Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #67 (Pt 4): 9.6.77 – God Save Chart Music

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham to put the Silver Jubilee episode of The Pops firmly to bed, as Legs & Co make do with Demis Roussos’ cast-offs, recount the time Bob Marley met the Wurzels, and examine the most shameful event in chart history, as Little Rabbit Arse holds down the Sex Pistols. GOD SAVE HISTOREE, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon*** See us LIVE on Sept 17th *** 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 to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. There's carnival magic in places. From London to sunny Torbay.

Let's put a big smile on our faces for it's cheers for the Queen all the way. Let's shimmy and shake to the number. They call it the Jubilee Rumba. So welcome the Monaco lay. to welcome the Mar-na-co-lay! That, Pop Craze Youngsters, is a mere sliver of the glory

of the nationwide Jubilee Song Contest, a rare jewel of a broadcast which has been eviscerated by Neil Kulkarni, Taylor Parks, and my good self Al Needham in a special bonus

episode available only to the Pop Craze Patreon people very soon which is both batshit and catshit if you want to hear it you need to pledge your allegiance at patreon.com slash chart music

and then sit tight and await. Anyway, welcome back, Pop Craze youngsters, to the final part of Chart Music 67, all the way from proper Jubilee Week. No fannying about Charge! Not about four weeks ago, I went to Las Vegas, and one of those hours saw the Osmonds, who were sensational. In the audience were the Jacksons. They've got a record out called Show You The Way To Go,

and here to dance to it are Legs and Company. Tony brags on to us that he went to Las Vegas the other week, but because he's Tony Blackburn, he went to see the Osmonds. In 1977, everyone. And who did he see in the audience but the next act, who are going to be emoted to by, in his words, legs and company,

the Jacksons, which show you the way to go i've got to say i misheard tony's intro the first time i watched this right i thought he'd accidentally called them legs and cunning which is a bit rough but it actually might be an advance on their real name because it does at least refer to two parts of their bodies instead of just one. It's a little bit more feminist, you know, as a step forward. Legs and other bits. Yeah. Tops and bottoms. Lady love your legs and coat.

We've wallowed in the glory of the Jackson 5 many a time and oft, most recently in chart music number 63, when they assisted Michael in a live performance of Rockin' Robin in the 1972 Boxing Day episode. Since then, they notched up three chart hits in 1973, with only Doctor My Eyes breaking the top ten, getting to number nine in March of that year, but Diminishing Returns set in,

and their first release of 1974, Dancing Machine, failed to chart over here. How could that fail to chart? Fucking hell. Stupid British cunts, you deserve Brexit. In 1975, after a stint in Las Vegas,

Joe Jackson discovered that his lads were only getting 2.8% of royalties from their Motown contract and instructed them to down tools forthwith while he shopped them around to other labels. He eventually settled upon epic records in June of that year, even though they were still under contract to Motown until March of 1976. And after Motown sued them for breach of contract, they eventually allowed them to leave on the condition that they change their name,

which was owned by their old label. Epic immediately went into a joint venture with Philadelphia International Records in an attempt to update and season the group. And in November of 1976, the newly titled Jacksons, minus Jermaine who stayed at Motown, but plus Randair, the youngest brother in the family, not only put out their family variety show on CBS, but also released their new LP, The Jacksons, which was produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Hough, the overlords of the Philly sound. The first cut to be put out as a single, Enjoy Yourself,

got to number six on the Billboard chart, but only got to number 42 over here in April. But this, the follow-up written by Gamble and Huff, entered the chart last week at number 23, and this week it soared 17 places to number six. Although they've already appeared in the top of the pop studio three weeks ago performing the single live, as they were in the country for the first time since late 1972,

to join the likes of David Soul, Lena Zavarone, Dolly Parton, Eric Sykes and Hattie Jakes, and Sari Lewis and Lamb Chop at the Royal Show in Glasgow in front of the queen robin nash has opted to give the song to legs and co this week and oh chaps i had a look at that jackson's performance the other day and and what did i come across none other than kid jensen wearing the

exact same shirt with a queen's head on it that he wore on chart music number 65 over five years later fucking hell that explains a lot legs and co first i think because they've completely recycled demis roussos's bit haven't they yeah same set pretty much the same set apart from the floor demis's floor was a bit silver and legs and co's a bit more wooden yeah and those plants are now sort of providing furtive cover for members of the audience to look at legs and co's a bit more wooden yeah and those plants are now sort of providing furtive cover for members of the audience to look at legs and co with and not only that but they've also cut up demis roussos as muumuu and made six outfits with some green feathery bits and some gold tinsel on it so yeah make do and mend top of course the routine itself i mean as usual with legs and co it it suffers with

that simultaneous need for it to be a dance but also that infantile storytelling yes so every time it's a me in the lyric it's a thumb towards themselves and every time it's you they point at you and every time they they come together in the lyrics they link arms sometimes i wonder with legs and co routines how much better it would have been to just, I don't know, get them a bit tanked up, take them to a club and just film them dancing to this music.

But actually, I know I've said it's moaned, it's a kind of cheapskate episode. The combination of camera work, the subtle way of knowing the moments when the hook and the chorus has come in and stuff like that, it's one of the more successful moments of the episode,

I'd say. It doesn't feel randomly timed. So, yeah, pure satisfaction, really. Yeah, I mean, the routine is a cursory flounce about it. It does make you wonder if this has been another last-minute job. Yeah, as we know very well by now, there are legs and co-routines that are unfathomable and intriguing. There are legs and co-r co routines that are hypnotically catastrophic

there's legs and co routines that are just appealing and casually sexy in an unthreatening way and then there are legs and co routines like this which are barely there and all too obviously cooked up and rehearsed in front of a giant egg timer being tapped by Flick Colby. Where ultimately the most important thing is not the steps they dance, but just that they dance at all. Yeah, yeah. That Music Week article about Robin Nash mentioned the fact that Flick Colby had to scrap two routines they'd spent a week on last month.

One was due to a single going down instead of up, and the other, OK, by Rock Follies, being binned off at the last minute. Going back to that piece, it says, the Rock Follies single, OK, had been played, admittedly rarely, by Radio 1 and had already been shown on ITV to an audience about the size and range of Top of the Popsers. Having failed to secure either the performers or the Thames TV clip, Nash had set Flick, Colby and Legs & Co to work out a routine for the song a week before screening. At 6pm on Wednesday, June 1st, Nash had decided to take the song out, having listened at someone's

suggestion more closely to the words, and checked that Radio 1 had received complaints. A combination of this, the Sex Pistols ban, and the fact that the performance were ladies, the song begins, you want to do me, persuaded him to hold off for a week. So yeah, six o'clock on Wednesday evening,

and they start recording at what, seven, eight? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah they ended up doing got to give it up by marvin gay and they put on a repeat of their routine to the shuffle by van mccoy uh and okay dropped two places from number 10 to number 12 this week so you know we never got to see legs and co wiggling their fingers as disapprovingly so i think we can deduce that this routine's been cobbled together at very short notice. Yeah, and other than that, it's the usual studying contrasts. It's the smiley, cutesy lady display versus the fact that if you banged a spoon off Legs & Co.'s legs,

it'd sound like whacking a spanner against an aluminium pipe. But, you know, it works. But the song, it's fucking mint, isn't it? Yeah. Another example of a Motown act kicking on, and a proto-boy band showing us that there is life after the dropping of the balls. Michael's going to be 19 in a couple of months, so

this is his transformation into adulthood, this song. Yeah, it's another Sublime Jackson single in a Sublime Runner singles singles yeah but yeah they are demonstrating that there's life after motown and they said they sound just obviously they're getting older but they sound so relaxed yes it's so odd that it's only once they're on epic and they're with gamble enough that they start picking up gold records and platinum records because yeah i mean not because they haven't sold before but because motown had never submitted sales to the ri

a no that's mental it is mental so yeah it's just another great jackson's single and the perfect people to team up with in 1977 it's an interesting pair in the jacksons and gambling because you know they are the absolute masters of mature love songs aren't they you know married people coming to the end of the line either trying to cling on to what's left or giving up and having illicit relationships with other married people in cafes you know gambler huff songs are all grown-up songs and so is this in a way yeah you know it's either about a couple getting ready to put some serious work into a relationship or it's an older man initiating a younger woman and swearing loyalty to them and it's clearly touched a nerve with the people who grew up

with the Jackson 5. Yeah, being a gambling huff record, do you think that is partly almost like a jab at Motown? You know well you were the big deal but we hear that these are the big deal now and it's also appropriate because

Jackson's leaving Motown involved both a gamble and a huff. That's such a cunt, Mr. Huff. I'm sorry. I've had a difficult moment for a while. No, no, bravo, sir. And, of course, Gamble and Huff also wrote I'll Do Anything He Wants Me To for Doris Troy, which was recorded a year from now by Lenny Gamble. Oh.

