Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #57 (Part 2): 11.10.1973 – A Balloon Full Of Gravy

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Simon Price, Neil Kulkarni and Al Needham examine the case of Kenny Everett – the Problem Child of Radio One – as he embarks upon his final stint on The Pops, while David Cassidy arses around with a dog, Jeff Lynne carries a hundredweight of hair on his head, and Elton John is stalked through the streets of Hollywood as he nips out to buy some cowboy gear…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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? Erm, chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop craze youngsters and welcome to part two of episode 57 of Chart Music. I'm your host Al Needham, here I am once again with my good friends Simon Price and Neil Kulkarnet.

Boys, this episode, it's always a treat to go back to the early 70s isn't it? Boys, this episode, it's always a treat to go back to the early 70s, isn't it? Yeah, it's a joy. I think, I mean, you know, we've discussed various golden periods. This, for me, is an absolute golden period. I love these episodes. Yeah, not only for the music. We're all going to see some, you know, some pretty fucking massive names at the peak of their careers.

But I think we're going to find that the attention to detail is just a cut above from some of the Top of the P as we've covered already yeah i feel this was top of the pops in its prime and its most proper and that even though there were other good eras after this those eras were all in some way harking back to this trying to recapture some of that excitement that um the thursday night appointment in 1973 would have had. Definitely. By now, they're apprehending just how many viewers they've got. So every single aspect of this episode is fine-tuned, in a sense. The graphics, everything, the camera work, everything is at a really high standard. All right, then, Pulp Craze youngsters. It's time to stop fannying about as we get down to 73.

Always remember, 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. It's 20 past seven on Thursday, October 11th, 1973, and despite being one of the BBC's highest rated entertainment shows with an average audience of 11 million, despite having just completed a milestone which has cemented its reputation as a flagship programme, despite being the 12th most watched programme in the UK,

and despite being a pop show in a boom period for pop, Top of the Pops, unbelievably, is under attack on both sides. Last week, it broadcast its 500th episode, which it celebrated with an hour-long special, which featured special messages from Slade, Mick Jagger, the Osmonds and Gary Glitter drinking champagne in bed. Tony Blackburn's slow dancing with Lindsay DePaul, a rear appearance by The Who,

a double performance by Tony Orlando and Dawn and topped off with the man of the hour, David Cassaday, pretending to have flown into Heathrow to be interviewed by Tony Blackburn and mine, both sides of his new single. The next day, the papers lined up to give it and the show in general a proper shooing. Miriam Malone in the Daily Mirror. The old thing creaked. Getting to be 500 is no joke, and despite many cheer-up messages for its birthday, refused to buck up. Terry Metcalf in the Birmingham Post said, BBC One, ill-informed enough to believe that the 500th edition of Top of the Pops was worth shouting about,

showed us how not to present pop on the box. All it promoted was an atmosphere that was utterly sterile. An aerial in the Liverpool Echo, possibly not its real name, said, Top of the Pops celebrated its 500th edition last night. It obviously wowed the Motley collection in the studio, but if this is really entertainment there's something sadly wrong with the lot of us it might have been more interesting if the program had been devised in flashback form to demonstrate how the pop scene has changed since the mercy beat electrified the world but to do so might well have demonstrated how devoid of real talent it has all become.

Personalities have been replaced by tinsel and garish paints. The mediocrity of the song and the singing has been disguised by lurid and meaningless costumes. Lyrics, for the most part, have become either a meaningless jumble of words or have moved into the sick, sick world of deviation and morbidity. Fucking hell. Makes it sound amazing. That episode, the 500th episode, it doesn't just get it in the neck from sort of the mainstream newspapers.

The music press do see it as this kind of totemic symbol of everything that's wrong with pop. And it gets just remorselessly slagged and as with most of these things it becomes a scapegoat where you can kind of start blaming every single complex aspect of the problems in society on top of the box to a certain extent and how shit it's become um so yeah this this episode that we're looking at is coming out of of a pretty atrocious week for top of the Pops in terms of its perception. We'd love to cover the 500th edition of Top of the Pops, but the BBC wiped it.

There were bits and bobs floating about, but there's no complete episode, which is fucking stupid. It's weird that this one has been preserved in all this colourful glory, but the 500th one, that so much fucking effort went into, isn't.

That's mad. That tells you everything about 1970s BBC and Doctor Who fans will cry about this. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Video tape was like, it was like platinum, you know? Do you know what?

They probably kept more kind of Fanny Craddock cookery shows than they did Top of the Pops. Yes. I would wager. Because they had a weird idea of priorities and what people would want to see in the future it was just pop isn't it it's throwaway yeah yeah that's it it's not cultural history it's it's still that low culture thing in it exactly

and the whole reason that we're able to put out this chart topping fantastic podcast uh every month is is that paradox isn't it it's that the culture that was considered throwaway ephemeral disposable at the time ends up being the most enduring and the most rich in terms of residents and memories and so on and I guess nobody saw that at the time nobody would have predicted it although I suspect we get a better flavor of 73 and the culture from the actual episode we're looking at today rather than the 500th one where it would have been more organized by the producers it would have featured more content that wasn't you know people performing on stage the joy of this episode is everything that's great about top of the pops in the era not only the music that we

hear but the audience and i doubt the audience featured much in the 500th episode and i wonder if those articles that you quoted there were from writers who maybe had kind of zoned out tuned out of top of the pops several years earlier yeah they felt obliged to watch the big one the 500 um and yeah you know pop had moved on go where's where's sandy yeah exactly what's going on so really they're revealing more about themselves than they are about top of the pops even worse the papers are starting to talk up a young, lithe, hard-punching contender in the pop TV heavyweight division. For nearly 10 years, Top of the Pops has been the only successful pop music show on BBC One, says the Daily Mirror's TV column. Now there is stiffening competition from the old grey whistle test.

Bob Harris, the resident host, is the DJ they're all talking about. No gimmicks, just a sound knowledge of the music scene. Mock rock. Quality. And even worse than that, the Daily Mirror is gunning for pop music, on top of the pops in particular as they cry won't somebody think of the children last week they published a piece entitled daughters in danger a worried mother writes to the mirror are our children growing up in a sex-mad world in which they are targets for erotic magazines,

TV programmes and advertisements? One mother believes this to be true. She is so frightened about the future of her ten-year-old daughter that she wrote to the mirror. Here is what she says. My daughter is ten years old, yet she looks thirteen and talks and behaves as I did when I was 16. I meet her sometimes from school and watch her and her friends crowding through the gates,

chattering and giggling. Wearing little t-shirts and tight trousers or full-length skirts, they look more like typists leaving the office. It's not just their appearance that is frighteningly mature. Listen to these children. Their talk is all about pop stars and boyfriends and who fancies them. I worry about Top of the Pops, the television programme they all watch every Thursday. It's not like the 6-5 special of my day when vivacious youngsters belted out good tunes. It puts over sex far more blatantly. It stars a man dressed as women

in bizarre make-up and multi-coloured hair. It puts over eroticism and fantasies which have become the staple diet of every young adolescent in the country. Of course, I could forbid it and face a row with my daughter every week and her angry cry, but all the others are allowed to watch it.

I know. I've tried. I prefer to know what she's doing or watching Rather than have her deceive me I have to face the fact that I can't shut her up Safely protected from the dangers and influences of this society She's growing up in Or will she end up another tragic statistic On the list of girls pregnant at 15

