Music was a big part of growing up. 

My first musical memories are of Dad singing.

Dad loved singing; he had a been a chorister in Southwell minister as a boy.

He sang to us.  I have vague but happy memories of being a baby in Malaysia, and Dad singing ‘Yellow Submarine’ by the Beatles, Puff the Magic Dragon,  and ‘Lily the pink’ by the Scaffold.

In the 2010s, with Google, Wikipedia and You tube at my fingerprints, I am able to research these songs, some of which are only vague memories; I remember the chorus of Lily the Pink and have always thought it was an educational ditty. It is wonderful to discover that the song was  by The Scaffold, a satirical group comprising Roger McGough, whose poems I read as a late teenager, another poet, James Gorman, and the brother of Paul McCartney (who went by the name of Mike McGear), and was based on a bawdy rugby song from earlier in the 20^th century.

Lily the Pink was released on November 1968 and was No1 over Christmas that year. Presumably the song was heard by the expat community in Penang. I would have been two years old when the song was number one. Dad sang it regularly then and into the early 1970 when we were in Wells. He only ever sang the chorus:

“We shall drink a drink a drink
To Lily the Pink the Pink, the Pink,
The saviour of the human ray-a-ace
For she invented medicinal compound
Most efficacious, in every case ”

The Yellow Submarine was first released in 1966, but I assume that Mum and Dad would have become aware of it with the release of the film in 1968. It was always my favourite of the Beatles songs. When my children were toddlers I began singing it to them and bought the CD of the album, many of whose songs I listened to for the first time.

“In the town where I was born
Lived a man, who sailed the seas
And he told of his life
In a land of submarines

We all live in a Yellow Submarine
A Yellow submarine
A yellow submarine….”

Puff the Magic Dragon was made popular by Pete, Paul and Mary in their 1963 recording of the song.

Dad loved watching westerns, and I suspect Lee Marvin was a hero of his. Jane would shriek in delight as  Dad took her into his arms and rubbed her smooth face against his stubbled chin, whilst mimicking the slow, deep drawl of Lee Marvin singing ‘I was born under a wand’rin’ star’ from the film ‘Paint Your Wagon’. This was number one in 1970, apparently keeping Let it Be by the Beatles off the number one spot.  Dad was singing this for years; it was one of  the few songs that I was capable of trying to sing, so became one of my favourites too.

Records

Getting hold of your own music in the early 1970s was a big thing. We listened to the radio and watched the few pop shows on TV – Top of the Pops etc , but to actually own a record was a wonderful thing.

One Saturday morning in the early 19070s (1973) , Jane, Jeff and I walked down into town and bought our first 7-inch single: ‘I Love You Love Me Love’ by Gary Glitter. There was a record shop in Wells, but I think we bought the single from Woolworths, which was then a treasure trove; you could spend many happy hours juts looking at the records in there.

Gary Glitter was then one of the stars who appeared on Top of the Pops and whose records were played on Radio 1. His songs were easy to sing along to and his showmanship appealed to children I guess. When we watched Jimmy Saville , his arms draped  around two young girls, introduce Gary Glitter to the watching public on Top of the Pops , we had no idea what these people were really like.

I always think that ‘I love you love me love’ was the first record I bought, but it was probably as much Janes choice.  I preferred a couple of  his other songs: ‘The leader of the Gang’ and ‘Hello, Hello, I am back again’, both fist pumping songs more appropriate for a bunch of boys to sing whilst in the communal showers. This one, by contrast, was more feminine, a paean to love , too soppy for a boy who had no understanding of the ‘boy and girl’ thing that so many of the songs appeared to be about.  The song was number one in 1973.  Other bands around at this time would have included Slade – Merry Christmas Everybody was also released in 1973, Wizard, T-Rex.  We favoured the easier listening family friendly stuff – the likes of Mud. Muds 1974 Christmas hit, ‘It will be lonely without you’ was loathed by Dad and Grandpa Peabody, for whom it was a doleful and miserable dirge (as it indeed is).

The second record I bought, and perhaps the first to be truly ‘mine’, was ‘Billy Don’t be a Hero’ by Paper Lace. This was a number one in March 1974. I liked songs that had a story and this seemed to fit the bill. Although it has the sickly love element to it, the story of the soldier going away to war, somehow redeemed it for me. I have a memory of being in the kitchen at Jocelyn , alone with Mum, and the song being played in the radio, and Mum and I singing along together.  In this memory, which may be entirely fake, I see a ray of sunshine slanting into the kitchen, lighting up a beam of dust. Mum is cooking and I am just pottering around, perhaps reading or doing a puzzle in a book. I feel totally at peace, a boy at one with his mother.

