1977 Wings: Mull Of Kintyre

Ah now, this one caused me no end of anguish as a lad. Thanks to my home environment, I was introduced to the world of music - and lots of it - at an early age. Bowie, Pink Floyd, Slade et al always seemed to be playing in the background as I was growing up and, as far as The Beatles went, I knew every song off the 'Blue' album by heart before I'd even started junior school; not by indoctrination, but because I genuinely liked them. I still do in fact, but in point of fact before punk and the "No Elvis, Beatles and the Rolling Stones" scorched earth policy of The Clash, there didn't seem to be any alternative but to like them. Because the equation ran: The Beatles = the best band of all time and at age eight, I wasn't inclined to challenge.

When 'Mull Of Kintyre' appeared, the ten year old me reasoned out an equation for myself that seemed unquestionable; to whit: Wings were Paul McCartney's 'new' band after The Beatles split. Paul McCartney was an ex Beatle. Paul McCartney wrote 'Mull Of Kintyre'. 'Mull Of Kintyre' was at number one for a million years so therefore 'Mull Of Kintyre' was one of the best songs ever written. The logic seemed inescapable, but there was one fly in the ointment. I didn't like it.

Of course, I didn't dare say anything to the contrary lest I be labelled a know nothing musical simpleton - '"What do you mean you don't like 'Mull Of Kintyre'???? It's a two million selling number one hit. You fool", yet the fact remained that I simply couldn't stand listening to it. Now, older, wiser and less inclined to give a toss what anybody thinks, I still don't like it, only now I'm more than happy to tell you why.

For a start, 'Mull Of Kintyre' sounds more like some hastily knocked up prefab framework rather than any finished article. And that’s probably because the 'Mull Of Kintyre' is about the Mull of Kintyre - McCartney's rural bolt hole where he owned a recording studio and the song is basically the view from his window. All very nice I’m sure, but the sixth form poetry of the "dark distant mountains with valleys of green" smacks more of an "I'm much richer than you" face rubbing exercise than anything approaching creating an evocative mood of longing for a place far off in space and time. Or to put it another way, McCartney's song doesn't in any way want to make me want to visit, not when its whole ambience is single dimension, cardboard flat with about as much substance as a drunken campfire nursery rhyme.

To my mind, its success is totally inexplicable; the strummed opening verses have the hesitancy of a tune being made up on the spot, giving the whole an aura of a demo, an unfinished piece of doggerel knocked out during studio downtime and then tarted up with some bagpiped blare to flesh out the sound. McCartney had released far better songs since The Beatles that hadn't enjoyed a fraction of its popularity. Not that his post Beatles output was a treasure chest of riches, but he did mange to strike gold on a few occasions whereas almost everything that came after was, shall we say, disappointing.

In fact, one of my many pet theories is that 'Mull Of Kintyre' is the song that effectively finished off McCartney as a songwriter. Always at his best when keeping things unfussy and direct, McCartney's post 'Mull' output seemed to react to its success by digging at the exact opposite seam and always looking for the next overproduced bit of clever cleverness instead of relying on with his talent for writing a clean underlying song.

'Mull Of Kintyre' is unfussy true, but it's unfussy to the point of being trite. I don't think I've ever met anybody with a kind word to say about it either then or since, and just how fondly regarded is the biggest selling single of the seventies now? McCartney himself has released four live albums since 1977 (most either doubles or triples too) yet 'Mull Of Kintyre' appears on none of them, to the apparent abject consternation of nobody. Except perhaps the Scottish Tourist Board.

1977 Abba: The Name Of The Game

Fresh from charting the breakdown of one relationship in 'Knowing Me, Knowing You', 'The Name Of The Game' details the first hesitant steps at the start of a new one. In many respects it's a direct sequel, or perhaps it would be better to regard it as a continuation of events; Agnetha is still bruised from the break-up and is wary about getting in too deep too soon with a new relationship that's blossoming.

That's my favoured interpretation anyway - as far as the lyrics go, then on face value they could be taken as describing any brand new, first time love affair, but following that route makes the "I'm a bashful child, beginning to grow" a bit too clumpy and demeaning for my liking. But whatever, what's certain is that a personal wall has been breached for the first time ("I was an impossible case, no-one ever could reach me") and someone once content to live alone is no longer so sure. It's a theme Abba would go on to develop in the much darker 'The Day Before You Came'.

'The Name Of The Game' is a markedly more downbeat affair after the searchlight brightness of their previous brace of singles. True, the almost trip-hop bass driven introduction gives way to (yet another) memorable chorus, but the lights aren't shining quite so brightly this time and there's a shadow of doubt lying over the song that dampens the glam and makes me less inclined to sing along.

The mixed up confusion of Agnetha's vocal is mirrored by the song's stop/start violent key change structure and it makes the overall ambiance more jagged than smooth - is she ready for love or isn't she? Agnetha doesn't know and the tension is brilliantly voiced in the middle eight where she shifts from a coy flirting on "If I trust in you, would you let me down? Would you laugh at me?" before blurting a question of sheer, naked emotion: "IF I SAID I CARED FOR YOU? COULD YOU FEEL THE SAME WAY TOO?" It's a spine tingling moment that briefly reveals the fear of heartbreak and rejection that underpins her reluctance to commit. And not just her - it's a question that we'd all like an answer to at some point in our lives.

'The Name Of The Game' can now be seen as a transitional work. It's Abba's most 'adult' single to date and it's the fact that they are being so self consciously grown up about it all that makes it slightly less enjoyable than it could have been. Benny and Bjorn seemed intent on drawing a line under the 'Dancing Queen's, yet they weren't prepared to abandon a winning formula entirely by starting on a completely fresh page.