Or 14 Or even 13. Could I be taking my daughter to the hospital for an abortion in three years' time? Fucking hell. Jesus Christ. No name on the letter there, and the hand rises to the chin. Yeah. I mean, personally, I find it hard to believe that the 10-year-old girls of 1973

were looking at Roy Wood and Jimmy Osmond and thinking, oh God, I really need to get pregnant in three years' time. Yeah, but even if they were thinking about these pop stars sexually, the idea that that's a new thing, you know, the idea that girls in the mid-60s screaming at the Beatles didn't fancy the Beatles, it's kind of ridiculous but yeah they weren't screaming because they were scared of the mother well it's a creeping thing that you see throughout the 70s this fear of the sexualization of children

um in a huge way and then you know later this is just another example of i don't know what we'd see 10 15 years later when tipper gore hears her daughter, you know, singing Darling Nicky by Prince and starts the whole Parents Music Resource Centre thing, it's exactly the same moral scapegoat and moral panicking. Also, this worried mum saying that Top of the Pops puts over sex far more blatantly than 6-5 Special. Now, all right, 6-5 Special is very tame by modern standards, but wasn't, like, Little Richard on there? Pretty sure, you know? I mean, come on. You mentioned Roy Wood there, Al,

because, yeah, there's that bit about bizarre makeup and multicoloured hair. And I did check, three weeks earlier, Wizard had been on doing angel fingers. So that's probably what inspired that bit. And I read the whole thing. There's a few bits you didn't pick out, but they jumped out to

me there's a bit where she goes there are and she's talking about teen magazines now too many good-looking boyfriends and moonlit endings where the young couple would walk hand in hand into a rosy and oh so false future and like you just know that she's necking a strong gin and bitter lemon on that last bit isn't she like oh don't talk to me about boyfriends proper edna krabappel business going on there absolutely perfect comparison edna krabappel yeah yeah but on this very day october the 11th 1973 the mirror ran a public opinion special where actual real life mums had their say mrs isabel rushton of stoke-on-trent said for a worried mother to say that top of the pops has any more bizarre and influence than six five special ad in the late 50s shows how short her memory is yeah i well remember the outcry and condemnation which went

with bill hayler tommy steel and elvis the pelvis I can also recall wearing a tight pencil skirt and high heels at 13, having to pay full bus fare and getting in by myself to see a daring A-film. On the other hand, Concerned Mother of Exeter writes, I have banned my two girls, seven and eight, from watching Top of the Pops. I don't care if it makes me unpopular. I am responsible for their moral welfare. As a counterpoint, F. Fryer of Oxford says I have a daughter of 10 she watches Top of the Pops and buys a pop magazine every week she also has posters of Slade on her bedroom wall but this daughter of mine still

believes in witches and Halloween reads fairy stories and plays with dolls and that girl grew up to be Toya Wilcox Neil would you let your daughters marry this episode of Top And that girl grew up to be Toya Wilcox. Neil, would you let your daughters marry this episode of Top of the Pops? Without a doubt.

I mean, the thing is with these parents, this desire to exert this fanatical control over every aspect of their kids' lives, what they're raising there is good liars, really. Those girls are going to grow up to know how to hide and not not let their parents know the the shit that they're getting up to um whereas you know i'm a somewhat less controlling parent i kind of um yeah i kind of know what my girls look to i hope i see things that they watch on youtube but fucking hell yeah you know but how am i going to stop that i hear the language coming out of the kids when they come out of their schools. And bloody hell, you know, those kids are way ahead.

So what's really identifiable in a lot of these responses, that phrase, these alien creatures or whatever that person said, there's a real sort of venomous response to the increasing androgyny of male pop stars, I think, in this era. And a lot of these responses, this fear of, of yeah that androgyny that's suddenly been injected into pop the thing is go back to that question I'll ask to you Neil about whether you'd let

your daughters marry this episode of Top of the Pops the thing with your kids is they know you right so you can't say anything they know that you were hanging around with

you know Marilyn Manson in the 90s so you know you've been there and done that and like you know

you can't say to them stay away from this satanic evil influence even if you wanted to no of course not and you know i mean my youngest she keeps clinging to the fact that you know my my wife told her that when my wife was 13 she was hitching rides down to london and going to gigs at the marquee and all of this kind of behavior so my daughter's always like do i have to turn up to that lesson mum used to bunk off it's a weird one but you know these yeah these parents are gonna are gonna raise kids who just you know are gonna go the other way they're gonna deliberately kind of engage in all kinds of bad behavior probably just to piss their parents off um so yeah they're raising little monsters these concerned parents your daughter had watched this episode of top

of the pops go fucking her where's sabbath yeah fuck say she did watch it and she loved it you know i mean yeah i don't get how anyone could find top of the pops you know threatening in this fashion you know even for young girls i think they're just misremembering their own pasts and the fact that you know when you're a little kid eight through till about 12 and being a teenager you're feeling things you're not a completely blank slate if you like yeah you are starting to feel things about pop you know you just have to accept that talk about them in a way um i i remember looking at my daughter's face when she first saw adam ant right and she was about nine years old when she saw and there was a just

it was confusion and it was delight and And it was a complicated response. You know, these kind of parents don't afford their kids that complexity of response, really. It's all just about, oh, they must be blank-eyed worshippers at these pop star sort of altars. And that's not really the way it works. There's a lot more sort of argument and discussion about pop amongst young people that these parents are just not, you know, cognizant of at all.

This entire podcast um is predicated on us digging back into those confused feelings that that we had watching top of the pop so yeah we can't pretend that that's not a thing from those readers letters my favorite bit and it's only a slight little little detail but one of them said when the time comes, I want my daughter to marry someone else's respectable son. That made me laugh, respectable son. But I did wonder what specifically has happened on Top of the Pops in the last few weeks to freak them all out so much, all these moments, right? And I had a look, and the probable answer, right? Yeah, I think I know what it is.

Yeah, two out of the three previous weeks, the suite have been on with Ballroom Blitz. Yes, there we go. So, right, these mums writing in, they're all worried that their daughters will turn into the girl in the corner that no one ignores because she thinks she's the passionate one. Or that their sons will turn into the man in the back who says everyone attack. It's the suite who freaked them out, definitely. Yeah.

Blame them. Or suite as they were at that time. I mean mean my dad wouldn't let me watch top of the pops but it wasn't because he was worried that it would make me sexually promiscuous it was simply because he wasn't interested in watching a load of in his words bent cunts who weren't fucking real when there was a perfectly serviceable colombo on itv at the time so i live for bent cunts who aren't fucking real, that's what I live for they make the world go round

but yeah again I said earlier I wanted to get into a time machine and go on Tomorrow's World, actually I've changed my mind now, I want to go in a time machine so I can write a letter to the Daily Mirror for this section and say hello everyone I'm from the year 2021, the biggest single

of last year was two women going on about how drippy their fannies were. Yours sincerely, I'll need them the future. It's me Nothing more than wishes And a wish is just a dream A wish to come true.

Your host for this episode is Kenny Everett. We've already covered Cuddly Ken in Chart Music No. 25, and 1973 has been a turbulent year for Maurice Cole. He began it by squatting on various BBC local radio stations, recording shows made at his cottage in Carmarthenshire and sending them off via British Rail Red Star. But when the National Radio Network decided to scrap the practice of broadcasting the Sunday afternoon show Family Favourites simultaneously on Radio 1 and 2 and permanently hosting it on Radio 2, Everett was given an hour-long show on Radio 1

at 1pm between Noel Edmonds and Jimmy Savile, his first appearance on Radio 1 since he was sacked in 1970. As usual, he recorded everything at home, drove the tapes down to Swansea, had them couriered down to London, usually arriving that morning, put on two separate reels so the last half of the show could be edited while the first half was being broadcast. He was immediately fast-tracked into the Top of the Pops presenting rotation the same month and would present seven episodes over the summer and autumn of 1973,

seven episodes over the summer and autumn of 1973 including being part of last week's special but he recorded his last show for radio one at the end of last month and it's already been announced that he'll be one of the djs on the brand new capital radio which launches in five days time he'll be presenting kenny everett's clean air show from noon till two on sundays so yeah if you're not in london this is going to be the last time you're going to see or hear from presenting Kenny Everett's Clean Air show from noon till two on Sundays. So yeah, if you're not in London, this is going to be the last time you're going to see or hear from him for a very long time. Yeah, and I wasn't in London,

so I'd never even heard of him until he had his TV show. You know, that was a brand new figure to me when he suddenly appears, yeah. I was delighted when sent this episode that Kenny Everett was the presenter because for the longest time as a kid, I that Kenny Everett was the presenter because for the longest time as a kid, I considered Kenny Everett to be the funniest person

in the known universe. Yeah. You know, he knew how to be funny for pure oil kids. You know, progressively bigger arses on Rod Stewart, progressively bigger noses on Streisand or Manilow. That's going to be funny for kids. And when you listen to Kenny Everett radio shows, I found one the other day from 68, and it is very ahead of its time quite python-esque and from the same kind of

weird place as viv stanchel in a way and his his fanatical editorial control over his shows when we talked about how alan freeman yes as i recall we talked about how many people copped his style you know the way that he talked over records played one into the other and kind what what alan freeman did became the form i would say kenny everett is you know similarly influential onwards yes but it's almost always a bad influence yes a calamitous influence on people like noel edmunds yeah noel adrian always claims kenny everett adrian yeah shaking kenny everett yeah this is it yeah this kind of it's's the rise of the DJ who thinks they're funny to the point where we now, you know, when you turn on Absolute Radio, you've got these braying teams of unfunny people

laughing at each other's unfunniness. What I found as I continued to watch the episode is that, man, it didn't work. My happy memories of the later TV shows and all those characters, I think the narrative around Everett is that he should have been given more freedom and been left on his own. But I don't think that would have satisfied

