Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #54 (Part 3): 25.5.1978 – Nineteen Seventy Gibb

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

The twin cultural juggernauts of 1978 collide in this episode of Top Of The Pops, and Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni beg Al Needham to slow down so they can have a good look at the splintered and mangled carnage. A second shift for Legs & Co appears to catch them with their pants down, the TOTP Orchestra lay off the Party Fours for a bit, and your Mam can’t take her eyes off Phil Lynott’s shiny trousers…   Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language,

which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music Chart music It's Thursday night It's 29 and a bit minutes past 7 It's May the 25th, 1978.

And I, Al Needham, and my compatriots Taylor Parks and Neil Kulkarni are loving the polyester look of this episode of Top of the Pops. Hey up, you pop-crazy youngsters. Welcome back to part three of episode 54 of chart music let's not fanny about let's rejoin the episode in progress You think wrong, so don't think too long I bet her mind is out and out to go If she might, I want to know Lovely sound, isn't it? Heatwave, mind-blowing decisions.

As if you didn't know it, Isaac Cohen and Alpha Beta won the Eurovision Song Contest with a number called Bonnevie. You knew that already, didn't you? But right now, they're at number 21 in the top 30 of the moment. And here they are right now with you on Top of the Pops. Blackburn, alone in front of a wash of colour, tells us, in case we didn't know, that the next single won this year's Eurovision Song Contest.

Then he fucks up the title, calling it Abani B. Hopefully that isn't something offensive in Hebrew. It's actually Abani B by Izar Cohen and Alpha Beta. Born in Tel Aviv in 1951, Izar Cohen was part of a family of musicians and spent much of his youth in his dad's band. In 1970, he did his Israeli national service and honed his musical skills in the Lahakat Hahanel, the answer of the Israeli armyi army in 1978 he teamed up with the singing group alpha beta for israel song for europe with this song which was picked out to represent the country after the head of their eurovision committee stated openly that it was the only

entry that wasn't cat shit and last month in paris it became the first Eurovision winner from outside Europe, winning by 32 points and battering Baccarat, who were representing Luxembourg, and Cheryl Baker, who was in Coco. on Polydor, entered the charts at number 27 a fortnight ago and this week it's up five places from number 26 to number 21. Well chaps, more Euro nonsense here. 1978,

another year of controversy in Eurovision land unfortunately. The rule that everybody had to perform in their native language had been put back in place, which so enraged beyond skiffs of sweden that he planned to sing it in english on the night and then he changed his mind on stage forgot the swedish lyrics and bust it with some gibberish that we wouldn't have known anyway more importantly of course when it became clear that israel were going

to win most of the arabic stations that were broadcasting the contest pulled the plug with Jordanian TV showing a picture of some daffodils to fill the time and Jordanian Terry Wogan announcing that the second place country, Belgium, had actually won. If there's any Jordanian listeners out there, I'm sorry to break the news to you. And of course, Jan Tegen of Norway, the most memorable performance. He got the first ever null poids with Mille et un mille, which is a tune. It is. It has notes in it.

Yes. I mean, this is obviously, you know, lower than TK Disco. This is SJ Disco. this is barely even a fairground ring toss prize i'd rather have had a goldfish with three days to live uh or a mirror with starsky and hutch on it or a soft toy that's too big to carry around the fairground for the rest of the night but it is catchy catchy. Yes. It really is. That main hook is just insistent enough to get you, which is usually enough for a competition

where the struggle is to remember anything you've just heard. Yes, definitely, yeah. Also, it stands out in the lineup of turkeys that was the Eurovision Song Contest 1978 because it's the only one that sounds faintly exotic. It's not Schlager and it's not chanson. It's got roots, albeit distant roots, in Jewish music. And that's enough to make it stand out,

sound a little bit more interesting, a bit of sort of Middle Eastern flavour in a two-hour banquet of mayonnaise. Basically, it's Zum Gali Galley with its flares on, looking for love. You know, work on the land by day, boogie by night. And it is better than the fucking Swiss entry, I'll give it that.

The Hebrew version of the song, of course, was aired on top of the pops a fortnight ago, but we're being treated to the English one here. But the lyrics are entirely different. The version we're getting here is essentially saying, love is skill, but the original is fucking dark as fuck. When we were children,

we would love in secret. Who were we nice to? Only uncles and aunts. And the poor girls suffered. Those sweethearts,arts they just get beaten up and what we really felt we whispered in the bet language because a barney b is essentially i love you in the hebrew version of pig latin right right and not i want to be a polar bear as some people thought it was christ that is bleak yeah it might as well have

ended with the line you know at least this winter we eat or something like that jesus although it is really fucking catchy um it's catchy without being nursery rhyme-ish which is a good trick for a eurovision song and yes the lead singer i mean he's just a magnificent stallion of a man with a with a magnificent mane he's really captivating taylor here's another addition to your band chirpy human cerberus isn't it yeah it is a bit yeah it's ours here it's a it's a uber keegan yes yeah it is i wish i'd known about all these eurovision shenanigans though because eurovision just was not a thing for me. Oh, it was for me. In 78, I think Eurovision becomes

a thing for me much later with Bucks Fizz. I mean, I was aware of Brotherhood of Man, but only really via Top of the Pops and The Chart. But Bucks Fizz, yeah, that was the first Eurovision I remember watching where I wanted the UK to win and I was really glad that they did. Eurovision

before that, at this period, yeah. Maybe it was just on too late. Yeah, that's the thing for me because Eurovision was really important in my life because it was one of the few Saturday nights where I was allowed to stay up until almost 11 o'clock. Yeah. Yeah, midnight Central European time.

Alright, look, I've got to be honest. I did my bit. I went and watched the 1978 Eurovision Song Contest. Yes! From Paris with Serge Gainsbourg in the audience. Wow. Although, you know, he always looked half asleep anyway. And it is a strange affair.

Did he say, I want to fuck Angela Ripper? Yeah, I want to fuck Leon Zon zitron the uh presenter of this who speaks perfect english with a swedish accent even though he's french wow but it's look that it was a strange affair all round like late 70s france is a funny place anyway Like a lot of tired looking men in flared suits, smoking fags in the rain. Everyone's a bit too used to the taste of five quid wine and has no energy left to philosophise. They just wear a cream Macintosh while raising one eyebrow

with their mouth hanging open. Then make yet another film about a bourgeois housewife who becomes a prostitute and likes it. How many of those films are they going to make? But look, it's all on YouTube in English. So you get the benefit of Wogan and his twinkly Irish wit. Like the introductory film, they've got some scenes of Paris in it. And when Notre Dame comes on he says the bells

the bells good one Terry then they show a shot of the moon and he says it may well be a French moon but I'm not taking any chances by gum it is see that's how you earn

the big bucks he's not bitter wogan here, is he? No, he's... By this point. He's just... Later on in his Eurovision career, he'd start off all twinkly, then as soon as the votes came in

and it was obvious he wasn't going to win again, he'd get really bitter. Yeah, yeah. It's like, Terra, you're Irish. Yeah, precisely. No, on this one, he's just enjoying Duval

and he's on this one he's just enjoying duval and uh he's pretty chilled i don't think he's really that bothered no it's like he it's like he was trained into being bothered by this and at this point he's just no he's he's on a jolly you know and it's pretty much what you'd expect from 1978 all the male male singers are in bell bottoms, like flares at the bottom, but so tight at the top, they're all bunched up around their doubtless bright red briefs, you know. Empty seats in the theatre with all the house lights way up high. Because it's still in that period. This is the thing.

