Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #63 (Pt 2): 28.12.1972 – Thank God For Belgian World In Action

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

Taylor Parkes, Neil Kulkarni and Al Needham begin their submergence into Top Of The Pops ’72, and discuss the less-than-immaculate interplay between Tony Blackburn and his foul nemesis Edmonds. Mike Leander (and his singer, who we’re not supposed to talk about these days, but do) drops his magnum opus. Donny Osmond does some Weenybopper edging and bats his eyelids like a rabbit trapped in a fence. And Alice Cooper blows up a school and gets Mary Whiteshouse’s knickers in a twist…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 listening to? Um, chart music. Chart music. Hey up, you pop-crazy youngsters, and welcome to part two of episode 63 of Chart Music. Here I am, Al Needham, with my dear little elves who've been tap, tap, tapping away all night long. Taylor Parks.

Hello. And Neil Kulkarni. Why, hello there. Boys, this fucking episode. So high you can't get over it, so wide you can't get around it. It is a behemoth, it really is. It's fucking enormous, isn't it, this one? I mean, it's only 50 minutes long,

but fucking, oh, they pack a lot into this bastard who's gonna be able to pick highlights out of this man oh it's very very difficult all right then pop craze youngsters it is time to go back to late december back in 72 what a very special time for me and you always 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 ten past seven on Thursday, December 28th, 1972, and Top of the Pops, still in a party mood,

is entering stage three of a week-long splurge of pop. Four days after last Thursday's episode, they dropped the first part of their annual review of the year, presented by Ed Stewart and Jingle Nonce OBE in a disgusting pastel floral suit. Alas and alack, that episode has disappeared into the ether. So here's what we could have won. Here's what was on that episode.

Starman by David Bowie. Crocodile Rock by Elton John. Clear by Gilbert O'Sullivan. How Can I Be Sure by David Cassidy. Pants People Dancing to Popcorn by Hot Butter. You Wear It Well by Rod Stewart. Amazing Grace by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. Take Me Back Home by Slade,

Vincent by Don McLean, California Man by The Move, Telegram Sam by T-Rex, I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing by The New Seekers, Sugar Mare by Lindsay DePaul, Long-Haired Lover from Liverpool by Little Jimmy Osmond, and Silver Machine by Hawkwind. Gotta say, we've got the better part of the deal

here. Without a doubt. I was doing the old thumbs up, thumbs down just then and it was definitely more down. Even though that episode has been lost, you can almost imagine the massive sense of deflation you'd have. Going from Telegram Sam to I want to teach the world to sing.

It's a typical Christmas episode, isn't it? It is, isn't it? And this is why we've got the better deal because Christmas dates on the pop. You've got to consider the old ones, haven't you? Mum and Dad. Top of the Pops on a Thursday night, having their pick and choosing of the biggest hits of the year. Oh man, we've

won hands down on this one. Yeah, if just for not having to see Claire by Gilbert O'Sullivan introduced by either Jimmy Savile or Ed Stewart, both of which... Fucking hell, yes. Yes, that puts the spinner... I am anticipating the day when we sit down and talk about Claire. I've got opinions on it.

Let's put it that way. Yeah. But anyway, as of December 1972, Top of the Pops is in rude health, pulling down 11 million viewers a week and still under the reign of its original executive producer. Born in Tombridge in 1917, Jonny Stewart was the son of the choir master

and organist of Magdalen College, Oxford, who joined the BBC radio sound effects department in the late 30s. When World War II broke out, he did his bit as a wireless operator in the Middle East before working in intelligence, rejoining the BBC after Hitler got the biffing he richly deserved. He eventually gravitated towards music shows such as BBC Jazz Club, Sing It Again and BBC Show Band. In 1958, he made the switch to television, producing The Singing Years, Twist and the Billy Cotton showcase, The Wakey Wakey Show.

And when the BBC finally decided to grapple with pop music in 1959, he was installed as the producer of Jukebox Dioré, where celebrities were subjected to a selection of that week's new releases and considered their hit-making potential. When the show was moved from Monday night to Saturday evening, it started to pull down an average of 9 million viewers, which soared to 22 million when the Beatles appeared as jurors. And when the BBC decided to give a pop TV show the full gun in late 1963,

Stewart was the obvious choice as producer and given carte blanche on the formatting. And six 25- minute slots on Wednesday night at 6 25 were commissioned for the first six weeks of 1964 after deciding to lift the format of Jimmy Savile's teen and 20 disc club on radio Luxembourg and streamline it for tv and presumably installing jingle nonsense its first presenter to avoid any mither, Stewart racked out the rules of the show, which stood pretty much untouched until the 90s, and insisted that all acts mime to their single, as he was convinced that the kids didn't want to hear an inferior version of what they could hear on the radio,

and is also responsible for the name Top of the Pops. The first episode of Top of the Pops, which went out on New Year's Day in 1964, was immediately slagged off by the newspapers, but the kids went berserk for it, and long before the six-week trial was up, the show was recommissioned on a rolling contract. Stewart would pilot the good ship TOTP right through the 60s and 60s, adding the top of the Pops Orchestra after the musicians' union moaned about a music show we'd just mime in, and eventually installing a dance troupe, the Go-Joes, in November of 1964. troupe the gojos in november of 1964 he is now completing his ninth year as the kindly overlord of top of the pops and finally after 62 episodes we can give the praise that is rightly due to

johnny stewart without a doubt it's all down to him man what a fucking visionary yeah and and good on him for i mean the essential idea of the miming so important and and i know it seems like a daft little thing but top of the pops is a fucking fantastic title for this show yes it is it really really is so all of those decisions absolutely spot on and that's why they remained unchanged for so long yeah all of which he thought of was sitting on a high chair with his jacket slung over one shoulder. Yes. Yeah, the only person on the credits of any BBC show that got his own logo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ray Butt used to have his signature. But that was the only other one I could think of with a visual element. Light red for anything else. Yeah, just as well it wasn't a visual element. After the thrilling, life-affirming blast of Whole Lotta Love by the Top of the Pops Orchestra and accompanying visuals of a dolly bird slinking about,

some American roadworks and buildings, a merry-go-round, and the sort of visual effects more commonly utilised in headache tablet adverts, we're hit with the logo Top of the Pops 72 and our host with the logo, top of the pop 72, and our host for the evening, one of whom is Tony Blackburn, who is still holding down the alpha male position on Radio 1 as the host of The Breakfast Show,

a position he's clung on to since the station's launch of September of 1967 and is finishing off a year which could be his high water mark. He began 1972 by telling the Daily Mirror on January the 1st that his new year's resolution was to make friends with John Peel. Then he got engaged to Tessa Wyatt later that month, got married in March at Caxton Hall with 50 coppers holding back 500 onlookers. Then bought a semi-detached in St John's Wood in the same month. Announced that Tessa was pregnant in November. And rounded out the year by opening the remodernised walls on Oxford Street with Miss England, Miss Scotland and Miss Wales.

Where's Miss Northern Ireland? That's wrong. And comparing the stylemaker queen of sewing competition at the london hilton but let it be known that it's not all been sensational for tony in 1972 he spent most of the year plowing money into a custom-built nightclub in corfu called the beeb buying land having it built to its own specifications and importing state-of-the-art equipment. But according to the Daily Mirror, quote, First torrential rain flooded it out, then legal snags forced its closure for a time, and there was trouble with permits for Tony's English chums.

What's more, local fans seem reluctant to turn up. But a grin and bear it Tony, who says he is trying to convince himself that Greece isn't a police state, declares, we're going to sort out all the problems. If we don't, I'll have to put the place up for sale. If we don't, I'll have to put the place up for sale. Furthermore, an interview he gave to the Reading Post in November has put a considerable amount of noses out of joint. He began, If there's one person I really admire in this country, it's Ted Heath.

He's a great prime minister and he's battling against a lot of fools. Those men in the unions are not to be taken seriously because a lot of them can't even speak the Queen's English. He went on to moan on about how anything that becomes successful in Britain, like Radio 1 and by extension him, is automatically knocked and it's not like that in america most of the people who slag him off are only doing it because he's on the radio in the morning and people are naturally grumpy at that time they never should have banned the pirate stations and he shuns friendship and would never do public appearances if he didn't need the money. He said,

In some ways, I'm a great believer in the art of not meeting people. Just look at what that has done for Elvis, for example. Yeah, that turned out brilliant, didn't it, Tony? He was also quoted in that Melody Maker prediction centre spread. And just, you know know just to get the flavour of 1972 here's what he said. The music scene has really begun to change. It started this year with the underground thing but that has gradually been overridden by the Osmonds, Jackson 5 and Cassaday. The scene today is much more happy and it's nice to see the younger kids enjoying themselves. Today the 12 to 14 year olds are being specially catered for.

