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So, let’s go back in time to those hairy, browny-purple, nicotine-stained nineteen seventies.
1974 was actually a real nadir for music. I know it’s easy for people to say the ‘70s in general were, and most people who lived through them certainly seem to concur; this quote is from The Times, following England’s exit from the 2002 football World Cup:
‘There have, of course, been worse moments in English history. The Roman Conquest, the black death, the civil war, the fall of France in 1940 and virtually the whole of the 1970s, for example.’
I have to disagree with that, though. Looking back with a music-loving head on, the majority of my favourite bands, artists, albums and even movies, TV shows and (anti-) style icons are a product of that decade. It just seems that anybody half-decent took 1974 off. Two years either side and there would’ve been great, exciting music flourishing everywhere but ‘74 appeared to have been trapped in some vapid nether-period, suffering from a kind of creativity shortage, on the cusp of better things yet to come, stuck between two differing ages (post-hippy prog-rock but pre-punk & disco), while the ‘Now!’ sound of the time, glam rock, had already begun to outgrow its silvery spandex leggings. Progressive rock had outlived its usefulness and got far too pretentious, too ludicrous and ‘up its own arse’ to be taken seriously by the kids anymore. Bands who sounded truly awesome at the turn of the decade, now sounded tired, hackneyed and bereft of ideas. Meat-&-potatoes Pub Rock outfits had started to rule the gig circuit and many of these no-nonsense beer-guzzling boogie-mongers would soon beef up their sound and ride the new punk wave. It’s actually quite telling that in the 1975 film, ‘Confessions Of A Pop Performer’, the second in the series of bawdily sexist shag-o-thons starring Robin Askwith and Tony Blair’s father-in-law, Tony Booth, that Kipper, the fictional band featured in the movie are, for maximum comedic effect, supposed to be the worst racket-making rabble imaginable but in reality, sound like a fairly decent prototype punk band.
See for yourself…
Patti Smith’s debut single, ‘Hey Joe’ was released in ’74 and is considered by some to be the first punk single but, although they’d formed in that year, it was a good 2 years before The Ramones’ 1st album was released (punk’s generally accepted ‘year zero’). Something new and thrilling that would change the way people feel about how music should sound and be produced was still yet to emerge. But who were the Ramones’ inspiration and what were any budding punk reprobates in the UK listening to back then? Faraway American crazies like the New York Dolls and Stooges would’ve been leading the way in terms of being a major influence but both of those bands in ’74 were in the process of drug-addled capitulation they’d never properly recover from. As for The Modern Lovers, I’m not sure most ‘70s Brit kids were sussed enough to know about obscure bands like that then. The Stones were still going, I suppose. Not that 1974’s ‘It’s Only Rock & Roll’ LP is a must-own classic. That’s the thing- even the great bands that were around back then had little to offer Anno Domini 1974. I suppose great albums were in the process of being recorded but it seems everyone either took loads of drugs and fucked loads of groupies or took loads of drugs and recorded underwhelming albums in that year.
It was a transitional year for many acts. Just about everything John Martyn recorded in the 1970s is magically captivating but there was nowt on offer from the great man in ’74; he released both the ‘Solid Air’ and ‘Inside Out’ albums in 1973 and then followed them up with ‘Sunday’s Child’ in January ‘75. The previously prolific Black Sabbath released nothing in ‘74 and there were no Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin albums that year either, although they would’ve been busy creating ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Physical Graffiti’ respectively so at least there was some creativity in the air. Little Feat, Joni Mitchell, Eno, Roxy- great stuff like that came out but even most elite artists from the early ‘70s delivered an inferior album or had blown out and started to break up come my arrival into this world. There was no worthy classic from any solo Beatle, Yes were starting to take the piss with ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ and most other proggers and hard-rockin’ hairies had completely lost their way come the mid-‘70s. The ineffably fertile creativity shown by the pioneering jazz stars of the ‘60s (those that hadn’t already doped themselves to death) had now been replaced with a willingness to safely aquaplane along in the slow lane of mildly funky shopping mall muzak. Drugs and the ensuing burn-out had a debilitating effect on artists who’d released fantastically worthy works a couple of years prior: Allman Brothers, Sly Stone, Brinsley Schwartz, Black Sabbath, Slade, Stones, most of the Motown legends, Caravan, Deep Purple, Edgar Broughton Band, Beach Boys, Grand Funk Railroad… you name ‘em … they were all very much on the wane after years spent successfully blowing minds. Meanwhile, on their way to rock’s checkout, influential and magically talented people like Tim Buckley, Graham Bond, Mama Cass Elliott, Nick Drake and Average White Band’s Robbie McIntosh were all to cop it too early that year.