Who is Tony Blackburn. Oh. Yes, Tony Blackburn's Northern Soul song. Whoa. It was the roadblock of the day. Because they were going round shopping it round. Oh, look at this Northern Soul classic we've just dug up from a fucking warehouse in Miami. He listened to it. And it's clearly tony blackburn singing

backing vocals by arnold yes the thing is if the jacksons had stayed with motown and i try to imagine what songs they would have been given by motown it would have gone too adult it would have gone to the other way i think the thing that gamble and huff do is they do smooth but without schmaltz and i think that separates them from motown in a big way motown would have given them big i'm still waiting style ballads perhaps and and you know try to i don't know keep them there it's it's definitely a good move for them yeah jermaine no longer with the group stayed with motown of course yes because he married into the gordy family yes not the only artist whose career was affected by doing that for better or for worse and it's something

i've never understood because however well we got on i don't think that i could a marry a close relative of my boss or b marry someone with a facial resemblance however slight to my boss yes because you could just be sat there one day clinking cocktails on the patio or worse and suddenly the sunlight hits their face at a particular angle and oh god it'd be like if you married stella mccartney do you know what i mean? Just a bit uncomfortable. But this is the Jacksons just approaching that changeover moment in terms of the tone of how the Jacksons present themselves, isn't it? This is still the period where they're releasing albums with covers that are just a picture of them,

maybe smiling, goofing around, until suddenly they go big and blustering and start putting out records called destiny and victory and triumph yes bizarrely over heroic covers and videos where they're they're looking down on humanity even as they aim to become its ultimate saviors is a development a development I never quite understood, especially as that happened when they were at something of a low ebb commercially. And suddenly it's gaze upon us mortals. You know what I mean?

It's like the front cover of Destiny looks like the titles of Life of Brian if they weren't meant to be funny. Do you know what I mean? I don't know enough about the personal lines of the Jacksons in this period to know whether there was some reason why that might have happened or if it was just on a whim. But it's like one minute, they're these warm, chummy family entertainers, and then suddenly you're being addressed like the shepherds on the hill.

You know, do not be afraid. it's like the funky enunciation oh just wait till we get to the video for can you feel it for oh that video fucking hell but that's interesting you say that taylor because i mean you know that big promethean thing they do on the sleeves coming up contrast that with you know off the wall which is only two years down the line yeah um you know yeah and of course i mean at this point 77 none of us could have predicted off the wall no i mean that you cannot compute that that is two years from now god no it's just remarkable no i mean it's still 1977 so it is the pre-video age for 99.9 of the general public so it is odd that robin nash hasn't dialed back the live performance

that he did a few weeks ago but yeah i managed to look at that and you know like rocking robin is live but they're not as assured and polished as they were in rocking robin uh but it is the first time that michael starts doing his breathy whoopee verbal tics that yeah carry him through the aventures and beyond so yeah that is it's all bubbling up yeah also don't forget i'm assuming that they were backed by at least some members of the top of the pops orchestra true something's happened to the top of the pops orchestra since 1972 yes i don't know what it is but it it has happened yeah because we heard them doing rocking robin yes it was halfway through before

you knew for sure that this was not a band they'd brought with them so the following week show you the way to go nipped up three places to number three and then deposed lucille by kenny rogers from the summit of mount pop staying there for one week before giving way to so you win again by hot chocolate their only number one single in the uk as either the jacksons or the jackson five which is mad yeah fucking mad the follow-up dreamer got to number 22 in september and they close out 1977 with the title track of their next LP, Going Places, getting to number 26 for two weeks in November. In 1978, they ended their relationship with Gamble & Huff, re-signed to Epic, and were given full creative control, and it paid off big style when Blame It On The Boogie and shake your body down to the ground return them to the top ten there's a group now who are literally known worldwide everywhere you go they've had smash

hits they've got a brand new one out called exodus here of bob marley and the whalers tony sitting in the gloom of the corner of the studio tells us that the next band are the bear of the reggae world because everyone knows their name why it's bob marley and the whalers and exodus we last covered jamaica's answer to paul nicholas in chart music 64 when his posthumous career began in full with a re-release of one love and this the follow-up to who the cap fit which failed to chart in the autumn of 1976 is the the lead cut from his new LP of the same name, which came out last week. After the attempt on his life in December of last year, Bob and his chums have relocated to London, where they've finished off the LP, and they've just finished a tour of Europe, which culminated in a four-night stand at the Rainbow in London last week.

Cut down from its original seven minutes and 40 seconds to a slightly more radio-friendly four and a half minutes, it was put out last week and is not in the charts yet. But Robin Nash's Ital and Azusha the band into the studio, making their first ever in-studio performance on top of the pops and their first appearance on the show since no woman no cry was played out to some studio lights and the credits in october of 1975 chaps bob moley arrives for real on chart music we ripped into the leninification of bob moley a few episodes ago so here's a much needed chance to see him as a living breathing entity yeah quite reggae influence this one isn't

it i mean it's interesting you say that lenonification that we talked about in the 84 episode i mean reading the music press on reggae in this period is quite interesting because yes because bob is already kind of deified by most of the writers. And even those sort of non-believers see him as important as someone, as someone to focus on that, of course already enables disregarding the rest. But, but there's, it's interesting that in the music press at this time,

there still persists this debate about reggae as to whether, I don't know, not whether it's proper music, but whether it's okay to not like it and to actually not like the entire genre with the faint suggestion that the kind of groove of reggae is a kind of one note groove and the space that it takes up is, is really limited. So in the live reviews of the rainbow shows that,

you know, last week then that were pictured on the front of Eminem with that great shot, there is a sense in the reviews, oh, he's legitimising this form and he's proving that it can happen live. The same kind of condescension was sent towards Public Enemy when they figured out how to do hip-hop live. But Reggae's in this interesting place, not to aficionados, but just in the general kind of music press idea at this time.

Yeah, not is this proper music, but can in the general kind of music press idea this time yeah it's not is this proper music but can we admit we don't like this although the whalers have notched up a mere one single on the uk charts therefore bob moll is definitely known about in the non-music media but it's mainly for being someone else's knockoff uh i refer you to an article in the Daily Mirror dated November the 20th 1976 headline Miss World's Wild Man they look an odd couple call Cindy Breakspear the new Miss World and Bob Marley the wild man of pop but they're in love according to Cindy 22 year old Miss Jamaica. Bob, a 31-year-old Jamaican, is a reggae superstar with a lust for life. He says he has fathered nine children by seven girls. He says he smokes a pound of pot a day. And as a member of the mystical Rastafarian movement, he believes it is morally wrong to comb his hair. Cinde, a health-loving

vegetarian, said she would like to marry and settle down with children, but getting Marley to marry and settle down with her might be difficult right now, as he has no plans to divorce his legal wife, Rita. Meanwhile, Marley is laying low. A friend said in Kingston, the nation's capital, Bob seems to have vanished from his usual haunts. I bet he's off enjoying himself somewhere. Is Bob Molly the wild man of pop? Yeah. In 1976? Come on.

Yeah. I mean, they're basically painting him as the new Jimi Hendrix there, aren't they? Yeah, there's a definite similarity in in tone yeah they must have had something in common i mean fair play to robin nash for putting them on but it's weird that it's this single and not one of the love songs because you know in a jubilee episode exodus is basically saying hey black people this country's shit get the fuck out yeah probably would have gone down well at a blues organized by the national front don't you think but it's it's nice to hear it because the last time that chart music covered robert nesta marley uh robert aaron marley robert patrick marley robert cougar marley last time chart music covered robert frogman marley it was the hit single which best

represents the the fluffy prettified yes ultra commercial end of the catalog yeah social worker yeah whereas of all the hits this one probably best represents the heavier and more hardcore side although it's very smart what this record does which is to present as roots reggae while also incorporating all the most commercial musical trends of the period which you could conceivably fit into a reggae record you know you can hear things from 70s soul you can maybe hear a little bit of disco and it's got that very smooth but deep production that almost sounds like Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. It's not rough, this record, at all. And I think, in fairness, it works brilliantly,

artistically as well as commercially. Partly because Marley knew exactly what he was doing and partly just because the Wailers are such a good band, it's always great to just listen to them play, which they get the chance to here but even so to me personally it's still it's not a patch on duppy conqueror and all that stuff you know yeah because to me reggae is like rock and roll i just like it better when it's got a bit of a rough edge on it yeah and when it breaks the rules of musical taste, rather than finding ways to work within them.