Showmanship is right back and Bolan and Slade have had tremendous years. Their character will help them next year. I have doubts about David Cassidy staying the course. Younger kids are tending to think he's too old next year could well meet a british pop idol like donny osmond a melody is here to stay again it's going to be the year of big images john peel is now the one making the mistakes praising all those heavy groups yeah so so there's the new year's resolution gone for a toss yeah but while it appears that everything's coming up blackburn the fault lines are beginning

to appear while tony was being measured up for his flared burgundy wedding suit the bbc have installed some serious competition over at radio 2's breakfast slot in the shape of Terry Wogan. And there's a new challenger to his throne because young Noel Edmonds has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. Edmonds is still holding down the 10am to noon slot on Sunday, which he took over from Kenny Everett in April of 1970 and has curated a singer-songwriter heavy playlist

for that mellow pre-Sunday dinner experience as well as being a regular presenter on the Radio 1 Club a weekday show where a DJ will be packed off to a school or youth club in the sticks and be made to put themselves about with the provincials. But he's clearly being groomed for bigger things and to that end was catapulted into the top of the pop's presenting roster on the 20th of July of this year becoming part of a talent pool which at the time consisted of Blackburn, Savile and Ed Stewart. And this is his fifth, but far from the last,

Top of the Pops gig. Yeah. Yeah, him and Tony in very festive alpine hats for some reason. Yes. Yeah, it's like they're about to... What's all that about? Clink foaming tankards together and slap each other's thighs, you know. Yeah, it should have

had lederhosen as well tony black forest it's a bit creepy though and it's like where do they spend christmas the eagle's nest noel brought a bone for blondie no questions asked actually you know they probably spent christmas together didn't they, these two great friends? Yes. Tony bought Noel a rubber breast that squirts blood, and Noel brought Tony six pickled onions and a spin of the whirlywheel. It's a dirty business. Blackburn and Edmunds, the former in a brown tank top with a cat on it, the latter in a hideous lime green shirt with floral embroidery up the front, appear on screen surrounded by some women who are clearly older than the usual batch of audience members, and a twat in a fake beard who's desperate to get his face on the telly. turquoise green alpine hats making the tableau look like austrian tv's version of whatever happened to the likely lads it's a bad look for both of them isn't it i mean blackburn's usually

modishly dapper and edmunds is usually suited up and gone for a change this year and it's a it's a mistake isn't it it is a mistake it is a mistake i mean the thing is and also you know they appear they're the first people that you see after that astonishing title sequence. Yes. There's no way out of that title sequence without sort of crashing and burning down to the brute reality of what Radio 1 DJs were like at the time. But fuck me, it really couldn't be more apparent, could it, how our presenters just have this strange tangential relationship

and not immersion. In pop and rock, it's a real come down after that amazing title sequence I found. Did you really like that title sequence? Well, when I watched it last, I was a bit wasted. So maybe that helped. And perhaps, you know, it doesn't stand up in the cold light today. But yeah, I did enjoy it. That theme tune is so fucking pulsating and exciting

that you could put any kind of footage to it, you know, a fucking abattoir scene. Yeah, yeah. It is a bizarre mix of those sort of, you know, handheld road bits of Cine 8 type sort of, Super 8 rather, film. But it's the distorted effects they put on them. I mean, that is not an Asian wedding video.

That is seriously bizarre effects. Anyway, there'd be trippy effects, certainly, if you were a kid. There would be trippy effects if you were watching it on a colour telly. If it was black and white, you'd be just banging the top of your sack. It's mostly footage of office blocks and concrete road bridges. Yeah, it is. But in America. They could have filmed it driving around Telford. footage of office blocks and concrete road bridges yeah it is but in america so they could have filmed it driving around telford it's like but it's weird because it's supposed to say it's

america therefore it's automatically exciting but a time when the charts are pretty british really yeah yeah yes you know and the kids are as interested in beer monsters from Wolverhampton dressed as Venusian jesters as much as chubby-cheeked American veal. So I don't know. It's just solarised footage of the view out the window of the Hertz renter car driving in from Dulles International Airport. Well, it's a bank, isn't it? Is that what it is? Yeah, it's a bank, isn't it? Is that what it is? Yeah, it's a bank building.

Oh, even better. The thrilling excitement of part. But what I do really love about it is at the end, they have that countdown on screen. Oh, good, yeah. Presumably to, you know, symbolise the chart countdown, except that it's a countdown that doesn't go down to one, it goes down to zero.

Ooh. Which is somewhat deflating, I think. Why isn't there a number zero in the charts? I know. It goes beyond the chart into negative space. Yeah, just the least selling record of the week. That'd be great. I love the idea of a countdown to nothing, just in itself.

It'd be great to have a big room full of people and just blast over the loudspeakers like a booming voice, like, ten, nine, eight, and then when it gets to zero, just nothing happens. Just leave the cameras on and see what they do. The odd thing about Blackburn and Edmonds here is that, yeah, of course it's all smiliness and palliness, but it very much reminds me of when Henry Hill in Goodfellas says,

see, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends. Because, obviously, Edmonds is going to take Blackburn Show next year. At this point, they're still kind of pally. What comes across most is that, although Noel is already pretty slick and relaxed with that confection of ease that we've discussed before, he's still very much, I think, in hock to Everett. Yes. In his style, certainly, and definitely in his look.

Whereas Blackburn is sort of more as Blackburn always does because he can do nothing else. He's inhabiting his own skin. Edmund still feels like he's not really found his shtick. He's kind of confusedly somewhere between the the the kind of besuited professional future and this kind of dissolute counter-cultural past indicated by his time but um that's why much of the interaction it's kind of i mean at the time of course nobody knew but um yeah it has a little taint of sadness to it because obviously things are going to go in different directions for these two guys in a big way.

Yeah, poor old Tony's in a bit of a bind here. Number one, he must be wondering why he's not done the Christmas Day show like he did the year before and presumably the year before that. But he's also been teamed up with someone who's quite similar to him, but a bit younger, a bit smoother, a bit more professional, a bit more bearded. Yeah, it's cruel almost, and you can tell he's rattled a bit throughout this episode by that. It is a bit of a fall from grace, not doing the Christmas Day episode. It must be,

yeah. And losing it to Ed Stewart of all people. Yeah, fucking hell. You know, we were talking last time about the chirpy, curly haired Russian doll. Let's not forget that Noel Edmonds is a prominent component in the bearded, leonine, blow-waved Russian doll. The outer shell of which was obviously Barry Gibb.

And inside him, it's Morris Lee out of The Grumblewoods. And inside him, Don Fel Morris Lee out of the Grumblewoods. And inside him, Don Felder from the Eagles. And inside him, Kenny Rogers. And inside him is Noel Edmonds. And inside him, Richard Stilgoe. It's a slow seller, that one. There wasn't a lot of take-up. Partly, I think, down to all the rumours about people who died after buying one.

Apparently there was one in the hold of a ship and the ship sank. Even the people on the ship thought it was for the best. Well, a fine mess you got me in, Sue Stanley. Good evening, Tom. Welcome to Top Of The Pops. Welcome indeed. Did you have a nice Christmas, Norm? I had a fantastic Christmas. A lot of presents, a lot of trees, plenty of glitter. Glitter? What a coincidence. Singing rock and roll part two, here comes Gary Glitter.

APPLAUSE Part two, here comes Gary Glitter. Happy New Year! After Blackburn does a shit Lowell and Hardy impression and Edmonds calls him Ton, they exchange false pleasantries regarding the Christmas period, working their way to the key word glitter. So they can start us off with Rock and Roll Part 2 by Gary Glitter. Born Michael Farr in Walthamstow in 1941, Mike Leander spent the early 60s studying law, but packed it into working a minor music publishing company. After leasing a single to Decca, he was offered a contract

with them as an arranger, and ended up working with Cliff Richard, Billy Fiore, Shirley Bassey, and Lulu. And after working with Marianne Faithfull on her debut lp he was commissioned by the rolling stones to score the orchestration on their version of as tears go by in 1964 he was signed up to atlantic records to work with the drifters and scored an immediate hit with under the boardwalk before returning to the uk to write the soundtrack for the Paul Jones film Privilege. After he was drafted in at the last minute to score She's Leaving Home for the Beatles in 1967, he moved to MCA to head up their new UK division and took three singers under his wing, Elton John, David Essex and Paul Gad, who was working under the name Paul Raven.

And when his deal with MCA was up, he set up on his own and took the latter two with him. One morning in November 1971, Leander and Gad were kicking about Leander's office when David Essex called to cancel the studio session that was booked for the day. So the two decided to use the time to have a piss about. After hours on a drum kit, looping and multitracking, then adding guitar and hand claps and multitracking them, Gad added lyrics inspired by a headline he read in Melody Maker, Rock and Roll Part One.