Thus, 'The Name Of The Game' falls between two stools. It still punches its weight in the glammy pop stakes, but it's a far less immediate listen and a few years of experience under your belt is needed to properly appreciate all that's being said. Perhaps its biggest shortcoming is that it followed a series of singles that were the personification of pop perfection. 'The Name Of The Game' falls short of that but, as I say above, it's transitional and while it would be a few years yet before 'serious' Abba set down the benchmark for this chapter of their career with 'The Winner Takes It All', the wait would be well worth it.

1977 Baccara: Yes Sir, I Can Boogie

Back in the days when I used to be a pub quiz regular, I once set a question "What could Julie Andrews have done all night and still have begged for more?"* It raised a few titters (which let's be honest, was my intention - I never claimed to be less than easily amused) yet I can't help thinking I could have generated a similar entendre laden question from this too - what could Baccara do all night long if they have a certain song?

Of course, in the first example, Ms Andrews (or rather, Lerner and Loewe) are totally innocent of all charges of innuendo, but the same can't be said for the Baccara girls. Because what they are selling here is sex, not just in the lyrics, (which are themselves almost direct enough to not even be a single entendre: "If you know what you're looking for. Baby I wanna keep my reputation, I'm a sensation. You try me once, you'll beg for more") but in the whole 'two Spanish women with sexy accents' set up.

This flimsy device was enough to get seventies man's blood racing with a "you know what them foreign birds are like, cor!" nudge and wink followed by a Sid James yak yak yak.** Then again, it's not just sex - on a less....basic....level, Baccara and their Spanishness would have been another Eurotrash souvenir of a two week package deal in the Med, just like one of those odd and chunky shaped bottles of liqueur that are brought home and destined never to be opened. A slightly more sophisticated souvenir than 'Y Viva Espana' maybe, but it's cut from the same cloth. Sex, sun and cheap holidays - sounds like a winner to me.

But away from my cynicism, 'Yes Sir, I Can Boogie' is a disco romp at heart and, like most disco romps, it's all about the groove and the chorus. 'Yes Sir, I Can Boogie' scores highly on both counts, but it's further elevated by a swish of sophistication in a string arrangement that floats effortlessly behind the girls seductive cooing and groaning of the lyric that in part tips its hat to 'Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus'. A bit.

A veneer of class then, but it's the lyric that's the lead weight keeping this sack of kittens at the bottom of the canal. The very title sounds a product of another age and the repetition of 'Sir' throughout sounds slightly demeaning; if it was meant to be sarcastic then the message hasn't travelled well. Maybe that's fitting - 'Yes Sir, I Can Boogie' is as seventies kitsch as a lava lamp, and like those lamps it can be seen as making a statement of some kind to profess a liking for it. But as long as you take it with a healthy spoonful of playful irony then there's much to enjoy here.

* The answer, of course, is 'danced'.

** Step forward twenty six years and TaTu pulled the self same trick, but by then some nice frocks and a promise needed an underage schoolgirl lesbian makeover to get the Sids yakking. How times change.

1977 David Soul: Silver Lady

In which Soul follows up a song about pleading with his lover for another chance with.....another song about pleading with his lover for another chance. But originality issues aside, 'Silver Lady' is a far better song than 'Don't Give Up On Us', and that's mainly down to it being written by Macaulay/Steven, a partnership that knew how to pen a decent tune. It's also because it lays off the simper and adds a crunchy guitar line with some delicious Steely Dan lite funky jazz piano and horn fills.

I've always thought 'Silver Lady' could have been a fine vehicle for Glen Campbell to record as a kind of sequel to 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix'. Campbell would have nailed the desperation of the lyric to the mast because that's the biggest problem with this cut of the song - Soul's lack of any discernible vocal talent. 'Silver Lady' is a song sung by a man at the end of his rope ("But Honey you're my last hope, and who else can I turn to?), but Soul sounds like he's found himself in a situation of minor inconvenience instead of the desperation born out of making one bad decision too many. On this, he's a man enjoying his new found pop star status instead of burrowing into the song in front of him, but I guess you can't expect a one dimensional actor to pull a hidden layer of depth out of the hat as a singer can you? But still, not a bad effort at all.

1977 Elvis Presley: Way Down

'Way Down' had been skulking around outside the top 40 until Presley's untimely death catapulted it to number one on a wave of sentiment. No surprises there, and it's hard to criticise because if anybody deserved such an open manifestation of public grief then it's Presley. The only real surprise in all this is that RCA didn't glut the charts with an avalanche of cash-in reissues

Neither a rocker or ballad (two of Presley's staple fall backs) 'Way Down' powers along on an electronic gallop, an ever forward drive of purpose that even Status Quo felt comfortable in covering, but this is not Presley's entry into the dance/disco craze. Rather, 'Way Down' has more in common with 1972's 'Burning Love' than anything in his recent output. It's a big sounding song designed to fill those big Vegas showrooms and in that respect it's a means to an end more than anything substantial in itself. What it does show though is that Presley's voice was on form right to the end. Throughout, he sounds huge, totally in command of the song without barely breaking sweat and his growing entreating on "Ooh, and I can feel it, Feel it, FEEL it, FEEL it" is volcanic. What is he feeling exactly? "Way down where it feels so good. Way down where I hoped it would. Way down where I never could" - surely not?