But if you are going to make consciously commercial reggae, I don't think it's possible to do it better than this because it doesn't sacrifice anything apart from the rude edge, you know, which maybe stuff like One Love does. And it makes sure that the smoothness which replaces it is also appealing in its own right. It's not just a cop-out, you know. Yeah, I'm not overly fond of the Exodus album.

This is probably my favourite track off it. Because the Exodus album, in a sense, it is that sort of total ironing out of Bob's roughness that Tony was speaking of. But this is one of the tracks I do like off that album. And to be honest with you straight after I watched this clip I wanted to go listen

to the seven minute version because on the seven minute version it just becomes more and more hypnotic and engrossing but it's still one of those sort of watchable moments of this episode and not really because of Bob

I mean because of a chance to witness you know Aston and Carlton Barrett in the rhythm section and also Junior Marvin on guitar. And is that Judy Mowat and Marcia Griffiths on backing vocals? I couldn't quite tell, but it might be. But the Wailers, you know, they're no longer sort of, in a sense, loads of things to look at. Because there was always the attendant danger back in the day that you'd actually find yourself much more compelled by the weird unique presence of peter tosh yeah more than anybody else but you know the thing we have to remember

from this vantage point is if you're black or west indian in 77 this kind of moment this is unforgettable and and it's as important to you as say i don't know the freaks are later on in the late 70s and early 80s for an awful lot of other people you know it's something from your home that you thought was private suddenly brought to the people and go away from this and you you walk into the playground or the football field or the street the next day with just a little extra pattern of resistance in your armor um that this has happened so it's what it's one of the best moments on this episode definitely yeah i think you you can definitely defend the way in which bob marley commercialized reggae and made it into something that sold a lot in you know britain and to some extent america but there's always a price to pay and there is a reason why on prince william's recent visit to jamaica he kept quoting

bob marley yes rather than prince jasbo or leeroy horse mouth wallace you know what i mean it's like it's not marley's fault but if babylon's gilded representative can use your words for pr and people stand and clap it, you know, something must have got twisted somewhere, you know. You didn't see him hand-jiving with Kate to President Mashup the Resident, you know what I mean? To some extent, Bob Marley makes me understand why some people are weirdly ambivalent about the Beatles, you know.

Because in terms of simple old-fashioned musical talent he probably was the best Jamaican actor the 70s in terms he was the best songwriter and the best singer and you know the slickest performer and it's obvious why he made it bigger than everybody else because there's just this sort of quality to his stuff yeah I'm just not that fussed about that particular type of quality you know in this genre yeah where a whole lot of other people who couldn't write songs half as cleverly as he could or sing half as sweetly were able to make records that were much more interesting and weirder and more raucous and more wildly imaginative i mean i think the difference is that the beatles had the craft but they also had the mad visionary bit you know sort of low-key which i don't think

marley did he was a great singer-songwriter with a band who were agonizingly shit hot when they were on it and his particular talent broke down those barriers because it was so commercial and could be marketed a particular way. Which obviously makes him one of the most important figures, if not the most important figure in reggae history and all that. great but it never sounds like a raw outsider using the freedom of the genre to create baffling magic which a lot of other stuff from this period does and it's not some weird snobbery about his records being commercial because some of the records i'm thinking of were big british hits too you know people tend to forget this that were millions of reggae hits in the charts all through the 70s. It just wasn't considered an album genre

or a serious genre until Bob Marley. It's just that for Bob Marley, reggae was the style through which he could express and exercise his conventional musical talent and express his basic thoughts and feelings, which is what most music is, what most songwriters do. Whereas for someone like Lee Scratch Perry, reggae was an open-ended magic spell

through which new and previously unimaginable thoughts and feelings could be shocked into existence you know and yeah all the all the horrors and iniquities of the world could not just be protested and lamented but placed under psychic attack which might not work but it made for for wilder music you know can you imagine say lee perry on top of the pops can you Can you imagine Max Romeo on top of the Pops? What these people would have done is they would have put across a pop performance. Now, Bob can write great pop songs, but he's not a pop performer. He's a serious musician and consequently he's taken seriously.

I mean, look at this, what he does here. I mean, in a sense, this feels a bit more like a whistle test clip or something. And Bob, he's already in that sort of closed-eyed communion with God that shuts the audience out, really. And that's perhaps why he was acceptable. It's not particularly a Top of the Pops performance. I do sort of, yeah, wonder, you know, put that Top of the Pops mic in the hands of a lunatic like Max Romeo, and what would you get?

It would have been fucking amazing. Perhaps there should have been more of that. Yeah, big youth riding his motorbike on the stage and singing about communism. Yeah, Dr. Alimentado or any of these people. It would have been amazing. Bob isn't that. He's not a pop performer.

He's, in a sense, almost like a rock performer. So I found myself throughout this performance not looking at him. I was just dazzled by the rest of the band. I know they're not playing it live but it don't matter just seeing aston and carton barrett nailing it down you know and it's just a remarkable sight yeah strangely the top of the pops orchestra have been stood down for this performance as i say the other thing is that even though bob marley in most senses is a more conventional or you know in Britain is considered

like a more traditional artist really he was the outlier in 70s reggae yes you know because yeah so much of it was not about melodicism in this sense it was about roughness and a psychotic edge and about the disorientating artifacts of its own production you know the studio sound like the noise uh the extraordinary exaggerated weight of of the bass you know all all the stuff that isn't just about the playing and isn't just about the music all these unpredictable ideas and wild gimmicks you know in the sense. A lot of people forget how gimmicky the best regular music is because it didn't say it was a bad thing. It was just about just doing stuff to grab your attention.

And this is all the stuff that just isn't there on legend. Some of it is there on some of the earlier whalers stuff, but there's nothing wrong with that, especially on this particular record, which is, um, you know, is fantastic. It's not compromised in any negative sense. It's just that when you've got years of Jamaican music spread out in front of you, and it includes literally hundreds, maybe thousands of records like Space Flight by Iroy, you know, or Wet Vision by Uroy or heart of the congos or king tubby or keith all these amazing oddly shaped pop singles that you get on tighten up compilations you know like

barbed wire by nora dean and uptown top ranking for fuck's sake you know or the male equivalent three-piece suit by trinity i'm trying to fill out the video playlist just so i can put it on one night and just relax in your diamond socks and ting exactly as usual but compared to that a lot of marley stuff it starts to seem like ready salted crisps by comparison you know reggae crisps apparently the most popular and dependable option but how often do you want to pick them out you know and this that's even before you get to the impossible mental adventure playground that is dub you know especially late 70s dub versions of ultra heavy root stuff like if every household in the world that bought a copy of legend had instead bought a copy of a compilation like open the gate which would have been tricky as that wasn't compiled until the 90s

but i can't imagine what a difference that would have made to to music and and to like open the gate is a is a 3lp trojan box set yeah of of Lee Scratch Perry dub versions of mostly roots tracks. And almost every second of everything on it is totally mind-boggling. It's got stuff like Sons of Slaves by Junior Delgado and Open the Gate by Wattie Burnett. The so-called disco version of Words by Anthony Sanghi Davis. Delgado and Open the Gate by Wotty Burnett you know the so called disco version of Words by Anthony Sanghi Davis it's like the heaviest thing you've ever heard

these amazing exploding flowers and adventures in musical space and none of which is to denigrate Bob Marley it's just a shame that this reggae got waved through while that reggae had to stay

semi-underground Yeah but how many people would have heard that reggae if they weren't allowed to hear this reggae first on top of the place Yeah it's a gateway absolutely but I mean I think for Bob this pound of weed that he's smoking every day it's not psychedelically

inspiring him it truly is just the holy chalice and as a good raster he's doing his duty i guess whereas with perry and the rest of the people taylor mentioned yeah it opened up things that they then wanted to reflect in their music and that's why you get so many fucking nutty sounding records around about this period yeah he may have been a superstar, but I heard he was very tight. He'd go backstage at one of his gigs, see the whole of his band sharing one cigarette. No. But no, speaking of which, I was going to say,

