UK Singles Chart - 60th Anniversary Solid Gold Sixty

01. All The Young Dudes - Mott The Hoople
02. Jumpin' Jack Flash - Rolling Stones
03. Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
04. No More Heroes - Stranglers
05. Virginia Plain - Roxy Music
06. Life On Mars? - David Bowie
07. Metal Guru - T.Rex
08. The Man With The Child In His Eyes - Kate Bush
09. Shot By Both Sides - Magazine
10. I'm Mandy Fly Me - 10cc

11. Now I'm Here - Queen
12. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall - Bryan Ferry
13. Elected - Alice Cooper
14. This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us - Sparks
15. Hong Kong Garden - Siouxsie & The Banshees
16. What Do I Get? - Buzzcocks
17. Dead Pop Stars - Altered Images
18. Senses Working Overtime - XTC
19. Delilah - Sensational Alex Harvey Band
20. Airport - Motors
21. Back Off Boogaloo - Ringo Starr
22. Anarchy In The UK - Sex Pistols
23. 10538 Overture - Electric Light Orchestra
24. Lola - Kinks
25. Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever - Beatles
26. Coz I Luv You - Slade
27. Riders On The Storm - Doors
28. Duel - Propaganda
29. Violet - Hole
30. All The Things She Said - t.A.T.u.

31. 22: The Death Of All The Romance - Dears
32. Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire
33. Venus As A Boy - Björk
34. Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
35. Whiskey In The Jar - Thin Lizzy
36. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band/Harlem Community Choir
37. Pipes Of Peace - Paul McCartney
38. Layla - Derek & The Dominos
39. In A Broken Dream - Python Lee Jackson
40. Rocket Man - Elton John
41. 99 Red Balloons - Nena
42. Stop The Cavalry - Jona Lewie
43. Ghosts - Japan
44. 5:15 - Who
45. See Emily Play - Pink Floyd
46. School Days - Runaways
47. Fireball - Deep Purple
48. Satellite Of Love - Lou Reed
49. See My Baby Jive - Wizzard
50. Blinded By The Light - Manfred Mann's Earthband
51. Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) - John Fred & His Playboy Band
52. Hocus Pocus - Focus
53. Flowers In The Rain - Move
54. Fire - Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
55. The Carnival Is Over - Seekers
56. Dreamer - Supertramp
57. Where The Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds/Kylie Minogue
58. Let's Stay Together - Al Green
59. Naughty Miranda - Indians In Moscow
60. Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft - Carpenters

Telly Visions: Lily Cole

I’ll be perfectly honest and tell you I could look at pictures of this girl all day - with or without her clothes on! She’s simply stunning. The supermodel type doesn’t usually appeal to me but Lily Cole is different. She has that pixie/elfin quality about her face that I, and many others, find so charming in Kate Bush. The shocking-red hair is, also, definitely an asset. And, Lily’s perfectly-shaped boobs aren’t exactly going to put anyone off either! She’s been modelling for about five years. The story goes that, when she was fourteen, she was walking through the streets of Soho, after a hamburger with friends, when a talent scout approached her. Fearing she was being chased by “some dodgy guy”, Cole ran. But, after being asked to consider modelling, she accepted and was signed on with Storm Models, the mother agency of supermodels such as Kate Moss. Lily is now one of the models in the Marks and Spencer-clothing advertising campaign, becoming the youngest model ever to participate in a promotion for the line. The Sunday Times stated, last year, that she’s already worth £6 million… and she only turned twenty yesterday!

Lily has started to break out of the modelling world and move into acting. She played Polly in last year’s successful remake of “St. Trinian’s”, alongside Rupert Everett, Colin Firth and new Bond girl Gemma Arterton. St. Trinian’s, for those of you who don’t know, is a school for what are generally termed “young ladies”! With its anarchic doctrine of free expression, this wonderful establishment of learning brings together a motley crew of ungovernable girls - posh totty, chavs, emos, geeks and first years - who, using their wit and ingenuity, save the institution from bankruptcy. Sounds like the ideal place for Kerry Katona! The bespectacled Polly is in the geek clique, though doesn’t Lily look lovely with glasses. However, don’t take my word for it… I’ve posted a selection of ten screen caps, on my Jukebox blog, in order for you to make up your own minds concerning the leggy lassie. Lily appeared in the “Comic Relief” video of “Walk This Way” with Girls Aloud and, conversely, the girl group appear as schoolgirls in the film! If the thought of all those stocking-and-suspender clad legs is getting too much, “St. Trinian’s” is now available to own on DVD!!!

Sweet Little Girl?

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I wrote some really crap lyrics! The first song I ever committed to manuscript was “Sweet Little Girl”, and the title says it all really, but embarrassment isn’t the word were I forced to put my name to some of today’s hit records that seem to pass muster with the kids. Take Kate Nash. Well, as long as she kept her trap shut, I just might! But the lyrics of her song “Foundations” are just so goddamn irritating. Consider this example…

You said, “I must eat so many lemons ’cause I am so bitter.”
I said, “I’d rather be with your friends, mate, ’cause they are much fitter.”