Had he lived, 'Way Down' would have been a lesser song in Presley's canon but instead its been given undeserved prominence through unfortunate circumstance. It's decent enough, but totally outshone and outsparkled by Presley's real crown jewels. Up until 2002 it was only noteworthy as being a cracking pub quiz question ('name Presley's last UK number one'), but it seems somehow fitting that subsequent events should deny it even this status because 'Way Down' doesn't really deserve any kind of podium of its own.

1977 The Floaters: Float On

Well it's different anyway. 'Float On' is basically each of the four Floaters stepping up to the mic to give their star sign and a précis of what they want from a woman, kind of like an early pilot of Blind Date. My favourite is Charles who is a Libra and is looking for "A woman that's quiet, who carries herself like Miss Universe". Good luck with that one Charles.

Sight unseen, you could be forgiven for mistaking this as a sly parody of 'loverman' soul singers like Barry White, but watch any footage of them performing it and you'll see that humour wasn't foremost in their minds. Fair enough, there's some sweet falsetto vocal going on around the (admittedly) catchy and dreamlike 'Float, float on' chorus, but it's not enough to hide the fact that there's more ham here than a sty full of pigs, and a similar smell hangs over both.

1977 Brotherhood Of Man: Angelo

Now then, what's this? A former Eurovision winning band of two blokes, two women singing a song about some Mexican folks with a title that ends in 'O'. Ah yes, I know, the 'Abba rip-off' comments are a bit lazy - its been done to death on this one, but unfortunately that doesn't make them any less accurate; as Abba were enjoying so much post Eurovision success then why not hitch their cart to that ready made racehorse formula? Why not indeed, and in trying to give their career legs by raising their game from the sickly twee of 'Save Your Kisses For Me', the Brotherhood Of Man offered up this tale of doomed love and suicide.

As I've commented elsewhere, I'm always partial to a song with a story and, as I'm a sucker for a good death ballad too, 'Angelo' should delight. Instead, it leaves me feeling the wrong side of cold. Why? Well for a start the song's 'story' is a model of brevity to say the least; poor boy Angelo falls in love with a rich man's daughter and they run off together to avoid their disapproving parents and......and the next thing you know they're both lying dead in a ditch 'hand in hand'.

Now, I don't expect a three minute pop song to weave a Dickensain web of intrigue, but a little more development than this cynical tug on the heartstrings would have been nice. Because how can you empathise in any way with such tissue thin characters? And perhaps to paper over the shortcomings in the story, 'Angelo' is a little too sharp and shrill to be an enjoyable listen: "they took their lives that night and in the morning light, they found them on the sand, they saw them lying there hand in hand" - such lines are not delivered with a sympathetic tone but with the hardnosed matter-of-factness of two fishwives gossiping over the garden fence. You expect them to follow up with 'I always knew he was a bad lot that Angelo, the baggage'. Elsewhere, 'Angelo' manages to score a plus point with a nice Mariachi drum beat that precedes the chorus, but the gain on the swings is lost on the roundabouts with the shameless (SHAMELESS!) steal of the descending piano motif from 'Dancing Queen'.

'Angelo' is a brash and tacky penny dreadful cash in that's 'Orca: Killer Whale' to Abba's 'Jaws'. Saying that, if on pain of death I was forced to choose which Brotherhood Of Man single I had to listen to on auto repeat while locked in a room for a few decades then I'd probably choose this one. But just because it's the best of a bad bunch that doesn't make it any less irritating.

1977 Donna Summer: I Feel Love

Of course, I should be writing this from my holiday home up on Mars. Or not even writing it - I should be beaming the words directly onto the screen via a jack plug in the back of my neck. Whilst wearing a hover pack. This is the sort of future that was promised to me when I was a kid in all the magazines and comics I read anyway, a brave new world of talking robot slaves and intergalactic travel. Never happened did it?

Saying that, compared to 1977, the future did arrive in the form of technological developments that would have been beyond my wildest dreams in 1977. Like having a device in my pocket that could store and play over 500 albums on the go or that my half baked writings could be published on a global scale and be read by people in Australia minutes after I'd written them. Incredible developments to be sure, and ones that should not be dismissed just because of their now commonplace ubiquity. But for the most part it remains the depressing familiarity of the same old. I still get up and put my pants on every day anyway. Ain't no machine doing that for me just yet.

In 1977, Donna Summer released 'I Remember Yesterday'. A concept album of sorts, side one was a set of tunes united by a musical theme that looked to the past whilst the music of side two looked to tomorrow. The closing song, 'I Feel Love', was written with Giorgio Moroder and presented as a vision of the kind of music we would all be listening to in the future. On Mars whilst dancing in mid air wearing hover packs I suppose. Never happened though, did it?

Well, did it? Does the music of the today sound like 'I Feel Love'? Of a sort it does, though perhaps only in the way that those 1950, 60's and 70s sci-fi mags and films I used to love occasionally struck lucky with an approximate vision of how some aspects of modern life turned out by getting parts of it right. I can remember watching '2001: A Space Odyssey' in 1982 and being amazed at the thought of Dr Floyd making a televisual call to his family back home on earth. 'Can't happen here' I thought. And most of it hasn't; we aren't sending manned flights to Jupiter or commercial flights into space just yet, but I can make a similar televisual call from that device in my pocket that holds all those albums.

So part of my promised future has arrived, and in the same way you can hear a lot of 'I Feel Love' in 70's disco, 80's/90's dance/trance and, let's be honest, virtually every band since that ever plugged in a keyboard from new romantics to hardcore Industrial and all stops in-between. Yes, the ideas presented on 'I Feel Love' have been plundered by all and sundry, but only in the same way that Moroder himself plundered (for example) James Brown's more primal beats to create it. Because 'I Feel Love' didn't arrive fully formed like Venus from her shell and in that sense it's as much a stepping stone, a passing of the baton as between (for another example) Buddy Holly to The Beatles to most bands that followed, but I'd suggest that 'I Feel Love' in its entirety still pretty much stands alone and aloof with it's cool, mood generating aura.

