Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #77 (Pt 3): 27.12.71 – Six Tins Of Batchelors Peas

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Taylor Parkes, David Stubbs and Al Needham continue to gorge upon the selection box of 1971, and the big hitters have arrived. Slade – midway through their gestation into Tramps Of The Future – pitch up with their first #1. George Harrison celebrates his first and only year as the most successful solo Beatle – is emoted to by the People of Pan, who are still in quarantine after being stuck in Kenya. And Mick and the Kens make a rare appearance before nipping back to France to remind us who the Daddies are now...  Video Playlist| Facebook | Twitter| Bluesky | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like this in time? Um, chart music. Chart music. You pop craze youngsters, and welcome to part three of chart music number 77. I'm your host, Al Needham,

and with the assistance of my colleagues, Taylor Parks and David Stubbs, we're making right pigs of assent, as we're ripping through the selection box of Pop. There is the December the 27th, 1971 episode of our beloved Top of the Pops. So, prepare yourself because there's some big names in this episode. So let us fanny about no longer. and took right in. Here's one that used to be number one.

It's called Because I Love You, and it comes from The Slane. We go from Benny Hill directly into the next act, while Tony appears in a starburst of top left, like the price tag on a 90 in a Brentford nylon sale. Here's one that used to be number one. He helpfully says of, Because I love you by the Slade. Formed in Wolverhampton as the vendors in 1963,

then the in betweeners in 1964, then Ambrose Slade in 1969, Slade a fucking Slade. After being picked up by Chas Chandler in 1969, the band had put out four singles and an LP to Little Response and began 1971 with a reputation as a skinhead band who were bound for the dumper. But when Chandler decided to play to the band's strength as a sledge,

I'm a live act and transfer that vibe to vinyl, they put out a cover of the 1967 Little Richard single, Get Down and Get With It, which finally put them over the top, getting to number six in August. This is the follow-up, which was written in half an hour by Noddy Holder and Jim Lee, after Chandler said they ought to start writing their own material. When he heard it the next day, Chandler said,

I think you've written your first hit record. In fact, I think you've written your first number one. Problem was, the band to a man hated it. Feeling both the music and lyrics were massively soft-ass and a huge diversion from the winning formula that stumbled on with Get Down and Get With it. And after an argument in Olympic Studios, Chandler, they'd compromise by adding foot stomping and hand-clapping.

and amending the title to something that would be written on a bus shelter in Blocks, which. They were rushed into the top of the pop studio the week it came out, which helped it enter the chart at number six in late October. It then soared to number eight a week later, and a week after that, it brushed aside a single we're going to hear in a bit to plant their first flag into the apex of Mount Pop. and here they are in the studio for an encore performance. And chaps, already the pieces of the Slade we know and love are falling into place, aren't they?

Yeah, yeah, they're getting there. They're sort of nailing down the foundations of glam, you know, without being fully blown glamours. Yeah, I mean, Dave Hill's got his little fringe there, whatever. It's all beginning to sprout. But, you know, you've also got the aspects of Slade, like the rigid stomp, you know, the sort of the chant element. And that faint overlap with football terrace culture, which I think is something that's... starting to pervade music at this point. You know, I'll see a bit more of that, I think, later on.

I mean, again, that's the sort of, well, I say progressions. Some people might say regression, but it's certainly kind of very different from, you know, the sixes or whatever, where the Beatles didn't give a shit about football. There wasn't really that kind of overlap. But you're starting to get that now. And it's almost like that terrorist culture is beginning to pervade pop music. I mean, I kind of think of Slade as pop music, really, I have to say. I think that they're Chas Chandler's second great stroke of genius, you know,

after Jimmy Hendricks. Yeah. But I'm guessing where your peers on the playground was standing on the Slade-Bowland divide in 1971. It was a bit a bit popular. Oh, no, we're pro-slade. See, this is the thing. So Bolan, I thought, was like a 16-year-old girl, you know. He just feel they've got no chance, you know, that they're far too good for the likes of me.

