Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #48 (Part 3): 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard This

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Chart Music #48: 24th January 1980 – Imagine If Charles Manson Had Heard ThisThe latest episode of the podcast which asks: Matchbox – big elderly Ted-racists, or just really keen on The Dukes Of Hazzard?It’s a long-overdue return to the Pic n’ Mix counter of TOTP, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and this time we’ve pulled out a plum from the early days of the new decade, which is now FORTY BASTARD YEARS AGO. Mike Read has been quarantined to the balcony, resplendent in a clankening of badges, and he is poised to drop an episode shot through with Eighventies goodness.Musicwise, well: Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes mark time before going off to be Stunt Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. The Nolans drop the Staying Alive of Mum-Disco.  Legs and Co have a bit of a float-around to the last knockings of Beardo Disco. Bob Geldof looks like Richard E Grant playing Rambo. Suzi Quatro has a whinge about her Walter the Softy-like boyfriend. David Van Day shoots John Lennon in the back a full eleven months before Mark Chapman gets the chance. The Specials con you into thinking every gig you’re going to go to when you grow up is going to be an incredible experience.  Sheila and B Devotion (and more importantly, Chic) kick in the afterburners, and we get the First New Number One Of The Eighties.Simon Price and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a comprehensive dismantling of early ’80, veering off on such tangents as Space Oppression, DAAANGERFREAKS, caravan warehouse-owning lions, The Great Jumpsuit Shortage, another examination of I’m Your Number One Fan, Nazi double basses, and Colleen Nolan’s unfortunate teenage crush. ALL THE SWEARING.Video Playlist |  Subscribe |  Facebook  | TwitterSubscribe to us on iTunes here. Support us on Patreon here.PART 4 OUT TOMORROW - AND THE ENTIRE EPISODE GETS RELEASED ON FRIDAY!This podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Hey up, you pop-craze youngsters, and welcome to part three of episode number 48 of Chart Music and fucking hell, Revelation has been piled upon Revelation already in this episode. Let us not fanny about, let us rejoin the episode in progress.

The Nolans are their biggest hit to date, I'm in the mood for dancing. Still with the Emerald Isle, this is the new single from the boom town rats Reid, alone in front of the balcony informs us that I'm in the mood for dancing is the Nolan's biggest hit so far and would stay that way forever and ever before introducing another Irish band the Boomtown Rats with Someone's Looking At Ya We've covered the Boomtown Rats in Chant Music's 13 and 45

and this, their 8th single is the follow up to Diamond Smiles which got to number 13 only last month It's the third cut from the LP The Fine Art of Surfacing, with lyrics by Bob Geldof which touch upon his participation in a Greenpeace rally in Trafalgar Square the previous year, and it's entered the charts this week at number 45. And oh boys, how fast things move in the world of pop chaps because you know only a few months ago Bob Geldof

had been anointed by the tabloids as the voice of a generation and you know they'd go on to win best single for I Don't Like Mondays at the British Rock and Pop Awards next month and even the Daily Mirror they ran a week long section in August of 1979

called Superheroes a revealing series on the new idols of today's youth. And wouldn't you know, the first subject was Bob Geldof. The introduction. Out of the snarling, sweaty rabble of the money-grabbing, clawing, poisonous world of the pop music industry, crabbing, clawing, poisonous world of the pop music industry, there comes, quite rarely, a single sane voice, which sounds like the pure note of a trumpet above the battle for supremacy. The men with cigars, dressed twenty years too young, who pull the strings of the trade, fall back in their serried ranks,

clutching their wallets and croaking that they have a rebel in their midst. The pop world is full of tame, make-believe rebels, most of them as full-blooded as an anemic slug and speaking in the jargon which saves their addled minds from being overheated and hides their feeble command of the language. Most are larger than life and twice as empty. But not Bob Geldof. Not Bob Geldof. This lanky, dark-haired youth of 26 is emerging into the hard,

diamond-bright light of fame and riches as the greatest rock star since the Beatles orbited a crazed world. Ha, ha, ha, ha! Yeah. Do you want to guess who the other superheroes as used were looking up to in this series?

It's not Toya, is it? Sebastian Coe. I hate Sebastian Coe. two in this uh series it's not toyah is it sebastian ko i hate sebastian ko david gower of course and the show jumper caroline bradley who yeah such rarefied company bob galdolfson at the minute but here we are in january 1980 and uh it seems that the rats are already falling behind the pack. No, he's the biggest icon since the big... Never mind David Bowie, never mind Mark Bolan, any of that. Forget it. No, no. It's all about fucking Geldof. It's weird, actually, how, you know,

their period of supremacy, such as it was, has been kind of telescoped in my mind. Because, for example um a later hit banana republic in my mind that was a real late period hit like it's almost like a comeback turns out it was the same year it was it was later in 1980 yeah yeah yeah so really everything that happened of any import in their career was in a tiny amount of time yeah i've been speaking up for the boom tower Rats quite a lot lately, here and elsewhere, but I've got to say,

watching this one this time, it was trying my patience. Partly the way that he looks, the way they present themselves. He's got this headband on that makes him look like a cross between Jennifer Beals in Flashdance and Brighton & Hove Albion's Steve Foster. Yes. And it keeps cutting between that and this different

Geldof in a swivel chair who's kind of snipping his way out of a bin bag with his hair slicked back and he's looking at millions of TV screens. It's like a cross between his character in The Wall and Thomas Jerome Newton. Which he's not been casting yet. Oh right, yeah. And

Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Yeah. I mean, you've got to take your hat off him for being an early adopter of the headband, even before The Green Goddess. But it has to be said, he does look... If First Blood 2 had starred Richard E. Grant as Rambo, that's what he'd look like.

Also, in terms of slightly fading punk singers wearing headbands in the early 80s, it's a bit Jimmy Percy, isn't it? Yeah, on Riverside. Yeah, very much so. And he is doing quite a lot of kind of overly

kind of mime-like movements with his body. He's acting out the lyric literally, isn't he? He's doing his usual Pans People style emotes into the lyrics, isn't he? Yeah, so he goes, on a night like this, I deserve to get kissed. And he blows a kiss. It looks like he's sniffing his fingers. Yes!

It's exactly what I was going to say. You're reading my notes on my shoulder. It looks like he's doing that smell my finger thing that terrible schoolboys do. I just sort of couldn't really get past that. It looks like he's doing that smell my finger thing that terrible schoolboys do. Yes. You know? And, yeah, I just sort of couldn't really get past that.

