Glam, Glitter, Stadium Rock, fifties revivals,
Disco, Punk and
The Osmonds . . . and they call it the decade that taste forgot!
The decade that brought us Leif Garrett AND
The Ramones. What's up
with that?!
 It seems remarkable that in just 10 years, popular music could
develop from the innocence of The Jackson
5's The Love You Save
to the future shock of Gary Numan's Are Friends Electric?
and the Sugarhill Gang's Rappers Delight. Yet it happened .
This was also the decade that opened with Jimi Hendrix choking
on his own vomit and ended with Sex Pistol Sid Vicious stabbing
his lover Nancy Spungen to death.
The Beatles finally broke up,
and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley died (but within
a week he was back at the top of the American charts).
Britain and America largely followed different paths in the
first half of the decade, with Britain gripped by teenybop mania
and no discernible change from the music of the late 60s in the
USA.
The seventies began with a major increase in LP sales with
established acts like Led Zeppelin,
The Who and Deep Purple all
spending time at the top of the album charts, with competition
from Elton John.
 The Jackson 5, a group of brothers from Gary, Indiana,
dominated the US charts in the early 70s (They had already scored
four Number One singles between 1969 and 1970). Thirteen year old
lead vocalist Michael even stepped out for a solo career.
The Osmonds were another group of brothers to top the charts in
the early part of the decade.
They were like a white, Mormon
version of The Jackson 5 and had hits with One Bad Apple,
Double Lovin' and Yo-yo, while teen heart-throb
Donny had hits of his own with Go Away Little Girl, Puppy
Love and Young Love.
Alice Cooper stepped to the front of the rock scene with his
outrageous onstage antics and pet Boa Constrictor. Alice and his
band actually produced two of the best hard-rock albums of 1971, Love
It To Death and Killer.
At a time when many were still trying to come to terms with the
radical changes of the last five years, Carole
King's Tapestry
album hit the zeitgeist square on the forehead and stayed on the
album charts for five months.
More than anything, the 70s saw a tendency for brief fads and
for acts to come and go, and the term "one hit wonder"
was bandied around for the first time.
The first big 'new sound' of the decade came with 'Glitter
Rock', the main proponents of which were Slade,
The Sweet and Marc
Bolan's T. Rex. The Osmonds were definitely not part of the
movement but appealed to a similar audience in the UK.
As politics got greyer and life became more depressing, people
needed a break - literally. They needed larger than life figures
to take them away from it all.
Which is where the Bolans and the Bowies came into it. What joy
was there in watching a dirty, gratefully dead hippie who was
happy to play long, endlessly long, meandering instrumentals
because it meant that he didn't have to get up from his stoned
stupor?
In 1972, Slade traded blows with Alice Cooper while in the
other semi-final Lieutenant Pigeon played The Royal Scots Dragoon
Guards Band. But music was always mad in the Seventies.
In 1973, when Glam was at its height and even the lady who
worked in the local bakery had dyed hair (OK so it was a blue
rinse - don't get bogged down in detail) what was the top single? Eye
Level by the Simon Park Orchestra. Yes, yes, the theme to Van
Der Valk . . . and if you can't remember it, just be grateful
we haven't included snatches of the song on this website!
These were the Glitter Years. The years of hot
pants, platform boots, nail varnish and sequins. And for the girls - tank tops,
Doc Martens and boys' haircuts. The gender bending had begun.
Glitter Rock was of course
named after the man who started it all. The now legendary Paul
Raven, who over a period of 10 years (and under his latest
pseudonym Gary Glitter) staged 14 farewell
tours - but sadly 15 revivals.
In 1970, Top 40 pop began to revive, after a lengthy period in
the doldrums. The change was most noticeable in the US where new
groups and new styles were breaking out everywhere. But in Britain
also there were signs that the art of the three-minute hit single
was slowly being re-discovered. .
But before you dismiss the '70s as a musical wasteland
populated by one-hit wonders, remember this: It also produced
Bruce Springsteen, Talking Heads, The Ramones,
The Clash, The
Pretenders and David Bowie.
The major new movement which began in the USA in 1975 and would
spread its influence worldwide, was disco music. Originally
regarded by many as a poor substitute for genuine soul music,
nothing had been more capable of filling a dance floor.
Who can forget the Village People (Macho Man and YMCA),
or KC and the Sunshine Band (That's The Way I Like It), or
even Rick Dees (Disco Duck)? After Vietnam,
Watergate and
long afternoons in a petrol queue, kids didn't want to deal with
issues any more. They just wanted to dance.
 The disco boom would peak in 1978 with the enormously
successful Saturday Night Fever, but before that the charts
would be almost saturated with disco epics.
At the start of 1976 there was little warning that the world of
popular music would be turned upside down before the end of the
year. Even in America the waves from punk would be felt in major
cities, although the New Wave took longer to bite (which was
curious since all the punk influences came originally from
America).
And then one day it happened . . . John Lydon wandered into
Malcolm McLaren and Vivien
Westwood's Kings Road boutique Sex and
forever melded fashion and noise with The Sex Pistols.
The Pistols were the leaders of the revolution, guided by rag
trade entrepreneur McLaren (who had managed The New York Dolls
during their decline). At the time, nothing seemed too different -
among the chart topping LPs of the year were glossy items by ABBA,
Queen, Rod Stewart and Status Quo.
In the UK singles charts, retrogressive acts like The Wurzels,
Eurovision Song Contest winners Brotherhood Of Man, Greek
fat-bloke Demis Roussos and Johnny Mathis reached the top, while
America was a little different - Disco records ruled.
But something quite new was happening. The predominantly
American acts who had dominated the early part of the decade were
being ignored outside the US. The glitter era had passed and
everyone craved excitement and wanted music they could call their
own.
Not since the 1950s had there been a major musical genre which
alienated parents. Punk gave hope to disaffected youth. London
venues like the 100 Club, The Marquee, Dingwalls began hosting
bands like Siouxsie & The Banshees, Generation X and The Jam.
However, it wasn't until Rotten and co shocked Britain by
swearing on an early evening television chat show that things
really took off.
Originally there were just the Pistols, The Clash and The
Damned. And originally everyone got all worked up about the
Pistols, got all idolatrous about the Clash. And The Damned?
Everybody just took the piss out The Damned. "They're like
cartoons! They're not real! They don't mean it!"
Ironically, out of the three, easily the most influential were
The Damned. Their spirit lived on simply because they were the
ones having a laugh, they were your mates.
Everyone likes icons such as the Pistols and The Clash, but you
look at icons, you gawp in reverence at icons. They're cold and
impressive and distant. Mates you have a laugh with.
Some established acts were able to survive the punk onslaught.
Others just went to ground until the coast was clear for them to
re-emerge into their dry-ice filled stadiums. And punk eventually
became just another music-industry cash-in, and the death of Sid
Vicious in 1979 meant the end of an era.
Ultimately, many of the brash young bands of the punk movement
became the new establishment bands, with the likes of The Police
and U2 moving up into the stadiums.
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