Ramble through the musical brambles

44 years since 1970?

You’re having a laugh, surely.

It can’t be.  But I suppose it must.  Sheeeit!

Mind you, I was only eight.  Still, I remember all that stuff.  We’d gone to see the film “Battle of Britain” at the pictures (the cinema) the year before.  The whole World War II film genre was getting a bit long in the tooth by then, but it was going out with a bang.  I’m sure it was in the programme from the film that I saw the legend: “Into the ‘70s with the Royal Air Force”.  The ‘70s were going to be even bigger than the ‘60s.  We were meant to be whizzing around in hover-cars, a la Jetsons by the end of the decade.  Honest – I’ve still got the artist’s impressions.

But I suppose it’s the music that really marks the times.  The ‘60s did the honourable thing and killed-off its heroes at the turn of the decade.  Some soldiered-on I suppose – well most.  But a point was made.  Beatles, Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin – you know the story.  Even the Stones underwent pre-70s surgery.

My real musical awakening began in 1972, by my accounting.  It probably had something to do with being presented with a cardboard box with red and blue ink spelling the words “National Panasonic”.  I can see it now – my first cassette recorder – my childhood can’t have been all that bad.  It was a step on from the Benkson Solid State transistor radio bought for me a year or two before, on which I’d listened to the phasing in and out of radio stations under the covers in the eerie light of a lantern that changed from green to blue to red to white light.  God, no wonder I’m weird.

I used that cassette player to record early McCartney solo songs and the first Wings.  But the real seed was planted with Bowie’s “Starman”.  If ’72 was the start of something, ’73 finished the job off.  Slade – well, why not? – more McCartney and even more Bowie.  I was under the spell of that beguiler of ‘70s pubescents.   It was a slippery-slope from “Life on Mars”.  Suzi Quatro clad in silver leather at one end of the room.  At the other end, Bowie pouting in stripey leotard.  Confusion reigned.  But the music, and the fantasy it fostered, was the fanfare of the new age.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

In no time at all, Bowie decided he’d had enough of frenzied British teens – or maybe that was just part of the master-plan, eh David?  We mourned, sure, but there’s nothing more resilient than youth.  We became sophisticated – progressive.  In small groups, we wandered off to find the subliminal meaning of Prog-Rock.  Others disappeared off to find Northern Soul.

In friends’ bedrooms we sat in small, serious groups to face the immense studio works of Pink Floyd.  We fell into the routine of a great new step forward every two years and busied ourselves with the back-catalogue to fill the gaps.  There was plenty to go at. “Interstellar Overdrive”.  “Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun”. 

Music is a rich mix.  I heard Punk going on around me – the stripped-down response to Prog-Rock.  I recall being caned in earshot of “Anarchy in the UK”.  But I didn’t fall for it like I’d fallen for Bowie and Floyd.  Maybe I was already too old.  Me and a mate did take the train to London and seek out a record shop on the King’s Road, where I bought a Stranglers album and “Public Image” by Public Image Ltd. We stared in awe at the Mohicans strolling down the street in their green bomber-jackets, but we only scratched the surface. 

Those records were spun on my Fidelity UA4, but everything was in the mix by then.  ’78 was the year of first love and heartbreak.  “The Wall”, eagerly awaited, turned to cold porridge by '79.  I’d already discovered beer and football hooliganism.  New Romantics were on the horizon.  For a number of years, music became simply a soundtrack – until Rave.  But that’s another story.