SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK 'N ROLL

(AND TELEVISION - PART 3)

Musically, the 1960s started out drab and grey and ended up bright and multi-coloured. We moved from two TV channels to three and homes increasingly had access to music systems with Hi-Fi sound. Somehow, though, the creative types occupying the BBC and ITV had yet to find an effective way of bringing the explosion in musical interest to the small screen. Most people still had black and white TVs, BBC2 was not yet available in all homes and for many of us, music on *the box* simply meant the weekly half hour of Top Of The Pops. 

In this third instalment of my look at popular music shows on TV, we look at how the 60s morphed into the 70s, how culture and politics increasingly impacted on viewing habits - and how in the late 1970s, we seemed to be on the verge of a musical revolution.

Of course, things turned out somewhat differently than we might have hoped and as before, this blog takes an overview and paints a broad picture - you can check out and read the first two instalments here Sex & Drugs & Rock 'N Roll & Television - Part 1  and here Sex & Drugs & Rock 'N Roll & Television - Part 2 . So, put the lava lamps away, bring out your Space Hoppers - and away we go.

THE END - AND A BEGINNING

The Woodstock Festival - August 1969

If 1967 was the Summer Of Love and 1968 the Summer Of Revolution, 1969 was the year that the high hopes of the flower children were dashed against the rocks of reality. That year saw both the highs and lows of the musical experience - the August Woodstock Festival being a last vital burst of freedom and creativity and then, just four months later in December, the writing seemed to be on the wall. The Altamont Free Festival in California featured such bands as The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Rolling Stones and was intended as a great celebration of the counterculture. Books have been written and movies made about what went wrong, but essentially, on December 6th, 300,000 people had gathered together, security had allegedly been *given* to The Hell's Angels and as The Stones played Sympathy For The Devil, the Angels - fuelled by a day of free alcohol - became a little too keen on the security *enforcement* aspects of their work. Some had already invaded Jefferson Airplane's set earlier that day, one of them having an altercation with Marty Balin which resulted in the Airplane guitarist being punched and knocked unconscious. Indeed, The Grateful Dead who were due on after the Airplane called it a day and departed. This left a gap during which tempers simmered and when in the early evening the Stones appeared, the front of the crowd surged for the stage.

Altamont Concert - December 1969 - Hells Angels running security 

Mick Jagger had already been hit by a member of the crowd before even getting on stage and it was clear that tensions were running high. He appealed for calm and songs were started and stopped as difficulties in the crowd escalated. As Sympathy For The Devil started up, fighting broke out in the crowd and one of their number, Meredith Hunter, tried to climb onto the stage. It is a matter of dispute, but after appearing to have been carrying a gun in his hand, he was rushed by a Hells Angel and stabbed twice, quickly dying from his wounds. The Stones could see a disturbance, but had no idea of what had just happened. They played on, Jagger later saying that he was even more concerned as to what might have happened had they stopped playing and abandoned the show.

Rolling Stone Magazine
 How they saw the aftermath of Altamont

Grim though this was, it soon became a symbol of the festival, a festival that had been poorly organised, over-priced and in the views of many, shown a "complete disregard for humanity". The concert had been filmed - including footage of the murder - and 1970 saw the release of the documentary Gimme Shelter which included significant sequences from Altamont. Whether deserved or not, many saw this as the end of the counter-culture and "hippy peace and love", although if the truth be known, it was already starting to whither away well before the festival had even been thought about.

As for television, a medium which had probably not truly embraced the whole "summer of love" vibe anyway, it was simply an item for the News. That year of 1969 saw the continuation of Colour Me Pop on BBC2, but this weekly half hour of TV concerts came to an end in August just as Woodstock was reaching its climax. Other than that, there were two other shows worth mentioning that had debuts in the autumn. First up was Monster Mash Music, a series of six half hour shows on BBC1 hosted by Alan Price, late of The Animals and now with his own band. It was aimed at a younger audience, but still managed to show bands such as Pentangle, Fleetwood Mac, Magna Carta and The Moody Blues. Over on ITV, still with no national competitor to the BBC's Top Of The Pops, Granada TV launched Lift Off which some have seen as a junior version of the BBC's warhorse. It was hosted by Ayshea Brough and such was her success in the role, it was retitled Lift Of With Ayshea and ran for some 144 episodes across 8 series through to 1974. The half hour show saw viewers getting in touch and requesting music -  and this was accompanied by bands doing studio performances of their new releases. When it ended, it was replaced by the Bay City Rollers vehicle Shang A Lang and later, in 1977 by Get It Together hosted by Roy North.  