'I Feel Love' sounded like nothing else around it in the charts at the time. Viewed in its 1977 setting then it may as well have flown down from Mars on a hover pack. Ziggy Stardust and his band purported to have hailed from the same planet, but they still sounded like they'd paid their dues on the pub rock circuit whereas Summer's song barely sounded touched by the hand of man. To take the most obvious, bluntest frying pan in the face contemporary comparison, then I've no doubt that Kraftwerk could have come up with the music to 'I Feel Love' without breaking much of a sweat. What they couldn't have done, and not done in a million years, is provide the vocal. On the other hand, Summer couldn't have sung something like 'The Model' without it sounding a fiasco, a burlesque robot party from a very bad sci-fi B movie and it's the sum of the parts, of Moroder's music and Summer's vocal that makes 'I Feel Love' so incredibly unique.

For a long while, I only ever listened to 'I Feel Love' in the form of Patrick Cowley's fifteen minute remix. And that's because I could/can listen to the song all day and I always found that the original was over all too soon (which gives you a hint as to the direction this review is going). But listening to the 1977 single again tonight, I can see that no remix was ever needed, and neither does the song need lengthening; it's like comparing the original 1977 cut of Star Wars with the CGI retooled 1997 version. Both have the 'gee whiz' factor of the shiny new parts, but both manage to lose sight of the ground that was broken by the original articles, and what they gain in gloss they lose in heart.

As I say above, 'I Feel Love' is a logical progression in popular music of sorts. If you take Chuck Berry's "it's got a backbeat, you can't lose it" description of rock & roll as gospel (and I do), then Moroder's electronic chassis strips the concept down to the bare bones - or more accurately, bare wires - of that backbeat. A few repeated words and a repetitive electronic beat and that's all it is - 'I Feel Love' is actually a non song in any traditional sense, but just as 'all' hypnotism is is a few calm words and a swinging watch, the combined effect is a mesmeric swirl of self contained bliss.

Moroder's music throbs like an excited pulse, all flashing twitches of firing synapses. The ever rolling heartbeat thump is nothing less that a re-imagining of the primal rhythms and desires of the blues cooked on a flame set to a slow, low burn that's there to heat Ms Summer up to boiling point. If her vocal on the previous 'Love To Love You Baby' got the puritans in a lather with its erotic overtones, then 'I Feel Love' should have blown all kinds of moral fuses because throughout its duration, Summer sounds like she's in the throes of a slow building orgasm in the midst of the swirling electronica. What lyrics there are are delivered more to herself with a complete lack of self consciousness that anybody else is listening: "Ooh it's so good, it's so good, it's so goooooooood" before the ultimate release of the repeated title with "looooovveeee' stretched out in eyes closed, arms aloft ecstasy.

So the sound of the future then? Well yes in part - the electronics may now sound a bit valve powered and running on old money, but the sensuous mix of sex and machine (that's not machine fetishism like, say, the auto erotica of Ballard's 'Crash') is a one off. Countless acts have revamped, re-mixed, re-moulded and retooled the original - sometimes cleverly, sometimes lazily - until the concept has been stretched and twisted in every way imaginable so that its influence has entered popular consciousness to the point it's no longer noticed or acknowledged. The aftershocks are everywhere, but on it's own terms 'I Feel Love' remains defiantly different, the sound of a future that has not yet arrived. A magnificent milestone in popular music.

1977 Hot Chocolate: So You Win Again

Always a dependable brand, Hot Chocolate had been having a hit a year since 1970 (and would do so until 1978). Mention the band's name to anyone and like as not it's the sweat funk workouts of 'You Sexy Thing' or 'Every 1's A Winner' that folk will remember. And that's fair enough because they're memorable songs, but in-between the smiley dance fun, Hot Chocolate weren't averse to dropping the occasional misery bomb to keep people on their toes.

Written by Mickey Most, 'So You Win Again' (their sole number one to date) found singer Errol Brown at a low ebb after his woman has gone and left him; though 'low ebb' may be an understated way to describe the verbal beating up he's giving himself. Exactly why she left we're never told, but Brown spares himself no quarter in the blame stakes: "Being the fool I am", "Here I stand again, the loser", "I'm a fool there's no denying" he goes on before muttering the title over and over again to himself in a mantra of self flagellation. The bizarre thing is he seems to enjoy wallowing in his self pity; just listen to his tongue wrapping around 'the looosserrr' and that key change plead of "when will my heartaches end" at 3:18. And what's with the so you win 'again'? How many times has she done this to the sucker?

All the while, the band try to cheer him up/take the piss through locking into an inappropriately solid funk groove that dances around, trying to nudge him up onto his feet when he'd probably rather be left on his own. It's an odd juxtaposition and it's one that serves to put 'So You Win Again' up on a high wire that straddles the band's upbeat singles (the above mentioned) and their more downbeat songs like 'Emma'. It's an awkward balance and that they never once slip is testament to the watertight quality of the playing. And while it's all part of the same circus, it's no fun watching something that leaves you with your heart in your mouth when all you wanted was to watch the clowns lark about with buckets of water. Not their best single, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

1977 The Jacksons: Show You The Way To Go

By 1977, The Jacksons had moved on from their earlier Hanna Barbera powersoul to embrace the more mature disco/dance scene that Michael would come to dominate. Ah yes, Michael - the four years since the last Jackson 5 hit had been a period of growing up. Voice now broken, gone is his previous beam of adolescent glee to be replaced by something more akin to the Jackson of his eighties salad days. And now no longer hampered by Motown restrictions, he sounds like a caged bird freed desperate to fly, but try as he might, he's kept grounded by the song itself.