And, yeah, the lyrics, as you say, refers to him attending this Greenpeace rally. They saw me there in the square when I was shooting my mouth off about saving some fish. Right? And it's broadly about state surveillance, 1984 style. And his website also says it's a statement on fame. But I don't feel that it has anything particularly interesting or original to say on any of those topics. You know, those topics are, you know, they've been done to death in pop music. But you can still make a decent fist of it.

Not Geldof, not here. No. I can't believe it was such a big hit. Number four ended up. And my God, it goes on, doesn't it? Four minutes, 27 seconds, the single is. And some Boomtown Rats songs, I would say, earn that kind of running time.

For me, Rattrap earns that running time. It's got drama to it. It's got different episodes, different passages to it. This one doesn't. I really lost patience with it. Sorry, yeah. Also, someone should tell him whales aren't fish. They're mammals. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Already, rock is folding in on itself. You know what I mean? All the least appealing aspects of the stones and the kinks from the 1970s, not even the 60s, are being coughed back up here already you know and sold as something fresh and new it's a terrible racket in more ways than one it's uh there's such a lot of that in the 80s bands with no purpose except the glorification of themselves just doing what you thought what they think you're supposed to do if

you're in a band you know and the problem was punk was meant to liberate us all from this but it just made things worse because the new orthodoxy was easier to achieve so more people did it and all these second or third hand ideas and just all these dullards and ego trippers enabled and encouraged you know not a decent tune or a single interesting thought between them you know i mean it's like you're talking about how the rat's star is is on the wane here but i think that horrible desperation was always there you know what i mean like everything they did was just straining all the time trying too hard and it's because there was no actual substance to the music and nothing naturally appealing in the presentation but they have this need to be

the center of attention and this sort of sub-punk received idea that you have to be lively and annoying you know so it's all bug eyes and jumping up and down you know it's like they're doing this song about he's paranoid and it's like paranoia is only a form of narcissism you know what i mean and he's fretting about someone looking at you somewhat undermined by how shameless they are about their need to be looked at you know this fucking hyperactivity is not coming from a healthy or a or an interesting energy it's just a need for attention which can't be earned so has to be demanded i mean there's clearly diminishing returns going on here with the Boomtown Rats,

but they are still big enough to be allowed to have their video on. Yeah. Which is quite rare for 1980. I mean, particularly after the Nolan sisters have had a video on. But that was a BBC thing, so that was all right. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it's a bit counterproductive, though, because right at the beginning,

you just assume it's another studio performance. And it's not until it kicks in with this Noughts and Crosses motif that you realise you're actually watching a video. Yeah, and they're wearing kind of military-style stuff, camouflage, aren't they? So that actually made me go back to the lyrics and look a bit more closely. So I thought, ooh, is it about the Troubles?

And maybe it's wrong just because they're an Irish band to assume to assume that but no it's just me me me isn't it really yeah they've just gone down to the army and navy aren't they yeah yeah i mean i've already expressed my real feelings about bob geldof on a previous episode so this time i should be a bit more measured so let's just say that there's nothing worse than a rock star of average intelligence it's the worst thing in the world either be smart and tell us something we don't know or you know use your brain to dream up a reason for us to give a shit about you or just be thick just be thick as eggnog and fall over for our amusement you know what i mean is it but god preserve us from this kind of fucking small business owner or dwp team leader who gets

into rock and roll you know because inevitably they have their ego grotesquely swollen uh but instead of making instead of that making them do something crazy or ridiculous or entertaining they just carry on mouthing off their their worthless thoughts their sort of commonplace dreary semi-informed mixture of of ignorant claptrap and the bleeding obvious, except with a new sense of self-righteousness and an ugly air of superiority. These people are the worst, always the worst in rock and roll in every way, this saggy, soggy middle, you know,

because they think they're really clever next to a lot of the people they're meeting, like a lot of rock musicians and you know music biz parasites because compared to those people they are quite clever but compared to anyone with any real wit about them they're just bores you know strutting about wagging their finger at you you know like you're a child or you know like you're meant to be grateful or impressed you know actors are fucking terrible for this as well by the way um i don't think you can be in showbiz without a grotesque ego because if you didn't have one already you will have one after

about a year but if you have any real intelligence you'll at least be semi-aware of your own ridiculousness and you'll find ways to operate around that and ways to utilise your brain within your preposterous new reality, you know. So aware of your distance from actual reality as well. You know, it's what Bowie did or Dylan or Prince, you know, Marky Smith, anyone who's actually got a brain. But what you don't do is just start acting like all of a sudden everybody should listen to you.

You know, at long last, your unremarkable pontification has finally found an audience. Because that's how you end up with a disaster like Live Aid. The practical power plus the kind of oblivious pride that stops you understanding that the situation you've blundered into might be a bit more complicated than you thought because maybe you're not quite as smart as you've been allowed to believe. I mean, I moaned about it getting to number four, but it's partly my fault because I did buy this.

Oh, Simon. Yeah, yeah. You're part of the problem, not the solution. Yeah, I was on board with the Boomtown Rats. I sort of maybe bought it a little bit out of loyalty because I'd liked a few of their other singles. I used to hear them around the house quite a lot. My dad was quite into Fine Art of Surfacing

and Tonic for the Troops albums. But having bought this single, I don't think I played it very much. Like I say, it just goes on and on. The other thing I noticed at the end of this is that when Mike Reed is outreducing it, he calls it someone looking at you. Yes.

Despite the emphasis very clearly being someone looking at you. Yes. And it reminded me of that bit on the day-to-day, the John Fashanoo. Yes. John Fashanoo. John Fashanoo. And then Chris Morris goes,

John Fashanoo. 10 o'clock on BBC Two. So the following week, someone's looking at you. Soared 31 places to become the highest new entry at number 14. And two weeks later, it got to number four, its highest position. The follow-up, Banana Republic, got to number three in December of this year. Their last top 20 hit, and they'd released seven more singles before calling it a day in 1985.