the audience or him. It was precisely the feel that he was barely tolerated that was part of his appeal. And that sense of freewheeling danger in his shows is really confected. Everything he does is painstaking. Stemming, I think, you know, from a sense of self-loathing and self-pity to a certain extent on the radio he can control maniacally every single aspect of his outward projection and editing is really key to

him you know on top of the pops he can't do that he can't do that i feel some kinship with ever always because this big gob constantly gets him in trouble. But the trouble with Kenny Everett on Top of the Pops is his just wordiness and this uneasy kind of tension between the show and his persona. Top of the Pops presenters, they are stepping into an already demarcated role and it's how they populate the kind of confines of the format

that's key. Kenny Everett, it feels like the whole format role and it's how they populate the kind of confines of the format that's key kenny everett it feels like the whole format of top of the pops is straining to fit around his gobbledygook he's seeing top of the pops as a vehicle for himself yes top of the pops presenters need to know that no matter how many times they've been on top of the pops top of the pops has been on top of the pops more than them and i don't think kenny gets that and that's why there's this uneasy tension throughout this episode you know an episode that i was really looking forward to watching it's not the kenny bits that i enjoy that they're quite uncomfortable

actually i think neil's uh neil's hit several nails on the head there sorry yes he has we might as well just stop this podcast now several nails on the head there first of all about kenny everett being funny to children because yeah i probably would have found him hilarious at the time secondly that the thing about you know it's fair to call kenny ever a radio genius because he certainly was yes a pioneer in in his use of pre-recorded carts etc you know and that but thing is yeah as neil says that's when he's put the work in when he's just winging it yeah as he is here the results aren't so great he's not a natural wit he's not an off-the-cuff wit he's not funny

in that way when we did him the last time you know we were quite down on him and you know there were some people who were quite upset that we were coating him down a bit but you know it's fair to say that him and the BBC in the early 70s was an extremely awkward fit. Yeah. They wanted him because, as you've said, he is, you know, an absolute radio innovator. And he needs the BBC because it's the biggest platform he can get to at the time. Yeah. But it's an awkward fit.

God, yeah. As we've discussed before, he was no stranger to television by 1973. He'd already done a string of shows for lwt in the 60s but yeah as you've said already he was a sound technician at heart and yeah therefore an absolute control freak and the bbc can't stand for that particularly on a weekly show that gets recorded the night before it goes out yeah yeah and a show where you've got i would say quite strong-willed producers and directors who've been in place for a while you know yeah i mean i love the kenny everett video show you know so did the pop stars

at the time who would you know they'd fight to get on it i mean anyone who can convince cliff richard to be hogtied at uh kenny everett's feet and then hung up by his thumbs must be doing something right i mean david bowie went on it you know yes i mean yeah i'm not saying the kenny everett show taught me everything i know about comedy but no no but what i mean is it provided everything when you were a kid that show slapstick humor a little bit of sexuality via hot gossip as well um extremely risque routines it was fantastic it was important in the weekly routine as Top of the Pops, the Kenny Everett show.

It was a must watch. The first time I kind of remember being genuinely helpless with laughter was watching Kenny Everett. And I think it was the one where Rod Stewart repeatedly goes on and off and his arse grows bigger.

Low humour, but it worked. Yeah, I mean, as a supplement to pop music shows, it was fucking brilliant. But this is Top of the Pops and you don't fuck with it and it's very telling that he walked out on itv when they put his show right up against top of the pops on thursday evenings yeah yeah yeah we plunge into the anthem that is the top of the pops orchestra's version of Whole Lotta Love and are immediately bombarded with Bieber model Tom Fuloré,

keyboards, a long sweep of Piccadilly Circus at night, guitars, flashing lights and a countdown of numbers from 30 to 1. I love it. My particular favourite being the number 7 with a young Elvis bursting a fist out of it and smashing some records up. Oh, so Pavlovianian it's the best title sequence top the pops ever has yeah it's a heady world isn't it it's amazing it sees yeah it sees

pop as this kind of weird mix of a sleazy casino based soho life and basically the numbers on sesame street it's this really weird yes yeah really really works a kind of avant-garde art as well and sculpture all kinds of weird stuff flying at you. And it's just cut together so quickly, you just don't know what hits you. You think, oh my God, I don't know what world this is launching me into, but I want to be part of it.

We immediately cut to an exit sign above the studio door. I think that was a bit of an in-joke. As a sort of people mill about in the distance, we see Everett, dressed as a comedy yokel, making a dash into a massive studio while the kids are already giving it some salt rail replacement service and the floor crew are pegging it out of shot. He stops at an easel with an old BBC publicity shot of him affixed to it, then turns, smiles to reveal some joke shop manky teeth and says it's me as we

are launched into the top 30 rundown to the sound of the puppy song by david cassaday we've already covered david cassaday the singer with the nose as long and strong as the side of a mountain and ears like another world of their own in Chart Music 17. And this single, his fifth, 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. On the back of him making that clandestine visit to the UK,

including the Heathrow appearance where he pretended that he was stopping off on the way to Germany, this tune, The Other Side of Daydreamer, which was written by Harry Nielsen in 1969 when Paul McCartney asked him to provide material for Mary Hopkins' debut LP, has crashed into the charts this week at number 8, this week's highest new entry. I mean, where to start with with this i think the first thing we need to say is that this is usually the bit where we have a good old tea and a he over the piss poor band images but fucking hell there's been some severe care and attention lavished on some of

these images haven't they yeah they've done a bit of work haven't they a bit of editing on some of them which is quite light one little trick that they do uh quite often that i noticed with these is that when it's someone from the old days right uh like uh was it uh al martino yeah perry como um that they they got sort of sepia tinted images of them but they're kind of cut out and superimposed on a groovy color background i noticed um one where they had a little kind of in-joke with it was Bobby Boris Pickett, where it was the same thing, but rather than lit sepia-tinted, it was green-tinted for Halloween. Yes.

Yeah, and they found a modern image of him as well. Yeah, yeah. A few sort of random observations I made. The very first one, number 30, Barry Blue, looking the spit of Bob mortimer i thought check it out yes um the uh the isley brothers one and this is another kind of uh tricksy one they did it's very cool i thought it's a black and white yes black and white cutout of the isley brothers against the color shadow of themselves it's a really nice effect the cover of three plus three

yeah and oh the thing with the isley brothers i don't know if you noticed, one of their faces is whited out as if he didn't sign the consent form to be in the photo. Yes. That's a bit weird. There was the Jackson 5 one they did a bit of mucking around with. I don't quite get it. No. It's Skywriter, isn't it?

Well, the song's Skywriter, so presumably that's the pun, but they've got this giant billboard-sized Jackson 5 picture hanging from underneath the biplane. So I guess it's a pun on Skywriter. The record sleep of Skywriter does have the Jackson 5 gathered round a biplane. So someone at the Beeb was probably riffing with that. But yeah, there's a lot of effort to put in. I like the one, and this is just a simple picture,

of Manfred Mann's Earth Band just grinning their heads off in an assortment of hats and headbands. They just look so happy to be there which is nice um there's there's one of um i can tina turner him looking mean and her looking scared can't imagine why um not not that i should be making light of a very bleak situation um there's a bit of a battle of the brummies right there's um the elo picture has jeff lynn in a tinsel beard and as if he's taking the piss out of out of the recently departed Roy Wood yeah yeah meanwhile there is a wizard one which is Roy Wood with his usual mad beard and makeup but his hair is swept up into this massive

quiff which looks amazing yeah he looks amazing yes it means his head is symmetrical around a horizontal axis which is quite a good look the other thing was that there there are lots of pretty boy pinups there's uh donny osmond who's basically just teeth of course uh you've got david cassidy who we just mentioned um also david essex who's also soft focus and dreamy as if to say hey we brits can be handsome too don't forget about us, you know. And of course, being 73, you've got your glam rockers. They've gone a bit arty with David Bowie, haven't they?

