Yes, I did actually return from India. We had a great time, having some amazing experiences in a hugely intersting country. It’s made us want to go back and visit other parts of the country in the future. We were on an escorted tour and the group was a very lively one with everyone getting along. Indeed one of the group members may even be reading this, if she hasn’t lost interest waiting for a post to land. Hello, Louise!
So why the delay? Many reasons:
I got back to my final three weeks of work before retirement expecting to be doing little more than final handovers and checks. Instead I was given a two week project as “you’re the only person who knows the background to this”. Er, wouldn’t that have been a good time for me to walk someone else through it? Apparently not. Stress levels were through the roof before I finally signed off and walked into the sunset with a good drinking session at the Northern Monk Refectory in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. All plans to drink sensibly went out of the window as soon as I saw that they had Brass Castle’s excellent Bad Kitty on cask. Younger colleagues were watching on in horror as the old git drank 5.5% porter like it was water!
Less than a month later I was back in the world of employment (albeit part-time) as an exams invigilator at the local high school. Walking up and down looking mildly stern and grumpy is a lot more tiring than you might think.
Mrs TGG’s mother has been in and out of hospital since we got back from India. This has required a lot of visiting various hospitals and a lot of call outs to her house when she’s been at home. Fingers crossed that things are now settling down on that front.
Christmas
New Year
I’m now volunteering at the local museum and I’ve been asked to lead one of the regular History Walks around town in a few months’ time. This requires research and preparation of material and at least a couple of walkthroughs to measure timings.
I’ve discovered that my local does discounted cask beer between 2pm and 6pm on weekday afternoons. I’ve been making use of this, catching up with other retired friends and making a few new ones, too.
I’ve been locked out of the site. Obviously I’m now back in!
General inertia.
But now…
I’ve seen them again (supporting Madness) since I was last with you, and we’re booked in again to see them on their own tour later in the year.
I’m planning to carry on with the Smash Hits reviews, but given that I’m now well away from the 45 year gap on the timeline, I may revive some old threads and introduce some new ones as well, in among the Smash Hits ones.
Hopefully it won’t be five months until the next post!
Exhausting just reading everything you’ve been doing! From (north) M/c myself, now living south of there. Strange how I rarely go now.
When we were growing up we’d look over at it on the skyline from school, and say, it’ll be us who will be the ones there when we’re old enough. Oddly depressing thought: same stuff over again and again. Glad it did not turn out that way.
The 28th issue of the magazine that I purchased had within its cover photo possibly the oldest person that I think ever appeared on said front cover during the period that I was an avid reader.
That person being Saxa, saxophonist for The Beat (or The English Beat if you hail from the USA), who had recently celebrated his 50th birthday.
The full page advert on Page 2 is for Robert Palmer’s Clues album, which has had a previous mention. I wouldn’t have bought it yet – that would have been after a very good single was taken from it, and if memory serves the words for that will appear in due course.
Pages 4 and 5 do their usual thing of housing three sets of lyrics. The Jam’s latest single, Start!, is there – a track which would hit #1 in the second of the weeks covered by this issue. Also there are two songs from our cover stars, Best Friend and Stand Down Margaret. The former was the side that got the airplay, with radio stations being wary of the political content of its other side. Interesting that there was such a strong “anti” feeling for a Prime Minister who’d only been in power for just over a year. Some things don’t seem to change.
The interview with the cover stars is next – all of them apart from Saxa, who is apparently usually absent from any interview that they do. There’s the usual stuff about how the band formed and a recognition that Saxa joining them added a different dimension to their sound. The band has also had a month off from touring and recording, which has allowed them time to pen some new material. Dave Wakeling has enjoyed this period after realising that “a quarter of a million people will probably buy our next record”.
After a full page ad for Kenny Everett’s Kremmen The Movie soundtrack, it’s on to Bitz and the shock news that Jools Holland has left Squeeze. He has some studio time booked for a new band, whilst the rest of Squeeze have to recruit a new keyboard player. “… a man of Holland’s versatility will be hard to replace”, Bitz notes. Other big news sees Radio 1 scrapping daytime playlists “Whether this will mean any less sludge on the air remains to be seen”. Still yet to have their Big Hit, The Passions get another mention (after a piece in December 1979), as they’ve parted ways with Fiction Records, who have just released The Affectionate Punch album from “new acquisitions The Associates”. The All-Time Top 10 is from Ranking Roger – punk, ska and reggae choices all sitting alongside Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express. He admits to not liking heavy metal.
After musings in a previous issue about the provenance of the song Tom Hark, with which The Piranhas were now enjoying a hit, we get the words that accompany their version as well as an interview with the band which took place whilst they were preparing to perform said ditty on Top Of The Pops. Again, it’s the usual how the band formed sort of stuff, but does include a quote from the band’s John Helmer that he probably doesn’t like being reminded about – “I don’t think music’s going to get any more machine oriented than it previously has been”. I’m not sure if the song still gets an airing at lower division football grounds when someone scores a goal, but The Piranhas’ version remains stubbornly unavailable on Spotify. Luckily I bought the single back in 1980.
Words for a couple of songs that made the Top 20 next, in both cases, the only time the artist actually cracked the Top 40. Tom Browne with Funkin’ For Jamaica and A Walk In The Park from The Nick Straker Band.
And we really do need a musical interlude now.
Late arrivals to the 2-Tone party, this was part of a double-sided release from The Swinging Cats, with the flip being an instrumental entitled Mantovani. This failed to chart at all, and its words appear on the same page as The Selecter’s final Top 75 entry, The Whisper, which peaked at #36. It looked like the ska craze was beginning to peter out, especially for those bands that hadn’t really adapted their sound.
The Disco page treats us to the words of a song that I can confidently say I was not singing at that, or indeed any other, time – the song that would replace The Jam at #1 – Feels Like I’m In Love by Kelly Marie. Written by Mungo Jerry’s Ray Dorset, the band had originally released it as a B-side in Belgium, before KM recorded her version, which failed to chart on its original release in 1979.
Roxy Music take up the centre pages, looking mean and moody in front of part of a large statue, that I should probably recognise, but don’t.
There’s an interview with Joan Armatrading, where she opines that touring after the age of 40 is “disrespectful”. Her most recent tour was in 2018, shortly before her 68th birthday.
One-hit wonder, Sue Wilkinson and You Gotta Be A Hustler If You Want to Get On (originally the word Scrubber was in the song, but was changed to Hustler for airplay reasons) has its words alongside a song that surprisingly failed to make the Top 40.
Reaching #61 in the UK, the appearance on Dutch show TopPop failed to get it a chart placing in the Netherlands.
And so to Independent Bitz, where Joy Division are still top of both the Singles and Albums Charts. The reviews still very much concern themselves with tunes that the reader would not get to hear on daytime radio and addresses to send off for a single are still being included. I can’t say I ever thought I’d hear all of these tunes, let alone hear one for the first time 45 years later, but as it’s a new entry on the Indie Singles chart at #26 and had a positive review back in 1980, I’ve just investigated this one, which I found quite interesting.
There is a small black and white accompanying photo of the band as well.
The mainstream Singles reviews follow along with an instruction that all abusive mail should be sent to David Hepworth, as he’s once more in the chair and is as grumpy as ever. He feels that The Jam “have leaned the wrong way here” with Start!, which of course is about to be #1. He also reckons that Elton John has “made far too many records”. It’s 1980, he’s barely got started!
Not a great fortnight albums-wise. The ubiquitous Hepworth gives a top score of 6/10 to Leo Sayer’s Living In A Fantasy, which had at least contained a recent hit. Low scores of a mere 3/10 go to Hazel O’Connor’s Breaking Glass, despite the advert and item in Bitz last time out, and the return of the magazine’s pantomime villains, AC/DC, with Back In Black.
Request Spot ventures into the current year for the first time for a tune that I’ve already featured here when it was in the Singles reviews, The Psychedelic Furs and Sister Europe.
Two more sets of words then follow with The Lambrettas’ final Top 75 entry, Another Day (Another Girl). Originally entitled Page 3, it was changed when a certain newspaper decided to object to that original name. Whether or not any of this helped the sales of the record, is open to debate, but it peaked at #49, quite a bit lower than their two previous releases. The other song featured on this page was penned by Russ Ballard and peaked at #39.
This was taken from the soundtrack to the film McVicar, which I seem to recall courting some controversy as it was about a convicted armed robber, played by Daltrey. Then current Who members, Townshend Entwistle and Jones were all present and correct on the soundtrack.
Final sets of words are firstly for a track that won’t reach its peak until the following year, Adam And The Ants and Kings Of The Wild Frontier. On this occasion it stalled at #48. Sharing the page is a track that didn’t feature on the artist’s imminent album.
This would be the fifth of a run of five Top 10 singles for Numan under his own name. The next single would be the only one released from the Telekon album, breaking the run. He would be back in the Top 10 again the following year. Talking of the Telekon album. he will be touring that later this year and of course, Mrs TGG and I have tickets for the show at Manchester Apollo. It will be interesting to see if I Die You Die features among the “other” tracks that he plays.
The back page photo is of Bow Wow Wow, who are obviously brandishing cassettes and cassette recorders, given the subject matter of their most recent single as mentioned in the previous issue.
I’ll aim to get an En Vacances done in the next day or so. As you can probably guess, that will mean I’ll be increasingly out of sync with 45 years ago, Maybe once I’ve retired at the end of October, I’ll start catching up again. Maybe.
27 issues in for me, and after the appearance of lesser-known acts on the previous couple of front covers, it’s time for the appearance of a man who was currently enjoying his eighth (and at the time largest) hit with Could You Be Loved?
The Page 2 advert shows that RCA were keen to let us know that David Bowie had a new single out, ahead of the new album trumpeted in the Bitz pages in the previous issue. Did it need the advert? Ashes To Ashes would become his second UK #1, roughly five years after a re-release of Space Oddity hit the top spot.
The usual three sets of lyrics are spread across pages 4 and 5, with a full page for Ashes To Ashes (just so we wouldn’t forget it was out) and the other page being shared by Roxy Music’s Oh Yeah and Grace Jones’ cover of Pretenders’ Private Life. Top 10 and Top 20 respectively, and songs from that era that I still hear regularly.
It’s the cover star interview next with Mike Stand (surely not his real name) asking the questions. Much of it is bringing the reader up to speed with the Bob Marley story thus far. At the end, there is a brief mention of current album Uprising, which had spawned Could You Be Loved? Marley proclaims “we don’t record a song if we don’t love it”. So I imagine he was very fond of the album’s lead track.
This would be the final Marley album released in his lifetime. There would be no further singles released from it, and indeed his next hit, later in 1980, would be from an earlier album.
The one enduring track from the Xanadu movie gets its words printed next – ELO’s All Over The World. It’s one I’ve always liked and featured on Jeff Lynne’s farewell tour in July. We were at the Manchester date that did go ahead and which may well be his final live performance – I’ll just say that we did enjoy the show, despite it being increasingly clear that it was all becoming too much for him. I wish him well.
Then it’s Bitz, and I forgot to mention that the previous issue saw the introduction of a feeble cartoon strip entitled Strange Tales From A Music Paper. These first two episodes featured a character called Zitty Ben, who appears to meet his demise down a toilet. If only the same were true of the strip itself. There’s news of an upcoming movie starring Hazel O’Connor and Phil Daniels – Breaking Glass. Previously unknown to me, and I guess most readers, O’Connor is described in the press release as “the most exciting talent to emerge in the entertainment world of the 1980s”. A bold claim eight months into the decade, it has to be said. We will of course, hear more of her.
Ian McCulloch chooses his All Time Top 10. They also helpfully point out to us that he is from Echo And The Bunnymen. Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray is described as “seventeen minutes of sheer inspiration”, he has an unrecorded Fall tune in there (Mess Of My) and also one of EATB’s own, Over The Wall (at that point also unrecorded, it would be on the following year’s Heaven Up Here album) – “This does something for me but I don’t know what”. The Fall track had been on a December 1978 John Peel session, so wasn’t technically unrecorded, but only those who’d been judiciously taping away would have been able to listen to it regularly.
The Appliance Of Science (a phrase I remember from Zanussi white goods adverts) is used to headline an interview with New Musik leader, Tony Mansfield. David Hepworth (him again) is the one with the tape recorder – an odd choice as the reader is left with the impression that he’s not all that keen on the band, or indeed Mansfield himself – “he seems to undervalue his skills and overestimate his originality”. Of course, as mentioned previously, New Musik were now at the end of their brief run of hits.
Lyrics again. Firstly for a duet by Amii Stewart and Johnny Bristol entitled My Guy My Girl. Looking at the words it appears to be some sort of early mash-up featuring the Mary Wells and Temptations songs with those titles. I’ll swerve listening to this, as the British record-buying public look to have been less than enamoured with it, as it peaked at #39. Amazingly Stewart must have felt the concept had legs as she re-recorded it in 1986 with Deon Estus, and got to #63 for her troubles. The other words are for Jermaine Jackson’s Burnin’ Hot, which reached a rather lukewarm #32. On the opposite page there is a full page ad for the Breaking Glass movie mentioned earlier.
Time for a musical interlude.
Why this track? Firstly, when reading the Independent Singles Chart in Independent Bitz all those years ago, the title intrigued me. Also, the third single released by Bauhaus was a new entry in said chart in this issue. I don’t recall it at the time but as Bauhaus became more prominent over the next couple of years, I felt the need to go back and familiarise myself with their back catalogue. Talking of the Indie Charts, Joy Division remained atop of both Singles and Albums.
Perusing the page, I spotted that a band called Sector 27 were in the Singles listing, and indeed said single merits a review. I thought the band name sounded familiar, but had completely forgotten that it was a project of Tom Robinson’s. Red Starr describes the track as “isn’t his greatest by any means”. Shall we see?
I don’t mind it myself, although he’d released better tracks and would go on to release some other decent tracks over the next few years under his own name.
And the tracks keep coming as we get the words for a highly hyped new band’s first release. Malcolm McLaren was behind a track extolling the virtues of home taping when the powers that be were pushing the slogan “Home Taping Is Killing Music – And It’s Illegal” with a cassette and cross bones image. And the lead singer of the band was still only thirteen! Five months younger than me.
It peaked at #34. A few minor hits would follow before a Top 10 hit in 1982. Enough to keep said singer, Annabella, gainfully employed on the Retro circuit in 2025.
The Disco page seems to have permanently lost Rob Jones. We have a write-up about the band Odyssey, who’d recently enjoyed a #1 and the words to a song entitled Does She Have A Friend by Gene Chandler. The accompanying photo suggests that he wasn’t exactly in the first flush of youth. He wasn’t. He was 43 at the time, the first of his four hits landing in 1968. This was his final one, peaking at #28. Another that I don’t think I’ve ever heard.
The centre photo shows eight of the nine members Bad Manners surrounding front man, Buster Bloodvessel. He has two of them in headlocks, and of course he is sticking out his tongue. Lovely.
There’s then an interesting piece about the current Liverpool scene and a suggestion that the city is about to become the Next Big Thing. There’s mention of bands who’ve underachieved in the recent past – Deaf School, Big In Japan and Yachts (Holly Johnson from BIJ and Henry Priestman from Yachts would go on to enjoy considerable success with FGTH and The Christians respectively, whilst Deaf School’s Clive Langer was already embarking on a successful production career and Bette Bright had enjoyed a minor hit). Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (no reference to them actually being from The Wirral) are mentioned as having record deals – indeed the The Teardrop Explodes are described as “soon to be huge”. There’s mention of the legendary Eric’s – which at this point had closed, as well as other bands that would not go on to enjoy much in the way commercial success, such as Dalek I and Pink Military. Wah Heat! also feature and would of course “shift units” after a couple of name changes. Finally, the demise of Nightmares In Wax is mentioned – member Pete Burns is reported as having started a new band called Dead Or Alive, who would of course eventually end up spinning round like a record.
More lyrics and Magazine’s Sweetheart Contract (as featured last time out) shares a page with the first single for the Midge Ure-led Ultravox, Sleepwalk. It may have peaked at a surprisingly low #29, but it set off a run of sixteen Top 75 hits over the next six years.
There’s a half page advert for the latest single from Adam And The Ants, a band who I was aware of from my irregular purchases of NME, and a couple of hearings of Car Trouble. They were about to get a lot more mentions.
That single, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, is the first to be considered in the Singles Reviews by Dave Rimmer. He likes it – “a record packed with activity”. Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes is described as “rather a strange choice for a single”, and “not a hit”. Oops.
Top scoring in the Albums Reviews are Siouxsie And The Banshees with Kaleidoscope – 7.5/10. Three albums low score with 4/10 – The Kinks with One For The Road, Lou Reed’s Growing Up In Public and a joint effort from Linda Clifford & Curtis Mayfield, boldly titled The Right Combination, which it clearly wasn’t.
Request Spot goes to 1977 for X-Ray Spex and Oh Bondage, Up Yours!
The Clash have the lyrics to Bankrobber listed. Another one we wouldn’t see on Top Of The Pops even though the strike was now over and sharing a page with those was a disappointing #49 peak for Stiff Little Fingers.
And after that, the final two sets of lyrics are much more in keeping with the era’s Radio 2 playlist. Future #1 from Abba, The Winner Takes It All (which in all fairness is a pretty harrowing break-up song) and the breakthrough hit for Sheena Easton, 9 To 5, to be known in the USA as The Morning Train.
Finally, on the back page, we are treated to a pic of John Foxx, probably taken a little earlier in the year during his run of hits. Ironic that he should appear just as his former band were about to become huge, given that he had only one more Top 40 hit to come.
Boy, that’s taken a while to write, and there’s not even that much there. Too many interruptions. There’s an En Vacances looming, so I could to with getting at least one more of these Smash Hits efforts done before then.
My 26th issue of Smash Hits and the second one running with an unusual choice of cover star. Were the Smash Hits editorial team desperately trying to find the Next Big Thing? Hot on the heels of The Professionals, they now featured a band that had enjoyed just the one novelty hit and which appeared to include a dog as one of its members.
Looking at the other featured acts mentioned on the front cover, The Mo-Dettes were even more unfamiliar and The Korgis didn’t really display the youthful, trendy image that the magazine seemed to be searching for. The following issue’s cover star would be someone rather more established.
The Page 2 ad is for Dexys Midnight Runners’ debut album, Searching For The Young Soul Rebels. I think this was the point where Kevin Rowland had decided not to do interviews with the music press and to put out “statements”. The advert is in this form, with a potted “history” of how the band formed, ending with the phrase: “The firm was complete – now for the caper….”
There are then the usual three sets of lyrics across pages 4 and 5, with the aforementioned Dexys getting all of page 4 for a photo that looks like it came from the same shoot as the warehouse photo in the previous issue, with wire (some barbed) fencing in the background. Gritty. The words to latest single There, There My Dear feature. It’s not a song I hear on the radio that often, despite it making #7. Their next Top 10 hit was two years away and mentioned someone called Eileen. Across on Page 5 are the words for a couple of underachieving follow-ups with The Bodysnatchers’ Easy Life failing to match its predecessor, peaking at #50 and The Vapors with this.
Perhaps not as immediate as Turning Japanese, but for me, still one heck of a tune. I seem to recall it getting a decent amount of airplay, but it still stalled at #44. The Vapors would hit the same spot a year later with another great tune, Jimmie Jones. If I ever get around to doing any Unsung Songs again, I may need to revisit The Vapors.
Two more sets of lyrics follow, with curation worthy of one of the K-Tel compilations that were prevalent at the time. More Than I Can Say from Leo Sayer shares a double page with Kate Bush’s Babooshka.
Next is a double-page interview and song lyric from the relatively unknown Mo-Dettes. They’d released a single, White Mice, earlier in the year on an independent label to a reasonable amount of critical interest Now they’d signed to the newish Deram label (an attempt to rebuild Decca) and there’s a fairly uninteresting account of how that all happened. (It may be worth mentioning at this point that label-mates on Deram were none other than Splodgenessabounds – was it a case of “we’ll give you access to the ones that have had a hit if you’ll interview this other lot as well”?). The single they had out was a cover of the song that was top of the Charts on the day I was born. So obviously it has to feature.
I have no recollection of Granada Fun Factory, despite growing up in the North-West of England, the area for which Granada TV held the ITV franchise for many years. Clearly the programme was aimed at youngsters, probably younger than the average Smash Hits reader. It reached #42, despite the efforts of Deram to promote the band and the song. They would only have one other Top 75 entry, a year later.
What are the Bitz pages offering this issue? There’s an explanation as to why the words to Love Will Tear Us Apart have not appeared in the magazine. In a nutshell, the remaining members of Joy Division didn’t want them to appear. We are told that the band continue to rehearse as a threesome and “want to explore all possibilities before announcing any plans, though a name change is likely”. I guess at that point I wouldn’t have been too bothered about their future prospects, but obviously that would change. The death of The Ruts’ frontman, Malcolm Owen, is also announced, not too long after a previous piece about what a difficult time the band had been having, which I referenced in an earlier post. “The remaining three Ruts are reassessing their future plans”.
Other interesting news in Bitz includes a brief analysis of the impact of the two-month long Top Of The Pops dispute, citing lower than usual public awareness of hit singles, fear over the career impetus of certain artists and relatively poor sales for recent #1, Crying from Don McLean. There is also news of a new David Bowie album (at the very least, the singles from this will be getting a mention in due course). Finally Steve Eagles chooses his All-Time Top 10. Helpfully the words “The Photos” appear in brackets after his name. He includes a Johnny Cash track “because I learnt to play the guitar by strumming along to his records”.
Two more sets of lyrics – the Edwards / Rogers written Upside Down from Diana Ross and the previously featured here Do You Dream In Colour from Bill Nelson.
Then it’s the cover star interview, entitled The Max Factor as the leader of the band Is Max Splodge – real name Martin Everest, which to me isn’t too bad as a “rock star” name. The potential longevity of the band is discussed. In 2025, they are still a recording and touring entity, albeit the Top 75 entries dried up in the middle of 1981.
On to Independent Bitz and a track which is listed as a new entry at #3 in the Independent Singles chart.
It’s actually just listed as “Hobgoblins” and no mention is made of the better known other side, How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’. I have to say that I really enjoy listening to this one and it’s made the odd playlist. The review of the single covers both sides and talks of The Fall’s “recently improved, more streamlined style”. Can’t say I noticed. There are album reviews for D.A.F. and Silicon Teens, both in the Top 10 (and I may feature tracks if they stick around and I’m struggling for any other inspiration on the IB page). Joy Division remain top of the Singles chart and Closer goes straight in at #1 on the Albums.
The Disco page is once again Rob Jones-less and provides the lyrics to A Lover’s Holiday by Change. This was the first of two Top 20 hits they would have in 1980. I have a slightly better recollection of the second one, which I would expect to see in a few issues’ time. They would then disappear for four years before a third Top 20 hit and a few that fared less well.
Peter Gabriel takes up the colour photo slot in the centre pages. Another of those strange “futuristic” ones that I imagine all concerned would have wanted to forget within a fairly short space of time.
There’s then an interview with The Korgis, sharing a title with their latest release – Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime. The final paragraph sees interviewer Fred Dellar leaving the building and hearing someone singing along to the aforementioned single – “Suddenly there seems no doubt about The Korgis future”. Their future chart-wise turned out to be one more low-placed hit. The legendary Dellar continued working in the music press and writing a number of books right up until his death in 2021 at the age of 89.
Two more sets of lyrics, with Hot Chocolate going a bit funky again with Are You Getting Enough Of What Makes You Happy and the final Top 40 hit for Gibson Brothers (who around twelve months previously had been the subject of colour photos and interviews), Mariana, which peaked at #11.
Request Spot is back again in 1978 with Angelic Upstarts and The Murder Of Liddle Towers.
I really should check ahead to see which of the Singles reviewed actually make a lyrical appearance in future issues, but that would sort of spoil the fun. In this issue, David Hepworth & Ian Cranna have been scratching their heads over whether Tom Hark by The Piranhas is “an actual old tune or just sounds like one”. Some basic research in the Guinness Book Of Hit Singles (which was being published by 1980) would have told them that it had been a hit in 1958 for South African act, Elias And His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes, reaching #2. And wouldn’t they have been of an age where they would remember it anyway? Elsewhere, Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls’ Dream Sequences confuses Hepworth “it’s difficult to see what this is doing as a single”, and he’s not keen on Cities from Talking Heads. And as for this one, he believes the writer has put more thought into the title than the song itself.
It became Magazine’s second and final Top 75 entry, peaking at #54. Even my schoolfriends who liked “New Wave”, etc were bemused by my love of Magazine. Their debut album remains one of my all time favourites.
Talking of which – over the page are the Album Reviews, with three quite different acts scoring just 5/10. Detroit Spinners, Athletico Spizz 80 and the album advertised on Page 2 from Dexys. I think it’s a decent album myself and it’s one I still go back to fairly regularly. The top scorer gets a mammoth 9.5/10, and it’s really difficult to argue against such a score for Echo & The Bunnymen’s Crocodiles.
If you’ve been paying attention to recent posts, you’ll have spotted that Heavy Metal was very much a thing in the middle of 1980, and so we have two sets of lyrics from that genre, Black Sabbath with Neon Nights and Whitesnake with Ready An’ Willing (Sweet Satisfaction). I remember neither.
The final words are for the final Top 40 hit for one of the early synth groups who I have previously mentioned were already beginning to sound dated. This one was slightly unusual in that on the 7″ single, it just stopped in a manner which would take the casual listener by surprise.
The version here is from the album, which has a slightly different, less abrupt finish. As I stated, this would be their final Chart entry, their fourth, of a run that began just nine months earlier.
The back cover photo is of The Lambrettas, who are all grouped around a pinball machine, Presumably out of cash, or they’d have been playing on it.
So ends another issue that’s taken far longer to research and write about than it should have done. Big news is that I’ll be retiring at the end of October (I was going to wait until the big 6-0 next May, but the time off with the eye ops has allowed me to realise that I just need to get out, and I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to do so). Will the rate of posts on here speed up? Probably not.
FUN FACTS: This is my 80th post on the blog, and New Musik’s Sanctuary becomes the 200th tune to which I have provided a link.
TGG
One response to “Smash Hits: July 24 – August 6 1980”
Not doing very well at this catching up on the timeline thing. Must try harder – as many of my recently rediscovered school reports used to say. I must admit to looking at other recently rediscovered items far more happily. By that I obviously mean these old copies of Smash Hits that had been stored, forgotten, at my parents’ house for so many years until I uncovered them whilst clearing stuff out. The next issue is Vol 2 No 14 as far as the publisher was concerned, but I refer to it as my 25th issue.
And it was a bit of an unusual cover. A band who hadn’t at that point had a Top 40 hit, and indeed never did. As I’ve mentioned a few times, Sex Pistols still seemed to have some sort of allure for the editorial team, if less so for me and my peers. And so it was that two former Pistols and Some Other Bloke graced the front cover. I don’t recall much discussion about it at school, as it would have been the end of term and I suspect I ended up reading this issue a number of times at the start of the holidays. It seemed a little more familiar than some of the other issues I’ve written about.
More about the cover stars (?) shortly, but we do have the important business of the Page 2 advert to consider. It’s for “1980’s most spectacular album”. To save you from sitting around making several incorrect guesses – it’s the original soundtrack to Xanadu, “featuring five dynamite tracks from ELO…and five beautiful songs from Olivia Newton-John”. It’s fair to say that from a creative point of view, this album doesn’t rank highly in either artist’s canon, but it did spawn a #1 for both of them together (the only time ELO reached the top spot). We get the words on Page 5 for the sickly title track, along with 4 pics of one of the artists concerned (Clue: Jeff Lynne is not present on any of them).
Across the page were the words for the very busy Phil Lynott’s latest single, King’s Call, which earned him a #35 placing and this from the increasingly unlucky Chords, who saw it stall at #54.
The fact that it got a mention on the front cover suggests that better things were expected for it. I liked it at the time, but never got round to buying a copy. It’s on a playlist or two now.
Then it’s the cover star interview. All three of them. Andy Allen (the other one) only chips in a bit though, and doesn’t get the honour of a photo, unlike Messrs, Cook & Jones. Unsurprisingly, there’s mention of Sex Pistols, and in particular the messy end of the band. In reference to John Lydon’s output with Public Image Ltd, Cook opines that “some of it’s good”. They all hate “this ska crap…it won’t last long”. Madness are doing an arena tour in late 2025, The Professionals (their given name) are not. There is no explanation as to why that band name was chosen, but we are informed that the band is only a month old. And they got a Smash Hits cover! Of course there was a single to promote.