One of the knock-on effects of the global oil crisis that was occuring around the time I was born was that the price of oil, a key ingredient in the manufacture of vinyl, quickly quadrupled (£210 per tonne, if you really need to know!). This led to record companies throwing less cash at the bright new hopes they’d signed-up as they looked for more cost-efficient ways of balancing the books. The no-brain solution was to cobble together cheaply-produced ’20 Golden Greats’ compilations which required no recording costs or hefty advances dished out for the artists to whimsically squander on drugs and lavishly gaudy outfits that only looked good when you were high on said drugs.
Indeed, the best-selling albums in the UK around this time were, respectively:
1974: Carpenters- The Singles
1975: Stylistics- Best Of
1976- Abba- Greatest Hits
The live album also became an essential part of every act’s catalogue, as these were also cheap to produce (just set up some mikes & a mixing desk) yet featured the hits, presented in a different, more urgent-sounding way.
The charts and record shop racks were also peppered with the ‘Top Of The Pops’ albums, which were the “Now” comps of their day. Only they didn’t feature any songs recorded by the original acts, just accurate facsimiles of them bashed-out by some nameless, faceless soundalikes.
All pretty naff, uninspiring goings-on, in the main.
Looking back with a speculative eye to the year in which I was born, I reckon it must’ve been, on the whole, rubbish. Obviously, I don’t remember 1974 but through a garnering of historical knowledge, I reckon, had I been in my thirties as I am now, I would’ve been a bored, desperately miserable man in a grim, run-down world.
Also, concurrent with most other males of the same age, I would’ve gasped my way through 40 Dunhills a day, barely tolerated my job in some starkly primitive, Health & Safety-bereft workplace and thought this newfangled ‘lager’ drink that’s doing the rounds tasted like weasel’s piss. I would invariably have sported some kind of hirsute facial furniture to go with my awkwardly-coiffured mane of greasy hair and, when I went out to sling pints of Double Diamond or Watney’s Red Barrel down my neck and boorishly flirt with skirt in poky smoke-choked boozers, I would no doubt have thought I looked truly irresistible in my uncomfortably undersized tank-top/flappy-collared shirt combo and reckoned my arse looked proper groovy in my tight beige loons.
After all, northern England in the mid-’70s wasn’t a pleasant or attractive place to be, most towns and cities looked dilapidated and in a general state of soot-stained disrepair. A thoroughly messy time politically, 1974 saw two separate general elections held after the first had resulted in a muddled hung parliament and the previous year, a national state of emergency was declared.
My mother was carrying me during the three-day week which, for those neither old nor interested enough in recent history to care, was a period when a global fuel crisis hiked up the price of coal and to save on dwindling power resources, Prime Minister Harold Wilson introduced petrol rationing and declared all industrial production be restricted to 3 rather than 5 days a week. Due to soaring inflation rates, trade unions began demanding better pay for their members, particularly the miners who went on strike (used to be a big coal mining hotbed, y’see, the areas in and around Leeds).
There were countless job losses and a pervading air of general despair, panic and unrest, exacerbated by frequent power-cuts and gloomily candlelit black-outs. Some right political carrying-on.
