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Benny Hill's comedy legacy has been tarnished somewhat, not so much by the PC lynch mob who hounded him out of the business in the eighties, but by his own over reliance in that decade on age old routines, tired jokes and copious amounts of T&A to fill in the gaps. So much so that his shows became little more than a vehicle for 'Hills Angels' to provide some cheap, pre-watershed, pre-internet thrills for the jaded. But it wasn't always this way.
While never possessing the cutting edge, razor sharp wit of a Peter Cook or the groundbreaking weirdness of Monty Python, Hill in the sixties and seventies pedalled a comfortable comedic hybrid that enjoyed a mass appeal the former acts could never hope to have attained while they were still a going concern. 'Ernie' was a case in point. Steeped in the British music hall tradition, Hill's tale of the speedy milkman managed to combine pure seventies sauce:
"They said she was too good for him
She was haughty, proud and chic
But Ernie got his cocoa there
Three times every week"
with an aura of surrealism that appealed on many levels (The Goodies were to 'borrow' the fighting with cakes scenario in their 1975 episode 'Gunfight At The OK Tearooms').
The characters and antics of milkman Ernie and Two Ton Ted the baker fighting over the widow Sue might be seventies sit-com clichés to a name, but they are drawn with a keen and affectionate eye as Hill gallops with glee through the verses ever faster, and it comes as a moment of genuine pathos when it all slows down to describe Ernie's demise at the hands of a stray meat pie ("Ernie was only fifty-two, he didn't want to die") - surely comedy records shouldn't end with the death of the hero (though John Wayne was shortly to 'die' himself at the end of 1972's 'The Cowboys'; see what I mean - Benny Hill the innovator in action!)
Comedy records can be hit or miss and rather humourless affairs all told, but 'Ernie' is a playful construction that combines a rollicking tune with a smart lyric to create that rarest of beasts - a comedy record that you care to listen to and laugh at more than once. All good fun for Christmas.
The scourge of seventies English teachers everywhere (and now spellcheckers too it seems), Slade started out life as Ambrose Slade, a skinhead band with an aggressive skinhead following. 'Coz I Luv You' found them balancing on a cusp of sorts, though this particular cusp was a strange one for them to be straddling. Though not yet the glam act of fame (check out that sleeve picture!), 'Coz I Luv You' is recognisably Slade and it evidences enough of the key traits of the glam genre to make it seem familiar, in particular the hobnail boot stomp and kick in the face chorus.
Ah yes, the chorus - Noddy Holder had yet to become the favourite Uncle figure with a twinkle in his eye and his delivery on 'Coz I Luv You' is perhaps a little too intense for comfort. His repetition of the title sounds less like sweet nothings and more like the bug eyed rant of the deranged addressing a tearful girl cowering in chains in his cellar. Instead of true reciprocal love, the best he can do is to promise "Only time can tell if we get on well", and his "DON'T you CHANGE the things you DO" sounds more like a demand than a lover's heartfelt plea; you half expect him to break into "it rubs the lotion into its body". All the while the band beat out an ominous funeral march of doom only broken by Jim Lea's electric violin, scribbling a shriek sounding not unlike the 'Psycho' theme as played by a genuine psycho.
'Coz I Luv You' is Slade with menaces, Slade without the fun. It's catchy tune will appeal to the kids and the air of danger will appeal to their older siblings (and the faithful amongst the skinheads), but there's no escaping the fact that it's too tightly wound to be truly enjoyable.
In his book 'In The Fascist Bathroom', Greil Marcus presents a table of rock deaths ranked, Top Trumps style, in accordance with their contribution to the genre whilst alive, and also the contribution they would have made had they not died. Sam Cooke and Buddy Holly comes out on top, though Marc Bolan, Jimi Hendrix and Tim Buckley also appear. Had he been writing later, then Kurt Cobain would have doubtlessly ranked high and Jeff Buckley higher. You get the picture.