But Slade, you know, they were kind of on my level. You know, I could appeal to Slade, you know, could all get down and get with it. Sartorily, they're not yet full-on, Slade. Noddy is starting to look like a tramp of the future. And Dave is beginning to branch out both tons. sorreilly and sartorial there with in a long powder blue duster coat with massive letters on the back over a dark blue and I want to say dress but I'm not exactly sure fliers weren't that big in 1971 is he wearing a dress is he some kind of ginger beer

as my dad would say yeah I don't know but noddy is wearing a pair of red and yellow platform clogs which look like his namesakes car What are the letters on Dave Hill's back all about? I was trying to spell them out and hoping it was a bit sweary, but just letters, isn't it? I don't really care, do you? No, that's a joke nobody's even going to get anymore. News cycle moves much too quickly. Yeah, I don't know.

I think it's just incomprehensible, jumble, isn't it? Which is what Slade kind of are at the moment. They've got the foot stomping, but they've got the violin as well. Well, yeah. And you know who plays violins, don't you? Walter, the soft air. Maybe so. I don't know.

Maybe at this point, it's 1970. One is one of those years where no one is quite sure what's going to happen next. You know, maybe violin solos are going to be the sound of the 70s. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting in this is that Jimmy Lee is kind of to the fall because there's always been that tendency with Slay to think of them as primarily Noddy Holder and Dave Hill. Yes.

Although, of course, the songwriting partnership is Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lee. It's a bit like people think of the Beatles as like, you know, like being primarily John Lennon and George Harrison. Yeah. But I think that's the way that Jimmy Lee's always liked it. You know, I think he's just quite happy to sort of catch an enormous check every Christmas and see how out of the limelight. That was Dave's thing, wasn't it?

Whenever they used to raise an eyebrow is more excessive outfits, he would say, are noddy and Jim. You keep writing them, I'll keep selling them. Yes. And Don Powell still looks massively unconvinced by the new direction. Actually looking like the kind of bloke who's just a bit too old to enjoy the early 70s. You know what I mean? He may well be the first musician of his kind

who always looks as if he hates the kind of music that his own band plays. It's just that Wolverhampton-type face. You know, it's a town of miserable people lacking the subtle dry humour of Brummies. And, you know, and this is exactly the same of Kiderminster as well, so I'm not being partisan. Rennie and Renato couldn't have come from Wolverhampton, could they?

I know they're caddick through and through. Yeah. They can sinsle up as much as they like, but they're never ultimately going to be able to expunge that Wolverhampton with. Yeah, but that's what's probably going to sustain them over the next few years. They're a lad band. I mean, the one thing about this song that gets me, actually, and it always did at the time, those kind of rather chivalrous lyrics.

You make me out a clown and you put me down. I still love you. I just like the things you do. Don't you change the things you do? And I always puzzled me as a kid. You know, surely he loves her despite some of the things she does. Surely I thought the lyrics should have gone. You make me out a clown, then you put me down.

Nevertheless, I love you. I love you despite certain things that you do. Yeah. I love you, but perhaps consider changing the things you do. I mean, that would have made more sense. I mean, you know, it's got a rocking rhythm to it. I've got the kids going. Yeah, but David, it's 1971.

And I'm guessing the things that she does that makes him love her aren't the downsides that he's mentioning here. I'm of the opinion that are a bit more fanular. You know what I mean, and I think you do. The implication to me in this lyric is, yes, you're a fucking nightmare, but also, yes, I'm getting me end away with you. Well, generally, it's kind of weird

that this was their first big hit because it doesn't sound like proto-slade. It sounds more like someone you'd do after a couple of years of hit to get away from the sort of stomping stereotype sound. If you heard all Slade singles, jumbled up with no idea of when any of it happened, you'd probably place this with stuff like,

how does it feel? As Slade trying to broaden the palette a little bit. But no, it's from before they established the signature sound, which is, I always say, it's one of the very few regrettable things about Slade. Could they perhaps have been a little bit more varied and adventurous, even when they were knocking out top five singles every few, weeks. I mean, they had the talent to do it, but I understand why they didn't want to take the