I don't know if you're aware, but there is, in Britain, a group of cannabis growers and activists who named themselves Exodus after this song and album. Oh, really? Yeah, and these days days the trend in marijuana especially since it was decriminalized in most of the united states is to keep cross-breeding strains and creating new ever more finely tuned types of weed with increasingly ridiculous names like super glace cherry og or thunder yeah pittsburgh meow mix you know or like

strawberry dog shit or something like that and these people exodus created a very popular variation on the type of marijuana known as cheese so it came to pass that currently one of the most common strains of weed in Britain is called Exodus Cheese, which sounds like a character from To Kill a Mockingbird. Oh, Exodus Cheese, he never believed in mixing with folks. If I was a marijuana grower at this point in time, I would like to create a new strain of marijuana called andy peebles that would be great sell it in a pack with a cut out of his face on the front or maybe maybe just that unmistakable

silhouette it's a particularly dank bud you'd have to call it andy people's space kush or something like yeah anyway i like this one better than the whalers follow-up single rocco can which just somehow just never seemed to work for me that one i don't know why and the kids seem to like it yeah they're bouncing around with their uh cardboard silver crowns on their head yeah i think reggae by this point has become a music that the british audience is completely used to completely familiar with yeah and you know i mean it might sound like we're popping up bob but this is one of his best songs actually i mean from this period and it's a really hypnotic little window out of this episode in a way you kind of again forget that you're watching silver

the pops i mean if the whalers really wanted to sell out for american and european success they could have gone for a more dynamic image never mind the old jeans and the Adidas tracksuit tops. They would have had more impact with a bit of a gimmick, wouldn't they? Like, they should have called themselves Bob Marley and the Whalers, and all dressed in oil skins. With harpoons. Thick white woolen polo necks and bobble hats and carried binoculars and bloodied harpoons.

How great would that have been? Call me Israel. Call me Israel. Call me Israel. They could have done a version of Nantucket's Sleigh Ride. Fuck me. You have to be careful with that stuff, though, because you can end up like the crazy world of Arthur Brown. Like he called his record Fire.

He came up with a great gimmick, and it was his only hit. So he had to spend the next 25 years on stage with his head in flames what a fucking bind if he'd called that record shoulder massage the rest of his career would have been an awful lot more comfortable or Cornettos then he'd have been 30 stone

every night I am the god of Cornettos and I bring you more Cornettos. And I bring you more Cornettos. He's got no teeth. Expensive, too. Taylor, I have to bring up the question that me and Neil discussed a while back. Bob Marley's 80s.

What would it have been like? I want to wake up with you by Boris Gardner. Would he have done Live Aid? Yeah, without a doubt. I still say no. I looked into this a bit more. So, Jar say, not one of my seeds shall sit in the sidewalk and beg bread.

Come on now. But more importantly, he would not have lifted one finger to help Mengistu. Right. A man who, let's remember, interred the remains of Haile Selassie directly under his private toilet.

So he could shit on it. Bob Marley's not going to fucking do out for him. On reflection, I think you're probably right. Yes, yes I am. Giving myself a pat on the back there. So a fortnight later, Exodus enter the charts at number 41. Then soared 15 places to number 26. Beginning a slow pull upward. to descend to the charts at number 41, then soared 15 places to number 26,

beginning a slow pull upward, which culminated four weeks later when it got to number 14, its highest position. The follow-up, waiting in vain, got to number 27 in October, and they'd finished their most successful year so far with a double-A-side jamming slash punky reggae party

becoming the christmas number 28 and eventually getting to number nine in february of 1978 punky reggae party sounds so barren nice doesn't it it's amazing to think that bob marley demis russos and the world's were in the same fucking building though jesus christ pete budd claimed in a channel 4 documentary that bob molly came up to the words and said who are man how you doing baby you don't think it was just he says when you got any bud and they slightly yes yeah Yeah, he's over there. That's Exodus there from Bob Marley and the Wailers. Right now it's number one time on Top of the Pops, and here he is.

He's still there, Rod Stewart. And the first cut is the deepest. Tony, standing alone next to a blue backdrop, finally gets round to the best-selling single of the week. Formed in London in 1975, the Sex Pistols were a band put together by Malcolm McLaren from out of his pervy clothes shop on the King's Road, who signed to EMI in October of 1976 and put out their debut single, Anarchy in the UK, a month later,

which got to number 38 for three weeks in December. This single, God Save the Queen, is the follow-up, which went under the working title No Future and originally contained the line, God Save Save Window Lean and had been part of their live set since late 1976. It had already been recorded in October of that year and was supposed to have been the first release on their new label A&M who had pressed 25,000 copies of the single immediately after they signed to them outside Buckingham Palace in March but when they were dropped six days later all but nine copies of the single were destroyed. Only last month the Pistols signed a new deal with Virgin and the single was readied for release

only for workers at the pressing planted down tools when they were told about the lyrical content and plate makers for the sleeve artwork to do likewise when they saw the image of the Queen with her eyes and mouth obscured by the name of the band and the single. When that was all sorted out, the single finally came out a fortnight ago, was made single of the week by Melody Maker, the NME,

Sounds and Record Mirror, and was immediately banned by the BBC, the IBA, Radio Luxembourg, WH Smiths, Boots, Woolworths and every single jukebox in pubs in Britain, but still sold over 150,000 copies and crashed into the charts at number 11, which instantly set the tabloids into a froth, which was compounded when Malcolm Viv put out a new line of t-shirts. Article in last week's Sunday Mirror, Juby Punk, Sex Pistols pin up Rock's Palace. Royal circles were rocking with horror last night

at this Jubilee souvenir produced by the Sex Pistols pop group. The punk rockers are offering a three pound t-shirt bearing a portrait of the Queen with a safety pin through her lips. Buckingham Palace was far from amused. A spokesman said sternly, we think it is in deplorable taste. At the office of the Lord Chamberlain, a spokesman said frostily, Our rules do not allow this, but any action we may contemplate to get it banned would only give the group the publicity they are so obviously seeking. An angry spokesman for the Silver Jubilee Appeal said, It is really horrible and derogatory and every citizen must be hopping mad this week cbs who are distributing both god save the queen and the current number one single have reported to

virgin that the former has been outselling the latter by two to one but john fruin the managing director of wea records who is also the head of the British Phonographic Institute, the trade association of the record industry, has clearly been worried for some time that certain record shops who provide the BMRB with chart returns are owned by record labels. And, in the spirit of fair play, you understand, has issued a secret directive to the BMRB telling them not to bother

counting returns from those shops including the virgin ones two days ago god save the queen jumped nine places to number two although that didn't stop the band from having a lovely party on a barge that went past the houses of parliament that people assume is a foreshadowing of today's licking of the queen's arse but is in actual fact a recreation of the opening credits of the current series of that's life but no matter because this is the real number one and by god we're gonna treat it as such aren't we yeah completely yeah and what would have been different if officially this had got to number one yeah and been accepted as such i don't think much would have been different there'd have been a bit more fish shaking but that's about it isn't it yeah i kind

of presume that the way it played out this this underdog status that was conferred upon this single um you know which is a single bought out by a major label, you know, by a band who had multiple labels interested. This is all perfect for McLaren, you know, all of it. And I think it's crucial to, I think,

to realise that even by the time this record came out, that reaction of kind of appalled recoil that we see among some music fans and certainly the

moral majority towards punk, that's never going to be shared by the commercial record industry. The music business is not thinking this must never happen again it's thinking this must and will happen again and we have to be in on it yes next time you know yeah so you know it changes that for the music press this also sets something up about about around being a pop critic this needs to be

a profit to see things coming you see that a lot in coming years but it needs pointing out why does this get to number two why does this get to number one it's because it's a giant fuck you to the jubilee and a more general fuck you to the future partly but it's also selling because it's a great pop record yes it is it fucking is it's possibly the pistols best single there's other pistol songs i prefer but um it's the best single i think because it's all about johnny you can see him singing and snarling and spitting every line and this is obviously you know 50 years before he's back in jacob reese mug but you know the lines are fucking great the lyrics are amazing there's a ferocity that perhaps in pop hadn't been heard since the early days of sweet and that

yeah kind of glam racket kind of feel to it really helps too so it just needs dating yeah i don't think the the industry had to show oh there's some elements of the industry anyway have to show what this is awful they're already thinking how can we be in on this and and it's just an undeniably great pop record i think let's say what t Tony Blackburn has to say about the cinema. It is disgraceful and makes me ashamed of the pop world. But it is a fad that won't last. We DJs have ignored them. And if everyone else did, perhaps they would go away. I mean, obviously, it's the relaxed mistake.

