NOVEMBER 1975

 

 

Notes on text:

 

Unbeknown to me at the time, Marc Bolan had a brief affair in 1972 with Patti Smith, and even wrote a song about her entitled “Mystic Lady” (it’s track two on The Slider). Today "Dreamy Lady" sounds like a prototype for both solo Lindsey Buckingham and Win.

 

"New York Groove" was subsequently an American hit for Ace Frehley of Kiss. 

 

Maxine Nightingale is from Wembley, and “Right Back Where We Started From” was sort of mocked up, by Pierre Tubbs, the man behind Al Matthews' "Fool" (on which Nightingale sang backing vocals) to sound like an old Northern Soul floor filler. Strings arranged by Wilf Gibson, formerly of ELO and Centipede. It made number two in the U.S.A.

 

“Eloise” was indeed a major inspiration for Freddie to write “Bo Rhap.” And yes, by November 1975 the hormones had made themselves known and I discovered that I might be bisexual. True, it turned out that this idolatry did not extend beyond male pop stars who looked like women, and my confusion certainly wasn’t reflected in everyday school life; everybody there seemed determinedly unfanciable. However, you can rest assured that nobody read my “Bo Rhap” commentary, or if they did they never said anything to me about it.

 

“You Sexy Thing” had the head start, but not the video, so “Bo Rhap” leapfrogged it to the top and held it at number two for three lengthy weeks. Errol and “the boys” would have to wait another eighteen months before they finally got their turn.

 

Scottish Television didn’t pick up on Tiswas until late 1977, by which time John Asher was long gone – and the sax soloist still sounds like Gary Windo to my ears, although that's never been confirmed.

 

“Money Honey” peaked at number three behind Queen and Hot Chocolate. “Saturday Night” made number one on Billboard in Christmas week, but in Britain I guess they were trying to break away from the Bill Martin/Phil Coulter edition of them.

 

1 November

 

T•REX DISCO PARTY: Dreamy Lady/Do You Wanna Dance/Dock Of The Bay (T•Rex MARC 11)

 

 

 

How desperate can a pop star get; cashing in on the latest craze? You wouldn’t have got the Disco Beatles if they’d kept going – or maybe you would; I’d prefer not to know. Once it was Tyrannosaurus Rex with hippy songs about elves, then it was T Rex the pop stars (or at least Marc Bolan was a pop star – how many of the other members can you name without prompting?) and now get down with the funky T Rex Disco Party, where’s my medallion? The song’s as anaemic as you would expect and I forgot how it went while it was still playing. Two golden oldies on the B-side for your parents, but Gloria Jones, not Marc, sings “Dock Of The Bay.” It would have been embarrassing for him to try singing that one. If things keep going this way the next one will be T Rex Wheeltappers And Shunters Social Club Bingo Round.

 

 

 

JIM CAPALDI: Love Hurts/Sugar Honey (Island WIP 6246)

 

 

 

Strange, dull disco cover of an old Roy Orbison song. You were In Traffic; what’s wrong with you? The second man in a row here desperate to get a hit.

 

 

 

BILLY CONNOLLY: D.I.V.O.R.C.E./Cuckoo (Polydor 2058 652)

 

 

 

The Big Yin finally gets a hit record, and it was recorded live at the Glasgow Apollo – I’m sure I can hear my father laughing on this, but we weren’t at that concert. Send-up of the Tammy Wynette song except it’s about a dog and two abbreviations of rude words have been bleeped out. Well, it’s a step up from the Tudor Hotel in Airdrie where Solo Concert was recorded – it would have been quite the thing if “The Crucifixion” had got in the charts, although of course it’s far too long to be a single and nobody would play it on the radio anyway.

 

 

 

HELLO: New York Groove/Little Miss Mystery (Bell 1438)

 

 

 

Unexpected second hit from the “Tell Him” band, and very different – uncanny how this sounds like “Disco Stomp”! A catchy way out of the glam dead end.

 

 

 

JUSTIN HAYWARD • JOHN LODGE: Blue Guitar/When You Wake Up (Threshold TH 21)

 

 

 

The Moody Blues seem to be taking a break at the moment, so here are two of them sounding remarkably like…the Moody Blues; a dreamy, ethereal progressive pop ballad with some nice drumming. It would be easy to say that time is running out for this sort of music but The Snow Goose by Camel and A Trick Of The Tail by Genesis would suggest that it isn’t.

 

 

 

 

8 November

 

MAXINE NIGHTINGALE: Right Back Where We Started From/Believe In What You Do (United Artists UP 36015)

 

 

 

The radio’s been caught asleep by this one (again) – brisk Northern Soul dancer with a chorus suspiciously similar to “Goodbye Nothing To Say” from last year, but superbly sung and very catchy.