The golden age of Eurovision for us was that early 80s period where it became like an entertainment occasion like it was presented like a proper tv show whereas here it's still in that period where it was treated almost like a formal occasion um yes with this sort of strange self-assumed importance like the rotary Rotary Club or something, you know. Like, rather than what it really, like a Jeux Sans Frontières that thinks it's Summit. But, look, I took a brief note for each entry, if anyone's interested. So, to save everyone the pain of watching it, I'll give you a summary. In order of appearance, Ireland, balding, bearded Dublin cowboy

with mad staring eyes and legs of Kimbo. Norway, new wave trousers, very, very old wave everything else. Italy, ragazzi e ragazzi. That's Italian for guys and dolls. Finland, strange woman, half Nina Mischkoff, half Bea Smith. Portugal, Gemini, a singing group led by a scotsman

who looks a little out of place meninos in meninas that's portuguese for guys and dolls france a greasy chanter kelse priest but too young to be convincing and you know what they say never send a boy to do a man's job they'll only steal his bike Spain gleaming white suit gleaming white teeth like Jurgen Klopp but it's the 70s so they look uncomfortable

should have been disqualified for not entering lost punk rockers yes United Kingdom yeah Coco described by Wogan as an for not entering lost punk rockers. Yes. United Kingdom. Yeah, Coco, described by Wogan as an attractive, eye-catching group, including Cheryl Baker and some clowns in stamped-on paintbox outfits. And it's a Stephanie de Sykes composition.

Jaw-droppingly obvious rewrite of Those Were the Days. Yes. Switzerland's just no fun, like a night out in Zurich, sung by somebody's wife out of the Sweeney. Belgium, piano ballad from a smoothie who is like the bloke of about 50 in a soap who's the local playboy. Netherlands, conducted by Harry Von Hoof.

Unexpected, permed lady teacher in a world book day Aladdin outfit flanked by two boys town dancers who look suspiciously and unconvincingly butch like it's a small country maybe they couldn't find any gay men Turkey

dressed as a wrongly assembled jigsaw puzzle a kekler for kisla that's turkish for guys and dolls germany disco schlager with electronic keyboard sounds i.e as germany 1978 as you can fit into the eurovision song contest streamlined and and and sexless monaco not going to comment on this one because it's not a real country no greece lady dressed as charlie chaplin sings a song about charlie chaplin that goes charlie chaplin charlie chaplin but she looks like lorraine kelly denmark multiple rod stewart stripper grounds

singing something that's obviously meant to be funny but but it's in Danish, so it dies a bit. Luxembourg, Baccarat, the actual Baccarat, cheating, pathetic, what a fucking disgrace. Luxembourg should have been banned from the contest. Sorry, you're a Spaniard. Yeah, fielding an ineligible player, isn't it? Yeah, ringers. And worse than that, the song is a rewrite of yes sir

lux familiar um israel this shit austria the grumbleweeds if they weren't a comedy act sweden well sweden think they're big shots now right after abba as you say this guy thinks he can buck the rules and oh it's just and he's just some idiot in a he's got feathered hair and an osman's outfit doing a proper song and he looks looks away looking thoughtful in the instrument it's like david soul right the only good thing about it is because it's in french they're credited on on screen as suede and yeah in the final reckoning is brilliant there's no frills at all it's just a still shot of the scoreboard while unseen foreigners solemnly intone scores down muffled phone lines it sounds like a numbers station for about an hour and occasional shots of the artistes sat around what looks like the all-night bar in an airport you know like usual

but there's something noble and beautifully simple about it and it made me think this is what they should do with europe generally basically everyone votes and at the end whichever country wins takes over the whole of europe for a year yes it's better than a war isn't it right that means we get holland for two years i'd settle for that at the minute yeah i think that anyone who balks at this is an enemy of democracy really let andora have its day yes but anyway this performance they're all in white and gold with good to see straight leg trousers they're israel's on trend but what the fuck's going on with the set it looks like they've got tape machines you know like how like tepeche mode and stuff and echoing the bunny men you still have like machinery on stage yeah they they're not like Edwardian one-armed bandits, don't they?

Yeah, and I love the line-up of Alpha Beta too. It's like there's just this overabundance of backing singers. There's no need to have six people on stage. None of them playing an instrument or pretending to. They're just shuffling from side to side, clicking their fingers, singing along. They're all singing, but they're so far down in the mix. It's like they're on the other side of a hill.

You can't hear them. I do like the instrumental bit in this song, by the way, just because the backing dancers and singers, they do that thing of, oh, things are going a bit crazy. And they kind of juggle their heads about like what's going on so the following week a barney b nipped up one place to number 20 its highest position the follow-up make a little love failed to chart and he never troubled the UK chart ever again. In 1985 though he represented Israel again in Eurovision where Ole Ole finished fifth and he now runs his own jewellery shop in Tel Aviv. I'm a Libby, I'm a Libby I'm a Libby, I'm a Libby I'm a Libby, I'm a Libby Number one is called Annie's Song. It's a beautiful new instrumental version out by James Golloway, which I want you to hear right now. Blackburn points out that he knew that song was going to win Eurovision, actually,

before fucking up another intro when he introduces Annie's song by James Galloway. Not a good night for Tony. It isn't. And actually, when he comes out of that Alphabeta song, I think he says, believe it or not, that won the Eurovision Song Contest or something like that. Basically implying, you know, who's buying this foreign muck? Born in Belfast in 1939,

James Galloway was the son of a flute player and shipyard worker father and a pianist and mill worker mother who took up his dad's instruments and joined a fife and drum corps at the age of nine. By the age of 11, he was a genuine prodigy, having won the Junior, Senior and Open Awards at the Belfast Flute Championships on the same day. And when he left school at the age of 14, he worked as an apprentice to a piano repairer. At 16, he studied the flute at the Royal College of Music, then at the Guildhall School of Music, and then finished his studies at the Paris Conservatoire. He would then spend the whole of the 60s and half of the 70s as an orchestral player with Sadler's Wells Opera, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1969 he became

the principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan. However in 1975 he went solo and signed to RCA and this the follow-up to russian love song which failed to chart in 1976 is of course a cover of the john denver single which got to number one for a week in october of 1974 in between kung fu fighting the ramadan number one in 1974 and sad sweet dreamer by sweet sensation which like denver he recorded for his current wife, who had the same name. It's just entered the chart this week at number 51, and here's the man with the golden flute

in his biggest assignment yet, leading the top of the pop's orchestra. Here they are. We finally get to see them again. All on the best behaviour, all tugged out. Yeah. Can't have what is party for safely hidden away for a moment. Yeah, and they're completely competent.

There's no seeming drunkenness here. I mean, given that on previous chart musics, I've admitted that I loved the floral dance. You might think I might like this. I was expecting it. Well, no, but mean if we we do get that same dazzling radiance from galway's flute as we did from the brigas and rascal bands you know brass instruments but this isn't jaunty and it's not happy and and in 78 i would have hated

this for i mean for very similar reasons actually that i hated as we previously mentioned the waltons and little house on the prairie it's too emotional it's like it's it's like i couldn't stand for the longest time the last scene in the incredible hulk because it was just too sad and this was a period where i remember i mean it's something my sister takes the piss out of me massively for but i remember watching a kind of old version of hunchback of notre dame at this time in 78 and i was quite young it was the charles lawton version and at the end when he throws himself off the tower i think he says why before he jumps and i was in can fucking solable for like you know i was sobbing i couldn't get over it and any song you know it's too emotional it's a loathsome song for me i don't

like it um how what can i compare you know um it there's something about tunes that as a kid they can be too emotional chi mai the morricone tune that's another one that just traumatized me too much because i remember when that came out i remember like one of my one of my favourite records in my youth was, my favourite albums was Jeff Love Orchestra plays great Western themes, right? Because the big country tune and Gunfight the OK Chorale were massive faves. And I remember noticing Morricone's voice in the credits for it. And, team, I just upset me too much. I was appalled that he was knocking out this tearful stuff. So this, although it looks

like i should like it because i like um things like the floral dance no it just reminds me of sadness and it reminds me of fucking recorder lessons as well um at school just 30 slobbery kids making a really shrill racket um and galway actually galway's one of those artists that we were bought albums by you know we'd get a galway album for christmas from somebody trying to westernize us i guess and and you know this one i mean it was the one that was most unfathomable to me the galway album because it was all just dreary slow shit like this and you know looking at this and listening to it i just wonder because there is this thing about james godway that he's you know he's just this this not this flute demon

but he's you know there's something special about him but what's special about him what what's special about the way he plays nothing and i think that's probably like he sets fire to it or plays it with his teeth or his nose if it is'd played it with his nose, that would have impressed me. But there's nothing special about his tone. It's just, I don't know, it's just clear. And I guess that's why he's huge. He provides music to people who don't want any of the flim-flam of pop. They just want a nice tune.

