduce Leader of the Gang by Gary Glitter We've discussed Gary Glitter in excruciating detail in chart music number three.

And this is the follow up to Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again, which got to number two for three weeks in April of this year. It went in straight at number two in July and it stayed at number one for four weeks. And I would have ran right back into the living room for this because this was another fucking Scotto Mimford School fucking floor filler. David, you've had the chance. Me, Taylor and Simon had a very big discussion about Gary Glitter.

Yeah, there's not that much. Mention him in a pub. Is there anything you want to add to the pot on this one? Various observations I mean when I was 11 I just wanted to be Gary Glitter in every respect I wanted to dress like Gary Glitter

he had alt moves I simply would he was for some reason not even David Bowie for some reason Gary Glitter I thought I absolutely worshipped him. You know, he was a paradigm as far as I was concerned. Yeah, I mean, and the only other thing I'm thinking of to say is that it is interesting. I was doing a thing for When Saturday Comes the other day, Match of the Month, and it was a bottom-of-the-table clash between Barnett and Morecambe.

And the 70 or so Morecambe fans, all seven or eight of them, were singing to this. You know, this survives on the terrace. Come on, come on, Morecambe, Morecambe. Come on, come on. He hasn't been entirely expunged from the culture. And nor should it. Songs don't look at filth on the internet.

Songs are just songs. The only problem with this one, though, of course, although it's still a quite good record, it is hard to hear these... I mean, just because of the lyrics, it's hard to hear these days as anything other than an incitement to conspire in something unspeakable. Like, you picture his gang.

Who the fuck's in his gang? Suddenly being invited to join seems less of a compliment. But as you said before, it's like, yes, you would listen to Stalin's demo tape. So, you know, there you go. But it's, I mean, this record shows you everything that was good about him and all that was bad about him as a recording artist, in that it's magnificently vulgar,

and I sort of admire the way it's not even a song. It's just an exercise in whipping up the audience, posing as music. But at the same time, this is his second best record, and there's already quite a drop from the first and it's clearly which is uh rock and roll yes of course it's clearly vastly inferior to all the other glam and glitter acts on this show yes it's like you put it next to the simon park orchestra and it's like a massive silver eruption. But compared to Quattro or The Suite or Slade, I mean, yeah, come on.

Edmonds and Blackburn have been building this up, haven't they? All through the show. Yeah. And, you know, we've seen, I mean, there'll be other bands coming along after this, but you look at The Suite, there's a band that have pushed the boat out.

And pretty soon we're going to see there's a band that have pushed the boat out, and, and pretty soon we're going to see a band who've just fucking picked the boat and just flung it as far as possible, and here, I think the performance is a, is a bit, it's a bit downbeat, isn't it? I mean,

because we've already seen this year, we've seen Gary Glitter on, you know, like, kind of like strapped to a big silver love heart that's been turned round as if he's been tortured by love. And then we've seen him do the same song kind of like

on a massive half moon. And on this one, I think the BBC were expecting a fucking spectacular and it's a straight band performance, isn't it? Yeah, and it's just... It's just him in a sort of strappy silver top with gaps in it,

spread really tight across the mantids and beer gut, like squeezing them out on both sides. His torso looks like a beanbag with a crowbar lying on it. It's really unpleasant. And he's got these kind of like flimsy American football shoulder pads going on. And his boots are playing up as well. One of his boots kind of like keeps slipping down. Having a little bit of distance from Gary Glitter now,

I always think, now it's almost something like, he's like a man in drag as a man. Yes. If that makes sense. You know, there's an element of, there's something sort of Danny Lewis about him, but there's no sort of crossover into, you know,

Feelman or anything like that. It just feels, yeah, if you could have a man in drag as a man, then I think that's Gary Glitter. It's more of a butch act than a drag act, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, this is an okay record, but it's just now, it's difficult to hear gary glitter sing do you want to be in my gang in the same way that it's difficult hearing rolf harris sing do you think i would leave you

crying yes yeah anything else to say only that only that this particular Top of the Pops is being repeated on BBC4 this Christmas. Is it now? I fancy that. I suspect this is the bit that the viewers at home will not see. Yeah. So the follow-up, I love you, love me, love, went straight in at number one in November and would stay there for four weeks, keeping Let Me In by the Os-up, I Love You, Love Me, Love, went straight in at number one in November and would stay there for four weeks,

keeping Let Me In by The Osmonds, My Cuckoo Chew by Alvin Stardust and Paper Roses by Marie Osmond off the top spot. He'd go on to have three top three hits on the bounce in 1974, including a number one with Always Yours, and he's currently residing at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, and presumably not having a rock and roll Christmas. There you go, Gary Glitter once again on Afraid Out of Glitterless. Never mind, try again next year. You know, earlier on, top of the pop scooped everybody because we flew David Cassidy over from America to sing this.

APPLAUSE I remember April when the sun was in the sky and love was burning in your eyes. After conceding defeat and giving up in his attempt to out-glitter Gary Glitter, Blackburn gets goosed by Edmonds. Well, at least Edmonds is still having a go. And then he introduces Daydreamer by David Cassidy. Born in Manhattan in 1950, By David Cassidy Born in Manhattan in 1950, David Cassidy started his career as an extra in TV shows such as Ironside, Marcus Welby MD and Bonanza. In 1970, he landed the role of Keith Partridge in the TV show The Partridge Family, about a widowed mother who forms a band with her kids and quickly established himself as a star of the

show. His solo career began in 1971 and he scored his first UK number one in September of that year with a cover of the Young Rascals song How Can I Be Sure. This is the follow-up to the double A side I'm a Clown slash Some Kind of Summer which got to number three in april of this year is one half of another double a side with puppy song and it got to number one in october of this year staying there for three weeks the bbc is screening footage they took of him in march of this year when he was in england for the final leg of his european tour when he played bellevue Stadium in Manchester and the Empire Pool in Wembley I mean he's pretty much the biggest pop star in the world

in 1973 isn't it I mean it's always him and Donny but you know Donny's got a band of Kens and a sister and a fuckwit little brother dragging him down. At least Donny's got a personality albeit an