The TV Times listing for Granada TV's Lift Off With Ayshea

In some ways, the new decade was a new start.

June saw a General Election in the UK and Edward Heath's Conservatives came to power. Within the next two years, the UK's currency had "gone decimal" and the nation had joined the European Economic Community, the EEC. Government policy towards industrial relations saw the miners go out on strike in 1972 and unemployment began to rise. Consumers had seen fuel prices increase in 1973 with the world-wide oil crisis and they then endured a further miner's strike in 1974, a prelude to the imposition of the "Three Day Week" in the late spring. With work not guaranteed, prices rising, power cuts planned to cut consumption - it might have seemed that the UK was fast becoming an economic basket-case.

February 1971 - Decimal Currency hits the UK

Musical trends, though, took a different approach - rather than fighting against the state of the nation, escapism seemed to be more in order as first progressive rock became prevalent and then, for the populist end of the musical spectrum, glam-rock was born.

Naturally enough, television would need to respond to all of this - and for a while, it looked as if the 1970s was going to be a bountiful decade.

Trees - Innovative folk-rock band - Just two
studio albums - but they featured on Disco 2 

BBC2, having brought Colour Me Pop to an end in 1969, created a replacement show in 1970 with the launch of Disco 2. Looking back, one could be forgiven for thinking that the BBC were ahead of the game as the "disco" genre didn't start taking hold until the mid-70s - but no, it was just a reflection of the clubs and discotheques that had sprung up around the UK in the late 60s. Broadcast in colour on a Saturday night, the first series of thirty minute shows was hosted by Tommy Vance and included a highly innovative range of artists. With Vance in charge, rock was clearly the order of the day - and acts such as Caravan, Trees, Curved Air, Caravan, Humble Pie and the early Mott The Hoople featured - and a certain Elton John, then at the outset of his career, provided the theme music. 

It was renewed for a second series in 1971, this time hosted by Radio 1's Pete Drummond: the mix was very much as before - and as we shall see, it inspired the creation of The Old Grey Whistle Test in September of that year. 

Neil Young
BBC In Concert - 1971 

One other innovation needs to be looked at - and this is the launch on BBC2 of the first series of In Concert. This was a series of 13 weekly shows, each running half an hour and devoted to a single artist playing live in front of a studio audience. Usually broadcast on a Monday or Friday night after 10.30pm, it gave a real showcase to a fine range of performers and looking back, this first run really does seem to have hit the spot with musicians such as Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Randy Newman, Tony Joe White and David Crosby to the fore. Two more series followed in 1971 and the roster broadened its horizons even more. Neil Young, Neil Diamond, James Taylor, Laura Nyro and Labi Siffre for example. By 1972, the format had expanded to include the occasional band such as Three Dog Night in amongst singer-songwriters such as Melanie, Gordon Lightfoot and Harry Nilsson. This mix of bands and solo acts continued into the mid-70s and is a useful mine of recorded material for use in documentaries and re-runs on networks such as BBC4 today. 

Over on BBC1, Top Of The Pops was entering its pomp: with a popular format, some newer presenters, the weekly dose of Pan's People and the chance to see fine live bands playing (miming) each Thursday night. New techniques enabled a crisper and smarter approach to the show's filming with increasing use of camera effects, all adding to the excitement of the product - and with glam rock, the product was bright and (initially at least) compelling. Whether it was bands such as T Rex or David Bowie on the one hand or Roxy Music and Mott The Hoople on the other, it did seem to be "appointment" TV. Unfortunately, until 1973, although the live show was taped, copies of the recordings were often junked to allow the videotape to be re-used: of the 520 shows in the programme's first 10 years, barely 20 of them remain intact. Over on ITV, Lift Of With Ayshea continued - albeit only for six months a year - and it too built up its own steady following.

But, the landmark event of the early 70s was - as has been hinted at - the launch on BBC2 of The Old Grey Whistle Test on 21st September 1971. This programme had evolved out of both Colour Me Pop and Disco 2, combining elements from both shows, but focusing increasingly on album bands and live studio performances. This wasn't about glamour and glitz, it was about the music. The show was initially recorded in one of the BBC's smallest studios which meant no elaborate staging, no studio audience - and often, just the bare walls for the bands to contemplate as they played. The show ran for half an hour, later increased to 45 minutes and for its first season, was hosted by Richard Williams, a sports journalist who was also a big music fan and worked regularly for The Melody Maker. It usually featured a couple of live bands, an interview and footage of other interesting live performances and when Bob Harris took over the reins in 1972, it gained an even greater degree of influence. A real innovation was the introduction of archive cinema film clips to accompany performances by bands who couldn't appear live in the studio. The clips were provided by Film Finders, a company started by the BBC's film critic Philip Jenkinson. Such was the artistry involved in matching, for example, 1920s flappers dancing to Led Zeppelin's Trampled Underfoot, that they became a welcome highlight, foreshadowing the explosion of pop videos in the early 1980s. 