Like, we're not playing the most talked about record. So if you want to hear it you jolly well have to go out and buy it to find out what all the fuss we've made is about yes someone should have told him there was already a song with this title yeah confusing isn't it i was thinking about how funny it is that the sex pistols were not only one of the most over-discussed bands of all time, but also one of the most misunderstood, right? As though they are obscured rather than illuminated by all that discussion, right? But in fact, that's kind of perfect

because one thing people get wrong about the Sex Pistols is to suppose that they were meant to have any coherent meaning, right? Because both on the highfalutin art school theory level and on the actual level of songwriting and performance, the point was chaos, but not some rock and roll fantasy, right? Chaos as a genuine, simultaneously destructive and constructive force, right? Which involves a lot of heavy, serious ideas and a lot of plain silly buggers.

And people can't always tell what's what. Like, Americans listen to the end of anarchy in the UK and they hear, I want to be anarchist, get pissed, destroy. And they think pissed means angry. The whole point is that it doesn't and that's a very deep misunderstanding yes and it's peculiar that a band that were absolutely all about simplistic shock tactics and sensationalism and stripping things down should turn out to be so much more complex than most other groups.

Yeah. But that's partly why pop music is so interesting, you know. And it seems to me that all these years later, the people misunderstanding the Sex Pistols are the people who imagine them to have been one thing or the other, like virtuous or wicked or left wing or right wing or constructive or destructive or subversive or a money-making scam because of course they were all these things yes and that was the whole point and in fact now that the dust has settled and covered

the sex pistols themselves what is most valuable about these records and about the band is the expression and the reflection of that chaos and the horrific accompanying churn of anger and resentment and egotism and self-loathing nastiness and innocence and destructive rage and an unforgivable cuntishness and unforgettable goodness yeah everything that human beings actually experience and how they actually behave in an environment of enforced poverty hopelessnessness, and anguish, in which they're loathed, disrespected, ignored, spat on, and then blamed for their own predicament, right? This is not an earnest student activist type record, which wants to make a constructive point on a polarizing topic, right?

It's not a gang of ideological warriors going into battle with this as their cry you know all puffed up with confidence in their own wisdom and their own moral rectitude it's something much darker than that and something much more nakedly human than that i mean out of, you could mistake this as the granddaddy of all those stupid records that people do now. Like, let's get a song called Do a Shit in Your Own Eye, Boris Johnson,

as the Christmas number one, you know what I mean? But taken as a whole, the Sex Pistols, despite the occasional lapse in the slogan earring, were the opposite of that kind of glib, smug approach. You know,

they weren't meant to be your best mates. They weren't meant to be your wise older brothers. Yeah. You weren't even meant to think they were cool. Particularly, you know, they weren't there with a useful lecture. They were a horrible mess of contradictions and,

and yeah, lecture they were a horrible mess of contradictions and entirely informed by the experiences of being a bright but uneducated working class kid in the stinking ultra violent london of the 70s and not only do they not have a coherent message they ridicule the very concepts of coherence and easy communication and that's what's great about them that's the whole fucking point yeah yeah the chaos and contradictions are the whole point of the pistols they sound like the last band you'll ever need in a way that there's something kind of i don't know i wouldn't say millennial how can i say they're like lollards or something it. It gives a world feel to their stuff. They're an impossible band in the best, best way.

And you're right, because the way the tabloids reacted to this, I mean, the two big baddies of this month and the previous month are the Sex Pistols and Idi Armeen. Maybe they should have got him in instead of Ronnie Biggs. That would have been fucking brilliant. But the way the tabloids were reporting the Sex Pistols at the time, it was as if they were threatening to start rocking the Queen's fucking big pram and then climb up on it and do his shit on it.

The tabloids were absolutely furious with them for queering the pitch of the Jubilee. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, that's why now they come up with all this stuff about, you know, oh, actually, I like the Queen, or actually, I like Jacob Rees-Mogg, or it's, you know, like John Lydon sat in LA drinking tea out of a Union Jack mug, you know what I mean, cheering on Brexit and Donald Trump. This was something people didn't get about Lydon.

People recognised that his instinctive intelligence and sense of mischief is the authentic artistic selling point of the band right this is what makes them different to like slaughter and the dogs or you know chelsea or stiff little fingers but they don't get how this could have happened to john lyden and how he could have ended up like that but the point is this intelligence of his was never based on the possession of information it wasn't based on great political or geopolitical understanding or knowledge that's not how he thinks right yeah the reality of brexit or trump informs what he says about brexit and trump to about the same extent as the reality of the Cold War informed holidays in the sun,

i.e. not very much, you know. He just sees a still lake of smugness, and he wants to throw a brick into it. The only difference is that his experience of life these days is unrecognisable from what it once was, so the rocks are coming from another direction. He's the Andy Kaufman of pop, isn't he? Oh, what can I do to wind people up this time? Keep me in the spotlight and earn me a bit of money. And the Pistols are really the last band he's in

that actually capture any glee at all. I mean, when you think about the three records he's going to make soon with Pill, such a completely different kettle of fish, although a similar kettle of fish in a way. But there it's all pretty much despair yeah and the pistols capture that last moment of glee and we have to remember yeah you know so many people rejecting this record and so many people throwing up their arms about it the charts do not reject this record no in a way you know and

and the i'm not going to say the kids the kids but even if toppler pops and radio shuts out this record what we have here i mean perhaps i'm putting too much on this single uh itself we could talk about this single for fucking hours mate i think one of the things in undervalued about punk and i'm not saying punk was great for the record industry necessarily but punk doesn't just revitalize alternative musical rock music it kind of revitalizes the chart yes look look at the charts look at what we've seen in the rest of this episode everything else that's happening in charts quite a lot of it is is you know bands are not caring about singles much anymore they're kind of promo things for these old dinosaurs so it's not just that punk leads to post-punk and new pop

and pretty much the next decade of music i think it brings back an interest and a focus on the seven inch single as a form yes and that focus on smashing the charts so you know it had loads of positive impacts this single just hangs over this episode of top of the pops like an upside down christ on an anarchy t-shirt when did you actually hear this single for the first time oh that's an interesting question. I mean, I suspect it would have been several years after 77. I'm nine years old when this comes out, and I didn't hear it. Trevor Dan, when he was a DJ on Radio Nottingham, he played it once when it came out before the bands kicked in.

But that would have been in Radio Nottingham's John Peel slot, so I wouldn't have heard it. Didn't have an older brother or sister. None of my mates had any older brothers or sisters. So you'd just hear about this song that was just so fucking scurrilous and evil, and you were just desperate to hear it. It went around on our playground

that it was a cover version of the National Anthem, but with more belches and farts in it. Then the lyrics came out in the tabloid so you just stare at them and try and work out what they meant how they'd fit into the song and they're fantastic lyrics oh they're fucking amazing but i think the two pistol songs that anyone hears before they get to the album is probably this and anarchy in the uk maybe pretty vacant if you're lucky but of course as soon as i picked up never mind the bollocks which i think i probably did around about 83 84 you know it's bodies and holidays in the sun that really

fucking got to me uh in a big big way yeah you should never with the pistols underestimate the production on these records is fucking great from bill price it's such a big big ass sound didn't chris thomas produce this album or was it the two of them i think it was the two of them maybe bill price engineered it but the sound sounds fucking fantastic um yeah absolute explosion in a guitar factory but it's great this is one of the great pop singles of 77 even if the charts don't want it even if bbc and radio one don't want it um and iba don't want it's one of the great pop singles of 77 yeah taylor when did you hear it for the first time the only sex pistol song i'd ever heard was frigging in the rigging yeah somebody brought it into school on a little tape player obviously that was quite

popular yeah rugby club pistols yeah i was old enough when punk was around to hear all about it yeah and too young to hear any of the music so i just carried it in my head yeah that it was this uh this incredible terrible subversive dark thing that was like actual satan you know this is around the same time as the video nasties panic as well and two things happened around the same time started going around my mate's house and watching horror films on pirate vhs's yeah and a mate of mine got nevermind the Bollocks and started playing it. Yeah, oh, God. And to find out at the same time that everything I'd read about popular culture

in my mum and dad's first The Sun and then when we class-hopped Daily Mail was bollocks. It was all just lies. It was all wrong. And in fact, these video nasties were just hilarious, stupid horror films with people having their rubber arms cut off and a lot of red paint shooting out and this x pistols album

was fucking brilliant yes it's like what can you know and actually they weren't this pure force for evil that went around stamping on kids toys and popping their balloons and, you know, spitting on old ladies. There's a strangely vintage morality to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it would have been 1981, 82 for me when a mate who was babysitting for a bloke who had the first video recorder on the street got hold of the great rock and roll swindler. You wanted to hear it and you couldn't

and you were desperate to. Even years after the event, it was essentially the clockwork orange of singles God Save the Queen. And it's also the first time that the world's been introduced to the Mark King of the 70s Sid Vicious, who's

bass proficiency threatens to bring a funk edge to the band. I mean, him replacing Glenn Matlock that's what really did for the Sex Pistols, isn't it? It is. It is. They did what?