So, yeah, they had a pretty decent 1980. Yeah. This is what looks frightening there. The Rats and Someone's looking at you. They're always looking at you. This one looks frightened there. The Rats and Someone's Looking at You. Seven top 20 hits so far, and that one's on the way to join them. And right now, here are Legs to Dance to the Bee Gees. I've never been a little up so easily When all wings blow, I carry on Reid spews out more rat stats before introducing legs

dancing to spirits having flown by the Bee Gees. spews out more rat stats before introducing legs, dancing to spirits having flown by the Bee Gees. We've done the Brothers Gibb loads on chart music, and this single, the follow-up to Love You Inside Out, which got to number 13 for two weeks in May of 1979, is the title cut from their last LP, which was released in January of 1979 and got to number one in the UK album charts for two weeks in March. More importantly, it's the only single released from the LP Bee Gees Greatest, their collection of late 70s singles and versions

of hit singles recorded by other people, which was put last october and got to number one in america but didn't do so well over here this week it's got up 10 places from number 26 to number 16 and when there's some floaty ethereal late period disco that needs emoting to who you're gonna call legs and co which is their proper name read you cunt it's a bit grotesque isn't it his introduction where he says here are legs dancing to the bg yeah peter powell used to call them legs as well like it's kind of um like some sort of glory hole where just only the legs are peeping through or maybe you know the herbie hancock video to rock it yes or the knobbly knees competitions in heidi high yeah or that um what was it not Sexbox,

but there was this show on Channel 4 where it's like a dating thing where you only see people from like the ankles up and then, yeah, that thing, then the crotch and all that, yeah. As we've learned from our forays into late 70s top of the pops, disco is a welcoming temptress

that allows everybody to have a go, but oh dear, the Bee Gees are about to discover that they can't remove its musk no matter what they do. Because this isn't really a disco song, but to people like me, it was. They were that disco band, and that's what they were always going to be from here on in. Well, the thing is, they hadn't made an actual studio album

during the kind of real height of disco. I mean obviously they're strongly associated with it because of Saturday Night Fever soundtrack but this album Spirits Having Flown was their sort of belated attempt to actually ride that wave

with an album of their own. There's a book I've been reading recently by our former colleague Pete Paphidis called Broken Greek. It's not out till March, but it's his sort of childhood memoir. And the way he reads this song is that there's this really kind of poignant sense

of things slipping from their grasp, that they know that they're past their peak of fame and things can only go down from here. And this is their last little bit. And I'm not sure how much of that is peak projecting or reaching, but I do like it as a theory. Because they were, around this time, kind of national laughing stock. You know, you had Angus Deaton's Hebe Jebe's,

you had Kenny Everett, people like that. They were just, you know, doing an impression of the Bee Gees was just a bog standard thing in British light entertainment. And in America, it was the tail end of them being a thing. was just a bog standard thing in British light entertainment. And in America, it was the tail end of them being a thing. This song, you know, they were rarely on the radio after this one. And Robin Gibb referred to it as censorship and evil in an interview. And, you know, when I saw that, I thought, get a grip. I mean, I know Disco Sucks was kind of a malicious and pervasive force but you

know evil and censorship hardly um i mean this this album is number one in in the us and the uk so they're doing all right uh but then you know it wasn't because of this song it was stuff like too much heaven and tragedy was obviously tragedy was the big song off the album. I Love You Inside Night is a fucking tune. Is it? I love it. Ah, I can't remember that one. Wow. I've got the album downstairs.

I'll just go to play. Spirits Having Flown was... Oh, by the way, it's spirits, isn't it? It's open brackets, having flown, close brackets, on the single. Nice, ridiculous parenthesis work. It always livens up the song title, I think, as well as making it awkward to say in the book. Yeah although that's not how

the album is written I don't know why but it's one of those slightly strange intriguing Bee Gees song titles like Every Christian Lionhearted Man Will Show You just one of these sort of startling titles my favourite Bee Gees song title though will always be Fanny Be Gentle

With My Love, especially because I like to imagine them switching the first and last words of it around. I did like this song. It's got this kind of lighter-than-air feel to it, which I liked. It's got this kind of utopian feel of being kind of elevated to sunlit uplands or ascending above the cloud canopy. It's quite slight as a song, but it's like a cloud, really. It's like a gas, and I quite like it. Yeah, I like this record a lot, but in a quiet way.

That's the thing. It's not really a single, and when it then has to take its place in the singles discography of one of the great singles bands of the 1970s, and it's right at the end, it's enough to make your OCD flare up. I can't tell whether the unusual vagueness and sort of melancholy of this record is born of exhaustion and that creeping, know inescapable sense of an era ending or if it's actually a sort of hubris and a mistaken idea that as the you know as the still mighty greek gods of pop they can do anything and make it happen you know it's a

commercially like it's oh this is not it's not a disco single it's not really a single we can do it but if you'd bought tragedy the previous year you'd think yeah fuck yeah so it's a lovely song but who are you trying to kid you can't you can't do that you can't step down from city-smashing monster pop songs like that to something so understated. You can't really do it, and especially not if you do it just as the seasons change culturally. And that's what happened.

And so that's how they went from galaxy-straddling super pop deities to a half-remembered Kenny Everett sketch overnight. It's terrifying. I wonder how much say they had in this coming out as a single in the UK. Yeah, because there was quite a gap, wasn't there, between the album with which it shares a name. Yeah, yeah. And it was only really whacked out to pimp their greatest hits.

So, yeah, I don't know, maybe it was RSO Robert Stigwood or whoever was behind that at the time. Yeah, it's a lovely record, but they should have stuck to what they were best at, which is making disco music and eating carrots held out on an open palm with the thumb tucked carefully underneath. We usually pile into Legs & Co. before we discuss a song,

so the fact that we haven't done that this time says... I think it speaks volumes for Legs & Co.'s performance on this one. It's not one of the most memorable ones, is it? Well, you say that. I found it quite... No, I honestly thought it was quite classy and quite minimal. That's why we're not talking about it. Well, I guess.

Dress up as Smurfs. Yeah, I suppose. Like getting a big cooking pot in the jungle or something like that. That's what we like. They're in these outfits, a sort of white lattice above the waist and white lettuce below it. And they're dancing inside a giant wind chime, is what it looks like. Costumes by L. Roland Warne, I noticed at the end.

Quite a grand-sounding name. It's near the birthday party. Yeah. Yeah, they've got kind of like white feathery dress bits and white heels and white knickers. It kind of makes them look like uh big sexy dream catchers doesn't it yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely and and um i mean i do like to give credit where it's due normally they're you know pretty ropey and amateurish and and we know the reasons why because they don't have much time to get these things together but when we did uh the earth one and fire one recently

i thought it was it was really great This one I think is also quite good. It's not spectacular, nothing very memorable happens, although I do like how they all kind of band together for cheesy grins during that silly little flute bit that Herbie Mann plays in the song. And they've got these really ridiculous grins on, and I quite like that. Yeah, it is the world's largest plastic wind chime, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