Their dream of having a hit with this came to nought. Maybe it was all too soon, maybe we’d moved on, maybe it just wasn’t very good. They would get a hit of sorts later in the year, with a track that just missed the Top 40. I can’t remember if the Smash Hits infatuation with Sex Pistols carried on long enough to print the words to that, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
The Bitz pages follow including an All-Time Top 10 from Jona Lewie – two Beatles tracks, Fats Domino, Roxy Music and Sex Pistols all included. Virgin Records have dropped The Members and signed former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan, along with “peroxide popsters” Japan. Bitz ponders if this signals a change in direction. We also learn that The Stranglers’ tour will go ahead, despite them all being temporarily imprisoned in the south of France, charged with incitement to riot after a gig in Nice. Support on the tour was from this lot, who had this single out on Virgin.
I’m sure The Professionals would have been unimpressed, and probably The Members as well, after being jettisoned for this. I remember seeing plenty of adverts for the single in the music press, with edited pics of contemporary figures – Mrs T, tennis player Bjorn Borg, etc being made to look “bald”. It wasn’t a hit.
Next up, it’s an interview with The Human League with quite a bit of discussion about Adrian Wright’s visual contributions to their live shows. The reason for the article is that Empire State Human has been re-released and the lyrics are featured on the same page. Of course, it was featured on this blog when reviewing the 18-31 October 1979 issue. The re-release peaked at #62 – still way lower than it should have done. I finally saw this performed live by the band last December as well. I sang along with gusto.
More words now – both for sizeable hits. Detroit Spinners and Cupid / I’ve Loved You For A Long Time, not giving them another #1, though. Unlike the other set of words on the page for Odyssey and Use It Up And Wear It Out. Their only UK chart topper, and the second of their five Top 10 hits (Five! Came as a surprise when I looked).
No Rob Jones on the Disco page, but we do have the words for one of Stacy Lattisaw’s two UK hits, Jump To The Beat. Reaching #3, it fared a lot better than its follow-up.
Bob Marley & The Wailers grace the centre pages. There are eight of them, so it’s probably just as well the picture was put there rather than on the back page.
Heavy Metal time next with the words for Saxon’s 747 (Strangers In The Night) and the best-performing of a whole raft of posthumous AC/DC releases, Whole Lotta Rosie being the only one to sneak into the Top 40.
Independent Bitz now and the Singles chart sees Joy Division and Love Will Tear Us Apart at the top. I seem to recall it hanging around that chart for ever. It may still be there now. Black Sabbath hit the top of the Albums chart with Live At Last, released on the independent NEMS label. Putting in an appearance at the bottom end of the Singles Chart (and getting a fleeting mention in the round-up of new releases) was this effort, produced by Ian Curtis & Rob Gretton (both uncredited), and with the catalogue number of FAC 18
I can’t imagine this got played at any of that summer’s Radio One Roadshows.
Them again. With what would be their last Chart entry for twelve years, Sex Pistols appear with the words to their cover of (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone.
A full page advert follows (I don’t mention all the adverts, but this one is a little more interesting than some). It’s for Rockatta De Bowl. Yes, it’s The Police playing Milton Keynes Bowl, supported by Squeeze, UB40 and “Skafish from the USA”. Who were they? I’ll just say that they were signed to Miles Copeland’s labels, Illegal and I.R.S. John Peel was also on the bill, presumably as compere.
There’s a competition to win a copy of Jayne County’s new album. The first question is truly cringeworthy (if you know anything about Jayne, you can probably guess).
Stewart Copeland, or to be more accurate, Klark Kent sees Request Spot going back to 1978 again after a bit of a break, with the words for Don’t Care.
Nothing particularly of note in the Singles reviews, many of which will feature again in forthcoming issues. The Album reviews see a top score of 9/10 go to Commodores and Heroes (not an album of which I have any recollection). The low score is a mere 3/10 for Queen and The Game. I’m not really much of a Queen fan, and I don’t think this is seen as one of their best, but it does contain one of two songs of theirs that I truly like. It will be released as a single later in the year.
There are two pages devoted to a feature / interview with the new Ultravox line-up. It’s basically a piece to bring the younger reader up to date with their story thus far. Tellingly “they are still here and refuse to go away”. Indeed – a few years of regular Chart visits were about to start.
And then you’ll never guess whose latest single gets its words printed over the page…
Another one for JF that peaked in the Thirties – the third of a run of three.
One of the “old guard” whose time was now about to be up were Darts. The words to their cover of Let’s Hang On are across the page. Their final Top 40 hit, peaking at #11.
The final set of lyrics this issue are for Bob Marley & The Wailers and Could You Be Loved.
Despite what I said about the need for two pages being required for an eight piece band, there is one on the back page. It’s Dexys Midnight Runners who appear to be on various steps of an emergency exit at the back of a warehouse. Admittedly you can’t see any of them too well – which may not have been a bad thing.
So that’s another issue done and I need to get cracking on the next one p.d.q.
Super holiday in Romania – still off people’s radar to some extent, so not ludicrously expensive, but an interesting country where it seems that tourists are welcome. We visited various places – obviously Bucharest (including Ceausescu’s palace and the Romanian parliament buildings), Brasov and Bran Castle (the supposed setting for Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel), among others. We had a couple of meals where we were treated to local folk music and dancing, which was interesting. Not the sort of thing I’ll be putting on here though as I continue to focus on Smash Hits issues from 1980 and a need to start catching up on the timeline.
On the 24th occasion of me visiting a newsagent to purchase Smash Hits, it was Feargal Sharkey and the the band who now no longer like to hear his name mentioned, who greeted me from the shelf.
The Page 2 ad goes to The Lambrettas and their Beat Boys In The Jet Age album. Of course, they were on the same label as Elton John (his label!) and snaffling that spot was clearly a thing if you recall the advert for Elton’s most recent single being there a couple of issues ago.
Over the page and the usual three-lyric hit. All for songs that I still regularly listen to today. The cover stars are there with Wednesday Week as are The Police, with one of my favourites of theirs – The Bed’s Too Big Without You. This was part of Six Pack – six Police singles packaged together, with their five previous hit singles joining Bed’s Too Big. A&M Records already cashing in. But in these situations, the regular reader will know that I tend to favour the least successful chart entry, and with both of the above making the Top 20, it’s the tune that peaked at #39 that follows.
As has been mentioned in a previous post, The Stranglers were on a two year run of releases peaking in the 30s and 40s, which would be brought to an end early in 1982 with their biggest hit.
The cover star interview follows, covering a number of topics including the subject matter of the bands’ songs. Damian O’Neill: “Just because we’re from Northern Ireland, why should we write songs about the troubles?…It’s just as easy to write songs about chocolate and girls, really”.
As mentioned in a previous post, Liquid Gold did have a second Top 10 hit, Substitute – and we get the words for that after turning the page from the Undertones interview.
Then it’s the Bitz pages. One new band that gets a mention also features as part of a competition later in the magazine, so we’ll leave a mention of them until then. Another band there will also get featured later. There’s not really much else of interest there apart from a mention that The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle film is opening across the country during July. The Sex Pistols’ importance continuing to be felt (stay tuned for the next issue. and indeed this one!). John Cooper Clarke selects his All Time Top 10 – suitably diverse as it takes us from Billy Fury to The Velvet Underground & Nico and most points in between. JCC would of course share a flat with Nico in the near future.
Next, it’s the words to UB40’s second single, My Way Of Thinking, accompanied by an interview with the band. They discuss their decision to sign to a relatively small independent label, citing the lack of creative freedom with major labels as one reason, and another being that as an eight piece band, they needed a much larger share of royalties than the big labels would offer, but which Graduate Records were prepared to give them.
Two more sets of words follow, both by female singers who wrote them themselves – In The Night from Barbara Dickson, which missed the Top 40 and Joan Armatrading’s second Top 40 hit, Me Myself I, some four years after the first and three years prior to the next one.
Independent Bitz is next and the highest new entry in the Singles chart is this one, which is very much a track I still love listening to.
This entered at #5, one place above Dead Kennedys and Holiday In Cambodia (which featured on the blog back in November 2023 as part of En Vacances #2). A new entry at #8 was a certain posthumous Joy Division release. Crass / Poison Girls again were in the top spot and Toyah’s The Blue Meaning had climbed to #1 in the Albums chart.
The Disco page features the words to Behind The Groove by Teena Marie. This apparently reached #6, but wasn’t a song I had any recollection of. I’ve just listened to a minute and half of it and would still struggle to recall it! Goodness knows who purchased it.
The centre pages are given over to a selection of photos from various scenes in the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. The editorial team clearly of the opinion that despite no longer existing, Sex Pistols were a band that we still wanted to see and hear about.
A heavy metal band called Budgie have a half page ad for their new EP, tastefully entitled If Swallowed , Do Not Induce Vomiting. They share a page with the latest Judas Priest single, Breaking The Law. I so wish they’d put the ad next to the Barbara Dickson lyrics.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark are the subject of Request Spot, with the previous year’s single, Electricity, getting its words printed over a photo with a reel to reel tape machine in the foreground, looking out across the Mersey to the Liverpool skyline. Of course although Smash Hits hadn’t featured the song lyrically, I did feature it when reviewing an October 1979 issue.
The band mentioned in Bitz that were the subject of the competition were The Barracudas. It was a “design your own surfboard” competition, with the first prize being a Barracudas surfboard, second prize being a night out with The Barracudas, third prize being two nights… (Smash Hits’ joke, not mine!). What was going on? Surfboards? A band we’d barely heard of? This glorious slice of pop was the reason why.
Still on regular rotation chez TGG, this was their only hit, reaching a criminally low #37. At least I can say that I bought it at the time. This was one that my sons used to beg me to play when they were both still at primary school. At least one of them has it on a playlist, as we were both singing along to it when he picked me up from the local railway station recently after an evening out (payback for all those times the other way round, when he was younger!).
Despite the advert with the words to Paul McCartney’s Waterfalls appearing in the previous issue, we get them again, this time in the “corporate” Smash Hits format. We also get the words for Hot Love. No, not the T Rex ditty from the 70s, but David Essex’s follow up to big hit, Silver Dream Machine. This did not fare so well, peaking at #57. He’d now be absent form the Charts for a couple of years.
More heavy metal follows, with the words to Iron Maiden’s Sanctuary sharing a page with “Canadian Metal’s Progressive Power”. This was a band called Triumph. Triumphant they were not, with advertised album Progressions Of Power peaking at #61 and advertised single Live For The Weekend coughing its way to #59 in November, despite being “No. 1 in Sounds’ Heavy Metal Chart”.
David Hepworth is back perusing the Singles for the Review section and for once dishes out some praise. Recipients are cover stars The Undertones, whose Wednesday Week is described by DH their “finest record so far”. He also opines that the first release from the new Ultravox line-up (minus John Foxx and the exclamation mark, but with added Midge Ure) is far more streamlined for radio play than any of their previous offerings. A shrewd observation as Sleepwalk certainly became more well-known than anything that had gone previously.
Toyah’s The Blue Meaning may have been top of the Independent Albums Chart (see above), but that doesn’t save it from a mauling by Red Starr in the Album Reviews. “…gutless exhibitionism…worst lyrics EVER…garbled imagery…”. Pretty much the stuff that would give her a run of hit singles over the next couple of years. It low scores with 3/10. Top score comes from David Hepworth who gives 7.5/10 to The Records’ album Crashes. Who?
According to Wikipedia: The Records were an English power pop band formed in 1978. They are best remembered for the hit single and cult favourite “Starry Eyes”. I’ll have the power pop bit, but hit single? Er, no. It’s an OK tune though. The Records remain absent from any listing of UK hit singles and albums.
After all that excitement, there’s a full page interview with Peter Gabriel. After six appearances of the word “Genesis” in the first few paragraphs, it does settle down to focus on his solo career, current album, etc. Talking about his second album, produced by Robert Fripp, he feels that Fripp “doesn’t really understand synthesisers”. PG was keeping up with current music, too, having recently watched The Undertones and citing Manchester band, Manicured Noise, as one of his favourites.
There’s a picture of the recent winner of the “meet Joe Jackson” competition, Catherine, along with her mate Colette, the ubiquitous David Hepworth and JJ himself. Everyone concerned looks like they’d rather the photo wasn’t being taken. I can only hope they enjoyed the rest of the meeting.
The final two sets of lyrics come from the same EP. One that was recorded by the oddly named Splodgenessabounds (they typing of which has upset my spell checker). The best known track, was actually the second one on Side Two, Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please. It’s accompanied on that side by the puerile Michael Booth’s Talking Bum. Side One, and the one which we have to assume the record company expected to grab the airplay was this.
It is included here purely so that I may cleanse my soul and finally confess to playing my part in propelling it to an improbable #7 in the Charts. I was only 14, m’Lud. Splodge… were the other band mentioned earlier in Bitz, and amazingly they would have another Top 40 hit.
The back page photo is of Jona Lewie, in a not dissimilar pose to B.A. Robertson last time around, but somehow managing to look a lot more cool. Being dressed in black rather than a tartan suit probably helped.
I’m over a week behind, so I need to catch up. Unfortunately I’m away at a Board Games Convention over the weekend (Fri to Mon), so it will have to be a slow process of getting back on track.
TGG
2 responses to “Smash Hits: June 26 – July 9 1980”
Yes, Romanian is unusual among Balkan languages in that it is Latin-based. There’s also a strong Saxon influence in Transylvania – I found myself reading some German in an old church there.
Time to go off on our travels again. Away for eight days, so with a bit of luck and a lot of commitment, the next post may appear during the first weekend of July. I’m not sure if anyone is crying, “Where are you going?”, but I’ll leave you with a couple of fairly straightforward clues.
And from the other end of the musical spectrum…
Obviously, the one of these that reminds me in places of Boney M’s Rasputin was the one that reached #54 in the Charts, whereas the more deserving Fatima Mansions effort didn’t register.
For my 23rd purchase of Smash Hits, I was greeted by the image of someone who I sort of regarded as part of the “old guard”.
Sure, Roxy Music were beginning to be cited as an influence by an increasing number of newer acts, but not for the slickly produced pop that had charted in 1979 and was now now evident with Over You – the lead single from Flesh & Blood. I must confess to liking those tunes a lot more now than I did back then. Looking at the other featured artists mentioned on the cover, I’m not sure who else they could have used (Squeeze had appeared within the previous twelve months, and believe you me, the B.A. Robertson photo which I’ll mention later, would probably not have enhanced sales).
Page 2 has a full page advert for that aforementioned Flesh & Blood album.
Across the next couple of pages there are three sets of words – the second in Siouxsie & The Banshees’ run of excellent singles, Christine, Elvis Costello’s rather underachieving New Amsterdam (#36) and part of a four track EP, and one of the sides from the latest Stiff Little Fingers release.
The other side was Nobody’s Hero, which I always took to be more popular, but their Spotify play totals are very similar (and both have more plays than previous hit, At The Edge!). The single spent two weeks at #36, and was replaced in that spot by the Elvis Costello track mentioned above.
Next up is the cover star interview, which also guides the reader through a potted history of Roxy Music up until their split in 1975 and Ferry’s subsequent solo career, before getting back together again for 1979’s Manifesto album. Some band tensions are alluded to, but not really explored too far. However, Ferry clearly felt that Cry Cry Cry from Manifesto should have been better realised and could then have been released as a single. To my mind, it would have needed a lot of work to make it a viable single, given that I think it’s weaker than Trash, which only made #40.
The words for Don McLean’s cover of Crying (future #1) follow.
On the Bitz pages, we learn that The Specials’ video for Rat Race has upset the BBC as Jerry Dammers is dressed up as a schoolmistress in it. The Beeb have banned it! Four years on, and crossdressing seemed to be acceptable when Queen did it on the I Want To Break Free video. Of course, due to the ongoing strike and non-appearance of Top Of The Pops, the ban was somewhat irrelevant anyway. Here’s what they didn’t want you to see.
I mean, Dammers hardly even appears in it!
Elsewhere in Bitz, there’s some burble about Stewart Copeland’s “protégé”, Klark Kent, who has a new album out. “Stewart would like to emphasise that there is absolutely no truth in the rumours that Klark Kent is actually just himself in disguise. Absolutely no truth at all. Just because they sound the same.” Stay tuned! The All-Time Top 10 is from “Eddie Tenpole” who has Mozart sitting alongside Sham 69 and two Rolling Stones tracks and Abba’s Chiquitita – “the last twenty seconds is the best tune I’ve ever heard. The rest is rubbish”.
Next up is an interview with Squeeze, which closes with the line – “Squeeze’s talents and creativity should see them at the top clean through the nineties, never mind the eighties”. OK, it didn’t quite work out like that, but as mentioned on the previous post, Messrs Difford & Tilbrook still tour regularly and there have been occasional new releases.
More words. Chinatown from Thin Lizzy and a song that was already on a three week run at #1, the ten year old Theme From M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless) by The Mash.
Words next from a couple of guys who even then I thought of as old stagers – Elton John and Little Jeannie, as advertised in the previous issue and Rod Stewart with the verbose If Loving you Is Wrong (I Don’t Want To Be Right).
Korgis (without a The) are next to have their lyrics printed with Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime, which I rather like, and it got to #5. Below that is an advert for something else that I rather liked.
This peaked at #60. Or did it? There were allegations that the song was “hyped” into the Chart and that it was thus removed from the Chart and then re-“hyped” back in. Granada TV’s World In Action programme ran an investigation into chart hyping later in 1980, which I remember watching. The link to the programme is here, with Hey Girl mentioned just after 17:15.
The centre pages give us a photo of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark standing awkwardly with a lot of synthesisers.
The Disco page is next with the words to Back Together Again by Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway. It apparently reached #3, but I can’t say I have any recollection of it. Rob Jones selects New Romance by Spiderz as his hit pick. “It’ll be interesting to see how this does”. Well, getting the band’s name correct would have been a good start, it’s actually Spider, without the z. As it transpired, if you were waiting to see this chart in the UK, you’d still be there. It made #39 in the USA though. I’ve just heard it for the first time ever. Not my cup of tea.
Independent Bitz follows. An album with a great title is reviewed – Pink Military’s Do Animals Believe In God? Crass / Poison Girls and The Fall remain at the top of the Singles and Albums charts respectively. Among the singles reviewed, prominence is given to the latest Spizz incarnation.
As the review says, It’s not “Where’s Captain Kirk”, but for me it’s interesting nontheless.
Another full page ad for Elton John’s Little Jeannie! He’d even managed to get his obligatory Top Of The Pops appearance on the last show before before the strike started, but to little effect.
There’s a brief interview with Jermaine Jackson and then EMI save Smash Hits the trouble of printing the words to Paul McCartney’s latest single, Waterfalls, by including them in a full page advert.
Request Spot focusses on Ultravox! and The Man Who Dies Every Day from 1977. Timely, as their three albums had recently been re-released.
The brief and rather irritating fashion for the Singles reviews to be conducted by a cartoon character comes to an end and Deanne Pearson is in charge this issue. Among the discs given consideration is U2’s first release on Island Records – Eleven O’Clock Tick Tock. They are described as “highly rated” and favourably compared to The Cure (as were Echo & The Bunnymen three issues earlier). Klark Kent’s latest single is also reviewed – not too favourably.
It’s not brilliant, but I prefer it to Walking On The Moon or De Do Do Do….
Top score in the Albums reviews goes to Graham Parker and The Up Escalator with 9/10. Despite the advert and interview, Roxy Music’s Flesh & Blood only gets 6.5/10 and The Game seems to be quite literally up for Sham 69 with their “totally unlistenable” album of that name languishing in last place with 1/10.
There’s a two page interview with Matchbox, which I wouldn’t have bothered reading in 1980 and didn’t dwell on for too long this time around. They seem happy that “live” bands are having hits. This includes themselves, The Specials, Madness, and er…Fiddler’s Dram.
The final one of B.A. Robertson’s four solo hits has its words printed next – To Be Or Not To Be, and across the page is the second and final Top 40 entry for The Lambrettas.
Not a tune I hear often these days, I always think of it more as power pop than mod, not that I get particularly hung up on labelling musical styles. I’m glad this one got on to Top Of The Pops a couple of weeks before the strike when it was still outside the Top 40. It peaked at #12.
Two final sets of words. Firstly, Twilight Zone / Twilight Tone by Manhattan Transfer, not one I remember, but it made #25 and they still had one more hit to come – in 1984. It shares a page with the glorious Funkytown from Lipps Inc – a huge one hit wonder, as it was just a studio band. One that sounded a little bit from the future.
The back page treats us to B.A. Robertson in a tartan jacket, mid-leap, raised eyebrows and mouth wide open. It’s not a great look.
Off on hols for a week in a few days. I may get chance for a quick En Vacances post beforehand.
And for my 22nd purchase of the magazine, I was greeted on the front cover by a man whose band had made their debut appearance in the very first issue I purchased. Less than twelve months on, and Terry Hall was very clearly the face of The Specials, so much so that he could be put solo on the cover of Smash Hits and the kids would know who he was.
We’re back to the adverts on Page 2 and a total contrast to the relatively new, edgy and exciting Specials. It’s a full page ad for Elton John’s latest single, Little Jeannie – for which the words will, I think, appear in a future issue. He’d dropped off the radar over the preceding eighteen months, since Song For Guy had made the Top 10 at the end of 1978. His only 1979 Chart entry had been Are You Ready For Love, peaking at #42 (but to be a #1 in 2003!). The advert wasn’t wildly helpful in reminding us all of EJ, as the single peaked at #33. I do have a vague recollection of hearing it. It would be another couple of years before his next Top 10 entry.
The next couple of pages have three sets of lyrics for us. Gary Numan’s We Are Glass, Rescue from Echo & The Bunnymen, as featured a couple of posts ago, when it was mentioned in the Singles Reviews (and which I’d not noticed was in this issue), and the first featured track for this post.
Not Peter Gabriel’s most commercial song by any stretch, but this follow-up to Games Without Frontiers did get to #33 (same spot as Elton, but without the need for the full page advert!).
The Acceptable Face Of Synthesisers is the title of the article over the page. Who be that? It’s Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, who have been featured in the magazine previously, but this is their first interview. They like Gary Numan. A lot. They’d been the support on his 1979 tour and it seems to have been a pretty wonderful experience. The words for their first Top 40 hit, and then current release, Messages, accompany the article.
You’ll be glad there’s no video link to the next set of lyrics as it’s novelty record time – and it was over six months away from Christmas, too. A cash-in from ITV Saturday morning programme, Tiswas, it’s The Bucket Of Water Song by The Four Bucketeers (who would appear to be Sally James, Chris Tarrant, Bob Carolgees and the song’s writer, John Gorman). A one-hit wonder that peaked at #26.
Then it’s the Bitz pages. Tucked away in a corner is news that the BBC is planning on cutting back on the number of orchestras that it uses and that as a result the Musicians Union is planning industrial action from 1st June. The piece goes on to say that there may well be an impact on Top Of The Pops. Indeed there was – the show broadcast on 29th May would be the last until 7th August. Two whole months’ worth of hits and random tunes that weren’t, denied prime time TV exposure!
Elsewhere in Bitz, Holly Vincent of Holly & The Italians picks her all-Time Top 10, which includes three tracks from Cheap Trick. She also includes songs from Ultravox! and Japan which will in due course be re-released and make the Top 40. The Buggles have joined Yes. That still seems a bizarre statement even today. The group photo looks a little odd, with Trevor Horn wearing a suit jacket, shirt and tie (we only get to see their top halves). Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman had left the band, the former focussing on Jon & Vangelis for now. There’s also a piece on The Ruts and the bad luck that they were currently enduring – flop single (Jah Wars), loss-making European tour and Malcolm Owen having a long-standing throat ailment. Sadly, things would soon get even worse….
The cover star interview is next. It’s with Terry Hall, but there’s a photo of the band by the Lady Godiva statue in Coventry. Terry says that the band do all they can to discourage violence at their shows, and we get the words for their fourth consecutive Top 10 hit, Rat Race.
Some Disco page escapees next, with words for You Gave Me Love from Crown Heights Affair and recent Rob Jones pick, Just Can’t Give You Up from Mystic Merlin. #10 and #20 respectively.
After a couple of advert pages, we get the actual Disco page itself and the words for Jermaine Jackson’s Let’s Get Serious. Rob Jones picks a future hit – but it’s the very un-Disco Me Myself I from Joan Armatrading.
The four gentlemen gracing the centre pages look like they’re attending a convention for second-hand car salesmen, but on closer inspection they turn out to be New Musik.
Never Mind The Horlicks, Here’s Hot Chocolate is the title of the next interview. As mentioned on the previous post, their current single was No Doubt About It (about a UFO) prompting the comment “whatever you think of flying saucers, it does seem pretty certain that Hot Chocolate will be around for a few more years yet”. Robin Katz was the writer with the accurate crystal ball.
Oh no. Matchbox are back. No longer Rockabilly Rebels, their latest single suggests that they are now Midnite Dynamos – studying the photo of the band that accompanies the lyrics, dynamism isn’t something that immediately springs to mind. Across the page, are another “older” band with the words to their current hit – The Average White Band and Let’s Go Round Again.
Next, there is a competition. “Firstly you need to buy or lay your hands on a copy” of this single.
The idea then was to suggest what one or all of the Johns might be saying, with “the best” suggestion winning. First prize was dinner with John Peel, no less. Did the gimmick work – was the single a Top 10 smash? Er, no.
Not even Top 75. There’d only be one more Motors single after this one, and that wasn’t any sort of a hit either.
The Singles reviews follow, with a number of well-known names in there. There are also some less familiar artists, including the tastefully-monikered Pearl Harbor & The Explosions. The Record Of The Week accolade goes however to an Edinburgh-based band – The Flowers, featured on JC’s The (new) Vinyl Villain blog, back in November 2017 https://thenewvinylvillain.com/category/flowers/. It was the second of the two singles that they released, and I rather like it.
Obviously, not a hit.
In the Album Reviews, The Beat top score with 9/10 for I Just Can’t Stop It. The Chords are now clearly falling out of favour and get the bottom score of 5/10, along with Raydio’s Two Places At The Same Time. The band’s Ray Parker Junior would of course be happier with a global hit a few years later.
Request Spot is in 1974 with Sparks and This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us, highlighting that Ron Mael’s words have been “out there” for over fifty years. Stepping from 1980 to 2025 for a brief moment, Mrs TGG and I will be seeing Sparks at Manchester Apollo on 22nd June (for the third time in four years). Given that they will be 77 (Russell) and 80 (Ron) later this year, their continued creativity is amazing. This was the first track issued from their latest album, Mad!
Back in 1980, we flip over the page to find two sets of lyrics. Firstly, Jona Lewie with what we all thought would be a one hit wonder – You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties. But we were wrong, as will be revealed in several issues’ time. And then Squeeze return with a song that inexplicably peaked at #44.
This clip is from their 2019 tour, when we saw them at the Lowry in Salford, supported by the excellent Heaven 17. We’ve seen them several times since and will be catching up with them in December at Manchester Arena, supporting Madness, with both our sons joining us.
Independent Bitz has been moved further back, and the main picture story is reporting the death of Ian Curtis. Transmission had been featuring in the Independent Singles Top 30 for some time and Unknown Pleasures now appeared at #10 in the Independent Albums chart, presumably as a re-entry. The Fall remained at the top of the Albums chart, but a double A-side single had displaced UB40’s Food For Thought from the summit of the Singles chart. Bloody Revolutions / Persons Unknown was from Crass and Poison Girls. There’s also an article about a band who had a single at #11 in the Independent Singles chart and who via a number of name changes, would go on to bigger things in the next few years. The single had been around for a few months.
A brilliant track.
Final words are tor the first of four ELO releases from the soundtrack to the film Xanadu, I’m Alive. Not a track that would seem likely to feature on Jeff Lynne’s Over And Out tour this summer.
Back page photo is of The Human League – a band who appeared to be in the ascendancy, but would only grab some serious hits after a split that was now less than a year away.
I realise I’m slightly behind where I’m supposed to be. I’ve got ten days to get another of these and an En Vacances out. Let’s see how that goes.
TGG
One response to “Smash Hits: May 29 – June 11 1980”
The 21st gripping instalment and the issue that covered my 14th birthday.