Yeah, very much so. Lots of repeated images of his face with the gold circle painted. It's like a fly. Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mott and Hoople look amazing, I thought. I mean, the thing with Mott is, obviously, they were clearly quite old already to be doing this Ian Hunter was

34 at the time and Pete Overend-Watts has silver hair which could, it looks like it could be natural except he was only 26 they all have lots of very macho jewellery around their necks including a Nazi iron cross and we get a second iron cross from Sweet

and for once it isn't even steve priest wearing it and there was this one of slade who uh for some reason is i i don't know if you can explain this one to me there's a boxing photo superimposed over them i don't know what that was and dave hill dressed as a nun um oh the way you blackmail oh god yeah yeah oh they've gone very literal with the lyrics there and then there's uh brian ferry who looks like he's to me he looked like he's having an angry exchange on question time perhaps about a proposal to ban fox hunting or something like that um and then then at number one there's some man's face that nobody recognizes and there's no no name caption

so at least there's some mystery held back to later in the show because this is that spoiler-tastic era isn't it where they basically tell you the whole fucking chart before the show's even begun so which i always thought i always think it's a bit of a shame i don't know about you but yeah the key is with all the images it's the it's the care and attention to detail each one of them has been thought about in the context of the music that you know that the song that the person is bringing out, which, you know, just demonstrates a level of attention to detail with Top of the Pops at this time. I'm really glad you've explained the Jackson 5 image because that was the one that confused me. I was just wondering why are they hanging from the undercarriage of a Messerschmitt, you know, that clearly has to do with the song.

But yeah, every single artist, the Bowie image suits Bowie, the sweet image suits sweet. There's been thought about all of this. Whoever's done this actually knows what they're going on about. Yeah, yeah. The first two, three minutes of this show are fantastic. And then, unfortunately, Kenny Everett comes on. Well, and unfortunately, we have to listen to this fucking piece of shit. That doesn't help.

Fucking hell. This is proper Owen McLove business, isn't it? It is. I mean, I love the loving spoonful, but I blame Daydream for this kind of stuff. This stuff that sounds rickety and old school and like it should be part of the soundtrack to The Sting or something. It's so nauseatingly cheery and sappy,

it could turn even the sappiest person into a real bitter curmudgeon, this record. Yeah, you can imagine David Castier in a boating blazer and a straw hat and a cane exactly when he's doing this and you don't need that no you don't need that the odd thing about cassidy which separates him from the other kind of weenie boppers and teeny boppers that are annoying music journalists quite a lot in this period is that he's a charmer is david cassidy yes i was reading pieces about him from 73 by quite spiky writers, you know, like Nick Kent and Chrissie Hynde in The Enemy as well,

and also stuff in Cream Mag. And he charms them all. It's all really positive. The Nick Kent thing, he goes to a press conference slash reception and is amused that there's all these kind of seats laid out for potential stars turning up, Rod Stewart and Elton John, but the only people who turn up are Tony Blackburn and Ed Stupak, you know?

Of course. But he ends up being completely charmed by him. And so does Chrissie Hynde and so do many people. He is a, you know, he's not like British teeny boppers, if you like, because he's been trained from a young age to now deal with the press, deal with all of this and come across as a charming individual.

So when David Cassidy ends up in the 70s, you know, working with Mick Ronson and things like that, he's accepted as doing that as a proper musician because he's just charmed all these music journalists. Whereas, you know, Mark Boland's getting it in the neck every week from the music press. David Cassidy, he's okay.

Simon, were you Cassidy aware at the time? No. Was there a Cassidy-Osman schism at your school? I completely missed out on David Cassidy first time round. But I just wanted to quickly talk about the audience that we see. Every time the countdown of the chart reaches, you know, it's done 10 songs, we get a quick bit of the audience dancing to David Cassidy. And I think it's a very audience-heavy episode, this one, down of the chart reaches you know he's done 10 songs we get a quick bit of the audience dancing

to david cassidy and i think it's a very audience heavy episode this one which is always a joy particularly for the 70s when there was still that innocence about it and not everybody was there trying to be famous themselves there's that bit when kenny everett's pelting through the studio and uh he sort of pushes these he sort of barges through all these kids and uh quite a sparse crowd mind but all these yeah but it's a fucking huge studio yeah um it's cavernous you could get a hundred extra people in there and it wouldn't make much of a difference that's the thing i noticed it's quite sparse and you realize how much camera trickery normally goes in to make it look like a rammed crowd but, all these kids in their maxi skirts

and their wing collars. There's one woman I keep noticing who shaved her eyebrows off. Definitely Bowie influence. I'm going to come back to her in a bit. But yeah, I completely missed out on David Cassidy. I only really became aware of him when he had a hit with The Last Kiss in the 80s.

That song that George Michael wrote for him. Prior to that, all I knew vaguely was that he was one of the three big Davids in the 70s and he was the one who wasn't Bowie and wasn't Essex, right? I never saw The Partridge Family because I think it must have been on ITV and, yeah, we were a BBC house and all that. Well, it's still going at the time.

It was originally picked up by BBC One for and all that. Well, it's still going at the time. It was originally picked up by BBC One for the first series. Oh, right. But they dropped it and it was immediately picked up by ITV, which was round about the same time that David Cassidy started taking off. So yeah, BBC fucked up there. Oh, wow. You know, this time is still a mainstay of Saturday tea times across the ITV regions.

And it could be on in a couple of days after this episode. Okay. And the Partridge family were doing very well. You know, they, they racked up five hits over two years, including two top 10 hits in 1973. Well,

you see, they passed me by the songs and so did the show. And from the name of the show, I assumed it was like the waltons or something yeah i didn't realize it was about a singing family um and in fact um that that lasted until very recently i interviewed michael imperioli aka christopher moltisanti from the sopranos about his favorite music for the quietus website and he chose i think i love you by the partridge family right and he said that when he was five or six,

he thought Keith Partridge, David Cassidy's character, was a real rock star. So Michael said he had long hair and he was this teen idol and girls would chase him. And it was kind of weird that girls looked like they wanted to attack him, like rip his clothes or pull his hair, which I couldn't understand because I thought they liked him. I was quite funny.

Keith Partridge, by the way, has there ever been a less rock and roll name? It's even funnier than Alan Partridge. And apologies if there are any pop craze youngsters called Keith Partridge. And obviously David Cassidy was huge. I found a book the other day called The Big Four, which had the faces of four pop icons on the front in pretty awful airbrushed paintings, sort of sub Guy Pellet,

or maybe actual Guy Pellet if he was pissed or in a hurry for some quick cash. And those four faces were David Bowie, Mark Bolan, Mark spelt with a K, Michael Jackson and David Cassidy. So he was on that kind of Mount Rushmore level for that period, which

must date it very exactly, by the way, to 1973, the only year in which all four of those would be considered the big four. So anyway, it's in one of the papers from this week in 1973. Can't remember if this was in the Melody Maker or Record Mirror, but anyway, that David Cassidy has had a special suit made

by someone called Nudie for Top of the Pops, but it got lost in the airport, right? So I wanted to see what he did end up wearing. So I had a look at that previous episode of Top of the Pops that we've alluded to, the 500th. Tony Blackburn gets it wrong, by the way, and calls it the 500th anniversary. Fucking hell.

Unfortunately, we haven't got any episodes of Top of the Pops from 1473. Cassidy is wearing a perfectly nice white suit, and the conceit, as you say, is that he's supposedly just stepped off a Pan Am jet from New York, and Tony Blackburn's interviewing him at the bottom of the steps before he mimes his two songs, two sides of the single in front of the jet engine. And this one that we're hearing on this top of the pops

is technically the B-side and Daydreamer is the A-side because I've got to be pedantically accurate here. The Puppy song was actually the B-side on the uk release on the bell label it's not listed it's not listed as an aa side um but it's being pushed to hits as a hit song in its own right to extend the chart life of the record a bit of a sort of crafty uh rivers of babylon slash brown girl in the ring situation or or last christmas everything she wants um although the the picture sleeve does give equal prominence to both songs it's got a picture of david cuddling a massive springer

spaniel so um uh you get the point but on on that 500th episode they they also as you say showed tony orlando and dawn do two songs and a bit of a so a bit of a faces situation. Remember they let the faces do two? And I know it's a special thing because it's the 500th. But I've only watched the Cassidy ones because I thought maybe we might one day deal with the 500th if we can get hold of it. And I've got to say, right, now, look, right,

I'm a heterosexual man. They don't come any more heterosexual than me. Let there be no doubt about that sorry boys he's engaged I'm like shaking Stevens over here right but even I, Simon heterosexual Price I felt a little bit kind of