It was put out in March of this year, but was rejected by every DJ and producer at the BBC. But after it exploded in the discos and clubs of the UK, with the virtually instrumental B-side Rock and Roll Part 2 becoming more popular, it entered the top 40 at 37 in June, jumped 16 places to number 21, then soared to number 6, and a fortnight later, it began a three-week run at number 2 in July. And although much of this episode is essentially

a clip show, here's the leader in the studio, backed by the Glitter Band. So yes, chaps, obviously, like all Christmas episodes, they're going to be leaning very hard on the repeat performances. But, you know, in 1972 that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It would be another chance to see, as they say in the telepapers. So, on Christmas Day

the Pop Craze youngsters would have been salivating at the chance to see Starman again. Absolutely. And any chance of hearing this fucking amazing record is one's take. Yes, because it is fucking amazing, isn't it? Well, yeah. And the really odd thing about Glitter is how there's no truly sort of great

non-parodic period from which he then downfalls in a parody. Even here, doing his finest record by miles, I think this is his best record. He looks like benny hill parody of pop but you know eric more eric morcombe as spick sparkle is a better dancer and performer but that's perhaps why gad's vanishment from pop is complete and total not just because of his later

crimes but because i think the bulk of his records bar this one i'm not saying they're not worth keeping but he has completely vanished you know when you buy a glam pop compilation from sainsbury's now of course the glitter band will be on there yeah you know gad's been written out and i suspect the place to hear him now the most is probably american sports events where they seem totally dimly oblivious to his history and his conviction yeah it's easy to reject him because the contrast between this kind of up-tempo party pop and his crimes is so... I remember when Channel 4 did their

top 100 best-selling singles to mark 50 years of the chart and every other entry was covered in some depth, many with interviews, but Gary Glitter's was cut short after about 10 seconds. The voiceover saying, this man used to be one of the most popular entertainers in the country.

Not anymore. The thing that makes him so horrifying is that he really did con everyone you won't find in the 70s really any rumors i don't think um you know he wasn't remotely sinister he was comedic and his endless comebacks afterwards got parodied in smash hits and that kind of lame but lovable thing was his his profile throughout his career the long twilight of his career you realize what good cover that provided him of course a lot of glam rock and glam pop was bit dodge yeah slightly older men who'd been in the industry longer than their newfound fame really indicated dressed in ridiculous kind of outfits surrounded by 12 year old girls but in glitter's case, yeah, obviously it turned out to be real,

which is all a shame, because this record's fucking mental. It's brilliant. This bizarre, repetitive rotation of moments. This kind of, it's dehumanised sort of proto-dub, this record. I'd slot it next to Rock On. You mentioned David Essex.

It's white dub, isn't it? Exactly. Before dub even took hold in reggae. Well, quite, yeah. Absolutely. slot it next to rock on you mentioned david essex well it's white dub isn't it exactly before dub even took hold in reggae well quite yeah absolutely but but those same sort of techniques with rock on you can at least establish a kind of a narrative or message to it there's no significance to this record it's all about effect and the effect you can see it in the audience here it makes you move not not particularly because it has a groove but because it almost like it's like built out of samples from rocks past just kind of ruthlessly put together and that trippy dubbiness is something that you know i mean they do it repeatedly

throughout the episode the backroom boys up in the bbc gantry they start putting wibbly wobbly effects on the camera and for the kids all of that stuff's naturally immediately addictive it is it is for kids it's like those whistles that only under 18s can hear that the response to it is kind of pavlovian and that two drummer you know bass heavy vibe is so brilliant and influential no hi-hats no cymbals just toms and kick and snare you can feed this forward not just i would say to adam and the ants and bow wow wow but also in a way to the next wave of of sort of the wave that's going to come after the wave that's about to come in glam i hear this stuff in the base city

rollers as well i think it's it's usually important and in a way it's the one record in his career in which gary glitter's, his strengths, his vocal in this is this weird thing. It's almost driven out of existence by the wallop of the band. And when you do finally get to hear it, it's this weird kind of wheezy, thin, nasal, fogey-ish voice. Even he looks unsure in this performance when he starts singing and he's giving himself a slap on the back every time he reaches the end of the line but with each line i mean these are the best lyrics he ever did rock and roll rock and roll rock and roll rock and roll hey hey hey hey those are amazing lyrics even say acdc who are similarly lyrically limited to stuff about rock and roll their songs at least include trajectories and and narratives in their lyrics.

What makes this song great is it's got no narrative, no story, no protagonist, no tradition. And I love what Leander's done here. This is Leander's record, really. I mean, I remember reading a quote from him regarding this record where he said, you know, we'd produced something that was like all the records we'd ever heard before and yet were different to them all.

We were writing and making the sort of record that we had both loved to listen to when we were 14 and 15 years old, yet it wasn't preconceived. We'd not planned it that way, but when we played the tapes back, the sound we heard was a revelation. It still is. It's a masterpiece because it's practically inhuman, this record. The drums and guitars, they're echoed and stretched out so much they don't really appear to be played by human beings and it's got these big cavernous grunts

in it which which really do sound like dub the performance is great a couple of moments really stood out to me the guitarist putting the strap back on his star-shaped guitar when it falls off i love that bit and i love that guitar man oh man yeah no because you know when buying a guitar the first consideration should always be how's this going to look on top of the pops yeah i also really like the girl who clearly quite fancies a frog with a completely disinterested tony blackburn because he's just bobbing about in his own solipsism and i love the moment at the end as well, when I love any moment in Top of the Pops when this happened,

where the record fades out, but one of the drummers carries on hammering his tom, this weird sort of shard of low finesse. So a fantastic performance of an amazing record. Yeah, shame about the singer. Yeah, I mean, the beat is the DNA of glam, isn't it? It's essentially Adrian Street in Morse code. It just skips around for a bit and then just punches you in the back of the head while you're talking to the ref.

Yeah, yeah. It's just perfect. Yeah, it hits you up physically, this record, beyond anything else. I mean, to me, this is the first pop song I ever heard. I'm four years old when this comes out. Well, no, I'm three when this comes out. This episode, half the songs are part of my life in 1972,

and half of them just aren't. But this is one of them that is. You know, I said earlier that I was at my mum's bingo wall singing next to the bingo blower, and this was the song i sang because it's just hey just grabbing the microphone just going hey i'm punching the air and it's like is this pop music fucking yes i like it more please i was excited by the bingo blower they used to do bingo at the old folks home all the time amazing piece of equipment when i actually started being a bingo

caller i was so disappointed that the blowers had gone and it was just a screen and a button that you pressed. And you couldn't do the lingo because all the cunts who went there wanted as many bingo games in as quickly as possible. Scum, all of them. Anyway, Merry Christmas. Let's get everything off to a nice, smooth smooth uncomplicated start with one of the best pop singles of the 70s being sung by a serial child sex offender yes grab a mince pie

have a baileys with a lager top relax and luxuriate in the cozy glow so it is sort of a tricky one this but it's sort of not. I remember when he came up on a very, very early chart music. Yeah, Chart Music 3. Yeah, which I would have listened back to, but I no longer have any of the old equipment required to play it back. And besides, when you hear it, it's just like, maybe had a little fun. But I think we said back then

the spiritual and creative distance between on the one hand this record and on the other the actual real life of this cunt is so unbridgeably huge that it's easy to digest this without feeling like you've somehow let this

person into your home. Or you've given a load of money to the paedophile information exchange. Yeah, precisely. I don't think about the human being that much when I respond to modernist art anyway, you know. Or indeed any art. You know, I grew up into like the fall Alfred Hitchcock, Philip Larkin, you know, Phil Spector's Christmas album and all that.

But when the human being is as distant from the work as this, it's like watching a film where the key grip turned out to be a strangler. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, he is there front and centre showing out. But this record is not about a moment of spiritual connection between the listeners and Paul Gad because he's sealed inside a silver bubble floating around. And what you're responding to is the surface of the bubble and not the paedophile inside it.