                                             Led Zeppelin - Trampled Underfoot  

The show was broadcast late at night - usually 11pm onwards - and right from the intro titles of the "star kicker" and the unusual but compelling theme music (Stone Fox Chase by Nashville-based band Area Code 615), it seemed marked out for being a bit of a must-see show for the music enthusiast. It wasn't all about rock or progressive music, as it also featured rare TV appearances from such fine artists as Vinegar Joe, Sandy Denny, Judee Sill, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Druid and later on, many punk and new wave acts.

OGWT - Annie Nightingale

Unusually for a serious music show, the BBC persisted with the OGWT and it ran through to 1987, reflecting changing tastes along the way and seeing a change of host to Annie Nightingale (1978) and later, David Hepworth and Mark Ellen. The latter pairing would go on to launch a range of well-received weekly and monthly music magazines (Smash Hits, Q, Mojo) and today, are still noted commentators on the music scene. Change within the show did make for some awkwardness on occasions: Bob Harris didn't always see eye to eye with some of the acts that were booked, for example, and the format - despite it's continued *refreshment* did look and feel tired when it came to an end. There's no doubting though its influence, both in terms  of the sheer range of acts showcased, but also the respect given to the various genres of music.  

Whisperin' Bob Harris - OGWT 1972 - 1978

Oscar Peterson - BBC Sounds For Saturday

With the success of The Old Grey Whistle Test, the BBC pushed the boat out a bit further in 1972 with the launch of two very interesting shows. Bear in mind that BBC2 now hosted not only Whistle Test and In Concert, it was felt to be the right time for a further live music showcase on the channel - Sounds For Saturday. This programme included a fine and eclectic mix of bands and artists: Yes provided the theme music and other acts featured included (for example) The Faces, Osibisa, Roberta Flack, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Oscar Peterson. It only ran for one season, but that season included 25 forty-five minute programmes and again, has proved to be an invaluable source of great live music.  

The other new programme was back on the main channel, BBC1. Sounding Out was a half hour show which combined artist interviews with performance and although it only ran for ten shows between January and March 1972, it did emphasise that there was another way of presenting bands and musicians on TV. This format has been adopted by other shows since then, most recently in the long-running Later...With Jools Holland. There was an unusual and pleasing mix of acts in Sounding Out - ranging from Yorkshire folkies Mr Fox to Lindisfarne to blues rockers Stone The Crows and prog-rockers Yes.

CONSOLIDATION

The mid-1970s was to prove to be a tough time in the UK - and it didn't look as if the rest of the decade would be any real improvement.

The Conservatives under Edward Heath lost the 1974 election to a minority government run by Harold Wilson's Labour Party. A second election was called later that year to try and create a majority administration and in this, the Labour Party was successful. But, in some ways, their handling of labour relations and the decline of traditional British industry was no better than their Tory predecessors. Whilst television seemed set fair with its mixture of serious and popular music shows - leavened by the occasional special in the BBC's arts strand Omnibus such as the excellent 1973 David Bowie documentary Cracked Actor - there was a quiet revolution starting to gather pace in the music business. This would explode onto the scene in 1976, but until then, it was all very much about consolidation and familiarity. ITV mainly focused on the youth market with its shows such as Lift Off and later, Get It Together - and in 1975, it tried yet another production aimed at the teen market - Supersonic.

Supersonic - LWT 1975 and 1976
Mike Mansfield, arm poised to "cue"

This was a show produced by London Weekend Television that ran for just two seasons. It was created by Mike Mansfield whose presence was seen in each broadcast sat up in the director's gallery. He actively *cued* the start of each act by pointing his outstretched arm and saying "..and cue". It was all a bit artificial, although the show did try to concentrate on non- chart music and managed to put in a total of 50 shows across its run. Perhaps things were all feeling a little bit safe, though - and certainly not edgy or challenging - and almost certainly not reflecting life as it was starting to be lived out in the real world. Television reflects the music that's made and by December 1976 when TV anchor Bill Grundy - clearly having assisted himself to a drink or two pre-show - met the Sex Pistols and goaded them into a television sensation, we were looking for change. 

Join me next time as we explore how television plays its part in the UK punk revolution - and then all but ignores it.


Alan Dorey
28th January 2014.