unappealing one the problem for me with david cassidy i mean he's entirely of the moment and if this had been my moment i'd have thought okay fair play but it wasn't so he's like an empty space to me um he seems perfectly inoffensive and unobjectionable, unless you're Samantha Fox, apparently. But he's barely there. It's like he's got that hair that's like a nothingy colour and shape, and he's skinny in a way that looks like he's trying to take up as little space as possible. And he's got casual clothes and small features,

and his voice is breathy in a really forced kind of way so it has no presence and it has to be mixed really loud um to be heard at all but what he does get right is this air of vague dreaminess which is pitched just right for girls of a certain age in a certain era which changes him from an empty space to a blank slate. So he's like a vessel for borderline innocent fantasies. If you want to see the difference between Donny Osmond and David Cassidy at the time, you only have to refer to the Music Star Annual of 1974,

which I'm still flicking through as we talk. And I must say, there are lots of really good pictures of pop stars that are just crying out to have a Hitler mustache drawn on them to piss off your older sister unfortunately I didn't have one but they did a lot of short stories about pop stars which

was you know is like stroke fiction without the stroking basically and the two examples here are Donnie to the rescue. It started just like any other tour for Donnie, but then he found himself involved in another kind of start, helping someone build a new life. And then you compare and contrast that with David's heartbreak.

This is the story of one boy's love for a beautiful woman and how that love was rejected. The boy is David Cassidy. Here's how he suffered. So, yeah, David's pretty emo compared to Bright and Bouncy Donner. Yeah, you know, there's obviously this underlying sadness about David Cassidy, which eventually transfers over into his own life. He's an empty vessel who poured alcohol into himself.

In the end, sadly. But it is difficult to evaluate the sense of his nondescriptness, his inoffensiveness. But he's in that great tradition. Remember that Simpsons episode in which Leeser reads Nun Threatening Boys magazine? Yes. He's obviously in that great tradition. And it's almost like, it always struck me at the time,

like the more blandly kind of inoffensive and almost like vaporously nice the object of the affections of like, you know, Teen Mania were, then almost like the more violent and sort of shrieking was the reaction towards them. You know, there's always this bizarre disconnect between, you know, the sheer ferocity of the energy of like the kind of manias that sort of struck in the 70s

and the actual objects of their affection. And, you know, this is brought out in the video, isn't it? The show. I mean, he gets off a plane. Then he signs some autographs then he has a bit of a walk around in Kew Gardens and then he has a bit of a sulk and then he walks around a fountain

and then he sits on some steps and then he walks past a wall and finally he gets in a car with two blokes and he's never seen of again yes yes they've come to take him away haha he does get off a plane And he's never seen of again. Yes, yes, they've come to take him away, ha ha.

He does get off a plane with David Cassidy written on the side of it, which sort of punches his... Yeah, which is pretty impressive. This is what most of those Top of the Pops made videos were like, isn't it? It's just that usually it was someone you didn't recognise in it. Waving some flowers about outside a church. You just get the impression that if he ever were to sort of accidentally kind of stray into a, you know,

an area of the airport or whatever where there's people waiting, he would actually literally be ripped to pieces. Oh God, yeah. Yeah, definitely. But the song, it's a bit embarrassing that this isn't even the best chart hit called Daydreamer. And that there's a it's a bit embarrassing that this isn't even the best chart hit called daydreamer and that there's a better one by menswear

it's it's not it yeah i don't know like i say if i was around at the time i'd probably have found something quite charming about this but yeah but again it is calibrated that black but like cast himself it's almost like calibrated calibrated to have that sort of bland, nondescript and offensiveness about it. It seems kind of essential to the whole pop relationship. Yeah, I was looking at him and I worked out who he reminds me of. It's Meg Morris from Prisoner's Cell Block H. Oh, well done, Cell.

He's got the same small apologetic features and slightly sort of mouse-like air about him yeah and meg didn't have it good either did she exactly she was a bit emo as well yeah but i mean i'm going to refer back to the text um there's a page called What Makes David So Great? So, you know, you might learn something from this. Yeah. His hair, soft like a wave, streaked like the moon setting across the sea. Touch it, it feels like gold. His eyes, see his soul, his sorrow and his pain, the love and the happiness of his life.

David is yours. His nose, long and strong like the side of a mountain. Stroke it with your finger. His mouth, like a flower, hiding his white teeth and tongue. His breath to kiss it softly. His ears half hidden behind his hair. The lobe soft and white. Ears like another world of their own.

Summing up, what more can we say he's just great i can just imagine some sort of middle aged female hack with a kind of clacking all this out on an old typewriter and all of a sudden with a little cigarette dangling off the edge of a lip you know yeah yeah picking at some ribeters so this would be david cassidy's last UK number one and he scored four more hits over the next two years including the first version of I Write the Songs written by the then unknown Barry

Manilow. In 1974 at a gig at London's White City Stadium nearly 800 fans were injured in a crush and a 14 year old girl died of a heart attack which caused him to quit touring he made a comeback in the mid-80s getting to number six in 1985 with the last kiss and spent the rest of the 80s in musicals such as blood brothers time and joseph and the amazing

technicolor dream coat he announced this year that he was suffering from dementia in february and died only last month. And this month, Samantha Fox claimed that he had a go at her in a dressing room in the mid 80s and she need him in the bollocks. Bollocks like a world of their own. Daydreamer, walking in the rain. Yes! There we go. On the Christmas Day edition of Chocolate Pops,

David Cassidy and, of course, his Daydreamer. Now, 1973 was a great year for 10cc, a bit of home-bred talent indeed. Some fine singles out, a highly meritorious LP, and, of course, a load of rubber bullets. APPLAUSE we've covered 10 cc in chart music number 6 And this is the follow up to Johnny Don't Do It Their second single which failed to make the charts in December of 1972 It got to number 1 for one week in June of this year

Keeping the re-release of Fleetwood Mac's Albatross from the top spot And it might have been number 1 for even longer Were it not for the BBC restricting its airplay as they didn't want to draw attention to the British Army's use of rubber bullets in Northern Ireland at the time. Oh, Northern Ireland did fuck up the pop charts in 1973, didn't it?

Wasn't this the same year when Paul McCartney did give Ireland back to the Irish? Was it or was it 72? Can't remember. Oh, I think you could be right. It was 72. Early 70s, though. And what was the John Lennon one again?