Because what did he ever mean? You know what I mean? It's not like he was the voice of the Woodstock generation or something. You know, now all these boomers wrestling with their screwballs you know it would have been if it had been crosby stills gnashing glitter um that might be hard to listen to you know for several reasons but not a piece of abstract sound created by mike leander and the glitter band with some awful sex criminal standing in front of it. You know, it's like some edgelord punk band putting a picture of a serial killer

on the cover of the album, right? That's the level at which this is uncomfortable. No more than that. So don't give him credit he doesn't deserve. Yes. The only way in which the presence of Gary Glitter is important here is in the clash between the dry 70s minimalism of the sound and the lurid visuals

right and that's obviously a big part of the point the fact that the performers have overdone their image to a ludicrous degree while the music is just the steel exoskeleton of something that doesn't exist right like you can only see the edges there's no there's almost no reverb no movement no counterpoint there's no meaning it's just this and it's yeah ugly and beautiful and it's unapologetic and it's 50 foot high you know and people usually talk about british glam in, you know, brickies in eyeliner and all that stuff. But there's usually something in the music that suggests glamour or glitz or exoticism or fantasy or a party or something. Whereas this record's about as glamorous as ferroconcrete,

you know, which is the best thing about it. Yes. Also, it's more alien and it's more awe-inspiring in its complete blankness and inhumanity, you know, and it's primal and contrived and could only have been a product of the British 70s, you know, and it's not diminished in any way by anyated horror. No. In that episode when we talked about Gary Glitter, I mentioned that, you know, while I was doing a pub quiz and Gary Glitter was in the picture round and someone tried to beat me up and got thrown out of the pub. Well, just before lockdown, I was doing quizzes at this pub where I usually play all the music off my iPod

because it's easier. But in this pub, they said, no, no no we've got a tablet that does spotify and it's right over the other end of the pub and you won't be able to get to it so don't worry about it we'll play some music and you just do your thing it's like okay fair enough one night i'm there doing the quiz and the pubs rammed out and they'd set a 70s playlist up on spotify and spotify decided to play not one but two gary glitter records and this was the first one and immediately as soon as you hear the first second of it you know what it is yeah yeah and so my eyebrows shot up and i thought oh fucking hell

here we go loads of people are gonna kick off on me and it's nothing to do with me and the pub's so crowded that i can't get to the tablet to change it. So I'm like, oh, well, you know, I'll just have to blame the landlord for it. So I'm bracing myself and nothing happens. And I wait a bit longer and it's like, you must know what this is now. Yeah, yeah. And I look round and there's people just sat there just tapping their feet and like going, yeah, so what? It's a tune. It's like, oh, that's interesting.

I think this has become a glitter band record in a way. Yeah. You know, because people like it so much we find ways you know this is the thing all that shit's about oh no one's going to play michael jackson singles anymore well that's not happening because how can you be a human and live without don't stop till you get enough it's very very difficult and it's similar with this record i mean it's weird to to think that he was ever a pop star anyway yeah just because of what he is like when i was at high school i sat at one of those old fashioned desks with the inkwell in it and the lift up lid you know what i mean yeah she'd obviously been there for like the cover of schools out yeah without the knickers and scratched it at the top of the desk with a compass were the words julie for gary glitter even before we know what we now know that seemed a really strange thing for a school girl to

write yeah because of all the many pop pinups who don't make sense he must be the most unfathomable not just because he was an ugly old cunt but because of the the strange queasiness of his present he doesn't look authentically confident yeah he also no he's too monstrous to seem vulnerable right he's like he's simultaneously 50 and 12 yeah those little vole eyes and nervous smile and i mean it's one thing to expect young girls to fancy some, you know, lantern-jawed muscular zilch with no charisma. Because at least that's a blank wall on which they can project their fantasies. But who would ever have sexual thoughts about this fat hybrid of Benny from Crossroads and Fred West?

He looks simultaneously sinister and weak, which is hardly surprising considering what he is, but it's not a combination that usually wows the teeny poppers, is it? He was just, I think, just incredibly lucky to run into Leander. It's interesting. I was reading interviews with Glitter at the time that this record came out, and he was sort of searching for highfalutin justifications for the record. He actually compared...

I read something where he was quoted at the time as citing, you know, Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. Oh, shit. Well, no, nothing to do with Sticks of Butter, He was quoted at the time as citing, you know, Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. Well, no, nothing to do with sticks of butter, but I think there's a line where Brando says, we don't need words. And Glitter said that, you know, he used that quote as a kind of counter to the lack of lyrical kind of complexity of this record. Yeah, I remember that scene now where Marlon Brando lobbed it in and went, hey! I remember that scene now where Mol and Brando lobbed it in and went, Hey! But there's a lot of these unique vertical records in this episode that don't really lead anywhere, but are just astonishing.

And even though he's a joke figure, and even at the time he was a joke figure, even a joke can kind of just make something astonishing now and then. This is by miles his best record. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever miles his best record. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever seen his film?

No. Oh, only the clips that everyone else has seen. It's a terrible film. I'm talking about the somewhat hopefully titled Remember Me This Way. Yes. It's a very gloomy thing, right? Really, it's just a documentary about how famous

and important Gary Glitter is uh with that peculiar fantasy sequence yeah he kung fu's a bunch of goons you know yes it's about as convincing as buffy the vampire slayer you know and it but most of it is just him saying nothing of interest in his weird affected posh voice, pretending to be interviewed, staged conversations between Mike Leander and his manager or whatever, and some live footage which only shows off what a truly horrible singer he really was.

He's awful. But what's weirdest about it is this film has got the exact production values of a 1970s British porno it reeks of full ashtrays and empty scotch bottles

in an upstairs office in Greek Street it's like the negative flip side of that Italian documentary about Johan Cruyff from the 70s, which is Il Profetto del Gol, which is all this amazing, beautiful footage of Cruyff presented with the exact production values of a 1970s Euro porno, all glossy and fuzzy and funky. It's much better. Stick that on the video playlist for any 70s football and Euro sleaze lovers who are inexplicably bored and alone over Christmas. Costume-wise, Glitter's in his Bako foil rig out, but it's still early days, isn't it? So the shoulders are only slightly padded,

while the Glitter band appear to be tugged out in spangly mime artist gear. They haven't got the look nailed down just yet. These are early days for glam. The musicians are wearing non-super superhero suits with what you might describe as

unflattering camel toes. I was having more fun looking at the audience, to be honest. A very peculiar bunch. I mean, if you remember, we saw that episode two years before this, right from 1970. And the entire audience were like these hand-picked, heartbreakingly beautiful Kensington and Chelsea honeys,

you know, dancing around in miniskirts. Kensington High Street honeys. Indeed, yeah. And it's now, it's all changed. And I think it's because they've let the general public in. And this era of the general public being showcased on top of the pops, which I guess would last up until the introduction of Zoo, is a great thing.

Even more so in this one, because there's a definite bbc works do vibe going on isn't it yeah as we'll discover yeah yeah yeah i don't like to be sort of a little bit rude about these people who probably don't deserve it but there's a couple of grumpy older sisters there's someone who looks like someone's mum except it's 1972 so she might be 19 yeah there's a lost model type dancing on her own and looking disgusted like she was like last time she was top of the pops it was 1970 and it's like what's going on here there's a perfectly generic mr early 70s in shiny green jacket yes flares and a Rod the Mod mullet.

Yeah, who nowadays would have a huge beard and a third Reich hairdo. I mistook him for Rod Stewart at one point, later on in the episode. Is he the one who's got the Beach Boys T-shirt on? Yes. Yes. And also that mum you mentioned, Taylor. She makes several appearances. The camera is clearly fond of her. But she's got, she's odd. You're right, she may well

be 20, but she could be late 40s. But she's poppy because she's got a very sort of silvery glammy belt on, but her dress is quite normal. But yeah, the audience would delight throughout this episode. There's also a Scott

recognisable by his tartan flat cap. Yes. Possibly the first appearance of the tartan flat cap, which was absolutely endemic throughout the 70s. Yeah, and there's a strange hand-clopping fellow in black with big teeth. Looks like an Osmond at a funeral. And an owlish bloke with glasses and a neckerchief who looks like a

psychiatrist relaxing on the deck of his yacht and rising slowly from the crowd a deep putrid fug of unwashed hair grease and undeodorized teenage armpit but point is, because it's 1972, the kids are not the vague wash of grey and blue that decolourises the mid-70s episodes. There's still all this naive flash, you know, and residual 60s optimism. And it still feels like someone in there might actually have been having a good time. Yeah, no-one's coordinated.

It's like multiple patterns and multiple checks and multiple everything. It's super colourful. Yeah, a quilt of an audience. To me, this is the first ever pop song. It's amazing. And time has not withered its bizarreness. No. Not at all.

It's still a fucking really strange record. But as we'll see throughout this episode this is a time when really fucking strange records can do amazingly well oh gary why why i remember watching that i was working at aol and the whole fucking office floor stopped to look at the screens when gary glitter was giving that speech after he got done. And it's like the little child in me didn't die, but he, you know, got hit by a car and grazed his knee like Willie Weasel. Oh, man.