For sure, the chipped Chic guitar riff and smooth basslines have the best of intentions and the itself tune follows some interesting diversions (like that nagging "let me show you, let me show you" refrain) with Michael himself chiming in with his soon to be trademark yelps and whoops. So far so good, but although the component parts are there,'Show You The Way To Go' sounds less a well oiled machine and more a car engine that turns but refuses to fire.

And that's because Gamble and Huff's tune simply does not lock into groove forceful enough to carry the song along; it runs into too many dead ends and Michael's vocal tic ad-libs sound more like filler than anything spontaneously rebounding off the source material. By the time it fades out, the Jacksons sound like they've given up trying to motor and are content to simply push their vehicle across the finish line in a grunting rut of repetition. 'Show You The Way To Go' may well be an above par song for The Jacksons, but there's too much of Michael in it to make it sound anything other than a sub-standard Michael Jackson single. And if that sounds harsh, then I don't mean to be. Just fair.

1977 Rod Stewart: I Don't Want To Talk About It/The First Cut Is The Deepest

A double A side, but in truth both tracks are the left and right feet of a pair of very comfy slippers for the boy Stewart. It's coals to Newcastle; Rod has always had a keen ear for interpreting of other people's songs and any half arsed singer could make either of these pair listenable. And whatever else Rod Stewart may be, a half arsed singer he is not.

Originally appearing on 1975's 'Atlantic Crossing', Rod's version of Danny Whitten's 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' benefits immeasurably from a thick Muscle Shoals production and Rod has sense enough to sing just underneath the backing instead of going at it full throttle, giving the affecting lyrics the room they need. It's not a song that welcomes bombast and Stewart gives it none though the overbearing saxophone solo that tries to usher in the eighties three years early is more intrusive than it need be and ends the song almost mid-sentence with no sense of closure.

Though recorded a year later, 'The First Cut Is The Deepest' was a product of the same studios, albeit with a sharper sound all round. Again, Stewart reins in Cat Steven's lyric of emotional anguish ("Cause when it comes to being lucky, she's cursed") and casts it in a more wistful tone of wariness rather than the outright emotional rebellion at the thought of a new relationship that PP Arnold brought to the song; she makes being alone sound like a choice while Stewart makes it sound an inevitable circumstance born out of fear.

So, two good songs, two good cover versions - fine as far as it goes, but neither are great and in truth this is a lazy release at heart, a cherry picking of Rod's patchy recent output that tries to remind his old fans that underneath all the wealth, fame and supermodel girlfriends, he still knew how to hurt along with the best of us.

But I can't leave it there.

On December 14 1976, the Sex Pistols were due to play a concert at Cardiff's Top Rank. That show (as were so many others on the Anarchy tour) was cancelled and the venue switched to a cinema in nearby Caerphilly. When the band rolled into town they were met by a crowd of picketing Christians who sang hymns outside while the band played. One of the 'congregation' was interviewed by a BBC news reporter and he gave a soundbite to the effect "I'd let my daughter go and see Rod Stewart, but I wouldn't let her come and see something like this". One view maybe, but somebody else had a similar idea.

According to the figures, 'God Save The Queen' outsold Rod Stewart's single by a considerable margin and should have been number one in the Queen's jubilee week. But it wasn't. Remarkable enough really that it even got to number two - no mean feat for a single you could neither hear nor buy. Banned by Radio One, WHSmith, Boots, Top Of The Pops, Woolworth, all local radio and debated in Parliament ("If pop music is going to be used to destroy our established institutions then it ought to be destroyed first" - Marcus Lipton MP), both song and band were persona non grata in a country immersed in feverish, flag waving patriotism.*

A lot of this goes back to the dual nature of this thing we call 'rock and roll' that I brought up back on Showaddywaddy's effort. If we take it as the rebellion side of the coin then 'God Save The Queen' must stand at the pinnacle of the art form. Controversy has never been far away from its orbit. But although (for example) Jerry Lee Lewis may have been run out of the UK on a rail when the age (13) and familial relation (first cousin once removed) of his new bride was discovered, and The Beatles (for another example) may have had their albums burned on mass pyres in the USA, I can't think of a single example in Western Democracy where the powers that be simply tried to deny the existence of a song. To that end, I was sorely tempted to list this as a bona fide 1977 number one alongside Abba and Co, just as it was so listed on every honest chart of the day. But I can't. Whether I like it or not it's the 'official' UK chart I'm using as my guide and that places it at number two. Fine. And probably just as well - I'll leave the re-writing of history to those better at it.

So what of the song anyway? What lurks within those shiny black grooves that was so subversive, so terrifying to so many? Well, the fact it was having a pop at the monarchy was something still well beyond the pale as late as 1977 and it's something that's perhaps hard to comprehend thirty years on. But even then it wasn't the simple case of a bunch of louts kicking over the statues for the sake of it. Derogatory yes, but the much despised "moron" lyric, as any fool who took the time to listen, was not a simple equation of Queen = moron. Rotten was too smart for something so basic and - come on - if he was out to simply insult then he could have done a lot worse than that.