How many songs from Nevermind the Bollocks did they write after Matlock left? Is it two? Something like that, yeah. I think it's Holidays in the Sun, which is ripped off The Jam, which tells you how far, you know, even though it's arguably their best single, I think, and Bodies, which I think think Steve Jones had written already.

Supposedly the best two songs on the album. But yeah, they wouldn't go in anywhere without Matlock. But it's funny you mention Bodies. Bodies provided as close to punk rock as I'd get, in a sense. You know that thing of your parents coming in and saying, what is this fucking filth you're listening to? Bodies was the one. My filthy well what is this filth you're listening to bodies was the one you know sort of said fucking film well yeah but bodies was the one when you crank the volume on that you were you were playing with fire because it just did feel like that when you first heard that track you couldn't quite believe what was coming out of his mouth um because

we heard these things in a pre-hip-hop age in in a way. And, you know, we're just not used to all of those undeleted expletives. So Bodies was just... And, of course, Bodies illustrates perfectly exactly what we've been talking about with regards to the Pistols. Contradictions. Could I get on board with that message? What is the fucking message? It's, you know, it's a really problematic record, but that's precisely what makes Pistols so always thrilling.

We'll always love the Pistols. We'll the clash i don't think what it's really about is disordered horror yeah it's a red herring the fact that it's about this all that this is what worries me right for all the progress we've made in various areas of society in other ways we've gone nowhere right we were talking about after we went through that period in the 90s where the royals were distrusted and disliked and everyone was saying, is this the end for the royal family? We're just basically back where we were in 1977. Yeah. And what worries me is the way the Sex Pistols are now remembered.

Yeah. Because their inherent instability and madness is the hardest concept to process for a lot of people today especially young people who are just discovering the sex pistols right because the fashion now is to think in terms of good and evil and what you have to do the purpose of your life is to perfect yourself or at least declare yourself perfect so you can then rain down infinite condemnation on anyone who falls short of your own standards right regardless of any difference between their experience of life and yours or you make allowances for certain things

and not others based on a political checklist right and this is all fine when the question is you know should you be a fascist or something like that, where the answers really are that binary. But it's a fucking terrible way, a horrifically terrible way to approach anything more complex than that, e.g. humanity, right? Which is why the Sex Pistols, when they appear in modern culture, they are always rewritten or reimagined and always oversimplified. So you either stick them on a T-shirt and wear it with 400-pound sunglasses so you can be cool, or you reduce them to your own level of complexity, like that fucking ridiculous TV series that's just been on,

where they're angelic agents of progressive social change you know because it's a ridiculous middle class rewriting of of the truth yeah because really the key moment in the sex pistols brief musical career or the moment around which everything else revolves is that bit in Holidays in the Sun, where the music goes haywire, and Johnny Rotten shouts, I don't understand this bit at all. And they didn't often express this directly in a musical way,

because compared to Subway Sect or The Fall or even Buzzcocks, they were basically a boring heavy metal band who couldn't play fast. And a little of them goes a long way i.e you listen to 10 minutes of the sex pistols they sound like the best group who ever lived isn't there an hour of the sex pistols they sort of don't um but it's right there it's all right there it's about what happens to people under pressure yeah it's chaos right we're not into music we're into chaos yeah um and that's

why they're quotes real in ways that make no sense to these people who still sit there trying to interpret bodies or look at them this does not compute you know well no most people's lives and minds are not simple or simplistic and it's a fundamental misunderstanding of and in fact a fundamental inability to comprehend the kind of darkness and confusion and emotional violence that is the engine of this music in this band yeah the darkness is absolutely crucial i mean it's like you know obviously with the platy jubes this year wins sorry there was that usual campaign you know to get god save the queen back in the charts and i think it got to 42 or something like that showing really that people aren't that interested but you

know it's a complete misreading of this record if you listen to the closing lines you know no future in england's dreaming if you see that as a prescriptive didactic thing you're misreading the spiritual pessimism of this record in a sense because you know he's saying no future in england's dreaming the way lyden puts it across you get no sense that he feels there will be an end to england's dreaming he's kind of you know he's sure that that fake dreaming of a bullshit britannia will carry on forever and that's a crucial component of why the Sex Pistols are such a simultaneously impossible and confusing band and that's precisely what makes

them so good. It's so telling that in DOA, the punk film when God Save the Queen comes on it cuts to a scene of a really tatty looking school playground in London and the camera pans across all these 70s kids who are showing off and doing Fonzie thumbs up.

And just the words, no future, no future, no future for you flash up. And it's like, oh man, that still hits me in the gut that does when I see that. Yeah. I mean, there are far more scurrilous songs knocking about about the Queen. I mean, Eric Burden and Ward did a cover version

of Paint It Black in 1970, 1970 where burden starts going on about giving the queen a screaming orgasm and then a few years after this we get the queen gives good blow jobs by peter and the test tube babies good old peter and the test tube baby but this one it's because it's so fucking impossible for tabloid hacks of 1977 to decipher yeah exactly exactly you know and they say oh you know you say fascist regime you're saying the queen's a fascist and all this kind of stuff and they come back with saying well you know if this government wasn't a fascist regime we'd be able to say those words and not get banned so yeah think about it man yeah a working class kid like lyden can only be one note to these people you know he can only mean one thing at one time he can't summate contradictions he can't

summate what it is to be in the crossfire of all this both bullshit from the past and also thoughts about the future he can't do that he's not allowed to do that by the tabloid press and so when they look at the lyrics that they yeah they don't decipher them they take them at surface value yeah now that's absolutely that's the that's the thing about lyden that so many people got wrong that and also what so many of his fans get wrong the idea that like he should be some sort of fount of wisdom and so the sort of stuff he says now is like some sort of betrayal is like he wasn't a public intellectual the point is he was an awkward bloke whose circumstances once rendered that awkwardness meaningful. And now they don't.

That's the price of success. It always has been. So how would Top of the Pops have done this if they'd have allowed it on? If they'd have been forced to play it, how would they have done it? Oh, God, legs and co. Yes.

Just as chess pieces. Or swastikas on legs. I have no idea how they would have done it oh god legs and coat but yes just chest pieces or swastikas on legs i have no idea how they would have done this i mean we're shy of inviting the pistols into the studio i think they basically didn't expect to get invited onto you know like liftoff or any of those programs they just didn't know i think it would have been a blank screen and no music for two and a half minutes which of course mclaren would have loved yes yeah so the following week god save the queen dropped two places to number four by which time john through and decided to count virgin shops chart returns again which was nice of him the follow-up pretty vacant got to number six a month later, and they'd finished 1977 with Holidays in the Sun getting to number eight in October before it all went wrong in America, and Johnny Rotten got the fuck out of it.

And in October of 1980, John Fruin resigned as managing director of WEA due to differences of opinion between him and the shareholders on matters of policy and absolutely nothing to do with the recent broadcast of the World in Action episode, The Chartbusters, which focused on the distribution of Judy Zouk satin tour jackets to record shops in order to fiddle the chart return books. Shame on him. He ain't no human being. on him he ain't no human being so in its place we get the officially designated number one single the first cut is the deepest by rod stewart we last covered the king of the ramadan number ones

in sharp music number 13 and this single is the follow-up of sorts to the re-release of Maggie Mae, which got to number 31 in December of 1976, and the actual follow-up to his cover of Get Back, which was taken from the soundtrack of All This and World War II, which got to number 11 in the same month. It's actually a double A-side, featuring a cover of Crazy Horse's 1971 LP track I Don't Wanna Talk About It, which featured on his 1975 LP Atlantic Crossing,

and this, a cover of the 1967 Cat Stevens song, which PP Arnold took to number 18 in May of that year, which had not only appeared on Stewart's 1976 LP A Night on the Town, but was also the B-side of Get Back in Certain Countries. Despite both sides being already in the public domain, they were released in April as a stopgap while Rod was putting together his next album, Footloose and Fancy Free, and entered the chart in late April at number 48. The following week, it soared 35 places to number 13 then leapt up seven places to number four nudged up two places to number two and finally deposed free by Denise Williams to

assume pole position on the summit of Mount Pop his fourth number one in the UK so far. This is its fourth week at number one and has somehow managed to hold back God Save the Queen from its rightful place. So here's the fifth showing of the promo video featuring Rod grappling with an acoustic guitar. Oh, God. Rod's been in the news this week, chaps.