So Rock and Roll Part 2 would finish the year as the seventh biggest selling single of 1972 and would also get to number seven in America, where it began a strange afterlife in 1976 when a PR man for the Kalamazoo Wings, a minor league ice hockey team, suggested it be used as a timeout music during games. When he moved to the NHL club, the Colorado Rockies,

he took the music with him, causing radio stations in Denver to be bombarded with requests for the rocky hockey theme song after the other pro teams in denver started using it it spread across america and became known as that song they play at the sports event when you said the kalamazoo wings i thought they were a tribute band meanwhile in the uk it was covered by the human league on the holiday atep in 1980 sampled by the time lords in doctor in the tardis which got to number one in june of 1988 and was used in the joker a couple of years ago the follow-up i didn't know i loved you till i saw you rock and roll got to number four in October

and Glitter would go on to score two number twos and two number ones in 1973 oh and by the way he also got divorced this year so it's safe to assume that he didn't have an orphan delivery from Savicado this Christmas amazing fucking single god bless whatever air stewardess knackered David Essex out the night

before they recorded this, eh? LAUGHTER Thank you. There you go, that's Gary Glitter right there looking over all the number ones. Nice to have as us a party time all the ladies who are married to the cameraman. Nice to have you here with us. We've got loads and loads of cameramen. It's been a great year for the Osmonds,

the Jackson 5 and David Cassidy. Right now, to sing Papi Love, here's Donny Osmond. And they called it puppy love We cut back to Tony, surrounded by a gaggle of women who were older than the usual top of the pub's bystanders. He tells us that they're all the wives of the camera crew and they have a bit of a giggle. Then he tells us that it's been a great year for the Osmonds, David Cassaday and the Jackson Five.

But it's not a great link for Tony as he introduces Pappy Live by Donny Osmond. Pappy Live, fucking hell. What a professional. All he has to do is say who that was, you know, who's coming up. It's not that tough a gig. He had one fucking job.

He fucks up every single aspect of this remit. Completely Pappy live. And what's always heartbreaking about Tony is he's not got the brazenness to just, yeah, brazen it out basically. You can see in his face he's crestfallen. That one fucked up.

We're going to see a lot of Tony being crestfallen in this episode, aren't we? Yeah, still not enough. We last covered Donny Osmond, the boy who loves the moon, the countryside, wind, trees,

and fishing, and suffers a broken heart when he encounters war, pollution, and a bird with a broken wing in chart music number 17. And this, a cover of the Paul Anka single,

which got to number three in April of 1960, is his fourth solo single, but his debut in the UK. It's the follow-up to Hey Girl, which was never released as a single over here, and it got to number three in America in April. But when it was put out over here in June, it entered the chart at number 36, then soared 23 places to number 13, and two weeks later, it wrestled Take Me Back Home by Slade

off the summit of Mount Pop. Don is currently in Utah with his his family wondering what coca-cola tastes like so here's a video of sorts of him and his family on stage in their elvis costumes they're all wearing those white vegas costumes aren't they yeah and alas five beaming drips in elvis suits does not add up to elvis any more than getting volleyed in the bollocks five times adds up to a blowjob. I mean, look, a graph showing all of the Osmonds and Osmond-related records arranged according to their quality would look like an outline of Norwich Cathedral. And without wanting to spoil anything, we may get to be steeplejacks later,

but what we're looking at here is the nave or possibly the south transept, if not quite the crypt where little Jimmy lives. And what's strange is that for such a well-known record, it's quite hard to respond to this. Well, I mean, it's impossible to respond to this positively, but it's also hard to respond to this well i mean it's impossible to respond to this positively yeah um but it's also hard to respond with sufficient negativity to be very entertaining because really it is sludge um yeah and what i was telling is that i couldn't actually remember whether we've done this record before or not right i do recall doing something donnie related at some point yeah

because i can remember comparing him to his latter day analog bieber um and frowning over the fact that his selena gomez was his own sister um but beyond that it's all as dark as the background against which the fellas are performing here which is a bit creepy you see their blind in white suits glimmering against this pitch black abyss I don't know where this was filmed but whoever

filmed it seems extraordinarily keen to keep that location secret because I mean sadly I think we can rule out interstellar space or the Mariana Trench. But visually, it might as well be. I mean, David's obsession with the darkness surrounding the stage on top of the pops would be aggravated beyond endurance.

This is red zero, green zero, blue zero. It's on a stage, isn't it? But it's not a live performance because, you know, there's no girls pissing themselves and screaming. No. Which was the accompaniment to this song usually. Oh, yeah, without a doubt. It's in an abyss, as Taylor says.

This bloody record, it's one of, you know, you know that thing where you find out what was number one when you were born? This was number one when I was born. So I'd love to. Oh, no. Yes. I mean, which means I'd obviously to... Oh, no. Yes. I mean, which means I'd obviously love to salvage something from it.

But it's difficult because this is less a record than a kind of series of great and incisive commercial decisions coming together, really. I mean, it is, I think, inevitable that this was the moment that the UK sort of finally totally capitulated to the Osmonds because it's an extremely manipulative record, but a very effective one. I mean, for a few reasons, you know, the aforementioned kind of coming back of the 50s. In the summer of 72, you know, you've got Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry doing a Wembley revival gig.

You know, the 50s are already making their inroads into the 70s, so it's logical that the kind of other side of the late 50s and early 60s teen culture, i.e. sort of Paul Anka, Tab Hunter-style love songs, should come back. You know, Donnie's 13 when he sings this, and he's from Salt Lake City, and he's therefore going to equate and be relatable

to pre-teenagers, I think, boys and girls, more than an average 15-year-old kid in 1972. He sounds younger than a teenager here. He's not quite the slappable, chubby freak that is Jimmy Osmond, but he's not a pensioner like his brothers. And so it's inevitable that this hits bigger than Go Away Little Girls, say, at a time when you could argue, you could argue at this point, they've already passed their commercial peak in the States yeah but the production is so manipulative as well

it accentuates oh it's calibrated to the nth degree without doubt i mean when paul anchor wrote this he was 18 and he wrote it for an f1 cello who was 18 as well but but the production of this accentuates that pre-teen feel he's double tracked so his voice has this slightly unreal kind of patina to it but it also totally dominates the mix the backing music is just treacly and insipid but that doesn't really matter because what this song is what this song is ultimately it's kind of um it's edging denial pornography for young girls and boys basically you know it it puts him in the room with you while the record's on but crucially when it when the record isn't on it puts him in in

people's heads when the record's you know not even playing when you're dreaming and when i read pop annuals of this period that feature donny or pop mags that are entirely about Donnie. It's very much just a series of kind of sort of photo sets, you know, that are called, like, Donnie Dreaming of You, where he's in a bed. Or, you know, Donnie Goofing Around, where he's wearing crazy stuff. Or it's basically, you know, Donnie Poses for Feature in Donnie Magazine. You know, it's great. And, of course, all the astonishing tidbits about you know in liking seven up and stuff but um his voice it has this Karen Carpenter like smoothness

but but whereas in Karen Carpenter records and Carpenters records rather you do get the sense that Karen's lived a little um in this record you know you're getting played by yeah this denial edging porn basically as every girl watching this episode in 1972 was no don is not allowed to date until he's 16 which is great because that makes him even more untouchable yes absolutely but it means if you're a 14 year old girl you can go well well i can't have him but neither can anyone else so that's fine two years time i'm having him it's like when the sunday sport ran photos of a 15 year old lindsey dawn mckenzie in a school uniform and say oh wait till she's 16 lads they're coming out well yeah and to be fair donny sells it well you know key moment, of course, in this record is the help me, help me, help me please moment.

Like a rabbit caught in a fence, isn't it? I mean, of course, you know, it's going to divide the audience straight down the middle. If you believe those moments, this is an irresistible record. If you don't, of course, this record, Puppy Love, is everything that's wrong with music. This song was definitely part of my life because my cousin, who was, I think she was 13 or 14,

she had it. And every Sunday, my dad would fetch my mum from me granny's house, and the kids would be there and everything. And I'd stand by their radiogram and play air guitar to everything on the Top 30 Rundown. And I remember one time being in her bedroom and seeing the single that she owned

and being absolutely blown away that you could put a song on a bit of plastic and you could put it on a record player and the song would come out. I think before then, all the bands and singers in the world would have to queue up inside Radio 1 and wait their turn to do their song. You know what I mean? The idea that you could put a song down on something. Insane. It's still insane.

It's still a miracle. So yeah, this song was in my life as well. And it's not that I didn't like it. It was like, oh, can we have Gary Glitter, please? He's better. Well, they're about to completely clear up in England. You know, the Osmonds, Crazy Horses, et cetera. But there's very much a sense here that they're dividing to conquer, if you like.