Well, he did two. He did one called Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Right. And another one called The Luck of the Irish. Oh, God. Yeah, The Luck of the Irish. Oh, my goodness. Which really has to be heard to be believed.

That's the one... I think that Yoga has a hand in the lyric on that, doesn't she? Is it the one about leprechauns? Fucking right up to the fucking armpit in it, I think she does. Yeah, this is the song on which Yoko Ono sings, we'd walk over rainbows like leprechauns. Or as it says, the world would be one big blarney stone. That's it. It doesn't even make sense but

anyway 10cc rubber bullets i've only got i've only got three words for my notes this is mint it is it's fucking brilliant isn't it i'd totally forgotten about this song every every time we do one of these uh episodes of chart music there's always one song where i go fucking hell i haven't heard this for ages and i just find myself playing it over and over and over and over and this and this is this is the right it's probably the only record of this lot that would actually have bought because i didn't have much money and um but i did go out and actually buy rubber bullets um and i mean you look at retrospectively at the time i mean to me i branded them with Lieutenant Pigeon because, you know, because of the beard on the guy, you know.

And I just thought it was part of this beard genre, you know, and I didn't really kind of quite understand things too well. But, no, I loved it. And then retrospectively, I mean, you can see that they're almost a sort of post-modern band slightly ahead of their time, you know, and it's just at that point in, you know, in pop rock history where it's starting to kind of look back on its kind of early days or whatever, and there's a lot of elements of parody and stuff going

on, a lot of revisitation of, like, you know, the 50s and stuff like that. And, um, um, but yeah, just, I mean, maybe, I don't, I think maybe 10cc never quite get the complete credit they deserve, because they're maybe considered just a little bit too clever by half, but, um, but this is a great record yeah it's all right but um the problem for me is that over

the last couple of years i've celebrated being in my mid-40s by getting into steely dan and what this is a sort of a jokey clunky less sublimelime British version of Steely Dan. In fact, 10cc in general sort of are. Basically, if I'd asked for Steely Dan for Christmas, I'd have got 10cc. It sort of takes the edge of it. I mean, they've got the slickness and the smart-heartedness and the determination to be pop, despite it all. But they're lacking a bit of the uh the unearthly beauty um

also having to look at them you see kevin godley's revolting fibrous beard hair glistening in the studio lights i mean he gets the best moment on this record that processed churchy prog bit but yeah spoilt by having to see him looking um ironically enough considering the song looking like a disgraced officer of greater manchester police suspended on full pay and regretting nothing because the lad was a toe rag anyway just like his old man um at least at least the others have pleasant faces um although there's something there is something a bit unsettling about the uh the happy mildness of lol cream who presumably had elder brothers called lmao cream and raffle cream um he looks a bit like ed miller band gone to seed which is sort of

it's kind of charming you know but yeah it's all right but it's you can you can definitely see the difference here between them and everybody else making you know rock or pop music on this program because they're dressed like grown-ups and all the other bands on this program look completely pissed which they almost certainly were whereas they do those close-ups of eric stewart and he looks distinctly stoned that's the line you know i mean i think with 10cc i think they're a different kind of band from i love steely dan you know i'm supposed maybe ultimately i would prefer steely dan over 10cc, I think they're a different kind of band. I love Steely Dan. I suppose maybe ultimately I would prefer Steely Dan over 10cc. But I think they're just a slightly different kind of band.

And I think a lot of the stuff that Godley and Cream did together was very, very good as well. So the follow-up to Rubber Bullets, the Dean and I got to number 10 in September of this year, and they go on to have two more number ones throughout the 70s. Aren't they great? That's the group without the glitter, if you see what I mean. 10 CC, but what a fantastic sound they make.

Have you had a nice Christmas? Fantastic, thank you. What present have you had? I had a big cuddly elephant. What, a real life-size one? Oh, yeah, a massive. You'll be able to make trunk calls if you want to be honest. Boom, boom.

That was a good one, wasn't it? Here's a group, or not a group, but two singers now who have had a fantastic year. Peters and Lee, not only their first big hit record, but at the same time they had a fantastic Royal Command performance. Let's hear them sing now the one that got them to number one called welcome home peterson i'm so long my love without you Oh, my love without you. You're part of everything I do.

And now detinseled Blackburn indulges in some appalling banter with a young madam about what she got for Christmas involving elephants. Oh, fuck it. Just give up, Tony. Twat. And then he introduces a group, no, two singers, who have just done a turn at the Royal Command performance. Why, it's none other than Peters and Lee and their number one hit, Welcome Home. Formed on the Northern Touring Circuit in 1970, Peters and Lee were a duo consisting of Lenny Peters,

the uncle of Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, who was blinded in one eye in a car accident when he was five and then blinded in the other when he was hit by a brick at the age of 16, and Diane Lee, an actress and dancer. Earlier this year, they appeared on the ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks and won it for six weeks on the trot, attracting the biggest number of postcard votes the show had ever had during its 14-year run. This was their debut single, a cover of a French song, which got to number one for one week in July of this year, a week that saw their debut LP, We Can Make It, at number one in the album charts, making them the first people to do that

in the UK since the B-Clubs. Fucking hell, Lenny Peters, man. That's fucking harsh, isn't it? Yeah, that was, actually. It's an almost Jackson C. Frank level of shitty luck. The original Frank Grimes of pop music. And then he got cancer and died at 60.

And then a few years later, his daughter was murdered. Oh, really? Yeah, while on a caravan holiday by her boyfriend because she told him he was shit in bed. Oh, man. So Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone. Yeah.

You have to laugh, don't you? God. Oh, God. Terrible. Yeah, it's awful. The one thing about Lenny Peters was him wearing sunglasses made me believe that any pop star that

wore sunglasses all the time was blind as well. So it wasn't until the late 80s that I realised that Roy Orbison could actually see. Les Gray as well, I thought he was blind. There seems to be an almost superstitious thing going on together about the wisdom of the blind, whatever.