I’ll be honest from the off – this has been the hardest of all 21 issues so far to write about. Firstly because I’m recovering from detached retina operation #3 and can’t stare at a bright screen for any great length of time, and secondly, as will become clear, it’s a bit of a boring issue, with song lyrics you’ll either know pretty well, or words to songs that you’ll probably not want to bother with. And it all starts so well, with the second female cover star on the bounce.
Page 2 is back in use as an advert carrier, this time for a film. Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack. On now at the Empire, Leicester Square and from May 22 at the ABC cinemas at Fulham Road, Bayswater and Edgware Road. Oh, and as an afterthought – across the country. I had already grown to dislike the London-centric focus of the media…. As for the film – never heard of it. I hadn’t even remembered the advert until I reopened this issue after a good 40 years, if not more.
Page 4 is a Request Spot Special – a convenient way of shoe-horning in three sets of lyrics from The Jam. A couple of weeks earlier, several Jam singles had made the Top 75 as Polydor made all their previous 7″ output available in the wake of renewed interest following Going Underground reaching the top spot. They mostly hung around in the lower reaches of the Top 75 for three weeks. The lyrics printed were for In The City, All Around The World and The Modern World, which reached #s 40, 43 & 52 respectively on this set of re-releases. Higher than most, which is unsurprising as they were the three original releases furthest away in time from May 1980.
Next is the cover star interview, including the words to latest release, Breathing. I’m not a huge fan of Kate Bush. Don’t get me wrong, I like the major hits and all that, and even the occasional album track, but when I have done a deeper dive into some of her albums, I can’t say I like all of what I’ve heard. Breathing is one of those. I played it for the first time in I don’t know how long prior to putting this piece together and it really didn’t do anything for me. It got to #16, but it’s never been all that radio-friendly. The interview is all about the forthcoming album from Kate and also an explanation about the current single – “It’s about a baby still in the mother’s womb at the time of nuclear fallout”.
The mood is lightened a little over the page with the words for New Musik’s current release.
Whilst the lyrical content is still on the gloomy side, the delivery certainly isn’t. This was the third of New Musik’s four Top 75 appearances, as they ultimately got overtaken by more sophisticated purveyors of synth music. This, and its follow-up, both peaked at #31.
We hit the Bitz pages to discover among other things that Gary Numan is working on Robert Palmer’s next album (at this point I had no idea who Robert Palmer was, but I would end up purchasing said album) and that Devo would be touring the UK in June to promote their new album, Freedom Of Choice. There’s also a photo of Bad Manners’ frontman, Buster Bloodvessel “doing his Hilda Ogden impersonation”. This would seem to involve simultaneous gurning and ironing. There’s a brief piece informing us as to who Geno Washington is (or perhaps I should say, was, as it’s written in the past tense). Being the subject of the Dexys #1 had brought his existence back into focus, but I guess neither I nor the writer would have expected him to be still be touring at the age of 81 in 2025. The All-Time Top 10? I’ll come back to that later.
The next three pages are given over to an article reviewing music television such as it was in 1980. The article is penned by the legendary Tony Parsons. If you’re familiar with his work, it will come as no surprise that it’s largely critical and there are some fairly hefty insults aimed at various presenters (some of whom are now no longer with us, so I’m not going to repeat any of them). Praise is, however, given to Top Of The Pops. This is because the show by definition was largely reflecting what people were listening to and was the only show to regularly feature black music at the time. Difficult to argue with that point.
Back to the lyrics and Roxy Music are back in The Charts, so we get the words to Over You.
Independent Bitz follows with UB40 still the top single and yet another new Album Chart topper – The Fall Live, this time. There are a raft of singles reviews – best band name going to The Versatile Newts. Most of them are not exactly complimentary, but the track below is described as “this issue’s real gem”. It gets a photo of the artist as well, with that and the accompanying caption appearing in this montage.
If you did play the video link, apologies for not warning you that it is a little on the shrill side. If you’re wondering what was being described as “embarrassingly inept”, it was a single by Bob Saffron & The Postal Bargains. Janet Armstrong did not enjoy any sort of hit with this, but she would go on to sing backing vocals a few years later on David Bowie’s Absolute Beginners.
Words follow for Cockney Rejects and The Greatest Cockney Rip-Off. The crossword follows that and I’d completed it. The prize was The Undertones’ Hypnotised album. I’d asked for this for my birthday, so hadn’t sent off the crossword. I did not receive the album (my father reckoned he couldn’t find it), so I had to purchase it myself, probably using the cash from the postal order that my Gran always sent me. Given that we used to visit her at least once a week, I’ve no idea why she would post cards to all fifteen of her grandchildren, rather than just slipping them to her offspring to give to us on the big day, using cash rather than having to trudge out to get birthday postal orders fifteen times a year – and also at Christmas.
Featured a couple of posts ago, we now get the words for Junior Murvin’s Police And Thieves.
The Undertones are the subject of the centre page photo. They’re in a park, three of them sitting on a bench, one standing behind and Feargal Sharkey preferring to sit on the grass.
The Disco page features the words to Jimmy Ruffin’s Hold On To My Love, his first Top Ten hit since a re-release of What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted six years earlier. It would also be his last Top Ten hit, with only one further Chart placing awaiting him – a #68 in January 1985. Rob Jones reverts to type for his non-hit pick, Ship To Shore by The Quick, “a real summer sound and you will be singing this one as you go down to the beach”. We didn’t. I did research this one. You’ll notice I’ve not provided a link for it.
“What’s Black And Irish With A Big Head?” screams the headline on the next page followed by a drawing of Phil Lynott and the answer of “Guinness”. Hmm. It’s a fairly wide-ranging interview with the Thin Lizzy frontman, but with some focus on his new solo album. The lyrics for its first single were in the previous issue, and although I said I liked it, I didn’t do this…
Yes – all of the then-current Thin Lizzy line-up are in the video, and all play on the “solo” album, as do Mark Knopfler, Midge Ure and several other musicians. Phil was also the the provider of the All Time Top Ten back on the Bitz pages. Too Much Too Young from The Special AKA was at the top followed by Junior Murvin’s Police And Thieves. His own work, solo and with Thin Lizzy, features as do Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, a then relatively unknown ZZ Top and Sex Pistols (two of whom he’d recently worked with on The Greedies’ A Merry Jingle).
It may have been 1980, but some 70’s acts were in no rush to depart, and so it is that we get words to singles from Smokie (a cover of Bobby Vee’s 1961 hit Take Good Care Of My Baby) and Hot Chocolate with No Doubt About It. Save for a mid-90’s “rude” re-release of Living Next Door To Alice, this was it for Smokie, bowing out with a #34 placing. The Hot Chocolate tune reached #2, and they would be around for a while yet.
Blondie’s most recent #1 had been toppled by Dexys at the beginning of May, so we’d had to wait awhile for the words to Call Me, accompanied of course by the full page colour picture of Debbie Harry. Maybe they had a rule that there had to be a gap of x issues between Debbie pictures, although it didn’t seem that way towards the end of 1979.
The in-joke cartoon Singles reviewer thing continues. This time it’s “Mrs Esme Sprigg of Hounslow” (illustrated by a pic showing her washing a plate in a sink with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth). Somehow, I managed to prevent my sides from splitting and read the reviews. As usual, some will get a mention in forthcoming posts, but I don’t think this one will – from “one of the genuinely huge talents in rock and roll”.
I do struggle with the fact that Graham Parker, with and without The Rumour, only made the UK Top 75 on three occasions. By the time this was released, he’d already had two hits. The final one would be in 1982.
The Albums Reviews include several that can only muster 5/10, including the Phil Lynott album, Solo In Soho, given the full treatment earlier in the issue. Joining Phil are The Only Ones (Baby’s Got A Gun), Magazine (The Correct Use Of Soap) and The Isley Brothers (Go All The Way).
One album did receive 8/10. Curiously, the band that made it had an EP out, containing only one track from the album – and that wasn’t the track that was picking up the airplay. It’s the second album from The Human League – Travelogue (and another I used my meagre teenage funds to acquire). The Holiday ’80 EP loitered in the Charts for five weeks but never got beyond #56 (a 1982 re-release saw it peak ten places higher). Being Boiled was the track in common, and an earlier version of this would pick up airplay and make the Top Ten upon re-release, also in 1982. The track currently picking up the airplay was the first half of a medley of two cover versions, the second part of which was Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing. It’s the first part that gets its lyrics printed, but it was written and originally recorded by someone who I don’t wish to publicise, given what we now know about him. So I’ll give a link to the first track on Holiday’80.
Synth music – but a world away from New Musik already. I liked both (and still do), but this is the one I play a lot more frequently.
Words for Michael Jackson’s She’s Out Of My Life are next – the fourth single taken from Off The Wall. (not entirely sure I should be mentioning him either, but he was never actually convicted of anything).
Heavy metal lyrics to round off the issue with words for Motorhead’s Leaving Here and the rather more successful Fool For Your Loving from Whitesnake being featured.
Oddly, the back page colour photo is of someone who was still nine months away from having her first hit – Toyah. Her publicity people were good as not only had her new album and single been mentioned earlier in the Bitz section, but so was her forthcoming role as Miranda in a new film of The Tempest. This of course had opened in London and “should be seen elsewhere in the summer”. Fuel to my earlier comments!
This has taken a lot of sessions to pull together and has convinced me not to ignore the doctor’s advice about keeping off work until 9th June. My eye is really struggling with screen brightness still. On that basis, I probably need to get started on the next post later today if it’s to be completed on time!
I have my latest operation to sort out my ever-detaching retina on Monday May 12th. Hopefully I can get this completed before then, as I’m likely to be out of action from a screen time perspective for at least a week thereafter. And so we gallop into the 20th of these Smash Hits issues from 45 years ago. with a front cover featuring someone who hasn’t had many mentions in recent issues, but who, along with her band, was about to embark on a run of some really excellent singles.
The big news is that we’ve got song words on Page 2 again! Two lots of them. The downside is that they’re for songs I don’t think I’ve heard since 1980, nor have I succumbed to the temptation to reacquaint myself with them. That’ll be Saxon and Wheels Of Steel and the still-lingering Sad Café with My Oh My. Both made the Top 20.
More words over on Page 4 with what we didn’t realise then would be the final single from The Ruts with Staring At The Rude Boys. That’s sharing a page a band whose previous single I reckoned had underachieved by only making #40. This new track fared even worse, peaking fifteen places lower, but is another that I think could have done better.
People buying copies of it was the “something” that was missing. This was the third of their five Top 75 hits.
Across the page, we get the words for another of the classic songs from 1980, The Beat and my favourite song of theirs, Mirror In The Bathroom. This clearly showcased that there was songwriting talent within the band that could take them further than the confines of ska. This was proved to be the case after the band split, of course, and whilst General Public didn’t get the commercial success they deserved, Fine Young Cannibals certainly did.
The cover star interview follows with much discussion about departing band members the previous summer and a little focus on current release, Happy House. “They’re touring with a borrowed guitarist, yet still they bring out an excellent single”. A difficult time for Siouxsie, but things were beginning to take an upward turn. Sharing a page is another advert for The Face, bigger than last time, with some big names trotted out to show how important this was going to be. “Ian Dury on Elvis Presley” – who’d want to miss that? (Well I did – so if you want to know more about that, you’re not going to find it here).
Arguably Paul McCartney’s best solo single has its words printed next. Coming Up was a quirky tune that showed that the ex-Beatle was looking at the new technologies in music and embracing them while still writing a catchy song. It went all the way to #2.
It’s the Bitz pages next, and as predicted a few issues back, AC/DC are carrying on after Bon Scott’s death, with ex-Geordie man, Brian Johnson, announced as their new vocalist. There’s also a very brief mention of a band whose sole Top 75 entry made #56, for which the words were never printed (I looked ahead!). For me, this is yet another travesty and a song which should have gone way, way higher in the Charts.
An appearance on ITV kids’ show Runaround, hosted by comedian and future EastEnders star, Mike Reid wasn’t enough to push it where I believe it deserved to be. In more recent times I purchased a compilation of Photos recordings on CD. It was a bit of a mixed bag, but there were certainly some decent tunes on there. (I’ve just wasted fifteen minutes trying to find it – and given up).
The Bitz pages continue with news that Cockney Rejects are marking West Ham United’s appearance in the FA Cup Final with their own version of I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. Depressingly, this did make the lower reaches of the Top 40. The band haven’t been back there since. The All-Time Top 10 is from Toyah, who immediately endeared herself to me back in 1980, despite me not having heard anything from her at that point. by picking Zager And Evans’ In The Year 2525 as her #1. Quality.
The Bodysnatchers get two pages devoted to them – a full page colour photo and a page of interview, where there is discussion about a 2-Tone backlash in the music press and how Holly And The Italians were not a good fit to be on the same bill as The Selecter and The Bodysnatchers (they quit mid-tour) – not that there is any criticism of he band themselves, just of whoever curated the bill.
Phil Lynott had taken a brief break from Thin Lizzy to record a solo album and the words for the first single from it, Dear Miss Lonely Hearts, appear next. Again, another song that I feel could have gone higher, it stalled at #32. However, the album would yield a bigger hit and a new Top Of The Pops theme tune the following year.
Independent Bitz is next and there is a truly scathing review of an album by a band called Desperate Bicycles – “the kind of well intentioned but utterly hopeless hippy claptrap that New Wave was supposed to sweep away”. It would seem that the idea of releasing music independently was a broader church than fitted the agenda of the likes of Red Starr, who wrote that review (see comments on Heavy Metal in the previous issue). Chart-wise, UB40 were still at the top of the Singles with what is now just listed as Food For Thought and another new Albums chart-topper is Slits’ Bootleg Retrospective.
There is a brief piece about the band who’d clambered to #2 in the Independent Singles chart – a band with two bass players! The performance here from Delta 5 is not as is suggested, from Top Of The Pops (I have Peter Checksfield’s book that lists all performances on the programme from 1976 to 1986 and there’s no mention of them in there), so it must be from some other BBC show that had an audience.
Anticipation is listed as a double A-side with another song entitled You.
And as a compete contrast, the next set of lyrics are for The Nolans’ Don’t Make Waves.
Onwards to the Disco page and the words for the first of two Top 10 hits for Narada Michael Walden – I Shoulda Loved Ya. The second one was a mere eight years into the future, by which time he was simply known as Narada. Both peaked at #8. Rob Jones is on a roll, picking another hit – we’ll get the words for Mystic Merlin’s Just Can’t Give You Up in a forthcoming issue.
The Specials grace the centre pages and give the reader the impression that they are inspecting you.
The Mod thing is still rumbling along, with a Pete Townshend interview. It’s pretty wide-ranging and Pete is non-committal when asked if he sees The Who going on for ever. Not sure anyone would have imagined a European tour in 2026 back then! Before they were The Who, they were The High Numbers and the words for their song, I’m The Face, are included, as it had been re-released and made #49.
Words next for Billy Joel’s All For Leyna – not one of his biggest hits, but he’d be having a Top 20 hit before the end of summer.
Request Spot gets daring and goes back to 1973 for the words to David Bowie’s Life On Mars. Not actually the most difficult of songs to pick out what’s being sung, but it was clearly a challenge for James from Redcar at the time.
There’s a bumper selection of Singles reviews – in the chair is “a small creature (in shorts)” complete with illustration. Probably some in-joke in the Smash Hits office. The one that catches the eye is the very last song reviewed. “…attractive left field pop; steady sparse guitaring reminiscent of early Cure…”
The first release from a band who would enjoy several hits, mostly more successful than this, which stalled at #62. It does seem quite different to a lot of the other tracks out there at the time – we just hadn’t quite realised that the future did still include guitar bands as well as those with synths.
Three albums score 8/10 in the Reviews to share the winner’s spoils. Phyllis Hyman and You Know How To Love Me, New Musik’s From A To B, and the band referenced in that Single review above, The Cure and Seventeen Seconds – which I purchased.
Two more sets of lyrics – The Ramones were back with Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?, somewhat less successful than their previous single, peaking at #56. Six years would pass before they were back in the UK Charts. Stalling two places lower was the final Chart entry for The Motors, just two years after their big hit, Airport. I bought this as well, just to show how all over the place my tastes were at the time.
I still think it’s a decent tune.
Before we get to an unremarkable photo of The Chords on the back page, there is one final set of words. I imagine everyone who reads this will know the song. but it’s just too good to ignore.
OK, so it’s only a truncated Top Of The Pops version, but one of those moments where you’re left wondering if it’s the band or the audience that least wants to be there. #31! I mean, #31! Seriously? There’s been a bit of a theme this issue of low Chart placings but this one…. (rants indefinitely).
Some good stuff, and a lot i completely missed. So, thanks for the catch-up. I don’t think I ever got over finding out the Siouxie-Sue’s hair was a wig. The world just tipped sideways on that.
Delayed once again as I’ve been having further complications with my eye which has necessitated more time being spent at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. Initially I was given another regime of drops and hoped it wouldn’t be too long before I could see something out of my left eye that wasn’t blurry – for the first time in over six months. Then, of course on a Bank Holiday weekend, it appears that the retina has detached again. I now have to wait until the consultant contacts me to find out where we go from here. I’d never have imagined all this happening to me 45 years ago, as I’d have been far too busy devouring all the info in my 19th purchase of Smash Hits.
It was only ten issues previously that Madness had been featured on the front cover. Now, with the Work Rest & Play EP – led by Night Boat To Cairo – giving them their third Top 10 hit in a row, they were heading into territory reserved for the likes of The Police and The Jam. As we now know, they were destined to outlive the ska trend, with their combination of memorable lyrics, catchy tunes and mildly amusing videos.
The Page 2 advert is for a selection of 10 EPs showcasing “original music from the Atlantic label” with the likes of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and The Drifters featuring, for £1.60 each (which seemed quite a lot back then). Presumably a way to cash in on the mod interest in some of the old soul tunes.
First set of lyrics this issue is for Lene Lovich’s latest single What Will I Do Without You. I suppose she was learning to do without us as this is another that didn’t crack the Top 40, stalling at #58, although it was a better showing than for her previous single. I did purchase this not too long ago in a double pack featuring a live 4-track disc, from a second-hand vinyl shop. It remains unplayed.
As Lene has had a couple of singles featured on the blog previously, I’ll turn my attention to the act across the page, who have had a mention or two, and a #1 single, but have yet to have a song on here to show for it. It was Trevor and Geoff’s latest effort – one I’ve always been quite fond of.
This one only got as far as #38 as their chart career nosedived rather rapidly. As I’ve said previously, while the Buggles incarnation was nearing its end, there was plenty more from both members to come over the next few years, and I think I’m correct in saying that they are both still actively touring.
Turning the page, we suddenly find ourselves transported back in time with an interview with Davy Jones from The Monkees, woven around a potted history of the band. I’m pretty sure old episodes of The Monkees (if that’s what the show was called) were still being shown on British TV at that time. But why was all this in Smash Hits? Seems that an EP of their old hits was out and hovering in the lower reaches of the Top 40. The obligatory lyric is for Daydream Believer.
From old stars to soon-to-be stars next, as we get the words to Sheena Easton’s Modern Girl. At this point, it only made it to #56; a summer re-release would see it peaking at #8. All that after an even bigger hit that would occur in between. I’m sure it’ll be getting a mention in a few issues’ time.
Sheena gets a mention in the Bitz pages, where we learn that she used to be in a Glasgow band called Something Else while she was studying to be a drama teacher at The Royal Scottish Academy Of Music And Drama. At least she had something to fall back on if pop stardom didn’t work out. Also we learn that John Cooper Clarke has a new album and a new book of poems out and that there is a question mark over the future of Sham 69. The All-Time Top 10 is from Glen Matlock, including tracks from Anthony Newley, Henry Mancini, Johnny Thunders and Screaming Jay Hawkins. Wide tastes indeed.
Then we have the cover star interview with Madness, entitled The Importance Of Being Nutty. They talk about not necessarily remaining as a ska band (something I alluded to when reviewing the previous issue), with Suggs saying “Being nutty is what we think about. That’s the Madness sound no matter what outside influences there may be”.
More lyrics – this time from a couple of 70’s icons. Firstly David Essex, whose last big hit was from Evita, now back in the Charts and on his way to #4 with Silver Dream Machine, which I think was from a film about motorcycle racing, with a similar title. Less successful was Suzi Quatro, whose I’ve Never Been In Love only climbed as far as #56.
And then it’s Independent Bitz, moved forward in the magazine. Was this a sign that the introduction of this feature had gone down well? The Cramps’ stay at the top of the Independent Albums listing had ended and they’d been replaced by The Pop Group and For How Much Longer. UB40 remained atop the Singles chart with King / Food For Thought, but there was a new entry at #14.
How this ended up being performed on Belgian TV, when it was pretty much unknown in its native UK, will probably remain a mystery. Fad Gadget (aka Frank Tovey) never made it into the “proper” Charts, sadly.
Staying with Independent Bitz, there is a review of a live album by a band called Quartz. The review commences by complaining about the fact that Heavy Metal bands are infiltrating the Independent Charts. How dare they! “The musical equivalent of The Flat Earth Society, heavy metal only satisfies the terminally dense and easily impressed, those happy to gawp and challenge nothing”. Ouch. Summed up most of the HM fans at school though.
Disco continues with its one page. Last issue’s pick by Rob Jones, which, if you recall, made the Top Ten, now gets its words printed – that’s Bobby Thurston and Check Out The Groove. This issue sees Rob sort of playing it safe – a “welcome re-release” of a song he feels is sure to be “a smash in the discos and on the radio”. Not sure how well reggae went down in the discos of 1980, but it was a tune that had been given a wider audience by The Clash, having failed to make any commercial impression upon its first release in 1976. This time around, it got to #23.
I’m very familiar with this song despite not purchasing the single at the time. I acquired it on a reggae compilation in the 80s, and on various others since. It’s in a few of my Spotify playlists as well. Therefore I’ve no idea what level of familiarity anyone else has, so I’ve put the link on anyway. This would be Junior Murvin’s only UK hit.
The centre pages continue with their run of moody-looking bands. This time it’s The Vapors, basking in their moment in the sun – although you wouldn’t know it from their facial expressions.
Time then for a couple of “Radio 2” lyrics of that era, with Dr Hook and Sexy Eyes and the return of Pina Colada man, Rupert Holmes and his follow-up, Him, which peaked just eight places lower at #31. This would be his second and final visit to the UK Charts.
There’s then an interview with BA Robertson, who clearly wasn’t seen as outstaying his welcome by everyone, accompanied by a sketch of the man himself. It’s an interesting read, learning about the struggles of the mid-70s and a brief working relationship with the guy that went on to front Sailor, who had a couple of Top 10 hits. Along with a guy called Terry Britten, Robertson co-wrote seven songs on the 1979 Cliff Richard album Rock ‘n’ Roll Juvenile, including recent hit Carrie. Also on the second page of the interview are the words for Pete Townshend’s Rough Boys, which made it to #39, and as an indicator of things to come a tiny advert for something called The Face – “Packed with photo action, 64 pages of visual splendour, licensed to thrill” – coming soon.
Request Spot leaves 1978 for once – and goes to all the way back to 1977 and the words for White Punks On Dope by The Tubes.
There’s a competition where the star prize is to meet Joe Jackson backstage before a show on his upcoming UK tour. I’m sure Joe was looking forward to that.
In amongst the Singles reviews is one for the Belgian entry for that year’s Eurovision Song Contest. “As a plain pop record, it’s fearfully dull; alongside your average entry, it takes on the proportions of a major work of art”. Pretty much my feelings watching the contest back in 1980 when minor hitmakers from 1979, Telex, popped up with this.
According to the official Eurovision site, it finished 17th out of 19, but in an era where pretty much every song was still accompanied by an orchestra, this was radical. Europe just wasn’t ready for radical.
In the Album reviews, highest score goes to The Undertones and Hypnotised. with 9/10. Apparently the album was originally going to be called Fifteen Rockin’ Humdingers, which I prefer, having played the album in its entirety more than once. Feargal Sharkey is described as “the finest natural singer to come out of punk”. A few mid-80s hits back that up, I suppose.
The words to the latest Elvis Costello And The Attractions release, High Fidelity are across the page.
For the second issue running, there are UB40 lyrics, as the realisation dawns that Food For Thought is the side of the single that’s getting all the airplay. It’s sharing a page with future #1, Geno from Dexys Midnight Runners.
I’ve researched the next set of lyrics as I didn’t remember the song, but it’s appeared without a mention in the Disco section. Was it Disco? Well, I suppose so – it’s a bit funky. Leon Haywood is the singer and the song is called Don’t Push It, Don’t Force It. It was his only UK hit, reaching #12.
On the same page is an advert for a follow-up single that failed to hit the Top 75, despite an appearance on kids’ TV staple of the era, Cheggers Plays Pop.
I think this was good enough to have landed somewhere in the Top 75, but not being anywhere near as catchy as Echo Beach, it clearly didn’t get on to the radio sufficiently frequently. A couple of members of the band, rebranded as M+M, would get a minor hit in 1984 – potentially another Unsung Song, if I ever get back to writing about them.
Last set of lyrics are for Judas Priest’s Living After Midnight, one of two songs of theirs that peaked at #12 – the highest they got.
The back page photo is labelled as Siouxsie And The Banshees. The reality is that’s it’s Siouxsie, singing at a show, with a blurred Banshee in the background. An odd choice, given that Siouxsie would be on the front cover of the next issue.
Not sure when the next post will appear. It depends on what happens with the eye.
The eighteenth issue in my collection and a reminder if we needed one, that Smash Hits was not just there to cover mainstream music at this time. Who should be staring out from the racks of the nation’s newsagents forty-five years ago, but someone who was certainly seen as being part of the edgier side of the music industry.
Page 2 was a little less edgy, however, containing as it does an advert for the new 10cc album, Look Hear. Eighteen months after Dreadlock Holiday was #1 and its parent album, Bloody Tourists made #3, this one truly bombed, yielding zero hit singles and peaking at #35. This is probably an opportune moment to mention that generally I quite liked 10cc and that around a month ago, Mrs TGG and I went to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and watched the band’s Graham Gouldman perform songs he’d written from across his career, accompanied by various other musicians. I never had any doubt that he’d play what are for me, two of the finest pop songs ever written – Bus Stop (The Hollies) and No Milk Today (Herman’s Hermits). It was a very enjoyable evening, with plenty of humour and stories in between the songs.
Over the page and it’s a Ska-fest! I think we were pretty much in peak ska mode now, before bands stopped having hits or developed their sounds a little. Lyrics for us to sing along and generally leap around to include the only Top 40 hit for The Bodysnatchers – Let’s Do Rock Steady, Madness back again with another big hit, which has slightly more words than you might imagine – Night Boat To Cairo from their Work, Rest And Play EP, and also on their debut album. And there was this as well.
My favourite Selecter track, but one which saw them peaking just outside the Top 20, and they would never reach such heights again. When we saw Pauline Black last year (as mentioned during my ramblings on an earlier issue), she did describe the change at the record company when they went to discuss their second album and saw the staff there were starting to sport the New Romantic look already – the band sensed that things were changing.
For now though, there was still some co-existence of musical styles as we flip the page to find another Gary Numan feature. A feature with a difference as it’s written by a couple of fans of Gary’s who also publish a fanzine entitled In The City. We are given details as to how to acquire said publication should we so wish. It seems that Gary “now only speaks to people he trusts”. So clearly not anyone on the Smash Hits payroll, then! Much of the article focusses on Gary’s non-appearance on the ’79 into ’80 New Year’s Eve Kenny Everett Video Show. He seems to be under the impression that his performance was pulled at the behest of David Bowie, who was also appearing on said show. How true any of this actually was, who knows? Numan has however “lost a lot of respect” for Mr. Bowie.
Next up and keeping with the more electronic end of things are the words for the latest single by a man who’s had a few mentions in recent issues, but hasn’t had a song featured on here yet. Time to change that.
The second solo single from the former Ultravox! frontman and the second of three consecutive releases to narrowly miss the Top 30. I’m so used to the album version of this, I hadn’t actually realised that it had been slightly edited for release as a single.
On to the Bitz pages, and Gary Numan’s New Year’s Eve “chum” is the subject of Identity Crisis – again far too easy. Generation X have split, but there is still some talk of one half of the band (Billy Idol and Tony James) recruiting some new members. Dave Wakeling from The Beat picks his All-Time Top 10, with Captain Beefheart featuring among reggae, soul and new wave choices. There’s also news of a couple of books being published. One is the now legendary Rock Family Trees by Pete Frame – the writer is pictured posing with quill and ink over one of his creations. The other is a short novel from Graham Parker entitled The Great Trouser Mystery – I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a copy.