And it's, of course, the flim-flam that makes pop interesting. But as a kid, I would simply have been annoyed by this about i mean for starters it's not fast so i just wouldn't have liked that yeah i mean and his song was a slight nick of a bit of tchaikovsky's fifth symphony second movement it says here on wikipedia citation needed yes but that tune also provided the theme tune to the Paul Hogan show. Oh, yeah. A very valuable piece of work by Tchaikovsky there. Well done. And, of course, this is one of his first public appearances since he was run over by a motorbike in Switzerland about six months ago

and broke his left arm and both legs. Really? Yes. He's looking well. Yeah, I think the same bloke who was after jazz coleman in iceland what music lover this this is horrible isn't it this is really horrible this florid prick he's like he's got john denver trapped inside that flute feeding him on dried piss and pontifract cakes but i know from this distance we watch the old top of the popsies and the more variety the merrier but i sort of have to stand up

for the kids of the day and say this is a fucking disgrace um and i don't like this song anyway never have because well because why would, you know, or anyone? And on the rare occasions that I do hear it, I'm always confused that it doesn't open with the line, you came on my pillow, like in the Monty Python version, which is not very funny. It's on their Contractual Obligation album, which is largely barrel scrapings.

And they do this weak 10-second gag where it says, and now john denver being strangled and he goes you came on my pillow but john denver heard about this and complained and made them take it off the album the complete fucking bellend so fuck it but this version is at least an improvement on the original just by virtue of having removed half the song i.e the lyrics and that's the better half of the song to have removed because can you imagine if it was just him reading out the lyrics as a poem come let me love you let me give my life to you let me drown in your laughter let me die in your arms

fucking hell man get a fucking back as opposed to a plane yeah well the only problem is that he couldn't have removed the music as well and just sat there for three minutes in beautiful silence just staring at his flute being pestered by a fly it's a fucking chunky flute as well isn't it yeah it is i mean he's well known for having a platinum flute from japan that's worth 20 grand but this one it's it's a beefy fucking flute isn't it yeah he loves it and you know i'm watching this and yes like you my 10 year old self will be nipping downstairs to have a look in the cupboard to see if united bars have been invented yet yeah but watching it now i just started thinking well who would win a flute fight between james

galway and ian anderson oh because you know anderson's got the obvious height advantage but you know i think galway's flute would do some serious damage yeah yeah and behind though yeah galway i would not fuck with galway the only person who could beat Galway would be Tara Bentovan, the Sunday Morning Kids presenter. But this has a Dana-ish thing to it as well. So, yeah, get it off top of the pops. What a waste of time. I am picturing the choreography of this flute fight looking like Luke Skywalker

versus Darth Vader, holding the flutes upright. Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader, holding the flutes upright. He loves it so much because it doubles as a marital aid. If he's too drunk to do his evil duty, he gets out some rubber bands and uses it as a splint. It's like what Arthur Negus used to do. He didn't want to miss out on the antiques roadshow pussy bonanza. But he was past a certain age, in the days before Viagra.

So he'd strap it to a Queen Anne candlestick. Pewter. That's how he managed to father all those kids who went on to work with Ras Michael. Fucking hell. Someone let me out of lockdown. This isn't healthy. This isn't healthy. isn't the thing is with records like this though like variety is the spice don't get me wrong yes but records like this there's there is an implied snot in us and snobbery about pop not only in the

people who are buying it but i do just think yeah this you know that the people who bought this this is proper music and go away himself you know it that i feel that there's a there's a snobbery and a snot in a service it's not music that will coexist with the rest of the with the rest of pop music it's music that gets in the charts and kind of looks around at what else is in the charts and just feels this isn't really you know this isn't proper music. This is proper music. And that includes the people who buy it. So a lot of instrumentals that get into the 70s charts are very much like that. For people who like, yeah, a proper tune simply played without any of the nonsense.

Well, the nonsense is the nice stuff, you know. It's for people who grade music on how much it is like the still surface of a lake, you know, like as soon as anything happens, that's just spoilt it. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? But as it is,

like however offensive this is to the ear, it is even more appalling to the eye. And there's no excuse, right? Because plenty of older, uglier people have been on top of the pops and made it cool in one way or another you know the issue is not that he's it's not just that he looks awful it's that he's chosen to look like this right because i can forgive him the nervous confused look because he's probably not used to

working with musicians of this caliber no um there's no excuse for thinking oh i've got to go on top of the pops so i'll turn up looking like an unkempt loner well known to the local police like with a house you can't get into because it's crammed with like old free newspapers and bin bags full of his own shit it's not it's not appealing it's it's not so much annie's song as megan's law he's got that look of the 1970s creep like really down to a t do you know what i mean like a teacher who's always sat on his own in the staff room or the yeah or a sales manager at sunshine desserts with a shotgun buried in his garden but it's either way it's not it's that look of dark tangled shapeless beard over a velvet bow tie and an open velvet dinner jacket open to accommodate his protruding gut stretching out the the white ruffled shirt and it's supposed to be classy but it just suggests a reek of mothballs and body odor

and something he's dribbled into the beard and down the front of the shirt caught in the ruffles it's it's too much chateau margot at the dinner dance you know party hands and then still driving home despite being pissed full body hair including ears and nose and breath like a wheelie bin it's fucking horrible you want to get him off the screen and back into a dark wood banketed hall with a suit of armor in the corner and cross swords mounted on the wall and fly a fucking plane into it. He is the image of every slightly unpleasant man who ever stood too close to you when you were a kid.

He's gross. That beard is fucking foul. And you just, you don't want to see this guy eating anything. Would you have a sandwich made by James Gawne? Fuck no. The thing thing is I could make him

A really nice sandwich And I'd have to run away Before watching him eat it Could you imagine He's got egg caught in that beard He's fucking foul I apologise to any woman listening to this call Because you must have had this song thrown at you

Right through your life. Oh, dear me. So, the following week, Annie's song soared 24 places to number 27, eventually spending two weeks at number three in the first two weeks of July.

The follow-up, Arioso, failed to chart and he never resurfaced in the singles chart again but he went on to become a successful albums artist he played with pink floyd at their 1990 performance of the wall at potsdamer platts that was great won an oscar for the soundtrack of the Trilogy and released a 71 CD box set five years ago. 71 CDs! Oh, and if I had the money, I know what two

lads are getting for Christmas. APPLAUSE Beautiful song, isn't it? James Galway there and Annie Song and Johnny Pearson and the Top of the Pops Orchestra looking absolutely immaculate tonight. Sight-changing tempo at number 29, this is Thin Lizzy. She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her

She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her

She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her

She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her

She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her She's got me in her Blackburn gives a shout out to Johnny Pearson and the TOTPO before taking us back to the rock with Rosalie by Thin Lizzy. Formed in Dublin in 1969 when Phil Linnett and Brian Downey left the band Orphanage to team up with Eric Bell and Eric Rickston who was an

original member of them, Thin Lizzy named themselves after a comic strip about a robot girl which appeared in the Dandare in the 50s. They were almost immediately signed to EMI for the one-shot single The Farmer, which only sold 283 copies, but they were picked up by Decca at the end of 1970 and relocated to London, where they recorded their sole title debut LP, which also sold Paula, despite regular airplay from John Peel on Radio 1 and Kid Jensen on Radio Luxembourg. After dropping to a three-piece and marking time by teaming up with members from the band Elmer Fudd to record an LP of Deep Purple covers, they supported Slade and Suzy Quattro on their UK tours, only to discover that Decca had released their cover of the 17th century folk song Whiskey in the Jar as a single behind their back.