And anybody, whether it's Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, whatever, Roy Orbison, that they exude an aura as a result of wearing dark glasses like that. They see things at a deeper, more mystical level or something like that. They have a sort of Homeric quality of some sort. That's why Bono tries it as well. a deeper, more mystical level or something like that. They have a sort of Homeric quality of some sort. I mean, that's silly. That's why Bono tries it as well. But on a slightly... The only thing... Lenny Peters.

I remember getting a cab in the... A minicab in the late 80s. And, you know, we started chatting about stuff. And I mentioned working at Melody Maker and Poppin' All Night. And he said, I had Lenny Peters in the back of my cab once. And he said that apparently he was notorious. That, you know, he'd always used this firm, but he'd always insist on a white driver.

What? Yeah. You know, that's what the geezer said. He always asked for a, yeah, well, he didn't want a black driver. You know, he always wanted a white driver. And he always liked, you know. So, yeah. Fucking hell.

Despite his sightlessness. Oh, this gets darker and darker this fucking this segment I know yeah but Opportunity Knocks I mean Christ

what effect stroke damage that wrought upon entertainment it did didn't paper lace candlewick green

oh god yeah yeah they were good though Oh right Yeah Lena Zavaroni Les Dawson wasn't he Opportunity Knox I believe he was Yeah I mean Les was good What about Marty Kane

That was New Faces Oh yes that's right We could sit here and have the New Faces Versus Opportunity Knox argument, but no, let's be bigger than that. But the two of them are wearing matchy-matchy kind of like wine-coloured outfits. And, yeah, they're just sitting there.

I mean, because obviously he's not going to fucking dance around or anything like that. So, you know, the whole effect is of... I mean, did you ever think they were a couple? No, I never did. I never really did. I know I just thought that this was a sort of professional arrangement in which they would...

There was a big age difference, about 16, 17 years or something. Yeah, yeah. I think this is a weird thing. I think they were kind of accepted. It's like with Donny and Marie Osmond. I can't pretend that it particularly fazed me. I I think they were kind of accepted. It's like with Donny and Marie Osmond. I can't pretend that it particularly fazed me. I just thought they were kind of two professional singers singing a romantic song that required a male and a female voice, really.

I didn't really sort of get any sense of sexual chemistry or a kind of bizarre lack of sexual chemistry or anything like that. It didn't really occur to me. It probably didn't really occur to a lot of people. I always thought they were a couple because they were still around when I was a kid they were still about in the late 70s and i remember first of all i remember my mum having to explain to me that he was blind he wasn't just cool um because if you look in this clip he looks like sterling morrison

it's quite impressive but no i thought they a couple because I was always slightly disturbed by these rapturous, worshipful glances which Lee would give Peters. And she's doing it here. She's doing it in this clip. Yeah. And I don't know what she's playing at because they weren't a couple. No. And so presumably it's just for show. But it's really awkward to watch.

I don't know. I suppose she couldn't really look at him with open repulsion and put her fingers in her mouth I suppose could she but I mean again like Tie a Yellow Ribbon I can't hate this song because my mum used to sing it a lot but also

when I worked, I worked in a furniture factory in the late 80s and whenever someone went for an overlong shit in the morning the entire factory would sing the chorus of this and when someone went for an overlong shit in the morning the entire factory would sing the chorus of this and when they got back to the bench absolutely ramping up the volume when it got to you've been gone too long to me it might almost be tolerable without that fucking pub piano which goes all the way through it like a beer stain. Really loud in the mix, pushing everything else out.

It's just not a sound that brings happy memories to me. I can't listen to it. But it's just another reminder that so much of like, you know, I mean, in the 70s, you were living in the 70s, but you were living among the furniture and the people, you know, that formed like decades earlier. You were living in the 70s, you were living in the 70s, but you were living among the furniture and the people, you know, that formed, like, decades earlier. You were living in the 20s, you know. You were living among people whose values were formed in the Edwardian age

and who were still kind of influential and had a kind of, you know, a huge say in the way that things were. And stuff like that. This is just another reminder of that, really. The 1973 Royal Command performance, though, they appeared on it with Dick Emre, Les Dawson, Rudolf Nureyev, Cliff Richard, Ronnie Corbett, Duke Ellington, and the Doogie Squire second generation.

And, you know, when you're cheering a bill with the Doogie Squire second generation, you know you've made it. And they were huge in 1973, weren't they? It's almost like acts like Peterson Lee and, you know, even Little Jimmy Austin and things like this and maybe even the Simon Park orchestra type stuff. They were almost like they functioned as sort of sandbags against this impending tide of glam and androgyny and weirdness or whatever.

And it's just like it was almost like, you know, that they represented a kind of respite, you know, a period of sanity, you know, and it's just like propriety and the way that things ought to be and whatever. It's, you know, this ongoing war between, you know, both sides of the generation gap. And it's just so pronounced in the program of this, you know, it's just bizarre, you know,

the ups and downs, it's so pronounced. Yeah, the audience aren't digging this at all. There's a long haired lad at the front in a denim waistcoat with a confederate flag patch on the back and he's nodding his head along with it but he's not digging it

and neither are the others well Lenny Peters would have approved the confederate flag thing possibly given his but I mean this song i mean my my family would have been swaying along on the armchair amongst the pool of fag smoke and passing around the nuts and it's you know it's a suitable song for a christmas top of the pops i think because you know where else you're going to be at Christmas but at home? And shut the fucking door because it's freezing. So Welcome Home became the third best-selling single of 1973.

The follow-up, By Your Side, only got to number 39 the previous month, but they'd have a number three hit in May of 1974 and their own TV series on ATV in 1976. They split up in 1980, but would reform in 1986 and would perform together until Lenny Peters died in 1992. Oh, and Taylor, do you remember that conversation we had when Imagination were on? Yeah, which one?

And Lee John revealed how he got his name with the three e's on the end standing for extra exciting energy all bullshit because in a 2003 interview lee john of imagination revealed that the extra e on his name came when he started his career as part of the duo Russ and Lee, and he didn't want to be confused for Diane Lee. Because that would happen, wouldn't it? Yeah. I mean, Peters and Lee John, that would be a fucking amazing duo, wouldn't it? Oh, yeah, we're all in love with this, dude. Especially if he wasn't told.