Of course, this is just so much speculation. Who knows what Buddy Holly would have gone on to achieve had he not boarded that plane in 1959? Would he have been as consistently innovative as he was throughout his 22 years and continued to churn out classic after classic, or would he have been reduced to a cabaret act on the chicken in a basket circuit, endlessly playing 'Peggy Sue' to a partisan audience of middle aged Teds? We'll never know.
To take the idea slightly leftfield, would the reputations of, say, Paul McCartney or Eric Clapton now be enhanced if both had fallen in front of a bus in 1971? It's not too harsh to say that neither have barely recorded a note worth hearing since then, and every subsequent 'Pipes Of Peace' or 'Wonderful Tonight' has only served to tarnish the hard won legacy of 'Eleanor Rigby' and Clapton's soloing on 'Parchman Farm'.
Which leads me nicely on to Roderick David Stewart and 'Maggie May'. Few artists in the genre can be said to have squandered their talent so completely as Rod. A series of ill advised, playing to the gallery releases left Stewart struggling to regain any credibility since...oooh 1975, leaving him stranded in time as some kind of novelty act to any eyes not old enough to have been with him at his peak. Dropping his name now will generally at best result in a wry smile and a caricatured mental image of pineapple hair with skin-tight leopard print pants; it begs the question as to what Stewart's legacy would have been had he retired in 1974?
Probably a lot healthier all told - for a start, he would have left a back catalogue (both solo and with The Faces) containing a plethora of self penned classics; 'Cindy's Lament', 'Gasoline Alley', 'Mandolin Wind', 'You Wear It Well', 'Three Button Hand Me Down', 'Stay with Me' - it's an impressive line-up that would have been left completely unsullied by the later horrors of 'Sailing', 'Ole Ola', 'Do You Think I'm Sexy?', 'Baby Jane' and the rest of it. And then there's 'Maggie May'. Because make no mistake, 'Maggie May' is Stewart at his peak.
Another self penned track, the "Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you" is one of the most instantly recognisable openings in popular music. And what he has to say is drawn as a vividly as any short story; 'Maggie May' is over five minutes long, doesn't have a chorus and yet feels half it's length. Ably backed with a chunky rhythm from The Faces, Ian McLagan's woozy Hammond binds the song and keeps Stewart's vocal on track and in key.....but never mind all that, it's nothing they haven't played a hundred times before or since; it's the lyrics that make 'Maggie May' so enjoyable.
Apparently autobiographical, Stewart describes his summer spent as an older woman's plaything and the attendant mixed feelings of being in love and in a relationship that's going nowhere with a sharp sense of realism (from the off, he only 'thinks' he has something to say to her). Though obviously a 'jack the lad', the 'you turned into a lover and Mother what a lover, you wore me out' might sound like every young boy's fantasy, but there's none of the 'nudge nudge wink wink' you might expect from his bedding an older woman.
Neither are there any cheap or spiteful put downs, even 'The morning sun when its in your face really shows your age' is followed by the qualifying 'But that don't worry me none in my eyes you're everything' - the obvious affection Stewart has for his characters gives a warm glow to what could have been quite a sad and sleazy tale (one hopes that Rod was a sixth former at the time' his "It's late September and I really should be back at school" would have been enough to have Ms May locked up and signing the register in modern days).
Neither ballad nor rocker, when all's said and done there's nothing you can do with 'Maggie May' except sit down and listen to it. And yet the listening rewards in the way a good book or film can reward, it gives a brief insight into the lives of others and invites empathy (or at least comment) with a scenario that's maybe outside your own experience. Literate and intelligent - Rod certainly has fallen an awful long way. The modicum of credibility he regained through covering Tom Waits is overshadowed by the tragedy that 'Maggie May' is proof positive that he's more than capable of writing that kind of stuff for himself.
One of the more surprising number ones of the decade, 'Hey Girl, Don't Bother Me' was originally a minor US hit for The Tams in 1964, but it's sudden UK popularity some seven years later defies all reason. True, they'd hit the top 40 the previous year with 'Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy', but that was a tune popular with the fans of the then Northern Soul scene; you'd need to be popping some pretty powerfull uppers to cut a rug to 'Hey Girl'.