I felt myself turning because he's very dreamy isn't he oh my god but snapping out of that reverie and remembering that... Beautiful breath. Remembering I'm meant to be a savage, no-nonsense music critic, right? I mean, the puppy song is bollocks, isn't it? I'm sorry, but it was commissioned from Nilsson

by Paul McCartney for Mary Hopkin, who was on his Apple label, of course. And funny enough, it reminded me it's got a bit of a sort of twee old-fashioned nostalgic 1920s feel that reminds me of when i'm 64 by the beatles yes and um oh by the way because of the nelson thing i i do wish david cassidy's album had been called cassidy schmassidy um but it was actually called it was actually called dreams ain't Nothing More Than Wishes which is the first line of the puppy song and I've read the lyrics of the puppy song

for Hidden Meanings I'm thinking surely it can't just be about a fucking puppy right it must be about drugs yeah yeah or something or breasts and it's written by Nilsson and Nilsson was a bit of a head

he was switched on I thought there's got to be some subterfuge no he literally just wants a puppy right and by the way we've got to say to david casti a dog is for life not just for christmas this song yes this song coming out in october i think you know that's that's dodgy that really is not only is he trying to get 10 year old girls pregnant he wants them to to pester the mom and dad for a dog exactly shame on you everywhere shame on you cassidy you've got spaniel blood on your hands and shit as well i mean the fact that this song is so awful and yet david cassidy remains like immensely popular

in this period there is a difference between the the kind of adulation that cassidy gets and say beetle mania from a few years earlier. Even when Shea Stadium is full of people screaming at the Beatles, quite a few of them are blokes. Yeah, you can hear the girls screaming, but quite a few of the people there are blokes. And quite, you know, everyone there, I think is there for, I don't want to say all there for the right reasons, they're there for music, but they are there

because they love the songs and they like the music. Whereas with Cassidy, the music, well, it's tangentially relevant, really. It's not of primary importance. It's just a part of the package. The point of David Cassidy, as Simon alluded to, is, yeah, just to look at him and kind of not even feel sexual feelings, I don't think, for his fan base. It's just about, yeah, maybe we could go down the shops with David Cassidy.

Maybe we could go to the park with David Cassidy. Isn't he pretty? That's the extension of it, really. That's as far as it gets the music is fairly irrelevant yeah he was the original non-threatening boy wasn't it it was a bit emo a little bit emo i mean fulfilling the same kind of thing that frank sinatra did in 42 you know everyone's off at war here's the boy next door he's good looking looking. You know, that kind of thing, filling that void. So that's all he's there for. And the music's fairly irrelevant. Consequently, this song, fuck me.

It's awful. And the way they cut away, as Simon mentioned as well, the way they cut between the countdown and the audience is really odd as well, because they've got Gilbert O'Sullivan, hairy bloke, mouth open, singer-songwriter. Then they cut to a girl in the crowd. And then they cut back to Guy Darrell

in the countdown in exactly the same pose as Gilbert O'Sullivan. So it's like both of those guys just looking at that girl. And it's just a really weird effect that's going on there. Like gawping at her, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

That's the kind of vibe that comes across. I mean, I presume they cut to the girl to break up the similarity of the image because Guy Darrell's a boring singer-songwriter. Gilbert and Sullivan's a boring singer-songwriter. They're both in exactly the same position. I wonder if it was deliberate or accidental, but it was the only distraction

from this fuck-awful record, really. Guy Darrell looks like he could be Kings of Leon's dad. As Cassidy was in London last week for Top of the Pulse, Melody Maker took the opportunity to have a quick interview because they you know they cover everything there was an advert in the national newspapers for melody maker about david cassadair and there's an illustration of him and

fucking hell don't he look like tucker jenkins right he said that he only had 10 more weeks on filming for the partridge family and then he was fucking off. And he was going to take a month off and then he was going to make plans for a world tour and decide what to do with his life after that. And contrary to what the UK papers were saying, no, he wasn't married. No, he wasn't going to retire. No, he doesn't have acne problems.

And no, he's not involved with drugs. Not anymore anyway. In an early interview for rolling stone they talk about him having a spliff and how he used to get involved in drugs when he was at high school and everything but no don't do that shit anymore he's probably choosing what he says according to the readership isn't he yeah he's making himself look cool to the rolling stone guys i think his admittance was i have taken drugs but i don't do them anymore and he's also mentioned the fact that one of his friends overdosed and died and that's often sort of focused in on by reporters wanting to dig a little dirt but they can't he's squeaky clean really he also appears as he does every week at the moment in the latest issue of looking

in a comic strip uh alongside on the buses the tomorrow Tomorrow People, The Fen Street Gang, Folly Foot, Doctor In Charge, and Les Dawson is super flop. And this week, him and Danny Bonaduce are on a fishing holiday and they've found some stolen jewellery just when the thieves have come out of jail to pick it up. So they have to hide in a cave and a cougar has a go at them. An actual four-legged one not the cover of this week's looking is uh it's a bit interesting isn't it yeah gary glitter

do you want to touch him oh god there's a four-page feature which begins while g glitter esquire is working his tonsils to the bone on the continent, we're going to find him a wife. After all, he's not getting any younger, and what with all those satin socks to mend, lurex shirts to wash and iron, and sequins to sew back on, he definitely needs a

better half. And there's competition where the star prize is a dinner date with Gary Glitzer. Fuck me. In looking. Concerned mother of Exeter was onto something there. Yeah, that cover, Gary Glitter, do you want to touch him, is the very definition of that hasn't aged well.

But it's arguably not as funny as the cover of Beeb magazine I saw the other day. Beeb magazine being the junior Radio Times thing, which had Gary Glitter hanging out with Roland Browning from Grange Hill. Yes. I'm just trying to nonce you, Roland. Fucking hell. Did you see, right? Gary Glitter. Gary Glitter was trending the other day

because people were outraged about him getting the COVID vaccine. Yeah. Basically, idiots who don't understand how viruses work, you know, or the bad people can pass it on to good people fuck's sake anyway yeah i know yeah that that b-ball article was gary glitter teaching roland to be a vegetarian so he wouldn't be so fast oh my god see vegetarianism simon that's what it makes you do yeah yeah him and, him and Hitler. I know, I know. Yeah, but this song, fucking hell, absolute cat shit.

It makes Daydreamer sound like Welcome to the Terror Dome, doesn't it? So, the following week, the puppy song slash Daydreamer jumped six places to number two. And a week later, it ripped this week's number one off the summit of Mount Pop,

staying there for three weeks before giving way to I Love You Love by Gary Glitter. The follow-up, If I Didn't Care, spent two weeks at number nine in June of 1974, by which time David Cassidy's latest world tour was marred by calls for him to be deported from Australia after a teeny-bopper fracas at the Melbourne cricket ground, a half-hour BBC special being scrapped after a technician

strike and the death of a 14-year-old girl in a pre-gig crush at White City which contributed to his decision to quit touring. He'd score three more top 20 hits across the mid-70s before concentrating on an acting career starring in the NBC police show David Cassidy Man Undercover in 1978. But he made a comeback in 1985 when The Last Kiss got to number six in March of that year and spent the rest of the 80s in musicals such as Blood Brothers, Time, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, until he died of kidney failure in Florida at the age of 67. But before we put David Cassidy away, the final word has to go to Mandare, age 12, of Liverpool, who wrote a poem that was published in the Liverpool Echo's All Your Own

Kids section this week. Oh my god. David Cassaday is the best. He's the one above the rest. David really is great. He's even better than my

best mate. David Cassaday forever. I like no one else. Never. David Cassaday sings so good. I'd love him if I could. I'll take it all back. All those letters about Top of the Pops were spot on.

There's also a letter from Joan, 12, of Kirk Bear, who believes that football hooligans should be punished by being made to sit on the touchline at games with blindfolds and earplugs on so they have complete sensory deprivation. But before we go, I really need to read this from Karen, age 12, of Formby, because it's the most 70s poem ever.

It's called The Colour Brown Is All Around. Brown is the colour of dead grass. It's also the colour of brass. Brown is

the colour of my bed. It's also the colour of the shed. Brown is the colour of my bed It's also the colour of the shed Brown is the colour of my hair It's also the colour of a damaged pear Brown is the colour of my eyes It's also the colour of meat in pies If only I could have a friend It's also the color of meat in pies. Ha ha ha! 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. Hello, my darlings. It's me, Anna Mann, actress, singer, welder. Gotta have a backup. I've been in everything, my darlings, and's me, Anna Mann, actress, singer, welder. Got to have a backup. I've been in everything, my darlings, and I've been cut from most things. However, I will not be cut from one thing, and that is my own podcast,

Talking to Actors with Anna Mann, where I meet those rarest of creatures, the actors. That's Talking to Actors on The Great Big Hour. Well, there I was, mucking out the pigs and milking things we don't mention, and they said, come on, top of the pops, lad. So I stuffed me straw into me back pocket and rushed down to London town to be with you all. And here, the second act on the show that you're going to love. What, what? It's the E.L.O.!

APPLAUSE She cried to the southern wind About a love that was sure to end Every dream in her heart was gone Heading for a showdown Everett, with a flower between his teeth and clutching his script next to a black and white illustration of a 30s flapper's head

and in front of a bloke with massive side beasts in a purple waistcoat and a Legion-ited bobble hat who ruins the effects somewhat, tells us that he's pegged it over from the farm, presumably his as he was living on one at the time to present this week's top of the pops he then raises an arm towards the stage and introduces showdown by elo we've covered elo a time or two on chart music and this their third single is the follow-up to their cover of rollover beet which got to number six in February of this year.

