The arrival of my vinyl records in San Diego after several years in storage reminded me that the 1970s has a good claim to be the most dynamic, diverse and distinctive periods in music history. It’s difficult to explain to Americans what the UK was like in the era of the three-day week, mass industrial pickets, two elections in a year and a bail out from the IMF. For teenagers it was a time of entertainment poverty with just three TV channels, pocket money running to one single a fortnight and the Odeon cinema chain offering lumpy seats and tacky floors.
The great British music wave of the 1960s had sold out with the Beatles and the Stones leading the pursuit of the mighty dollar, then Led Zeppelin and the Who following in hot pursuit. Eric Clapton, once the blues guitar ‘God’ of Islington graffiti legend, was pursuing heroin, alcohol and Patti Boyd. And the dubious home-grown ‘folk rock’ was as derivative and limp as any movement spearheaded by a band called Fairport Convention could be.
The US musical response to Vietnam and Watergate was Album Oriented Rock (AOR), with noted DJ “Kid Leo” Travagliante confirming in 1975, ‘the emphasis is shifting back to entertainment instead of being ‘relevant”. But the intersection of social circumstances, lack of commercial radio and the need to re-find a musical identity made the UK more fertile territory for invention. Gender identity, feminism, anti-racism and social justice became the battlegrounds with music providing the soundtrack.
In the early 1970s ‘glam rock’ may have looked like an effort to put tinsel on the increasingly sputtering and stalling UK economy. But its glimpse of gender fluidity and theatrics opened a door which could never be closed. The Sweet, Slade, Marc Bolan didn’t make it across the Atlantic but without them there might have been no global behemoths like Bowie, Queen or Elton John.
With a starting output of seven albums David Bowie bestrode the decade like a colussus. He started 1971 wearing a dress on the Marlene Dietrich influenced cover of Hunky Dory, occupied, the bodies of Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane, then became the Thin White Duke. And he still had time to complete his Berlin trilogy and offer us Sound and Vision, Heroes and Boys Keep Swinging.
Queen was formed in 1970 with their first top ten single Seven Seas of Rye hitting the top ten in 1974. Surely, one of the greatest places in music history must have been Montreux in 1981 as Bowie and Mercury collaborated and competed to produce Under Pressure. Bowie’s judgement, and status as the coolest person on the planet, was re-confirmed when Coldplay sent him their best effort and suggested collaboration – he declined with the line ‘it’s not a very good song, is it’.
The 1970s was the musical decade where women moved decisively, both individually and collectively, from lead singers to leaders of the gang. Fictional, all-female rock band, The Carrie Nations, had to be created for the 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and Suzie Quatro, despite her long-term garage band pedigree, was an oddity at the start of the decade. But by 1979 Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sue and Chrissie Hynde reflected the changed circumstances
And in terms of feminist anthems and icons it is hard to get beyond Poly Styrene of X-Ray Specs. Mixed race (Somali and Scottish), dental-braces and bipolar might have seemed unpromising material when she started her own punk band at the age of 18. But Oh Bondage Up Yours was a primal response to the challenge that ‘some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard’.
Poly Styrene was given the space to perform by the musical equivalent of Martin Luther hammering his 95 theses to the castle door in Wittenberg. Punk was born in 1976, a year when inflation hit 24%, Britain went cap in hand for a bail out from the International Monetary Fund, and youth unemployment was rampant. The musical opposition was the nurdling, self-indulgent prog-rock of ELP, Yes, Genesis and Jethro Tull and the attitude was reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s response, in the Wild Ones (1953) to the question “What are you rebelling against?” – “whadda you got?”.
Punk may have borrowed from the riffs and attitudes of the Ramones, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop but, perhaps because the UK is a small island, its musical and social influence was electrifying. It defined the schism between the baby boomers and Generation-X, injected energy into a moribund music industry and opened the door for individuality. It’s inclusivity included the ska revival, reggae’s rise and opened the door for everybody to sing Glad to Be Gay in pubs, on marches and at parties.
But everything that has ever been written about punk can be ignored. Just find an old-fashionedrecord player, turn it to maximum volume and play Pretty Vacant, followed by White Riot and Oh Bondage Up Yours. Look at contemporary pictures of skinheads, right wing thugs and teddy boys trying to beat the crap out of bondage-trousered, spike haired, spotty kids.
That is the sound and vision of the new order replacing the old sensibilities. It’s also the look ofyoung people standing up against racism and social injustice while being scorned by their Government and frowned on by their parents. The disempowerment of what had become known as the blank generation was converted into a belief that chutzpah and energywere enough to make a difference.
Even as I spin the vinyl I realise that music alone never makes a difference and that youth movements are rapidly appropriated bycorporate interests. But for a brief period the youth of the UK took control, in a way that encouraged and celebrated diversity, valued integrity and effort above virtuosity, and changed the direction of travel. Order was eventually restored but only after new icons and values had crept through the gaps.