risk. But that's why Slade are only a great group rather than elite tier. I mean, not that that should really concern anyone, because they're fucking Slade. But they're doing it here. You know, they could have done more of this. Speaking of how does it feel, I watched Slade in Flame again recently. Oh, really? And it wasn't quite as good as I remembered, partly due to the rather overstated performance by Alan Lake which clashes a bit with the let's say naturalistic acting of the members of Slade which is obviously just them being wooden

because they don't out of act but it works really well but the grimness of that film really highlights the contrast that made Slade what they were like they're a good time band who weren't straight-faced about themselves but who really cared about stuff they cared about music and were really good at it. And they wanted to create something

of some actual value despite the fact that it was made out of tinfoil, which is why they were so brilliant. Which in a way was always more an American thing, right? In America, whatever else was good or bad about it, they didn't have this artificial separation between quality and entertainment. You could combine the two

and take pride in it without being seen as a, some sort of hypocrite or something, you know? Yeah. It's like the Beatles have sort of mainstreamed that in this country, but the process still wasn't complete in 1971. And in a way, it's like this stuffy island culture of highbrow versus lowbrow is what gave us an eerie staccato minor key song

featuring a violin that sounds like demon birds swooping down to peck off your soul, performed by men who mixed to... tart and flares with hoot so. I always thought that Slade were a reaction to the sort of the airs and graces and conceits of Prog Rock and Led Zeppelin and that kind of sense of elitism, you know,

the fact they would never release singles, for example. And I mean, people would talk about, you know, like the comparison of the Beatles and Oasis as if that's, no, the frame of comparison should be Slade versus Oasis and with Slade being far superior as far as I'm concerned. Yeah.

Do we get the feeling here that we're watching a band who are going to absolutely dominate the charts over the next two years. I don't know. It's easy to see in retrospect that this is going to be a smash it group. I don't know if you'd have known at the time. It's like subdued in lots of ways, really, you know, compared to the sort of energy they put out later on. So, yeah, I don't, I wouldn't feel like this.

I think they're just one of a number of competing prospects. This is one of my favourite, so. This is a genuinely fantastic record. Yes, it is. And yet today it's almost the great lost Slade single in a lot of people. don't really know it, even though it was a number one hit. Or at least, you know, they didn't know it until it was on an advert a few years ago. But it captures everything that was great about Slade

that isn't included in Merry Christmas everybody, you know. Because there was always that hard edge of Slade, which only showed sometimes the sort of murky, industrial Midlands understanding that everything that's real has got a shadow. but in this case the sun was behind them so you saw the shadow first so you get this dark terrace stump which even starts with them

literally stomping on the stage to set the tempo which sounds more like a Russian or a Jewish folk song and yet it's completely natural and logical and digestible to a pop audience in 1971 which is partly down to Slade having that neck partly down in the cultural openness of the time period. But in a way, that shows more of a Beatles influence than anything else. Like more than noddy holder singing like Lenin or whatever,

is that willingness to take advantage of an open-minded moment and create your own space to try new things. You know, compare and contrast the Oasis, the subslade and what they did when they had a chance to do something. It's interesting to think that this single would probably just just about hold together and stand up and be coherent without the violin solo. Yeah. And the violin solo is fine. I'm perfectly happy with it.

And the kids are really into it, aren't they? Yeah, there's a girl in a red play suit dancing. Like one of those sort of bright red Lader Hosen style, short trousers, nylon dungarees, worn over in colourful nylon blouse with white tights as thick as rhino hide. Fuck. and clump shoes. Yeah. So she's totally mummified

against the air. It's such a peculiarly British thing. Like no Italian woman of that period would ever have sealed herself so completely into man-made fabrics like this. It's not so much an outfit as a thrush machine. But, you know, in those days,

just got on with it. But the lady in the audience, who comes off best here, is the woman who looks a bit like a queer clubgoer of the present-day. She's got the 1950s Tradwife look. Do you know what I'm talking about? She looks like out of a far side cartoon. The big blonde sort of beehive mulling.