Slow and grinding, there's a gritty feel to 'Hey Girl', the rawness of a live, one take recording that nobody bothered to tart up with studio trickery afterwards. Joe Pope's lead vocal could have been lifted directly off one of Alan Lomax's field recordings and a starker contrast with the previous number one you couldn't hope to find. But alas, what it gains in authenticity it loses in its subject matter.
'Hey Girl' gives more than a passing nod to Ben E King's 'Stand By Me' in style and structure, but instead of the lifetime of love and devotion King was advocating, Joe is being given the come on for a quickie by the local good time girl. He tries to convince us (and himself) that he wants no part of it, but any fule kno he's just dying to jump in the sack with her; the old dog goes from "Stay out of my arms, don't try to use your charms" to "You look so fine, and you're so hard to resist" in a heartbeat, while around him the rest of the band repeat the mantra of title refrain as if all five are lining up with their pants 'round their ankles, waiting for a go themselves.
Sex without love provides a curious subject matter for a number one, especially in a song where none of the characters comes out with much credit and the end product is a downbeat, slightly sleazy offering that makes you want to jump in the shower as soon as it's done. Telling too that their next (and only other) appearance in the UK charts was in 1987 with 'There Ain't Nothing Like Shaggin''. They just couldn't help themselves, could they?
Talent and ego can make for a formidable combination when brought together in one package. Talent alone is good enough too, but ego by itself rarely butters any parsnips. Which leads me to Diana Ross. As a Supreme, she was one third of a set of spark plugs firing an unstoppable engine primed to deliver a series of classic pop singles that have passed into legend. Within the trio, her thick and sickly phrasing complimented Florence Ballard's joyous gospel yell and Mary Wilson's soaring soprano by providing a cloyingly sweet middle ground, a combination that made songs like 'Baby Love' so arresting.
But it wasn't to last, the whisperers without and within told Ross she deserved better than that and her first solo releases were a prime indicator of the way the cookie was going to crumble from now on. No more the short, sharp, singalong blasts of old, the grown up 'Reach Out And Touch (Somebody's Hand)' was followed by 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough', an updating of the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell single complete with spoken word passages and full orchestration that played the ego massaging 'for sophisticated adults' joker for all it was worth. Nothing wrong with that in essence, except of course where aspiration falls short of ability; Ross was never a powerhouse of emotion in the vocal stakes and taken without the complimentary support of Ballard and Wells, her voice is forever a plate of salt and vinegar minus the chips.
'I'm Still Waiting' continued in the same direction and is so doing threw up the same problems. A tale of childhood love lost, Deke Richards’ song comes drenched with an over fussy string arrangement that aims for the high class but instead becomes, if not quite mutton dressed as lamb, then certainly hogget. Ross recounts her remembrance of a ten year old boy telling her five year old self "Little girl, please don't wait for me. Wait patiently for love, someday will surely come" with wistful breathlessness that, if taken literally, borders on the parody. Sure, you can claim the theme is metaphorical, with Ross doomed to a lifetime alone through a tragic yearning for an ideal of love that will never come, but metaphor works best when suggested, not laid out in the clear terms of this song which plays like an Aesop Fable re-drafted to novel length.
Fair play to Ms Ross, she recognises the limitations of the source material and never goes balls out to create drama from thin air (not that she could anyway, she was never that kind of singer). But her lightness of touch combined with the jellyfish spine of the arrangement and awkward key changes means that instead of the low key charm it could have had, 'I'm Still Waiting' has little substance, less consequence and disperses in its ending like clouds on a summer's day.
There's always something inspiring about a recording artist at the top of their game; the swagger of idolatry, the cockiness in adulation, the anticipation of the next release if only to see where they are going next – teenage dreams so hard to beat indeed. But like the star that burns twice as bright, such purple patches are rarely lasting, especially in the pop field. Cockiness turns to complacency, swagger becomes arrogance and talent eventually runs dry. Or sometimes people just plain get too old and are usurped from their throne, especially when the fans don't grow old alongside them. Such is life.