Imagine if your next door neighbour had set that up in his back garden. You'd be fucking furious, wouldn't you? Yeah. Yeah, this whole routine. It's one of those ones where it's just some attractive young women in tasteful but revealing outfits. Dancing better than you could do do but not astonishingly well no and there's no really startling choices being made and no chances being taken it's easy to quite enjoy it without thinking of anything in particular apart from the bit where the

the wind machine flutters a few too many feathers and grants us an unexpectedly comprehensive view of but apart from that it works the way i sort of suspect legs and co-routines were usually supposed to work right it's like the function of dad is fact yes it's not to turn people on it offers a Offers a sort of comfortable proximity to sexiness without starting a fire. So the dad or dad-like gentleman can relax into a kind of perfumed reverie without becoming aroused to the point where he has to face any crushing moments of clarity. It reminds me of having your head massaged by the pretty young junior hairdresser when she's washing your hair at the salon it's like everyone's just doing their thing nobody's been made uncomfortable in any way and yet you have a sensual link with femininity once

again which you can enjoy without complications yeah just a just a slight reverie. What means Simon can't? No. But yeah, it just inspires a slight reverie, a slight kind of daydream state, which is perfect for the record, actually. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make you go... It makes you go... So the following week, Spirits, having flown,

dropped five places to number 21, and the group essentially hibernated for most of the year while Barry worked with Barbara Streisand on her LP, Guilty. The follow-up, the steely Danish He's a Liar, failed to chart in the UK when it was released in 1981, and they wouldn't return to chartland until 1987, when You Win Again got to number one for four weeks in october of that year this is the first radio ad you can smell.

The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Missions apply. is come and sing their favourite musical theatre songs in front of a live audience. This podcast... Is us bringing that person inside of a building. Welcome to Just A Minute with Jade Adams. I panicked. Enjoy!

Lex and Kerri dancing to the Bee Gees' Spirit's Having Fun. You should see that without the fellas It's difficult because Joe Jackson Read, still alone, is given a close-up, revealing that he's wearing a madness badge, possibly a pretender's badge, and a badge with the word NO in big letters with something you can't make out underneath. After telling us he's been spying on Legs & Co, possibly through a hole in the dressing room wall

that Dave Lee Travis has been carving out with a spoon for the past seven years, he awkwardly segues into It's Different for Girls by Joe Jackson. Born in Burton-on-Trent in 1954, David Jackson moved with his family down to the Paulsgrove Estate in Portsmouth from an early age. At the age of 16, he started his career playing the piano in local pubs, but also landed a place at the Royal Academy of Music in the same year as Annie Lennox. Annie Lennox. And after graduating, he joined the show band Edward Bear as their accordion player, then formed the group Arms and Legs, who landed a deal with Mam Records in 1976, but split up after three flop singles. After working the cabaret circuit for a year or so,

including a regular stint as the pianist in the smallest playboy club in the world in Portsmouth, he worked up a solo demo tape and was signed by A&M in 1978. And in October of that year, he put out his debut single, Is She Really Going Out With Him, which failed to chart, along with his next three releases. However, when he started to be lumped in with the new wave movement, Is She Really Going Out With Him was re-released, getting to number 13 for two weeks in October of 1979. This is the follow-up to I'm The Man, the title track of his latest LP, which Jackson demanded as the first single, but it failed to chart when it was released in September of last year.

Against his wishes, A&M have put this out as the next single, and to his astonishment, it's put him back in the charts, and this week it's up 15 places from number 27 to number 12. Well, Joe Jackson, he was lumped into the new wave, whether he liked it or not, and he actually became the one person who crossed over to America. Issue really going out with him, stayed in the billboard chart for 15 weeks and got to number 21, which was seriously good going in 1979

if you were British and not a BG. It's just as well for him that he did get out of where he was from and get to places like America. Because when you mentioned Paul's Groveve estate obviously it starts ringing bells and it's where there were the um the riots in 2000 when uh suspected pedophiles were living in the estate and all i'm saying is just if joe jackson had been walking around in that kind of febrile atmosphere I would fear for his safety, that's all I'm saying. He's a little unsalubrious looking isn't he but also a little

bit shifty and a bit sweaty a little nervous. So he only had three hits and this is the middle one and the biggest I was surprised to find out but not the best this is a classic chart music thing

it's just the luck of the draw that we get the song after the good one or before the good one the first one of course being Is She Really Going Out With Him that Incel anthem with a famous opening line but it was Incelvis Costello if you will I like it

with a famous opening line pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street. But I always think if the tables were turned and Joe Jackson was, let's say, punching, as they say, any nearby gorillas might reasonably say, pretty women out walking with deep sea angler fish down my street. And the third one being stepping out, which I consider the pinnacle of what I call city music.

But I also take to be an expression of a sort of benign conservatism with a small C. Because lines like, we are tired of all the darkness in our lives and with no angry words to say can come alive. And I do recall Joe Jackson being outed as a large C conservative. And I do recall Joe Jackson being outed as a large C conservative. Yes. He had a song called Obvious Song, which was actually listed in the top 50 conservative songs by the right-wing magazine National Review. Although if you actually look at the lyrics,

that's a bit of a stretch on the part of the compilers. Most of those were, I'll say. Yeah, yeah. But getting back to the song in hand, It's Different For Girls, it's the most opaque of his three big hits and the hardest to kind of get were or something. Yeah, yeah. But getting back to the song in hand, It's Different For Girls, it's the most opaque of his three big hits and the hardest to kind of get a handle on. Apparently he wrote it as a kind of gender role reversal thing where the woman wants sex and the man wants love.

A bit like Pretty Girls Make Graves by The Smiths or even We Don't Have To by Jermaine Stewart. But if you don't know that, then the experience of listening to this song, it's a bit like eavesdropping on a couple having a row in a cafe, but they're halfway through and you don't know how it started. You know? Yeah.

And he sings it with a bit of a new wave snarl, you know? At this point, he is still trying to be shaking Costello, right? But the melodic structure of it and the production values of this record are closer to very non-punk singer-songwriters from late 70s America, like Billy Joel, for instance. And the bass line, that sort of pom, pom, pom, pom, it's very sort of gentle.

It's like a Fleetwood Mac cast-off, you know, circa 70s. Or how long has this been going on? Yeah, yeah, something like that. Incidentally, we've mentioned his hits. I would direct people towards the first single of Beat Crazy, which is his album after this one, which is called Mad At You, and I would urge everyone to check out the video.