 Paper Lace had a few more hits with their rather sentimental songs, but none were as good as ‘Billy’. Coming from Nottingham, Mum and Dad had some affinity with them. In 1978 they releases a version of ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’  with Nottingham Forest FC. Mums younger brother, Dave, was a big Forest fan and when he came down to visit for the August bank holiday he would raucously sing this anthem.

Top of the Pops was watched by just about everyone in the 1970s. I wonder if anyone did anything  else at 7 o’clock on a Thursday evening?  Usually presented by someone who has now been outed as a pervert, it was the only way to actually see the people behind the songs. Each programme would include one song that was accompanied by a dance troupe. In the early 1970s, this was ‘Pans People’. I am sure Dad watched Top of the Pops only for their weekly dance.  They were glamorous, sexy. Jeff, who seemed at an early age to have an eye for feminine beauty that I could never quite understand, loved them, and in particular ‘Babs’, the busty blonde.  Jeff generally hated writing, but he loved Babs so much that he wrote her a letter. This must have been sometime between 1973 and 1976 when Jeff was 4 to six years old. We all sat round the kitchen table and encouraged him to write the letter. A week or two later, he received a reply – a signed photo of Babs, addressed to Jeff in person. There was much joy in our household about this.

I have just looked up Pans People and Babs. In the picture from the early 1970s on Wikipedia, Babs does not look quite as I remembered her and the whole troupe are more normal, less glamorous. But do  an image search and you get a clearer picture the range of their costumes and you get a feel for the attraction they would have had to men in the grey early 1970s. There are shades of Benny Hill in the outfits and the pouting. There are some creepy shots of Jimmy Saville with arms draped around them. We thought those bulging eyes , the ridiculous outfits or the tracksuit, the jewellery and cigar : people thought this was cool?

I am heartened to find that Pans People have kept going and it gives me some enjoyment to find that she married Robert Powell, that other icon of the 1970s, and has become an explorer.

Pans People were replaced on Top of the Pops in 1976; my memory tells me they were replaced by another all girl dance group, but in fact they were initially replaced by a boy-girl dance group called Ruby Flipper. It was not until 1981 that the next all-girl dance troupe, Legs and Co, started. Whatever, Pans People leaving TotP represents an ‘ending of some sort of era’. Dad certainly never took to Legs and Co like he did to them, and neither did Jeff.

—COMPILATION ALBUMS–

The easiest and cheapest way to own music in the early 1970s was to but one of the many complication albums that were released. Top of the Pops had their own series of albums. The covers always featured a photo of a young woman bearing juts enough flesh to be titillating. All the songs were cover versions, sung to sound as close to the original song as possible. There was also another series of records, probably cheaper still than the ToTP albums. They also always had a photo  on the front of the album of a scantily clad woman. These could be bought in Woolworths ; the cost could comfortable be covered by a couple of weeks of pocket money, or some Christmas of birthday money. Jeff, with his eye for the ladies, loved these records. The favourite was a record with a photo of a woman, dressed in suede bikini with fluffy white edging, sledging across some fake snow.

——-

Mum and Dad both enjoyed music but only had a handful of vinyl albums and I don’t remember them ever buying one. There were two albums that we played regularly: Take Five by  Dave Brubeck and American Pie by Don MacClean.  This was released in 1972 so must have been bought when we were in Wells.

We played American Pie a lot, although the title song and Vincent were the only two really memorable songs. We knew most of the words to American Pie and would sing it round the house or in the car. Mum and Dad would discuss possible meanings of the lyrics. Apparently ‘the day the music died’ might have referred to the death of someone called Chuck Berry in a plane crash, and Mum said that the whole song was about the Vietnam War and how many young American boys had died in that war. It was a sad song that sounded happy apart from the final mournful words “this will be the day that I die”.  Working out the lyrics was fun and it was easy to sing. I always had one of two pictures in my head when I heard the song :  old men drinking whisky whilst sat on rocking chairs on a porch outside a wooden America home; an american band, with drummers and marionettes, stood in the middle of a football field surrounded by American footballers. (Now, I wonder whether I really thought these things back in the early 1970s, when I was just 6 or 7 or 8, or whether I am transposing  more recent memories on to that time).