   
     

  

     

  

  

SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK 'N ROLL

(AND TELEVISION - PART 2)

The 1950s rock and roll explosion was teenage rebellion writ large.

And like any rebellious youngster, time passes and adulthood looms - and what had seemed an energetic and vital recreation no longer holds the attention that it once did. New horizons are in prospect and the enquiring musical mind needs to seek out new sounds and challenges.

In the first part of this quintet of blogs - Sex And Drugs And Rock 'N Roll Part 1 - I covered how television here in the UK eventually embraced this new music. With an increasing public interest in genre music and albums, how would 1960s BBC and ITV respond in their busy schedules? What shows and formats would they provide and how would viewers react to them? I'll try to provide the answers by sorting out the landmark shows from the also-rans and exploring the key trends that emerged.

As before, this is no scholarly, exhaustive trawl through every facet of music on British television, so those expecting intellectual interpretations supported by a myriad of footnotes will be disappointed. But , fear not, it is an action- packed double-album in a smart gate-fold sleeve with colourful lyric sheet, so let's slip disc one out of its inner sleeve, gently place it on the record deck - and cue the music.

FROM OUT OF THE DARKNESS - THERE CAME LIGHT

April 20th 1964 was a big day for the BBC.

After two years of planning, the UK was about to receive its third TV channel - BBC2. Born out of the 1962 Pilkington Report which noted that following the 1955 launch of ITV, the BBC had become more populist in its approach, it recommended that the third channel should be a more upmarket and high-brow affair. Not only that, but coming just a few months after Prime Minister Harold Wilson's famous  "white heat of technology speech", BBC2 would make use of the latest broadcast advancement by adopting the UHF format. This enabled the use of 625 lines on the TV screen and made for a higher definition picture as a result. It also meant that viewers would have to buy a new TV aerial capable of receiving UHF broadcasts, a major dampner on the exciting ideas the BBC had for its BBC2 schedule.

It wasn't all plain sailing.

Opening Night for BBC2 - with Candle Power

On launch day at 6.45pm, there was a major fire at Battersea Power Station and large parts of West London, including BBC TV Centre at Shepherds Bush, were plunged into darkness. BBC2 was due to go on air at 7.20pm and although a partial back-up was quickly provided via Alexandra Palace, it was a less than glorious evening for the BBC and their viewers.

Despite the opening night disruption, BBC2 got off to a steady start, but its viewing numbers initially remained low as its potential audience wondered whether or not to buy their new aerials. For those that did, the reward was a pair of new and influential music shows - shows that took advantage of both BBC2's *high-brow* brief and the increasing public demand for more *grown-up* music on TV.

Jazz 625 - Titles - April 1964

Jazz 625 - neatly using the new UHF system in its title - launched on Day 2 of the new network, 21st April 1964. The show's format mixed in live concerts, jam sessions, interviews and all things of interest to the jazz fan. Presented by Steve Race - and later Humphrey Lyttleton and Peter Clayton - the timing of the show was fortuitous. Until 1964, the Musician's Union, keen to preserve the working interests of their members, had been in dispute with The American Federation Of Musicians which essentially meant that many US artists could not come and play live in the UK. This ended just as BBC2 was preparing for launch - and thus Jazz 625 made great play of the change by bringing stars such as Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson to perform for its viewers.

The show ran through to the summer of 1966 and uniquely for the BBC at the time, most editions were recorded on 35mm film stock and have been kept in the archives. Frequent use has been made of the performances since in all manner of documentaries and packaged repeats. Such was its impact and influence, that in the 1990s, an affectionate parody of the show regularly appeared in the BBC comedy series, The Fast Show.

      

BBC2 also catered for the pop fan who - perhaps - wanted a wider exposure to the range of artists working in the field. In August 1965, The Beat Room started on BBC2 as a half-hour live show with the chosen acts performing in front of an audience of dancers. The host was offstage and heard but not seen as bands such as The Animals, Moody Blues, John Lee Hooker, The High Numbers and Marvin Gaye appeared on screen. It ran for some seven months and whilst not hugely influential, it was a bold attempt to provide something a little bit different.   


The Beat Room was the brainchild of director Barry Langford and he created its BBC2 successor, the awkwardly titled Gadzooks! It's All Happening . It was a half-hour recorded show, broadcast in the early evening and is memorable if only for widening the net a little in terms of the range of artists included. Alongside such as The Moody Blues, there were slots from Graham Bond, David Jones (Mr Bowie to be), Alexis Korner and folk guitarist John Renbourn. Sadly, none of the shows survives and it only ran for six months.