But regardless, looking at it from a modern perspective then there's something quaintly unthreatening and anachronistic about using the word at all, almost like describing today's tooled up hoodies as 'hooligans' or 'scallywags'. And not only that, that second 'fascist regime' line was well wide of the mark even in 1977 and would have wound up a country that had true fascism within mass living memory with the audacity of its inaccuracy. Neither has worn well. And yet the neo situationist text of "When there's no future, how can there be sin? We're the flowers in the dustbin, we're the poison in your human machine" sounds as mysterious and brilliantly subversive now as it did then, giving the song an intellectual air designed to catch the ear of all those prepared to listen. Or even listen perhaps a bit too hard, like Greil Marcus's stringing them alongside Guy Debord and Rosa Luxembourg as a linked series of black pearls to represent a more subversive version of history**

But all this is academic (literally) - in terms of music, 'God Save The Queen' is a dense three minutes, twenty second slab of pure rock and roll power. Steve Jones still sounds like he's playing twenty guitars all at once while Rotten still manages to sneer and snarl over the top of it all right through to the explosive carrion call finale of 'no future' that lifts the song heavenward on a whirlwind of sound that still feels like it has the power to stop the world spinning on its axis and slowly start it turning in the opposite direction.

That it didn't is a mere matter of observation - neither socially, politically or musically. Musically? Ha! A cursory glance at the rest of the charts show 1977 to be as anger free as it ever was. There will always be bands preaching a message that sticks it to 'the man', though typically they remain underground, too angry to do anything but shout to a partisan audience happy to be shouted at. 'God Save The Queen' is an intelligent slice of pure venomous anger that brought the underground overground into a face to face stand off with the establishment. The establishment won (obviously), but for a few glorious weeks at least the Sex Pistols and all they represented made it feel like anything was possible. What more can anyone possibly ask of a song?

* I myself can remember trying to buy a copy of 'Never Mind The Bollocks' in 1980 and finding it was still banned in my home town's WHSmith and Woolworth.

** See 'Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century'. If you're a music fan and you haven't read it, then I recommend that you do instead of reading anything else of mine. It's far better, trust me on that.

1977 Kenny Rogers: Lucille

If, as I'm trying to convince you, rock & roll has a split personality, then 'country music' is a multi headed Hydra of forms and styles from the harrowing, skinny bone white heartbreak of Hank Williams to the camp opulence of......oh take your pick. But however the presentation, the content stays pretty constant and it's probably best summed up by Johnny Cash when he said "I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humour, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and love. And Mother. And God."

Johnny Cash knew a thing or two about country music. So did Roger Bowling; Bowling co-wrote 'Lucille' and in so doing managed to fit in a fair proportion of Cash's favourite themes - family, hard times, whiskey, marriage, adultery, separation, home, pride, tragedy, heartbreak and love are all here and all wrapped up in Kenny Rogers' unique brand of rocking chair groove.

Rogers' best known songs tend to be best known via their choruses. Even those with an aversion to country can tell you got to know when to hold 'em, that we should walk away from trouble when we can and what a fine time Lucille picked to leave. Oh yes, 'Lucille' has a memorable chorus alright, so much so it provided the punchline to two fairly poor jokes I remember from my younger days*, but there's a lot more to the song than that.

Because I'll make a confession - I came here originally to bury 'Lucille', not to praise it. And that's because all I really knew of the song was that chorus and Rogers' mogodon monotone delivery that in no way gives the impression of a man at the end of his rope. But the joke was on me because, as far as 'Lucille' goes, it's not Rogers' character singing that chorus but a third party within the song's story. And as a story, 'Lucille' is morally ambiguous to the point of blackness - Rogers has met a woman at a bar who, after being plied with drink, tells him "I finally quit living on dreams. I'm hungry for laughter". As they are talking, a man enters the bar and sits next to them - "He looked like a mountain, for a minute I thought I was dead", but instead of violence, he speaks to the woman in the resigned words of the chorus:

"You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille
With four hungry children and crops in the field.
I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times,
but this time the hurtin' won't heal.
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille."

After he leaves, Rogers and the woman rent a hotel room, but remembering the words of her husband, he loses his appetite for stranger sex: "I couldn't hold her, for the words that he told her, kept coming back time after time".

There's an awful lot going on in there when you look closely, and not all that deeply either - who are we meant to be rooting for in all this? Who are we meant to be feeling sorry for? Who are the bad guys? Country villains usually wear black, but 'Lucille' is cast in varying shades of grey. Nobody comes out of all this with too much credit and none of the characters are particularly likeable. Even the husband comes across as piss-weak in confronting his wife and the whole morally blank tale is unlikely fodder for a number one easy listening country single.

I think a close relative of Lucille would be the unnamed serial womaniser in Bruce Springsteen's 'Hungry Heart':

"Got a wife and kids in Baltimore jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going"

Bruce places his man's motive in devil may care wanderlust (and lust) before admitting "Ain't nobody like to be alone" and his good time bar song makes it sound like a virtue, a sloping shoulders of "Hey, I'm a bloke, what else did you expect"? Lucille's motives are no less selfish and hedonistic than Bruce's yet can anyone really hold her up as a strong female figure to aspire to or a martyr to feminism? In country terms she's the absolute antithesis of Tammy Wynette's feminine ideal in 'Stand By Your Man' but her going against the grain of the norm generates far more finger pointing "how COULD she" comment from her disapproving peers than Bruce.

And that's about as far as I intend wading into the murky waters of sexual politics. For there be dragons. Of course, Rogers' voice and the feint pulse backing of the music serves to pull all the teeth from out of the mouth of the dangerous beast to leave a dribbling mess of soft mouth slobber until the chorus elbows the verses into the long grass to give folk something nice to sing along to. But all the same, 'Lucille' isn't the saccharine pill that many (and yes, I include myself in that) think it is. Like a razor blade hidden in a bar of chocolate, there's no harm done if all you get is a taste of the surface (which is what Rogers' wet lick of a version does), but there will be blood if you bite down hard.