The final instalment of The Police interviews follows. This time it’s Stewart Copeland and there is a picture of him with previous band, Curved Air, for whom her drummed on their final two albums. Credit is given where it is due: “without what The Clash did, there would be no Police”. Exactly.
Words for two more great 1980 singles follow – Pretenders’ follow-up to the #1, Talk Of The Town, and The Undertones are back with the brilliant My Perfect Cousin, which would be their only Top 10 hit, peaking at #9.
There’s a whole page of small news snippets called A-Z Fact File. Earth-shattering stuff, some of it. Dave Edmunds is working an a new album with Nick Lowe producing (wow! really?) and also news that Dire Straits won’t be touring until 1981. I’m sure we all coped.
The Disco section is still just a single page and features the words to Stomp by The Brothers Johnston – one I do remember and it did get to #6. Rob Jones is back and singing the praises of Check Out The Groove by Bobby Thurston – “one of the hottest disco sounds around”. Hot enough to reach #10!
The centre pages feature a photo of Stiff Little Fingers who seem to be displaying varying levels of enthusiasm about being snapped.
Then it’s the cover star interview with John Lydon, discussing matters Public Image Limited. There’s the usual disdain for the music press – “…they can’t understand our music, they either slag it as a joke or try to analyse it. They’ve got no idea”.
Words then follow for Secret Affair’s My World (already their final foray into the Top 40 peaking at #16) and also for the song that will be revealed over the page as #1 in the Independent Singles chart. A song from some new kids on the block that got overtaken by its more popular other side as far as radio play went.
As an introduction – a truly excellent double A-side with Food For Thought. I can cope with the later “cabaret” cover versions that seemed to become the norm for the band, but I definitely prefer the first couple of albums from UB40.
So what else was going on in Independent Bitz? There’s a less than complimentary review of a compilation album which includes Mansfield band B-Movie who contribute two tracks – “one moderately interesting rattle ‘n’ roller and one so average it’s painful”. The band would go on to record a couple of great singles which will almost certainly feature in my Unsung Songs thread if I ever get round to doing another one. Among the singles reviewed is Josef K’s Chance Meeting – “Gets better with every play, Buy this one”. I guess I should also report that Crass had already been toppled from the top of the Independent Albums chart, by a new entry – Songs The Lord Taught Us from The Cramps. Only one single was released from the album in the UK – a double A side featuring a cover version of Fever and one of their own compositions.
Not one that was ever going to feature on daytime Radio 1.
Request Spot is yet again in 1978, featuring the aforementioned Generation X and Ready Steady Go.
The Singles Reviews follow, featuring some of the songs already mentioned in this post and some that will feature in future. One that did get a good review but amazingly failed to chart altogether was Joe Jackson’s follow-up to It’s Different for Girls, Kinda Kute.
Recorded on The Kenny Everett Video Show (yes, that programme again!). It’s not known whether David Bowie approved or not.
Top scorers in the Albums Reviews are Burnin’ Alive from Tony Rallo And The Midnite Band (as mentioned in the Disco section an issue or two ago) and Billy Joel’s Glass Houses. Both score 8/10 with mod outfit Purple Hearts bringing up the rear with 4/10 and some withering comments from grumpy old David Hepworth.
In a magazine that mentions The Cramps, it’s nice to know there was still room for Radio 2 and The Two Ronnies stalwart, Barbara Dickson and the words for one of her bigger hits, January February (even though it was now April).I think I read recently that she had done a farewell tour last year and has since decided to do a few more shows. I don’t suppose I would have imagined back in 1980 that both she and Graham Gouldman would be touring 45 years later.
Then there are the words for the long defunct Liquid Gold and Dance Yourself Dizzy – reaching #2, it was one of two Top 10 hits for them (yes, they really had another – stay tuned!).
Except for re-releases of Pop Muzik, M’s Top 40 career was now over as this release, for which we get the words, stalled at #45.
You’re getting this link as the official video is “of its time” and there was no Top Of The Pops appearance for this so far as I can tell. I still feel it could have done a little better than it did.
Final lyrics for the issue underscore the huge range of genres vying for our teenage attention with Turn It On Again from Genesis and Rush’s The Spirit Of Radio featuring. A Top 10 and a Top 20 hit respectively.
The Beat are on the back page as we bid farewell to this issue. Not sure that Saxa ever imagined he would end up in a hit band, and he’s definitely smiling the most, followed by Ranking Roger.
I bet that was a decent read, cover-to-cover, after all these years! A few things mentioned that I can remember but haven’t thought about in decades (hi, John Foxx and Secret Affair), sprinkled with a fair number of which I have no recollection, including the Rush single that gets a mention
Number seventeen of a potential odyssey that could run to a further eighty instalments. If I keep doing these on time, it will be a miracle – this one’s teasing the time frame again. And who do we have on the cover? Only our old friends, XTC.
And what are they up to that merits a front cover pic? Well, they’re only featuring on the free flexi-disc that comes with the magazine (and which I still have somewhere). It’s actually a joint affair with Skids – the eagle-eyed nearly fourteen year old me spotting that this was a Virgin Records promotion.
To be fair, for a freebie, they were both decent tracks. My own copy got a lot of play, despite my annoyance at Richard Skinner talking over it and trying to be witty. Both tracks feature on my current day Spotify playlists, in their album versions – further evidence of my musical tastes getting hard-coded during this period.
Into the magazine itself, and the Incredible Hulk is still very unhappy about the state of the teeth of Britain’s youngsters as the full page ad from last time is again on Page 2.
The first three sets of lyrics are for songs that all feature on my 80 From 1980 playlist, and I also have all of them on vinyl. Another Nail In My Heart from Squeeze, Martha & The Muffins’ epic Echo Beach and last issue’s cover stars with their first #1, Going Underground from The Jam. Flip over the page and it’s the words for another classic, and another that would reach #1 – Atomic from Blondie. Was this fortnight as good as 1980 got? Discuss.
The Police interviews are back and this time it’s Andy Summers who’s the focus. There’s the obligatory photo of him with Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band from 1965. We learn that he lives in a mansion in south-west London and is financially secure for the first time in his fifteen year career. I’m sure I felt very pleased for him. He met the other members of The Police whilst helping out at a Gong reunion gig. I had no idea who Gong were in 1980 – that was a “treat” for my ears to discover at a party at Uni a few years later.
The Bitz pages have the usual mentions of trivia around artists we know and mini features about bands whose lyrics will feature in forthcoming issues. Among those already mentioned in the last issue, there’s info regarding both Bette Bright (and her time with Deaf School, also featuring producer Clive Langer) and Shakin’ Stevens, for whom we get a bit of a potted history, including a mention of him playing Elvis. Another Elvis is clearly the subject of Identity Crisis and just like he was experiencing a few weeks back, The Tourists are having record label squabbles.
John Foxx gets to pick his All-Time Top Ten, which has the likes of Roy Orbison, The Beatles, and The Shadows sitting alongside more avant-garde stuff like this track from 1978, that I’m rather fond of.
My first encounter with Thomas Leer was with the Pillows & Prayers Cherry Red compilation I bought in 1983 (the story of that purchase is mentioned in Unsung Songs #2 on 21/06/2023). The Leer song on the compilation was All About You. I subsequently picked up odd records of his as and when I saw them, although I think Private Plane came to my attention when idly browsing iTunes a few years back.
Moving on, we get further lyrics, including for the Bette Bright song I mentioned last issue (Hello, I Am Your Heart), and also for a song that I liked at the time, but one that it wasn’t particularly “cool” to like. I’m now at an age where any notion of coolness has long ago set sail, so I will mention that I’ve always enjoyed listening to Joan Armatrading and this was the one she had out in the latter half of March 1980.
It had been three and a half years since her first Top 75 entry, with Love And Affection reaching #10. This second one fared less well, peaking at #49.
Then it’s two pages containing the results of the Smash Hits Readers’ Poll – otherwise known as “What did you think of 1979?”. I suppose you’d like to know the winners – the mag gives the Top 10 in each category, but 45 years on, I’m sure the first three will suffice.
Band Of The Year – 1) The Police, 2) The Jam, 3) Blondie
Best Album – 1) The Police – Regatta De Blanc, 2) The Jam – Setting Sons, 3) Tubeway Army – Replicas
Best Male Singer – 1) Sting, 2) Gary Numan, 3) Bob Geldof
Best Female Singer – 1) Debbie Harry, 2) Kate Bush, 3) Chrissie Hynde
Best TV Programme – 1) Top Of The Pops, 2) The Kenny Everett Video Show, 3) Fawlty Towers
Best DJ / Radio Show – 1) John Peel, 2) Dave Lee Travis, 3) Noel Edmonds
Most Fanciable Person – 1) Sting, 2) Debbie Harry, 3) Gary Numan
Brightest Hope For 1980 – 1) Madness, 2) The Pretenders, 3) John Foxx
Best Single – 1) The Police – Message In A Bottle, 2) Tubeway Army – Are “Friends” Electric, 3) The Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays
Twerp Of The Year – 1) Gary Numan, 2) Lena Martell, 3) Tony Blackburn (Sting will have been disappointed at only making #7)
Worst Single – 1) Lena Martell – One Day At A Time, 2) The Ramblers – Sparrow Song, 3) Fiddler’s Dram – Day Trip To Bangor
Bore Of The Year – 1) Lena Martell, 2) Mod, 3) Disco
Sting / The Police scooping five of the awards, with Lena Martell the only other act to claim more than one. The most depressing one for me was the DJ rankings where second and third places were taken by guys who seemed to have very little interest in the music they were playing and much more in their own “wacky” humour. For the record, along with John Peel, my favourites were Mike Read (4th), Kid Jensen (5th) & Peter Powell (8th).
Talking of “wacky” humour, the next set of lyrics are for the then-very high profile “funster” B.A. Robertson, who’d gone all hippy-ish with Kool In The Kaftan. Another decent-sized hit and a song that bizarrely came up at my board games club the other week, when circumstances prompted a friend of a similar vintage to myself to quote a line from it. Once we’d finished singing the chorus, we then needed to explain ourselves to the other twenty-odd people in the room, who are, shall we say, not quite as old.
And so on to the Disco page (singular) – much reduced in this issue. Was this a reaction to the anti-Disco sentiment in some of the Reader’s Poll answers? Rob Jones is absent, and there’s a bit of blurb from someone called Froggy, who appears to be featuring occasionally on Radio 1 at this time. There are also words for a song by Phyllis Hyman – You Know How To Love Me. This was the first of two minor Chart placings for her (#47). Sadly, she passed away in 1995, just before her 45th birthday.
Centre page photo is of Gary Numan, standing next to a couple of brick walls, wearing a suit and tie and clearly giving the impression that he’d rather not be there.
There’s an interview with The Vapors, which ends with the line “…their best is yet to come”. Commercially of course, they were already peaking. Sharing the space with them are The Lambrettas – the latest bunch of Mod likely lads, with a cover version of the Leiber & Stoller-penned Poison Ivy – which would also see them hit a commercial peak at the start of the Chart career.
More words follow with Siouxsie & The Banshees’ excellent Happy House and Warhead from UK Subs.
Then – cue fanfare – it’s the arrival of a new feature – Independent Bitz! To be honest, I’ve just given it a level of trumpeting that it wasn’t afforded in the magazine itself. It’s just album and singles reviews – with the reader directed to “Scott at Rough Trade” and an address should there be any difficulty in finding said recordings. There’s also Independent singles and album charts topped respectively by UB40 and the soon to hit the mainstream charts King / Food For Thought, and Crass with Stations Of The Crass (soon not to hit the mainstream charts).
We’re well overdue a musical interlude, so here’s a song that featured very favourably in the Singles reviews mentioned above.
“You’d have to have a heart of stone not to like this”, we are advised. Other “indie” singles reviewed include: Killing Joke’s Wardance, Kebabtrauma by DAF and the Zoo release of The Teardrop Explodes’ Treason. I think this may develop into an interesting part of the magazine to revisit all these years hence, as I would only have been hearing a handful of these songs, mainly on late night Radio 1. For the record, there is only one album reviewed and that is Colossal Youth from Young Marble Giants.
Request Spot once again nestles in its spiritual home of 1978 – this time with Kate Bush’s The Man With The Child In His Eyes – obligatory colour pic of this singer present and correct as well.
Then it’s the regular Singles Reviews, this time overseen by Kelly Pike. To mention many of the tracks would be spoilers for future issues, but one that didn’t chart at all was this one, with the singer / band described as “an acquired taste”. I acquired it.
Tom Petty had had a couple of low Top 40 placings in 1977, but it would be 1989 before he got that high again, via several non-hits and a couple of releases that peaked at #50. Given the lack of UK commercial success, I’m amazed how many songs of his I know and like, that I seem to recall from the time. I guess the songs worked from an airplay perspective, even if we didn’t rush to purchase them.
The highest rated Album reviewed is rather boringly a James Brown compilation with a mammoth 9.5/10. Low score is 1/10 for Cockney Rejects and Greatest Hits Vol One – “should be very popular with people who don’t like music” says David Hepworth in grumpy mode once again.
Four albums score 8/10: the eponymous debut from The Psychedelic Furs, Stiff Little Fingers’ Nobody’s Heroes, Deguello from ZZ Top and the album from which this is the title track – one I discovered much, much later.
I really would have liked to see The Feelies playing this one live. They still seem to do the occasional show, but I’d have to time a visit to the U.S.A. with some precision. R.E.M. cited them as an influence.
There’s an interview with John Foxx – “a man of our times”, apparently. This seems to be down to the fact that he has recorded bus stops and written a song about a love affair in a nuclear war (the original Ultravox!’s excellent Hiroshima Mon Amour).
Two more sets of lyrics follow from songs that could well have featured on a second Disco page – Tonight I’m Alright by Narada Michael Walden, probably not so alright when it only peaked at #34, but he was to have a Top 10 hit imminently. The other was future #1 from The Detroit Spinners and the very dated sounding Working My Way Back To You (my father liked it). The use of Detroit of course avoiding confusion with Liverpudlian folk group and light entertainment show regulars, The Spinners.
We’re treated to bonus lyrics for the two tracks on the flexi-disc and are promised one of five badges with our next issue. I’ll give you full details next time.
Back page photo is of Skids, forming a neat book-end with fellow flexi-disc act XTC on the front.
The arrival of Independent Bitz suggests that the range of music in Smash Hits was only going to get broader for now. I’ve not looked at the next issue yet (well not for many years), but I’m almost feeling an air of excitement. Which has taken my by surprise a little.
TGG
4 responses to “Smash Hits: March 20 – April 2 1980”
Thanks Michael. There’s certainly a few folks reading them. Glad you’re enjoying them. I must try and resurrect some of my other threads at some point when I have a little more time, but there’s quite a bit of prep involved in putting these together – not least actually re-reading the magazines after all this time! I’m enjoying it!
That’s an in impressive list of singers and bands across just one issue. I didn’t often buy Smash Hits, and I certainly can’t ever recall much space being given to ‘indie’ music in a similar way as this issue.
I’m intrigued to find out what’s in the next edition.
From memory, the Independent Bitz section did run for a while. I’ve almost made a pledge to myself to feature something mentioned therein on each post.
Another post that’s later than I’d like, but with a reasonable excuse. I ended up working most of the weekend (when I was aiming to get this completed), as I had things to finish off before I went for my second eye operation on Monday 17th. The good news it that all was still OK with what had been done back in early November, and the even better news is that I’m in considerably less pain than last time , meaning that I can bear to look at a screen for a little time at least. So here goes with the 16th instalment.
I suppose this is as good a place as any to note the recent death of Rick Buckler. I would say that during the run of these Smash Hits issues, which in theory will end with an issue in April 1983 if I can keep it going, The Jam were the band I listened to more than any other. The Smiths were the band I listened to most during my mid-80s Uni years and I when I heard the news of Rick’s death, I had a similar feeling to when Andy Rourke passed away. A cutting of ties with a key part of my past, even though I knew there was no chance of either band ever getting back together to perform or record.
The Jam were on the front cover because they had a new single to promote. A double A-side, no less. Except it was originally just meant to be one A side, but that side proved to be a little less radio friendly than the other. I hadn’t planned to include this originally, but it seems appropriate now. The more well-known side will get its mention in due course (in the next issue).
One I don’t play as often as I should.
It’s funny how things come round again. 45 years ago the dental hygiene of the nation’s youngsters was of sufficient concern that Page 2 of Smash Hits was given over to an advert featuring a large colour cartoon of The Incredible Hulk getting angry about people who didn’t look after their teeth and visit the dentist. Fast forward to today and an absence of a nationally well-known angry cartoon character and indeed NHS dentists in many areas, and the focus is now on a campaign to get schools to supervise toothbrushing activity according to a couple of articles on the BBC website I’ve read recently.
On to the song lyrics then and first up this time are Skids, seeing their run of Top 40 hits stall at four, with Animation surprisingly only peaking at #56.
There is then a set of lyrics without a title, but which are clearly for the David Bowie cover of Alabama Song, and the words to Space Oddity are there also – the latter having been re-recorded to slot on the B-side to give Bowie fans something to purchase as work continued on his next album, to be released later in the year.
The cover star interview follows and is an interesting read, touching on the tensions in the band in the period between The Modern World and All Mod Cons, and the abandoning of “an album’s worth” of material during that time. Fun fact: Paul Weller wrote The Eton Rifles whilst holidaying in a caravan near Portsmouth.
We then get the words for Cuba by Gibson Brothers. The 12″ version apparently. Looking at what is printed, I think this just means more ink has been used to repeat the phrase “Cuba…quie-ro-bai-la-la-salsa” than otherwise would have been the case.
The Bitz pages mention the passing of AC/DC’s Bon Scott and highlight that Smash Hits has never been particularly kind to the band. An accurate prediction of the future follows. “They toured constantly and gave pleasure to a lot of people, and it’s unlikely that even a tragedy like this will mean the end of the band”.
Our attention is drawn via a photo to a band that were supporting Stiff Little Fingers on their current tour – Scottish-based band Another Pretty Face, who feature a Mike Scott on guitar. They have a new single out.
A decent enough song, but not one that would have really stood out at the time. The more sophisticated sound of The Waterboys was just over three years away.
The Chords’ Chris Pope selects a pretty well balanced All Time Top Ten: Dylan, Who, Kinks, Beatles & T. Rex sit alongside Costello, Jam, Clash, Eddie & The Hot Rods (whose Live At The Marquee EP is is described as the “best ever live EP performance”), and, erm, Secret Affair.
Blondie’s Chris Stein is interviewed over the next couple of pages. One interesting comment is where he clearly feels a better reception for their music outside of the USA, particularly live shows. “Everybody’s jaded. Everybody sees a million rock concerts. There’s so much TV. The American audience is tremendously underestimated as to their sophistication and taste. The result is they’re inundated with a lot of crap”. Pretty much like the entire world in 2025 with its zillions of media sources.
A rock page next with words for Rainbow’s second big hit, All Night Long and Sammy Hagar’s rather less successful I’ve Done Everything For You.
Following the crossword (which I completed, but didn’t send off for the chance to win a Sparks album – maybe I planned to purchase a copy all along), we get a rock ‘n’ roll page. A man who will feature many times in both SH and The Charts over the next few years, gets the words for his first Top 40 hit printed – Shakin’ Stevens and Hot Dog, which will peak at #24. Below that is an advert for an album by Whirlwind, who look like a younger version of Matchbox. I don’t think I ever heard anything of theirs, so I may have them completely wrong – I’m just going from their appearance!
The Disco pages! Lyrics for Holdin’ On by Tony Rallo And The Midnite Band (which then and now had/has me visualising Children’s TV Character, King Rollo) – not that I recall ever hearing it. Also we get the words for Captain & Tennille and Do That To Me One More Time – Radio 2 fodder as I recall. Of course Rob Jones is present, correct and inaccurately predicting a “big record”. Having had one recent big hit, he probably felt on safe ground forecasting another for Billy Preston & Syreeta, but It Will Come In Time ultimately didn’t and peaked at #47.
An unremarkable photo of The Tourists fills the centre pages.
Lyrics to future #1, Together We Are Beautiful by Fern Kinney follow, and also for Donna Summer’s On The Radio, which I find the more preferable of the two. I was surprised to see that it only made #32. I guess the word Radio in the title has guaranteed it airplay over the years.
And just when you thought the punk sound was dead, along come the words for Stiff Little Fingers’ biggest hit.
Probably the most cheerful Jake Burns has ever been on stage and surely the least animated group of people they’ve ever played to. At the Edge got to #15.
The results of the Walt Jabsco competition from a couple of issues ago are displayed over the next page. The quality of the artwork is variable.
Request Spot dips its toe into 1979 and a track that the magazine ignored upon its release, but which David from Weston-Super-Mare was keen to learn the words for. The glorious Where’s Captain Kirk from Spizz Energi, who the Bitz pages earlier in this issue had advised us were now called Athletico Spizz ’80.
David Hepworth is back with the Singles again, and correctly identifies that The Knack were out of ideas. Quite a few will be hits and will be mentioned over the next couple of issues. One he thinks is going to be a hit ultimately only got to #50.
I thought he’d called it correctly at the time and I still think it deserved to do better. It was Bette Bright’s only Top 75 entry.
Top scoring album is the latest from Squeeze – Argy Bargy with 9/10, and there are indeed some good tunes on that one. Red Starr was clearly in generous mode, with no album scoring less than 7/10 this time around.
There’s a colour picture of The Flying Lizards and an interview with David Cunningham (who was basically the band). It’s revealed that Deborah Upton just pops along to do a vocal when he’s got something for her to record.
Final lyrics for this issue are from two bands just starting out, but who will be massive by the end of the decade. Iron Maiden with Running Free and Def Leppard with Hello America. #34 and #45 respectively.
A free flexi-disc is promised for the next issue (yay!) and matters for this issue come to a close with a pic of Dave Edmunds on the back cover. Obviously he’s holding a guitar.
The fifteenth in my series and the cover stars this time are two gentlemen whose current incarnation had already peaked, but would linger for a little while and get further mentions in 1980 issues of SH. Post-1980, both would go on to other things – Trevor Horn as the 80s uber-producer and Geoff Downes as part of Asia, who would get a #1 album and 3 Top 20 singles in the USA, but didn’t grab the attention of the British record-buying public in quite the same way.
Into the magazine and after a couple or reappearances, the Page 2 lyric is shunted out of the way for a full page advert for the new Blondie single, Atomic. I’m not entirely sure a full page advert was needed – Blondie were huge at this point and anything new was going to sell well and get massive amounts of airplay.
Over on Page 4, Dave Edmunds saw himself back in the Top 40 for the penultimate time with a cover of Singing The Blues, the words for which share space with the lyrics for a song by a band who were having what turned out to be their biggest hit.
Steve Wright clearly felt they had a bright future ahead of them and I still can’t quite fathom how this never got any higher than #40. My eldest heard it for the first time a few weeks back and he assumed it had fared better.
Across the page, The Tourists are back getting it all to themselves with a large pic and the words to their second and final Top 10 hit, So Good To Be Back Home Again.
The cover star interview follows with Fred Dellar asking the questions. I always refer to them as Buggles, because that’s what’s on their album sleeves, but the records themselves say The Buggles. It seems their first effort in the recording world was producing demos for Tina Charles and they major on loving working in the studio and differentiating themselves from “New Wave”. We’re even told that big names have approached them – something that will become apparent later in 1980….
After the words to Cliff Richard’s Carrie, we get to the Bitz pages. Identity Crisis is just too easy (it’s Russell Mael from Sparks), and the Top 10 comes courtesy of The Selecter’s Pauline Black – two from The Rolling Stones among an otherwise varied mix and Joan Armatrading’s Love And Affection is described as “the most underrated single of all time”. I can only assume Pauline felt it should have topped the Charts rather than peaking at #10. Which to me isn’t all that underrated.
There’s a big feature on the Bitz pages about two young brothers, aged 11 & 5. Adam and Dominic Tinley respectively are known as Stupid Babies and had gained some airplay for a track entitled Babysitters, which featured on a Fast Product compilation. Reassuringly both boys are described as being “still at school”. It’s not the easiest of listens.
Intriguing that D.A.F. were on the same compilation. If you did play the video, you will no doubt have spotted that ten years later, Adam Tinley would have a #1 in the UK as Adamski. Babysitters was not included as a B-side.
There’s an interview with The Revillos, whose current release was featured in the previous issue, and then words for Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel and Jefferson Starship’s Jane. Losing the “Jefferson” would see the latter grab some serious Chart action later in the decade.
And then it’s our fortnightly visit to the world of Disco with Rob Jones choosing The World Is A Ghetto by War as his “Pick”. Needless to say, this one fell in the middle of a four year absence from the Charts for War. The Disco words this time come courtesy of Brass Construction who inform us that Music Makes You Feel Like Dancing and Billy Ocean who enquires Are You Ready. I have no recollection of either.
Those Madness boys fill up the centre pages where they all appear as though they are part of a seven person piggy back. The fact that “load carrier” Chris Foreman is smiling gives away a clever bit of staging.
Part 2 of the Sting interview, which began in the previous issue, is next. It includes a photo of Sting with Last Exit, his former band. “Can you see this lot getting on Top Of The Pops?” the caption asks. Well, perhaps not in 1980, but they wouldn’t have looked wildly out of place a few years earlier. Sting also reveals that “I have a huge ego”.
Moving swiftly along, words follow for featured track on the previous post, TV from The Flying Lizards, and a song about a phone box by some chancers from the Wirral.
Only their second single, but the first on a major label, it reached #67. It would be nearly five years before a single of theirs peaked that low again (and that would be for an ill-advised fourth single from an album). There’s still a barely disguised Kraftwerk influence on this one, but that would lessen with subsequent releases.
Michael Jackson had another release out from the Off The Wall album – Rock With You was another hit and we get the words for that.
David Hepworth seems in a particularly curmudgeonly mood on the Singles review page, dissing most of what he hears, including this.
He may have had a point, as it didn’t chart, but I’ve listened to Magazine a lot over the years, and I’m particularly fond of this one.
The Albums pages see a 9/10 score for Sparks’ Terminal Jive (as you may have picked up previously, I’m a huge fan of the Mael brothers’ work, but that score does seem a little high). Bottom of the heap are jazz-funk outfit, Spyro Gyra, who’d had a hit the previous year with Morning Dance, 3/10. A track entitled Percolator is described as one of the best. I can only imagine.
The Request Spot, fresh from a foray into 1976 last time around, is back in its “safe space” of 1978 with the words to Mongoloid by Devo. There seem to be varying opinions out there regarding the appropriateness of this one.
Talking of which, the next set of lyrics are for a track that some have also considered to be inappropriate – Turning Japanese by The Vapors, although songwriter Dave Fenton has said that the song is not about what people think it’s about. This would be their only Top 40 hit.
Rounding off the lyrics for this issue are Hands Off…She’s Mine from The Beat and an escapee from the Disco pages – And The Beat Goes On from The Whispers. Their first UK hit, going all the way to #2.
Suzi Quatro features as the back page star – looking a bit glum. Maybe she realised that her Top 40 days were now over.
And that’s it for this one. I’m over a week later than I’d have liked, but last week I was in full house clearance mode as we sold what had been the family home since 1973 last Friday. I think my sister and I are still a bit emotional about it all – but at least I rediscovered and rescued all those copies of Smash Hits!
TGG
3 responses to “Smash Hits: February 21 – March 5 1980”
Other than for the next issue, I can’t be sure which tracks I’ll pick, but I do try and avoid anything too well-known. I’m sure synths will feature among the selections as I wend my way through 1980.
The 14th issue of my Smash Hits odyssey, and the first time that there has been a reappearance of a previous cover star act.
Yes, the pin-up boys (for much want of a better word) of early 1980 are back as So Lonely is released and makes its first chart appearance in the second week of the period covered by this issue, eventually reaching #6. This is not the only reason they are staring at the purchaser in full colour, as will be revealed shortly.
The Page 2 lyric was turned over to the returning Rezillos, who were now The Revillos, following a split and contractual issues necessitating the change of name. They got themselves on to Top Of The Pops (ironically) and also Swap Shop, the BBC’s Saturday morning offer for the younger viewer.
The nation’s youngsters proved to be a tough audience and Motorbike Beat only sped up the Charts as far as #45.
Over the page and a couple of the early synth hitmakers’ lyrics share a page. Buggles, back with The Plastic Age (when I saw The Trevor Horn Band a few years ago, the man himself described it as “one for the aficionado”), and New Musik, getting their first Top 40 hit with Living By Numbers. Both acts would seem rather passé just twelve months on.