It's really something. He plays this misogynist psychopath screaming at his girlfriend, who's played by himself in drag. What? Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah oh yeah fucking hell which is an alarming sight let me say it's very um it puts the lotion on its skin from silence the lambs you know and um it turned out to be gay um joe jackson which bisexual apparently okay well he's uh he's in a relationship with a man at the moment but as i understand it which when when you look at the lyrics to it's different for girls mama always told me to save yourself take a little time and find the right girl then

again don't end up on the shelf logical advice gets you in a whirl and maybe with his constant bitterness towards women in his lyrics he's just processing all that kind of heteronormative stuff that's being forced upon him that you know the social pressure to to be straight i mean uh you know but then i'm i'm no i'm no sexual psychologist i don't care what anyone says it's it is a bit unfortunate for him that he's late 70s output he's best known for moaning about girls and you know um is she really going out with them all girls fancy them and not me and here he's portraying himself as a bit of gangly meat being pursued by women who only want him for sex so you know it's like

the label have gone all right joe your last single didn't do anything so let's go back to you moaning about girls again because that's what people want yeah but i think he's smart enough to pull this off, right? Because it doesn't really come across just as in Moaning About Girls. It comes across more as him exploring, in an unhealthy and obsessive way, exploring sectors of the male psyche of which we may not be terribly proud. Is She Really Going out with him is a masterly song in that respect it's like because really everyone knows that outrage at being excluded from your own needs by women's seemingly inexplicable choices right and resentment of a

misery and loneliness that you don't feel you deserve, as if deserve had anything to do with it. Now, that's something we've all felt but have usually tried to suppress because as well as being a dubious way of looking at things, it's also not very appealing. And so it does tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that song just goes straight in. And where people like Elvis Costello would do that,

and they would just sound pure incel, just dripping with bitterness and blame, like really self-righteously spiteful, like he's taking the moral high ground with a cock glowing with wank blisters. I don't get that so much from joe jackson it's more like he's just saying oh fucking hell and documenting the problem doesn't pretend it doesn't exist but he doesn't pretend he's any kind of hero you know he's not like a tormented wanking jesus he's uh he, I get so mean around this scene.

And it's not a boast. You know, he knows he's being a dick. Yeah. So that just doesn't make him feel any better. And this song is much messier and vaguer to the point where, yeah, if you hadn't had it explained to you, you wouldn't know 100% what's going on in it. But what is clear is he's still shoulder deep

in interpersonal complications and non-communication. And he's still got that pounding, nagging feeling that this should be the simplest and happiest and most natural part of life. Why the fuck are you making it so complicated why can't you be reasonable and do what i want then we'd all be happy um so yeah i yeah and he makes it entertainment and drama yeah you know as well as self-expression it's like there's something truly absorbing about this song that's the word you go in and it's it's hard to pull yourself out

you know what i mean it's like uh i can't really get through a whole album of it no because over 40 minutes that sort of cynical and slightly mean-spirited lyrical thing can wear you down a bit and also because the music is so neat and sparse it starts to sound like it's in black and white, as well as the musicians. But it works great as a single, because it just rolls in as something unusual, and then suddenly it's gone. And it's tantalising.

It's one of those singles that makes you want to hear it again as soon as it's finished. Yes. Because there's so much going on in it. And something really smart about the sound and structure of this track, it captures the ambiguity and the frustration and the emotional claustrophobia of the lyric, right? It's got all those hypnotic, twisting repeats going round

like a miserable three-hour conversation you know and the abrupt stops and starts and shifts and moves but it keeps going back and forth and even when it flares up it doesn't break loose you know the flare up just emphasizes that sense of confinement and exasperation uh and it would have been so easy to get this wrong and to just sound like a prick, you know. I don't think he does. I think this is a great record. Yeah.

I like Joe Jackson mainly because the cover of I'm the Man, the LP, when he opens up, he's in Spiv gear, and he opens up the side of his coat to reveal all this stuff he's selling. And one of them was a John Travolta key ring that I actually had at the time. I won it at Goose Fair the previous year on, I think it was on the darts, or it might have been the hooker dog. And it was falling to bits, but I still had it. And I really shouldn't have done.

Should have junked it a long time ago. But, you know, the fact that Joe Jackson had one, I just felt a bit vindicated. Yeah, yeah. And, of course, the lyrical Jackson had one, I just felt a bit vindicated. Yeah, yeah. And, of course, the lyrical contact when you're 11 years old is, ooh, it's not fair. Girls don't, you know, have to run around the school field in their vest and pants if they forgot the kit. Yeah.

Also, it's one of the few chances to see the audience in this whole episode. And it's a bit unfortunate because they're in near total darkness, which is quite unusual. And it's a bit unfortunate because they're in near total darkness uh which is quite unusual and it's a bit unfortunate they're all standing around that podium where mike reed is up in the gods like uh like an old-timey copper directing traffic yeah one of those little things or the fat lad in the uh relax video yeah but it creates the the unpleasant effect of the band performing directly to mike

reed as he stands in judgment yes hand mike down around his hips yeah listening intently it's yeah i don't like it i don't like it you can see why they didn't go with this for very long also he wants to watch it up there without his glasses on yeah Yeah. You can see him blundering off the edge with his arms held out in front of him. Some terrible accidents happen. He needs to tie himself to something. He doesn't want to find a dead body in his doorway. His own.

Imagine landing flat on his face in the audience. They'd all just immediately start going through his pockets. Find a soiled collection of Rupert Brooke poems. First draft of a new Western musical. And his glasses. So the following week, It's Different for Girls jumped seven places to number five, where it would stay for two weeks. However, a couple of weeks later, he was bottled in the toilets

of Dingwalls while he was having a slash, which got in the way of his UK tour. The follow-up, Kinda Cute, failed to chart, along with his cover of The Harder They Come, and after his third LP, Beat Crazy, and a switch to swing music failed to get him any sexy top 40 action, he'd have to wait until 1983 when Steppin' Out got to number six in January of that year. That would be his last hit in the UK, by which time he'd relocated to New York before moving back to the UK in 2002 when he couldn't smoke in restaurants anymore, and then on to Berlin when our smoking banning pubs, kicked in a few years later, he's quite full on,

about the smoking bans, and everything, you know, he's written a big, a polemic, on his website, about it, and he only smokes,

five fags a day, don't you know, that it's difficult for girls, you're all the same, you're all the same, you're all the same You're all the same You're all the same You're all the same You're all the same

You're all the same You're all the same Joe Jackson is well over 11 feet tall and it's different for girls. It's different for mama's boys. And here's one for every mama's boy there at home. Seriously, go on. You have a go.

Go on. Read, still in quarantine and superimposed over a bass drum, goes on about how tall Joe Jackson is before another awkward segue into Mama's Boy by Suzy Quatro. We've already covered Susan Quatro in Chant Music No. 17, the 1973 Christmas special, and since then she's had a second wind, scoring a No. 4 hit with If You Can't Give Me Love in April of 1978. At the same time, she was playing Leva Tuscadero, the little sister of the Fonzas' girlfriend in Happy Days, who was in a band with Joni Cunningham, and she's just turned down her own spin-off sitcom to concentrate on the music.