Whilst BBC2 was exploring the further reaches of the pop and rock universe, what was its elder brother, BBC1 up to? Given that it had a brief to cater for a wider section of the viewing public, it pressed on with Juke Box Jury and Top of The Pops, but it did experiment with a magazine-format music and youth show aimed at the under-21s. Called A Whole Scene Going On, it was launched in January 1966 and was hosted by Barry Fantoni (an artist, jazz musician and, for many years, a stalwart contributor to Private Eye) and actress Wendy Varnals. Of the 24 shows broadcast, only 4 seem to have survived - including one featuring such content as a live performance of The Spencer Davis Group and clips from the movie Dalek Inavsion Of Earth: 2150. Hardly cutting-edge, but none-the-less, interesting fayre.

Second big-screen outing for Dr Who and the Daleks, 1966

As for ITV, it was steady as you go with their popular shows, Ready Steady Go! and Thank Your Lucky Stars. But, if TV was playing it safe, the music world in 1966 was on the cusp of revolution. The Beatles set the cat amongst the pigeons with the release of Revolver in August, an album that sign-posted a new direction of travel for the moptops. Bob Dylan had already released two classic electric albums in 1965 (Bringing it All Back Home; Highway '61 Revisited) and 1966 saw his stunning release, Blonde On Blonde. In San Francisco, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were exploring new avenues, often substance-assisted - and here in the UK, British TV barely recognised the "new tomorrow" and BBC radio (for there was no commercial radio) ignored it. 

Change was in the wind.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED - IN COLOUR

One of the benefits that BBC2 had by being broadcast on UHF  was that it could accommodate the introduction of colour TV. The USA had pioneered colour shows some years before and even in the UK, several programmes (The Avengers, Thunderbirds) were made in colour for the US market. But it was the BBC who would be the first in Europe to launch a colour broadcast service. This was on BBC2 in 1967, just in time for Wimbledon - and from our point of view, co-iniciding with The Summer Of Love. The existing UHF aerial could cope with it, but televisions could not as once again, the viewing public had to decide whether to upgrade - this time to a large and expensive colour set. It was some while before the sufficiency of colour broadcasts met with the increasing propensity of the public to take the plunge, but the BBC did their bit to wave the flag. BBC producer Aubrey Singer had been working for almost a year on a major project to demonstrate the internationalism of television. He came up with the idea of Our World, a two and half our special to be broadcast via satellite around the world. It would take contributions from nineteen nations to show and promote internationalism and, although broadcast via the auspices of the European Broadcast Union, it remained a BBC project.

The Beatles at Abbey Road Studios for their Our World sequence

Our interest is the closing sequence where a range of artists such as The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Graham Nash joined with the Beatles in a live perfomance of a song the fab four had written specially for the occasion. The song - of course -  was All You Need Is Love and it is believed to have reached an audience of 400 million viewers. The only thing that was missing was the fact that it was broadcast in black and white - but times would change, and very quickly. 

It was The Beatles again that provided the catalyst -  and this time, they had been working on a colour broadcast project of their own - The Magical Mystery Tour. It might have seemed a good idea at the time, the band playing themselves on board a touring coach alongside a host of odd and interesting characters all keen to find out where the Mystery Tour would end up. The plot was thin and the humour of the situation didn't always come across, but there were several fine songs to break up the production including the iconic sequence of the band playing I Am the Walrus whilst wearing animal masks. It was broadcast on BBC1 on Boxing Day, 1967. Thus far, The Beatles could do little wrong in the eyes of the British public having released Sgt Pepper to immense praise and success earlier that year. That combined with their abandonment of live gigs back in 1966 gave the show an added piquance, but whether it was an over-reached ambition or the desire of the Christmas TV audience to have non-challenging viewing, it was met with bemusement from fans and indifference from the critics.

The Beatles - Have they been watching The Magical Mystery Tour? 

One other interesting and influential programme hit the screens for the first time in that December as well. It was a bridge towards such shows as The Goodies, The Two Ronnies and Monty Python's Flying Circus - and it was aimed firmly at children. It was Do not Adjust Your Set, a comedy sketch show produced by Rediffusion (later Thames) featuring Terry Jones, Michael Palin, David Jason, Denise Coffey and Eric Idle. From our viewpoint, the excitement lies in the weekly slot occupied by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, a platform for their anarchic musical pieces and today, a valuable archive for music clips. It only ran for two seasons of 13 shows (ending in 1969), but there's no doubt that when comparing the musical TV take on the world of the late 60s, it was probably more percipient than  the fab four touring the land in a colourful coach. 