Across from them and hallelujah! Elvis Costello’s record label woes (as mentioned in the previous issue) had been resolved and so we’re treated to the words of I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down – a cover and another big hit for Elvis and The Attractions.
And now we know why The Police were on the cover. This issue sees the first of a series of four band interviews. “But there were only three of them!”, I hear you cry. Well, yes – but one of them just had to have his interview stretched over two issues. In this one Sting (for it is he) “talks to David Hepworth about The Beatles, Quadrophenia, Newcastle, hard times and world domination”. Amazingly, that does leave some scope for part two next time where we’re told “Sting chats about fame, politics, his future plans and lets David Hepworth look down his throat”. Can’t wait. We also get a full page colour photo of the man formerly known as Gordon Sumner, wearing a garish sort of cardigan with a zip thing that only a badly-advised pop star would wear.
The Bitz pages have a competition. The “2-Tone trademark”, Walt Jabsco and his new female companion are the subject of said contest. Basically the reader is invited to draw one or both of them in such a way that they illustrate a song title. I imagine they got some “interesting” responses. Johnny Ramone provides his all-time Top 10, including his own band’s first album!
There’s also a little quiz on the Bitz pages under the heading Identity Crisis. “My Dad was an R.A.F, officer, my first band was called Kippington Lodge, I once had a hit in Japan with a song called “Rollers We Love You” and I’m rather attached to a certain Welshman. Who am I?” They give the answer a couple of pages later, but you’ll have to wait until the end of this post (if I remember).
The Bitz pages also introduce us to this lot (the lyrics for this appear at the end of this issue, but I’ve decided I’ve typed long enough without a musical interlude).
It only reached #40, but bigger hits were ahead.
There are then three sets of lyrics from “older” artists, kicking off with rockabilly flavour of the month, Matchbox and Buzz Buzz A Diddle It, stylish synth-pop from Jon & Vangelis with I Hear You Now and then Sad Cafe’s follow-up to big hit Everyday Hurts, Strange Little Girl, which didn’t do so well and had me singing The Stranglers’ song of the same name from a couple of years later as I just typed it there.
The inaugural Smash Hits Poll form follows – I never sent mine off, but The Jam, Elvis Costello and Gary Numan feature on what I did fill in. I’ve seen Weller (and From The Jam), Costello and Numan a number of times over the years. so clearly my musical taste was getting set in stone to some degree at the age of thirteen.
The Disco pages are next. Rob Jones is truly back on form, picking a song that will only reach #43 and is nigh on impossible to dance to.
Listening to it now, probably for the first time in forty-five years, I’m somewhat staggered that it even made #43. It was certainly helped by the fact they’d had their Big Hit the previous summer. The Flying Lizards would not have any further hits – I think I may have even worked out that career trajectory forty-five years ago!
Elsewhere on the Disco pages there are two sets of lyrics – Kool & The Gang are back with Too Hot (not an obvious title for a winter release) and Sister Sledge with Got To Love Somebody, a #34 hit that I don’t recall.
The centre pages have a photo of The Who from 1966, as the interest in all things mod continued.
An interview with The Ramones follows along with the words to their biggest UK hit, Baby, I Love You. Produced by Phil Spector, there’s only a fleeting mention of him in the interview, but the reader is left with the impression that recording may have been a little awkward.
Next, lyrics for two more songs by artists I’ve heard of for songs that I haven’t. Amii Stewart and Paradise Bird and Commodores with Wonderland.
The Request Spot finally drags itself kicking and screaming away from 1978 and goes back a couple of years from there to give us the words for The Damned’s New Rose.
The Singles reviews (by Julie Milton) contain little of interest, apart from one track, which stirred the old memory as I’m pretty sure I heard it once or twice, despite it being yet another that didn’t sell enough to crack the Top 75.
I have to say I rather like it, and I am now 100% convinced I heard that on the radio, probably in the evening, back in early 1980. Released on Cherry Red, it would re-emerge the following year on Virgin (I assume re-recorded) and still fail to “shift units”. Which is a great shame.
The Album reviews are interesting. Top score is an 8/10 for Buggles and The Age Of Plastic, with John Foxx’s Metamatic and, ahem, The Flying Lizards scoring just half a point less. I own two of these three albums – I’m sure you can guess the odd one out. Elsewhere, the debut album from Prince clocks in with just 5/10.
There’s a Joe Jackson interview where he says that he doesn’t care to be pigeon holed in terms of fashion or factions and that he’s more interested in the music. Well he’s certainly made a career by having that attitude.
John Foxx’s Underpass lyrics put in an appearance – a song I still love to bits, and which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. I used to get annoyed when people at school referred to it as “Underpants”.
Final lyrics are for the aforementioned Dexys, before the back page pin-up (?) of a band who looked even older than The Police. That’ll be them Matchbox chaps.
Just rifling back through the magazine, I spotted a positive Singles review of another late night radio favourite from the time, and another for which I have the album it belongs to. It’s also another non-hit, but it’s so good, I just have to put a fifth track on here.
Another band who would stick around through the forthcoming decade, with the occasional hit.
The answer to the Identity Crisis quiz was of course, Nick Lowe.
I nearly – nearly – found the time to wrote about something other than Smash Hits last week. I live in hope.
It’s Russell & Ron from Sparks who grace the front page this time. I imagine much was expected of When I’m With You (mentioned last issue) – it was their first new material since the successful Giorgio Moroder collaborations of the previous year. But it didn’t trouble the Charts and as noted in a previous post, they wouldn’t be back there until 1994.
Long hair ahoy on Page 2 as a couple of sets of lyrics appear: Young Blood by UFO and the rather more successful Babe from Styx.
A couple of 1979’s big hitmakers are on Page 4. Firstly Joe Jackson and what would be another sizable hit with It’s Different For Girls and this from Lene Lovich – another non-hit.
There are videos available online of Lene performing this live in recent times, including from the 2022 Electric Ladies tour, when we saw her at Buxton – with her own unique way of introducing the song.
Across the page are the words for The Boomtown Rats’ Someone’s Looking At You, which saw them back in the Top 5 after the relatively poor performing Diamond Smiles a couple of months earlier.
Over the page and the lyrical onslaught continues with Fleetwood Mac’s Sara and some words by a photo of a bearded and bespectacled man in an overcoat holding a pineapple. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Rupert Holmes (born Northwich, Cheshire, real name David Goldstein, English mother and American father, moved to New York aged 6), in the Charts in the country of his birth, reaching #23 and getting a #1 in his “new” country. Escape (The Pina Colada Song) has continued to be a nice little earner for him as it was included on the soundtrack to 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy. I’ll save for another day the tale of how knowing this won me a quiz prize around 2016 or so.
In the Bitz pages, Elvis Costello was having record label issues following the collapse of Radar and the proposed release of his new single on 2-Tone had fallen through. Spoiler alert – it did get released fairly soon afterwards on a new label. We’re also introduced to The Regents, purveyors of “one of the best chart entries so far this year”. (This would have been written in mid-January for Heaven’s sake!). The lyrics appear on the last page of the magazine, but so as to balance out the links in this piece, I’ll drop this here…
(There is an earlier TOTP appearance out there, but it contains the voice of a presenter I’m assuming none of us would want to hear).
The piece also refers to the fact there were two versions of the song, one which was “radio friendly” and one which was deemed unacceptable. Oh, the hypocrisy of the BBC. This was one of only two Chart appearances for The Regents, reaching #11. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything else that they recorded. Maybe I should.
Rounding off the Bitz pages, we’re treated to the Top 10 of Bill Hurley of The Inmates. With the exception of Pretty Vacant, every track was at least ten years old.
The two-page cover star interview with the Californian brothers follows. It’s mostly a conversation with Russell (lead singer, less scary-looking of the two for those who don’t know) in which has reveals that whilst over in England, he’s been checking out The Human League, with whom he is mightily impressed.
Lyrics follow for Dr Hook’s Better Love Next Time and The Nolans’ I’m In The Mood For Dancing. I can’t say I’m a fan of either, but it was sad to hear of Linda Nolan’s recent death.
The Disco pages next and Rob Jones is back. Having picked a couple to Top 20 hits in his most recent columns, a couple of issues’ rest seems to have done him some good and he’s back on form. This issue’s non-hit is from Rufus and Do You Love What You Feel. Rufus would of course hit the Charts a few years later with Chaka Khan and Ain’t Nobody.
Two sets of lyrics on the Disco pages – a previous pick of Rob’s in We Got The Funk by Positive Force, and one I’ve just gone and listened to because I don’t recall it really being a Disco tune. I still don’t think it is. Bee Gees and Spirits (Having Flown).
Pretenders grace the centre pages with just a single chair for a prop.
Then there’s an interview with Harry Casey, or KC. He was back in the Charts with his Sunshine Band – song lyrics were in the previous issue.
David Hepworth is back reviewing the Singles. Early on there’s mention of a “much fancied new band” and a song that “promises good things to come”. I remember hearing this and possibly another from the band on late night radio.
Needless to say, this failed to chart and indeed novelty act Holly And The Ivys show up in my Book Of Hit Singles, but not Holly And The Italians. A crying shame. Tell That Girl To Shut Up would itself go on to get to #45 in 1988, courtesy of Transvision Vamp.
The Albums reviews see Red Starr re-reviewing Simple Minds’ Real To Real Cacophony as “repeated plays have revealed its true brilliance”. It gets an upgrade to 9.5/10. Two debut albums also get 9/10 – those from Pretenders and M. Two acts whose careers would go in very different directions.
Interviewed last time, The Selecter see the words for Three Minute Hero appear this time around. Another new ska band are interviewed in this issue – The Beat, who were charting with their cover of Tears Of A Clown. Interviewer Ian Cranna signs off the interview predicting “You haven’t heard the last of The Beat, not by a long chalk”, having had a sneak preview of the follow-up single Hands Off…She’s Mine.
Once again we find ourselves back in 1978 with the Request Spot and the words for Skids’ Sweet Suburbia.
The final two sets of words are for the aforementioned 7Teen from The Regents and for Suzi Quatro’s Mama’s Boy, which proved to be a little less successful than her previous hit, peaking at #34. She hasn’t been back to the Top 40 since.
Closing photo is of Robin Scott (M). smartly attired (including a hat) lying over a load of magazines. I guess it meant something to someone.
For the final track I’ll go back to another single that was reviewed. The Jags’ follow-up to Back Of My Hand was called Woman’s World and spent one week in the Charts – at #75. It’s nowhere near as good as the Big Hit and features the line “a woman don’t think straight”. The lowly Chart placing suggests that perhaps they did.
TGG
One response to “Smash Hits: January 24 – February 6 1980”
Around this time 45 years ago, I’d have been eagerly casting my eye over the song lyrics in the 12th issue of Smash Hits that I’d purchased. I’d have been treating this with far more importance than my schoolwork, resulting in a spectacular mark of 4% in a Physics exam that I’d forgotten we were having. To be fair, the mark may not have been a great deal higher had I revised, as there was clearly a lack of any semblance of basic aptitude for the subject. It’s fair to say that at the pre-“dropping subjects for O-Level” era of Year 9 (as it’s now called), most of my teachers would have been more than a little surprised that five years later I’d be at university, having achieved over and above the grades required to get there. I think I would have been, too.
For the first issue of the 1980s, it’s rather fitting that the cover stars are the band that had the first new #1 of the decade.
Having had a flick through, it still feels a little lighter on content than the last few 1979 issues, but I think January was always a relatively slow month for new releases and significant movements in the Charts.
The good news is that the Page 2 lyric is back. The less good news is that it’s from a band that nobody was tipping to be the “Sound Of The 80s”, despite their song reaching #3 in the first week of the year – Fiddler’s Dram and Day Trip To Bangor. That shares a page with an ad for wrinkly old Sad Cafe’s new single. The year could only get better.
And indeed it does, with The Beat’s (well, Smokey Robinson’s) Tears Of A Clown and a mammoth set of words for the song that would replace Pretenders at the Chart summit – Too Much Too Young from The Specials.
Over the page and there are the words for Blondie’s Union City Blue, accompanied by a photo of just the one member of the band. No prizes for guessing who. Below that is an advert that has been printed upside down for a single that never made the UK Charts, but did reach #1 in France. One must assume that the upside-down thing was deliberate as it’s a single by Sparks – one that’s still a key part of their live show.
The Top Of The Pops production team probably breathed a collective sigh of relief that they didn’t have to put that slightly unsettling video on the programme.
Over the page there’s a song from an act that many people think were a one hit wonder, but this one did stagger it’s way to #33.
Interestingly, the photo accompanying the words looks very much like it came from this performance.
The Bitz pages have the usual Top 10 feature – this time from Jo Callis Of Shake. I had no idea who he, or they, were, but two years later he’d be celebrating having a Christmas #1 with The Human League. Two of Jo’s Top 10 are by the Barry Gray Orchestra. There’s also a picture-free article about a band who it appears had enjoyed a difficult summer and autumn but who would go one to have a number of hits – The Cure.
There’s then the cover star interview, a whole page of readers’ “wacky” photo booth pics for a Madness competition a few issues previously that I didn’t bother mentioning and the words for two songs that had me reaching for the off button at the time – Abba and I Have A Dream and the horrific Beatles cover from Dollar – I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
Rob Jones is once again absent from the Disco pages. Has he gone for good (I genuinely can’t remember)? Three sets of words: Billy Preston & Syreeta and With You I’m Born Again, KC & The Sunshine Band with Please Don’t Go (both of which I remember) and Earth Wind & Fire with Can’t Let Go, of which I have no recollection.
The centre pages treat us to three photos which between them include all four members of Pink Floyd, suggesting that they perhaps didn’t like spending time with each other….
There’s then an interview by the legendary Fred Dellar with Mike Oldfield, who had apparently lost quite a lot of money on his most recent tour. It’s difficult to feel too sympathetic though, when one of the accompanying photos has him sitting on the wing of a light aircraft that he presumably owns.
Boney M haven’t quite gone away yet. Barring remixes and re-releases, I’m Born Again (for which we are treated to the words) was their penultimate dalliance with the Top 40, reaching #35.
On to the Singles reviews and there are only a few – and no Album reviews at all. David Hepworth is once again in the chair and he turns his attention to a guy that Warner’s would probably had high hopes for. “Even the powerful production courtesy of Tony Visconti can’t give it the character it would need to hit”. He was right, too.
This was the first of only two UK chart entries for New Zealander, Griff, reaching #54. He’s still recording at the age of 67, with an album released in 2024.
The Singles reviews actually only occupy half a page, with the words to My Girl from Madness taking up the other half.
There’s then a feature on The Selecter, much of which is comments from Pauline Black, who clearly had more of interest to say than other members of the band. This is actually of great interest to me as last October, shortly before my eye operation, Mrs TGG and I travelled up to Stockport and The Light cinema to see a screening of Pauline Black : A 2-Tone Story. This was part of the Doc’n Roll festival and Pauline herself was going to be present for a Q&A with the film’s director afterwards. It was a superb film, telling me much I didn’t know about Pauline’s background and the struggles she’d faced. The Q&A session was also very interesting. The 1980 interview does indeed resonate with what I saw and heard last year. If you’ve not seen the film, there appear to be a few more screenings around the country (with Q&A) up until the middle of February. We need some Selecter.
A live show from 2017 and not too dissimilar from when I saw them as the Covid restrictions started being lifted. Sadly, Gaps Hendrickson passed away last year, and the film is dedicated to him.
Further lyrics follow with The Walk from The Inmates, which I vaguely remember and then the Request Spot. Go on, guess which year. Yup, you got it – 1978, and What Do I Get? from Buzzcocks.
The final set of words are for an older song that was back in the Charts with both its 1972 and 1975 versions, the former of which reached #12. This time around David Bowie’s John I’m Only Dancing would peak at exactly the same spot!
The back page photo is of The Clash, looking a lot more menacing than Billy Idol did on the same page in the previous issue.
A lot of the above were 1979 releases still making their way up the New Year Charts. The real 80s sounds will be landing soon enough.
As you can see, this was a slightly different issue of Smash Hits. Due to the late-December lull in new releases and lack of movement in the Charts during the latter half of the month, the editorial team had gone for a request edition. Regular followers will be pleased to note that there are, as usual, some requests for 1978 tracks.
I don’t intend to dwell too much on this issue as it is somewhat less interesting than any of the others thus far.
The tracks requested include some quite well-known ones:
Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights
The Boomtown Rats – Mary Of The Fourth Form
Abba – S.O.S.
The Police – So Lonely (soon to hit the Top 40)
The Who – My Generation (not included in Paul Weller’s Top 10 on the Bitz pages, of which more later)
E.L.O. – Mr Blue Sky
Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen
Blondie – (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear
The Undertones – Mars Bars
Squeeze – Take Me, I’m Yours
Ian Dury – Sweet Gene Vincent
The Bee Gees – Night Fever
Evelyn “Champagne” King – Shame
Tubeway Army – Bombers
Elvis Costello – Watching The Detectives
I suppose I’d better provide a link to one of them…
Obviously one of the many 1978 tunes!
Elsewhere there is the aforementioned Top 10 from Paul Weller, all culled from the previous couple of years. “You could put in any single by Wire, The Nips or The Skids because I like them all”.
There is a three page feature analysing the impact that Sex Pistols had, seeing as they were now no more and a photo feature of Blondie taken on set from a film, “Roadie” in which they were to star with Meat Loaf. There’s also a mention of “Union City” – already in the can, as they say and the devastating news that a remake of “Alphaville”, starring Debbie Harry and Robert Fripp was on indefinite hold.
There are some photos and some words about The Kenny Everett Video Show (from an episode that featured Pretenders).
There is also a two page article about the Teesside scene. Six bands are featured photographically: The Vultures, Shoot The Lights Out, Basczax (one of whom wrote the article), Bombay Drug Squad, Deja Vu and Discharge. I seem to recall a couple of lads at school with leather jackets with “Discharge” painted on, so they at least broke out from the local scene. The article’s writer, John Hodgson, has made a TV performance of a Basczax song available to view.
An altogether atypical magazine is rounded off with Billy Idol on the back cover, not looking entirely menacing.
Normal service would be resumed in the following issue – which I hope to cover in a timely manner.
I’ll be honest, the main motivator for getting this written is that the sofa bed in the study is being slept on by guests on New Year’s Eve and there are things on it that need to be tidied away. Like the above issue of Smash Hits, which has been lying on it since mid-September.
The good news is that my retina has been reattached, but I await a date for a secondary operation to remove the oil bubble that has facilitated the reattachment. I’m back at work, but my eye still hurts if I spend too long looking at a screen and while I can apparently drive legally, I’m pretty much avoiding doing so as it feels a bit weird.
Anyway, to the issue in hand.
Following the Page 2 ad (for the album “Sid Sings” – a classic – I’m sure you all have it) and the contents page, the cover stars latest release has its lyrics printed on a double page spread. London Calling sits with The Stranglers’ Don’t Bring Harry and a UK Subs cover version that I’d totally forgotten about.
Despite the TOTP appearance, it only reached #36. It may have fared better at a different time of the year.
The two page cover artist interview follows under the headline “Strummertime Blues”.
That pesky ad for the Boney M album is back again. I shudder to think how much Atlantic / Hansa lost on that one.
News on the Bitz pages includes a report from Swindon, where XTC had had their pictures added to a mural of the town’s Famous Sons And Daughters. They were now alongside the likes of Diana Dors, Justin Hayward, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Supertramp’s Rick Davies and Bruce the Begging Dog. A quick bi of Googling tells me that the mural no longer exists, having been taken down when it started to be affected by damp.
Also in the Bitz pages, The Tourists’ Annie Lennox (whatever happened to her?) picks her Top 10, which is very much fixed in the 60s and early 70s, including The Beatles, The Kinks, Bowie and Stevie Wonder. Also mentioned were a band who’d just over a year to wait until their one and only hit. This is a song from The Passions that I’ve just heard for the first time and I have to say I rather like.
There’s a page and a half interview with The Tourists, who were very much in vogue. before some words for the Chic-written and produced Spacer by Sheila B. Devotion and also My Simple Heart from The Three Degrees.
I did manage to complete the crossword in this issue, but the fact that it’s still there shows I opted not to try and win a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Across the page, a photo of Dave Edmunds holding a guitar in each hand is covered by the words to Crawling From The Wreckage – a song which brought an abrupt end to his run of two Top 20 hits, peaking at #59.
The Disco pages once again throw up a song I have no recollection of – Mellow Mellow Right On by Lowrell. It made #37, but evaded me. It continues to do so as the title has put me off any further investigation. Also there, and faring somewhat better (#13) are the words to Rose Royce’s Is It Love You’re After – the intro to which would make it to #1 in 1988 thanks to S’Express. Rob Jones’s pick is We Got The Funk from Positive Force, who he hadn’t heard of before. He’s on a roll is Rob – this one made it to #18, giving him two Top 20 picks in a row. Another of which I have no recollection.
Secret Affair are in full colour in the centre pages, peering through a venetian blind, not terribly secretively, as most of their faces are visible. As they would be for a poster photo.
Lyrics follow for Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall, which would have been hitting the top of the Charts during the period covered by this issue, and also Status Quo’s Living On An Island. There’s also an advert for The Best Of Sparks – a quick cash-in from Island Records featuring their mid-70s output and ignoring the recent hits on Virgin.
We get lyrics for the long-forgotten Christmas Day from Squeeze – a rare complete non-hit from them, before the Request Spot once again pitches us back to 1978 and Tom Robinson Band’s Glad To Be Gay.
David Hepworth is reviewing the Singles again. He gives a reasonable review to an early outing from Ian Broudie (and others) that you won’t find in a book of hit singles.
Much as I like Dream Baby Dream by Suicide, Hepworth’s review did strike a chord: “I waited for something to happen: I waited and waited and then I guess I must have dropped off…” Mrs TGG is on that page also, but for me, the lack of anything beyond the monotone is part of its charm.
In the Album reviews, three of them manage 8/10. The aforementioned Wall, Simple Minds and Real To Real Cacophony and an album, the title of which I always found intriguing, The Mekons and The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen. This was one of the recommended tracks from that one.
We move swiftly on to an interview with Wings. The band are described as “the most important thing” in the McCartneys’ lives (apart from their kids, obviously), which given they were now almost at the end of the road, is an interesting take. Alongside are the words to a record that in 1979, I described as the worst Christmas song ever. My opinion of Wonderful Christmastime has not wavered in the ensuing 45 years.
The final two lyrics are from two superstars – Michael Jackson with Off The Wall and Diana Ross with the Ashford & Simpson-penned It’s My House. She’d be back the following year with a Chic makeover.
Milking his ever so brief moment of fame, Dan-I (mentioned in the previous issue) is the subject of the back page photo.
The next issue is a Request Special. I need to have a read and decide what to do with that one. After that? Right now, I’m fired up to take this through the 1980 issues. I need to try and do these roughly 45 years to the week from when they were issued. A tall order given the various mishaps I seem to encounter, but even if I drift from the timescale, I’ll try to keep it going.
I might even put the odd post in from the other threads I’ve been so woefully neglecting of late.
All the best to you for 2025 and I can but hope for a more straightforward year for me personally.
What can possibly hold the answer to that question? I refer you to Karel Fialka.
Basically, I returned home from New England with blurred vision. It seems the worst thing I could have been doing was flying on aeroplanes as it transpired that I had a detached retina in my left eye.
This is my “not so good” eye, so I have been able to function, but staring at screens for any length of time wasn’t helping matters.
I had an operation last Monday (4th November). It was considerably more complicated than the surgeon had anticipated, with the retina being in a fairly poor state. I’ve had to spend the subsequent 5 days “posturing” – either with my head resting on a table, or lying face down on my front. It’s been fun. I have managed to listen to some music whilst basically immobile, but it’s been a fairly lonely existence stuck for all that time in the titular study.
I’m going back to Manchester Royal Eye Hospital on Wednesday for a review and discussion about further procedures – oh yes, there will be more!
For now, I’m going to sign off as I’m already getting a headache from the screen brightness, just typing this much. I would dearly have loved to go on to Discogs and find that there was / is a band called Detached Retina, whose music I could provide a link to. But sadly, good taste has prevailed.
I’d hoped to get the nest Smash Hits posting out there before we went away, but I’ve ended up spending way more time than I imagined sorting out a number of issues regarding my mother’s estate – and it’s not even that complicated an estate. I’m mentioning this because nobody ever tells you what a pain in the whatsit dealing with an estate can be. So I’m telling you – because I’m good like that.
Anyway, there will follow at least ten days of silence as we go and look at things in another part of the world we’ve not been to before.
Where are we going? Well, the last two words of this song title describe an area best visited in the fall.
And we’ll be starting our trip in the city namechecked in these two performances. A song that I’ll readily admit to being very fond of.
I remember both performances – and absolutely loving this tune at the age of ten. It did prompt me to purchase some Alex Harvey albums in later years, and I really need to listen to them more, as I found then to be very enjoyable.
I doubt whether I’ll return with tales from an ex-punk tour guide like we had in Slovenia, but you never know. Health issues will be preventing me from fully embracing the craft beer culture out there, but I’m sure I’ll sneak one or two in with a meal.
I’ll aim to get 1979 done Smash Hits-wise before the end of October. – and then make a call as to whether I can summon the energy and enthusiasm to plough through the 26 issues of 1980.
The 9th gripping instalment of the lost for many years TGG pop mag archive.
This one was clearly bought on the way to school as I saw fit to write my name and class number on it (now obscured). And those Madness boys get their first cover shot, already beginning to cultivate that “Nutty Boy” image. I don’t think their then current release, One Step Beyond, would have required any printing of lyrics, so whoever looked after their publicity did well to keep them in view.
Page 2 sees an advert again – this time a re-run of the one for the Boney M album that the record company was probably beginning to panic a little over by now.
ELO’s Last Train To London lyric is on Page 4 across from two from The Police. Future #1 Walking On The Moon (probably my least favourite of their hits), and a re-release from the days when Andy Summers wasn’t in the band, and Henry Padovani was. It did at least chart this time around, peaking at #47. In case you’ve missed it…
Official video supplied by the record label. No sign of Mr. Padovani.
Going back to the ELO tune, that was part of a double A-side with Confusion. Why the Smash Hits editorial team chose one side over the other will remain an mystery. The Specials had both sides of their current single printed last time out. More interest in the 2-Tone band than a long-established act among the relatively young target readership?
Charly Records were pushing the boat out with a full page ad for Sex Beatles and their single Well You Never. Well I never heard it then, nor have I since as far as I’m aware. This state of affairs is not helped by its only apparent online presence being as part of an 11 minute video, which I can’t be bothered to watch. The band also get a mention in Bitz. It wasn’t a hit.
Across, there’s a page for those who were thinking it was 1959 rather than 1979, as the words for Showaddywaddy’s A Night At Daddy Gee’s shares some space with Matchbox and Rockabilly Rebel. It’s OK – I’ve not looked for the videos of either of them.
The Bitz pages give a welcome to The Beat – “the latest combo to get the Two Tone treatment”. Secret Affair’s Ian Page picks his Top 10 (lots of soul, with two from Otis Redding, as well as Bowie, The Who and, er…, Rachmaninov). And another “brother revelation” – Undertones bass player Mickey Bradley’s brother Martin had recently appeared on Mastermind, answering questions about the films of Steve McQueen.
Following on from the previous issue’s high scoring album review, there’s a two page interview with Marianne Faithfull, including the words to this (yes, I know I linked another one on the previous issue’s post. but I like these songs).
Originally recorded by Dr Hook in 1974. I’ve never heard their version, but I can kind of imagine what it may sound like – in the style of Sylvia’s Mother, rather than some of their later releases.
There’s an interesting advert for a six-track album celebrating the first year of Fast Product – Mutant Pop, featuring 2.3, The Human League, Gang Of Four, Scars, Mekons. Research tells me the these was a sixth band on the release – The Flowers, who somehow dodge the advert. Remember, this magazine was also carrying a Boney M advert!
I failed to enter the crossword competition to win a copy of Skids’ Days In Europa. Why? Despite several letters being present, I did not know the name of the drummer from The Rolling Stones! My only defence is that at this point in my life, I was completely indifferent to the band. (I was still some years from discovering that Paint It, Black was #1 when I was born).
There seems to be a high advert content in this issue (not unreasonable given the time of year) and the words to Secret Affair’s Let Your Heart Dance are tucked away in the middle of album adverts for The Jam and strange bedfellows for those two – Racey. The latter available for a limited period at “only £3.99”. Hmm.