Yes, exactly. For 20 years I've been performing with this. Your home was more. I'll be gone laboring intensively in 1973 as Roy Wood on his own and with the band Wizard. And that is exactly the combination we've got now. Wizard, and see my baby Baby Jive by Wizard. by wizard formed in 1972 when roy wood formerly of the move fell out with jeff lynn and left the electric light orchestra taking two members of the band and their sound engineer with him wizard made their debut in late 1972 with ballpark incident which stayed at number six for three weeks in january of this year this is a follow-up which got to number one for four weeks

in May of this year and there's so much to talk about here but this is where me and Top of the Pops began this is the one this is the episode of Top of the Pops where I went around Tony Bones's mum's house and See My Baby Jive was number one and you know this song man I can't tell you how much it means yeah it's it's um i mean i'm just thinking about my granddad because actually roy would annoy him more than any of the others i think he was like all years jankers for roy wood um he really did so i think it's probably just as well for like the blood pressure people like my granddad that you would have had time for him to sort of cool down doing welcome home you know before the onslaught

begins again. It is absolutely relentless with Wizard. I think they always seem to be sort of outdoing themselves. Obviously, they've got geese dressed up as gorillas or whatever, and washing machines. It was a bit like Faust at times, with the cement mixer on or something like that. But maybe that was a slight problem with Wizard,

is that they maybe shortened their life a little bit by just trying to pull out absolutely all the visual stops every single time. But, yeah, for a while it was great fun, you know. I loved them. They have brought everybody they know here, haven't they? They've got two people in gorilla suits, one of which looks even more frightening when he takes the fucking mask off. You've got someone dressed up as an angel on roller skates. You've got loads of girl singers doing some really appalling dancing at the back,

but having a right laugh. And of course, Roy Wood starts playing a vacuum cleaner like a cello. It's like they're making every effort to be remembered over everybody else on this episode, which is how it should be, really. Yeah. It's like everything but the kitchen sink, but next time they bring the kitchen sink sort of thing. Yeah.

This is a much, much better record than I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Yes. Although I first knew this one from one of those shit hits of the 70s albums, one of those low fidelity compilation albums with 10 tracks crushed onto each side. And it was pressed on vinyl that's so thin and such low quality, it was like they'd cut a circle out of a bin bag.

And I played it on my Matsui MIDI system, which weighed as much as a cardboard box, and it had like a plastic stylus or something. So it scoured records as they played. So the last track on each side of every album sounded like you were listening to it while drowning in a vat of iron filings. So the thing about this,

because it's got that uncanny uh impersonation of phil specter production on it um it that the delicacy of that was completely lost um and it just sounded like a nursery rhyme being beamed in from mercury um so every verse sounded progressively murkier so all those bits where there's a brief stop and then the song turns around and starts again. It was like taking a quick gulp of air before having your head plunged even deeper into the barrel. It was pretty horrible.

But in fact, when you hear this properly, it genuinely sounds as gorgeous and otherworldly as the as the specter stuff um yeah i'd say it lacks a little bit of the emotional oomph because it's so obviously an exercise but it's a successful exercise i would sooner hear this song 12 times one after the other than the specter christmas album you know it just reminds me of a of a extremely happy time in my life yeah yeah i mean it's generous it's piling on if you think about the kind of austerity in all kinds of ways of the early 70s then you know there is a sort of huge generosity about you know it's just layer after layer of stuff yeah plenty of everything you know it's got that real feel to it but you know my

granddad i mean he disliked roy wood more like i say wizened particularly roy wood and i sort of have to you know egg him on a little bit and say, so, you know, what would have happened if Roy Wood had turned up on parade looking like that? And he was like, first of all, he'd be going to fall out of the ranks. Then he'd be marched right to his commanding officer. Then he'd be shaved from head to toe. That's what he'd be done. Then he'd be two-eyed and put bloody potatoes.

It was just like, you know, it just seemed to be rising and rising and rising his gorge that was what it was all about that was exactly what it was all about yeah and it's exactly what you want out of your pop stars isn't it? he does look here like a white George Clinton doesn't he?

sort of early 80s George Clinton yeah I just wish he didn't have the beard because it slightly makes it all look a bit unconvincing but then again if you've seen what the bottom half of Roy Wood's face looks like without the beard you can see why he grew it I like him

to me he's the thinking man's Jeff Lynn very good do you think they knew they were going to be on second to last and they obviously knew they were going to be on second to last? And they obviously knew who was going to be on last. And it's like, we're going to fucking upstage these bastards. Yeah, yeah. But this is all about excess.

The sound of the record and obviously the presentation. Like it tries to swamp you. Whereas the group who were number one had more of a boxer's instinct. So they still win and you can see why they sold more records because they just step inside your reach and bang. Yeah, I mean at this point you'd be thinking fucking hell,

ELO are fucked aren't they? Those two bands, ELO and Wizard, it seems really obvious as to who's going to be the more dominant bands of the of the era but elo appeal to blokes in tinted sunglasses and wizard never would but you know had ended up having more longevity you know and maybe it goes back to that thing of just like i say pulling out all the stops every time it's harder to kind of maintain that level also the gorilla suits that the guitarists are wearing,

it's the same one worn by Eric Idle in the Monty Python Gorilla Librarian sketch. Is it? Yeah, well, no, it's the same style. And I don't know if they got them from the BBC, in which case it almost certainly would be the same one, or whether they brought them from home. I suspect the latter

So the follow up Angel Fingers got to number one for one week in September and their current single I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day is currently at number four and stayed there for four weeks. The band split up in 1976

by which time Benny and Bjorn of ABBA acknowledged their debt to this song when they wrote Waterloo. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, with one of these streamers wait a minute oh missed again never mind they're fighting back how dare you we leave you and we wish you a very merry christmas from everybody here in top of the box we leave you with the sound art the number one sound slade it's stayed merry christmas everybody bye-bye Are you hanging up or standing on your wall? Edmonds and Blackburn announce that they are tassel free, wish us Merry Christmas again,

and sign off with a Christmas number one of 1973. Merry Christmas, everybody, by Slade. This is, of course, the national anthem of Christmas, and the follow- up to My Friend Stan Which only got to number two in October of this year Because of eye level It was recorded in New York in late summer When manager Chaz Chandler suggested they have a go at a Christmas song