The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band

  

Television - as is often the case - rarely sets the agenda, but is pretty good at following it once it's been established. Whilst the music world was turned upside down in 1967, it wasn't really until 1968 that the BBC hit its stride with bringing that revolution into our homes. March saw the launch on BBC2 of an early forerunner of what was to become the Old Grey Whistle Test slot, a show with the *catchy* title of Colour Me Pop. Aimed at pushing the availability of colour TV as much as presenting a host of pop and rock acts, it had been created out of Late Night Line-Up, a fondly remembered "open-ended" daily arts show. It only ran for half an hour, but managed to persuade a highly eclectic range of bands and artists to take part. In most shows, the whole programme was given over to one or two acts at most which served to provide a wider exploration of their music. Colour Me Pop ran for two seasons and in its 53 shows, it had sessions from The Hollies, The Kinks, Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, Giles Giles and Fripp, The Nice, Ten Years After and many others. This was such a striking comparison with the bill of fayre being served up over at Top Of The Pops on BBC1, but that show too was about to hit its stride and attain a popularity that lasted through to the mid 1970s.

Tony Blackburn

Over on the commercial network, one-time pirate DJ and now BBC Radio 1 breakfast host Tony Blackburn was given a weekly show on Saturday evenings from February 1968 onwards. Called Time For Blackburn, it was an odd production, being created by the regional contractor Southern TV and not a show that was able to hold down a national broadcast slot. (In the 1960s, although ITV acted as an umbrella organisation, each regional station could determine their own scheduling of shows). It was interesting, though for two reasons - it was directed by Mike Mansfield (who we shall return to in the 1970s) and it aimed to include rock music as well as the expected pop hits of the day. It ran for a year and is one of several regionally produced ITV shows that added their bit to the television musical mix.

BBC1 had another bash at a magazine format show aimed (as it said at the time) at "the young and young at heart". This was How It Is, a forty minute show broadcast from July to December 1968 and produced by Tony Palmer who, later on, became a noted film director and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music. Its music content varied quite a bit, but space was always at a premium as other segments fought for their time as well. 

So, as 1968 came to a close, let's take stock of where we are.

On BBC1, Top Of The Pops was going strong and Juke Box Jury had come to an end. ITV's Ready Steady Go! had gone as had Thank Your Lucky Stars. BBC2 was pressing ahead with Colour Me Pop and various other specials.

The musical revolution had certainly brought change - and the increasing use of colour. But there was no doubt that in the round, the TV treatment of music programming still heavily relied on variety shows with a *safe* pop act rather than a good range of genre music shows and shows aimed at the album buying audience. Both main networks ran light entertainment series hosted by pop artists attempting to diversify and prolong their careers: ATV had been running a series of shows with Cliff Richard - later to transfer to the BBC in 1970 -  and the BBC themselves had done their bit with several seasons of music and comedy shows hosted by Lulu. Cilla Black too had been launched in January as a TV entertainer by the BBC's Head Of Light Entertainment, Bill Cotton. Of the three, she went on to a lengthy televison career and it is for this which she's probably better known today, rather than her 1960s pop recordings. 

But, how - and when - would this change? Would there ever be a time when *serious* rock and pop would have its own, prominent slots on TV? There's nothing wrong with populist programming - just as long as there's appropriate attention being given to the wilder stretches of the musical world too.  

I'll explore this in the next blog as we take a look at the 1970s and 1980s This was an era of explosive change that started with paucity -  and ended with profusion. 

Was it what we wanted?

Join me next time.


Alan Dorey
20th January 2014.

SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK 'N ROLL

(AND TELEVISION - PART 1)

Television and Popular music - be it rock 'n roll, pop, folk, jazz or rock - certainly made for strange bedfellows in their early days. The rock n' roll explosion neatly coincided with the launch of independent television in the UK from 1955 onwards. The traditionalist BBC felt the heat of competition like never before as the populist ITV aimed to maximise audiences and keep the advertisers happy. This left the BBC clinging to its Reithian mission to "Inform, Educate and Entertain". Clearly, the BBC needed to change: the "entertain" element of its strapline (somehow) had to be bumped up the running order to serve a new demographic group: teenagers. In this blog - the first of five linked instalments - I review how the the BBC and ITV rose to the challenge of providing popular music on TV. From those early 1950s days, right through to the multi-channel environment of 2014, there's a wealth of fascinating programmes just waiting our exploration. 

It's not an exhaustive study, nor does it try to be the final word on the shows and trends it discusses. But I hope it stokes memories, provides opportunities for comment - and generates a wry smile or two as we journey through the hits and the (many) misses of TV music shows. 

After all, it's only rock 'n roll, right?