Where do you start with such crass writing? I’d dump her on the spot for calling me “mate” but the rhyme is what really gets my goat. It’s hilarious for all the wrong reasons. It’s just so forced. Kate was probably thinking, if she does such a thing, “what the hell can I rhyme with bitter?” The result is a confession that she sees men as no more than sex objects, the very thing men are always accused of when objectifying women. Well, you’re gonna have to get more of a personality, “love”, if you want to be thought of as anything other than tits and arse! I thought teenagers were supposed to mature more quickly these days. She’s twenty. Kate Bush was writing more mature songs, in the Seventies, aged 16, and so was I! And, don’t even get me started on Nash’s ability as a pianist. Keep your eyes on her fingers, she does!!

Normal Norman

I thought it necessary to step out of blogging retirement to warmly remember the life of Norman Smith who sadly passed away on the 3 March, aged 85. Perhaps some of you are scratching your heads and wondering who on earth was Norman Smith? Norman was a very influential figure in the world of pop music, initially as a sound engineer at EMI working for George Martin. Smith worked on every single Beatles’ record between the years 1962 and 1965, from their debut album “Please Please Me” up to and including “Rubber Soul”, taking in songs such as “Love Me Do” and “She Loves You” to “Nowhere Man” and “Norwegian Wood”. John Lennon affectionately nicknamed him “Normal” Norman!

Promoted to producer in 1966, Norman signed Pink Floyd to EMI, after seeing them perform at “underground” club UFO, despite professing a lack of understanding regarding psychedelia. Nevertheless, during 1967 and 1968, he went on to produce their seminal single “See Emily Play” together with the band’s first three albums, “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, “A Saucerful of Secrets” and “Umma Gumma”. During their first session at Abbey Road, Paul McCartney dropped in to the studio, put his hand on Smith’s shoulder, and told the Floyd, “You won’t go wrong with this bloke as your producer.” To think that without this signing there would have been no “Dark Side of the Moon” and guitarist Dave Gilmour would never have introduced a 16-year-old Kate Bush to the label!

The strangest twist in the tale is that after Pink Floyd took over their own production duties, Norman Smith reinvented himself, albeit briefly, as a pop singer! In 1972, under the pseudonym Hurricane Smith, and at the age of nearly 50, he had a huge hit with the self-penned “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” The song harked back to the music hall and vaudeville era. If you’ve never heard it, imagine a Gilbert O’Sullivan tune sung by John Hurt! Appearance wise, he promoted the record modelling himself on Peter Wyngarde as Jason King from the ITC TV series “Department S”! At the time, I was too young to make the connection between Hurricane and Norman, which presumably was the intention, but, I’m pleased to say, I still have my copy of his best-known single.

Kate Bush - Cloudbusting

Happy Talk!

Having been tagged by fellow time-traveller Simon, Old Cheeser to all you bloggers out there, I have been summoned to reveal all! Well, not quite all!! Five facts about myself, in fact. Everyone knows of my passion for “Doctor Who” but, around the time of becoming a teen, or perhaps even earlier, emphasis shifted to music; initially pop from which it broadened out to encompass much more. So, I thought I’d try and stick to a musical theme being a qualified composer, but how did I get there?..

The first gig I went to was a revelation. It was at the Cheltenham Town Hall in 1972 and the band was Mott the Hoople. It was shortly after their initial success with “All the Young Dudes”, my all-time favourite single which disappointingly they didn’t perform, but before follow-up hit “Honaloochie Boogie”. It was a wall of sound. If you opened your mouth and spoke it was as though nothing came out. But, I guess that must’ve been when I decided I wanted to play in a rock ‘n’ roll band! What I really wanted to learn in school, thereafter, was how to write music down.

The next revelation was the single “Virginia Plain” by Roxy Music. At the age of 13, it was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard. I can analyse it now. See the mix… of chords with no thirds, descending chromatic bass line, one note synthesiser solo, Ferry’s unusual vocal delivery of his strange lyric, not so much sung as spoken with vibrato, but, back then, the song must have seemed like Stockhausen to me! And that might well be why I went to University to study music and specialise in composition.

A third defining moment was meeting 10cc the very week they were number one for the third and final time. The original line-up had scored number one hits with “Rubber Bullets” and, most famously for six weeks, the spectacularly brilliant “I’m Not in Love”. 10cc mark 2, a 6-piece, reached the top for just one week with “Dreadlock Holiday”, the week I saw them at the Colston Hall, Bristol. The new line-up included one of my keyboard heroes Duncan Mackay whom I’d seen twice before, at the same venue, as part of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. I was introduced to him backstage afterwards for a chat, along with founder members of 10cc, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman.