He's made a rare visit to the UK to see the England-Scotland match and in tomorrow's Daily Mirror is the headline Star Rod pitches in to repair Wembley. Soccer-loving rock star Rod Stewart had two upsets when Scotland beat England at Wembley. He was angry when rampaging Scots ripped up the turf as souvenirs and he lost a gold necklace given to him by girlfriend Britt Eklund. But fortune smiled on Rod and Wembley yesterday.

Rod discovered that the necklace had been found and he sent a donation towards repairing the pitch. He said, I just wanted to apologise on behalf of the fans who were carried away by all the excitement fuck's sake very magnanimous of him yeah i nearly fell asleep watching this man the thing is with rod unlike say mick jagger rod writes himself into his songs i think and into the songs that he chooses to cover as well yeah you know yeah he's like the carpenters a lot of his songs are cover versions yeah and i always picture is

the the songs that he performs with almost with him as a central character you know with jagger you can never really find quite fine mick jagger in his songs in a way but but it's more a sort of dazed reflection of his surroundings in his milieu but with rod when he sings his great songs like maggie may or you wear it well i don't know about you but i'll picture him you know with his daddy's cue and all the rest of it so there's a really simple issue of believability about the first cut is the deepest it's kind of vaguely believable as the cat steven song because cat was in his disgraceful partying years at that time the pp arP. Arnold version's great. And also the Norma Fraser reggae version

is a real doozy as well. But Rod, I'm just not buying it. By this time, I'm not buying into that kind of slightly damaged young boy thing. He doesn't sound hurt. He sounds cynical. And this song sounds like a tactic. Yeah, telling someone he's going to try and love again.

How many times have you said that this week, Rod? Well, he's getting too old to be pulling these kind of lies out. And the fact that it's an absolute dreary, shit-fest, plodding dog of a recording with these horrible harps on it. It's not as utterly fuck-awful as You're In My Heart or something like that, but it's down there. And it feels and sounds lazy, really. Yeah, and the tables have turned now, haven't they?

Because Rod, the former super lad of the 70s, he's now cast as a villain of the piece. The tax exile holding the new generation down with his reconstituted off-course. Absolutely. He's the enemy. The whole thing feels lazy and cynical. I don't want to talk about it. He's from Atlantic Crossing, which is two years old.

This is from A Night On The Town, which is one year old. Yeah, who the fuck's buying this? Exactly, four fucking weeks. I have no idea who's buying it. It is lazy. He's changed the lyrics a bit from the PP Arnold version because he couldn't remember them, I think. Right.

This is Rod at his most successful. This is a big smash. But I think he always benefits from a bit of roughness around him. So when he's backed, as he he is here by the best session man and the best arrangers and all that bollocks he just kind of sounds soft i like the rough and ready a lot you know which is essential his kind of raspy voice it needs a bit of a raspy setting yeah and although he looks great from the waist up in this video although i don't like his diamante shark tooth combination necklace i mean the promo video is 70s video cliche number three the fake top of the pops

performance on a stage too big and expensive for top of the pops you know he's on his own with an acoustic guitar with no strap in some i noticed they were non-flared gray trousers so you know there is a progression well i thought with those from the waist up, he looks like a kind of pretty glam rock star. But from the waist down, he's wearing these horrible, shiny grey trousers that look very Burton's. Yes. I would have hated this anyway in 77 as being slow and boring. But if I knew that simply the fact that he's number one,

it's just not cricket. You know, he cheated. Well, he didn't cheat. I can't blame him, I guess. But I'd hate it even more yeah we've mentioned before that rod stewart is ugly sexer by the standards of the mid-70s and it's it's pretty much a straight fight between him and david soul as the girly lust object of 1977 but oh with his head in a jet engine bouffant he looks like the sort of woman who keeps getting stopped by the

west yorkshire police and and be forced to listen to a tape recording of Wearside Jack and then asked if they'd been in a car with him. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I find this record and video with its strange focus on bottoms and man dressed as a lady, I find it to be in deplorable taste and it's my policy to ignore it on this podcast might be getting any kind of airplay or attention from me then maybe it'll go away yeah that guitar

is getting right in the way isn't it you know you know he wants to collar the mic and emote into it but with no strap on the guitar it means he has to keep hold of it and he he hasn't got the courage to do uh to do an ashleygram. So he just ends up holding it and halfway through he does this massively awkward transfer of the guitar to behind his back. You know, as if his little sister's just come into the bedroom and he's terrified that she's going to put it about that Rob thinks he's a pop star.

And then he turns around so he can pretend to play an electric guitar solo on his acoustic and he starts giving it some absolutely appalling arse action, doesn't he? Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. It's like when Father Dougal portrayed mid-period Elvis in the old Priest Stars in Their Eyes lookalike competition. I remember watching, maybe not this episode,

but one of the episodes on which it featured with my mam. And when he turned round and did that, I can still see my mam tutting and saying look at him with his little rabbit arse massively disapprovingly and that's who Rod is to me now little rabbit arse

yeah the music playing while he does that should not be the first cut it's the deepest it should be do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do

no fuck him and fuck this record to be honest with you having said that though the first cut is the deepest Johnny Rotten's gonna know all about that in a few weeks time

isn't it poor sod ouch the following week the first cut is the deepest I don't wanna talk about it was finally dislodged from the number one spot by the hardcore

new wave sound of Lucille by Kenny Rogers. The follow-up You're In My Heart got to number three for three weeks in October-November while his new LP entered the chart at number three and stayed there for two

weeks. He'll have a few more decent songs in him, but these aren't they. No. Boom. Thank you. That's the number one sound from Rod Stewart. Thank you very much indeed for watching Top of the Pops. We're going to play out with Emerson Lake and Palmer.

See you on Saturday. Seaside special, Top of the Pops. We're going to play out with Emerson Lake and Palmer. See you on Saturday. Seaside Special, Top of the Pops next week. Bye-bye. Tony, still exiled on the fringes, thanks us for looking at him on the telly for a bit and then shills his appearance on Seaside Special before throwing us at the studio lights as we're treated to fanfare for the common man by emerson lake and palmer we covered elp

and this single with the same fucking people in chart music number 47 it entered the chart of fortnight ago then soared 23 places to number 25 and this week it's jumped another eight places to number 17 so can anybody manage one more squeeze of this tea bag yeah i'll tell you what elo and elp has there ever been a top of the pops featuring two groups so close alphabetically i bet not also i don't like how when you type elp into youtube it auto completes as elpen musk there isn't there isn't even an elpen musk what are they i don't get it well they tour is elp do we know because it seems inconceivable that they weren't somehow right it's it's hard to pin down but some music just feels tory at a fundamental level and it's not it's nothing to do with the classical pretensions or the attempts at highbrow which even in 1977 would be a very old-fashioned idea of Toryism. Because you listen to, like, the aforementioned Soft Machine, for instance,

and they're not exactly playing music for the people, but you can sort of tell that they're commies, right? If you have a feel for the time and place and how things worked in that culture, all the signifiers are there, and you understand that this bizarre difficult uncommercial music which does whatever it wants should be the work of adherence to a philosophy of repression and enforced egalitarianism because it sounds unworldly and academic and anti-social but also idealistic whereas elp sound like they're all about personal

gain and glory and tax avoidance yeah well it's like they've put themselves at the head of a meritocratic elite you know and yet they don't understand that what they're actually doing is terrible for everyone except themselves yeah no wonder No wonder Jim Davidson was a fan. That Tory aspect of ELP is most successfully crystallised, I think, on the sleeve to their 1978 album. Right. It's one of my favourite record sleeves ever. The album's called Love Beach.

