I’m going to quickly pop my head above the parapet just in case people think I’m unwell again. Anything but actually, just not had as much time for blogging because of all the socialising I’ve been doing, plus, I’ve got myself a job in a charity shop. Not had time yet, but I intend to have a good look through the vinyl and CDs in the shop to seek out any gems that have accidentally found themselves being donated. As for all the socialising, I thought I would lose touch again with most of the people who came to see me in hospital, but not at all – I’m fully booked up for walks, coffees and cinema trips on a weekly basis and my good friend from student days came all the way up from Harrogate to see me last week. A fun time was had by all.
But what else have I been doing other than donning my charity shop apron and socialising? I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading (5pm in our house is now “Reading Hour”) and I’ve just finished this book by Will Hodgkinson, where he revisits the singalong pop of the 1970s. Most of this music has been forgotten about and doesn’t get played on the radio any more, but as Will points out, the hits of Slade, the Sweet and Suzi Quatro were there to brighten up people’s lives at a particularly difficult time in Britain’s history. No-one has ever written a critical essay about the song Son Of My Father by Chicory Tip, but as Will postulates, isn’t a radio hit that appealed to millions back in 1972 socially significant? The decade had begun with the song Grandad by Clive Dunn and ended with There’s No One Quite Like Grandma by the St Winifred’s School Choir, but in between those two singalong horrors there was much to lift the spirits at a time of three-day weeks, rampant inflation and power cuts.
I think I’m going to revisit several of the artists and songs in Will’s book (a new mini-series perhaps), but as I’ve already mentioned them, here is Chicory Tip with their catchy singalong hit. It was apparently the first hit single to feature a Moog synthesiser as a lead instrument, overlapping the lines of melody to create a catchy song.
I think everyone who was around at the time would remember this group from TOTP and the lead singer had a fine example of a feather cut hairstyle, cropped at the top with longer hair at the back and sides. The band were from Kent and were still working as printers and engineers when they found chart success. Fun fact – the song was written by Giorgio Moroder who would go on to become the father of Euro disco and it was a hit all over Europe in 1972. Not all Europeans were happy about this however as they thought too much British music was infiltrating their charts, and although it might have been accidental, a missing apostrophe and unfortunate tight spacing on the cover of the Swedish single certainly packed a punch – ENGLANDSHIT.
So, “What’s It All About?” – I love reading books about the history of pop and Will’s book should appeal to anyone who was born in the early ’60s and loved the mainstream pop music of the ’70s. In the coming months we shall revisit some of the other songs that have all but been forgotten but will forever hog a place amongst the rest of the “tracks of our years”.
Until next time…
Son Of My Father Lyrics
(Song by Giorgio Moroder/Michael Holm/Peter Bellotte)
Mama said to me we gotta have your life run right
Off you go to school where you can learn the rules they write
Be just like your dad lad
Follow in the same tradition
Never go astray and stay an honest lovin’ son
Son of my father
Moulded, I was folded, I was free from draft
Son of my father
Commanded, I was branded in a plastic vac’
Surrounded and confounded by statistic facts
Tried to let me in but I jumped out of my skin in time
I saw through the lies and read the alibi signs
So I left my home I’m really on my own at last
Left the trodden path and separated from the past
Son of my father
Changing, rearranging into someone new
Son of my father
Collecting and selecting independent views
Knowing and I’m showing that a change is due
Son of my father
Moulded, I was folded, I was free from draft
Son of my father
Commanded, I was branded in a plastic vac’
Surrounded and confounded by statistic facts
What's It All About? 
I’m very glad to learn that you’re feeling well. Don’t think I knew about Chicory Tip. Maybe they weren’t played on US radio stations.
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Thanks Neil.
I very much doubt that their song would have made it across the pond. Very much a one-hit-wonder but one British people of my vintage will remember.
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It’s good to hear that you’re well and happy. Thanks so much for featuring In Perfect Harmony, and it will be great if you can mention some more of these wonderful 70s singalong songs. How did I not know about this book? I must read it!
