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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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.
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| 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.
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| Whisperin' Bob Harris - OGWT 1972 - 1978 |
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| Oscar Peterson - BBC Sounds For Saturday |
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.
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| Supersonic - LWT 1975 and 1976 Mike Mansfield, arm poised to "cue" |
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.
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