Which the band were dead against However, Jim Lee reworked a song called Buy Me a Rocking Chair Which was part of their set when they were the in-betweens in the late 60s. And Noddy wrote the lyrics at his mam's arse in Warsaw after a night on the piss. Let's start with the performance because as soon as the song starts, the stage gets bum-rushed by the kids until it becomes hard to see where the band are, even though they're still wearing the same stuff as they did with Come On Feel The Noise. It's amazing to think

that like I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day was, it was just this huge glut, it was a great, you know, there was such a glut of records, Christmas records made around this particular era that's still dominant now and it's almost like you know

it was a sort of halcyon era. It was a halcyon era of Christmases for me, but it seems to have sort of generally been like that. You know, it seems to have persisted right down the years, you know. I mean, even like Greg Lake and stuff like that. And obviously, you know, just slightly early, even John Lennon. Yeah, I mean, because, I mean, before then it was it was you know either by the late 60s it was like beatle songs and then it by the turn of the decade uh you had your novelty song so you had ernie the fastest milkman in the west um last year you had the ultimate novelty song which was jimmy osmond

but the one song that i think started it off, that started bands wanting to record Christmas songs, was John Lennon with Merry Christmas, War Is Over. And it's, if somebody did a history of Christmas, I don't know if anybody's written such a book, and I think they would look at this, that somebody in various forces coincided to make sort of Christmases, especially kind of, I don't know,

sort of bright and appealing, maybe it was just sort of like colour bursting through the first time. It was in association with glam and all the kind of sort of colour and sort of involved in that. And somehow, maybe it's to do with colour televisions just beginning to sort of come in and, you know, on certain kind of shows, you know, TV shows that were kind of, you know, where there's two Ronnies and Morgan Wise,

all sort of conflating all at once. I mean, these were my favourite Christmases I'll never have Christmases like this again the early 70s Christmases were never the same they start to tail off a bit almost the way that Morph and Wise would take tail off in the late 70s

you know Christmas metaphorically went to ITV at a certain point but but yeah and this crowns everything. Merry Christmas, I would say, crowns everybody. I mean, there's always that debate about, you know, like this was still in the charts in February. I mean, who the earth was buying Merry Christmas

in February? I would have. I wouldn't have, you know, if I could have afforded it, if I'd have scraped together my pocket money, you know, not to do it, I would have cheerfully bought it in February. I think this is the best Christmas song ever, simply because it's one of the few truthful christmas songs you know there's no bollocks about the wonder of christmas no one's asking you to be decent to each other it's a song that basically says look we've been allowed some time off so let's get battered there's no religion

in it there's no you know it's just oh here it is let's and the funny thing is as well it unifies the generation i'm talking all this time about you know the great the war between the old and the young and the kids and grown it was no course they got that line about the granny saying that the old songs were the best then she's up there rock and rolling with the rest you know you got that beautiful you know like little touches like that taylor so i'm going to be a bit of a grump because because to me... Oh, you know. Fucking hell. I mean, it's, you know, it's all right,

but this is the worst classic era Slade single, which is, okay, that's a high bar, but, I mean, I appreciate how it's, this is possibly the first Christmas single that's actually about a contemporary working class Christmas, which is one thing it's really got going for it. But first of all, any charm this record had for me pretty much died when they let it be used to sell toilet paper.

I'm a bit old-fashioned like that. But also, to me, this doesn't quite do what it's trying to do, which is to capture that very particular kind of self-conscious slightly poignant euphoria that people drink to achieve at this time of year like you come out of the pub and you see the lights and you slide into this lazy state of false hope and emotional inclusivity like you want to clap along with something, you know.

But it's tainted with a sort of morbid melancholy because there's still a part of your brain that's thinking and remembers that once you get past a certain age, and a young age, probably 21 or 22, Christmas is also a yearly reminder of ageing and loss and increasing cynicism despite yourself, right? Despite your best attempts to experience this magic, which maybe no longer exists. So I can't help it.

I look at this 90-second overhead shot of the audience halfway through this song, which I think is inserted to cover up Wizard's custard pie assault yes yes right yeah wizard who were semi-jokerly jealous of slade beating them to christmas number one ran on halfway through the song and and pied noddy yes which we're not allowed to see yeah that's such a sort of censorious bbc thing oh yeah it's a bit like when you have streakers, yeah. Yes, it's not the kind of thing you want to see.

It is the kind of thing we want to see, yeah. Because he suddenly appears with a custard pie over his face. Yeah, precisely. And there's no explanation of it. So I'm looking at this 90-second overhead shot of the audience, right, trying to dance. But I look at them and I feel like crying because he says look to the future now it's only just begun and i'm thinking well half these people are probably dead now and the others the others never made it like not like they wanted

to you know so i like the fact that this record is not just a knees up and there's an interesting hint of cheery melancholy to it. But I can't quite get it because I don't think it quite pulls it off. I don't think there's an atom of melancholy in this song at all. I think it's absolute unbridled cheeriness. And I think that, I mean, clearly it takes the place in times, you know, and there's a sense that like, you you know Britain is kind of on the slide and you know they are sort of dark days in all kinds of ways literally um and it isn't an especially kind of hopeful time and I you know I just think it just sits then is now whenever and just in absolutely defiance of all that you

know yeah but remember you're talking to the person here who thinks what a wonderful world sounds like somebody on their deathbed. I can't help it. I always hear the tragedy and then he pops up. That was number one when I was born, Taylor. It's a celebration of me. Yeah.

Actually. To be honest, I do tolerate this record, same as I tolerate the rest of a British Christmas, because you sort of have to, right? To stay upright and to stop your trolley from tipping over. Because we don't live in a snowy, lamplit Victorian house with children skating on a frozen pond outside.

And there is no peace on earth. skating on a frozen pond outside and there is no peace on earth and yeah but our over familiar surroundings look a bit different for a week or two and we get a pass to drink and loaf and behave like a happy person like a happy free person would for a few days but it's a euphoric record i i could i really take al's point about the fact that there's no preachiness about it. There's none of that sort of Christmas Eve-y sort of piety. There's no sort of religion. It is, it's a Christmas, you know, a lot of Christmas songs are Christmas Eve-y type songs. And this is a Christmas Day song.