 

 

 

JIGSAW: Sky High/Brand New Love Affair (Splash CPI 1)

 

 

 

Radio Luxembourg have been all over this record, playing it virtually around the clock; frantically melodramatic pop bearing orchestral maximalism reminiscent of 1968 – Richard Hewson did the arrangement.

 

 

 

JOHN LENNON: Imagine/Working Class Hero (Apple R 6009)

 

 

 

Finally released as a single, four years after it appeared on his similarly-titled album, presumably to promote the new Shaved Fish compilation. What a deceptively placid song “Imagine” is; it sounds quiet and peaceful, but actually Lennon is raising the stakes with every new line – you want peace and love? Get rid of countries and religion; how about that? Clever record in that it leaves you yearning for better things to pass, but reminds you that you might have to get out and fight in order to make that happen. “Working Class Hero,” which will never be played on Radio 1 in the daytime, is a clenched hiss of a song – “You’re still f-----g peasants as far as I can see.”

 

 

 

 

15 November

 

STRETCH: Why Did You Do It/Write Me A Note (Anchor ANC 1021)

 

 

 

Sneakily slithering funk-rock with gravelly vocals – midway between the Average White Band and C.C.S. The first “pub rock” hit since “How Long” a year ago. Really intelligent pop.

 

 

 

AUSTIN ROBERTS: Rocky/You Got The Power (Private Stock PVT 33)

 

 

 

God, this is a TERRIBLE record! As patronisingly maudlin as “Honey” and a last verse that’s been thematically borrowed from Frankie McBride’s “Five Little Fingers” – can’t wait for Billy Connolly’s version. This is so relentlessly poor you can’t imagine the writer ever taking it seriously.

 

 

 

ROD STEWART: This Old Heart Of Mine/All In The Name Of Rock ‘N’ Roll (Riva RIVA 1)

 

 

 

Rod slows down the Isley Brothers oldie and gives it the Al Green treatment. Or so he wishes. I wonder if he’ll cover “Fight The Power” in the same way.

 

 

 

EAGLES: Lyin’ Eyes/James Dean (Asylum AYM 548)

 

 

 

Why do all music critics and DJs rave on about the Eagles? They’re so dull they make Crosby, Stills and Nash sound like Black Sabbath, or if they’d never got in Neil Young. Drizzly song that dribbles on boringly forever, but it’s all in good taste, whatever that means. Who would want to buy this album, apart from anxious thirty-year-old men with beards?

 

 

 

DAVID CASSIDY: Darlin’/This Could Be The Night (RCA Victor RCA 2622)

 

 

 

Energetic Beach Boys cover – Bruce Johnston himself co-produces and sings on the record – from a man clearly still on the comeback trail. He wrote the B-side with Harry Nilsson, whom It’s always good to see around the place.

 

 

 

QUEEN: Bohemian Rhapsody/I’m In Love With My Car (EMI 2375)

 

 

 

So where do you start with this? Nearly six minutes long, in three parts like “MacArthur Park,” and in a lot of ways this record could almost have been made in 1968 – Paul and Barry Ryan would have been very proud to have made it. At the same time it also feels like the end of something; Freddie Mercury’s soft protestations that “nothing really matters” while Brian May’s very Mike Oldfield guitar suggests that maybe everything matters.

 

This is art rock to its core – the record contains elements of Sparks, 10cc, Roy Wood and the Sweet, yet Queen seem capable of taking them all to a different dimension. Not necessarily a better dimension, but certainly a different one. I can’t help thinking of the similar trajectory that Horses goes down – “I think it’s sad, it’s much too bad, that our friends can’t be with us today,” sung over equally soft piano chords.

 

(And at the moment I have crushes on both Patti Smith and Freddie Mercury. Nobody else will need to know because nobody even bothers to look at this log book any more – my parents have probably forgotten I even still have it – but I have to work out what I want from life, and on the basis of what I experience at school it isn’t being inspired by either girls or boys. Not the ones at the Grammar, anyway. But I can write what I like here.)

 

He’s killed a man – I don’t know why – and he’s going to die because of it (“I Did What I Did For Maria”?) but after putting up a small fight he finally decides to meet his fate and doesn’t really care what happens. The world will spin on regardless. Yet such epic sadness, such polished melancholy. It’s as if Freddie Mercury and Queen are waving goodbye to what people knew as being “the sixties” – that element of promise, the promise of a future. Closing the door on the past. If it gets to number one – and stranger things have happened – then it could pass for being the last number one before the world ends.

 

 

 

HOT CHOCOLATE: You Sexy Thing/A Warm Smile (RAK 221)

 

 

 

Possibly their strongest-ever single, perhaps even their first number one – I sense a battle at the top between them and Queen – and certainly their happiest song; it’s about time Errol Brown was happy, and goodness, is he happy here! He sings with an ecstatic squeak as if all of his prayers have suddenly been answered at one. Slinkily funky, superb Chinese Opera strings by John Cameron – this is all that a pop record should be.