This is the follow-up to She's In Love With You, which got to number 11 for two weeks in November of last year, and it's only the second single she's ever written in partnership with her husband, Len Tookie. And it's up this week from number 64 to number 50 and uh yeah this is practically an answer record too it's different for girls isn't it yeah she's essentially moaning that her new bloke isn't up to the standards of a hard-loving woman such as her and he's only two pumps and a squirt and he might even be a bit gay yeah the lyrics say he's a closet case with all the trimmings different times there's a bit where um she does the thing with her little

finger that yes in tony blackburn's book um we're meant to think that old barbara windsor did to him so uh yeah that's been implied as well yeah it's it's a very um sort of uh retrogressive uh lyric sexually let's put it that way yeah it's shaming someone for being um well either gay or anything well anything but manly uh you know as as it says um so yeah it's it's it's not not very pleasant is it and um that there are um you know a there are a lot of accounts I've heard that in real life she's not necessarily the nicest person, doesn't come across very well in her own autobiography. I mean, for a start, she's a massive Tory and all that.

But, you know, leaving aside that, you can't discount her as a massive force in rock and roll. Just hugely important. There was actually a review in NME written by Chrissy Hynde uh saying goodbye tits and ass hello rock and roll uh so it's basically crediting her with being this kind of force for feminism and all that kind of stuff um and uh you know if if you look at the early hits, stuff like Devil Gate Drive and Can the Can and all that kind of stuff, well, you know, before Joan Jett, before there was Patti Smith, before Debbie Harry, before Suzy Sue, there was Suzy Quatro.

She was the original kind of she-rocker, you know. And even the look, you know, the kind of the feather cut and the biker jacket and the stack heels, it was kind of a pioneering thing. And the way, you know, she would play an instrument that was too big for her right the bait the bass guitar was wider than she was tall you know um and she had that amazing kind of hellcat scream on some of those early rack records yeah by this point though by this point you mentioned if you can't give me love which is a sort of a sort of lacrimose country pop song. It's much more grown up.

And she's trying on this one, I think, to get back to rock and roll a bit. Yeah. And Mike Chapman actually, you know, produced all that, along with Nicky Chin, produced the good stuff. He's producing here. And the weird thing about that is Mike Chapman, right?

This is less than a year after he helped create Blondie's Pavla Lines, which is pretty much immaculate. And now he's making this dog shit. You know, the quality has fallen off a cliff. Okay, that's partly down to the songwriting. You said it's co-written by a husband. The best thing I can say about Len Tucky, he's got a nice leopard jacket

there, that's probably about it. But yeah, this song it's trying to be this kind of rockin' New Orleans style rock and roll, but it's just, I don't know. It's not Gillan, it's Jillian, isn't it? Alright, yeah, yeah. I'm going to

say it's unpleasant. There's nothing wrong with rock and roll records being unpleasant. Quite often, it can be a really positive thing. In fact, there's a record coming up later in this episode that's really unpleasant that I fucking love. But I don't know if it's just the homophobia of this one, but I'm just thinking, oh, fuck off, Susie. I mean, she's only 29 here,

but tainted with the musk of glam as she is, she might as well be as old as us now. Yeah, she feels like a relic from a whole other era definitely yeah yeah but i mean you know when you compare her to uh other glam artists she's she's pretty much the only one standing at the minute i mean slater on the verge of packing it in the suite of lost brian connelly and will release their final lp only in germany and mexico the mud split up last year Alvin Stardust is a year away from signing with Stiff. Gary Glitter's thinking about launching the rock and roll circus. So, you know, she's the last one standing at the minute.

Yeah, the bell has been rung and Rack is in ruins, yeah. It's a pretty bad song, this, isn't it? It's not, I mean, it's not 100% terrible because it's a partial ripoff of a good song uh sorrow by the merseys oh that's what it is yeah and the but the the worst parts of this are the parts that weren't in that you know i mean there's a lot of beer sloshing around in the bottom of this song it's uh it's like a record that hasn't washed. You know, it's a real mess. The tone of it is a bit unpleasant,

but although this bloke does sound infuriating, I have to say. He does, yeah. Especially if he's her age, which, you know, presumably he's about 30. So, yeah, if he does have to ask his mum about it, I don't think she's just complaining because he's not you know an oily handed vest wearing giant from a transport cafe who shits y chromosomes

but yeah to finish it off with the the female equivalent of she must have been a lesser he's a bit biteless, isn't it? Yeah. It's like, maybe, Susie, maybe there's another explanation for this. Who knows? But, yeah, you wonder whether she might not have slightly offended her audience with this song as well.

Because when you try and imagine who was buying Susie Quatro records in 1980, it's likely going to be just diehard, moderately dysfunctional male fans who have an unhealthy emotional obsession with her. Because whenever a female pop star ceases to be widely popular, this is almost always the hardcore that remains and, you know, keeps their career afloat at some level.

And I think Susie Quatro did have her share of those. that remains and you know keeps their career afloat at some level and i think suzy quattro did have her share of those uh and one assumes that a fairly large proportion of these you know barry george type blokes were you know mama's boys in in some sense like possibly the Norman Bates sense, but, you know, let's say not entirely relaxed around women and rarely described as alpha males. And you wonder what they would make of their heroine declaring her contempt for them. And on the one hand, it could have alienated them, as she never did have another top 40 hit.

But on the other hand, I think they might have quite enjoyed it, because what might be the precise appeal of leather-clad pretend lioness Susie Quatro to such men? You know what I mean? I think they might have been wanking themselves blind to this song, as if Susie's made them sit in a corner and she's shouting humiliating things at them while having it off with the Sweeney villain Len Tucky.

And yeah, we shouldn't lose sight of his co-writing credit because, you know, maybe adds another colour to this. Because maybe Len was a bit insecure as he got older and even uglier and there's all these aventures pretty boys swanking around you know when an ugly bloke has a widely fancied girlfriend and

sometimes he can go a bit weird this could have been self validation for him like getting his missus to sing this you know because whatever uncharitable observations you could chuck at len tucky uh being a mama's boy is not among them no and he's moved off the keyboard by this phase hasn't he the new keyboard player he's got the same problem as len with the height of the roads but he's he's gone for a much safer wide-legged stance, I noticed. Ensuring that you don't have the back problems in later life

that Len might have succumbed to by this time. But the keyboard player does have these nervous looks over his shoulder at Sousa, as if he's saying, she's singing about me. Yeah, he's not fearsome looking, is he? No. And of course, we get another good look at the kids here,

and they're not having it at all, is he? No. And of course, we get another good look at the kids here. And they're not having it at all, are they? No. There's one lad with braces on and he's just not impressed. And it only got to number 34, didn't it? Which I think it was lucky to get that high. So the following week, Mama's Boy entered the top 40 at number 34, but would get no further. The follow-up, I've Never Been In Love,

would only get to number 56 in April of this year and would be her last single for Rack Records, which dissolved later that year. She immediately signed for Mike Chapman's label Dreamtime and went back to her glam roots for the next single, Rock Hard, but it stalled at number 68 in November of 1980 and she never troubled the top 40 again. He gets involved with women, he's a classic case with all the trinity, such a pretty thing, he's a mama's boy. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na,

mama's boy. Mama's Boy Good stuff. Suzy Quattro and Mama's Boy. Love those guitars. Fantastic. 16 years ago this month, it was the first Top of the Pops with Jimmy Savile. Number one was I Want to Hold Your Hand. It's back there in the charts today, courtesy of Dollar. something I wanna hold your hand