Oh, with the deirdre glasses. Yeah, deirdre glasses and like an old-fashioned A-line dress. And she looks about 50 from a distance. Yes. But in closer, you can see she's about 20. But her dancing to this is... She really does look like someone in the far side. She's doing a dance, which is the best kind of thought.

for amateurism. It's not really proper dancing. No. But she's doing a kind of rubber-legged, like hips to the left, hips to the right, which has a distinctive pattern and it stands out and it makes perfect sense with this music which is similarly rigid

and expressive. So if you can't move like a soul train audience, at least do something joyful and individual and imaginative. Same as if you can't play and sing like a soul train act, do something joyful and individual and imaginative.

Yeah, she dances like Chris Morris taking the piss out of Jarvis Cocker, doesn't you? So, because I love you, would spend four weeks at number one before being stood down by Earner and is currently the Christmas number three. One place below Jeepster, one above theme from Shaft by Isaac Hayes.

Fucking out, what a top four that is. The follow-up, look what you use. done would get to number four for three weeks in February of 1972 but then they notched two number one hits on the bounce would take me back home in June and Mama were all crazy now in September and finished off the year with goodbye to Jane getting to number two in December and then they became really successful in 1973

come over a slave right there Back in February this year, one of my favorite records, I think I had one favorite record, George Harrison's and Diana Ross, the two favorites. We've got the Dinah Ross one a little bit later. Right now, Pans People, the dancer one that came out in February and shot right up there to the number one slot. One of the most beautiful records ever released. George Harrison and My Sweet Lord, here it is now.

Tony, flanked by two more young, but not that young ladies, tells us that not only is the next single in his top two of the year, but it's also one of the most beautiful records ever released. My Sweet Lord by George Harrison. Look at how wait till he is, he's so fine. Born in Liverpool in 1943, George Harrison joined the quarrymen as their guitarist at the age of 15 and then became an apprentice electrician.

From 1960, he was in a band called the Beacles, spoke B-E-A-T, who teamed up with Tony Sheridan to take a, cover of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean to number 17 in the Finnish pop chart in 1963. After finding himself at a loose end in 1970, Harrison, who had already dabbled and put out a couple of experimental LPs in the late 60s, had a go at a solo career. And this single, his debut, is the lead off cut from the LP, All Things Must Pass, which came out in November of 1960s. It was originally offered to Billy Preston

and came out on his LP encouraging words in September of 1970 but Harrison decided to cut a version for himself. It was initially released only in America in November of 1970 where it spent four weeks at number one with no plans for a release here. But constant radio airplay and public demand encouraged Apple records to put it out in the new year. It smashed into the charts at number seven in the third week of January,

and a week later it sent Grandad into the Care Home of Pop, becoming the first solo single by a Beagle to get to number one. He's far too busy promoting the release of the LP of the concert of Bangladesh in America, which will go on sale over here next month for £5.50, which is just over 70 quid in today's money with the big-eared man on it. So here's a repeat of the original airing of the single Emoted to by the people of Pan. The award-winning people of Pan, I'll have you know, chaps,

because in July, they, Stanley Dorfman and the singer Lansler-Gault, won the Golden Sea Swallower of Canocca in Belgium. Yes. Very interesting thing. Oh, yes. Every broadcasting nation is allowed to send over some people to make a TV show, but they get limited. rehearsal, they're not allowed to have an idea

and they've got to do it all on the spot. And yeah, it was essentially some bloke, bluesy nonsense with pants people frugging about in the way that they did. Yeah, well done to them. The bloke who ended up as the curdle in the 18th. Did he? Yeah. Fucking hell.

Obviously they also spent a lot of time in the newspapers demonstrating hot pants and Louise, my beloved Louise actually posed topless sort of on page three of the Daily Mirror. She covered her jubbies up with her hands but

whore blime it. I see. I can't believe the BBC let them do that. But the question hangs in the air chaps. Why are we getting an old Pants People performance? Well, here's an article in the Christmas Eve edition of the Daily Mirror. TV dancers stranded.

Television's dancing dolly girls, pans people. Mr. Vical recording session for their Christmas show yesterday. They were stranded in Mombasa, Kenya entertaining the crew of the aircraft carrier Eagle.