But after it got to number one in Ireland, it went all the way to number six in the UK in February of 1973, giving them their first Top of the Pops appearance. However, the year ended badly when Bo walked out of the band due to health issues and being fucked off with the music biz and he was briefly replaced by gary moore who left a few months later and by the time their deal with deca was up they were reduced to a two-piece after picking up two guitarists brian robinson and scott gorham and signing a new deal with phonogram they continued their run of six flop singles after Whiskey in the Jar, but in March of 1976, they put out their sixth LP, Jailbreak, and the lead-off single from it, The Boys Are Back in Town,

went all the way to number six in July of that year. This single, Builder's Rosalie slash Cowgirls song, is the lead cut from their next LP, which comes out next week, Live and Dangerous. It's a version of their 1975 single, which fell to chart and was recorded at Hammersmith Odeon last year. It's also a cover of the 1972 Bob Seger track that was a whinge about Rosalie Tremblay, the music director of the Ontario radio station OKLW, who wasn't playing Seger's records at the time but

lizzie have turned it into a song about a woman that phil linnet wants to cop off with it's entered the charts at number 45 a fortnight ago a top on the pops appearance got it up to number 40 and this week it soared 11 places to number 29. And here's a repeat of their performance from two weeks thence. This confused the fuck out of me because it's a performance of a live single, but it's different to the version they released three years ago with the cowgirl song bit at the end. But this is the version I fucking want because the riff on that is mint. And as far as I know they're recording for

top of the pops is the only version of it available unless of course you know better i mean the recorded version when they don't do it live and they do it in the studio is a tight as fuck kind of stonesy thing but this is i mean it's rorer It's better. And Phil barely has the breath to do it. But God, after Galway, fuck me. I practically, you know, stood up and cheered when this came on. What a band Lizzy were. I fucking love Thin Lizzy. My daughter's got me heavily back into Thin Lizzy in recent months.

Good girl. She has a lovely way of not caring about, like, she don't care about albums or discography as much. She's brilliant at finding those ace five quid triple CD comps in supermarkets. And she found one, Thin Lizzy, which is perfect because you basically get 40 odd songs without having to trawl through the discography. And Lizzy is just so wonderful.

They were always around when I was a kid, just by being popular being Irish as well had a big part of it in Coventry as well but I think at that age I don't think I would have appreciated what a great songwriter Phil Lynott truly is and you know that they remind me in a sense of Zeppelin in that their rhythm section is key and it's the one part of Lizzie that never changes it's always brian downey and phil and and you know he's one of the most under underrated drummers ever i'd say brian downey so so they've just got the solidity of sound um because they get bored

of just doing rock music thin lizzie always slipping away from it to a certain extent they've got these mad songs like mexican girl and randolph's tango but it's always like really really convincing um you know when phil does irish stuff he does it really convincingly you know unlike anyone else things like black rose i love and he has that he has this manics type thing of overstuffing lines with lyrics but he always does it so so brilliantly his bass playing is always infectiously funky the dry studio sound of rock in the 70s there's barely anyone better doing it than thin lizzy i think i i think they've suffered a little bit by being characterized by the big hits in a sense like jailbreak and whiskey and you know um dancing the moonlight and things like that but there's so much more of them.

And already, for me, instantly, they are the best thing on this show by far, so far. So I've loved Finn Lizzy. And this performance, after Galway in particular, it's just glorious. Filling its imagination with his writing, with his songs. I actually think, as well, that as we're pushing towards the 80s, I know this is 78, but that whole period from here actually until the early 80s with things like Waiting for an Alibi and Chinatown and Killer on the Loose and Trouble Boys and Hollywood,

Lizzie going to the 80s, really strong, really, really strong. And they vaunt that period really, really well. And of course, at the time, I mean, I don't know whether this was like a nationwide thing, but it just seemed like in my life, everyone's mum fancied Phil Linnett. Fancy the fuck out of Phil Linnett, you know? I mean, and understandably, he's incredibly good looking

and he looks so damn good in this performance. Yes, he does. Just a white shirt, black leather or PVC trousers, straight leg. And that massive thick guitar strap with all the studs on it. He looks fucking awesome. Beyond that, I mean, it's just the best bit of the show so far because I really love the audience in this bit. It's like a proper rock gig. There's not kids being commandeered around.

And they've got the space at the front to dance. And all the girls look like Janine St. Hubbins, basically. Yes. And all the blokes kind of look like Artie Fufkin. This is a real highlight for me of the episode so far. Fucking love Finn Lizzie. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we do see the kids getting down. But love Finn Lizzie. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, we do see the kids getting down, but again, there's that big gap at the front and centre that's dominated by the cameraman, which kind of, to me, made it look like the kids couldn't be arsed and they're all hanging over on the other end of the studio waiting for the next act. Yeah, perhaps. But I mean, what blazing stuff is coming off that stage and you're right it is difficult telling what's live what's not phil's vocals definitely live

um because he seems like really out of breath and perhaps the guitar sound is too strong for it to be live because it's it's but but you know as a replacement for what we've just had we've just had a beardy cunt um playing this horrible soft sappy shit music to this yeah i genuinely did get up out of my chair and just go fucking yes yes um which is you know yeah yeah totally yeah i i don't disagree with a single word of what neil just said the two things that i love the most about thin lizzy firstly they do that thing that's so difficult which only a few rock groups have managed of speaking for people who don't have that much to say do you know what I mean like like the who did it but in a different way it's like you've got an

audience of mostly young lads who didn't really know how they felt or how to express it until their favourite band sort of sang it back at them. And they didn't do it with social comment or tortured young man stuff, which is the usual way. They just did it with songs about life and love and lust and frustrations without a trace of the self-appointed spokesman bit, you know. It's just stuff that people could relate to. And all the better that these mostly white l that people could relate to and all the better that these mostly white lads could suddenly relate to a black irish guy more easily than they could

relate to their own families you know that can only have done good i think the reason why everybody's mum fancied him he had that combination he was like a tall black guy but he had that irish twinkliness about him as well i think that combination was lethal for a lot of people, and particularly a lot of mums for some reason. I don't know why. And the other thing I love about them is the way that they played, in that it was really hard rock, but with this balletic lightness of touch. Yes.

It's like 50-tonne titanium robots titanium robots like skipping and somersaulting there's that little trip you get in the backbeat and just the neatness of everything even through a haze of booze and god knows what it's almost like a feminine touch and it stops these records which are to some extent celebrations of masculinity sounding boorish or or lumpen you know they're very dainty in their way which makes no sense but it's precisely what makes them so great um i mean their relationship with their own machismo was quite interesting you know i mean like you had scott gor, who looks like Rapunzel with a Les Paul. Yes. Who to me was the most American looking person I'd ever seen.

Yeah. And then you get like the cover of the album Fighting, which is one of my favourite album titles ever, where it's just a picture of them in an alley trying to look hard, holding bits of lead piping and the word fighting over and over again down the signs but this is their appeal that they were they were sort of laddish and leering and leery uh but you know it was humorous enough with a light enough touch to be really charming i mean just sorry just to just

to interject yeah i mean with that light touch because i mean when i think about fighter you know finding my way back on that album the way phil goes fighting it's like it's humorous you're not getting an attitude they're not copping an attitude it's just yeah yeah really lovely and fluid neil can you do the early and the late albums? I only do the five middle albums, really. I've only got the five middle albums from Fighting to Black Rose. No, the early ones I don't bother with. The late ones I need to bother with, I suspect, because I've not got around to them.

But the five middle ones are sweet as. But, I mean, the thing is, you know what you're saying about macho-ness? All you need to do to kind of realize how special it was what what lizzie did is listen to any cover of them because when i think of like metallica's cover of whiskey in the jar is one of the most appalling things you will ever hear in your life and hetfield just doesn't get it obviously because he's a fucking thick bastard but he just does not get it you know and and if you try and play lizzy songs in that balls to the wall metal-y way no you're not getting

it there's a fluidity there's a ripplingness to their music yeah that i think virtually everyone who's ever copied them never gets yeah and also the it's that charm that twinkly charm that lets them get away with so much because they were like the poet laureate of it was acceptable in the 70s there's such a warm benevolent feel comes off thin lizzy in a weird way however loud and brutal they could be um well of course you know you look at their their output and it's loaded with really dubious stuff um things which have since fallen foul of shifting conceptions of where the safety cordon should go you know around sleaze uh a concept which would have meant nothing to thin lizzie because this that was what it was to them like they the whole point was they were sleazy and naughty you know that was that was the thing that they did uh but they get away with it because

i don't think a well-balanced person could actually object to any of it it's just there's just a lot which makes you go um you know what i mean but it's it's so deeply set into their modus operandi and their sense of purpose, in a way, that there's always a bit of a wink behind it. You know what I mean? Yeah, but putting out Killer on the Loose while the Yorkshire Ring is still about. A bit much.