More than any other song, Son of My Father reminds me of my first year at secondary school – maybe because it had a futuristic sound which chimed with this new phase in my life that was both scary and exciting. I also remember it being played regularly at Chelsea FC home games when I used to go with my dad (although the track that was played the most at Stamford Bridge was Liquidator by the Harry J Allstars, and I believe it still is).
I don’t remember the early 70s as being a particularly grim time, probably because I came from a comfortable middle-class background, and maybe also because I was living in a pre-teen and early teen bubble, with limited awareness of what was going on in the outside world! I remember power cuts as a novelty rather than an inconvenience!
Lizza x
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Hi Lizza – still doing really well and my lack of new posts is purely down to my hectic schedule of socialising!
As for the book I think you would really enjoy it. Each chapter features a different style of pop that happened in the ’70s but now gets forgotten about. I’ll share more of the nuggets around here as not easy to explain.
As for Chicory Tip I knew you’d remember them and when I watched the clip I was back in my mum and dad’s living room reliving it first being on TOTP. I used to get annoyed with the lead singer who did a funny pouty thing with his mouth in between singing the verses.
As for the ’70s being a bleak time, like you I didn’t notice much but perhaps our parents shielded us from any worries they might have had. I did notice that the clothes changed around that time though – the bright colours were out and in came shades of brown and beige. Skirts got longer and floppier and hair was feather cut. The best thing was the advent of colour television in every home so we could watch our pop heroes in all their glory. Of course the power cuts meant they didn’t work but like you said, it was quite exciting. How little we knew of the world of grown-up worries.
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Thanks for the reminder about the sudden change in clothes in the early 70s. I’d forgotten about that, but now I’m thinking about the colourful dresses my sister and I wore throughout our childhood – when hemlines seemed to get higher every year! – and the unfamiliar feel of the first midi skirts, which swished around you as you walked. I had a burnt orange linen skirt which I wore with a cream blouse and a long cardigan the colour of chocolate; and the new wallpaper I chose for my bedroom at that time featured orange flowers on a brown background. I never wear any of these colours now!
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Oh yes Lizza, I had an oatmeal coat with wide lapels that I wore with my brown skirt, brown wedge laceups, and a short brown/beige V-neck sweater that only came to my waist. In a post I wrote about the Bay City Rollers there is a picture of me in a brown corduroy trouser suit. As you say I don’t have any brown in my wardrobe now.
I had brown curtains in my bedroom with orange flowers and the walls were supposed to be mustard but when painted turned out to be a khaki green colour! Such times.
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Glad to hear you’re keeping busy and happy, Alyson. That books sounds particularly interesting… I’ve added it to the list!
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I am Rol – I just wish I could bottle it and pass it around.
The book is going on the list of other books you might not have time to read! I get that and to be honest it would be better for you if it was a book remembering the ’80s but for someone my age it was perfect.
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So what I always thought was “be just like your dabbling father when it seems tradition” is actually “be just like your dad lad, follow in the same tradition” and “mooling I was fooling I was free from drive” is “moulded, I was folded, I was free from draft”. That young man needs to learn to enunciate more clearer.
Mind you, the actual lyrics don’t make any more sense that my misheard ones. It is almost as if Giorgio wrote them in German then put them through Google Translate.
Good to hear that you’re getting out and about, and CC must be delighted to have a contact in the industry.
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We’ve been here before Ernie haven’t we, finding out the lyrics were something totally different from what we heard. As you say, they still don’t make much sense and perhaps Giorgio did have a time machine where he popped them through Google Translate them came back satisfied his work was done.
Yes, the first person I thought of when I got the new job was CC. I’ll be looking out for little gems but sadly I think it’ll be Daniel O’Donnell in the main.