It's their last single for Harvest Records and essentially a stopgap single between albums while they get their feet under the table with their new labels. Warner Brothers over here, United Artists in America. It made its debut on the UK charts at number 44 five weeks ago, then soared 15 places to number 29, soared another 15 places

to number 14, then dropped to number 16, but rallied the week after to get to number 12 last week. And this week it's a non-mover, but no matter, here they are in the studio. Oh, yes.

As mentioned, we've covered ELO before, but it's always been at the arse end of their career, isn't it? You know, the rock and roll is king and hold on tight and all that kind of stuff. This is proper ELO in my mind. And the first proper ELO single. It's brilliant, this. It's absolutely brilliant. So simple and so hypnotic and with such

startling sounds in it i love the middle bit when it goes from kind of being an r&b sound into almost like art rock and then it comes back into the main groove via a properly psychedelic wall of noise it's just a brilliant brilliant start to the show and one of their best songs and and you know a really striking visual start to the show as well because of je songs and and you know a really striking visual start to the show as well because of jeff lynn yes he truly looks none more jeff lynn than he does in this episode his hair is he's proper butch in theater of blood isn't it dishy dishy hair baby his hair is so thick you really could lose a fairly substantially sized marsupial in it it's just enormous and his appearance here i think the reason i'm talking is because i know that our resident um cmp elo um expert

is gagging to come in i just want to get him what i want to say um you know i think it's important to note that i think jefflyn's appearance here really crystallizes something i think that's crucial to all um Brummagen bands from this period and I take that from here like a wizard and slayed all the way through to the likes of Sabbath and eventually Priest this with Jeff Lynne you don't get the feeling as you do with most of the front men in these bands that what you get the feeling is these are professional rock stars rather than sort of auteur-like rock stars they don't take the work home with them do you know i mean it's something they do not

something they are they clock on almost and then at the weekends you can kind of see these people you know down the pub being normal people like you know not the older jeffrey and roy wood they're not i mean despite roy wood's appearance in the countdown looking like some sort of glam punk almost ahead of his time, they're not faces that are going to sort of stop you in your tracks like a Bowie or a Bolan with their kind of elfin androgyny. You never got the sense that these people walk off stage and take their art with them, if you like, and that their life and art is somehow confused in their minds. No, these are big, hairy blokes who see being a pop star as making amazing records. And this is an amazing record.

Getting really togged up to perform them, particularly on telly. And that's it. And that attitude about stardom, it allows for self-deprecation and fun rather than kind of anguish or torment. And with all of these bands, I mean, even with Jeff Lynne, everyone knows that that elo is kind of jefflin's baby a little bit and he's he's the creative kind of mainstay of it but it still feels like a collective that's the thing with elo um there's this warmth and collectivism of an orchestra playing repertoire rather than the front man being a focal point kind of wailing about their pain so there's that nicely depersonalized sense of the music as if it

simply emanates from the hum of electricity that happens when you flick the elo switch on and this just comes out and i think that's part of the appeal of a lot of these brummager bands amazing looking outlandish kind of pop stars but you do get the sense at the weekend they'll be down an m&b pub sinking apart a brew 11 there's that there's that lovely mix uh this is actually become because of exposure to this episode i think it's becoming my favorite elo single um more than living thing uh which was my previous favorite i know this is probably all sacrilege to simon but you know it's something there's something so hypnotic and minimal about this it It makes me think of, oddly, Can't Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue.

It's got a kind of, just an intent and a directness, but also this oddity to the sound. I really, really enjoyed this performance and a great start to the show. I knew of this song, but when this popped up on this episode of Top of the World, I was shocked because this sounds like 1976, not 1973. They seem ahead of their time already

oh sorry i thought pricey was gonna come in simon i can't hear you yeah well pray silence please for the electric light orchestra yeah um as as i've established as i've established on a previous chart music, I think Jeff Lynne is genius. And I've also mentioned before, he was this sort of aspirational Jesus figure to me as a child. He was somebody I thought I might grow up to be if all went well. If I just let my hair grow and got the right pair of sunglasses, I might become this kind of chilled, zen, modern adult one day

with this serenely laid back and blissfully benign countenance. Best case scenario, that's the adult I thought I might become. And I wrote about all this when I reviewed the LO live in Hyde Park in 2014 for The Quietest. And I don't often on here tell people to go and read my stuff, but I am going to say do go and look at that one. The headlines, the Jesus of uncool, because I'm really proud of it. And it conveys my thoughts about Jeff Lynn in ways maybe I can't even do on a podcast.

But the last time we did talk about Yellow on here, as you kind of hinted at, we talked about one of their lesser songs, Night Rider. as you kind of hinted at, we talked about one of their lesser songs, Knight Rider. And I'm really grateful that today we're getting to talk about one of their God-tier greats. So thanks, Al. You've pulled it out of the bag here.

Showdown might be my favourite ELO single, or it's certainly top three, along with Telephone Line and Don't Bring Me Down. When I interviewed Jeff Lynn in 2015, also for The Quieters, he told me Showdown was his favourite of all. So, you know, we're in good company rating that one so highly.

Tell you another thing, when I first started sort of collecting or like retro collecting ELO singles, I suppose it would have been Don't Bring Me Down was the one that I bought when it came out and I thought I'm going to buy through their oldies getting it from second hand shops and stuff and I saw the title Showdown

I bought it, I thought it was Sweet Talking Woman, I got confused I thought it was Showdown Sweet Talking Woman I got this kind of song merge in my head what we have on Showdown is a white British rock act incorporating black American funk and soul into their sound.

And this is important to note. It's a couple of years ahead of Bowie's Young Americans. But they're infusing that funk and that soul with a specifically British, and I don't know if you'd agree being Midlanders, but you could even say a specifically Brummie mood of sadness and dread. Yeah, absolutely. So when he's singing, it's raining all over the world, it's probably just raining all over the West Midlands.

And this theme of rainfall has always stayed with him. It's a rainy night in Tipton. Exactly. When ELO had their comeback album, there was a track called Love and Rain. And then on the second comeback album, a track called Down Came the Rain. So he's obviously obsessed with rainfall.

And that mood, that kind of sadness and dread is real and very Birmingham, I think. Jefflyn is almost like Ozzy Osbourne um his vocal in its tone here I think um some people don't agree with me when I say that but uh but I don't think it's the first time either I think on uh 10538 Overture um the first yellow single is very Sabbath to my ears uh by the way that kind of minor key dystopian funk groove that they lock into here is one that I think Pink Floyd revived six years later on Another Brick in the Wall. In the interview I did with Jeff Lynn, I asked him about the way that he puts chords together to provoke an emotional response. Ah, yes.

Because his songs always have this kind of yearning quality, and I think it's all about the chords. And he said, I'll take that as a compliment, a yearning that is my whole thing about music it's chord sequences how to get the next chord to be great so you go oh that's nice and it sometimes makes the hairs on your neck stand up if it's good enough even if it's not a song yet I'm always just stringing chords together and imagining the melody going through it so that's how he works he works chords first and imagining the melody going through it. So that's how he works. He works chords first. And in terms of chord sequences that hit you emotionally, I think Jeff Lynne was only bettered in the 70s by Benny and Bjorn from ABBA.

I don't think anyone else came close. That's his genius. There was an interview with Jeff Lynne that I read where he said the first time he discovered chords, he was a kid and he was walking with his dad to work, to his dad's workplace. And there was this massive pipe in the road. And he said, oh, look at this, son. And he just stuck his head in the pipe and just hummed a few notes.

And it came back as a chord. Birmingham there for you. Yeah. The true cradle of pop. Stick your head in a pipe. Yeah. He also told me he doesn't like performing live. Right.

And you can kind of see that here. And Neil's quite right about that idea of them clocking off, looking like people who are... What was your phrase? That they are... I said that kind of being a rock star for these guys, it's something you do, not something you are. It's something...