They're replicating. Jimmy's been given the Tiny Tots and the Old Folk and Marie's going to end up with a fucking line dancing Brummies. And Donnie's been given the Teenagers, you know, with this record. Yeah, I mean, the story of the Osmonds that everybody takes as rote nowadays is that everything was lovely until Donny got

pushed to the foreground and most of their energies were spent on his solo career but that was never the case in Britain all they'd done in the UK was get to number 40 for two weeks with down by the lazy river yeah yeah in April of this year and so it turns out that as far as the UK is concerned it's the Osmonds that are being dragged along in the toothy wake of their slightly younger brother i mean it's nice that they let him out of his veal crate for the day but you like you can understand why people got irate about it in 1972 anyone who did was allowing their self-important lack of perspective to get the better of them because there are far worse pieces of of low impact pop music than this like before and since

but ultimately this just isn't very good or interesting like either musically or semiotically speaking, mainly because, as Neil says, it's just a cynically constructed and targeted thing without the beauty or the energy or imagination to redeem that. And no teen idol has ever transcended the form with sincerity and piety and without a genius on the project somewhere. You know, it could happen by chance, but I'm not sure it ever has. And I mean, covering pre-Beatles pop songs

is always as much an admission of bankruptcy and creative defeat for a teen pop act as covering Beatles songs is for a rock band. Yeah. And another shit move is the predictable and slightly cynical thing where you take the pinup of the group and credit him as a solo artist,

even though that's essentially completely meaningless. Whenever the song is a doe-eyed ballad called Leave a Loaf of love in my little love loft or you know lovely love with my lovely little lover or something or my dream girl is a socially awkward 12 year old um although better that donnie sings a song with that title than certain other artists on this episode oh it's just a shite thing to do, isn't it? There's no reason why this is a Donnie record rather than an Osmonds record,

other than a very precise marketing strategy. And that kind of thing is fine in this sort of pop music, so long as it's invisible. But as soon as you can see it, this clearly, it becomes a bit obnoxious yeah i mean everything about this performance is teeny bopper crack isn't it well they're not even calling them teeny boppers now it's weenie boppers that's the the term of abuse used in melody maker in the nme at the moment i mean the only thing that's missing really is donnie with his shirt

off feeding an apple to an orphan pony. Actually, the only other things that are missing are teenage girls keening and howling and being dragged off by St John's ambulance men who all, funnily enough, look like Derek Giler. I mean, what's the appeal about the Osmonds to British girls? Is it to do with the fact that they're American? I don't know. They appear as emissaries from somewhere better.

Yeah, but do the Osmonds appeal to British teenage girls? Or does just Donny? You know, the Osmonds actually curiously start making interesting records, as we'll see later in this period, sort of after their commercial peak in the States. But it is just Donny. I keep coming back to pornography, not because there's... So do I.

But, you know... There's a lockdown on, don't you know? But sexuality isn't mentioned in this record, in a way. And, you know, it's the thing that can't be spoken about. But the whole record's appeal is about sexuality, is about that pre... It's not sexuality is about that pre it's not innocent um you know it's not puppy love if you like it's not the innocent sort of way it's portrayed the way this record makes teenage girls feel and the way this and pre-teenage girls feel

about donny and the way crucially i come back to the fact it's not about what happens when this record is on it's about what happens when you're not listening to this record and just dreaming of Donnie. This record will be in your ear. All his songs round about this time are the same thing, aren't they? I mean, Go Away Little Girl is essentially even younger girl, get out of my mind. Yeah.

I wonder if the appeal was partly the weird alien-ness of it because they were so American and so glossy and the fact that they were Mormons and all that stuff just made them seem even weirder. So at a time when an exotic, weird alien quality was seen as a good thing in a teen idol rather than now where it's seen as career suicide, maybe that was it i remember as a

very small kid seeing the donny and marie show on tv and being a bit confused and disorientated by it just because of the queasy simpering unreality yeah yeah right which as a kid struck me not so much as blandness but as a kind of alien thing and i i wish that the osmonds in general had been even more like that because ultimately nowadays the frustrating thing about the osmonds and osmond discussion is the airtightness of their dullardry you know it's like you you can poke into the mormon thing as we have a bit in the past, but beyond that, it's tricky because the blandness goes all the way through. They're like a gas planet. There's nowhere to land on the surface. And if you keep going in, you just get crushed by the overwhelming pressure

of this featureless haze. It would have been so much better for everyone, and especially us, this haze it's it would have been so much better for everyone and especially us if you know if donnie had turned out to be a goat fucking extraordinaire or something or a massive coke head there's still time donnie van der beek but the fact that he never was those things means less fun for us as well as him you know and none of us are going to heaven, so what was the fucking point in that? At least the banana splits had a bit of mystery about them. But, I mean, this is why they draw such a sort of... They're always negatively compared to the Jackson 5, because in comparison, you know,

the Jackson 5 are a riot of idiosyncrasy compared to the Mormons, who are just... Yeah, the Os... See, I just called them the Mormons when I meant just, yeah. You see, I just called them the Mormons when I meant to say the Osmonds, because you can, in a way, because it's six sets of teeth, isn't it? Now, chaps, it's three days since Christmas Day,

so your annuals, they're still pretty much fresh currency, aren't they? And a glance of the Fab 208 annual of 1973 tells a tale or two about the state of playing pop they've gone for a massive front and back collage of the heartthrobs of the day rather looks like the cover of the island sampler you can all join in naturally the osmonds feature prominently with donnie stood in between tony blackburn and jack wilde with a massive david cassidy sitting at the front because they've fucked up on the dimensions.

I mean, if he stood up, he'd be twice the size of the bloke next to him, George Best in a really shit tank top. Other participants, Mark Bolan

in a smiley face t-shirt, Cliff Richard pointing off and shouting at someone for some reason, Davy Jones, Kenny Everett, and Dave Lee Travis right at the back

in a psychedelic smoking jacket. Hang on, Davy Jones? Davy Jones, yes. Still hanging in there. Star of the Saturday morning reruns. Yeah. Let's talk sort of about Gentle Ben and Scooby-Doo.

Inside, there's a pretend pen pal exchange between Donnie and Jack Wildee um loads of pics and facts with an x on the end uh the usual girly rubbish about get some makeup on and a huge section called we love you because which takes in practically every dishy male celebrity, up to and including Rodney Buse, Jack Lord and Cat Stevens and Richard Beckinsale. And here's Donnie's. We love you because you're natural and nice and success hasn't changed you.

We love you because of your shiny straight hair, which always looks so nice to touch. We love your big clear eyes and your freckled face, which lights up into a smile at every chance. You make us happy when you sing and dance. We love you for being young and still a boy, but old enough to make our hearts beat a little faster we love your voice which skips and jumps but is always true and clear as a bell we love you for being the boy we'd like to have as a brother a son a boyfriend and a someone we'd like to be with all the time. Jesus Christ. Tony Blackburn and Kid Jensen are in there as well.

Tony is the greatest disc jockey we've ever known, and Kid has flowing blonde hair and a soft Canadian accent, and he's young and speaks for us. One thing that we forget about Donny and his appeal to teenage girls in particular and young girls in particular is that he was clean. Do you know what I mean? It seems like a little thing, but we forget it.

He looked so clean. And let's be honest, little boys are not clean. Little British boys in the early 70s were certainly not clean. So just the fact that he looked like he'd scrubbed up nice, you know, and probably smelled nice, was probably a big part of his appeal, I think, to little girls at that time. Oh, my, no, no, I would have banked on about Donny. Oh, isn't his hair so clean?

He's lovely. Such a nice turned out lad. Why can't you be like him? We've got another two years of Osman mania in the UK, which would probably culminate when the BBC ran that five-night special Osman show. Oh, yeah. And got the Osmonds to co-present Top of the Pops with Noel Edmonds. So Puppy Love would spend five weeks at number one,

yielding the floor to the next single we're going to hear, and would finish the year as the third best-selling single of 1972. The follow-up, Too Young, would spend two weeks at number five in October, and he'd close out the year with Why, getting to number three earlier this month. By which time, the news that his balls had dropped had made the front page of the UK tabloids and he'd realigned with the Osmonds for their first tour of the UK.

More of whom later. Oh, and can I do another of those we love you because things? Have a guess who this is. It's very short so you know it was clearly written by fab 208 annual staff member philip a column we love you because you're big and lovable like a teddy bear you play records we love to hear and have a smooth, friendly voice that we recognise immediately when we hear it on the radio. You have dark, curly hair and a bristly beard and we feel that you protect us and help us when we had a problem.

We love you because you're near to us And not distant like some men Oh, Christ, no Quack, quack, oops This is not a puppy love. This is not a puppy love. This is not a puppy love. This is not a puppy love. Canine affection from one Donny Osmond with his puppy love.

I suppose one of the most controversial characters of 72 was Alice Cooper with his rather unorthodox presentation of songs such as this. School's out! APPLAUSE Edmunds, surrounded by loads of girls and some cunt with a false beard, tells us that one of the most controversial characters of 1972 was Alice Cooper with his rather unorthodox presentation of songs.