* Both involved miss-singing the words of the chorus. One went 'You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel' while the other involved 'four hundred children and a cock in the tree'. I honestly can't remember how the rest of either joke goes, but I don't imagine they've aged well.

1977 Deniece Williams: Free

Deniece Williams has a pedigree stretching back to the early seventies as one of Stevie Wonder's back up singers. Solo success in the UK has been moderate, but 'Free', her only chart topper, has become one of 'those' number ones that time has simply forgot. In part you can see why - 'Free' is powered by an anonymous, off the peg smooth soul/jazz backing that's as horribly flat as the wallpaper Deniece is breaking free (HA!) from on that bizarre cover. Once heard, forever forgotten indeed, but instead of playing along with the blandness, Williams uses its flat surface as a sprung floor and bounces all over it. Her free running vocal swoops and highs are delightfully playful and they give 'Free' the same pleasurable lightness of touch that her man is giving her ("Feeling you close to me makes all my senses smile").

But it's not enough - once the fun is over then she's off; Deniece doesn't want to be tied down to any bloke "But I want to be free, free, free. And I just got to be me, yeah, be me", and to prove it her voice flies off out the door while her man can only watch from the lumpen bed of that music backing. Hedonistic? Selfish? Both? Maybe, but it's good to see a woman turning the tables for a change and 'Free' is a classy song that hides its 'strong female' message in a velvet glove instead of tubthumping it all over. Classy, but not a classic, which is why it's barely remembered now though I'd be the first to say it deserves a better legacy than that.

1977 Abba: Knowing Me, Knowing You

'Knowing Me, Knowing You' makes my head spin. It makes it spin so much it's hard to know where to begin - to my mind, trying to describe it is like looking through the glass door and trying to identify individual items of clothing inside a washing machine on final spin. 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' is a whirl of colour and energy that forever catches me up in its kinetic blur and leaves me breathless in admiration that so much can be crammed (that word again) into one song. But I'll have a go.

First thing - it's very different to anything Abba had done to date. OK, the trademark glitter of glam is still present in the music, but the ecstasy of 'Dancing Queen' is definitely not. Lyrically, the rosy glow of the third party hurt and remembrance of 'Fernando' is now first person personal; in the whole of Abba's canon, 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' is the best example of the descriptive 'Bright Lights & Dark Shadows' that formed the title of Carl Magnus's definitive biography of the band. Abba would return to mine this seam of misery for the rest of their recording life, but elsewhere it was accompanied by suitably downbeat music.

'Knowing Me, Knowing You' opens with a chiming thrust of melody that almost sounds festive and look, that cover could be off a Christmas single. But appearances can be deceiving; that snow is no mere decoration - there's a coldness here, and the thousand yard stare in Anna-Frid's voice on "No more carefree laughter, silence ever after" is the sound of the dancing queen all grown up and no longer having the time of her life. "Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes. Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye" - there's no build up to the hurt, no prologue - whatever has gone wrong went wrong long before the song started and all that remains is a bittersweet regret and a remembrance of better times.

And regret is rampant throughout, permeating each of its musical stages from the sepia toned sadness of "In these old familiar rooms, children would play", to Agnetha's counterpoint ghostly whisper of "bad days", a wide eyed and hushed suggestion of something best not remembered. And yet all the while it's building up to an explosive, firecracker of a chorus that relieves the tension by blowing up in your face with a definitive statement of finality that defiantly rhymes "There is nothing we can do" with "this time we're through".

How clear can someone be? There's none of the towel throwing resignation of the later 'The Winner Takes It All', it's screamed almost as a bluff, daring the other to agree with her assessment of how they've ended up yet shot through with the vulnerability (and emphasised by the fire and ice vocals of the two women) of a secret hope that they'll try to make it work. All Benny and Bjorn can do in response is meekly recite the words back in a voice too tired to fight,

How far removed is that from anything Abba had done to date? And yes, I'm repeating myself here, but once again the generosity in the songwriting is incredible. A lesser band would have cannibalised all this to create three different songs, possibly even a Pete Townsend style 'mini-opera' (something Abba themselves were shortly to do on 'The Girl with the Golden Hair').

Oh yes, Abba were always cavalier with their tunes, but then they could afford to be, they had them to burn. But on 'Knowing Me, Knowing You', each is wrapped up tight into a kaleidoscope of themes and moods that contrast, compliment and run as sure as a rollercoaster car that never once leaves the tracks. 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' delights with every listen, a song so strong that even being adopted by Steve Coogan as a piss-taking soundtrack to the bland hasn't damaged its legacy one little bit. Not necessarily their 'best' single, but it's my favourite.

1977 The Manhattan Transfer: Chanson D'Amour

Nowadays, I can't hear the name 'Manhattan Transfer' without hearing Ronnie Corbett prefixing it with a "Ladies and gentleman, please welcome...". Always a staple guest on 'The Two Ronnies' during the seventies, the middle class, middle of the road setting of the show seems somehow fitting for the middle class, middle of the road music they purveyed. Not that 'Chanson D'Amour' is all that typical of their output, but it's a good enough illustration of the light jazz/art deco retro music they were all about.*

It's fair to say that 'Chanson D'Amour' has never been one of my favourite songs. The hokiness of that repeating 'Ra ta ta ta ta' refrain fair makes my skin crawl but Manhattan Transfer at least rein it in considerably, making it a bit part player in the tune in comparison with (for example) the 1958 Art and Dotty Todd version that positively revels in it. What this version does do is push its 'Frenchness' to the fore, but with a lacklustre result that's more pastiche than passion.