Yeah. Yes, yes. Thank you, yeah. Because what I like about Yellow star for these guys it's something you do not something you are it's something yeah yes yes thank you yeah because what i like about yellow is they mostly don't look like rock musicians they look like musicians in a rock band um by which i mean that they may have grown their hair long but half of them look like they've been plucked straight from the birmingham conservatoire yeah um some of them were classically trained in inverted commas, of course. Mick Kaminsky, a.k.a. Violinsky, was at the Leeds School of Music. And the cellist, right, I don't know if you noticed him,

the camera goes to him a few times, he has this look on his face that says, yes, this is what rock music ought to be like. It ought to have strings on it. That guy is quite an interesting character. It's Mike Edwards, not the Jesus Jones one. And he went to the Royal Academy of Music. to be like it ought to have strings on it that guy is quite an interesting character is mike edwards not the jesus jones one and uh he went to the royal academy of music and he played with barclay james harvest before elo snapped him up for a couple of years he later changed his name to swami

deva pramada after becoming um a devotee of baguan shri vnish, right? Along with people like Terence Stamp and Ariadne Huffington, Bernard Levin, and this amazes me, Naina, as in 99 Red Balloons. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of it about in the 70s and 80s. Anyway, Mike Edwards slash Mr. Primada was the member who was killed in a freak accident in 2009.

Oh, yeah. When a cylindrical hay bale rolled down a hill and crushed his van. The bassist, who at this point was Mike de Albuquerque, doesn't live up to his spectacular and... No, not at all. To me, obviously, fake name. I've searched what's his real name, so maybe it was his real name. But he does look like a geography teacher.

Yes, very much so. His spectaclesacles his mustard roll neck sweater we're gonna see a lot more of those mustard roll neck sweaters later on of course the same year as this mike de albuquerque released a prog rock solo album called we may be cattle but we've all got names which i didn't have time to check out but i really want to hear it think about it man yeah just based on the title i want to hear it. Think about it, man. Yeah, just based on the title, I want to hear that. He later played bass on Right Back Where We Started From by Maxine Nightingale, which is a brilliant, brilliant single, of course.

But yeah, he doesn't look very rock star-y. The only rock and roll looking guy is Jeff Lynne himself. And as Neil pointed out, at this point, Jeff Lynne's head is almost entirely hair. It's entirely hair or sunglasses there's hardly apart from hair and sunglasses there's hardly any actual face it's impossible to tell if he's good looking no the bbc helped to rock star him up a bit more with this psychedelic red solar flare effect on his fingers um and the fretboard on the guitar solo. I mean if you opened Dave Lee Travis' mouth and put a grenade in it and then closed it he'd eventually look like

Jeff Lynne on top of the pops in 1973. And if he didn't, well he's still doing God's work there. You could make so many jumpers out of Jeff Lynne's hair at this time. Or stuff a mattress, yeah, definitely. It's interesting though what Simon said about it having that Black American sound, definitely. Yes. It's interesting, though,

what Simon said about it having that Black American sound. It absolutely does. It sounds like something that could be on Black American radio. And Simon's right that, you know, yeah, I mean, Bowie doesn't start doing that till 75.

Mark Boland doesn't start doing that until the next album after 73. You know, he's in Calloy and all that. So ELO way ahead of their time here. Yeah, and at the time they were seen as the off cuts of wizard well they're now free sons would to just just go for it and what what i find odd with elo is that is the record collections that they turn up in they're a very quite a pop band elo in the

70s lots of big big singles but the record collections that i used to see them in of parents of my mates and that you know the rest of their record collections it's all finlizzy and saxon and stuff like that quite heavy stuff and yeah elo were actually seen as part of that in a weird way they they found their way into the collections of yet your midlands metal fans just as much as they did the kind of mainstream pop audience they had that hold i mean obviously because some of the songs rock but there's just something yeah that that across the board appeal really especially with songs like this it's just fucking magical and that cellist that pricey was talking about the look on his face when it comes

out in the middle section and you hear those strings kicking in again it's a beautiful moment it's one of the highlights of the episode this we see a lot of the crowd in this clip don't we or rather we sort of don't because the camera moves through the crowd and they scatter like pigeons and and in this clip you really notice how few people there are i reckon maybe 35 or 40 max and and it's weird that they're allowing us to see that on top of the pots we see a lot of bare floor in this episode it's it's a bit like you know whipping away the wizard's curtain on um no pun intended on wizard there but on this episode um it's like we're almost seeing like the making of

top of the pops rather than the actual show we're getting glimpses we shouldn't be getting and it's it obviously that starts at the very beginning with kenny everett rampaging down the backstage corridor but it it seeps into the whole show um at one point in this clip you see another camera maneuvering into position over jefflyn's shoulder yeah and uh oh that that david bowie woman i was talking about with no eyebrows she's right down the front she's by the pianist richard tandy and i know she's given it some proper wig and casino dance moves to elo which is fantastic and the piano's actually in the audience. It's not on the platform or the stage or anything.

It's the first sign as well. I mean, the audience make an incredibly good account of themselves in this episode. They're mostly, as far as I'm concerned anyway, dressed brilliantly. And they're dancing well. I know I've said in the past, oh, the sight of British people enjoying music

is always a bit embarrassing. I didn't feel embarrassed at all in this episode. The response to the music is genuine, and it's just a delight. I could just watch the audience forever. All the different stories, all the different clothes going on there. Yeah, something sadly lost to later Top of the Pops. This is why this period is such a zenith. We get to see these people.

So the following week, Showdown dropped six places to number 18. And the follow-up, Mama Belle, got to number 22 in April of 1974. They spent much of 1974 recording a live LP, which was so badly marred by technical issues that it was only released in German air. And the studio LP, El Dorado, which yielded no hit singles. But they roared back into the charts in 1976 when Evil Woman got to number 10 in January of that year,

kicking off a run of 20 top 40 hits before they wound down in 1986. I've got to say to you When I'm ready to say I'm a fool for you Ain't no one Hello, darling. What are you doing after the show? I mean, we've got a rave going on in a pigsty, if you fancy. Oh, sorry.

Yes, that was Raining All Over The World by... And now we have Yellow. And that was And Now We Have Elton John with his latest bigot, Goodbye Yellow Rose of Kentucky. CHEERING Goodbye, Yellow Rose of Kentucky. Yay! Everett, skulking by a bank of lights, chats up the crumpet before pretending to be caught out and then gabbles on in his piss-taking BBC RP voice as he introduces Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John.

Oh, my godfathers. That Kenny interlude there. Oh, man. His introduction is tawdry and not worthy of Top of the Pops. It's like a late night thing almost the sight of a gay man pretending to be a heterosexual man by aggressively propositioning a young girl isn't exactly comfortable or remotely amusing and then he messes his words up in a really shit unfunny way we're only about 10 minutes into the episode and kenny everett is already immensely tiresome yeah

he's intent on getting his bits in isn't he he is but um yeah that that bit where he's chatting up the blonde girl calling her darling and inviting her to a rave at the pigsty now she looks quite uncomfortable and and now we know of course these days that top the pops was literally a crime scene when certain other presenters were on the prowl, right? As far as we know, Kenny Everett wasn't guilty of that. So does it make it okay that he's sleazy and pervy with young girls because we all know he's gay? I'm saying no. Well, we didn't know at the time.

That he's gay. Well, come on. But yeah, he's doing this running joke, isn't he, of refusing to say the song titles correctly, doing his bit, as you say. So he calls it Goodbye Yellow Rose of Kentucky. And it's as if he either has or thinks he has special dispensation, right?

It's like, you know, and this goes back to the thing of him being allowed to come pelting down the corridor at the start of the show and do everything a little bit differently. And that kind of Northern pig farmer act that he's doing, we've talked about it before and this is something that hasn't changed. He still looks like Abraham Lincoln

and he still thinks that speaking in a Northern accent is inherently funny. Yeah, I know he's from the North, but that isn't his accent. Yeah, and he switches between that and as you say that that um rp bbc english thing he chats her up in a very cockneyish accent doesn't it oh it's a darling thing yeah yeah all of that but yeah but this whole act that he's putting on it's in the same vein i think as something like mr blobby or rod tell an emu

right it's like because like mr blobby like emu itull and Emu, right? It's like, because like Mr. Blobby, like Emu, it's consensual chaos. It's officially sanctioned disruptiveness. You know what I mean? I'm quite surprised at Robin Nash, the producer, for allowing it because he usually seemed to run a tight ship

with not much room for fanning about despite the worst efforts of people like DLT to make it about them, you know? But yeah, Everett's really going for it here and I don't like it the thing is though you're getting on a radio personality on Top of the Pops they're going to act like that radio personality so you know the BBC clearly knew what it was taking on when they invited him to do Top of the Pops surely no you're absolutely right yeah and that that is the eternal tension on a lot of top the pops is between the um the ego of the presenter and the format of the show and never never more so

than on this one yeah and crucially his personality on the radio is a painstakingly edited one and this isn't so his accent slips in and out and he doesn't really keep hold of it and he's not scripted it properly so it's just a mess. And this moment is something that, yeah, will recur throughout the episode. He discomforts the people that he's talking to. And it's not pleasant to watch, you know. For a lot of the Radio 1 DJs, being on top of the pops would be the absolute goal.