The plane that was to have flown them back to London on Sunday couldn't take off because of technical trouble. The six girls are now expected back today too late to record their Christmas Day appearance on top of the pubs. An old film

will be used instead. And yes, that old film was tap turns on the water by CCS, which is why it's in the top of the Ponce Christmas Day episode, even though it got to number five. It was actually filmed at Walton on Thames Pumping Station. So you can just imagine how erotically charged that was. And it seems that they're still in quarantine

because we've got another repeat, which is a crushing blow for Dad is faction, because this is a religious song, they're not going to troll up about in hot pants. So it's your standard flick Colby flounce about in red, white, black and gold paneled maxi dresses with overlays of George Harrison looking old Jesus here. And I'm pretty sure that as a three-year-old child, I would have seen this, and I would have thought they were dancing for Jesus.

I mean, it is. It's a very, very stock maneuver, isn't it? Arms up and down, circle around, stride about as unerotically and unsuggestively as possible. So it's not to build their beauty and their charming, matching frocks and at the end a little light jumping up and down, arms do in the air. Yeah, that's it really, not much satisfaction there. Yeah, they're dressed like supermarket own brand chocolate biscuit bar. Yes, they are.

Just walking up and down, waver their arms in the air. This desultory mooching just highlights the fact that George couldn't be bothered to be there. It's just too important for this. Like he's off doing Coke with Eric Idol or something. No, and the worst thing is, you can understand it when there's, dance into an American record or a record by someone who's dead. But it's less than an hour's drive to television centre from George Harrison's mansion. And he will have been right there at home while they were recording this.

Just doing a bit of gardening and smoking a joint on the boating lake. Let's fucking do some work, man. You still want to be a pop star, fucking act. Exactly. No, can't be bothered. Or do a video. Yeah, steady on. Let us turn to George Harrison.

And yet, I'm sorry if anyone's tucking into a buffet at the moment. But I feel the need to return to my witch beagle, would you fuck question? Because I've reflected deeply upon it. And I've got to say, no matter what he looks like, I've got to put George Harrison right at the bottom of that list. So still at the top is Paul, particularly if he made an effort to look like a girl. But also because he'd understand that neither of us wanted to do it. But he'd pull me through, though, like he did with the others during the making of let it be. And yeah, every night and again, it even turned round and give me a meaty thumbs up of encouragement.

So, yeah, Paul at the top. Second place, Ringo. I was down on him at first, but again, I sat back and thought, well, out of all of them, Ringo would be the most forgettable fuck of the fore. And forgetting's really important in this case. Third, John. Yes. I mean, if you believe Albert Goldman, he'd probably be the most up for it. but I feel he'd be dead sneery and sarcastic.

He'd insist that Yoko was there. She'd probably be screeching in me tank. And at the end, afterwards, when it's all done, he'd probably want to go off and do an erotic lithograph of me bombing him, which, no, I'm not having that. So, yeah, George at the bottom, yes, he is good-looking, yes, he has got good here, but come on, let's face it, he'd be miserable as fuck all the way through, wouldn't it?

And he'd probably say, whatever it is that will please you. I'll do it. Yeah. And then he'd start chanting Harry Rahma halfway through it and putting me off my stroke. So yeah. Yeah. That's sorry, George, you're at the bottom. But in a busy year for the Beatles, George Harrison, he's at the top, isn't he?

He's won 1971, hands down. Yeah. I mean, he just built up that kind of vast battle block, you know, which results in all things from his past, you know, being a double, triple album, obviously with the life sides as well. You know, I think he's probably maturing to a certain point as a songwriter and, and finding it harder to get a look in. That's why he probably got on with Eric Idol and all the Pythons movie

because everybody else wrote collaboratively. Eric Idol wrote solo and perhaps they had a sort of kinship as a result of that. But in Abbey Road, he does write like something and here comes the sun, you know, which are like two of the very best tract. He's probably his kind of creative height around this particular time. Yeah. For sure. And there are certain people beginning, you know, during the 70s, would begin to assert that in fact the two most sort of creative

of an interesting people in the Beatles with John Lennon and George Harrison and put Paul McCartney in the third place, you know, because Paul McCartney really, really went out of fashion, you know, throughout the 1970s. Yeah. But a thing like George Harrison, right, I mean, yeah, I agree.