It's about, you know, that's a euphoric point, you know, or perhaps a little bit too early in the day, about, you know, 12, 12.30, that sort of time. And it's there right in the moment. It's Christmas. And it is, you know, because it's, you know, time they're right in the moment it's Christmas and it is, you know you've got a few more days off you can sort of party on a little while

longer like this, and I think in a sense that, despite its lack of kind of like, you know, humanity wishes of peace and goodwill to all humanity and all that kind of thing I think it does the listener far more of a favour than no songs by its sheer sort of message of say you know just its sheer euphoria i think it's done a lot to make humanity feel better than than the records that are intent that the preach

your records yeah and and you know it's all in the line look to the future now it's only just begun it doesn't say look to the future now it's going to be fucking brilliant he just says look to the future you're in it you're still alive yeah yeah yeah and even though when i hear this in tesco's as part of their christmas tape that loops around it's not a great experience but it does it's true that this record does signal the temporary change, right? And whatever else we have to put up with at this time of year, you know. And however little fun it might turn out to be and however badly it highlights your loneliness or your increasing distance from real magic, it does remind you that the rest of the year,

whatever you're doing in the rest of the year is not really it you know and it provides an arbitrary line which allows us to pretend that next year we're going to somehow change something or other right which we almost certainly won't but that thought can keep you together for long enough yeah who knows if there's ever good luck to be had and the older you get the more you realise that good luck is really 50% of what it's all about then hey at least we'll still be fucking alive to receive

it so you just drink up and shut up and let the children sing and deal with it and that's the real meaning of Christmas it absolutely is God blesses everyone but i mean you know christmas songs i fucking hate them simply because they get banged on over and over again for a

period of time long before they should be uh in places where you don't want want to hear them i mean i remember being working in a casino in 1990 and there was a Christmas tape and it would be played about 12 times during my eight hour shift. And I'm standing there and I'm listening to Merry Christmas, everyone, by fucking Shaker for the 10th time, just with this glassy eyed stare, just just thinking to myself, this is not the James Bond fantasy I thought it was when I took the job but when Merry Christmas Everybody came on by Slade it was like ah yeah it's Christmas you can't it doesn't wear with time and god knows we must have heard this song more than practically any other song we've we've talked Chart Music. And it's still got something to it. Even more so nowadays, because, you know, we're looking to the future now in this country

and thinking, oh, fucking hell, we're in for some shit. I must admit, when he said look to the future, I tend to think he's looking up to and including December the 28th or something like that. Yes, yeah. Back on the morning shift. So Merry Christmas, everybody, sold 350,000 copies on its first week of release

and went straight to number one 10 days ago with a single in such high demand that Polydor imported a quarter of a million copies from America and ordered its factory in Germany to produce an extra 30,000 copies a day. Merry Christmas Everyone would still be number one by the middle of January 1974 and ended up selling over 1.2 million copies. However, it would be their last number one and the follow-up every day got to number three in Julyuly of 1974 in 2015 it was estimated that merry christmas

everybody generates half a million pounds in royalty every year and at the time of recording it's at number 30 in the uk singles chart it's fucking going to outlive all of us isn't it but then maybe so what so we'll shake in stevens as well without merry christmas everyone and jonah louis stop the cavalry probably yeah so what's on telly afterwards well all three channels are forced to put on the queen's speech uh i don't know what she said but it was probably something about our family's doing all right and we've all got to do this and that and whatever. And then BBC One follows up with Billy Smart's Christmas Circus,

The Pantomime, Robin Hood with June Whitfield, Terry Scott, Anita Harris, Billy Dainty and Dana. Then The Christmas Generation Game, The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show with Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolf Nureyev, Andre Previn and Laurence Olivier, and then the film The Odd Couple, a gala performance with some ballet and orchestral palaver, and finishes off with the ghost story Lost Hearts.

BBC Two has the Julie Christie, Terrence Stamp, Peter Finch and Alan Bates film Far From The Man In Crowd, the Buster Keaton film The Railroader, then a performance in English by Les Moureaux de Paris, the French Puppet Theatre, then an episode of Face the Music, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev do a bit of dancing, Alice through the looking glass and finishes off with the film Quatermass and the Pit. ITV are now screening the film Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, about a progressive young nun who gets involved in civil rights and peace demonstrations, teaches novices how to make bombs and is considered groovy by them, followed by Danny LaRue and Peggy Mount in the pantomime Queen of Hearts. Then Jimmy Tarbuck presents all-star comedy classics featuring

short episodes from Man About the House, Says Les, Billy Liar and Doctor in Charge. Then it's Tommy Cooper's Christmas with Sasha DeSalle and Clodagh Rogers and the big film Von Ryan's Express. Finally Grant Evans and the Welsh rugby player Barry John introduce Christmas songs from around the world and the night finishes with what was he like where the current Prime Minister Edward Heath bangs on about who he thinks

Jesus was and hopefully at the end he says yo man what do you expect the guy's a gigolo man you know what I mean fucking hell big guns all over the place when telly was teller yeah busy christmas for rudolph nurav and the telly oh he's all over the fucking shop isn't it and the telly only went off if it was a power cup otherwise it was on you

know i mean the idea of a switched off telly it's just oh ridiculous it was just like i just get the electrician in or wait for the you know the It was just like, I just get the electrician in or wait for the, you know, the miners' strike to stop. I mean, that was the only reason the telly ever went off. Yeah. So, chaps,

what are we talking about over the handlebars of our new choppers tomorrow? Yeah, I think it works towards the conclusion, I suppose, basically. I think it just all piles on there with Wizard and Slade.

It's hard to... Once they've stopped going there, it's actually hard to recall what's passed previously. So even like, you know, your 10ccs. And Gary Glitter, you know, they kind of get lost in the wash, really. And Gary Glitter must have been looking at the last two acts and thinking, oh, fucking hell, should have done more there. Should have bought me a motorbike.