Yeah, they weren't living in the real world. But a lot much. They weren't living in the real world. Yeah, and more often than not, Phil uses his songs. I mean, weren't living in the real world. But a lot much. They weren't living in the real world. Yeah. And more often than not, Phil uses his songs. I mean, he puts characters in his songs. They're stories, a lot of his little songs. Something that was beyond a lot of the heavy rock brigade at that time.

You know, in a few years' time, this type of music is going to be colonised by a different type of band. But the fluidity and the gorgeousness of Lizzy's music, yeah, it kind of it kind of gets lost soon but even in the 80s even with big gated drums and 80s effects it's the strength i mean i i can't believe i'm saying this because i used to not give a fuck about songwriting but obviously it's important and phil's songwriting he's a fucking genius he's majorly underrated and i think him and brian downey is

it's one of the greatest rhythm sections ever um those those old lizzy records need listening to again i think they've been forgotten about to a certain extent in terms of they've been turned into those three or four big hits and people don't dig into them enough and they're ripe for rediscovery lizzy i think yeah that it's that subtlety to it. I mean, you wouldn't piss in a bottle and hurl it at Thin Lizzie. You're not inspired to do that by this music. No. And yeah, this performance is fucking great.

They don't do a lot. They just communicate that combination of charm and menace really well. And also that shiny reflective scratch plate on Phil's bass creating absolute havoc under the studio lights, flashing and flaring every time he holds it at a certain angle. It's like he's playing a lighthouse. And also what's stuck in the headstock of his bass? Is it a fag? You know how people used to put a fag?

It's not lit, if it is, but you know people used to put a lit fag in the head stock of their guitar or bass which i've never understood because a fag burns down in the time it takes to play at least the time it took to play a song in the 70s right especially if you've got a wind machine on stage look there's a clip of pink floyd Dark Side of the Moon, and Roger Waters has got a fag burning away on his headstock, which is surely the height of stupidity when you're playing a 40-minute song cycle. And it's like, just does it because I'll just have one drag on it

and just put it in there, and that'll be all right. They do roll-ups. They tamp themselves out, don't they? That's true. That's true. It doesn't look like a roll-up, though. It looks perfectly cylindrical. Fucking idiot yeah so yeah i don't also did we need to find out what the actual track i couldn't i tried i did my research i couldn't find out what we're actually

listening to here there is famously some debate over quite how live, live and dangerous really is. Yeah. I'm slightly cynical. So to me, it's about as authentically live as that seeds album with the overdubbed screaming girls on it. If you've ever heard that, but I'm thinking,

could this be the track without the vocals and without the audience from live at dangerous? I haven't heard that album for about a year, so I can't remember. I don't think it is. I think they've done it specially for Top of the Pops. In which case, whoever oversaw that session has done a very good job of capturing that very dry, powerful sound. Because it just sounds like Thin Lizzy, doesn't it?

It doesn't sound like a peel session or something. It sounds like Thin Lizzy. Phil, he's another West Bromwich birth, you know. Is he? Yeah, people always talk about that he's living in Ireland and about his heritage. Born in West Bromwich. It's him, me,

Robert Plant, Denise Lewis, Colin Jeevans, Brian Walden and Madeline Carroll out of the 39 steps. Brian Walden. So the following week Rosalie dropped 9 places

to number 38, then soared 17 places to number 21 then dropped 11 places to number 32, then soared 12 places to number 20, its highest position. Why? Fuck knows. All i know is that the british market research bureau had expanded the official chart from a top 50 to a top 75 in this month

and they abolished their system of excluding records that are dropped into the 41 to 50 slots in order to get some more new stuff in but But I don't know, it does make sense. There's one or two singles in this Top of the Pops that just bounce. Like that Matchbox thing with the ball bearings on their skins that I always wanted but never got. Do you remember that? Yes. Yeah, I do now.

That was fucking brilliant. I mean, I do know that the Daily Mirror launched an investigation against A&M Records about chart rigging. Elkie Brooks and Peter Frampton, they got their stuff hyped up. So the British Market Research Bureau had a bit of a fiddle with the way they did things.

And I don't know if it took a month or so to smooth everything out. But yeah, records bouncing up and down all over the show. Elkie Brooks and all our tampered books. Yes. Move my fingers up and down. Look out! I'm Mark Haynes, and for the last 32 years, I've been a fan of professional wrestling. My friend Pete Donaldson from the Football Ramble, he hasn't.

But in our podcast, Wrestle Me, the two of us subject the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment, WrestleMania, to the kind of rigorous scrutiny that ruins it entirely. GQ called Wrestle Me enrapturing. Shortlist said it's beautiful, and it's a hit with common people too, with well over 400 five-star reviews on iTunes. Wrestle Me, available from all good podcast providers. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. There it is. That's the number 29 sound here on Top of the Pops. The sound of Thin Lizzy and Rosalie. The Bee Gees running some fantastic records at the moment, aren't they? And from the film Saturday Night Fever, here's Tavares and More Than A Woman, number seven this week. Blackburn, still socially distancing from the kids,

wangs on about the songwriting ability of the Bee Gees as he introduces More Than A Woman by Tavares. Spawned by Mr and Mrs Tavares in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the 1940s, the Tavares brothers began their career in 1959 as Chubby and the Turnpikes, before changing their name to Tavares in 1973, and immediately making dents upon the American charts, including their cover of She's Gone by Hall & Oates, which got to number one in the R&B charts in 1974,

and It Only Takes a Minute Girl getting to number 10 on the Billboard chart in 1975. A year later, they made their first raid on the UK charts when Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel got to number 4 in August of 1976, kicking off a run of five top 40 hits and two top tenors with Don't Take Away the Music and Whodunit. This is the follow-up to the ghost of love and is their contribution to the soundtrack of saturday night fever a cover of the bgs track which also features on the original soundtrack and this week it's moved up six places from number 13 to number 7 and here's a video and quite an impressive video by 1978 standards isn't it loads of split angles and whatnot yeah you know we see various members of the band in different corners of the screen and

then you know the woman comes out and she demonstrates that yes she is more than a woman because there's five of us yeah and the band in bizarre outfits and they're not the first soulbound we've seen wearing them either these things they're like crimping dungarees or overalls it's like an all-in-one trousers and midriff cover it's like a pair of trousers that comes up to the tits you know just flat across the stomach like a breastplate it just yeah just stops just at the point where you can show off your wing collared shirt and chunky tie and they really are abominable there's no buttons or zips or anything it's just like an animal suit like a no like a stiff onesie it's not even flattering to tall well-built black men which is really the test of bad tailoring and i think it's the same outfits that

we saw was it the stylistics wearing in the the chart rundown it was just a picture of them on the chart rundown except yes as if it wasn't bad enough theirs were yellow like banana yellow like maplin surplus it was like it was the Web Twins, Chris Andrews and the Stylistics. This, of course, was used in the rocky bit of Saturday Night Fever, wasn't it? Where Tony and Stephanie are working out the moves in the dance studio that was owned by the middle-aged pervert. Yeah. And, you know, it's got to be said that the tavarez version once again pisses all over the bgs version do you think so that they dance to at the end i don't know if it's i don't know if it's

better it's different nothing i mean nothing at this time can be as perfect as a bgs record they're perfecting pop in a way that no one bar sort of maroda or abba are doing at the moment what saves this from being uh at not an well a knockoff or an inferior knockoff is the fact it's the farrest who have amazing voices who can actually bring something you know which sort of all bg songs need in a sense something non-creepy to it to a good song bg's always had something creepy about them yeah but it's it's different quality voices i'm i dispute that it's kind of better than the Bee Gees version. Well, I think it was a schoolboy error by John Travolta

to pick the Bee Gees version to dance to in the competition instead of this. And no wonder Hector and his missus won a moral victory by doing KG. And Travolta was absolutely right to give them that big cup and the $500. He knew. And if Travolta knew, right to give him that big cup and the $500. He knew. And if Travolta knew, then I know as well.