With a turn of a page, we get to the Disco section and the words to a couple of tunes that I assume would have been festive floor-fillers in 1979. The Isley Brothers with It’s a Disco Night (Rock Don’t Stop) Parts 1 & 2 (I’ve somehow resisted the urge to see how many more parts there may have been) and My Feet Keep Dancing from Chic. Rob Jones once again has a non-disco pick for us, but by jingo, he’s only gone and chosen a future #1! “This week my pick is quite an event because it’s the first time this group have brought a single out in ten years”. Yes, it’s Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2. Playing it safe there was Rob.
The centre pages treat us to a full colour picture of Lene Lovich Band – all five of them standing around in various poses in some cod futuristic setting.
Suzi Quatro’s recent re-emergence qualifies her for a two page interview and then we get the words for The Tourists’ cover of I Only Want To Be With You (which I duly purchased) and then a competition where you could win one of 10 copies of The Ricky Nelson Singles Album. I remember asking my parents who Ricky Nelson was and they seemed as bemused as I did as to why 1979 teenagers would be remotely interested. One for the Matchbox fans perhaps.
Cover stars Madness get a one and a half page interview. One fun fact is that Stiff boss Dave Robinson heard their ska version of Swan Lake and asked which of the band had written it! I’m sure he was thrilled to see that in print.
Next set of lyrics is for Skids’ Working For The Yankee Dollar – I remember learning these so I could sing along to my copy of said single. Well, I say single – it was (and indeed still is) a limited edition double pack with this one, which I really liked at the time, as the “A side” of the second disc.
I was familiar with the Mott The Hoople version at least, and thought this was a lot more fun.
The singles reviews follow, including the following comment regarding Eagles’ The Long Run – “This is the best track from their latest album. This isn’t saying much”. How we chuckled. Albums-wise, The Jam’s Setting Sons gets 9/10 with Private Hell and Girl On The Phone being deemed the best tracks. I’ve played that album many a time and my opinion as to the best tracks changes regularly. Low score is narrowly avoided by The Dickies’ Dawn Of The Dickies and goes instead to an Italian disco outfit called Revanche (3/10). Their main crime seems to be releasing a song called 1979: It’s Dancing Time in November rather than January.
Request Spot is once more back in 1978 for The Jam’s David Watts. You know, the one that’s actually originally by The Kinks. Ray Davies is at least name-checked as writer.
A further reminder of the time of year is provided by an advert for Mike Oldfield’s cover of the Blue Peter theme tune. A couple of years later, I was taking part in a German exchange visit through school and a German lad stayed with us. He was very into music. His present to me was a cassette of Volume One of The Best Of Barclay James Harvest – a band quite local to me, who I had never previously had any inclination to listen to! I took him to the local record emporium and there in the Reduced To Clear box was Mike Oldfield’s Blue Peter. Even when I told him it was a kids TV theme tune, his enthusiasm didn’t wane. He was overjoyed at purchasing a Mike Oldfield tune that his older brother didn’t own! Amazingly, we are still in touch 43 years later (attended each other’s weddings, etc) – I must ask him about that single some time.
Above the Blue Peter advert are the words for Que Sera Mi Vida (If You Should Go) by Gibson Brothers and across from that, words for a song I have no recollection of, but which made #30. It’s the one and only hit for Dan-I (real name Selmore Lewinson – you can see why he changed it). There had been a mention of him in Bitz. He seems to be quite a character and has a catchphrase: “Nicely, nicely”. I thought I’d listen to the tune…
I’ve not been terribly flattering about the Disco tunes mentioned in this series. This one’s OK as tunes in this genre go. I think it had the potential to be a bigger hit. Mrs TGG would probably love it, but she’s currently asleep, so her opinion will have to wait.
Final set of words is for a song that was already out and would eventually reach #1, but would take over a month to do so. That’ll be Pretenders and Brass In Pocket.
The back page photo sees us treated to a hard stare from Elvis Costello. We probably deserved it.
I was beginning to wonder if this series was running out of steam, but this piece seems to have taken me longer to write than any previous post and I really enjoyed doing it, so I think I’ll carry on for the time being. I do need to remember that pretty much all my other series have ground to a halt. Ah well, there will at least be another En Vacances fairly soon.
Issue number 8 for me (and 25 in the Smash Hits canon). Oh – look who’s on the front! He does smile a lot more these days.
The usual lyric on Page 2 isn’t there – replaced by an advert, not as I first thought when looking at it now, an advert for men’s grooming products, but rather for The Bee Gees Greatest Hits. I guess the cassette version may have ended up in some 1979 Christmas stockings.
The first lyrics we do get are on Page 4 for a double A-side, although I only remember hearing A Message To You Rudy at the time. I guess this was a little less radio friendly as far as most people would have been concerned back then, containing as it does, a word that would have almost certainly upset the likes of Mary Whitehouse, who I imagine only listened to Radio 1 so that they could be outraged.
The song that didn’t give The Boomtown Rats their third consecutive #1, Diamond Smiles, has its words on the opposite page. I remember being somewhat underwhelmed by it at the time and I clearly wasn’t alone, as it only reached #13. I think I’ve warmed to it a little over the years, but it never sounded like a chart topper.
The cover star interview follows (along with the words to Complex) and we learn that Gary lost £30,000 on his recent tour – and that didn’t include the £3,000 that was donated to Save The Whale at the Hammersmith Odeon date. No wonder the next couple of years saw him being so prolific.
Genuinely no idea about the next set of lyrics. The band photo looks like it could have been taken at some point in the early 70s. Atlanta Rhythm Section and Spooky. OK, a quick bit of research and I do have an idea after all. It’s a song I’ve heard before, just not by this lot.
If only I’d read Bitz first! There’s a potted history of Spooky contained within, specifically that in the US, it was a hit in 1968 for Classics IV, two members of whom were now in ARS. #46 for Classics IV in the UK and two places lower for ARS in 1979. At least there was some consistency to the British indifference.
We learn that John Cooper Clarke couldn’t get an Equity card under that name, as someone else was already on their books, so he was going to use the name Lenny Siberia. The Adverts had announced they were splitting up and new Skids keyboardist, Alistair Moore, is revealed to have a twin brother who plays football for Cowdenbeath.
The Top 10 slot features all five Undertones, with Sex Pistols, New York Dolls and Slade all getting picked on three occasions.
Said Undertones are then interviewed. And then we get to the words to this one.
After their recent couple of Top 20 placings, this only made it as far as #45. I prefer the longer album version, as I do for the track which I believe would have made a better third single from No. 1 In Heaven – La Dolce Vita. Whatever. The Brothers Mael’s next UK Top 75 appearance would be in October 1994! They will however feature on a Smash Hits cover in 1980 and some of us did keep the faith over the next fifteen years.
The Disco pages – words for Still by Commodores and the 12″ version (so it says, I wouldn’t know) of Ladies Night by Kool & The Gang – the first of 22 hits that they will enjoy over the next decade. Rob Jones sort of gets it right with his Disco Pick – Right In The Socket by Shalamar. Their fourth hit, reaching #44, but they would see bigger hits in the next few years.
The centre pages feature John Lydon in his checked suit, holding the mic under the heading Public Image Ltd. So who played the music then?
Then there’s an interesting Chic interview, where it becomes clear there’s a bit more substance to them than just being a disco outfit, with Nile Rodgers revealing he’s always wanted to be a rock guitarist. Having seen him live, I guess he’s doing a bit of that now in amongst all his hits that he plays.
More lyrics, with BA Robertson and the second of his quartet of solo Top 20 hits – Knocked It Off. Next to that is Cliff and the amusingly unprophetic follow up to his recent chart topper. Hot Shot will only get to #46. This seems to be quite an issue for minor hits as the next set of lyrics is for Angelic Upstarts and Never ‘Ad Nothin’ (#52).
The Request Spot beggars belief, with Natalie from Manchester needing to see the words to Blondie’s Denis. Really? These are printed on yet another colour picture of Debbie Harry – and one I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere else.
The singles reviews cover the usual mix of future hits and stuff I’ve never heard, and all bases in between. Albums-wise, Madness, Stevie Wonder and Cabaret Voltaire among others all get middling reviews, with Gloria Gaynor’s 4/10 being the worst score. Two albums score 8/10. First up, a band I’m not familiar with (until just now). They’re described as “a fourpiece who knock the dreadful Knack into a cocked hat”.
The album’s called Present Tense and the above was listed as one of the two best tracks. I like a bit of power pop and I really wish I’d not had to wait 45 years to finally hear it. And yes – way better than The Knack.
The other top scorer may be a little more familiar, but I love the title track.
Released as a single in early 1980, it wasn’t a hit, although the first single, The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan (another great track), did make #48.
Remaining lyrics are for Gonna Get Along With You Now by Viola Wills and then a couple on the inside back page. Fleetwood Mac and Tusk, complete with named individual photos of the band and a future #1 from Dr. Hook, When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman, with no accompanying photo.
The issue is rounded of by a back page photo of The Selecter – all wearing suits and only Pauline not wearing a tie.
I’m still struggling to realise just what a huge variety of musical styles were featuring in a publication aimed at teenagers. At this stage, it does seem to still be very much about the music, with the helpful explanations thrown in for tracks like Spooky.
Apologies if you were wanting a trawl through another old issue of Smash Hits. That will come soon enough, but there’s a bit of catching up to do with recent live music experiences, including a few acts we’d not seen previouisly.
Sunday evening saw a jaunt to Wolverhampton and the Wulfrun Hall to catch Thomas Dolby, supported by Martin McAloon of Prefab Sprout. The choice of support was hardly a surprise given that Dolby twiddled the knobs of the production desk on a few Sprout albums, of course. It reminded me of another long-standing musical/production friendship that we witnessed last year, with Seal’s live band having a familiar-looking bass player – none other than Trevor Horn.
The Manchester date was on the Saturday, but an annual trip/booze-up on a barge with a group of friends clashed and we were never going to miss that, or be sufficiently sober afterwards to make it into town.
Wolverhampton city centre is absolutely dead on a Sunday evening – we tried for some time to book a restaurant for the pre-gig meal, only to find that anywhere we fancied was closed on a Sunday. So a few grey haired / white haired / bald folks all rocking up for some live music had but one choice for dining. The young staff at the Slug & Lettuce had never heard of either act and had probably never had to deal with a clientele whose average age was probably around fifty, if not more – all confused as to whether it was table service or order at the bar.
Talking of white hair, Martin McAloon has rather a lot of it. He’s also rather witty, telling us immediately that he’s not his brother. He also needs audience help when he can’t remember the first line of Bonny – all done in a way which endeared him to everyone. It’s just him and a selection of guitars. In my head, I was thinking that both Faron Young and The King Of Rock ‘n’ Roll would be tricky to play in this style, but both were trotted out, the latter sounding something like this:
In case you can’t hear, the audience is doing the “Hot Dog, Jumping Frog” bits while he sings Get It On (Bang A Gong). It’s fun if you’re there!
Thomas Dolby’s set was big on the visuals, relatively short in length, and spanned a number of his albums. The guy sitting next to me seemed to think that Dolby’s career began end ended with The Golden Age Of Wireless album, which annoyingly led to him continually shouting for a song that didn’t get played (Radio Silence). There were also some covers of varying length including opener Blue Monday, Cars, The Cure’s Lovesong and “Heroes”. The man himself looked remarkably young from Row X, where we were seated and enthusiastic at being able to play what he wants to play. He was back in the UK after a run of 80s shows in the USA where he had just a 25 minute slot. Apparently Men Without Hats played The Safety Dance twice in theirs!
Cars and Lovesong were tacked briefly onto the end of one of my favourite Dolby songs. What I hadn’t previously been aware of was that he wrote it as a tribute to the uncle he never met, “Because, you know, World War Two”.
Despite the visual above, this wasn’t on the original release of the album, but on the flip side of She Blinded Me With Science.
All in all, an enjoyable evening out, even if I did have to buy an XXL t-shirt as the XL just wasn’t generous enough.
A couple of weeks earlier, we’d been back at Rewind North for our annual immersion into live 80s music in an outdoor setting. I did a full write-up of last year’s event and don’t plan to repeat that (unlike Nik Kershaw, who I’m pretty certain did repeat the the same songs in the same order – very proficiently though, it has to be said). We’d seen many of the acts before, including headliners Billy Ocean (still has a decent voice) and Squeeze (who we’ll be catching up with again later in the year).
On the Saturday, I finally saw the band who played my Grad Ball in 1987 – Bad Manners. I didn’t attend – having opted instead to spend the weekend at Glastonbury, and it’s a decision I’ve never regretted. Not that I dislike Bad Manners – I’ve always wondered what they were like live. Turns out that they’re pretty good, with Buster Bloodvessel still leading the proceedings exactly as you’d expect him to. I couldn’t locate any decent live footage from recent times so I’ll plump for this, which they played along with most of the singles the released back in the early 80s.
I also managed to dance to Can Can without causing myself a major injury. I’m probably more proud of this achievement than I should be.
We saw Gabrielle for the first time – good voice, but only a couple of her songs really do anything for me, and also Shakatak (nice relaxing start to the Sunday proceedings, but all the tracks pretty much merged into one for me).
Also on Sunday, with one member remaining from the 70s, were Aswad. I enjoyed their set. They played three of the big late 80s hits, but also some earlier tracks, including this Toots & The Maytals cover which they took to #70 in 1984.
So we’re now up to date live-wise and it’s another month or so before we have a live show with a “name” artist. Whether I write about that will depend upon the content of the show and whether I can pull something together in a timely manner. In the meantime, it’s our local Jazz & Blues festival this weekend – lots of said music in local hostelries. I’ll be there!
Some more Smash Hits-ness is on its way. The cover star has had the odd mention on this blog recently.
The beginning of November 1979 saw my 7th purchase of Smash Hits, with a band on the cover that was very much in vogue at that time. As presumably was their attire.
The regular Page 2 full page lyric goes this time to Chic, who are back with My Forbidden Lover, which would be their last Top 20 hit until a remix of Le Freak in 1987.
Pages 4 and 5 have lyrics from three bands who were already beginning to feel a bit like the old guard. Public Image Limited and Memories (a somewhat less successful follow-up to Death Disco), the Tudor/Cook/Jones-penned The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle from Sex Pistols and The Stranglers, who begin a two and a bit year run of singles peaking between #36 and #42 with Nuclear Device (Wizard Of Aus).
The cover star interview follows with Richard Jobson defending Skids’ cover for the new Days In Europa album, denying any intention to glorify Nazism. Heavy, but educational, reading for me at 13.
Over the page, and there are the words for The Jam’s The Eton Rifles on the top half of the page, with yet another bizarre juxtaposition below – an advert for Gloria Gaynor’s “beautiful new album”.
The Bitz pages warn us that “Gooey duo Dollar revive The Beatles “I Want To Hold Your Hand” for their next 45. Is nothing sacred?” Apparently not. A future hit – and I’m guessing the lyrics were printed in a forthcoming issue. Also therein are details of The Jam’s forthcoming tour and an introduction to their support, who are just a matter of months from their Big Hit. They had a single out…
It’s reviewed later in the Singles – very favourably. Despite that and the patronage of The Jam (particularly Bruce Foxton and Paul Weller’s father – their manager), this didn’t crack the Top 75. It really should have done.
Staying with Bitz, The Members’ Nicky Tesco lists his All Time Top 10 – and it’s wide-ranging to say the least. The Rolling Stones, Marcia Griffiths, Frank Zappa and Stiff Little Fingers all feature.
We also get another sign of hitmakers-to-come beneath a photo of a disparate group of people standing by some trees. They feature “musicians on loan from various well-known outfits” and of course have a single out – another that failed to sell in a chart-bothering quantity.
Maybe the lyrical content was felt inappropriate for “fun” daytime Radio 1. But no matter – they only had just over 12 months to wait for their biggie.
There’s then a two-page illustrated article on Ver Quo, entitled Chonking All Over The World – “Rick Parfitt explains how it’s done, David Hepworth learns the basic chords”. Rick is asked if he can still see himself doing this at forty. He can. Just as well, as he went on a lot longer than that.
The next lyrics are for Thin Lizzy’s Sarah, featuring a rare photo with Midge Ure in the line-up. The fact that Midge was involved with Tar around the same time just underscores his versatility.
Two big 70s acts have lyrics printed. Suzi Quatro and She’s In Love With You and Abba with Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight).
Then it’s the Disco pages with the aforementioned Gloria Gaynor and the words for Let Me Know (I Have A Right). #32 peak, ahead of a 4 year absence from the UK charts. So much for that “beautiful new album”.
Rob Jones’ Disco Picks really are something. This time he takes us once again out from the realms of the glitterball and chooses a single from a band who are “already big in America – I’m sure they’ll become equally huge in Britain”. Er, no. They’ve already had their one big UK hit and this is the only other one they’ll have (#66). It’s The Knack and the awful “Good Girls Don’t”.
The Disco pages are rounded off with a tedious report from the Caister Weekender (I guess you had to be there) and the words for Dynasty’s I Don’t Want To Be A Freak (But I Can’t Help Myself), the long-winded title not preventing it from reaching #20.
The centre photo is of The Police. sitting socially distant on stools. Sting and Andy have guitars and look intense. Stewart has something in his hand – probably a cigarette (the photo is oddly blurry) – and is smiling. I’m glad at least one of them was happy.
The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindon is the title of an article about XTC (obviously). Mention is made of Andy Partridge saying Buggles Video Killed… wouldn’t be a hit (see previous issues).
There’s a quiz (answers supplied) where we are invited to guess the “pop celebrity” from their real names. One person on the list is someone we’re not supposed to mention any more….
Across from that, The Selecter make their bow with the words to On My Radio.
The request slot is taken up by a 1979 release that wasn’t featured in the magazine earlier in the year. I featured Gary Numan a couple of posts ago – but this isn’t technically a Gary Numan release. So here it is.
The Singles are reviewed by Steve Bush and feature a number of future hits that I guess will have their lyrics printed over the next couple of issues. There’s some weird stuff in there as well. Sarah Brightman with Love In A UFO, hoping for more Starship Trooper pay dirt, the delightfully titled My Balls Ache from The Meteors and the original version of Laura Branigan’s 1982 hit Gloria by someone else we can no longer mention (lots of 60s and 70s hits, very annoying, was a Radio 1 DJ and TV presenter); the lyrics were amended for the Branigan release. Also in there was a track I heard a few times on Radio 1 in the evenings and really liked.
It did get to #70, but I didn’t buy it, although works featuring members Bill Drummond and David Balfe would become part of my record collection in the future.
In the album reviews, The Specials gets 9/10 as does Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. Not such good news for last issue’s cover star though as The Fine Art Of Surfacing gets just 3/10. I do wonder if there was a Geldofian outpouring of expletives if the review was ever drawn to his attention. Only David Bendeth scores lower with 2/10 – it won’t be haunting him, as 45 years on, he’s a multi-platinum award winning record producer.
In among pages of adverts is a photo-free set of lyrics tor The Charlie Daniels Band and The Devil Went Down To Georgia. There are a lot of words for this one and there was a picture of them back in Bitz.
The final sets of words are for The Slits and Typical Girls and a Bob Marley song that I don’t remember hearing at the time despite a chart placing of #56. Still relevant.
Finally, the back page features a suitably enigmatic snap of Sparks.
That’s it! Another issue revisited. The next issue’s cover star has had a mention in this post.
And we’re naming the month in full again. Some indecisive editing was taking place.
It’s taken longer than I wanted. The writing mojo has been back, just focussed on lengthy reports for work and a beer/pub article or two. But there is the future Sir Bob, looking suitably unimpressed with being on the front cover and being separated from the other copies of the magazine in the box in which I’m now storing them. The free badge (as trumpeted on the cover) was more carefully removed then the previous issue’s flexidisc – I got an Ian Dury And The Blockheads one. I’m sure I still have it somewhere along with others that I accumulated from Smash Hits and also from Harlequin in Stockport Town Centre, which had a fine selection (and was where I first purchased a copy of Viz, long before it went mainstream). I grew up eventually.
Turning onto Page 2 – and it’s a page of lyrics for stuff my older cousin would have liked (and probably still does). Sad Café with Every Day Hurts, as they begin their brief run of hits and Goodbye Stranger from Supertramp, milking the Breakfast In America album for all it’s worth.
Buzzcocks and You Say You Don’t Love Me (not even a Top 75 placing) is joined on Page 4 by this little gem, which made it to #39.
We saw Lene in a show a couple of years ago in Buxton. She was every bit as bonkers as I would have expected – which was reassuring.
Page 5 has a huge black and white photo of The Undertones along with the rather sparse words to You Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It!).
Then we have a two page interview with our cover star entitled The Fastest Lip On Vinyl. Having had two Number Ones, he says he’s hoping for a third so he can beat Frank Ifield. I had no idea who Frank Ifield was in 1979, and even today can only think of him in relation to a song about yodelling. Why Frank Ifield? Surely there were other acts who’d got stuck on two Chart Toppers? Like The Boomtown Rats ultimately would!
The Bitz pages are less interesting then usual – Ian Dury lists his Top Twelve – Gene Vincent features. And the death of former Wings guitarist, Jimmy McCulloch, is mentioned.
Two pages of The Damned follow – an interview and the words to Smash It Up. and over the page are the words to the latest from Skids, Charade.
The crossword competition affords the reader a chance to win a mini TV or one of 25 copies of The Police’s Regatta De Blanc. I was one tantalising clue away from being able to submit an entry, the 13 year old me seemingly ignorant of Queen’s Seven Seas Of Rhye. Were that I was now!
The Request Spot sees a cast of several readers wanting the words to Anarchy In The UK. The readers include ones going by the names of Johnnie Vomit and Sara Spew.
By contrast, the Disco pages are next – Rob Jones is absent and so Radio Luxembourg colleague and very soon to be Radio 1 man, Steve Wright, steps in to select I Do Love You by G.Q. as the Disco Pick. Rob would have been proud – it didn’t chart. There are also lyrics for Star by Earth, Wind And Fire, which I vaguely remember (*1) and Sing A Happy Song by The O’Jays, which I don’t.
A head and shoulders photo of Debbie Harry takes up the centre pages, before 2 pages of Boney M including an interview and the words to El Lute, which looks as though it was the flip side to previous single Gotta Go Home (not that they had any previous for that sort of shenanigans…). There’s also a 2 page Kate Bush interview with a colour picture of her sitting on a sofa whilst seemingly conversing with the interviewer.
David Hepworth reviews the singles. Anything good there? Oh, yes…
It wouldn’t chart until the following June and should have done way, way better than #62. Both my sons have loved this since they were quite young, when they chanced upon me playing the above album. It features in the album reviews by Red Starr, getting a worthy 8/10. Also in the singles reviews is the debut single from another band who we’d hear a lot more from in the 80’s. A track that Hepworth described as “bubbling electropop…could see them in the charts”. Or not.
In the Album Reviews, as well as The Human League getting an 8, so do Skids with Days In Europa and 7.5s go to Wire with 154 and Gang Of Four’s Entertainment!.
Skipping past some adverts, there’s a page of reggae with words to Errol Dunkley’s O.K. Fred, which just missed the Top 10 and was responsible for a lot of inappropriate accents at school as people tried to “sing” it. There are also words to this one – less commercially successful, but the one I prefer of the two. Despite their link to a TV show, mentioned by David “Kid” Jensen at the start, this was their only hit, peaking at #35.
The issue rounds off with words to Sham 69’s cover of You’re A Better Man Than I (which I bought) and The Chords with Now It’s Gone. The back page photo is of Nick Lowe sitting on a stool with the obligatory guitar.
I only took photos of the first 6 issues of Smash Hits that I purchased, but I’ve enjoyed doing these write-ups far more than I thought I would. I shall take some more photos and guide you into November 1979 soon.
(*1) – I think the Al McKay version of EWF that I saw at Rewind North last year may have played it.
Mum’s funeral took place earlier this week. Everything went as well as it could have, with my sister and I managing to hold everything together as we delivered our respective parts of the eulogy. What was quite telling was that there were far fewer mourners than at my father’s funeral back in 2012 – many of those now no longer with us or too infirm to attend. It was good to catch up with people afterwards, all with fond memories of Mum – over a decent pint and the sort of cheese and onion pie of which Mum would have been demanding a second helping.
Over the last month, like it or not, we had tickets to three live events. These provided a pleasant distraction from sorting everything out. I don’t intend to give them the full Seen ‘Em Live treatment as that would make a very lengthy piece.
First up, in early June, was a trip to the Ritz in Manchester to see our perennial favourite, Gary Numan. I always thought I was the Numanoid, but Mrs TGG invariably seems so eager to see him live. This tour was a 45th anniversary canter through Replicas and The Pleasure Principle, not in strict order, but all mixed up, with the two #1’s left for the encore. Obviously live favourite (and mine too) from the latter album got a run out.
Then the following week saw our delayed first visit to the new Co-op Live arena in East Manchester. Not to see Keane as we’d expected (that’s now rescheduled for October), but for James – supported by Razorlight. As far as Razorlight went, I liked the songs I knew and I was less keen on anything they trailed with “this is from our new album”. I’ll leave that there.
James also have a new album out – Yummy. It’s got some good tracks on it. They played eight of them along with the usual crowd pleasers I’ve seen them play before, but not Say Something on this occasion, although after the show, there were plenty of people singing said song. I’d heard a couple of tracks from the album in advance of its release, but when I heard the whole thing, there was one track that prompted me to say to Mrs TGG that I hoped they would play it live. And they did. Footage from a couple of weeks earlier.
Finally, on the day after Mum’s funeral, we were back at Co-op Live to see The Killers supported by Travis. If you think that’s an odd combination, Fran Healy explained. Travis were supporting Oasis on a US tour, back in the day and played a gig in Las Vegas. It was that gig that inspired The Killers to form, and they used to do a cover of Side in their early sets. Dues being paid. Both acts have – gasp – new albums out. The Killers didn’t really major on theirs, with more than half the set coming from Hot Fuss and Sam’s Town.
The Killers were superb, and I’d certainly go and see them again – Brandon Flowers is just a born front man and entertainer. However, I’ll return to a comment I made to a mate who was elsewhere at the show – Travis are one of those bands that you forget just how much you like them. According to Mrs TGG, this has been on heavy rotation on Radio 2
As far as the Co-Op Live goes as a venue – the sound’s decent enough. It scores over the Arena in Manchester in terms of having bars, toilets, etc on all levels, rather than the massive queues all on one level. The mini Co-op shops are good if you fancy a hot pastry or a sandwich. There are loads of people directing you around the place – not sure how long that will last for, and because we’ve opted not to travel via the city centre, we can jump on an Ashton-bound tram and avoid a lengthy wait for public transport afterwards.
Finally, a quick tale from Slovenia. We’d decided to keep the news of Mum’s death from the other six people on our tour. Firstly so as not to put a dampener on things and also because I couldn’t face three days of people asking me how I was. We did a city tour of Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, with the tour guide looking like Iggy Pop was his role model – he certainly looked like he’d lived life and mentioned an ex-wife in unflattering terms at one point. He also took us to a place that produced a rather delicious blueberry liquor. Someone spotted a stage being set up in one of the capital’s many squares and asked what was going on. “Iggy” replied that an old punk band were playing there that evening. We’d miss this as we’d be at the airport ready to fly back when they played.
Curiosity got the better of me and I asked “Iggy” who the band were. He told me they were big locally and called Niet – he also mentioned that he’d been in a punk band (I didn’t fall over in shock), but hadn’t recorded anything. So here’s a bit of Niet, in more recent times.
My 6th copy of Smash Hits is looking at me and given the cover star, is asking in an expletive-ridden manner as to when I’ll write about it. Soon, I hope.
That was a fine and enjoyable read. It can’t have been easy to get things going again after all you had to be sorting out after your mum’s passing.
A wee heads-up if you like Travis. The band will be touring later this year as headliners, with the support soming from Hamish Hawk, who is quite the live act. Myself and Mrs JC caught him in a small venue in Berlin last year and then a few months back when he played his own headlining set at a sold-out Glasgow Barrowlands.
Just looked – the Manchester date is 6 December and the venue is the rather splendid Albert Hall.
Been to the Albert Hall on a number of occasions – a favourite venue of mine (I’ve written about it on the blog a couple of times, too, although not recently). Sadly, the Travis gig falls on the day when we’re at the Arena watching The Human League (hoping for Empire State Human, but knowing it probably won’t happen).