In 1971, Bolan was very much on top of his game; the brightest star on the British pop skyline. And to prove it, ‘Get It On’ is in many ways the definitive T.Rex statement, it's the one that everybody knows though that's not say the song trumpets its own existence. Still too understated for Glam proper, the choppy guitar riff is kept slow and low in the mix to play underneath a rumbling bass, giving 'Get It On' an edgy feeling of something just waiting to break loose from its moorings.
That it never loses control means you can never take your ear off the track from beginning to end. It always keeps you listening and that alone is down to Bolan being savvy enough to know the limitations of his own creation; he's the star here and so his vocal gets as much attention as the music. And just like on 'Hot Love', his pseudo croon turns the 'rain in Spain' lyrics into a seduction worthy of Casanova, with the "You're built like a car, you've got a hub cap diamond star halo" introduction serving as verbal foreplay before the "Get It On" demand (there's none of the suggestive 'Let's' of Marvin Gaye; Bolan is too cocksure for that) of the chorus.
Though apparently based around Chuck Berry’s ‘Little Queenie’, Bolan’s sound on ‘Get It On’ is a unique hybrid of 50’s rock and 70’s glam shot through with a folksy earthiness provided by Steve Took’s bongos. A guitar based song to be sure, but not in the way that ‘Highway To Hell’ or ‘Marquee Moon’ are guitar-based songs - 'Get It On' isn't something that can be tinkered with or glammed up, proving one louder is not always one better.
Van Halen covered ‘You Really Got Me’ with all their waling whammy whammy guitar and got away with it, but they couldn’t do that with this. It wouldn’t work. Power Station found out as much in 1985 with a version that amplified the guitar, shoved it down your throat from the off and tried to use noise and bluster to disguise the fact it was going nowhere. It bores after a few bars and though ‘Get It On’ is many things, it’s never boring. It may well walk a fine line between homage and parody, sexy and silly, but it’s a line Bolan walks with verve, confidence and without a safety net. As well befits an artist at the top of his game.
There's something quite neat and satisfying in Middle Of The Road deposing Dawn at number one; both songs have managed to transcend their disposable origins by showing that, no matter how much they are despised, a catchy pop hook will always have the power to enter the national consciousness with the irritating persistence of a nursery rhyme. The same applies when it's got 'issues' (like Chumbawamba's 'Tubthumping') or when it's all a bit meaningless.
Because at least 'Knock Three Times' gave you some context to hang your prejudices on - 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep' in comparison is fairly impenetrable. A quick scan online reveals that everything here can be taken quite literally and that it's about a baby bird who finds its mother has flown the nest despite being there and chirping the night before. Other interpretations suggest it runs deeper and that vocalist Sally Carr is actually singing "Where's your momma gone, little baby Don" - social commentary and an abandoned baby! Unless the baby bird was called Don. Which seems a tad unlikely. Some even seem to regard it as a comment on Vietnam, but on this I will make my lack of comment my comment.
Whatever tale you plump for, there's no doubt that someone has been left high and dry, making the chirpiness (sorry) of the song a bit out of step; Carr sings like all her Christmases have come at once while the tune rolls behind her with the upbeat force of a football chant directed at a team who've gone six nil up. All very jolly.
And yet you can't deny that wrapped around such lyrical fluff, it's a strong tune wasted; Queen (or any eighties soft rock band) could have made hay with the opening 'Where's your momma gone?' chant (or maybe they did with 'We Will Rock You') while the chorus itself would have been a gift for any pop (or twee indie) band (I would say that The Pastels picked up on this with 'Truck Train Tractor', but that might be getting a wee bit too obscure).
Yes it's repetitive and yes it's banal, but there's nothing about it that suggests it's trying to be anything other, and on that front at least it trumps the Dawn effort, though both have a terrible habit of staying in your head when you're trying to banish them to Room 101. I'll let you decide whether that's a mark of a very good or a very bad pop song.