Right. Just go Google it. Just go look at the front cover, because it's exactly what Taylor was just talking about. It's horrible, obviously, because it's exactly what taylor was just talking about it's horrible obviously um because it's elp but it's them three basically on a beach with shirts on all pretty much unbuttoned to the waist with big chunky medallions and it's hugely aspirational oh i'm looking at it now it's a very expensive cna advert isn't it indeed it's totally grotesque it's what happens when prog completely detaches itself

utterly from the counterculture and this is where it ends up and that's what you can hear in this music as well and another way in which they're worse than soft machine and more tory is that their music is monolithic and intractable right you can't do anything with it it just tries to do its thing to you the reason i'm talking about soft machine the other day i was listening to soft machines album seven very much from their later open university spot rock period it's not all of it to my taste but i was listening to the track carol anne which is actually a kind of limpid jazz instrumental with a synth on it but you hear it and you think oh this sounds like the theme tune to a slightly melancholy bittersweet late 70s or early 80s sitcom if you listen to it on time stretching hallucinogens which it really

does by the way if you listen that's exactly what it sounds like and i'm not aware of any elp music which is that open to the imagination or the idea of potentially being anything other than just what it is right they're the musicians and you will listen to them and you will be in no doubt they're more totalitarian than the totalitarian i mean i've spent most of my life avoiding emerson lake and palmer the two things that stick in my mind is the documentary message to love about the isle of wight festival when there's all this hippie anarchist mentalness going on and then all of a sudden they pitch up with loads of cannons and they immediately strike the opening chord and it's like oh my god here comes the 70s everyone and then the episode of blue peter in 1975 when carl palmer pitched up

to show off his new drum kit which he commissioned british steel to make for him out of stainless steel and then he got it engraved with foxes and voles and badgers and you know i was only six but i knew even then that badgers aren't rock and roll the suite wouldn't do that like a lot of the records on this episode of top of the pops it very neatly illustrates why the record that isn't featured on this top of the pops is you know so needed yeah i mean i i don't like being too harsh on anyone who ended up committing suicide except hitler but fucking hell, Keith Emerson started off sticking knives into a Hammond organ

to see what kind of noise it made, you know, like a keyboard Pete Townshend. But the difference is Townshend was disrespecting his equipment, partly for show and spectacle, but also because it made a statement of frustration and nihilism and the inadequacy of pop music and a personal inadequacy to express everything which needed to be expressed through the usual channels, right?

Whereas Emerson was doing it for show and spectacle, but also to place himself above the instrument. It's like, I've mastered this and all there is now, the only place left to go is to stick some fucking knives in it i don't know if that was his conscious thought but looking at what he did later that's what it looks and feels like and then when you take him out of the marquee club and put him in a stadium with that extra space to fill with his virtuosity seem to validate him again and keep him happy musically whereas you put pete downs in

in a stadium and he just got more desperate and despairing because it broke his link with the audience which didn't matter to lp because they weren't about two-way communication with the audience even in theory this is a recital you should consider yourself lucky to be there with your barbiturates and your bottle of red wine sat in a football stadium in the snow yeah this is a band that just brought out two albums called works volumes one and two i mean so the following week fanfare for the common man leapt another nine places to number eight then spent two weeks at number three then nudged up to number two held back from soiling the peak of pop mountain by so you win again by hot chocolate the follow-up all i want is you failed to chart and this remains their only

sullying of the uk charts and that's pop pop craze youngsters, is the end of this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with part eight of Royal Heritage, the documentary series where Hugh Weldon noses through all the ramble that the monarchs of England have been given or nicked off some foreigners. This week, he's rummaging down the back of Queen Victoria's knicker drawer. After the 9 o'clock news, David Frost has a bit of live chit-chat on the Frost programme, then we're taken over to the embankment to witness the denouement of today's licking of the royal arse.

With Michael Barrett as your MC, Raymond Baxter on a motor yacht which was used in dunkirk and richard baker commentating on a fucking massive fireworks display then they rhymed off the night with john timpson and dennis tooey trying to remind us that other things are going on in the world in the current affairs program tonight only to be interrupted by the queen and her husband going home and waving at folk from a balcony oh she does she does it so well she does a great job i had a look at the telly for today and i love how bbc one's entire prime time schedule is just wall to wall royal ass washing apart from top of the pops and a dav a David Frost interview with David Irving.

Wow. Perfect. A disgraced charlatan who should be in jail interviewing David Irving. Oh, shit. That actually is the Have I Got News For You joke formula, isn't it? Fuck, you know, so lazy. I'm sorry. Oh, Taylor.

joke formula isn't it fuck you know so lazy i'm sorry no taylor bbc2 have just come out of newsday and continues its season of ealing cinema with a gomont newsreel from april 1942 followed by the 1942 tommy trinder film the foreman went to france then it's a special report from the world about us about the declining population of the african elephant then it's the special report from the world about us about the declining population of the African elephant. Then it's the drama series Sea Tales, late news on two, the highlights from the tennis, and they finish off with John Williams playing Cavatina in music at night. ITV eventually gets round to this week. Then it's an extended hour and a half news at 10 in order to fit in all the royal ram all and they finish up with cyril fletcher and bob price in gardening today closing down at midnight

so boys what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow um i think i'll be talking about the stranglers it's quite an exciting performance that demis roussos always going to be talked about and probably the wurzels, let's be honest. Yeah, the terrible truth is that it would probably be the Wurzels. Bob Marley of the Whalers, take note, that could have been you. What are we buying on Saturday?

Wurzels, definitely. I mean, from now, Honky, I actually quite dig. Pistols, Gladys and Jacksons. ELO, Sex Pistols, Bob Marley, if by this point the theoretical me had progressed to puffing on a crooked, leaky spliff that's 99% silk cut, plus a millionth of a microgram of horrible black plastic soap bar. I miss soap, though.

Yeah, me too sprinkled unevenly through it around the around the back of the chippy in the garages you know coughing and bug-eyed iry deep meditation at the age of five i said if and what does this episode tell us about june of 1977 they made you a moron i think it does tell us a lot about how punk rock must have seemed so exciting and threatening it's not that mainstream entertainment isn't speaking to kids about their lives or anything you know the words will speak to all of us but kids don't really have a problem mainstream entertainment i don't know i just think it's when pop seems barely tolerant of kids at all being even part of it and much of the pop music we get given here is very grown up and very adult and very slow and very boring and kids want energy and it is coming but it needs bearing in mind i think in 77 when we're looking back

punk is something i still think that you have to be looking for if you want to be into it. You know, it's not on the telly and it's not on in your living room much. So even though there's hints here, you know, you could successfully put the stranglers away as a novelty, almost shock rock act at this point. It's not gatecrash the mainstream in any way,

but every single thing on this that isn't by black Americans in a or black jamaicans is proof of why we needed it and that brings this episode of chart music to a close usual promotional flange chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music podcast reach out to us on twitter at chart music t-o-t-p money down the g-string patreon.com slash chart music thank you Taylor Parks God bless you Neil Kulkarni as ever a pleasure

my name's Al Al who Al fucking Needham that's who chart music Chart music. Excuse me, are you the producer? Yeah, right on, baby. Are you going to vocalise on this tune? Well, not exactly me.

Well, who are they, little brother? Prince. OK, well, where is this cat? It's not a cat. It's a dog. Wow! Yeah, that was real cool. Hey, dog, keep this up when you've got it made. Bones the size of houses.

Your own customized lampposts. The wild is your oyster. Oh, no, Prince doesn't like oysters. But he likes sausages. Okay, what is this? Can he do it or can't he? Oh, yes, he can. So, what went wrong?

It's not all his fault. It's just that every time somebody says that word, he says it as well. What word? Sausages. Has he done this kind of thing before? Oh yeah, he's even been on the telly. And I suppose he's been on the mantelpiece too. Come on, what do you take me for? Who would be crazy enough to have a talking dog on a TV show?

After. Well, really great stuff there. So, the nationwide special Jubilee message. Can you lift the pigeon out, Frank? Well, I'm going to get Ken Seddington to do that, because he's the expert. It's his pigeon. Right, as he's doing. So, let me just remind you that our royal flight of pigeons

took off exactly a week ago today when one of the Queen's own birds flew out of Buckingham Palace on its way to the royal pigeon loft near Sandringham. Other pigeons took up the message, adding to it as they flew around the country from Norwich to Newcastle, then on to Edinburgh, back down through Manchester to Cardiff. And there was actually some pretty awful weather on the way, I might say. And this fine bird here is the last of the relays. She took off from Cardiff yesterday and fluttered into a pigeon loft near the studio just before our fair began.

These, I'm unrolling them now so people can remember them, these were the key words in our message before today's bird arrived. Airborne, the tribute. Nationwide, our... And, of course, now, with Windsor Girl's contribution here, unstrapped from her leg, the verse is complete. The final verse of Nationwide's Jubilee message reads, Affection and pride, full-blossomed but unseen,

now revealed in homage to our Queen, with palpitating heart and beating wings our final messenger his tribute brings. Well, there we are, stirring stuff to complete our keyword message to the Queen from the length and breadth of Great Britain. Airborne the tribute, nationwide our affection. And now, let's get out and about again. Let's go over to the English and Welsh border at Chepstow Castle.

Welcome down from London with all their fancy tricks. Ah, we've got trick or two. We'll be just dancing. We've got brains, too. Weetabix, have you had your daily wheat? Oh, our.