Wednesday 3 June 2020

An influence which WAS a number one

Early in the great lockdown I got invited to do one of those things on Facebook where you pick 10 things, one a day, and nominate someone else each day to do the same. A kind of pyramid selling chain letter. This one was to nominate the 10 albums that had most influenced my taste in music. I don't normally go for these things but I carefully chose and posted 10 album covers being sure, as a pedant, that these were not my favourite all time albums, which it seemed to me was how most people read it. No, you CAN'T have three David Bowie albums in your list: the first one influenced you to get the other two, d'oh!!!!

I won't show the ten album covers here, partly because it struck me after picking The Beatles Abbey Road - and then backtracking and selecting an eleventh choice instead - that the question is a false premise for those of us over about 65. That is because it wasn't albums that influenced us the most, at least not initially, simply because we couldn't afford to buy them, at least in any number, until our musical tastes had started to form. Albums, or LPs as they were known (for "long players", kids) were beyond the scope of pocket money and were rare birthday or Christmas presents for a few kids in the class.

Back in the 60s we relied on either a record player - usually a multi-changer made by Dansette like this:
Or a reel to reel tape recorder for blagging music off the radio, like this:


No, kids, piracy wasn't invented with cassettes, or Napster....

The advantage of the tape recorder was that you could blag loads of music for your pocket money. But the disadvantage was how laborious it was to locate particular songs on the tapes, so you tended to move with the times very quickly and listen mainly to the run of songs you had recorded most recently.  The advantage of buying vinyl, which we all eventually migrated to, was being able to stack up records on the autochanger and build a once off version of what has now become known as a "playlist".

Anyway this all meant a fair number of the 10 pieces of music that have influenced me the most weren't albums but were singles. So which was the first?

Well, I have an enduring love of pop music. Hit songs from the past tap in to a deep vein of nostalgia in most people and I'm no different. I do draw a line somewhere (Eurovision for a start) but I can even enjoy disposable dross like Sugar Sugar (surely you remember The Archies) or the Bay City Rollers, albeit in small doses.

My love of pop music was initiated by my dad introducing me to it on the BBC Light Programme - the forerunner of Radio 2 - which had a few hours a day of music interspersed with  humour (The Goons and  Tony Hancock) and drama (well, if you call The Archers drama). As the music slots included things like the Billy Cotton Band show, chart music was very limited. It was restricted by needle time limits which the BBC were party to along with the industry, who managed the copyrights, and the Musicians Union. The Beeb was of course a monopoly apart from stuff beamed in from outside the country - Radio Luxembourg and then the pirates. By 1967 the limit was still only five hours a day until changes were wrung by the influence of the pirates. So there wasn't very much pop but there was Alan Freeman's wonderful Pick Of The Pops, in which he played new releases and records bubbling under the chart in the first half hour then the top 10 in the second half hour. The programme got more time and we basked in the luxury of hearing the top 20. I must have barely missed a single Sunday afternoon show from 1962 when my dad pointed me at the programme until I went off to Uni in 1970.

So my love for pop music is deeply ingrained. And therefore not influenced by any one song, though I'm still very fond of many early 60s pop songs by the likes of Brian Hyland (Sealed with a Kiss) and Del Shannon (several including Runaway and Keep Searchin'). While songs like these got me into pop music their influence was just that, which isn't specific enough for the question. The first song to give me a jolt from the opening bar and change the way I saw music was The Beatles' Please Please Me.

On all official listings the Beatles third single, From Me To You, is listed as their first number one, with Please Please Me shown as having reached number 2. Indeed it's not on the compilation album "1", which Wikipedia says features "virtually every number one single the band achieved in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1962 to 1970". Well, this truly awakens the pedant in me. It either does or doesn't include all those number ones, it can't feature "virtually" all of them. And there weren't any number ones in 1962, though Love Me Do is included as it reached number one in the States when they caught up with the mania in 1964. It also includes Yesterday, The Long and Winding Road and Eight Days a Week which weren't UK singles of the time, or at all. So they count more than Please Please Me, the Beatles' breakthrough single? I don't think so.

In the States Please Please Me only reached number 3 in 1964, with I Want To Hold Your Hand and She Loves You above it that week. This was around the time the Beatles had all the top 5 records in the US chart, unheard of until streaming individual album tracks enabled things like Ed Sheeran having 14 of the top 15 in the UK not so long ago.