Now here's a question for you; imagine you're living in the flat above the girl/guy of your dreams and you want to get to know them better. What do you do? Do you -
1. Go down, introduce yourself and ask if they might like to go out for a drink sometime, or
2. Unilaterally devise a personal code that even the Bletchley Park lads would have trouble cracking and then spend your nights waiting anxiously for a Morse code type signal that only you can decode?
Ok, maybe I'm being over analytical again and that this type of criticism is like having a go at the realism of Benny Hill's 'Ernie' dying from being hit in the chest by a cake. But hang on - 'Ernie' is a comedy record, it's supposed to be...well, not rooted in reality. 'Knock Three Times' isn't. Or at least it isn't in the hands of Dawn - Tony Orlando may well have been the chief bubblegum gun for hire in the Seventies, but he brought an over earnestness to whatever nonsense he was called on to sing.
I'm reminded in all this of the exhibition fight in Rocky 4 between ex champ Apollo Creed and the Russian Ivan Drago. Creed starts off laughing and joking but soon stops clowning when he realises Drago is taking things rather more seriously. And so it is here; 'Knock Three Times' is a catchy, nursery rhyme type tune tailor made for the under 5's to mime the tapping and knocking actions to and I'd have a lot more time for it if it was dressed up as such or at least had a bit of humour about it. Tony's 'wooahhs' and impassioned 'Oh my darling's on the chorus soon wipe the smirk off your face when you realise they are the work of a man taking things Ivan Drago seriously, a man who regards his unrequited love as a Shakespearian tragedy when in fact he's little more than a creepy stalker with control freak tendencies.
But hint for you Tony - no need to wait for two taps on the pipe, the fact that she doesn't turn up means she ain't gonna show so take the hint eh? But then again, the girl below spends all her nights in dancing by herself so maybe oddness deserves company.
Britain in the early Seventies was rather a dour place to be. Racial tensions saw the re-emergence of fascistic politics and the rise of the right wing National Front in the face of an economic downtown. Once welcome immigrants came to be seen as an easy target as the root cause of everybody's woes, bolstered no end by Enoch Powell's infamous 1968 'Rivers Of Blood' speech. The hope and promise of a multi-cultural society generated by the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 seemed distant.
Not that I intend venturing into the world of politics, but I think bit of context is important here. In terms of popular music, reggae was still very much a new sound and although The Beatles were early adopters who appreciated it's worth (with 'Ob-La-Di , Ob-La-Da.'), the initial fan base take up in the UK was with the working class skinhead subculture. Odd then that examples of the genre should find themselves at number one both in 1969 with Desmond Dekker, and now again in 1971 with 'Double Barrel'. Odd, but no mean feat and something worthy of celebration in itself (along with a crushing sense of disappointment that the British record buying public have long abandoned such a willingness to embrace the shock of the new).
'Double Barrel' is a bit of a hybrid - producer Winston Riley came up with the backing music and Ansel Collins played it. Jamaican toaster Dave Barker was asked to provide the vocals. And it's his toasting that raises 'Double Barrel' out of the realms of the ordinary. Sure the tune is a fine, up-beat Ska rhythm jogged along by the usual spaced out piano and woozy Hammond, but it's nothing that sticks in the mind once it's over. Two barrels maybe, but only one is really firing - Dave Barker's
Barker's opening gambit of "I am the magnificent. I'm backed by the shack of a soul boss most turnin' stormin' sound o'soul" is memorable. A proud boast that's both humorous and deadly serious at the same time. And it doesn't end there, Barker is all over 'Double Barrel' like a plague of locusts - "Build it up", "One time", "Work it on baby" - his interjections jockey the record along, papering over the bland colour of the music and providing a template for future Rap MC's to follow. So much so that he must be feeling a bit miffed at the billing on the sleeve - Ansel and Dave Carter might be a more accurate description of what's in these grooves, particularly as their next single 'Monkey Spanner' showed this was no fluke.