At this, the girl to his left raises her eyebrow as if to say, you don't know what you're going on about, mate. And she was right. She's lovely, I like her. Anyway, here's Scores Out by Alice Cooper. Formed in Cortez High School, Phoenix, the Airwigs were a band put together by the 16-year-old Vincent Furnier

with other members of his school's cross-country team in order to dress up like the Beatles and perform barren nights-like parodies of mop fab songs about running for a local talent show. After winning the competition, they decided to make a go of being in a band, changed their name to the Spiders, became the house band at a local club and put out their debut single Why Don't You Love Me, on a local label. By 1967, they had made inroads into the Los Angeles music scene, changed their name to Naz, and relocated there by the end of the year,

sharing a house at some point with Pink Floyd. When they found out that Todd Rundgren's band had virtually the same name, they changed it once again to Alice Cooper. In 1968, they linked up with Frank Zappa, who was looking for new acts for his label Straight Records, and recorded two LPs, which both flopped. However, they were encouraged by another band on the label, the all-female GTOs, to drag up a bit and put on some slap. In 1970, the band relocated to Michigan and immediately clicked with an audience used to the MC5 and the Stooges. Meanwhile, Zappa sold straight records to Warner Brothers, and they told the band they would keep them on if their next single was any good.

So they put out I'm 18 which got to number 21 on the Billboard chart and instantly became one of the biggest rock bands in the USA. This single is the follow-up to Be My Lover which failed to chart in the UK. It's the title track and lead-off single from their fifth LP which came out over here in june and was held up in america because of the inclusion of a pair of paper knickers made in britain which were impounded by us customs because they weren't fireproof it's entered the chart at number 44 then soared 27 places to number 17 and then assisted by an appearance on top of the pops a tabloid outcry about it is stage show which reached wembley empire pool and involved baby killing and hanging and all

sorts put it to number one in august knocking off donny osmond and here is a repeat of the original performance on top of the pops three words gentlemen kids live in it right listen before we get started on this one before we get started on the actual record noel's intro is extremely revealing i think right so far on this program which is less than 10 minutes old we've had a child molester and a group of adherents to a sham religious cult based on exploitation misogyny and the belief that black people have no souls and must be excluded from the temple uh all of them wheeled on with nobody batting an eyelid and then the guy who is introduced with a perceptible sneer by future megalomaniac and life-threatening conspiracy peddler Noel Edmonds

as a controversial character is a golfing Republican with a sense of humour who likes dressing up for a laugh. It's this bizarre assumption which lasted all through the 70s and 80s that the straight-looking establishment people and the deeply religious and those who played along with that and all those who appointed themselves guardians of public morality were the wholesome harmless upright citizens and the people who wore black and asked questions and did things their own way were reprobates from whom our children had to be protected. When, in fact, not only was this not true, the reality was almost the exact opposite. Authority figures, of course, were using their authorities as smokescreen.

Moral leaders were, at best, ill-informed and frequently corrupt or or even criminal and institutions charged with the physical or moral welfare of children were often factories for industrial scale abuse either emotional or worse um but this guy puts these golf clubs down long enough to say yah boo down with school and it's called the cops i mean yeah i've got a letter here which uh you fellas may or may not be familiar with um but some of the potcrow's youngsters won't be so allow me to read it dated 22nd of august 1972 addressed to the the Director of Public Prosecutions, 12 Buckingham Gate, London, WC1. Dear Sir, yesterday I arranged to have delivered to your office a copy of the record,

Scores Out, now being played by Radio 1 and 2 and on BBC1c one top of the pops you will also i trust have received a telegram from me requesting that you take action the bbc sick for playing this record on their program you will hear that the lyric contains the following chorus got no no principal, got no innocence, school's out for summer, school's out forever, school's been blown to pieces, ah, no more books, no more teachers. In our view, this record is subversive. I hope you agree and will take the appropriate action.

It could also amount to an incitement to violence. Yours faithfully, Mary Whitehouse. Of course, Mary Whitehouse. Now, that was the mentality. That was the level of thought and analysis and cultural literacy of the leaders of the movement, you know, the movement of the forces of reaction, people who would,

before too long, be taken seriously and elevated into positions of at least peripheral power. Yeah. These are the people who, for a time, would be guiding the country and passing judgment on the rest of us, right? Not just sour and pinched and nasty but really stupid and totally wrong about everything because they had no understanding of popular culture or culture of any kind

and because like for a lot of very religious people the truth was not actually important to them I'm sure Mrs Whitehouse will turn up again shortly For the foreign pop important to them. I'm sure Mrs Whitehouse will turn up again shortly. For the foreign pop craze youngsters who might not be aware, Mary Whitehouse

was the founder of the National Viewers and Listeners Association and by 1972 the nation's leading interfering rat bag. The Daily Mirror actually ran a poll to find out whether Mary Whitehouse was a force for good

or whether she should just fuck off and the results came back three to one in favor of the latter although a letter from stan shares of stockbridge went we need mary whitehouse to put over the public's point of view we applaud and want such healthy shows as on the buses and love thy neighbor yeah i knew you were going to say love thy neighbor yeah yeah yeah obviously stan shears hasn't seen mutiny on the buses or any of the on the buses of films, which is non-stop gusset lair, isn't it, basically? But worth remembering that while at this point Mary Whitehouse is a little bit of a national joke, she would later be courted by Margaret Thatcher

and given something of a role, something of an unofficial but influential role in the moral guidance of the nation as it was destroyed in the 1980s. Oh, Mary, Mary, why you bugging? Did you know that at one point in the late 60s, Mary Whitehouse lived two doors away from Enoch Powell? Yeah.

Why wasn't there a crowd funder to buy the house in the middle and give it to a gay Asian-Ugandan couple? That would have been fucking brilliant. Yeah, quick, somebody call Vince Powell. But part of the joy of this, schools out, of watching this performance, is what you can't see in a sense. You can sense all of that reaction at home.

You can sense it away. God, how joyous must it have been for so many kids that this got you know this replaced puppy love yes oh imagine being 15 when this song came out oh god during that glorious weekend between you leaving school for good and starting at the pie factory on monday but every now and then watching Top of the Pops, you are confronted with these moments that sort of feel historic.

Yes. You know, that realisation that this is obviously, it's the only show that everyone a certain age is watching. And that becomes so apparent

in moments like that. In moments like this, you can almost feel a nation's teenagers having their heads ripped off. It's just one of those moments. When Alice looks down the lens of the camera with his fencing foil,

for the no more teachers for you bit, you can feel all that adrenaline and release. I mean, especially after Puppy Love. God, yes. I've always loved Alice, and it starts here, I think. I know lots of people talk about the Starman appearance of Bowie that year but there's so many unforgettable TOTP appearances this year

this is one of them and what a glorious fantasy this song remains really you know it's essentially about a fantasy day that is real you know the last day of school is real and it's always a time of bedlam and hysteria of non-uniform real you know the last day of school is real um and it's always a time of bedlam and

hysteria of non-uniform and you know hoping someone's bought in crossfire so you can have a go but um but but the deeper fantasy that this introduces is of you know it's that line school's out forever the the end of school so complete so total i mean the idea of a school being blown to pieces isn't just a glorious mental image for any school kid school kids are going to buy into it The end of school, so complete, so total. I mean, the idea of a school being blown to pieces isn't just a glorious mental image for any school kid. School kids are going to buy into it because it's also genuinely reflective of just how much the summer holidays reveal the sham of school.

It kind of gets blown to pieces in the internal psyche of every kid. And that's the key thing with this record, I think, every kid. It's an inclusive record of course as a detroit band there's a there's a kind of studio-ness to it and there is the suggestion in there in one of the verses of never coming back to school that of course is purely fantastical for most of us we knew we'd be back after the summer holidays but it's an inclusive record this isn't just a fantasy for the naughty kids or the bad kids no and it doesn't exclude the creeps it's a record for everyone from the good kids or the bad kids no and it doesn't exclude the creeps it's

a record for everyone from the good kids in the front rows of the desks to us naughty fuckers pissing about at the back records take on school they're tricky because like you could compare it to baggy trousers but because there's similarly no condescension but i think a more telling comparison or a more revealing one if you you compare it to say Another Brick in the Wall you know, I mean all of these records acknowledge that the kind of hatred and trauma of a lot of school is real, but Another Brick in the Wall projects entirely

adult views and perspectives into the school experience to make this kind of ball-achingly obvious political point, whereas this record isn't like that at all, it's not condescending at all, it still sounds astonishing as well that crunchy guitar intro fuck me what a year for guitar intros as we'll see later on in the episode and the spooky playgroundness crucially for something that's

dark and twisted and and alice you know it's interesting magazines at the time pop magazines they firmly put alice cooper in the freak rock category, along with the Dolls and Mop the Hoople and all of that. But it's such a summer record. It's full of the bouncing joy of knowing that for the next two months, all rules are done and you don't have to fucking go to school. And the performance, oh my God, Father. If he'd appeared by himself, it'd already be unforgettable.