IN THE BEGINNING

Although the UK embraced the concept of Record Charts for popular music in 1952, the nation's broadcaster, the BBC, paid little attention to them. Radio was the prime broadcast medium, rationing still lingered post-war and although the BBC television service had started up again, it was't until 1953 and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II that the balance started to move in favour of the visual upstart. Popular music - when it was heard - cropped up occasionally in existing shows, but in general terms, it seemed almost as if the BBC believed that the nascent sound of rock and roll had no real future and was not worthy of broadcast investment.

To its credit, the BBC did dip its toes in the TV waters in 1957 with the fondly remembered Six Five Special, a weekly hour of rock and roll - hosted initially by Pete Murray and broadcast live. Being the BBC, it couldn't be seen to be purely about "the music" and early on, there was a determination that it should be a magazine show with some public service elements such as news and sport. There's no doubt though of the show's significance as its initial six-week run was extended several times, eventually leading to a run of 96 shows before it came to an end in late 1958. It was popular, but there were tensions behind the scenes as the producer (Jack Good) felt that the public service elements diluted the type of show he wanted to deliver.

Oh Boy - Compilation LP of
acts shown on the programme

He decamped to the new upstart ITV contractor, ABC and in September 1958, he created the show he'd wanted to run at the BBC - Oh Boy! Initially, it ran in direct competition with Six Five Special - but when that show ceased, it had the early Saturday night slot all to itself. It proved to be the launch-pad for several artists - Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury and Shirley Bassey just being a few of the up and coming guests. It ran into 1959 and was later replaced by a similar show hosted by musician Marty Wilde, Boys Meet Girls - this lasted just six months but did bring artists such as The Vernon Girls and Joe Brown to a wider UK audience. 

These two ITV shows were aimed squarely at teenagers, but it was a 1961 ABC programme that showed that popular music could make attractive, audience-grabbing TV. This was Thank Your Lucky Stars, a show that ran for six years and featured over 2000 guest artists playing live - albeit, miming to their records. Hosts included Brian Matthews and Keith Fordyce and the format allowed the artist performances to be broken up with audience participation pieces. The most well remembered of these was a record review slot where three audience members gave marks to the latest singles. Who can forget Janice Nicholls from the Midlands with her almost trademark "I'll give it foive" catchphrase? The show itself was cancelled in 1967.

The Beatles rehearsing for a 1964 performance on
Thank Your Lucky Stars

Meanwhile, back at the BBC, another attempt was made at creating a popular music show. Unusually, a format was borrowed from an American TV show that had been first broadcast back in 1948. It was an hour long programme that used a panel of personalities to listen to and then review a series of new singles. It was called Juke Box Jury, but  despite the obvious attraction of the set-up, the original run came to an end in 1954, although it continued (unbelievably) in syndication for a further five years - which is where the BBC came in. In that year - 1959 - the BBC devised their own version, hosted by David Jacobs and broadcast live on Saturday night from the BBC Theatre in Shepherds Bush. The judging panel heard a minute or two of a new single, gave their comments - and were then asked to vote on whether it would be a Hit or a Miss: the urbane Jacobs kept order - and part of the show's appeal was the disconnect between some panel members (a different quartet each week) and their "sage" comments on the music. It was a successful show which ran through to the end of 1967, although it must have been a frustrating experience for viewers who only got to hear part of each single played.  

A typical hip and happening set of  panelists on Juke Box Jury 

SIXTIES RIVALRIES

The big musical breakthrough was yet to come, however. The 1960s had started, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had arrived and something a little more informal, a bit more rough and ready - something more exciting - was needed. In 1963, Rediffusion TV - the ITV London weekend contractor -  started the legendary Ready, Steady, Go!. The TV sets looked like a scruffy warehouse, the audience mixed and mingled with the artists and cameras and the whole feel of the show was brash, confident and a little bit edgy. Hosted by Keith Fordyce - who had moved across from Thank Your Lucky Stars - and Cathy McGowan, the show quickly attracted a firm viewing audience as well as the top acts of the day. Broadcasting live on a Friday night in central London helped bring those artists in: acts such as Dusty Springfield, The Stones, Manfred Mann, Beatles, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and The Dave Clark Five gave it a credibility that made it stand out from the more variety-based shows that had been the main TV offering thus far.

The BBC needed to do something.