Yeah, he didn't have to make such a show of it though, did he? But yeah, I think I slightly prefer the Bee Gees version just because, well, if I can't have you, the more human approach brings more out of the song. Whereas on this one, I think it suits that sort of ghostly gliding, that relative lack of flesh and blood in the Bee Gees version, suits the creepy, heavenly creepy feel of the song. Perhaps it comes down to the fact that the opening lines of this song

are so Ed Stupot-Stewart-tastic that I'd rather hear them drifting in from a floating cloud than sung by a recognisable human being. I mean, again, like the real thing before, Tavares are a soul group who've gone disco, but it's been a smoother transition for Tavares, hasn't it? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, what a run as well

it has to be said what tavarez are on yeah from 76 onwards amazing run of singles but yeah they seem to suit it better it's the voices with disco that don't problematize it as such but might make it sound like more of a soul or a funk thing because i don't know then they're not heavily textured voices as such and they're not overly processed voices. There's a soleness to the vocals, if you like, that could be from 1975. But the undertow of it is definitely disco. It's definitely Saturday Night Fever. The film's been out for just over two months in the UK.

And it's still packing them in. It's currently running alongside The Goodbye Girl, High Plains Drifter, The Wages of Fear, The Last Dinosaur, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, running alongside the goodbye girl high plains drifter the wages of fear the last dinosaur looking for mr good bar confessions of a lusty housewife camp on blood island plague of the zombies the new one-armed swordsman and the porn brokers of course spelt p-o-r-n that's good film one-armed swordsman's a blinding oh yeah it's a good film. One Old Swordsman's a blinding film. Oh, yeah, it's a fucking great film. But, I mean, this is the love theme from Saturday Night Fever,

like the unconsummate love theme. And I think that those forced, lingering gazes and embraces slightly undermine the song in a way. Because if you're just listening to it, like the simplicity uh and let's face it the banality of the lyrics doesn't matter um whereas when when it's an accompaniment to a very soft focus close-up of two faces gazing into each other's eyes it becomes a

bit too annoying or spinning each other around yeah yeah. I had no patience for any of that. No. I mean, Saturday Night Fever was a fucking weird vehicle to put John Travolta in. Since they were trying to angle him as the latest heartthrob. It's like they're saying, Hey girls, come and see John Travolta be racist and violent. He's ever seditious.

Oh, and you can't see it if you're under 18 because he tries to rape his love interest in a car and get kicked in the bollocks it was a real shock to me when i first watched saturday night fever it's such a bleak film yes um in in lots and lots of ways you know and and the the dance sequences obviously then take on this kind of radiant hope that the rest of the film doesn't have and i didn't know of course at the time that you know nick khan one of my favorite writers is what this is based on one of these articles but but um the bleakness of it is still quite startling to this day because we all associate

saturday night fever with two things the film and the look of john travolta but also of course that soundtrack lp the soundtrack lp reveals none of the bleakness in a sense like from the front of it or the participation of the Bee Gees in it but the film when you watch it God you don't come away from it dancing

you come away from it quite depressed yes it's quite a depressing bleak film Saturday Night Fever and I really do like it I think it's a really good film

with a fantastic soundtrack but it's good because of its bleakness I think if I'd have seen it at the time it would have been really really startling to me. Yeah, you're right.

Because when I was that age and there were films going about that I obviously couldn't see because I was too young. I used to imagine what they'd be like. And I think I've got Saturday Night Fever. It's a film about a bloke who's really into disco and he goes to discos all the time.

And it's great. And he does nothing else but go to discos. And then at the end, he gets into that pose and he just nothing else but go to discos and then at the end he gets into that pose and he just goes disco yeah and that's the end of the film and that would have satisfied me deeply as a 10 year old yeah it's well first of all what's funny about Saturday Night Fever is yeah it's based on on that that uh what's it called, The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night by Nick Cohn. And he knew nothing of disco or New York City. He had to write about it and he just made it all up

based on his own experiences of the mod scene in London. Yeah, it's a mod film, isn't it? Yeah, which is why it's basically a slightly, very slightly more downbeat quadrophenia. And yet this is the holy text of New York disco. This film and that piece of writing, for all we know, it could just be a pile of old mints, you know. Yeah.

But it's a great film if just because there's so much fascinating stuff in it to gaze upon, like it's old New York and old freedoms and old miseries. And John Travolta's peculiar relationship with heterosexuality. And it's like a grand tribute to everything we can't do anymore. Like being in big crowded rooms, you know, the thrill of the crowd. I don't mean that we can't do any more because of the pandemic i mean just because we're old and fucked you know but there's there's a few things in it that that great like the fact that yeah everyone in the whole film is basically awful

um and i sort of like films like that but i'm never 100 sure how awful you're meant to think they are um and also how come this disco that they all go to is meant to be so cool when dj's only got one record and it's the soundtrack to saturday night fever it's one of the guys who say it's not exactly deep cuts is it mate no and also in the mod world that Nick Cone understood, dancing had a different function psychologically. The point is you would disappear into the crowd and you'd either reach a kind of collective nirvana, like Acid House style, or you could stand out within the crowd in a sort of a weird kind of way.

But the crowd in a sort of a weird kind of way but the crowd was the thing whereas a lot of Saturday Night Fever is about or it's focused on this like narcissistic individual display of what dancing had become like these dance competitions which you have to train for like an athlete and that yeah that scene where Tony clears the floor so that everyone has to watch it takes over the dance is this is the this is the scene that makes me hate him like more than all the more obviously terrible stuff he does fran drescher comes up to him right fran drescher who i've always massively fancied anyway comes up to chat him up and says, are you as good in bed as you are on the dance floor? And they go off to dance and she's like really slutty and great.

But because she's not as good at dancing as he is, he's like, oh, fuck this. And he just ignores her and just dances on his own and clears the whole floor. So everyone else has to watch this dance onanism. And he's like doing Cossack shit and fucking idiot. It's supposed to be an expression of his

existential confusion where I come from they call it being a dick Yeah. It's an odd film to become such an international smash but I think it's the film from 78 that exerts a bigger future influence than other big cultural behemoths of that year

because i mean we'll come on obviously to talk about another massive film from the states this year that is a musical but when you think of musicals after this year there aren't any really there were none until like much later much much later whereas what saturday night fever is i guess you could call it a danceicle it's like you know you know i mean it's dances soundtrack by music but what you're watching is the dancing you're not watching the singers singing it um but but the music you know is is part of the narrative thread of the movie it's a danceicle and those films kept going that there was still plenty of those oh god throughout the 80s yeah so i mean you know so i i guess it exerted a much bigger influence than the other big american film of the year

but but it's still startling just what a nasty piece of work it is in a way yeah and of course this is the film that codified disco especially in the uk you know if you want to go to disco you've got to look like this and your disco's supposed to have this kind of floor and this is the music you play and this is the suit that Tony Blackburn wears this is why the Pink Panther does those moves at the end of the cartoon because of this film

they're all in here. So the following week more than a woman dropped one place to number 8 and then nipped back up to number 7 the next week it's highest position the The follow-up, Slow Train to Paradise, would only get to number 62 and they'd have to wait 8 years for their next sniff of the charty arse when a remix of Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel by Ben Lebront got to number 12 in March of 1986. There it is, that's the number 7 sound there from Tavares.

It's been more than a woman, I think that's going to be my favourite along with Yvonne Elliman this week. Right now, Never Say Die. That's the brand new one from Black Sabbath. People going nowhere Seeking for a ride Looking for the answer Letting go inside Tony, still malingering at the back of the studio, tells us that that song and Yvonne Elliman's are his favourite tunes in this episode,

virtually implying that we might as well switch off right now. He then throws us at a band that presumably get very little time on his turntable at home black sabbath with never say die formed in birmingham in 1968 the polka tuck blues band immediately changed their name to earth but when they found out another band was already using that name they scrabbled around for a new one according to legend they chanced upon their new name when the cinema across the road from their rehearsal studio started to advertise their next film the 1963 boris karloff horror movie black sabbath they wrote a song with that title made it it dead scary, and adopted it as their new band name.