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A giant slab of 70s glam every bit as important as Block Buster!, Rock and Roll Parts 1 &2 or, even, Chirpy Cheep Cheep; seriously, I can’t imagine a 1970s without those three tunes propping it up. The lyrics of Chicory Tip’s monster hit may well have been as printed by Disc or 45 magazine (they may even have been the lyrics originally penned by Moroder), but they were, for the most part, definitely not the lyrics sung by the Tip’s front man, Peter Hewson, on the record; he’d heard it in demo form on a cassette and in a rush to record and release it ‘sang what he heard’. The actual lyrics were only known to the band after its release. Which is probably why it still sounds as amazing, fresh and vibrant today. I *wasn’t* kidding about Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep btw!
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It wasn’t his enunciation then, they really were different lyrics? Ernie will be relieved in a way.
As for the other songs you mention, they are all present and correct in Will’s book. I really think you should seek out a copy as it’s a great read for those of us who were teenagers in the ’70s. I think I’ll keep going with this mini-series – could be fun.
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Sorry, Alyson I forgot to mention how pleased I am to hear that you’re back in harness. Yep, that’s the story. There’s a standing joke among friends of mine that I am still convinced he sings “Boolin’ I was boolin’ I was streetward bound.” Tell me he’s not.
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Sounds about right to me. At age 12 I didn’t listen much to the lyrics it was always the look of the band and the “tune” I was interested in.
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I have similar stories about The Kingsmen’s version of “Louie Louie”, which supposedly they learnt off a version on their local jukebox and were mostly guessing at what the lyrics were.
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That’s quite funny – I wonder how many other bands did the same thing.
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I’ve heard Son of My Father countless times but wouldn’t have a clue as to the lyrics.
I’ll pass on Daniel O’Donnell thanks!
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I didn’t have a clue either – he didn’t enunciate very well and it sounds as if he was making them up anyway!
I thought it would be a pass on Daniel O’Donnell. I sold a Lynsey de Paul album last week but the person buying it didn’t know who she was. I treated him to a verse of Sugar Me to jog his memory before realising it might be a tad inappropriate.
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You know the thing that always gets me about that Chicory Tip clip is the singer’s sort of jogging-on-the-spot dancing, so bad that I can’t take my eyes off it if you know what I mean – it’s that compelling. Also his haircut, the short/long thing, not quite a mullet but a very particular look at the time, so much so that I think I even had a doll with the same styling! Love the ensuing conversation about lyrics too – and the thought of that Swedish cover…
It’s so fab that you’re enjoying life again and doing so much – and as for the charity shop job, well brilliant. Not just a first look at music donations but I’m thinking of books and clothes too – hope you don’t get too inundated with the Daniel O’Donnells and Crimplene blouses….
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Funny you should say that as I couldn’t take my eyes off his constant stomping either. There was no variation, just a pair of grey slacks (they weren’t jeans) solidly stomping or “dancing” (a stretch) on the spot for the three minute song.
Yes, the charity shop has been fun so far so look forward to going in on a Monday. It’s voluntary of course so they are just really grateful when people come in and no pressure to make sales targets. I was thinking last week, you can pop in for half an hour and leave with – a new outfit, a book and a CD for under a tenner. Where else could you do that! Fortunately not any crimplene blouses but a few Daniel O’Donnells.
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Amazing sales technique! A lovely read too, I didn’t know I knew so little about Chicory Tip.
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Ha ha, yes I’m trying to hone my selling skills. We all of a certain age remember Chicory Tip but when is the last time you would have heard them on the radio? I aim to please.
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Thanks, Alyson, for the reading tip. ‘In Perfect Harmony’ looks very juicy and way up my musical street and, all being well, a sixty-third birthday present come this July, perhaps?