The first couple of years of the 60s had been a strange time musically: the first bursts of rock 'n roll had fizzled out somewhat, all manner of UK acts doing copyist versions and this was reflected in the BBC offerings. It all looked and felt as if music was in limbo, stuck in a rut with few signs of the creativity and energy needed to lift it up into a new plane altogether. The 1963 launch of ABC's Ready, Steady, Go!  had set a high bar - and it was perhaps fortunate that the BBC listened to an idea from one of their staff producers, Johnnie Stewart. He'd pitched the notion of a weekly chart show, a show that played key singles from the Top 20 and - as he admitted - was a show loosely based on Radio Luxembourg's Teen And Twenty Disc Club. It was a simple but winning format - the charts determined what was on the show, music fans decided what was in the charts by the records they bought. And, of course, the thrill of the countdown each week - ending up with the week's number one - seemed almost designed to ensure plenty of viewers tuned in. 

The original BBC studios, Dickenson Road, Manchester

The show was to be broadcast from Manchester at the BBC's Dickenson Road studios, a small complex created out of a converted church and not - one would have thought - the best location for top acts to find their way to. But, a mix of live artists, filmed inserts, the Go-Jo dancers and the studio audience "doing their thing" ensured that there was plenty of variety.

And thus was born Top Of The Pops on January 1st 1964, a show offered a six-week run that lasted for 42 years.

Top Of The Pops was initially hosted by a revolving group of DJs and presenters with some - David Jacobs and Pete Murray  - already veterans of BBC music shows. Alan Freeman was brought in from Radio Luxembourg and he was joined by Jimmy Saville, a night club owner from Leeds who was to make the show his sinecure for many years to come. The show's longevity was closely tied up with the singles charts, and although there were experiments with (for example) a weekly album track, it was all about the best selling sounds of the week. It finally came to an end in 2006 by which time awkward scheduling and the digital download revolution had caused its audience to fall away dramatically. The days of million-selling singles and big-name bands playing live were over, but there's no doubting the influence the show had and although many early broadcasts no longer exist, there's a wealth of iconic performances that have been preserved and still readily available on You Tube and in packaged versions of the show still broadcast by the BBC.

During its long run, Top Of The Pops had to contend with many things: the increasing attraction of album-based bands, the Summer Of Love, the growth of feminism, political changes, colour TV, recession, the CD and all manner of short-lived competitors. The format worked, but what it didn't do - and what it couldn't do - was champion genre music, album music, music that some saw as being more "serious" and less transient and "here today, gone tomorrow".

In the next instalment, we look at how television coped with non-chart material as genre and album-based music took on a greater importance.

Join me then.

Alan Dorey

13th January 2014 

THE MUSICAL BOX "TOP 40" ALBUMS OF 2013 - Part 2

With the New Year now well and truly upon us, there's still time for one final backward glance at 2013 - and here we are with the second part of The Musical Box Top 40 Albums of 2013. This week is the Big One, the one where we do a run down of the Top 20 - including the stunning #1 album. The 40 albums were chosen by me from a combination of my Albums Of The Week last year - plus some of those which slipped under the radar - and then were thrown over to the listeners to cast their votes. Voting numbers are - pleasingly - well up on 2012 and it's great to see the final placings of some very fine albums indeed.

2013 has been an exceptional year for new music, albeit, some of the most interesting releases coming from artists making surprise comebacks after many years of apparent inactivity. Record sales - that is, tangible releases such as CDs and Vinyl - continued to fall amidst the continued onslaught of downloading and streaming as the consumers' choice of purchase. However, digging beneath the surface shows us that whilst CD sales fell by 13% compared to 2012, Vinyl sales continued their niche popularity with growth of over 101%. With fewer and fewer record stores - and other outlets such as supermarkets only selling a *safe* selection of CDs - it's become increasingly difficult for music fans to buy CDs, a format which still sold over 61 million units in the UK last year. It was good too to see the rescue and rebirth of HMV - and indeed, the increased focus on its core business, namely music, rather than all manner of peripherals like mobile phones.

The surviving independent record stores continue to innovate and it's instructive to look at The Official Record Store Top 40 of 2013 -  a remarkable degree of consistency with The Musical Box chart, not only in the albums themselves, but several of the key placings too. This chart only includes the independent stores, those that participate in Record Store Day each year, but it still packs some punch: Official Record Stores Top 40 - 2013   

So here we are then, the second part of The Musical Box Top 40 as voted for by you, the listeners:

     THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 2013 - PART 2 - 20 TO #1 

Click here to listen to the show itself:

 The Musical Box - Show #366 - 2nd January 2014

There we are then - just a bit of fun, but I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. 

The Musical Box is back to *normal* next week with all our usual features and songs old, new, borrowed and blues - so do please join me, make it a date and tune in at 10pm on Thursday, 9th January.

See you then.

Alan Dorey

3rd January 2014