Sadly, during my holiday in Croatia & Slovenia, my mother passed away. My sister contacted me to say that Mum was close to the end, and I was able to talk via speakerphone to Mum about an hour or so before she passed. Given that she had survived being knocked over by a car on her way to work at the age of 60, leukaemia twice in her mid to late 60s, and losing her already limited vision at 67, she did amazingly well to live to the age of 89. Despite all of this, she looked after my father who had Parkinson’s, until his death in 2012.
As you may have picked up from previous posts, Mum spent her last 18 months away from what had been the family home since a move in 1973, in a nursing home, where the staff could not have treated her with any more respect and dignity than they did.
As well as being a strong, resilient character, Mum was a very creative person while she could still see, and regularly wrote humorous poems for departing colleagues and also made hundreds of Christmas crackers every year for various school fairs.
From previous posts, you may also have picked up on the fact that our house constantly had music playing. Not necessarily music that I liked, but there was always a radio, record player or cassette player pumping out something around the house. Mum always loved to sing along to tunes that she heard (whereas my father preferred playing items of cutlery on the kitchen worktops) and this was the way that in the nursing home, the staff were able to connect with her
I’ll leave you with what became Mum’s signature song in the nursing home and much as I want to write some more blog posts, as I promised 10 days ago, please bear with me as there is quite a bit of sorting out to be done right now.
There will now be a scheduled break, of at least 10 days, while Mrs TGG and I spend some time “looking at things” as she so delightfully puts it. That will include looking at interesting food on a plate and interesting beer in a glass.
And where are we off to, you ask. Well, obviously a certain prolific band had it in a song title.
And it would be remiss not to include an effort from a local act
We then travel from Croatia into Slovenia, visiting a number of places on the way, and will fly back from its capital.
For this, I had to turn to a band from York.
Just be thankful I didn’t have to resort to putting in links to the two countries’ respective recent Eurovision entries.
Expect more trawling through old copies of Smash Hits, Unsung Songs and waffle about board games once I’m back. Oh, and of course some Seen ‘Em Lives coming up, too.
And the editor has decided it’s OK to abbreviate the name of the month once again.
And lo, adorning the front page of my 5th copy of Smash Hits were the band who seemed to be getting a mention every issue – Squeeze. There was a very good reason for them being on the front of this one, and the clues are as intended in the top left-hand corner and also less intentionally (at the time anyway), by the two marks where I rather clumsily removed said flexi-disc from the cover. The track on the disc was obviously by Squeeze and was a Smash Hits exclusive, “not available anywhere else on Planet Earth”. That would actually be anywhere else apart from Europe, where it featured on a compilation released around the same time, entitled “Propaganda – No Wave II”. And also many years later where it surfaced on the Tube that is You, allowing me to share a link.
I still quite like the tune, if I’m honest, and I still have my flexi-disc somewhere in one of my boxes (along with some others that Smash Hits gave away over the coming months).
On then into the magazine, and on Page 2, two sets of lyrics. First up was the track that Andy Partridge dismissed last issue as “not a hit”. That would be the soon-to-be #1 from Buggles and Video Killed The Radio Star. It was around this time that one of the older teachers at our school mentioned to us that a former pupil was a member of “The Buggles” – Geoff Downes, who had departed on his journey to to pop and rock stardom some six years before we all landed there in 1977. I think we were more impressed with the old-timer being aware of the band than we were with an alumnus actually being in it. Also on Page 2 was The Dickies’ rather less successful cover of Nights In White Satin. This version was eclipsed by the re-release of The Moody Blues’ original a few weeks later, and for which I don’t recall the lyrics being reprinted. But I may be wrong….
More lyrics follow with some of the year’s big hitters, Dave Edmunds and Queen Of Hearts, Kate Bush with Them Heavy People from the On Stage EP and Blondie and Dreaming – my favourite song of theirs, but one I didn’t have a copy of until purchasing a compilation of theirs around twenty years later.
There follows a two-page interview with Stiff Little Fingers and the words to Straw Dogs, followed by a double page spread of photos from the film Quadrophenia and a competition to win albums and posters relating to the film.
On the Bitz pages, we are introduced to a long-haired chap by the name of John Du Cann. “He’s the man who has taken the place of Gary Numan on the single version of Don’t Be a Dummy, the song from the Lee Cooper TV ad. Gary turned down the offer to make the single himself since he’s now doing nicely enough on his own”. The ad featured a Numan-voiced version. At the time it seemed odd to me that a guy who’d been in a band a few years back (Atomic Rooster) would replace Numan, but when I listen now…
I think this was a direction GN clearly didn’t want to be heading in. What did it sound like with his vocals?
The Du Cann version did make Top Of The Pops and stalled at #33. I did purchase some Lee Cooper jeans around this time, more because they fitted me than for any marketing that had been aimed at me.
Onwards we go, and Bitz finally reveals the vocalist on The Crusaders’ Street Life to be one Randy Crawford, putting to bed my weird notion that it was Grace Jones (go back three issues if this makes no sense to you). In the same article Ellen Foley is revealed as the female vocalist on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album (which I had largely managed to avoid). The crystal ball was clearly playing up though – “Smash Hits wouldn’t be surprised if Ellen Foley turned out to be the first massive female star of the Eighties – and that’s not much of a gamble”.
There’s then an interview with John Peel (and a photo). Having started listening to him in the months before, I hadn’t realised he looked so old, and was so old – 40! He seemed like a decent guy though – “I don’t like signing autographs. I don’t think it’s right. That’s not what I do it for”.
Across the page, two sets of lyrics, Making Plans For Nigel from XTC and The Shape Of Things To Come from The Headboys, one of which fared rather better than the other.
I won’t bore you with the Bitz special, basically a list of forthcoming tours and releases or with the Request Spot, that goes back to 1957 and Elvis’s All Shook Up. Paul from Runcorn requested this – couldn’t he have just asked his parents?
The Disco pages. What I haven’t mentioned, largely because I wasn’t interested then, and am still not now, is that a Disco Top 40 was printed each issue. Beneath this issue’s chart is the much delayed photo of Fat Larry’s Band (again, go back to the Grace Jones reference three issues ago) as his tune still appeared to be lingering therein. The two songs with lyrics of which I have no recollection are This Time Baby by Jackie Moore and Al Hudson & The Partners with You Can Do It, which apparently got to #15!
Then there’s our chum Rob Jones. He goes for Rise by Herb Alpert as this issue’s Disco Pick. Hang on! Herb Alpert? I checked my parents’ record collection to find an album by Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass. It looked like it was one they didn’t bother with any more when entertaining, as it was buried well below around 15 James Last albums. Rob finally broke his run of non-hit predictions with this peaking at #13 (and #1 across the pond) “It’s going to be a monster”. My parents didn’t purchase it and I really can’t motivate myself to listen to it now, despite the fact that “Herb’s trumpet playing is excellent”.
The centrespread is a Sex Pistols photo from 1977.
There’s an article about James Brown – which partly seems to be plugging a planned tour in 1980. and tucked in a corner over the page are the words to Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough by Michael Jackson. and given equal space, Purple Hearts and the excellent Millions Like Us. Seems utterly bizarre now.
Future staples of Driving Anthems CDs to be found at all good service stations in the late 90s / early 00s share a page. Whatever You Want from Status Quo and Rainbow’s Since You’ve Been Gone.
Squeeze’s Chris Difford is in the chair to review the Singles, none of which will ever grace the UK Top 40. Among these are Steve Harley and Freedom’s Prisoner (for which I shared a link when he passed away recently), The Trainspotters and High Rise, which featured future Radio 1 man, Mike Read and also another Mike, Harding and Disco Vampire. No, I’m not researching it – you can if you want.
One track that did catch my eye was by Metro, titled The Mystery. Metro featured Peter Godwin, who will at some point feature in my Unsung Songs series as a solo artist. I’d not previously heard this one, taken from their album, New Love.
They got synthy for their final album in 1980, and Peter Godwin headed off in that direction thereafter.
The Album reviews. Firstly, Red Starr is on holiday so David Hepworth sits in and doesn’t award any scores. But there are some heavy duty releases reviewed as we lurch towards Christmas. Michael Jackson – Off The Wall, The Police – Regatta De Blanc and Blondie – Eat To The Beat. All seem to find favour with DH.
There’s then a “report and exclusive colour pix” from Gary Numan’s recent tour. The “pix” are not terribly exciting.
We get informed that we will be getting a free badge with the next issue. Not as exciting as a flexi-single, but still trying to sugar coat the price increase. The badge will be one of five: Sex Pistols, David Bowie, The Boomtown Rats, Ian Dury And The Blockheads or Blondie. Which one did I get? Stay tuned….
Ian Dury (without any Blockheads) is the star of the back page photo.
I was sure The Headboys tune had been quite the hit as I remember then being on TOTP. Turns out, however, it didn’t crack the Top 40 (I had to look it up!!).
The idea of Sex Pistols and Herb Alpert being in the same magazine seems bonkers.
Hoping this will be the first, and last, of a series I didn’t ever envisage starting.
As I have mentioned previously, I don’t write up every live music event that I go to. Sometimes, time gets the better of me and sometimes there just isn’t anything particularly interesting to write about – even if it’s still a decent gig. However, regardless of what went on at the show, this post should have been all about my first experience of the Co-Op Live in Manchester, having seen Keane supported by The Lathums.
If you’re in the UK, you’ll be fully aware of the catalogue of mishaps that have befallen what is supposed to be the biggest indoor music arena in the country, right next door to Manchester’s Etihad Stadium. It’s supposed to provide the best live music experience for both performers and audience alike. The opening has been delayed a number of times, with initially some rescheduling taking place (and a resignation of a senior executive). But the most embarrassing incident came at 18:40 on 1st May when there was a cancellation just 20 minutes before the advertised start of a show by (checks notes) A Boogie Wit da Hoodie. There have been issues with communications within the venue (I’m guessing that it’s basically a giant Faraday cage, and the impact that might have hadn’t truly dawned on anyone), and the 1st May cancellation was caused by an air con unit falling from a ceiling, thankfully not injuring anyone. It’s almost as if they’ve gone out of their way to devise a scenario for which the word “omnishambles” was invented.
At long last, some common sense has since prevailed and both the ABWdH show mentioned above and a number of nights by a popular local band called Take That have been moved to the rival AO Arena in the city centre (whose management must be rolling around with unbridled laughter at the sequence of events). Sadly for whatever reason, the Keane show hasn’t made it back to the city centre venue and we are left awaiting further information about a potential rescheduling.
We have a couple of planned visits to Co-Op Live in June, and we can only hope that the venue has opened by then and can claim to be a safe place for up to 23,000 people to attend. It remains to be seen if it will all be…
As and when I see a show, there, I’ll be sure to write about it.
My 4th issue of Smash Hits, and had I been wavering over my continued purchase of the magazine, the cover stars would have convinced me to hand over my 25p. I think that failure to do so may have resulted in a visit from “the boys”, who would have wanted a “cosy chat” about my negative purchase decision.
Yes, it was Secret Affair’s moment in the sun – once again a band who had until very recently been unknown to most readers, found themselves on the shelves of all discerning newsagents across the UK. This issue is also notable on a personal level as I purchased no less than four of the singles whose lyrics were printed. I’ll be sharing a couple of those with you and something else, I guess – but I’ve yet to decide what that will be.
Kicking things off on the top half of Page 2 is one of those four singles, Nick Lowe and Cruel To Be Kind and on the bottom half, a song I acquired that Christmas on a Ronco compilation, which was a present from a well-meaning aunt, The Jags and their only notable hit, Back Of My Hand. Around a quarter of the tracks on the compilation were bearable.
At the top of Page 4 is the second of those single purchases, a song that only made it to #36. The band would have to wait over 12 months before they had another Chart entry, peaking this time at #66. Unsurprisingly, I know next to nothing about them, but I still like listening to this:
The Planets share a page with new kids on the block, Madness and their debut single, The Prince.
Across from these, there is a whole page for recent cover stars who were about to enjoy their first #1, The Police and Message In A Bottle.
With mods still being very much in fashion and Quadrophenia having recently been in cinemas, there’s an interview with a member of The Who, and it’s John Entwistle who gets to talk to “the kids”.
On the Bitz pages, we learn the devastating news that Victor Willis (the cop) has left the Village People to go solo. That went well. The Top Ten this issue is from XTC’s Andy Partridge who at #10 has Everything I’ve Ever Liked by Everyone. He’s across the page too as he had just got married and there’s a wedding photo. Andy will feature again in this issue. Also recently hitched was Chris Difford from Squeeze and the police (not the band) had to be called to manage the crowds at this event in Greenwich! The photographic evidence is there.
Then it’s time for Secret Affair to take a couple of pages with their obligatory cover star interview and also the words to Time For Action (the third of the four singles I bought).
Quite how the decisions were made about editing I have no idea, but the next two pages have on the left hand side, words to War Stories by The Starjets and Something That I Said by The Ruts, and on the right hand side, a full page advert for the new Boney M album, Oceans Of Fantasy. (If you saw my comment to JC last time around, I did suggest that Boney M weren’t being aimed at kids. All I know was that if anyone at school had owned up to buying this one, they’d still have been trying to live it down when we finished our A Levels in 1984). Even worse, on the reverse of the Boney M advert is another full-pager, this time for Cliff Richard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Juvenile.
Keeping up the strange mix of acts, a Commodores interview is followed by The Jam taking up the centre pages with a double-page photo.
Next we step into the realms of things I’ve never heard of, with the Disco pages. First up, we must once again doff our caps to the legend that is Rob Jones. His Disco Pick this time is, I assume, a disco track (at last), given that it’s by Hi Tension and There’s A Reason. However, I wonder if in the Smash Hits office they were wanting to rename it the Rob Jones Kiss Of Death, as it’s another that failed to chart. We also get the words to Feel The Real by David Bendeth, American Hearts by Billy Ocean (going through that spell between his 70s big hits and his mid-80s revival) and When You’re Number 1 by Gene Chandler (I had to check – peaked at #43).
The Request Spot is dragged kicking and screaming into 1979, courtesy of a B-side from earlier in the year, The Jam and the excellent The Butterfly Collector.
Andy Partridge reappears to review the singles, and I’ll put links in for a couple of tracks reviewed. His “fave this whole session” is Edinburgh band, The Freeze and their In Colour EP. Apparently they “beat Simple Minds at their own game”. This was the lead track.
There’s also a review of a track written and produced by Ron & Russel Mael, a.k.a Sparks. I can only find a long version, but it’s evidence that they had learned a lot from working with Giorgio Moroder on their most recent album. From what I can glean, the identity of the female singer known as Noel has never been revealed. Neither this nor the one from The Freeze troubled the Chart compilers in the UK.
One track that would go on to trouble the Chart compliers, by reaching #1, is dismissed by Andy as having a “sickly production” and “won’t be a hit”. Its lyrics will appear in a forthcoming issue and the title includes the words Video and Radio among others.
On to the album reviews and the highest scorer is Cut from The Slits with 9/10. And yes, the album cover is reproduced, albeit in a very small format. Smash Hits – corrupting the nation’s youth! The other item of note is that Eve by Alan Parsons Project is rated more highly than Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle. I’m still outraged by that nearly 45 years later.
ELO are back, just three issues on from their last set of lyrics. This time it’s Don’t Bring Me Down, the words eagerly seized upon by a lad in my class called Bruce, who was determined to prove that they weren’t singing his name. They weren’t. Not that it stopped the rest of us from continuing to annoy him for another couple of weeks until we got bored.
Sharing a page with ELO is the fourth of the singles I purchased. What I consider to be a vastly under-rated song, only reaching #32. Both my sons like it and agree with me. It did get a slot on Top Of The Pops though.
Over the page are the words to one of the unbearable tracks on the aforementioned Ronco compilation. Dollar and Love’s Gotta Hold On Me.
There’s bad news – a 5p increase for the next issue and good news – a free flexidisc with said issue. More about that next time.
The back page photo is of Joe Jackson who looks like he’s deep into training for the all-England Gurning Championships.
So there you are, another packed issue showing once again just how wide a range of music was out there in the second half of 1979. I’m still enjoying writing about these long-forgotten magazines – I hope you’re enjoying reading about them.
TGG
2 responses to “Smash Hits: September 20 – October 3 1979”
Yup. Still enjoying reading about them…..and this one is a nice trailer in many ways for the later editions of the ‘Shakedown’ series over at TVV.
I thought I was well versed on the music of 1979 being the obsessive 16-year old at the tiem, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that song by Noel. I reckon it’s got more of an early 80s feel to it….and the the chorus kicks in and dates in prefectly as late 70s!
I did a wee bit of digging, and the ever-brilliant Post Punk Monk, back in 2021, provided about as much info on Noel as you’re ever likely to find.
The Freeze passed me by at the time, but a good friend of mine who is just a few years older recalled them with great fondness on the original incarnation of TVV back in 2010….a post that I was able to pull out of the ruins and share again in 2018.
Thanks for the links, JC. Both were interesting reads. Secret Affair did manage another Top 20 hit (that will be covered several issues hence), so they’re not quite the OHW. Glad you’re enjoying the posts and I am mindful of your Shakedown series, so trying to avoid too many tracks that you might want to feature – but would have wanted to pick some really obscure ones anyway.
As you can see, they abbreviated the name of the month and I’m staying true to that despite really wanting to write it out in full.
And there on the front cover – a band who, little over a month earlier, were unknown to the bulk of the readership. This “hot new band will shift lots of copies” philosophy will be repeated on the cover of the next issue, too.
Turning the page we get lyrics to The Stranglers’ Duchess, little realising that I’d find myself singing this 19 years later when hearing a song by Manic Street Preachers for the first time. The next couple of pages feature three songs so different that it feels like the phrase “strange bedfellows” could have been made for them. The rapidly declining in popularity Boney M and Gotta Go Home, the re-released Boredom from Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch (listed as Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto – just so we didn’t confuse it with anything new) and Squeeze with Slap & Tickle.
Following an interview with The B-52s (and still no words for Rock Lobster), the first of the Bitz pages introduces us to “London band Madness”. Whatever happened to them? Squeeze’s Chris Difford shares his wide-ranging Top 10, with Elvis Costello taking top spot with Stranger In The House. In case you don’t know it, EC wrote it for a George Jones album in 1978 and his own version was given away as a limited edition single with early copies of This Year’s Model. It also featured on a Peel session, recorded with The Attractions. Probably a good time to share a version.
There is footage of Elvis and George duetting on this, but it’s from 1981, so I’m guessing this is the version to which Chris refers.
Also on the Bitz pages is the first of three mentions for a release on Stiff Records entitled Peppermint Lump. Its singer, 11 year-old Angie (Angela Porter), we are told “is an experienced juvenile actress who has appeared in such masterpieces as Wombling Free, Nationwide and The Rod Hull Show”. With it also featuring later on the magazine in the Singles Reviews and as Rob Jones’ “Disco” Pick, it felt like this was going to be the Next Big Thing. Pete Townshend produced it and played guitar on it and future Big Country man, Tony Butler, played bass. It failed to chart. I have literally just heard it for the first time ever, and feel somehow grateful that none of us appears to have been taken in by the hype.
Moving swiftly along, a two page interview with The Jam is followed by a full page advert for “The new game from XTC”. Making Plans For Nigel’s first 20,000 copies include a free game. Given that this is 18 months prior to my introduction to strategic board gaming, I opted not to purchase this. Fool.
Across the page are the words for the rather insipid Love Will Make You Fail In School from Rocky Sharpe And The Replays and a band who seemed to land five years later than they should have done and were continuing to linger like a bad smell – Racey and Boy Oh Boy.
There’s an interview with The Specials and a quiz, in which I would today comfortably score 20/20, but appear to have only managed a meagre 12 at the time. A photo of Squeeze occupies the centre pages.
The disco pages feature one song that I absolutely love – The Crusaders’ Street Life, one I can vaguely remember – Commodores and Sail On, and one I don’t think I ever heard – Fat Larry’s Band and Lookin’ For Love Tonight. Their time would come. These lyrics are all spread over a picture of a rather tall-looking woman on all fours wearing a swimsuit. It’s explained thus: “If you’re wondering why New York disco star Grace Jones is crawling across this page and there’s no pic of Fat Larry or The Commodores, then you’ve obviously never seen a pic of Fat Larry”. Harsh. I had no idea who Grace Jones was at the time and did briefly wonder if she was the vocalist on Street Life – that would have been interesting!
More lyrics with Gerry Rafferty having the final Top 40 morsels from his dining out on the back of Baker Street, with Get It Right Next Time. Below that was the song which had my father looking briefly at the magazine – the awful If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me from The Bellamy Brothers. And this:
It references a Jensen Interceptor – my favourite car – so I have some affection for this, but it is terribly cheesy when compared to the ska sounds that were now hitting the airwaves. Nevertheless, Bill’s only hit did reach #12.
Eddie Cochran features for the second issue running, this time via an article telling his story. I’ll skip past the Singles Reviews, with some of the discs there featuring in forthcoming issues, and pause at the Album Reviews. What’s the top scorer? Talking Heads and Fear Of Music at 7.5/10? Nope. Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures with 8/10. No, sir. With a score of 8.5/10, album reviewer Red Starr plumps for Risqué by Chic. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Mrs TGG was masquerading under the Red Starr moniker with those scores (but she would only have been 13 then, like me – I’m a week older than her). It is the Chic album that includes Good Times, so it should get a decent mark, but better than Unknown Pleasures?!?
The lyrics request spot continues its fixation with releases from 1978 – this time it’s The Clash and White Man In Hammersmith Palais. As we’ve moved into September, there are no outdoor shows with varied line-ups to share from the Gigs page, but acts performing in Manchester that fortnight that I could have seen, had I been able to go, included Shake, Boney M, Nils Lofgren, XTC, The Crusaders, The Chords and one my father would have been interested in – The Shadows.
This issue’s lyrics are concluded with two from Wings. Getting Closer and Baby’s Request. I had to look this up as I can’t recall either song. It was a double A-side that peaked at #60, and the last Paul McCartney release billed as Wings. He’d be back before the end of the year with a song that, annoyingly, I can recall only too well, because I’ve heard it every year since.
Finally, the back page photo is of Gibson Brothers (you know, Him, Thingy and Wotsit). At the time they were (and may still be), the only act from Martinique to have ever hit the UK Charts. Obviously the photo has them standing in front of a beach and some palm trees.
I’ll warn you now – the next issue has some very stern-looking people on the front cover.
Dear God….if you’d given me 100 guesses as to which label had released that Peppermint Lump monstosity, I’d still never got it. Unlistenable.
Surprised that Unknown Pleasure was even given a review in Smash Hits, far less scoring so highly.
Also fascinated by Virgin Records taking out a full page ad for the next XTC single….wouldn’t have imagined Smash Hits readership being the normal target audience for the group, but then again, they were about to release a bona-fide pop classic.
Thanks JC – glad you’re enjoying it. I’m finding it fun regressing to the 13 year-old me, and trying to recall how I felt at the time. I’m guessing I was in the demographic that Smash Hits was aimed at in 1979. Both male and female peers were buying the poppier “new wave” releases as well as the 2-tone and mod stuff. If you look at the other singles covered, they weren’t really aimed at teenagers – Gerry Rafferty, Boney M, etc. Even the disco releases would have been more for the older teenagers who were actually going to clubs.
It really is time that I got round to sharing my thoughts on this one. The idea to do a piece on this tune occurred to me in the aftermath of writing the Shane MacGowan item back in December. If you recall that piece, you’ll be aware that part of the story was about my liking of music that some of my less enlightened peers did not. This has been a pretty constant theme throughout my life, hence the existence of this series.
I can’t recall where I first heard what was the only song by Immaculate Fools that I knew for many years, other than the B-side. I’m guessing it was the juke box in the common room at my college. It generally had a smattering of current hits, but there were always the odd one or two which someone somewhere thought would have been hits by the next time they rocked up to change the records. I remember putting my money in said juke box rather a lot during the early part of 1985, as well as the accompanying cries of “Oh, God – no, not that shit again”, as the synth intro to Immaculate Fools rang out to my fellow students who were playing pool, a bizarre video bar football game or pinball among other activities. Like this:
I couldn’t easily tell you what it is I like about the song. The video above appears to have been made a couple of years later, but other than being slightly longer than the single, is pretty much true to what I was listening to. It was some time later when Mrs TGG heard it on one of my numerous mixtapes of the early 90s and said that the vocals reminded her of The Psychedelic Furs. Somehow I hadn’t clocked that, but I had to admit that she had a point.
So my love of this song appears to boil down to it sounding like another band that I like and the fact that at the age of 19, I just loved being annoying. The song was the band’s only UK singles chart entry, reaching #51 in its 4 week stay. It’s done well in recent times though, picking up just under 2.8 million plays on Spotify at the time of writing. The only other person I know who admits to liking it is my mate Steve (the one that was at Rewind North last year) – I found this out back in 2006 when I was showing him how the iTunes Store worked!
Immaculate Fools – consider yourselves welcomed to the Unsung Hall Of Fame.
I expect my next scheduled piece will be some more Smash Hittery – I’m enjoying both re-reading the magazines and then writing about them as well. And that’s before I start the research on some of the more obscure tunes that are mentioned.
TGG
One response to “Unsung Songs #7: Immaculate Fools – Immaculate Fools”
I have absolutely no recollection of this one at all…….feels as if it hasn’t dated very well. Get where Mrs TGG is coming from re The Furs-style vocals.
I was going to do an Unsung Song that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, but I so enjoyed writing the last one of these, I thought I’d do at least one more first. We move forward 14 days and are greeted on the cover by the nearest thing 1979 had to a boy band.
Except they weren’t actually all that young, as will be discussed shortly….
On to some song lyrics first, and another of the many classic hits from 1979 is first up on page 2, Cars by Gary Numan. Then we have the band mentioned in the previous issue’s Bitz, already making the breakthrough to having the words of their only (very minor hit) published.
Their prime time TV appearance resulted in them getting no higher than #40. Yes, that is Mick Talbot’s brother, Danny. Hard to believe that a mere 4 years later, Mick would be involved with the far more sophisticated output of The Style Council.
Mick and co share a page with The Flying Lizards and their cover of Money, while across the page is a picture of future bandmate Paul Weller and the words to The Jam’s When You’re Young.
There follows an interview with Joe Jackson, before we hit the Bitz pages and that man Jackson is there again with his All Time Top 10 – a varied selection that includes both Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run and Big Youth’s cover of Hit The Road Jack. The Bitz pages also tell us that someone called Toyah Wilcox is releasing a 6 track record called Sheep Farming In Barnet. The 13 year old me would have been thinking Who? What? Why?, little realising that 45 years later, I would have seen her live on four occasions.
The other notable item on the Bitz pages (as alluded to earlier) is a photo of the Zoot Money Big Roll Band from 1964 featuring a certain Andy Summers from the issue’s front cover. “No, no, Andy, don’t thank us – it was nothing” it says, as thousands suddenly realise that Andy is offically old.
Thereafter there is a Police interview followed by the words to Angel Eyes by Roxy Music. There then follows an odd page where you can enter a competition to win an Eddie Cochran album alongside a large advert for an album by Rocky Sharpe And The Replays. Interest in Cochran would have been high due to the recent Sex Pistols covers of a couple of his hits.
Then it’s the Disco pages and Rob Jones’ Disco Pick, which to my ears is not in any way disco.
Future member of The Christians, Henry Priestman, and his Liverpudlian outfit had caught the ear of Mr. Jones, who at the time was on Radio Luxembourg. He can now be found on Boom Radio – and I bet he’s never played this on there.
There is some disco on the Disco pages though, with lyrics to Girls Girls Girls by Kandidate, Strut Your Funky Stuff by Frantique and Gone Gone Gone by Johnny Mathis. I may have heard the Frantique song at some point since 1979, but the other two?
The centre pages are basically a Gary Numan poster before we hit the most interesting article in this issue. Martyn Ware (then of The Human League) gets two pages to write about the Sheffield music scene. As well as his own band there are, among others, mentions for Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, forerunners to ABC, Vice-Versa, and er… Def Leppard. Best band name goes to The Defective Turtles.
Words to Angelic Upstarts’ Teenage Warning are followed by the chance to complete a crossword and win a B-52s album. I’d just purchased Rock Lobster as a single and was gutted the words hadn’t been published due to “delays with their American publishers”.
The request spot is taken up like the last issue by another 1978 release, this time Solitary Confinement by The Members.