On a wider global scale, the Watergate scandal had everybody questioning exactly who they could trust while continued Cold War horn-locking between the Yanks and the Reds compounded the overall misery and, on the day before I was born, commie paranoia made flesh when the Nobel Peace Prize-winning West German chancellor, Willy Brandt resigned after one of his closest aides was exposed as an East German spy.
Meanwhile, locally, just under a year later, the Yorkshire Ripper’s 6-year reign of terror would commence, gripping my mother and a million or so other women in the north of England in a continual state of fearful nocturnal dread. Still, I suppose you had the omnipresent and very real threat of a mainland IRA bombing to perk up the spirits. It was the year of the pub bombings in Guildford and Birmingham and the M62 coach bomb in West Yorkshire which killed 12 people. In fact, nearly 300 people died in 1974 as part of the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’ (and over 1500 between ’72-’76). It must’ve been a real hoot. I guess things could’ve been worse back then, though. I could’ve been one of them ‘darkies’, steeled and ever-ready to endure inevitable abuse and made to feel about as welcome as a cold sore on a first date wherever I went.
Where my parents hung out, a shit-load of foreboding high-rise tower blocks had been thrown up to keep all the grotty working class detritus who’d been raised in the recently-cleared slums all in one place, piled on top of each other, on as little land space as possible. Huge, ugly obelisks, totemic scars from the far-from-swinging ‘60s, decorated only by the brown, mauve and orange of the nylon dresses and jumpers drying on the balconies. My folks were living round there (Burmantofts in Leeds) when I was born. They lived, along with my 3-year old sister, with my Dad’s parents in a little maisonette, just until we got our own house in an exciting new housing estate in no-man’s land between Middleton and Belle Isle, on the southern outskirts of the city.
Over time, I’ve watched Leeds get its confidence back as a city, seeing a renewed brashness and sense of pride returning for the first time since the Victorian era. Rather than forever sulking, bitter in the shadow of Manchester and even Sheffield, it’s gradually blossomed into an edgy, happening and ever-more impressive urban sprawl, although some areas took to regeneration better than others. Thirty years later, I lived back near that same inner-city area where I first gurgled and shat and it’s still just as ugly. Even more so now. I reckon benefit-scrounging smack addicts probably use that old maisonette now.
Admittedly, being into football so much, I would’ve been a pretty contented fella back then in seventiesworld. My 3 favourite teams; Leeds United, Celtic and Barcelona were all respective league champions that year & only a bent ref prevented Leeds from being European Champions a year later, but that’s another story (moan, grumble, whinge….about an incident I don’t recall).
To sweeten the unthinkably bitter taste of England failing to qualify for the efficiently-run West German World Cup in June, I would’ve been a Scotland fan for the duration of that summer anyway. They got to the finals and their team- which included 4 Leeds players (Harvey, Bremner, Lorimer and Jordan, with McQueen also in the squad) and 3 Celtic players (McGrain, Hay and Dalglish)- were actually the only team to go home unbeaten. So, I guess soccer would’ve been an even bigger distraction back then than it eventually became for me in reality, as my home town team were pretty much the best in the world then; feared, envied and respected by everyone.
But anyway, this rambling ream of tripe you’re reading is supposed to be a largely music-based tome; about how music has shaped and soundtracked my life. I’m sure extraneous stuff will weave in and out if it’s going to be about me… Expect some random trivia alluding to stuff like; sport, entertainment, politics- all the cheeses of the triv board, really. It’s principally intended to be a yarn about one lad growing up in Leeds and the music that he’s heard and loved along the way to being what and who he is now.
Sort of… I suppose.
In keeping with the spirit of the gratuitously chauvinistic ‘70s, here’s Marilyn Lange, the Playboy ‘playmate of the month’ from May ’74 over whom I may well have ogled, had I been a 30-summat fella back then. Sporting the requisite humungous funbags, long flowing locks and big hairy fadge, this honey- and her adorable little kitten- might’ve provided some saucy light relief and helped me realise life wasn’t all doom and gloom.
Justice For Good Music! 