Yeah, should have. That motorbike was brilliant. I bet you wanted a motorbike yeah shouldn't that motorbike was brilliant i bet you wanted a motorbike like that didn't you when you were on your chopper did you feel a bit like gary glitter that's sort of that's like that's sort of like being on a speedboat and swerving two inches from the rocks well done no matter where you lived in nottingham there was someone on your street who worked for rallyaleigh so you could either get bikes cheap or parts cheap or you know in a lot of instances

a lot of kids had like franken bikes from different parts of Raleigh bikes that had been smuggled out I remember one lad he had a Raleigh chopper and he had a car steering wheel fitted onto it he's probably fucking

crippled up now or something. You know, who gives a fuck? He looks skilled. I'm no expert in kind of car cycle hybrids but I suspect that he might have a few flaws in his little plat there.

Taylor, what are we talking about? Perhaps the mystery of Loddy Holder's spontaneously foaming sideburns. And what would we have bought this year? A lot to choose from, isn't it? Of that selection, certainly

anything, I mean, rubber bullets, yeah, sweet slate. I mean, it was pretty much standard issue in the particular wars that were going on. And, you know, the division is just very, very obviously there's very little ambiguity, really,

in that selection, in terms of the great cultural divide. Yeah, so I would have faithfully, affordability being a factor, yeah everything but the Sweet, Wizard Slade, 10cc and I would have spurned the rest

this question is like the answer is like a flow chart just says you know what records are you buying are you under 50 yes or no and there's only two options yeah Slade, Quattro Sweet, Wizard and what does this episode tell us about 1973 what's more charming is what it doesn't tell us about 1973 which is that in so

many ways it's all downhill from here um i mean with the exception of Gary Glitter's appearance, none of it really highlights any of the areas in which things needed to improve. None of it really highlights the bad side of the 1970s. But there's lots of examples of what was good or at least quite admirable about 1973. And a lot of people having a lot of fun here very unselfconsciously um you know whereas of course with hindsight the song recorded in 1973 which came closest to the truth was end of the

rainbow by richard and linda thompson which uh is an address to a toddler about my age at the time who like everyone else born either side of the oil crisis, would grow up against a backdrop of continuous decline. But it's nice to see the other side of 1973, this sort of people fearsomely alive in all the horror and glory. I enjoyed this a lot, except for Peters and Lee. I mean, it's interesting that a lot of the things that were huge, and not just like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd,

which is obvious that Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin are never going to feature on top of the pops, but, you know, people like Stevie Wonder at his height, you know, no one knew this, and then David Bowie isn't getting a look in at whatever, you know, it's interesting. There is almost, but there are most of the sort of, like, suspects, you know, it's interesting. There is almost, but there are most of the

sort of, like, suspects, you know, in the sort of pop world at that time are there, you know, you've got Agliti, you've got Sweetie Slade or whatever, who, and they're never going to be quite taken seriously at that stage, you know, by the rock press. But

I think, you know, they're performing a sort of glam would perform this really vital task, really, and but I think they were performing a sort of... Glam would perform this really vital task, really, and I think it was, you know, and especially at a time when, you know, the nation was in a kind of pretty dismal state. At the same time, you've got this process in reverse. I think that people are learning about enjoying themselves.

Some of the sort of spirit of the 60s, some of the sort of hedonism is trickling down eventually. There because a lot of people talk about the 60s and and it was actually slightly rarefied you know it wasn't really trickling down that far and i think that the sort of pop fun as it were pop euphoria is a certain kind of post-war kind of euphoria in in in what the culture is really trickling down into people's lives via the television and things like that, via the colourisation of things. And, you know, I think that, like, 1973 is really signalling that. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's still... I mean, you know, the schedules are still kind of, you know, bleak,

you know, in, like, great long patches. You know, there's a lot of, like, darkness in the rafters and on the peripheries of whatever and work shit. You know, and as Taylor says, you says, there's double diamond and dry rot and all that kind of stuff. But there's a sort of gradual, you know, it's a sweet stage. I mean, you know, now our lives are kind of suffused. I mean, there's too much.

I mean, there's a super saturation, really, of sort of popular entertainment and a lot of it's kind of paralytic sort of rubbish, whatever. But at this stage, it was still kind of novelty. It was new and it's euphoric and almost innocent in a way um and um and you know and i guess obviously it reminds me of like you know i was just coming into my you know the age of about 10 or 11 you're just beginning to become conscious of things you know so i suppose you know it has holds enormous affection for me for that reason yeah whatever else it was the early 70s was the 60s for ordinary people.

I mean, for me, this episode's probably the hardest we've had to talk about, simply because everything's a massive number one hit. It's something that everyone knows about. And, you know, there's no real surprises in it. And the other reason why it's so hard to talk about, it is a genuinely enjoyable episode. Yeah, a lot of it is a wallow in the past. But I mean, some of the songs that we've gone through today are some of the best songs I've ever heard in my life and some of the songs that mean the most to me.

And, you know, because it's an episode where I can remember exactly where I was and exactly who i was with at times watching this episode was like getting a massive hook from people really close to me who aren't here anymore yeah and uh yeah that's all i've got to say about it and the other the only last thing i was going to say it's just actually you know david cassidy donny osmond you know they're pretty sort of you know terrible these episodes incredibly sort of bland and they just feel and yeah if you actually went to any of the gigs or even just any public appearance that they made i mean it would have been more ear-splitting more frighteningly kind of voluminous you know than any jimmy hendrix ticket or anything like that i mean it would be you know to be in the midst of the euphoria the mania about these kind of people would have been the most a far more frightening energy than

even like you know the most out there rock band could muster so that closes the book on another episode of chart music the last episode of 2017 usual shit you can go on our website at www.chart-music.co.uk

you can join us on facebook at facebook.com chart music podcast or you can get involved with us on twitter at facebook.com slash chart music podcast, or you can get involved with us on Twitter, chart music T-O-T-P. Thank you very much, Taylor Parks. No problem. Enjoy it as a world. Thank you very much, David Stokes. Yes, I'll second that.

And a special thank you to our other guests who've been on chart music over the year, which is Sarah B, simon price and neil culcane and a special thank you to you the pop crazed youngsters particularly if you've ever said anything nice about us online or recommended us to anyone uh yeah really appreciate that thank you very much my name's al needham and i have ears like another world of their own. Shark music. Hi, Smash Hits readers. We wish you a Merry Christmas on behalf of Errol, Ashley, and Peterson.