Reid, still skulking at the back, comments favourably on the equipment of Suzy Quatro's band before linking the first ever episode of Top of the Pops to the latest one as he points out that the Beatles were number one with this tune

I Wanna Hold Your Hand by Dollar. We've already covered Dollar in Chart Music 11 and this, their fourth single since being kicked out of Guys and Dolls in 1978, is the follow-up to Love's Got a Hold on There, which got to number four in September of 1979. As we've already mentioned, Teresa Bizarra's already approached Trevor Horn of the Buggles to produce them after she heard Video killed the radio star, but he initially knocked them back as he was too busy. Meanwhile, despite having a cast-iron reputation in the music industry

as someone who would never leech off other people's music, David Van Day has decided nonetheless to unearth a song from an obscure Liverpool band for their next single produced by Chris Neal who also produced get a load of this Grandma's Party like it used to be for Paul Nicholas Dancing in the

City by Marshall Hayne New York New York by Gerard Kenner I Could Be So Good For You by Dennis Waterman. All of Sheena Easton's UK-based single. And what we're going to get are indoors by Dennis Waterman and George Cole. Here comes Chisholm. And it's gone up 10 places this week, from number 19 to number 9.

Oh, man, Chris Neil, the string in so many beads, beloved by chart music. Absolutely. Do you know what? I looked into this Christopher Neill character a bit, and he'd previously been an actor in sex comedy films. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. With names like

The Sex Thief, which had Christopher Biggins in it, and Adventures of a Plumber's Mate. And he was in Rock Follies, right? But also, right, he was the host of the kids' show You and Me. No! Yeah. Fucking hell!

That's quite a career path, to do all that stuff. Sex comedies and a show for toddlers, and then make those a pop-up, of course. He should have done another sex comedy about the world of children's television called Lots and Lots for those apartment clothes. He should have done another sex comedy about the world of children's television called Lots and Lots for Us to Do. I didn't know it was the same Chris Neill. The best bit in The Sex Thief

is where a load of pornographic photos get strewn across a road and a bloke picks one up and looks at it and says, Blimey, it's somebody's cock so yeah dollar trevor horn i came into this episode thinking oh i wonder if uh wonder if a conversation was had in the dressing room during this episode well exactly yeah because if he's knocked them back already yeah he's knocked them back already once so you've've got to wonder if Teresa Bazaar's just tapping on the dressing room door. Trevor, have you had any more thoughts about maybe working with us?

He's too much of a nice guy to say no. Well, Teresa Bazaar knew Trevor Horn from the mid-70s when she was a jobbing artist and he was in a sort of backing band. So, yeah, they knew of each other yeah first order of business i suppose simon yeah i'm guessing you have much to say about this uh you've mentioned before that you prefer this to the original version but before we go any further i do need to pin you down what is it with you and the beatles um okay well uh i'm not an idiot i realize their huge importance culturally and musically um i realized the um the high quality of a lot of what they did but it's just one of those things

like where you don't like somebody's face or you don't like their voice you just can't help it and there's just something about the Beatles' voices and these kind of quite nasal sort of folk singer harmonies that it's just a turn-off to me. There's also a certain element of, and maybe you'll understand this, Al, being almost exactly the same age as me, but we grew up in a time when we were constantly being told

by the older generation that, oh, you've missed all the fun, all the good stuff. The good stuff's happened already. All the good stuff happened in the 60s. Yeah, those are the golden days. And you might as well just forget about it. Just don't even try and have anything good yourselves because, you know, it's all been done. So instantly you bristle against that and you rebel against that.

So, you know, I didn't really want to. I had the Beatles kind of force-fed to me as a child, really, from both parents. Was being a music journalist in the mid-'90s something to do with it, when the Beatles were being rammed up everyone's arse again? I'll tell you this, being a music journalist and being a Beatles sceptic is quite hard work, especially if you don't particularly want to make a feature of it.

You don't want to be the guy who hates the Beatles. You know, I'm not interested in that becoming my fucking novelty selling point, but I just don't happen to be into them as much as everyone else, so I end up zoning out from a lot of conversations that people inevitably have. The thing with this particular song,

if I ever said it's better than the Beatles, I don't know if I ever said it's better than the Beatles. If I did... You said you prefer it. There we go. Yeah. To said it's better than The Beatles, I don't know if I ever said it's better than The Beatles. If I did... You said you prefer it. There we go. Yeah. To say it's better would just be a stance, and a stance that I don't even necessarily agree with. In fact, I don't.

But I do prefer it, just personally, as a listening experience. I've got to say that if I hadn't done my homework, or didn't know this stuff off by heart you could almost imagine this being a Trevor Horne production because it sounds nothing like anything else. You listed Christopher Neill's discography there

and I think the biggest hit he ever had was Think Twice by Celine Dion there's nothing in that very very conservative discography to give you a clue that he could do something like this, which to me sounds... I loved how empty it was in a positive way.

Very minimal, very modern. It's the song reduced to the absolute basics in quite a brutal way. The only thing that has any of that kind of space in it that I can think of, of the ones you mentioned, was Dancing in the City by Marshall Hayne. Possibly a little bit of that there. I'm over the worst of my aversion to the Beatles.

I can stick on some of their stuff and enjoy it now, including I Want to Hold Your Hand. But I did really love this and i i you know watching it again on this episode i did get something out of it yeah it's got to be said though what a fucking plastic mod david van day is fuck's sake he's got this nice black kind of like mod style jacket and matching skinny tie but you know i even then even in my pre-mod phase i noticed that he'd done all the buttons up when you're only supposed to do the middle one up yeah which i'd learned from uh from my mod friends at school with their school blazers but he's ruined the look by teaming it

with skin tight satin trousers um bazaars wearing matching trousers uh with a jumper with massive black and white checks which she basically looks like a a teacher who's uh he's trying to be down with the kids yeah trying to be a bit two-tone yeah absolutely yeah we had that one of our teachers came in with a check skirt one day and all the all the girls on the corridor were going hey you're mod miss you're mod now the giveaways the hair they both got purdy oh yeah Oh, yeah. Purdy, isn't it? Yeah, it's not a French crop, is it? No, no.