I mean, it definitely would be by the late 70s and 80s. But with Kenny Everett, you get the feeling that it's... It's almost like being on top of the pops is something that he's got to do if he wants to continue doing what he's doing at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, but the show should not be treated so casually. No.

They've got nearly 12 million viewers, you know. He needs to sharpen up and he's certainly not doing that. You know, and if I was a watcher at that time and if I was older than one years old, obviously,

I'd be pissed off in a sense at his lack of care where every single other aspect of the show is so fine-tuned to perfection. I was older than one years old, obviously. I'd be pissed off, in a sense, at his lack of care, where every single other aspect of the show is so fine-tuned to perfection. His is just this messy thing in the middle of it, and it really doesn't work. We've already covered Reg Dwight in Chart Music No. 13, and this, the second single from the LP of the same name which came out last week, is the follow-up to Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting, which got to number seven for

two weeks in July of this year after entering the charts at number 43 at the end of September it soared 27 places to number 16 and this week it's nudged up four places to number 12 and because Elton is currently preparing to play the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis later tonight here's some footage of him arsing about in Hollywood and this is the beginning of the crest of Elton John's career isn't it he's currently borrowing the starship Led Zeppelin's plane for his current American tour and the first thing he did was change the colour scheme because he didn't like what they'd done to the plane. Jesus Christ.

I mean, it's no secret that Elton John makes me almost physically sick. Being open about my dislike of Elton John has had consequences for me. It's held me back in my career, but I can't lie. So anything I say from now on must be taken in that context this of course is the title track from his big album which is the 86 minute double that has loads of the hits on it including this being the title track

and if the most irritating thing about Elton John to me is his faux American singing voice that whole goodbye England's rose that thing right then that's nothing compared to his faux jamaican accent on this album's novelty reggae song jamaica jerk off oh right which makes sandy shaw's infamous reggae number on her tv show look like a paragon of racial

sensitivity by the way i see that that sandy Sandy Shore clip has been removed from YouTube, but we remember, we remember. So have you heard Jamaica jerk off? No, I haven't. Fucking hells bells. First thing you do after this show, you know there's that Seaside Woman song by Linda McCartney?

Yes. With the dodgy Jamaican accents. It's even grimmer than that. One thing I'll say for Elton John of course uh and I've said this before is that he gave us all the biggest laugh of lockdown when we're dill dancing and what I enjoyed about that was that Elton John was making Elton John look like a prick without meaning to but but we but we've talked about that already so basically get the idea that I hate the curtain right so so can I surprise you when i tell you i've got time for this song this is one

of the few songs of his i think that dares to dream to almost scrape the sky you know um with the melody and just the whole production of it even if it then comes crashing back to earth with that line about a horny bat toad that bit but more than that, what struck me watching this was imagining how British viewers would have felt watching this video, because it's all this footage of glamorous America, Los Angeles in particular, of course. So he's teetering about in his stack heels, he visits a rodeo tailors, et cetera,

but we're not looking at him. Go through it. Let's go through it in order. Yeah. Obviously, they've not done a promotional video, so the BBC have cobbled this together. I can't imagine his record company putting this out. So we get a close-up of Elton's rounded hexagonal glasses.

Elton chucking a lime in the air and catching it. Yeah. Elton lying on the grass looking at the ground. Elton sat in front of a big photo of Elvis in his gold lame suit. Elton putting a mug on the table, throwing his keys in the air and going out. A close-up of an orange on a tree. Elton walking down some steps in some massive silver platforms. Elton standing by that orange tree, giving the thumbs down to a green one

elton then picking up a ripe orange and showing it to us elton walking on the grass in his blocker boots elton getting into a massive american car a shot of a shop called Drug King on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Maybe he thought it was called Rug King. A big clock going backwards. A Sunset Boulevard sign. Elton patting a big plastic horse and then shaking hands with a bloke in a cowboy hat. A big sign for Nudie's rodeo tailors who made that gold lame suit

for Elvis and made the David Cassidy outfit. And that bloke's nudie cone. Elton inside nudie's, presumably buying everything. Another shot of drug king. That clock again, which we now see

is for the Hollywood Ranchwood ranch market which was the place where james dean had some coffee and donuts before he was killed all right not exactly the most elaborate promo film but a glorious chance for the pop craze youngsters in 1973 to have a good hard stare at america well that's it right he in every scene, but we're not looking at him. We're looking past him. We're looking at America. There is that moment, the drug king bit, where the camera lingers on the street intersection of Hollywood and Vine, and nothing really happens,

but nothing needs to because footage of America was something we could just be hypnotised by at that point. That scene where he's picking fruit from a tree, citrus fruits from a tree. Imagine how unfathomably exotic that must have looked in Britain, right? In October 1973 with IRA bombs going off, the fire brigade on strike, Ted Heath announcing pay cuts for everyone,

the Dark Knights drawing in, in every sense. And then you're looking at that. Fucking hell. And there's Elton living that life, and he's rubbing it in our faces. Living the absolute dream. Yeah. To give a sense of his lifestyle at that time, you mentioned the Led Zeppelin jet.

There's an item in Melody Maker week about um a surprise treat that was arranged for him when he got on that jet he was promised that there would be a cocktail pianist on the plane when it took off out came stevie wonder who's stowing away in the toilets yeah but according to his autobiography his highlight of that tour on that plane was watching his mam watching the in-flight move there, which was deep throat. And just laughing at her response to everything. This video is no I'm Dildanding, but it has this air of, okay, let's go make this fucking video nice and early so I can get on with snorting cocaine later, basically. Yes. So they'll literally cling to anything he's doing that day as a time waster so we have that

sniffing a lawn we have him doing this business with a with an orange i thought it was a lemon actually um but um you know we could i i thought it was a lime so let's all have a fight and we get him stroking a plastic horse outside the nudie store. And by the time he leaves the nudie store, he's clearly in such a bad mood with the video maker. He just kind of storms out, leaving the video to be nothing but this montage of kind of, look, we're in Hollywood proof. It's like a video created as an alibi in a way.

Yeah, he wants to be having a party, doesn't he? He wants to be throwing a party and telling people not to jizz on the base. This is it. I mean, he's getting this done. He's getting this done so he can go and do what he wants to be having a party, doesn't he? He wants to be throwing a party and telling people not to jizz on the bass. This is it. I mean, he's getting this done. He's getting this done so he can go and do what he wants to do. Like Pricey, actually, I'm not a big fan of Elton at all. Don't like him much. But Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I would argue,

this song and maybe Benny and the Jets from this album are two that I would salvage. But yeah, beyond that, no, not a big elton fan this video probably the most entertaining thing he's given me in my life apart from the i'm dill danding thing of course it's very counterproductive because the song's about him oh i'm leaving the rat race i've had enough of it uh oh but here's some footage of me enjoying every single fruit of that rat race yeah yeah yeah in some cases quite literally at this time i would have known who elton john was but i always saw him as a grown-up thing as i've actually grown up he's

still a grown-up thing yeah he's still someone i've got no interest in investigating i don't feel i'm missing out by not owning a elton john lp yeah but this is all right it's okay people swear down by some of his lPs, like Captain Fantastic and that. I just cannot be arsed. Yeah. I tend not to explore the musical career of artists who I can see them being introduced by one of the two Ronnies, basically.

Yeah. So I just don't bother investigating the musical career of him, and he's one of them. He is. He's grown up stuff, isn't he? So the following week, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road nipped up two places

to number 10 and would eventually spend two weeks at number six, its highest position. The follow-up, Step Into Christmas, would only get to number 24 in the first week of 1974, but would get to number eight in the first week of 2020 and number eight again in the first week of this shit-hole year. I hate that song. i just ate the title step

into christmas as if it was a dog turd it's a cuckoo in the nest of christmas songs because as you say it wasn't a hit right yeah but because it's by a major artist and because it has the word christmas in the title it ended up in the 90s on all those best Christmas album ever CDs so you ended up hearing it in shopping malls every Christmas and it's become part of the British Christmas but it wasn't the British public rejected it at the time

yeah fuck off and he'd have two more hits from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with Candle in the Wind number 11 for two weeks March March of 1974. We won't hear any more of that song. Yeah. And Benny of the Jets, number 37, October 1976.

And as Elton stomps off back home to attack his pool table with a paint scraper, we're going to leave it there for now and we're going to come back tomorrow to continue this episode of Top of the Pops. So, on behalf of Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price, my name's Alan Edam, this is Chart Music, you are Minted skill. Stay pop craze, why don't you?

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