I run the Fan Blog, ‘Hotlips On The Horse Tram’ for an artist twice associated with Giorgio Moroder, Valérie Čižmárová, whose ‘Signature Tune’, ‘Léta letí’ (‘Time Flies’) was a Czech-language cover of Giorgio’s ‘Looky, Looky’, later going on to cover his ‘Wasted’, for Donna Summer, as ‘Tikot všech hodin’ (‘Ticking All The Time’). ‘Wasted’ seemed to go largely…well…wasted here in the West, but it obviously raised considerable interest over the former Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, as it should have done for the cracking tune it is. It is far from the only instance of a cover by Valérie Čižmárová of an originally Western song drawing my attention to the original article that would have passed us by, possibly the most prominent example being her cover of Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution’s ‘Sha-La Love You’, ‘Dávno nejsem hloupá’ (‘I’ve Not Been Crazy For A Long Time’), recorded on the same day (5th December 1970) as ‘Léta letí’, the Saturday Morning TV show on which Lancelot Link and The Evolution Revolution appeared, ‘Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp’ not getting much of an airing here in the UK.
‘Son Of My Father’ is indeed a classic of the Glam Rock era but in many ways I prefer the B-Side, which was a cover of Johnny Johnson and The Bandwagon’s ‘Pride Comes Before A Fall’ and which would not be out of place at a Northern Soul ‘do’. For a while there was an unfortunately unidentified Czech-language cover of ‘Pride Comes Before A Fall’ by Tibor Lenský available on YouTube as part of a film of various artists performing around Brno in 1973, but, sadly, that’s disappeared into the ether. My other WordPress Blog, ‘Girls Of The Golden East’ deals with the female side of Pop of the satellite nations of the former Soviet Bloc, but I do like to dip into the male side occasionally and that Tibor Lenský cover is a male favourite of mine.
Incidentally, it is thanks to Ernie Goggins’ Blog, ’27 Leggies’, that I’ve found yours!
Oh…and noting that you’re from Scotland, it was all down to discovering Hana Zagorová’s Czech-language cover of Scotland’s Middle Of The Road’s ‘Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum’, ‘Pan Tydlitýt a Pan Tydlitát’ (‘Mr. Tydlitýt And Mr. Tydlitát’) on the Web sometime in the last decade that I ended up blogging about this scene, with your partners in the ‘Auld Alliance’, France playing a huge part in the ‘journey’ on the way, France’s Sheila doing her own cover of ‘Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum’, ‘Les Rois Mages’ (‘The Three Kings’).
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Hello Christopher. Thanks for finding my blog via Ernie’s, and thanks for the mention over at your place. I must admit you are the first music blogger I’ve discovered to write about songs from the former Soviet Bloc but it does sound as if there was a big overlap what with cover versions and Giorgio Moroder penned songs. I can’t pretend to have heard of any of your Girls of the Golden East (and would find difficulty in pronouncing their names) but all very interesting.
It sounds as if you are around the same age as me so the Will Hodgkinson book should be right up your alley. Every chapter touches on a different genre of music from the 70s so lots of interest there and a massive dose of nostalgia.
Son Of My Father is a song I knew everyone who drops by my place would remember but it’s never played on the radio any more. Same goes for Middle Of The Road and their hit singles. Think I’m going to have to write about them next time I pick a song from the 70s. Although Middle of the Road were a Scottish band they were based in Europe for a long time before becoming a household name – they obviously had a big impact on their European cousins leading to those cover version of Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum. The mind boggles!
Thanks again for dropping by. You just never know who is going to stumble upon your blog.
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You’re welcome, Alyson and thanks for this very kind reply. I first became aware of that uniqueness through a comment from that fellow fan of Valérie Čižmárová’s, Aleš Korábek, at the ‘VALÉRIE ČIŽMÁROVÁ’ Facebook Group, into which I was accepted at the turn of 2016 to 2017, when he was remarking about this unique Blog called ‘Girls Of The Golden East’ where Valérie Čižmárová was heavily featured. She has become one of the more forgotten names of what was Czechoslovakia of that era so the group had been set up to raise awareness. Therefore, he was amazed to discover that she was being written about by somebody in the UK!