When my children were old enough to sing I bought American Pie on CD. It became a regular in the car. When Ned was just 3, we started going to Soccer Tots on a Saturday morning and we would always play it. The journey was just long enough to pay the whole track. We learnt most of the words. All the children heard the song and asked of me the same questions that I had about the song when I was a  child: ‘what is it about , daddy’. I explained what a ‘levee’ is; I tried to explain who Lenin and Marx were; Joe told me who ‘the father, the son and the holy ghost’ are. If we hear the song on the radio now, the children will become animated and remember us playing the song in the car years ago; so in some way the song has passed on from my parents to, to me and then on to my own children.

Before punk exploded in 1976/77, popular music in the early  1970s was a mixture of ridiculous ‘teen’ friendly glam  – Slade, Gary Glitter,  Mud,  Showaddywaddy, Alvin Stardust, Darts, The Bay City Rollers, and groups or singers who appealed to teenage girls – and younger – who always seemed to go into massed hysterical frenzies at the sight of their favourites. In the 1960s it was the Beatles who had first provoked this reaction. In the first half of the  1970s, the  standard of music required to inflame such adulation appeared to dip, and the likes of David Cassidy, The Osmonds and The Bay City Rollers were the subject of massed teenage love.

Dad even claimed to have gone to the same school in Mansfield as  Alvin Stardust; this seemed preposterous, but Dad knew that he was then known as Shane Fenton, and he could recall the exact conversations that he had with him.

Jane, who followed all the stars via Jackie comic, fell for David Cassidy(*). She had posters of him on her bedroom walls. Jane always had an eye for the handsome, well-dressed man. In early adulthood, some of these good looking men that Jane admired turned out to be gay so were not viable partnership material.

*From Wikipedia: The best ever selling issue was the 1972 special edition to coincide with the UK tour of American singer David Cassidy.

The Don Maclean album was an introduction to slightly more adult pop music, and during times spent at home pottering around with Mum I would hear music on Radio 2.  Mum would put this on for the Jimmy Young show. He regularly played ‘Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world?’ which I always associated with mum.

The charts were an important part of my childhood. I first heard the them back in the early 1970s, probably from the Jimmy Young show who introduced the new chart on a Tuesday lunchtime.  My first memory of really noticing specific songs within in the charts is following the progress of what I remember as  ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones. For several weeks this remained in the late 20s and early 30s, moving a few places each week. The song was actually released in 1965 and became a number one then, so perhaps my memory is failing me, or was the single re-released in the early 1970s?

As I grew into my teen years, I awaited the new charts with intense anticipation. I liked pop music, but suspect I loved as numbers as much, the movement up and down.

–Songs and specific memories—

Like many people, I associate songs with periods of time, or particular places or events.

‘Crazy Horses’ by the Osmonds is associated with our early years in Jocelyn. Jeff would ‘play’ the piano part on a stool in the bathroom. In the early evening we would then follow Mum on a t9ur of the dormitoires, and Jeff would again play the piano part in all the dorms, and everyone would sing ‘Crazy horses, wow, wow…’.

As well as the Paper Lace song mentioned already, times spent at home with Mum in the early 1970s are associated with “The Most Beautiful Girl”:

“Hey, did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world?
Tell her I love her,
Tell her I need my baby..”

I can see Mum humming this quietly whilst it was played on the Jimmy Young show. I see myself alone with mum, which would have been a rarity actually. Would I not have been at school? Perhaps my memories are from school holidays or weekends or perhaps a day when I was ill. I always thought the song was by Perry Como, and I only now have I found it was sung by Charlie Rich and released in 1973, although Andy Williams also recorded the song in 1974.

When my daughter Lois was a few years old, I started singing this to her; sometimes the Boys would join in, and we would ‘serenade’ Lois, much to her annoyance.   

 ‘Seasons in the Sun’ by Terry Jacks was a massive hit in 1974 . For me it is connected with a summer holiday in Devon.

We had rented a cottage, possibly near Blackpool Sands. There was a small swimming pool. I had been bought a toy plastic boat tied to a length of string. I am  dragging the boat around the pool with the words from Season in the Sun rattling around in my head. We would sing the  song in the car. It was an odd mix of sadness and happiness; it spoke of climbing trees and singing songs , and having joy and fun, but then almost every line ended with some disappointment:

“ the stars we could reach were just starfish in the beach “ or

“the wine and the song, like the seasons, have all gone”

And the saddest lines of all:

“Goodbye papa it’s hard to die,
When all the birds are singing in the sky”

I associated the Michelle in the song with Jane, whose middle name is Michelle:

“Goodbye Michelle my little one
You gave me love and helped me find the sun
And every time that I was down
You would always come around
And get my feet back on the ground
Goodbye Michelle it’s hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky
Now that the spring is in the air
With the flowers everywhere
I wish that we could both be there”

This song has been in my head since 1974. I can never shake it off.