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 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!).
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. 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.
 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.
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!
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 gas line
(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. 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, and
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.
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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