T Rex started out in life as Tyrannosaurus Rex, an acoustic duo of guitar (Marc Bolan) and bongos (Steve Peregrin Took) who pedalled a spare and folksy sound in a series of airy fairy albums (“My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair” et al) designed to appeal to socially inept Sixth formers who'd read way too much Tolkien – you know the type: “that’s a six, your elf has attacked my orc in the enchanted forest glade”. A bit stereotypical maybe, but I’m in that mood. Bad eggs.
By dropping the name to a simple T, plugging in the guitars and adding bass and drums proper the band and their songs were given a major jump start and re-boot. Although Bolan's head was still in Middle Earth when 1970's 'Ride A White Swan' single lit the touchpaper, by the time 'Hot Love' came around there was more change afoot than simply going electric.
Change in some areas anyway - the lyrics are still so much a nonsense exercise in junior school rhyme ("Well she ain't no witch and I love the way she twitch u-huh-huh"), but wrapped in their new electric cloak they attain a patina of sensuality in Bolan's mouth that they wouldn't have if they were left bare. Not that Bolan ever had a soulful bone in his body, but anybody would be hard pressed to come up with a more sexily predatory sound than that on 'Hot Love'; the title alone reminds of a Swedish porno loop and Bolan coos and groans his words over a loose and loping bassline and guitar riff that thrusts randomly in and out of a mix that comes bathed in its own red light. The Dungeons and Dragons boys wouldn’t have been impressed.
Though he came to be closely identified with the brash glitter of Glam rock, 'Hot Love' is too smooth and simmering to rank alongside the usual in your face, campily macho yob stomp that prevailed through most of the genre; it's far too playful and slinky for that. Honest too - less camp and cerebral than Bowie, less ‘last gang in town’ than Slade and less just plain odd than Gary Glitter; Bolan is only out to get into somebody's knickers and 'Hot Love' is a track designed to appeal to the girl fans only too willing to let him in. The lads may well have wanted to be Bolan, but without the attendant charisma or the sly wink of his seduction techniques then they were always on a hiding to nothing whenever Marc was around, in any form.
No wonder that the endlessly looping 'lalalalala' singalong ending is less the lumpen, arms linked chanting that closed 'Hey Jude' and more the sound of Bolan celebrating the best sex of his life with the cackling glee of one who knows he's cracked the Rosetta stone that leads to pop immortality at last and has finally made it. For a year or two anyway.
After the loose, good natured breeze of 'In The Summertime', the headlong bull charge of 'Baby Jump' comes as something of a shock with the psycho blues, mutant piano runs and Dorset's leering vocal fair taking the breath away. For about the first thirty seconds anyway; the initial spike on the cardiogram soon settles into a flatline when the constant barrage of one key noise wears with its inherent boringness and the curtain is pulled back on the initial rush of primal lust to reveal some giggling schoolboys trying to re-write 'Louie Louie'.
The idea seems to be that if you play loud and fast enough then the song will take care of itself, but no plugs are sparking here and the unnecessary false ending is used as little more than a device to extend things already dead well past their natural length; rather than engendering another burst of excitement, the feeling when the music starts up again is more one of 'Oh Christ, no more please'.
What it's doing at number one is anyone's guess (and who plays or even remembers it anymore?), though a national postal strike that hampered the return of reliable sales data may be partly to blame. What's odd too is that the moral campaigners who seized on the 'Have a drink, have a drive' line from 'In The Summertime' have turned a blind eye to the paedophilic "I dreamt that I was Humbert and she was Lolita" lyric here, but this itself predates The Police by a good nine years and sets up the cracking pub quiz question 'Name the first number one to namecheck a Nabokov novel'. So all is not lost.
It was the first solo number one for any of The Beatles, but what's less widely known is that 'My Sweet Lord' was originally written for Billy Preston who recorded it first and that it was pencilled in for release as a single on Apple. For one reason or another it was pulled at the last minute and Harrison's own recording became the hit, but regardless, it's useful to compare both versions here.
