Music of the 1970s
 Glam, Glitter, Stadium Rock, fifties revivals,
Disco, Punk and
The Osmonds . . . and they call it the decade that taste forgot!
The decade that brought us Leif Garrett AND
The Ramones. What's up
with that?!
It seems remarkable that in just 10 years, popular
music could develop from the innocence of The Jackson
5's The Love
You Save to the future shock of Gary
Numan's Are Friends Electric?
and The Sugarhill Gang's Rappers
Delight. Yet it happened . . .
This was also the decade that opened with Jimi Hendrix choking
on his own vomit and ended with Sex Pistol Sid Vicious stabbing
his lover, Nancy Spungen, to death. The Beatles finally broke up,
and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and
Elvis Presley died (but within
a week he was back at the top of the American charts!).
In 1970, Top 40 pop began to revive, after a lengthy period in
the doldrums. The change was most noticeable in the US where new
groups and new styles were breaking out everywhere. But in Britain
also there were signs that the art of the three-minute hit single
was slowly being re-discovered. Britain and America largely
followed different paths in the first half of the decade, with
Britain gripped by teenybop mania, and no discernible change from
the music of the late 60s in the USA. The seventies began with a
major increase in LP sales with established acts like Led
Zeppelin, The Who and Deep Purple all spending time at the top of
the album charts, with competition from Elton
John.
 More than anything, the 70s saw a tendency for brief fads and
for acts to come and go, and the term "one-hit wonder"
was bandied around for the first time. The first big 'new sound'
of the decade came with Glam Rock, the main proponents of
which were Slade, The Sweet and Marc Bolan's
T Rex. The Osmonds
were definitely not part of the movement but appealed to a similar
audience in the UK.
In 1972, Slade traded blows with Alice Cooper while in the
other semi-final Lieutenant Pigeon played The Royal Scots Dragoon
Guards Band. But music was always mad in the Seventies. In 1973,
when Glam was at its height and even the lady who worked in the
local bakery had dyed hair (OK so it was a blue rinse - don't get
bogged down in detail) what was the top single? Eye Level by the
Simon Park Orchestra. Yes, yes, the theme to Van Der Valk . . .
and if you can't remember it, just be grateful we haven't included
snatches of the song on this website!
But before you dismiss the 70s as a musical wasteland populated
by one-hit wonders, remember this: It also produced
Bruce Springsteen, Talking
Heads, The Ramones, The
Clash, The Pretenders
and David Bowie.
The major new movement which began in the USA in 1975 and would
spread its influence worldwide, was disco music. Originally
regarded by many as a poor substitute for genuine soul music,
nothing had been more capable of filling a dance floor. Who can
forget the Village People (Macho Man and
YMCA), or KC and the
Sunshine Band (That's The Way I Like It), or even Rick Dees
(Disco Duck)?
After Vietnam,
Watergate and long afternoons in a gas line
(petrol queue), kids didn't want to deal with issues any more.
They just wanted to dance. The disco boom would peak in 1978 with
the enormously successful Saturday Night
Fever, but before that
the charts would be almost saturated with disco
epics.
At the start of 1976 there was little warning that the world of
popular music would be turned upside down before the end of the
year. Even in America the waves from punk would be felt in major
cities, although the New Wave took longer to bite (which was
curious since all the punk influences came originally from
America). And then one day it happened . . . John Lydon wandered
into Malcolm McLaren and Vivien Westwood's Kings Road boutique Sex
and forever melded fashion and noise with The Sex
Pistols.
Not
since the 1950s had there been a major musical genre which
alienated parents. Punk gave hope to disaffected youth. London
venues like the 100 Club, The Marquee, and Dingwalls began hosting
bands like Siouxsie & The Banshees,
Generation X and The
Jam.
However, it wasn't until Rotten and co shocked Britain by swearing
on an early evening television chat show that things really took
off.
Some established acts were able to survive the punk onslaught.
Others just went to ground until the coast was clear for them to
re-emerge into their dry-ice filled stadiums. And punk eventually
became just another music-industry cash-in, and the death of Sid
Vicious in 1979 meant the end of an era. Ultimately, many of the
brash young bands of the punk movement became the new
establishment bands, with the likes of The Police and
U2 moving up
into the stadiums. |