Just as well, Carry On Up The Kyber wasn't playing at the time. Something like that. They signed to Phillips Records at the end of 1969 and put out their debut single, a cover of Evil Woman by Crow, which failed to chart. But their debut LP, Black Sabbath, got to number eight in the UK in May of 1970, and the immediate follow-up, Paranoid, got to number one in the LP charts in October of

that year, and the title track was released as a single, getting them to number four in the same month. This single, the follow-up to Am I Going Insane, which was released in February of 1976 and fell to charts, and the title track of their next LP, is only the sixth single released by Sabbath in the UK. It came out last Friday and isn't in the charts yet, but as they're currently touring the UK, here they are, making only their second appearance on top of the pops. Before we turn our attention to sabbath

why is tony being kept apart from the kids do you think the bbc are worried that he's taking his travolta persona a bit too far and he's going to get girls up on stage and ask them are you a nice girl or are you a cunt it is weird that it's very noticeable very noticeable that there's no grinning girls or grinning boys next to him at any point very strange but anyway this song um it's just as well that thin lizzy are in the studio this week as uh i think their ears would be burning at the intro of this song it does remind remind me very much of Boys Are Back In Town, don't you think? A little bit, but I mean,

you know, at this point, Thin Lizzy are together and solid. And at this point, Sabbath are just falling apart by this point. I was going to ask you, Neil, where are Black Sabbath in May of 1978, apart from standing over the prone Alan Jones and saying, leave it, Tony, he's not worth it.

Sabbath are, I mean, they're about to kind of disappear for four years. I mean, Ozzy's already quit the band, but then been sort of rejoined in a sense. They're falling apart. Too much drugs, too much alcohol. And to be honest with you, with Sabbath, after the first two albums, drugs just exert such a colossally bad influence on the band

in terms of their personal relationships that they're just massively massively dysfunctional by this point um you know and but despite all this they could occasionally still be just fucking awesome as as this track shows i mean i love it i actually love this this kind of period of sabbath with the technical ecstasy album that preceded never say die and this never say die album they're often kind of um you know the the kind of biblical thing to say is yeah you know you need the first three studios albums you need the first seven led set records and you need the first um sort of six sabbath albums and i would still go along with that up to sabotage that they are

essential texts if you like but you know and it's often seen that Technicolaxi and this one are a mess because they're a great band falling apart fundamentally on both but that's precisely what I like about it there's a real royal trucks like ugliness to what they do in this period and I like it always when Sabbath in in a sense, depart from that slow motion, heavy blueprint that they'd laid down. It's tracks where they start, I don't know, because they start using synths and stuff in this period. And it's always really jarring, but really sulfurous and nasty as well. And what you're seeing in this period of Sabbath is really that their mutual animosity. Because, like, you know, they hate each other really by this point

um you know they go to toronto to record this lp in the middle of winter just because the rolling stones have recorded a really poor live lp in toronto the year before it's all a mess at this point but their mutual animosity is finding its way into the music not in a confrontational way but it i don't know it's like you know how like you could be walking down the street and you'll see two kind of spice addled booze addled guys threatening to bang each other out and they will bang each other and then the next morning they're just you know next to each other still friends it's like that that's what sabbath are like at this point they're really massively dysfunctional but they're making they're still pals in a sense because they've got nowhere else to go and i

you know i would never say that this period is comparable to the early period but there's pleasures to be had because you can always with sabbath hear the character of the people involved you know ozzy the maniac with a kind of heart of gold a A real heart of gold. And that's key to Ozzy. He's not just scary or something. He gave Neil a couple of boxes of tea bags. He did give Neil a couple. But it's got nothing to do with that. But he's, you know, I mean, this is the thing with Sabbath.

I'm not saying they're misunderstood as such, but they are different than the heavy metal that they supposedly birthed. You know, when I listen to heavy metal, there's a glory in evil to it. There's a delight in being satanic and all of that. Sabbath were never that band. You know, Giza Butler, who writes a lot of the lyrics, is a terrified Catholic. That's why so much of their music,

you know, Ozzy sounds genuinely scared of the devil. And also they're big, big Beatles fans, right? They're coming from a period in the 60s where they idolize and are obsessed with the Beatles so that comes into their song right you can hear that a little bit here of course you've also got Bill Ward the implacable rhythmic force of the band he's just amazing on this track the speed of what he's doing what fast I know that's why he's had to take his shirt off yeah no he's just amazing and of course dominating in a sense the riffs which are the heart of their music

is tony iomi who's the boss and a kind of fucking really angry scary one at that um so even though this would be seen i guess as a bad period for sabbath and you can kind of see that ozzy's almost laughing his way through this performance um and they are about to fall apart completely yeah um because they've kind of lost the will really they've lost the desire to go on with it but and pretty soon you know sabbath in in the metal stakes if you like are going to be left behind by bands like priest and maiden i.e bands that could play and were disciplined. And this band were never really that disciplined. But this performance is great.

I love Bill's look. He looks properly like he don't give a fuck. He looks like he runs a vape shop in Brighton. He does. He looks startlingly modern, doesn't he? Yes, very much so. I think Bill Ward. He looks like, you know, you could see him in a band now.

He looks like he's disguised as that bloke who had the sign that said, Get a brain, morons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he does, he does. But also they've got that lovely look with the boots that Ozzy's wearing and stuff. They've got that perfect kind of, this is where Spinal Tap comes from, to a certain extent, that look of both being a heavy rock band, but being very colour colorful and almost having a glam touch to it but um yeah never say die is commonly derided as an album but i think it

warrants reinvestigation precisely because of its ugliness and its depiction of a band falling apart but still something happens when these four guys are in a room together that's special and even in this top of the pops performance you get that you get that powerfully i think yeah yeah i'd never heard this song before and if you'd have played it to me without visuals and said oh this is from 1978 i'd go oh this is one of them nuwaba this is one of the new wave of british heavy metal bands who were uh copping a lick off Sabbath. Yeah, but what you don't get, you see, with Sabbath ever is any kind of twin guitar virtuosity.

No. Or any of that kind of, you know, there's little fantasy in Sabbath's music. It's mainly depressing and dark, but also just shot through with a real sappy innocence and love that, that makes it really cherishable. I just think that there's such a, well, you know, Lizzie were one of the highlights of the show.

And I think this is the sort of second big highlight for me. Yeah. I always feel like it's almost like metal skipped a generation or Sabbath skipped a generation. If you listen to like that new wave of british heavy metal stuff it sounds more like they grew up listening to to deep purple and stuff like that where there's almost like a progginess to it yeah yeah um and it's like you hear sabbath much more in more recent metal stuff where they it went back to the roots of you know of just sludge you know like yeah in the best possible sense yeah i feel a

sort of weird tribal local cultural identification with sabbath and understanding i can't explain it but there is some peculiar thread there you know i mean it's like like there's like i'm dangling from it and then somewhere along there's aussie and every other flat vowel chip munching subhuman from the workshop of the world which is birmingham not to be confused with workshop which is the birmingham of the world but i do feel it even though i didn't grow up a metal fan but three quarters of my middle school were obsessed and Ozzy was a god so I grew up hearing that music as a soundtrack in the same way that grew up with the charts as a soundtrack right yeah and even if I didn't necessarily like it all I didn't necessarily like what was in the charts I heard it and you know in the same way

that I would go back to the charts at the time when i was a little bit older and discover actually i did like much more of it than i thought at the time same thing happened with heavy rock but that sense of local connection only happens with the sabs right not really with jiran jiran or dexys or elo or any of the other good groups to come out of Birmingham or the West Midlands it's just Sabbath I can't explain it there's just something about the the sort of wall-eyed insistent misery of it but good-natured underneath you know what I mean no that's it because whenever I've seen Ozzy live or Sabbath live, you know, with songs like this, I mean, like you said,

you know, that first track, Black Sabbath, that they ever did, is still properly a terrifying bit of music because of Ozzy's vocals and stuff. But whenever I've seen him do it live or Ozzy doing it live, he doesn't get a pained expression on his face. He claps. He claps constantly when he plays live. He's all about getting the crowd going.

You know what I mean? And there's that odd mix with Sabbath that, you know, definitely they could not have come from any other place. They could not have come from any other place than Birmingham. When you sit in certain parts of Birmingham, when you sit in a pub in Birmingham, for instance, and you look out the window and you just feel encased in concrete, like the concrete goes to the sky and you can't see a fucking lick of green anywhere.