But I think that would have made it novelty in a kind of arthur brown kind of way yes but the key thing is is the band and the audience here and it's illustrative massively of that early 70s top of the pop dynamic that's so instantly watchable pure golden age telly you're watching pop history being made because it's one of those moments where watching it as a kid you'd have just thought right this has to get to number one and oh my god when it does silver machine is at number three yes i mean that's fucking nuts and and there's the wonderful moment not just when he points that thing down right down the lens but that crucial moment when he that really points out that inclusivity of the record the moment when alice starts bopping with that girl yes that's been dancing that could have gone one of two ways

that could have been creepy as fuck and if you imagine Gary Glitter doing it it would be creepy as fuck even before what we knew about him because he would never have the confidence to do it properly but Alice, he bops with her really well, they do the bump a bit and then there's that mad moment

where he grabs her hair and he kind of leads her backwards in this kind of frightening, ritualistic, noose-like moment and then releases her and launches into the chorus. But there's no worry there. No. It's just fucking fantastic. And she's into it.

He's into it. What a performance this is. Oh, yeah. In an episode full of lovely audience observations, this is the loveliest, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are the kids who want to be a little tiny bit wild, even if they're not quite sure what that entails.

But they see this emaciated ghoul with his sleazy leather gloves and his red balloon, and they think, okay, this is exactly what I'm going to be all about. Even if, like that girl, I'm still wearing what looks like a Laura Ashley maternity dress from C&A, and I've washed my hair in Duckham's queue, you know. But I don't know what happened to any of these kids, right? I don't know whether they followed through on this

and became proud rebels and resistors or whether they all grew up to be virginia bottomley or you know well that sinister woman who sits in the director's box at newcastle united next to the gay killing journalist dismembering horn of plenty um do you know what i mean it's this woman i forgot her name she looks like yeah she was born to clink champagne glasses with blowfeld and then turn on her heel while two goons throw someone into a pool full of crocodiles spoiler alert at the end she falls in and the crocodiles are yet no actually real life spoiler alert at the end she dies in her sleep at the age of 97 in a huge bed made out of woven 50-pound notes. Completely happy and fulfilled.

Anyway, look, whichever way they went, it's beautiful to see them here completely free of the bullshit of 1972. Yeah. And lost in a record which, if you were forced to rank all the great records on this episode would surely make the Champions League places at least. And it is a fantasy panto reality, but it's one which really hints at genuine excitement and genuine freedom. Even though when this episode went out at Christmas 1972, one month previously, his girlfriends died of a drug overdose. Wow.

So they're caught in that beautiful no man's land between the restricted freedom of childhood and the dangerous freedom of naive young adulthood. But that's where they are. And this is what that sounds like. And this is what that looks like. And it's blissful I mean this is the beginning of a wave of outrage about teenagers that

would get stoked by Teenage Rampage by the suite and would reach a peak in 1977 with a comic strip Kids Rule OK in action where all the adults in the world die from a plague and the kids take over and aggro is a way of life Where all the adults in the world die from a plague and the kids take over.

And aggro is a way of life. I'm a bit too young for this. I don't recall this being in my life. To me, school's new and it's brilliant. I get to play football and dance with the Rudy guys. Play school's out forever. If there was something similar in 1984, I'd have had it. I'd have been well up for it.

Yeah, no more pencils. That's the best bit. Yeah, man. Snap those pencils. Yeah, fuck you, graphite. And I love the Christmas cracker jokes in it as well. Like, we got no class. And we got no principles. Brackets. Principles. Which doesn't work in Britain. of jokes in it as well. Like, we got no class and we got no principles, brackets,

principles. Which doesn't work in Britain. No. No one cares. And as a kid, you'd have been delighted with the line about not being able to find something that rhymes. I know it's revealing the nuts and bolts, but you'd love that. Yeah. I mean, I don't even really give a toss about Alice Cooper beyond this

amazing record. No. I like some of his other stuff. I like the fact, you know, I like I'm 18. If just because it goes, I got a baby's brain and an old man's heart, which I think we can all relate to. Oh, yes. And Elected, if just because it's got one of the best videos ever.

Yeah, yeah. And I even like Poison, his best videos ever. Yeah, yeah. And I even, like, poison his hair metal sunset. Yeah, yeah. Sophie is obsessed with that record. Oh, yeah, because he looks so old. It's a bit of a tune. It is all right, yeah. But he looks so old in the video,

and it's even crappier than before, and he still can't sing a note. So it's hilarious. It's like all those late Aussie records that are just lovely rubbish. Yeah, like No More Tears. Except the difference is with Alice Cooper, there's no part of you thinking,

yeah, but Planet Caravan? It's like, no. Because it's just a logical conclusion of what he always did, you know. It's like a less musical twisted system. He gave up the booze, so now this is the 19th hole for him. You know, just piss, take, rock and roll.

But I can't remember the last time I chose to play an Alice Cooper record because really, to me, most of them just sound like a shit Panther Man. And I know that Alice Cooper had the riff first on Billion Dollar Baby. Panther Man. had the riff first on Billion Dollar Babies. Shady pasta man. But it's true that Alice Cooper had the riff first on Billion Dollar Babies. But that counts for nothing in this game.

Do you know what I mean? Elected is fantastic. 18 is fantastic. I think the 71 album, Love It To Death, is great as well. But basically go for the best of where they're all dressed as gangsters on the front. That's the fantastic best of when it comes to Alice Cooper. But yeah, I mean, what a moment.

What a fucking moment this is. I mean, I just, you know, I felt it just watching this episode. I'll never forget going from, you know, that move from James Galway to Thin Lizzy a while back. Coming from Puppy Love to this was similarly just total adrenaline. I think the best thing about Alice Cooper in a way is that none of the imperfections to put it mildly

about any of his music matter because Alice Cooper is all about things not mattering. Like he gets his head chopped off but it's, you know, fake. It's just the weird clarity of drunken nihilism. Yeah, drunken nihilism, but it's a beautifully finessed record. I mean, you know, that crunchy guitar intro.

Oddly enough, I was speaking to somebody the other day who used to tour manage Alice Cooper. And, you know, he said, because we were talking about just interviews and stuff. And he said one of the interview questions that Alice and his guitarist actually always get is, aren't you a bit bored of School's Out? Aren't you a bit bored of playing School's Out every night? And Alice's answer to that is always, why would I be bored of a record that's basically paid for my life? And that, you know, enables me now to bring out an album to my fans that sells only 5,000 copies.

It doesn't matter because I've got schools out. And he loves playing it every night. Who would not love playing that intro every night? There's something to be said by the way, and we'll say it repeatedly I think through this episode when we go through all the guitar bands here. Fuck me, guitars sound amazing in 1972. And intros,

guitar rock intros sound fucking astonishing in 1972. They don't get much better. And the backdrop on this performance is fucking mint, isn't it? A big astronaut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Big astronaut's helmet with the moon lander reflected in it. Oh, fucking hell.

And it's one of those performances as well where the Bat Room Boys' trippiness with the visuals suits it perfectly. Yes. Absolutely perfectly. A lot of the fuss about Alice Cooper is what he looked like. You know, a pioneer of glam. But in this performance,

he looks like Jim Morrison ripped from the grave, doesn't he? Well, yeah, I mean, he was never going to... He can't do pretty, can he? So he's just got to do ugly as best as he can. And he really does. And, you know, it's that thing of going to Detroit and basically becoming, in a sense, an honorary Brit in a way.

Because, you know, he is put together with bands. I've got a pop magazine, actually the same magazine where I was looking at pictures of Donny Osmond, where there is just a page. It's an advert for a magazine. It's called Freak Rock. And it just says, all your Freak Rock favourites. And Alice features big, as does Bowie and Bolan

and New York Dolls and Mott the Hoople. And basically anyone who was glam in the UK is called Freak or Shock Rock over in the States. And there is that real crossover there, I think. He was mates with Groucho Marx in in the 70s alice cooper really it was yeah they lived near each other in la which is just what it was like living in la in the 70s you know so that's alice cooper's house that's groucho marx's house yeah they used to hang out together because groucho was really old and he didn't have many friends left. So he appreciated having a young lad go around and sort him out.

They'd sit around and chat and Groucho would nod off and Alice would let himself out. And they, yeah, he used to go to their gigs and stuff. Groucho March used to turn up Alice Cooper's gigs in Los Angeles. Just stand at the back. So, schools out would spend three weeks at number one, eventually being toppled by You Wear It Well by Rod Stewart. The follow-up, Elected, would spend two non-consecutive weeks

at number four in October and November, and they'd notch up two more top ten hits in 1973 with Hello, Hooray and No More Mr. Nice Guy. But Teenage Lament 74 would be their last top 40 hit in February of 1974, and the band split up later that year with Furnier taking on the name for himself. Yeah, flipping school. We're off to a flyer here, Pop Trade youngsters.

But trust me, it gets even better. We're going to catch a breath and come back tomorrow. So, on behalf of Taylor Parks and Neil Kulkarni, this is Al Needham pleading with you to stay pop crazed. Chart music.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. Chart music.