A few months later, I thought I’d better set up another WordPress Blog dedicated to Valérie, with her coming to dominate ‘Girls Of The Golden East’, so, on the basis that the lyrics of the song that launched her singing career in a couple of talent shows in 1968, aged sixteen, her cover of The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Slunný podnebí’/’Tám, za vodou’ (‘Sunny Weather’/’There, In The Water’), sang of dreaming of laying on a hot beach breakfasting on a kilo of bananas on a cold winter’s day ‘Bananas For Breakfast’ seemed as good a title as any. Earlier this year, however, I thought I’d mix things up a little by re-launching ‘Bananas For Breakfast’ as ‘Hotlips On The Horse Tram’, inspired by the nickname I’ve thought up for her, with her Hungarian-speaking heritage, ‘Hungarian Hotlips’ and one of my early favourites on discovering her in late August 2015, the stand-out album track from her one and only studio album, ‘Koňskou dráhou’ (‘On The Horse Tram’).
It does have to be conceded that, on first discovering Hana Zagorová around the middle of the last decade, I instinctively pronounced her surname as ‘Za-guh-ROH-vuh’, when it should be ‘Za-GO-ro-vah’. The acute-accented ‘-á’ at the end of Czech and Slovak surnames is not just there for decoration. There should be a noticeably lengthened ‘-ah’ there and when once one gets that the correct stressing almost naturally follows, so, in Valérie’s case, it’s ‘Chizh-MAH-ro-vah’.
That mini-seminar on pronunciation over, I did sort of gather from the content of ‘What’s It All About?’ that you’d be more or less the same age as me. I wonder if, in ‘In Perfect Harmony’, there are any references to the concept of 1940s-inspired ‘Seventies Swing’ amongst the many genres of the decade having just featured that at ‘Girls Of The Golden East’.
A local community FM station based near here in Ripley, Derbyshire, Amber Sound FM, does have nostalgia shows on which some lesser-played songs of certain decades get aired, so I shouldn’t be surprised to hear some Chicory Tip or Middle Of The Road songs on that station. Hopefully, there’s something akin to Amber Sound FM around Inverness.
I recently heard the story of Middle Of The Road’s first appearance on ‘Top Of The Pops’, where one of Pan’s People, who could speak a bit of Italian, asked them where they were from, in Italian and Ken Andrew replied ‘Glasgow’, much to her surprise! The strange thing about Middle Of The Road is that they were a much bigger name in parts of the former Soviet Bloc than they were in the fellow English-speaking U.S., illustrating the fact that the Iron Curtain was certainly no cultural barrier, even though it was very much an ideological one. Sometimes, the Atlantic Ocean can be more of such a cultural barrier.
As you remark at the end, one never knows what one is going to find, Blog-wise!
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To answer your question on Seventies Swing Christopher, there is a chapter in the book about that genre. The whole premise of the book is that we chose music as escape from what was going on in 70s Britain and one of the ways we did that was look back to what we thought of as better times.
I did know that Middle of the Road were living in Italy when their first big hit came about and that it was a hit all over Europe before making it here in the UK. That’s a great story about the Pan’s People dancer – she must have got quite a shock hearing a broad Glaswegian accent.
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How wonderful that such a niche genre as ‘Seventies Swing’ should be covered in a publication evidently on music of a mass appeal! It sort of reminds me of the lyrics of ‘Koňskou dráhou’, looking fondly back at more ‘poetic’ times – in the relatively prosaic times of 1974 – when trams were still drawn by horse rather than new-fangled electricity! I think that shows that Seventies nostalgia also didn’t respect that ideological boundary that was the Iron Curtain.
As an example of Seventies nostalgia was The Carpenters’ ‘Yesterday Once More’ you might be interested in hearing about my latest vinyl acquisitions – one of which has Carpenters connections – at Retro Tech UK 2024 at this YouTube video where one gets a rear view of ‘Yours Truly’ engrossed in record-hunting, to which I had to comment! All I have to say is that Inverness is very southern compared to Tromsø 😉
I had a feeling that you might have been familiar with Middle Of The Road’s Italian connections…and yes, it would have taken her aback to hear ‘Glasgae’!
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