Lead Laurel Massé is a fine jazz vocalist in her own right, but the affected French accent she adopts on this is more ''Allo 'Allo' than amour amour and it makes the interpretation a little too kitsch and a little too fake. No doubt it was convenient and de rigueur sophistication to have burbling away on the music centre at seventies dinner parties, along with hostess trolleys and bottles of Blue Nun. But just like that budget Liebfraumilch, it doesn't too travel well and now sounds a creaky artefact of a different age entirely. Sadly for Laurel and the band, that age is not the aspired to sound of Paris in the twenties but the forced domestic hell of 'Abigail's Party'.

* As an aside, having this at number one in the year of 'The Punk Wars' (TM) seems almost like an act of spite, of the respectable majority of the UK giving their own two finger gesture at the urchins in ripped jeans and safety pins cheering on the Sex Pistols signing with A&M outside Buckingham Palace that same month. Maybe that sounds a touch fantastic and paranoid, but as we'll see, the levels of spite would go much deeper than this scenario.

1977 Leo Sayer: When I Need You

From a career start of writing songs for Roger Daltrey in the early seventies (not forgetting that episode in the Pierot outfit), Leo Sayer's credibility gradually got out of Dodge as he fell into the comfy chair persona of the non thinking man's Elton John. Written by the usually dependable Albert Hammond and Carole Bayer Sager, 'When I Need You' tries its best to announce itself as a sincere statement of the strength of long distance love, but the lurching mutant waltz time structure makes every line of verse end on a downer of finality that puts the brakes on whatever emotion the song may have had. Which wasn't much to begin with, and certainly nothing that will compensate for Sayer's whiny, white bread vocals. It seems lazy to just dismiss something as 'boring', but 'When I Need You' in Sayer's hands is boring. Thin, reedy, irritating and boring.

1977 Julie Covington: Don't Cry For Me Argentina

Though 'Memory' is probably the biggest name to drop, it's curious to note that for all his extensive theatre output, Andrew Lloyd Webber has come up with precious few songs that could be regarded as standards with a life outside of their specific shows. True, his early output with Tim Rice will keep school productions in business for as long as there are schools, but for the most part it's slim pickings. 1976 and 'Evita' marked a watershed of kinds for the partnership, not just because it was their last collaboration; it marked a more mature direction and was a work that came accompanying cracking sound of wings being spread.

You don't need to have an in-depth knowledge of Argentinean politics or even have sat through the whole of 'Evita' to appreciate its showstopper (and I don't propose to go into either here) because the song is strong enough to stand by itself. But a little context helps; Eva ('Evita') Perón is standing on a balcony to speak to her home crowd with a speech riddled with honest uncertainty and hesitant insecurity, traits that Julie Covington nails each and every time with the precision of a sniper.

Just take the opening line:"It won't be easy, you'll think it strange", an almost whispered opening delivered with the self conscious hesitancy of a woman addressing her peers, that gathers confidence with "When I try to explain how I feel" (with emphasis on that "I", a egotistical show of defiance. In fact, all the '"I"s and "me"s in the song are delivered forcefully, showing where Perón - not Covington's - true priorities lie) before breaking down with an almost mumbled confession of dependency in the face of internal flaws "that I still need your love after all that I've done".*

To carry on would be to bore, but suffice it to say that Covington climbs into the skin of the song to present a masterclass in interpretation, splitting octaves with the devastating effect of splitting atoms while around her Lloyd Webber's score provides an unsettling flux of uplift and elegy that adds to the tension.

I'm not one for musicals really, and I'd be the first to admit that, as a rule, I'd rather swallow live spiders than listen to 90% of anything Lloyd Webber signs his name to. But I could listen 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina' all day, if just to admire what Covington does with it. The combination of singer and song ooze a class and sophistication (coming sandwiched in-between Mr Soul and Mr Sayer amplified this to the power of ten) that the rest of 1977 would struggle to better.

* All these subtle nuances are glaringly absent from the second most famous version of the song by Madonna. Rather than crawl into Perón's skin, she sounds like she's singing Lourdes to sleep.

1977 David Soul: Don't Give Up On Us

If I was too young for Telly Savalas and Kojak in the seventies, then I was the right age for Starsky & Hutch, oh yes. And I loved it. Saturday nights weren't complete without me wishing I was in a red Ford Grand Torino, haring round corners and piling into cardboard boxes. Great stuff. But fan that I was, I never had much time for Soul's singing career. Dear me no.

Probably the most inappropriately named vocalist in history, Soul may have roughed up the bad guys on screen but his singing voice is the weak, flat drip of a leaky tap - constant and annoying.* To be fair (I suppose), 'Don't Give Up On Us' would offers nothing for any vocalist to get stuck into - as wet as it is, it's impossible to wring anything out of it's terminal 'let's try again' blandness. It threatens to get tough on the 'I really lost my head last night' middle eight, but that in itself leads nowhere, certainly nowhere where you give a toss to find out what happened, and even when it does give the opportunity to aim for the stars on the closing 'thhrroouugghhh', Soul bottles it by reaching for a note that makes it sound like he's apologising for wasting everybody's time. Which is apt because that's exactly what he's doing. The tinker.

* More than this, I can't hear anything by David Soul without imagining Billy Howard sticking a fork in his leg through frustration at writing 'King Of The Cops' in 1975. There's enough material here for him to have wrung a good five more verses out of.