Preston takes the song at a fair clip with a to the fore vocal that runs a constant battle with the equally dominant backing singers until the mood is almost revivalist. After a chunky acoustic opening, Harrison takes things at a far more sedate pace, slowing the melody to a dreamlike wash of languid slide guitar that recalls his own 'Something' and which emphasises it over his own mellow, understated vocal. Preston sings like he's addressing a congregation, but Harrison almost murmurs the lyrics in quiet contemplation, so much so that listening to the repeated "I really want to see you. Really want to be with you" feels like eavesdropping on a man in prayer and an invasion of privacy. Even the backing vocals keep a respectful distance.
Ah, the backing vocals. It's hard to broker any discussion of 'My Sweet Lord' without mentioning the plagiarism suit - so, does it sound like The Chiffons' 'He's So Fine'? Well yes and no. The similarities more or less begin and end with the chorus to 'He's So Fine' and the brief melody picked out by the backing singers as they chant 'Hallelujah' and Hare Krishna'. The likeness is undoubtedly there in Harrison's, albeit fleeting, but in Preston's faster and more forceful version you'd be hard pressed to pick it out at all. Which leads to the conclusion that any similarities are purely down to the song's pacing rather than any conscious decision on Harrison's part to imitate.
The litigation dragged on for years until the judge in Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music decided Harrison had 'unintentionally copied' the tune and ordered most of the royalties to be surrendered. The merits of the argument and the decision are for another to comment on*, but the whole circus froze Harrison into creative paralysis for years. The outcome? A shocking waste of time and talent that resulted in Harrison never again sounding as carefree and at peace with himself on record as he does on 'My Sweet Lord', a non preaching song of devotion and faith that even an atheist would enjoy.
* Though I will say that it was probably Harrison's name and fame that ignited the litigation rather than any genuine belief he'd been stealing someone else's song - how else can you explain the gross unfairness when there are other, far clearer examples of tunes being ripped off shamelessly elsewhere at the same time? What is the riff of Deep Purple's 1970 hit 'Black Night' if not a blatant steal of Blues Magoos' '(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet'? What is Lou Reed's 1970 song 'Sweet Jane' if not simply a sped up version of Tommy James' 'Crimson & Clover'? And so on.......
Clive Dunn would appear to have forged an entire career out of playing doddery old men, the most famous being Corporal Jack Jones from television sit com Dad's Army. True to form, Dunn simply carried his Corporal voice and persona across from show to single to perform this to the extent you expect him to break into 'They don't like it up em'' at every line.
Not that the 'Grandad' in this song would be half as animated or enthusiastic as Jones was on parade - this one is a half senile old fool, scared of his own shadow, confused by 'Telephones and talking things' with one eye stuck firmly in the past while the other gazes wistfully at his imminent demise ('Now my days are gone'). Around him, a gaggle of schoolkids tell him he's 'lovely', presumably because he's too useless to do anything else. It's not exactly a cheery picture of old age and it's made slightly disturbing by the fact that Dunn was only 50 when he recorded it.
What's more disturbing is that behind it were uber session man Herbie Flowers and The Creation's Kenny ('Makin' Time', 'Painter Man') Pickett, though I'd like to think that not too much midnight oil was burned in its writing and that tongues were never that far from cheeks. Dunn's presence helps dilute the wailing of the brats and make this slightly more palatable than 1980's 'There's No One Quite Like Grandma', but not by much. But perhaps the most disturbing thing of all is how serious Dunn seems to be taking it all (serious enough to go on to record an entire album of this half baked nostalgic whimsy anyway), whereas a few shouts of 'Don't panic!' and that funny noise Jones used to make when he got excited would have made it more palatable still.
Benny Hill's comedy legacy has been tarnished somewhat, not so much by the PC lynch mob who hounded him out of the business in the eighties, but by his own over reliance in that decade on age old routines, tired jokes and copious amounts of T&A to fill in the gaps. So much so that his shows became little more than a vehicle for 'Hills Angels' to provide some cheap, pre-watershed, pre-internet thrills for the jaded. But it wasn't always this way.