And yet... I distinctly remember Please Please Me being played as the number one on Alan Freeman's Pick Of The Pops in late February 1963. On and off since 1973 Radio 1 and then Radio 2 shows have run down charts from selected years in the past. The format was started by the infamous Jimmy Saville, with his Double (then Triple) Top Ten show from 1973 to 1987. We listened to it a lot (and yes, we thought he was pervy). Meanwhile Freeman started doing something similar on Capital Radio before Radio 1 brought the format back with Freeman as host and calling it Pick Of The Pops for old times' sake. On any of those shows, if they happened to choose February 1962 they had Please Please Me at number 2. Now these things matter to a pedant like me and I've often muttered to Mrs H about it. Please Please Me was a number one. So have I got a case of false memory? Well, actually I haven't.

I quote from a super blog site* which orders all the Beatles group and solo releases (and other stuff besides) in handy lists with links. For Please Please Me they say:

So, a common debate ... was this release The Beatles first number 1 !?
"Please Please Me" was the second official release by The Beatles since their signing to E.M.I. It was released on 11th January 1963 after having been recorded in 18 takes on 26th November 1962. To discuss the chart career of The Beatles follow-up to "Love Me Do" and it's omission from the greatest hits CD '1' we need to properly understand the evolution of the U.K. music charts.


The first U.K. chart of record sales was produced 14th November 1952 by the New Musical Express (N.M.E.) which is therefore the longest established chart. In the N.M.E. chart of 1963 "Please Please Me" did indeed reach the top spot on 22nd February where it remained for 2 weeks.
But prior to this, from 10th March 1960, the music industry started to compile it's own chart in "Record Retailer". This was a trade publication as used by record shops and the music industry which later became "Music Week". For a couple of years from it's inception this chart was not the most widely accepted chart and was largely overlooked by the record buying public who, on the whole, still relied on the ever-present N.M.E. listing.
But the "Record Retailer" chart is historically the official chart of the music industry as it was the fullest chart and no less accurate than any other. In this chart The Beatles reached number 2 on the 2nd March 1963 but were kept off of number 1 by Frank Ifield's third consecutive chart-topper "Wayward Wind".
The
retrospective (my added word) choice of this chart as the one used for "official" purposes is slightly unfortunate, because in the hit parades of NME, Melody Maker and Disc "Please Please Me" was number 1, and therefore the Beatles FIRST number one.

That will do for me. Alan Freeman played it as number one and everybody apart from some dudes in the trade thought it was number 1. Having it at number 2 for all history is like a cup final goal being disallowed by VAR years after the game has finished.

Please Please Me gave me a jolt of excitement I hadn't felt from music until then, previously I'd liked "nice songs". Suddenly I appreciated that this was happening now and thought "what's coming next?" It would be a few years before I felt that tingle you get in the back of your neck when a piece of music really connects - maybe you have to be adolescent before you get that - but the journey had started. The Beatles were a big part of that journey as the story unfolded through the 60s. While I liked most of their stuff I rarely listen to the early hits now. Indeed, I can remember me and the girl who would become Mrs H walking out of a student hall of residence disco when they went into a prolonged session of by then very old (nearly a decade!) Beatles hits. We must have had something better to do....

But I still think Please Please Me is one of the best early Beatles songs, full of energy and enthusiasm and a big influence on me, even if I only occasionally listen to the later albums now. Abbey Road is my favourite and, for me, the Long Medley on side 2 of Abbey Road is one of the greatest achievements in pop/rock music. So Abbey Road was one of my choices in the Facebook 10 albums question, until I realised that it couldn't have influenced me, I already loved the Beatles music.

So what other songs influenced me in the days before albums were relevant? I have a draft list.....


* Home page for super index of The Beatles recordings: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/i_sound.html?
From which you can go to Beatles singles by date and the individual records, like Please Please Me: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/r4983.html. If you want to know the evolution of what was printed on every label, with pictures, this is the site for you.....

1 comment:

  1. We all love a good music list, if only for the inevitable discussion when you disagree with the choices! Some good points on the nature of what influences you (and what can't be an influence). Maybe I'll have a go but I'm notoriously bad at settling on any order - my top 10 albums of each year isn't usually ready till about April.
    The guardian music critics have done a list of their 100 favourite number 1s over the last 6 weeks which is worth a look. Interesting write ups on each song and plenty to disagree with!
    https://www.theguardian.com/music/series/the-100-greatest-uk-no-1-singles

    ReplyDelete