 

 

 

 

22 November

 

GEORGE ‘BAD’ BENSON: Supership/My Latin Brother (CTI Records CT SP 002)

 

 

 

Bouncing funky disco from the now-singing jazz guitarist, complete with corny foghorn sound effects; Esther Phillips fans should appreciate.

 

 

 

SLADE: In For A Penny/Can You Just Imagine (Polydor 2058 663)

 

 

 

The problem with Slade is that their time has gone. This is agreeably enraged but also an album track rather than a single – musically it’s a remix of “How Does It Feel?” Also I think of the terrible ITV situation comedy In For A Penny starring Bob Todd which was set in a public lavatory. I had more laughs watching The World At War. My father liked it but he’ll laugh at anything. Is that really what Noddy and Dave want to associate themselves with?

 

 

 

JOHN ASHER: Let’s Twist Again/THE ASHERS: Twister (Creole CR 112)

 

 

 

Rather frightening Chubby Checker cover by somebody from the ATV children’s show Tiswas, which we don’t get up here in Scotland. Our nearest equivalent would be Glen Michael doing this and I can’t imagine him EVER doing this. Is that Gary Windo on tenor sax?

 

 

 

THE STYLISTICS: Na-Na Is The Saddest Word/To Save My Rock ‘N’ Roll Soul (Avco 6105 041)

 

 

 

If you didn’t have the hyphen it would be two words. So boring it makes Val Doonican sound like Parliament.

 

 

 

STEELEYE SPAN: All Around My Hat/Black Jack Davy (Chrysalis CHS 2078)

 

 

 

Good to see Steeleye Span back in the charts. Ridiculously catchy folk-rock, produced by Mike Batt. If Sandy Denny was as cheerful as Maddy Prior, Fairport Convention would sound like this.

 

 

 

BAY CITY ROLLERS: Money Honey/Maryanne (Bell 1461)

 

 

 

Written by Eric and Woody, the band finally get an opportunity to rock out. Not bad but if they weren’t who they were, this would have got nowhere near the charts, and I’d be very surprised if it got to number one. In the States they’ve gone for “Saturday Night” as a single. They might regret not doing that here.

 

29 November

 

GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS: Part Time Love/Street Brother (Buddah BDS 438)

 

 

 

Cover of a David Gates song. I can at least say that it’s better than “If” by Telly Savalas.

 

 

 

THE IMPRESSIONS: First Impressions/Old Before My Time (Curtom K 16638)

 

 

 

Music critics speak in awe of Big Sixteen, from the sixties when Curtis Mayfield was the Impressions’ leader, but that’s impossible to get in the shops so I’ve never heard it. Solo Curtis Mayfield is an incredible phenomenon and There’s No Place Like America Today – the cover infuriated my father at first before he realised it was meant to be ironic – is as great a 1975 album as any. This is bouncy, harmless and exquisitely-skilled up-to-date doowop soul-pop, and better late to the charts than never.

 

 

 

SILVER CONVENTION: Fly Robin Fly/I Like It (Magnet MAG 43)

 

 

 

Terrific electronic girl-group disco, so airy in atmosphere it could have been recorded in a desert, and almost as desolate. Kraftwerk fans would approve.

 

 

 

DEMIS ROUSSOS: Happy To Be On An Island In The Sun/Before (Philips 6042 033)

 

 

 

The Greek housewives’ heartthrob who not that long ago was a member of Aphrodite’s Child with Vangelis. Interesting to hear this slice of holiday postcard MoR next to Vangelis’ excellent new album Heaven And Hell. It sounds as though they’ve drifted apart somewhat.

 

 

 

MUD: Show Me You’re A Woman/Don’t You Know (Private Stock PVT 45)

 

 

 

Plodding slowie. Somebody thinks they're Thom Bell. “Lonely This Christmas” didn’t plod. They’re missing Chinn and Chapman all right.

 

 

 

LAUREL AND HARDY WITH THE AVALON BOYS FEATURING CHILL WILLS: The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine/LAUREL AND HARDY FEATURING TY PARVIS (VOCALIST) AND CHARLEY CHASE: Honolulu Baby (United Artists UP 36026)

 

 

 

Well, who would have guessed Stan and Ollie would get into the pop charts? Too late for either of them to know, unfortunately, but this really is delightful. I understand John Peel got the ball rolling by playing it on his show but I’ve heard it on Junior Choice and of course their films are on BBC1 and BBC2 all the time. What can you say – two of the funniest comedians who ever lived. I’ve watched Way Out West many times but have never become bored with it. They just make you feel better. If people don’t like Laurel and Hardy they don’t understand what it means to be a human being.