That's the Sabbath sound. And they could not have come from anywhere. Regardless of whether Tony Iommi's industrial accident affected his riffing or whatever, because he had to have those bits of plastic on his fingers. They have to come from Birmingham. Definitive Brumband, I would say. And something that Birmingham are, in a good way, you know, proud of.

I mean, where I work was opened by Tony Iommi. He's my least favourite Sabbath member. Just punch it or something. No, I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't like Sabbath in a way. That was the story when Alan Jones interviewed Ozzy a few years after tony o we beat him up and he said uh oh yeah last last brush ad with a member of your band he punched me in the face and apparently ozzy just shrugged and went yes tony fists for brains

i fucking love ozzy i love him so much and the more out of his nut he gets, like the more lovable he is, you know. It's like the 11-year-old boys that I knew when I was 11 thought he was a god, but the whole point was that he wasn't a god or a devil, you know. And it's easy to forget, for years a lot of people seriously thought Ozzy was a devil worshipper. Even after he'd said the only black magic Sabbath I ever got into was a devil worshipper. Even after he'd said the only black magic Sabbath ever got into was a box of chocolate.

He was an awkward and slightly unhappy geek who transformed himself into magic without losing his identity as an awkward and unhappy geek. In fact, that was the key to the magic. But by this point here, he's more like the solo ozzy sort of yeah wild-eyed and overdressed you know and if you prefer a genuine real life alienated boozer giving you pure doom feeling direct then the early sabbath ozzy is vastly preferable but this one i mean at least you make sure he gives you a show.

Yeah, yeah. There's something peculiarly heroic about him, although the other members of Black Sabbath at this time would have disagreed. But he's not just an old pro, you know what I mean? That's the thing. He's no kind of pro at all. That's the problem.

It's just this isn't real. This is what he's communicating. He's incoherent and ludicrous and all over the place. And this song is, it's no Paranoid and it's no Killing Yourself to Live or any of these songs which mean something, where it's like he's singing from the heart. But it's still great because even in this state, singing from the heart but it's still great because even in this state he is a perfect vessel for communicating desperation in a pure and unselfconscious way he's just this open channel

um and you know who can gripe that nowadays that channel is closed and he's all showbiz because fucking hell it nearly killed him well quite yeah yeah and at this point closed and he's all showbiz because fucking hell, it nearly killed him. Well, quite. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And at this point, I mean, he's already wearing T-shirts that say Blizzard of Oz on it. I'm not saying he's, you know, already conscious of the fact

that he's going to be a solo star pretty soon. And solo Ozzy is different than Saban Ozzy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's that voice. It's that pitiable whine that he's got. He's one of the all-time greats. And this band are one of the all-time greats. This is their kind of like, this is where I depart company

because I'm not interested in D.O. era Sabbath or anything like that. Nobody should be. And I'm very, the one thing that does piss me off about Sabbath is their later treatment of Bill Ward. So I'm quite doctrinaire about Sabbath. It is these these first sort of six seven eight albums but they're all fucking essential and technical ecstasy and this one they've got some really interesting shit on because they're one of those bands they've been playing long enough whenever like lizzie when they plug in and play it's going to be interesting yeah why are they on top of the pops well that's

i mean that it's i you know when you sent me this episode out i had no idea sabbath on it at all and it blew my fucking mind because i i knew their um 1970 appearance wasn't it for paranoid i think yes um but i had no idea that this even existed it It's a real mind-blower from this period because there's not a lot of live footage apart from when they go on tour with Van Halen and that sort of starts getting filmed. But yeah, it's amazing. It is amazing, isn't it, that they did it?

That they thought... Well, it's amazing that they were asked because there's no reason for Top of the Pops to get them on because this song's not even come out yet. And it's amazing that they accepted. Yeah. You'd assume that, oh, they'd be like Led led zeppelin don't bother with singles or not doing top of the pops it's beneath us are we going to get our stone engine there i think it's possible

that someone at the record company made an advance to top of the pops because maybe they knew this album was going to be a hard push yeah yeah, yeah. And were like, you know the prestige of having a serious rock band like Black Sabbath on your show. Could have come from that direction. I don't know. I can't imagine Tony Blackburn pushing for it. Well, you can see his reaction at the end, can't you? Yeah.

So condescending. I think this is a really good song. I was quite taken aback by it and just gave me another prod to investigate sabbath a bit more yeah i've always shunned them but as a pop craze youngster of 1978 i would have looked at them and gone oh fucking hell don't they know it's 1978 i mean ozzy's got one of roger daltrey's casts off with so much fucking fringing and when i watched this my instant reaction was ozzy osbourne is the dead spit in this episode of b smith imagine if b smith was in a fucking metal band how brilliant that would be they'd

call him lag basher i'd wear a fucking lag basher t-shirt and then i start because it's locked down i start thinking about recasting Prisoner Soul Block H with pop icons. I've got a list here. Yeah. And I made a pretty decent sort. So, Ozzy Osbourne, B. Smith.

Right. The obvious one, Ian Brown, Lizzie Birdsworth. If you can't get him, Ronnie Wood. Yeah. Andy Scott of Sweet in his later years.

Doreen Burns. Oh, yeah, definitely. Rod Stewart. Margot Gaffner. David Sylvian. Chrissie Latham. Yes. And Fish.

Judy Bryant. Yeah. Now, I need to cast some of the screws in Erica Davidson, but, you know, I think I've got the basis of a really solid pop star cast for Prisoner Cell Block H.

Yeah, I think you're right. So any of the pop craze youngsters want to chip in on that? I mean, fucking hell, there's nothing else to do, is there? But, yeah, I mean, this is great. This performance is great.

Yeah, well, someone should have told the audience because they're not... Exactly. There's a few girls bopping like it's a disco tune. Yeah, and gassing on about lads in shoes and what they read about in Jackie that week. Yeah. And there's a couple of lads on the right-hand side

wearing Mickey Pearce hats. Yeah, well, there's late 70s boys sulking because this is a bloody dinosaur band. There's one lad, he's got short hair, black leather bomber jacket, white trousers and pumps. Yes, with his hands in his pockets, just fucking ambling about. Defiantly deep, defiantly

deep in his pockets. He's point blank refusing to lift the sole of either shoe off the ground because the clash wouldn't have approved. He just ambles about, doesn't he? Like he's at a car boot sale or he's poking a worm with his shoe. They should be ashamed of themselves. I don't think...

I forgive Ozzy everything. I forgive him the fucking Osbournes and all that sort of stuff because who wants to spend more than a decade with ghosts and demons howling around you and shooting up your throat every time you open your mouth to sing or drink, you know

all he ever wanted was to be like the Beatles good for him So the following week, Never Say Die enter the charts at number 41 then soared 13 places to number 28, then dropped three places to number 31, but then jumped back up 10 places to number 21, which put them back on top of the pops again.

And this time they were put in a dressing room next door to Bob Marley and the Wailers, who Ozzy claimed was brandishing the biggest spliff he'd ever seen in his life. And the band had to explain to the Wailers that Bill Ward hadn't put his hair into braces to take the piss out of them. That was just his look at the time. Imagine being witness to an argument between Black Sabbath and Bob Marley and the Wailers. Fucking hell.

Some poor BBC commissioner's got to fucking break that up. But I think, I mean, Sabbath ended up just being utterly astonished by the way Marley was able to smoke just a big fucking joint, but put in such an amazing performance when he actually come to do it, blew him away. Because we all know that we just make Sabbath

cough, as you can hear at the beginning of Sweet Leaf. So, you know. The follow-up Hard Road got to number 33 in October of this year, their last single before Ozzy Osbourne was sacked. Oh, man, it kills me to have to stop this part of episode 54 right here. But stop it, I must, because we've still got a long way to go. for right here but stop it I must because we've still got a long way to go and let me tell you there are some

very heavy hitters coming in the final part of this episode of Chart Music so let's all reassemble tomorrow my name's Al Needham on behalf of Taylor Parks and Neil Kulkarni stay pop crazed Chart Music Chart music.

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