The Singles reviews cover a wide range of artists from Buzzcocks, and the aforementioned Toyah release to Chas ‘n’ Dave and Max Bygraves (the latter two being separate releases and not thankfully a collaborative work). As for the albums, highest mark goes to XTC’s Drums And Wires (9/10) and the wooden spoon to AC/DC and Highway To Hell (3/10). The Australians are described thus: “with the possible exception of Kiss, the worst group currently walking the face of the earth”. You can almost hear Rocky Sharpe and his mates breathing a sigh of relief at that news.
One single reviewed that I do remember hearing on the radio, but which was not a hit is this one. They got on to Swap Shop, but this would seem to be their only ever release.
Three more sets of lyrics as we near the end. Randy Vanwarmer (probably not his real name) and Just When I needed You Most, Hot Chocolate and Going Through The Motions (which I guess they were, as I don’t recall this one) and the delightfully titled The Bitch by The Olympic Runners – the words are not an easy read.
The gig listing has an interesting show on September 1 at the Edinburgh Ingliston Showground where you can see Van Morrison, The Undertones, Talking Heads, Steel Pulse and Squeeze. Wow! If only I’d not been a 13 year-old living in Stockport. At least I have seen The Undertones and Squeeze since, the latter many times.
Final song words come from The Jolly Brothers and Conscious Man (more dubious lines about being wary of the females you might get involved with) and then a song which ended up being a much bigger hit in 1984. Sister Sledge and Lost In Music.
The back page is a picture of The Undertones, which I can’t imagine ended up adorning too many bedroom walls.
And so I headed off to my third year at Senior School (or Year 9 as it is now known) armed with two issues’ worth of lyrics, facts and news with which to bore my schoolmates.
TGG
One response to “Smash Hits: August 23 – September 5 1979”
So many names thrown at us in this review…..I was 16 years old and totally obsessed with music, but there are so many songs and musicians in this edition that I simply cannot recall!!!
The late 70s was an era where the boy band phenomena in pop music was nowhere to be seen. The Osmonds and Bay City Rollers had come and gone a few years previously and the likes of Smash Hits had to scramble around to find suitable substitutes. Fast forward two years and the ‘New Romantic’ bands were ushered in to fill the void.
New idea for a series, no idea if it will work or not, but I’m curious and for now, strangely motivated.
My sister and I are in the process of emptying my mother’s house so we can get it on to the market. – the joys of needing to pay nursing home fees. Clearing out the wardrobe in my old room, I found various items I’d meant to move out with me, but due to lack of space in abodes prior to living chez TGG, had left behind. Among them, football & speedway programmes, a backgammon set and every issue of Smash Hits magazine from August 1979 to April 1983. The latter date was the moment when I realised that my sister (who is five years younger than me) was reading it more than I was.
This realisation was caused by the nature of the music covered changing and the fact that I myself was changing. I was 13 when this run of purchases began, and I stopped just a month before my 17th birthday. I was also picking up NME, Sounds, Melody Maker and Record Mirror on a more occasional basis, with NME and RM becoming regular purchases once I ditched Smash Hits.
I should point out that I’ve lived at my current address since 1997, and could have moved these items at any time. Mrs TGG hasn’t even noticed their arrival (at least I don’t think she has).
I plan to saunter through each magazine with a brief-ish description of the contents, commenting on anything that interests me and providing a link or two to tunes of interest. All the magazines are in a reasonable state, apart from the well-thumbed first one, which has also had the misfortune of being top of the pile and acting a a protector for the others below.
This was actually the 18th issue of the magazine. I’d been tempted by earlier issues, but the thing that got the purchase over the line was the inclusion on the inside cover of the words to Beat The Clock by Sparks. The publication of song lyrics was the big attraction of Smash Hits – in theory settling the various arguments about what was actually being sung. Except that they didn’t always get it right. A letter in this issue berates them for printing “curry and kippers for breakfast” as opposed to “could we have kippers for breakfast” a couple of issues previously when including the lyrics for Supertramp’s Breakfast In America.
So the 13 year-old me was thrilled to read those Sparks lyrics and was word perfect in no time. I still know them off by heart. I can also see why they haven’t played it live since 2013, as the words do include a degree of misogyny that seemed to be more accepted back in 1979, but is actually quite cringeworthy when you stop and consider it.
So what else was there? Words for Gangsters by The Specials and Is She Really Going Out With Him by Joe Jackson follow – a couple of classic tunes and the first hit for both. Then it’s ELO and one of theirs that you don’t hear so often these days, despite a Top 10 placing – The Diary Of Horace Wimp.
Below ELO is an advert for Boots announcing that they’ve cut the price for singles to 79p. I remember reading that and thinking it was still too expensive and that I could save myself money by not getting the bus into town and getting my records more cheaply from my local shop, which was within walking distance. It’s also got me wondering as to exactly when it was that Boots stopped selling records.
3 pages of short items follow under the heading of Bitz. Rita Ray of Darts shares her All Time Top 10. It includes two from both Mary Wells and Smokey Robinson. Bitz also has a short feature on a new mod band, The Merton Parkas, one of whom will go on to have a lot of hits in the 80s as part of The Style Council – Mick Talbot.
There’s then an interview with cover star, Ian Dury, and the words to his latest release, Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3. Quite handy given the “list” nature of the song.
Three sets of lyrics on the next page: Ooh! What A Life by The Gibson Brothers, You Never Know What You’ve Got by Me And You (looked it up – got to #31) and a band also mentioned in Bitz, with a cover whose words were probably quite well-known to most readers (or at least their parents):
This was the future! Except that it wasn’t. Better synth records were already out and about and despite their TOTP appearance, the Belgians fared even less well than Me And You, peaking at #34.
Two pages of Disco follow with lyrics to Boogie Down (Get Funky Now) by The Real Thing and Earth, Wind & Fire’s After The Love Has Gone. Not sure how Disco the latter of those is – more of a Smooth Radio staple I’d say (the people at my mother’s nursing home have Smooth playing in her room all the time as she likes to sing along – you get to know what they play).
Centre photo is The Boomtown Rats (who were the current No 1 with I Don’t Like Mondays). The future Sir Bob – pulling at a roll of cellophane with his mouth because….. Wacky! Rock And Roll! etc.
Then there’s an interview with The Pretenders headed “Stop Your Gobbing” – they didn’t like audiences spitting at them apparently, particularly Pete Farndon.
Future No 1 for Cliff, We Don’t Talk Anymore shares a page with Dire Straits non-hit “Lady Writer”, before a Sham 69 interview and the words for Hersham Boys.
Then it’s some pretty unremarkable Singles & Albums reviews. The Sex Pistols’ Some Product merits 9/10, with Neil Youngs’s Rust Never Sleeps getting 8/10. (I know which of those I’ve listened to more over the years). An album also scoring 8/10 that I’ve never listened to is the Nina Hagen Band’s eponymous effort, with this track being described as “just incredible”:
That’s one word for it.
Skipping past the Letters and Word Searches, we get a Request lyric for Stiff Little Fingers and the previous year’s Alternative Ulster, which I’m guessing was released prior to the first issue of Smash Hits.
There’s an eclectic list of gigs, with the most intriguing taking place on 21st August at Hammersmith Palais, featuring the varied talents of The Specials, Linton Kwesi Johnson and John Cooper Clarke.
We round off the lyrics with a couple that hark back to another era – Darts’ cover of Duke Of Earl and the cast of thousands that was Showaddywaddy and the long-forgotten Sweet Little Rock’n’Roller, and then there’s a photo of David Bowie on the back cover, with D.J. having recently just made it into the Top 30.
I enjoyed writing that and had no idea which songs I was going to feature when I started. I guess that means I’ll at least do the following issue at some point. I hope that you enjoyed being catapulted back in time.
It’s genuinely fascinating to realise that these early editions of Smash Hits covered such a broad range of music. It’s not a magazine I ever bought but then again – it was 1979, the year when I got to my first live gig, that I began to buy music papers. I wasn’t faithful to any of the inkies – I’d look at each front page, and based on who was featured in the cover photo or the undercard, would decide which I’d go for that week.
Thanks for the kind words about the series. I think the nature of the early Smash Hits was a product of the times, where the Top 40 contained a mix of (in my mind) new pop and rock acts, old pop and rock acts, disco and stuff my parents liked. There were little in the way of “pin-up” acts, save for the cover stars of the next issue and it was very much about the music. It changed at some point – if I stick with this long enough, we may all find out when!
The palace of Sanssouci can be found in Potsdam, to the south-west of Berlin. Back in 2018, Mrs TGG and I were travelling by train from Prague to Berlin (in one of those proper old school three seats on either side compartments). Two elderly ladies joined us at Dresden. I clearly have a Central European look about me, because a recurring theme of that break was random people walking up and speaking to me in Czech or German. As luck would have it, I did an A-Level in German and the manner in which these ladies spoke was not a million miles from the stilted nature of my old text books.
There followed a surprisingly fluent exchange during which they strongly advised me that we should dedicate one of our scheduled days in Berlin to a trip to Potsdam. As shouts go, this was a very good one. We had an excellent time learning all about the history of this fascinating place, ate what are probably the largest burgers we’ve ever eaten and got to visit the palace at Sanssouci and its magnificent gardens. Whilst the Potsdam bus tour cost us some of our Euros, the train journey from Berlin to Potsdam and back cost us nothing extra as it was included in the scope of our Berlin travel cards that we’d purchased the minute we arrived in the German capital.
It’s the gardens at Sanssouci that form the basis of the board game. Originally released in 2013, I remember playing and enjoying the game at a convention around that time. I didn’t really think any more of it until I saw that there was a re-release of the game launching on Kickstarter in June 2023. I correctly though that nobody in my regular gaming group had a copy, and it’s the sort of easy to learn tile-laying game that sits well with most of us. The basic premise of the game is to re-design the gardens and score the most points for pleasing the nobles with your efforts. This work has been commissioned by the great-nephew and successor to the successor of the Prussian emperor, Frederick The Great, under whose orders the palace was built. The game has made it to the table (as we say) and gone down well.
If you’d like to know more about the game, it’s all here:
As an historical footnote, Frederick The Great finally got his wish to be buried at Sanssouci on the 205th anniversary of his death – on 17th August 1991.
Music-wise, the tune here pre-dates the board game, but obviously not the palace. It’s one that I immediately took a shine to when I first heard its parent album back in 2007.
It doesn’t appear to have ever been released as a single anywhere, but it makes the cut as one my five favourite Rufus Wainwright tracks on my master Spotify playlist (where no-one is allowed more than five songs). I just need to get the pub where the games group meets to put this on their playlist for when we next play the game.
More sad news earlier, when I heard the news of Steve Harley’s death. I was visiting my mother at the time and was surprised that she remembered Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) when I sang the chorus to her – she doesn’t remember a lot these days and my singing is far from the best.
Steve Harley’s most commercially successful spell took place while I was still at primary school, but I do remember the aforementioned track, along with Judy Teen and Mr. Soft from that era. At some point I picked up a Best Of cassette that contained a few more songs from that era and some from a little later.
Like this one, that missed out on the Top 40 in 1979 (reached only as far as #58), but that I clearly remember hearing on the radio at the time. Looking at the release date, I’d have just started what is now referred to as Year 9 (or 3rd year at senior school), and I think there were others who also expressed a liking for this tune.
I was really saddened this morning to hear of Karl Wallinger’s death. As regular readers here from the start may recall, I have both of The Waterboys albums on which he contributed as a full member of the band and I was also an avid purchaser of World Party’s output and got to see them a couple of times in the early part of their career.
I’ve read a number of tributes to Karl over the course of the day from various people in the music world, and it’s clear that he was loved and admired not just for his musical and song writing ability, but also because he seems to have been a really likeable person.
If anyone remembers The Cassette Albums #1 on this blog, you will be aware of my very brief meeting with Karl. The meeting where I sent him and his bandmates back round a one way system because they had just missed their turning. They took the news better than I would have done!
Obviously I’ve been playing some World Party today when not in online meetings (at least today was a non-office day for me) and the song that seems to have lodged in my head is this one – which surprised me a little as it wasn’t one of the ones I’d expected. Still a fine tune though.
Thanks Karl, for some great tunes and I really wish I’d found the time to get to some later World Party shows as I know I’d have thoroughly enjoyed them – from a guy wearing specs and an overcoat back in 1986/7, that still feels bad about those directions.
Hello! Still checking in to see if anything’s been posted? Thank you – sorry that it hasn’t really been worth the effort for the last few weeks. We saw a couple of live acts on Monday 29th January and I had planned a write-up of that occasion.
However, I started to feel unwell during a meeting at work on the Wednesday lunchtime, and by the early hours of Friday morning I was once again having the full-on chest pains and breathing difficulties experience that I had back at the beginning of December.
Thankfully it got sorted and I was given medication that I am supposed to take until the end of March when I’m having some tests. Said medication completely messed up my sleep patterns (which aren’t the best anyway) and I’ve stopped taking it. And touch wood. I’ve been fine so far. I don’t think they have the first idea what’s wrong with me and I can only hope that these tests can shed some light on the issue.
So that and a good dollop of old-fashioned inertia is why there hasn’t been anything here for a while.
It’s too long ago now to do any sort of meaningful write-up of seeing Depeche Mode, supported by Nadine Shah – both acts that we’d never seen live previously. DM had been #2 on my “bands I’d like to see” list, behind long-standing and almost certainly permanent #1, R.E.M..
Both acts have relatively recent releases, tracks from which featured in their sets. I’ve picked out a couple of favourites.
It was a very enjoyable evening out and having seen both acts once, I’d be more than happy to go and watch them again.
Hopefully posts will start to appear here a little more regularly once again.
Happy New Year! This is the promised “before the end of the year” article which for various reasons hasn’t been written, other than in my head, until now.
I’ve done a number of “Seen ‘Em Live” posts – 10 in actual fact. This is not by any stretch the total number of live music events I went to last year. I’ve only written up the ones where I thought there was something interesting to say or to share. The shows I haven’t written about have been very good, don’t get me wrong, but a combination of lack of time and not there not being something share-worthy stopped me from writing them up.
I could have mentioned the show we went to in December, just 6 days after my hospital dash, where I remained seated for the entire event, wondering if this was actually a sensible place for me to be – Manchester Arena with Mrs TGG and our 2 sons, watching Madness supported by The Lightning Seeds. The memorable part of that gig was that both acts paid tribute to Terry Hall, with “Sense” from Ian Broudie and co and “Friday Night Saturday Morning” from the headliners. This last gig of 2023 therefore neatly bookended with the first where Belinda Carlisle had played Our Lips Are Sealed as a tribute to the great man (see Seen ‘Em Live #1).
However – that’s not the point of this piece. Just three days after Seen ‘Em Live #10 (Gary Numan acoustic at Manchester Cathedral), we were back in Manchester at the Ritz to see Haircut One Hundred. If you’ve been paying attention, you may recall that we’d seen Nick Heyward at Rewind North, where we’d had the hits played to us. This was a deeper dive, with 3 original members, and a 4th, drummer Blair Cunningham, sadly too ill to perform, but a very competent replacement had been drafted in. If you like their Pelican West album and the other peripheral tracks they recorded, you’d have enjoyed the show. I do and I did. Closer up (a LOT closer than at Rewind), I realised that despite being 5 years older than me, Nick Heyward could easily pass for 5 years younger than me. A point Mrs TGG has been reminding me of ever since, particularly during my spell of illness when I felt about 20 years older than him.
While we were queuing, we were wondering if there was a support act. Upon entering the venue we could see that “Barbara” was due on stage at 8pm. A female singer or a band? We weren’t sure until we clocked a small merch store in the corner. A band.
Barbara are in fact two brothers, Henry & John Tydeman, from the Brighton area, who for their support slot on the tour were augmented by three other musicians. One is the vocalist, one plays the piano, and I’ve forgotten which is which. All I can say, is that I loved their set. Some strong 1970s influences, but somehow dragging that sound into the 21st century. I’ve been listening to them quite a bit since as well.
A couple of their tunes, both of which they performed in Manchester.
They’re out and about in 2024 with none other than Paul Weller, as support on his forthcoming tour. We tried and failed to get tickets for the Stoke-on-Trent show – so we’re doubly fed up about that now.
Hopefully they’ll be back in our neck of the woods with their own show at some point – I think Mrs TGG may even put up with having to stand, we liked them that much! Their Bandcamp page is here: https://barbaratheband.bandcamp.com/
I’m planning more of the regular series as 2024 progresses and I still have to fish out the actual cassette for my next planned Cassette Album. I’ll try to post a little more frequently as well. Try, being the operative word!
This wasn’t going to be the next in this series, although it would have featured eventually. It’s just that the title (and song) sprang to mind given the lack of activity on here during December.
Within 12 hours of posting the Shane MacGowan piece, I was in the back of an ambulance with blues and twos, on the eight mile journey to my nearest A&E, with a suspected heart attack. Suffice to say I was in a bad way, responded to treatment and it’s taken some time to recover. My heart is actually in very good nick for a 57 year old, apparently, but while I have some other relatively minor health issues. the main culprit appears to have been something I picked up in SE Asia. All this has made me reappraise things and I’m eating less and have dramatically reduced my caffeine intake. Alcohol? Yes, I’ve dropped a bit off my usual level as well – being ill during the Christmas do season has helped on that front. During lockdown, I lost three and a half stone, moving from “obese” to “overweight”. Half a stone had crept back on, but that’s now gone again – I don’t really want it to reappear. Mrs TGG had started making salads to take to work – she’s now doing double the amount and leaving a portion for me. I’m very grateful for this and have enjoyed the absence of my usual pastry-based lunches far more than I expected.
The song?
This one came to my attention as a freebie sent to the student radio station in 1985. CBS/Epic were very good at sending us stuff – often multiple times. I just remember playing this and loving it instantly. It was released twice (with different B-sides and the piano intro missing from the re-release) but doesn’t appear to have got anywhere remotely near the UK chart. Wikipedia claims this song made No 1 in Japan, but Discogs doesn’t list a Japanese release. Believe what you want to believe.
From memory. the two guys were both called James and were busking in Coventry before landing their major label deal. One of the B-sides was a medley entitled Songs From The Street, which included songs they’d played while busking. There were a couple of other singles and an album and that seems to have been it on the recording front. I was also fond of one of the other singles.
I think my liking for their songs was because they were a little different to a lot of major label releases in 1985 and I’m a sucker for upbeat acoustic guitars. The Everly Brothers style vocals also won me over.
I don’t play these two songs as often as I should, but boy, am I glad to be well enough to share them with you.
I have at least one more post I want to get in before New Year. Let’s see how that goes!
TGG
3 responses to “Unsung Songs #6: Jimmy Jimmy – Silence”
I dropped by to catch up and wish you a happy holiday, TGG, not expecting to read that you’d spent time in A&E in the lead up to Christmas. I hope you’ve been able to take it relatively easy and enjoy the last couple of days at home with Mrs TGG.
Thanks for stepping back into the blogging spotlight. I don’t get to comment as often as I like as my phone seems to really (I mean, really) dislike WordPress these days so I only get the chance to read and catch up on your blog when I have a quiet moment on the family computer (and I’m not frantically trying to get my own posts finished).
Keep on keeping on…but at your own pace. It’s worth the wait.
Thanks for those kind words, Khayem. Glad you enjoy dropping by. Pretty much back to normal now – looking forward to playing football for the first time in several weeks tomorrow night!
A slightly belated post, but one I felt I ought to write if for no other reason than The Pogues were the first band I ever saw live.
It was two or three weeks into my first term at Uni and Elvis Costello & The Attractions were playing. I’d gone with a couple of people from my corridor who by now I vaguely knew – neither of whom had showed a liking for any sort of music other than heavy metal both before and after this gig. We’d assumed there’d be a support, but there hadn’t been any mention as to who it was.
The lights went down and a ramshackle bunch of people burst on to the stage with the lead singer yelling something at the mic before the band launched into their first song. At the time, I don’t think any of us worked out what he said, but It was probably something along the lines of “We’re The Pogues”.
It was a minute or so into that first song when I turned round triumphantly to my new acquaintances and told them that I’d actually got a single by this band and they’d recently had to change their name. “They’re shit” was the considered response. It wasn’t that much further into the set before said single got played.
At which point I started singing and doing something that vaguely passed for moving my feet. As we were near the back, I wasn’t exactly joined by many people in this enterprise. My companions looked suitably unimpressed. One of them told me later that he didn’t think he could bring himself to ever attend a gig with me again – he was true to his word.
Over the next few years I was an avid purchaser of Pogues records – singles, EPs and albums. Some even got re-purchased as CDs in later years.
I didn’t really pay much attention to anything that was released after the band’s initial split, but those songs released up to 1990 have given me a great deal of pleasure over the years. One of my sons has also got bitten by the bug and plays them often. I realise the band was more than just Shane, but he was the face of the band and wrote or co-wrote so much of the band’s original material prior to his departure.
Thanks Shane for some great songs that evoke some great memories. And I bet both those guys I went to that first gig with ended up buying Fairytale Of New York at some point!
It also was a university gig when I first saw The Pogues. June 85. Helluva set list from an incredibly good band, given how hammered they all were when they took to the stage.
Unfortunately (I’m assuming you like what you read here as you’ve taken the time to visit), there won’t be any more posts for at least the next two and a half weeks, maybe a little longer.
Mrs TGG & I are off on the longest trip we’ve ever done, taking in a couple of countries, where things have changed a bit since these songs were written and recorded.
and this one
It’s a 16 day tour that takes in all the key sites, including ones that pertain to the troubles both countries have endured during my lifetime. For all the more ancient wonders that the countries have, I wouldn’t be comfortable without going to see and learn more about their recent history.
I was going to download something so I could write a Cassette Albums piece when I got back. Unfortunately said album isn’t on my streaming service of choice so that will have to wait a while longer and I’ll have to – gasp – actually listen to the cassette! I have got 3 albums recorded by one of the band member’s previous group downloaded, so I’ll certainly be listening to those.
And I suppose you’re shouting at the screen wondering where this is…
I needed to do one of these on Talk Talk, but which song? They had a number of great tunes that dodged the UK Top 40. Even their biggest UK hit, It’s My Life, didn’t break the Top 40 until 6 years after its original release – I enjoyed that moment as I’d lost count of the number of people who’d had to put up with me bemoaning its lack of Hit status.
Ultimately I’ve chosen one from my favourite Talk Talk album. When they first appeared, with the repetitive group name, I, like many others, assumed they were trying to ride on the coat tails of Duran Duran’s success. But when I actually listened to the singles it occurred to me that there was a bit more to this bunch and promptly got hold of the debut album. By the time the second album landed, they definitely had their own distinctive sound, aided by the voice of Mark Hollis, who seemed to inject a sense of drama into whatever he happened to be singing about.
The third album, then. Not just my favourite Talk Talk album, but one I can categorically put in my Top 10 albums of all time. I even bought it on CD to replace the knackered cassette I had of it. The Colour Of Spring is just flawless in my opinion. Even the slow, airy tune (April 5th) doesn’t linger longer than it needs to. I know the perceived wisdom is that 4th album, Spirit Of Eden, is their career peak, but it just doesn’t quite do it for me in the way that The Colour Of Spring does
The first single taken from The Colour Of Spring, Life’s What You Make It, earned a respectable Top 20 placing, so I imagine hopes were high for the second single. If memory serves, I already had the album when it was announced that my favourite track would be that second single. But hang on! It’s almost 7 minutes long! Yup, it was a truncated, edited version that hit the nation’s airwaves. It’s still a great tune, but does suffer from not being the full-length version.
See what you think.
And the album version
It peaked at #48. I don’t suppose the unedited version would have fared any better as it wouldn’t have been attractive to radio schedulers. Of course, I played it to death on student radio, where such concerns didn’t exist in those days. I believe that playlists have even crept in there now. If you can’t play whatever you want and be innovative on a student station, then all hope is lost.
I may pick another of Talk Talk’s misses at some point – I never tire of listening to them. Their recorded legacy is not massive, but there is quality throughout and for me, it does all stand the test of time.
Annoyingly it’s taken me almost a week to get round to writing this, but Saturday 14th October saw us heading to Manchester Cathedral. Despite being born and brought up in Manchester and still working there (on my increasingly infrequent visits to the office), I’d only ever set foot in the cathedral once before. That was for a memorial service. Won’t go into details, but obviously a prominent person in the life of the city who I’d met via work a few times, and I was there in that capacity.
This time it was to see what struck me as a rather intriguing event when I first saw it advertised. We’ve seem Gary Numan a couple of times recently (both occasions at Manchester’s Albert Hall) and been blown away by the performance. If you’re not familiar with his more recent output, it’s a lot heavier than the songs he made his name with – and even the old tunes that he does play get the heavier treatment. I wasn’t sure Mrs TGG would be that keen, but I think she enjoyed those shows even more than I did. So when he announced an acoustic tour, she was straight on it and grabbed some tickets for a show that was sold out in a matter of minutes.
I concur with that review. It was one of the best shows I’ve attended, largely due to its unique nature, but also because Gary Numan and his fellow musicians truly pulled it off.
Even leaving aside the amazing reworking of so many songs, it was a real deep dive into his back catalogue. He admitted that one song had only been included because his daughters had told him to, and that he couldn’t actually remember writing it, let alone recalling which album it was from. Another older track he confessed to not remembering what it was about. As the review above states, there was a very personal feel to what he was sharing with the audience. Normally, he says next to nothing at a show, but following him on Facebook does give an insight to life in the Numan household, and it was that openness which came across here.
It was also great to see everyone on stage, including the man himself, laughing, joking and clearly enjoying themselves. Here’s a clip of one you’ll know performed on the night and filmed from just to the left of where we were.
Not sure how long it will be on there for, given the brevity of some live performances’ existence on the service, but hopefully it illustrates what the shows on the tour were all about.
When I wrote the piece How It Should Be a few weeks back, I listed a variety of reason for the inactivity on this blog. One reason I didn’t include was Being Ill. Ill in the sense of taking time off work, not partaking in the usual leisure activities that one does, not wanting to eat a cheese and onion pie or drink a pint of beer. That level of ill. The level of ill where everyone else in the house doesn’t want to go anywhere near you – for several days. The level of ill that as it endures, you start to worry about missing a live music event which you’ve been looking forward to.
Given that this involved a band I’ve never previously seen, but whose first six albums I dutifully bought, there was a fairly significant level of worry attached. Thankfully, while still not feeling 100%, I did make it on Friday night to the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester to see The Waterboys.
Like the Ben Watt song mentioned a while back in Unsung Songs #3, my first recollection of The Waterboys was hearing A Girl Called Johnny on the radio during a spell of homework avoidance. The “what the Hell was that I just heard?” moment lingered and as a result of never seeing the single on sale, I ultimately purchased the first album. As I did the next five, up to 1993. Then, the band seemed to have a break and even when things started up again I never really re-engaged, until I borrowed a CD copy of 2011’s An Appointment With Mr. Yeats from my local library.
Since then I’ve been dipping in and out, thanks to the existence of music streaming and the odd CD purchase.
The current tour isn’t billed as plugging a particular album despite a new release in 2022 and indeed nearly half the set comes from 1985’s This Is The Sea and 1988’s Fisherman’s Blues. Given that I haven’t seen them previously and that these albums are chronologically slap bang in the middle of my peak love of the band, I’m not unduly disappointed by this.
The band played without a support act, doing two sets and the obligatory encore of The Whole Of The Moon. It does seems as though they have been mixing the set list up a bit between shows on this tour and the fact that some shows have seen a cover of Prince’s Purple Rain has intrigued me. Sadly we didn’t get that in Manchester.
However, it was a great show with a highlight for me being the end of the first set which saw a cracking version of The Pan Within with keyboard players Brother Paul and James Hallawell trying to outdo each other duel-style with some truly amazing playing. There was also a first play on the tour for a cover of a traditional song “Dim Lights Thick Smoke (and Loud Loud Music)”. Mike Scott explained how this was a song they thought would suit the band well – until he saw how misogynistic the lyrics were. He said that he and Brother Paul had re-written the lyrics on the journey over from the previous night’s show in York – and then duly played it, to a great reception.
There is one new song that they have been playing at every show – It Was Over. Sadly its brief appearance on YouTube also seems to be over, so I can’t provide a link to it. I will however provide a link to the show opener – 2019’s Where The Action Is.
It really shouldn’t have taken me 40 years before I saw Mike Scott and co live. Would I see them again? Oh, yes.
Saturday saw another trip to Manchester for a rather different show. I’ll write about that as soon as.
Wasting time in the study
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