And there's a couple at the front. And, you know, we haven't seen much of the audience, like you say, in this episode. But there's a blonde couple at the front who look like a shit version or like an even shitter version of Dollar themselves. Do you notice that? Yeah, Drachma, they were called. themselves you know is there yeah drachma they were cool and um and just the the persona uh personi of dollar was a real turnoff to me because they were presented as this kind of sickeningly devoted dream couple from a photo love story as taken the piss out of brilliantly by trace yellman in was it three of a kind? Or maybe Kick Up the 80s, but yeah, one of those. When they were dollop. Yeah, yeah,

yeah, exactly. So they're a hard band to love, really. But I would say that the three or four songs they did with Trevor Horn plus, for me, this one make them a valid

thing to have existed in pop. And it makes you wonder if Trevor Horn listened to this and thought, oh, okay, they're willing to... Do something a bit different, yeah. They're willing to accommodate my ambitions of taking over the world through music. Maybe. But you couldn't see David Van Damme in Quadrophenia,

could you, Taylor? I mean, if you did, it'd be a scene where his burger van was being tipped over by a load of rockers. Yeah, it'd be like, you, you hooligans, or something like that. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Did you see Dave Van Dade before Christmas with his fucking Brexit song? Oh, that cunts.

This sort of Get Brexit Done song in front of a Christmas tree wearing a fucking Christmas jumper. Yeah. Jesus. Singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Get Brexit Done with a load of other twats holding up banners. Imagine if Charles Manson had heard this.

We'd all have been in fucking trouble. I mean, what dollar have done it is not so much cover this song as lay it on the floor, piss and shit on it, pick it back up again and eat it covered in their own piss and shit then stick their fingers down their throats and puke it back up again and then piss

and shit all over the pile of pissy shitty vomit but there's also a downside which is that it's just not very good it doesn't do anything interesting it's dumb but it's not really gross it's sort of cheeky and iconoclastic in principle but not really in practice where it just sounds more like a terrible plot and a bad joke, you know, and more of an artifact or an object than a piece of music. But an object that is neither useful nor beautiful. And I think the one interesting thing about this record is the way it sounds like it could have been approached as a kind of nihilistic, negative art project where the point is to take a classic pop record of the past

and identify and isolate everything that made it popular and good and then remove all those things to see what's left. Because it's like someone sat there and thought, okay, let's do I Want to Hold Your Hand. But on the bit where it goes i can't hide i can't hide uh take off the high harmony that provides the transition back into the verse and is structurally the climax of the whole song let's just take that off for no apparent reason uh you know that famous explosive intro to this record? Let's just get rid of it.

Yeah. You know, the frantic, rushing, love-struck mood. It's got to go. It's got to go. Let's make it trudge. Let's make it sound like the last mile of an over-ambitious sponsored walk. You know, take it all out. Take everything out.

Just get them to sing it like the undead, admiring their own reflection. And how shall we present it? How shall we replace the most perfectly balanced, instantly appealing, culturally revolutionary image which invented the modern pop group. We'll have David Van Day looking like a spitting image puppet of Lady Di. Yes.

Being upstaged by his own drummer who's not even really in the band, but he's wearing a floor-length fur coat and standing up at the kit, raising his sticks over his head. Yeah. He's not even the best drummer in dollar david van day said that yeah that coat looks like it's made it out of the pelt of big bird as well he's far more interesting than anything else that's on the screen or coming out of the speaker and just out of perversity i would love love to love this. But in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. Oh, very good.

Yeah, I didn't see the name dollar on the back of any parkers in January of 1980. It has to be said. Can you imagine, though, if you saw this on Top of the Pops and you just thought, oh, yeah, everyone's being a mod now. This is what they must be into and going out and buying it we're in a dollar dollar bag the way they're both dressed they're 60s from the waist up and disco from the waist down which i don't know if that's a deliberate reflection of what the record's meant to be but it's six co yeah it's just it doesn't work does it we get to see the kids at the front again and no they're really not into this one yeah no one's jumping off a balcony to this song let me tell

you i've got to say there's not really a point in this episode where they come alive no if anyone's waiting for that it doesn't happen obviously i've said my piece about this song and my view is different from taylor's but i am interested in something that he picked up on that it could almost be a kind of art project. And it made me think, less than a year before this, we had the Flying Lizards doing Money. Yes.

Now, Money, obviously, not technically a Beatles song, but thought of as a Beatles song. And I wonder if they, or Christopher Neill, listened to that and thought, we'll have a bit of that actually it's possible isn't it yeah i'd be interested to know the amount of input that dollar had into this as well because you know it's weird to think of a group like dollar taking a while to settle in and get into their stride like the way self-contained rock bands often do but they did and obviously when they finally got good it was as a vessel for the work of more talented but less photogenic people uh some of them seen earlier but at this point they hadn't quite surrendered total control

had i mean they were just about to enter the dark age of their career, the first dark age of their career, which was when they took the decision to write all their own songs and take full creative control. You know, this dappy pair of subhumans running the show didn't work. But, you know, fair play to them for then seeing sense and becoming passive, possessed marionettes, driven around by people who knew what they were doing, you know. Yeah.

But at this point, I'm not quite sure what the deal was. I think it's a fair point in pop in general that one of the greatest acts of agency that you can take as a pop star is to surrender control, to know when to surrender control and to know who to surrender it to yeah yeah and it's not the result of any humility on their part uh it's but it's they were smart enough to know that this was a way to indulge their narcissism uh more successfully you know and maybe end up contributing something vaguely worthwhile and maybe end up contributing something vaguely worthwhile to the universe. I'd like to know who picked this song.

Maybe David Van Day was thinking about his future career singing in care homes. I'm not very keen on this, but I do have to say it's better than Dollar's version of Revolution No. 9. Or Thompson Twins' version of Revolution. Oh, God, yeah. So, the following week, I Want To Hold Your Hand dropped two places to No. 11, Oh, God, yeah. You which only got to number 62 in November of this year. They were on the verge of splitting up the musical duo as well until Trevor Horn got back in touch, told them he was leaving yes and he was up for pulling them out of the shit. After a meeting at a restaurant he sat down and wrote Handheld in Black and White and Mirror Mirror in an afternoon and they went to number 19 in September of 1981

and number 4 in January of 1982. That was a good lunch. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. All right then, Pop Craze youngsters. We're going to put the tin lid on this part of the latest episode. Come and join us later on, and we'll bring this baby all the way home on behalf of taylor poulks and simon price my name's al needham stay pop crazed

chart music great big owl.com dot com.