Another shining beacon from my musical history would have to be seeing Kate Bush in Liverpool on the first date of her one and only tour. She was just two albums into her career and responsible for another of my all-time favourite singles, “The Man with the Child in his Eyes”. I didn’t actually like “Wuthering Heights”, initially, until I saw the sheet music and thought, “Wow, unbelievable”, this looks interesting. Incidentally, as well as Steve Harley’s number one “Make Me Smile”, another all-time favourite, and 10cc’s “Dreadlock”, Duncan Mackay’s other number one was playing keyboards on Kate’s only chart topper.

Life’s so much more complicated than that, of course. Liking a few pop records doesn’t get you into University! A lot of hard work does and it doesn’t stop when you get there. I was very lucky to have a brilliant music teacher at school in Michael Rangeley. He laid all the important musical foundations in me. Students in other fields found it surprising that I could be interested in pop, being classically trained. But having been in a band at home, Boulevard, I formed another at Uni, The Disturbed, as glam made way for punk!

From studying with John Tyrrell and composer Nigel Osborne at Nottingham and Stanley Glasser in London, I got to meet Peter Maxwell Davies, composer on Ken Russell’s movies “The Devils” and “The Boy Friend”, work with John Harle, a brilliant saxophonist and composer of the “Silent Witness” theme, but, best of all, become friends with the late Tim Souster, known to SF fans as the arranger of the theme tune of Douglas Adams’ “Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. As you might have guessed, I never became a rock star. Education made me Captain Sensible!

Return of the Psychomodo!

Steve Harley is back on the third of October with a new album of songs entitled "The Quality of Mercy". I say back but he's not really been away as you can listen to his half-hour radio show, "Sounds of the Seventies", every Tuesday night just after 10pm on BBC Radio2. I usually catch up with it on the BBC Radio Player, online, sometime during the week.

Recently, Steve did a special show featuring photographer Mick Rock over from the States to take the cover shot for Steve's new album. Their collaboration goes back to Steve's second album "The Psychomodo" which spawned the hit single "Mister Soft". It was interesting to learn that Mick did that cover the same week he did the one for "Queen II". His first cover was for Lou Reed's album "Transformer" from which the single "Walk on the Wild Side" was taken, which just about sums up the glam rock era of pop music in the early Seventies! This album was produced by David Bowie and his band's guitarist at the time, the excellent but underrated Mick Ronson. It seems only natural, therefore, that Mick Rock took the shot for Bowie's most famous album, "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars".

Instead of being credited as a solo record, Steve's new album is billed as by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. As far as I'm aware, Steve hasn't used the Cockney Rebel moniker since the Seventies. Until now, the live performances have been credited simply as The Steve Harley Band but he says the time is right to return to the Cockney Rebel ident. This then, presumably, is the third version of Cockney Rebel. The original lasted two albums, "The Human Menagerie" which gave us the haunting but commercially unsuccessful, at least in the UK, "Sebastian" and the aforementioned "Psychomodo". It was with the second incarnation of the band, renamed Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, that they hit the big time with the number one single "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)", perhaps better known now for its appearance during the football sequence in Brit flick "The Full Monty" but originally taken from their third album, "The Best Years of Our Lives".

I was lucky enough to see the second line-up of Cockney Rebel perform twice, both in Bristol at the Colston Hall. The first was to promote the third album and then again a year or so later on the "Timeless Flight" tour. Duncan Mackay was the keyboard player on both occasions. I saw him play live a third time a while later, at the same venue, and met him backstage afterwards, when he was part of the second version of 10cc, the very week they were at number one with the single "Dreadlock Holiday", from the album "Bloody Tourists". As well as playing on this single and "Make Me Smile", Duncan also played on Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights", so he's had a trio of number one singles and practically nobody has probably ever heard of him! Also a part of the Cockney Rebel line-up on these two tours was guitarist Jim Cregan who played the acoustic solo on "Make Me Smile". When Rebel eventually split, he joined Rod Stewart's band and more recently has been playing with Katie Melua.

So many connections! With the release of Steve's new album imminent, it seemed like a good time to mention a few of them!!!

Kate Bush is back!

It's certainly been a while but singer Kate Bush will release her first album in twelve years in November - a double album entitled "Aerial". This also marks the first time she has released a double album - so plenty of new material! The new collection of songs will follow a single, "King of the Mountain", released on 24 October, with both the single and album produced by Kate herself.

On a personal note, I was lucky enough to be present at her first ever gig, in Liverpool, opening her only tour to date, back in 1979. I must admit that when her first single, "Wuthering Heights" appeared I didn't like it but was won over on hearing the second, "The Man With The Child In His Eyes", which remains one of my favourite pop songs to this day. On viewing the sheet music, I subsequently realised what an interesting song "Wuthering Heights" is. Both singles can be found on her debut album "The Kick Inside". Her tour was to promote both this and her follow-up album "Lionheart".

The 47-year-old performer's last album, "The Red Shoes", reached number two in the UK album chart in 1993. Kate's last public appearance was in 2001, when she received Q magazine's "classic songwriter" award in London. I'm looking forward to hearing her new compositions.