He's the beetle I would least like to fuck. Because in my case, he's not as elaborately reasoned as yours, but just because he wasn't a very nice man. And I do value niceness in a shag, I think. And he claimed to be immune to the enticements of the material world, then whines about having to pay his taxes. Yeah, and they're jets off in his fucking lotus. Yeah, he preaches about love and peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind.

But he deliberately bought a huge remote property because, as he explicitly put it, he didn't want to have to deal with or meet people. It was a misanthroat. Well, you can see why, considering what happened in the end. Well, I mean, you see, you do have to wonder when it was some carmary revenge that he was set upon by that intruder at his house. All right, fair enough.

I mean, sure, he did organise the concert for Bangladesh. But, you know, then again, Bob Geldof organized Live Aid. Yeah. And he's a bit of a git by all accounts. There was also, and I don't, I tried to Google this, but Google is so in shittified. I couldn't, but in his solo years, someone who idolized George Harrison,

maintained a fanzine dedicated to him. Yes. But which he had to cease publishing, because the problems he faced with Harrison himself being such an arseol about it, that he left him completely discouraged and disillusioned. I thought he was running his fan club. Oh, is it his fan club?

Yes, maybe it's his fan club, yeah. It was definitely an unofficial thing. But, yeah, the editorial in the final issue. So we can no longer sustain putting out this publication about such an unpleasant person. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. You're right. He's winning 1971, no doubt.

But I just wonder if he did kind of judder to such a kind of an abysmal halt in the 70s, you know, pretty early on in the 70s that ultimately this wasn't enough about him as a man. You know, for someone into spirituality, you know, perhaps it's just this lack of spiritual well-springs of creativity. You know, he was a twat. Listen, can I go on and on and on about George Arison for a bit? Yes. Like, okay, look, before we get on to any of the other stuff, let's just talk about musically.

George Arison is one of those people, and this is a common phenomenon, who was underrated for so long that when finally the pendulum swung back, he became absurdly overrated, at least in some quarters. I've heard people say that George was the most talented beetle, which like, I mean, he might be your face.

but you might enjoy his contributions but to describe George Harrison objectively as the most talented beetle it's like getting a facial tattoo that says I don't really understand music he was always underrated as a guitarist this is true partly because his early solos sound so horrible because the rock and roll solos played on a country guitar like a big grech with a country twang going through a clean vox amp with no distortion. So they all sound like someone pinging an elastic band and they've got no

rave up power at all. You listen at the solo on You Really Got Me or the Stones version of I want to be your man. Yeah. And then you listen to any solo played by George in 1964 and the difference is embarrassing. And that clean sound

really exposes mistakes as well. So like Jimmy Page would be off his head and make 12 fluffed. in a 24-bar solo. But the guitar was so loud and distorted you could barely tell. Whereas when George just doesn't catch a string quite right, or he

slightly misjudges a bend, that tiny mistake is spotlit right in front of your face. And it's a shame because in fact, if you watch the Beatles on the Royal Variety show in 1963, right at the beginning, a 20-year-old George

plays a solo on till there was you, which was beautiful. smooth and fluent and you can tell he's actually really good and the other thing about George is a guitar player people look back at 60s and 70s guitarists and just see blokes with screaming Les Paul's playing blues scales but the whole point is George didn't just string together ancient blues riffs like most of them did his league guitar parts are carefully worked out melodic pieces yeah if you play the solo from something it's great but it doesn't remotely suggest itself.

Just from the note choices and where they all sit on the fretboard, it's obvious that this didn't just come naturally or spontaneously. He's really worked on it. Whereas mostly guitarists by that time, it was all about spontaneity and improvisation like Clapton or showing off your chops, which George could never do. He was too methodical. Paul could do it,

which is why whenever you hear a ripping freak out solo on a Beatles record, it's Paul doing. it in one take like Taxman or Good Morning, Good Morning, but George was a craftsman which is really sweet and good but as a songwriter and a singer let's be honest, if he'd never join the Beatles

and had formed a band with himself as the leader we would not be talking about him here and now in this context if at all and what's weirdest about George is that he wrote about six or seven genuinely great songs

in his life which is six or seven more than most people, but he wrote them all in one 18 month period between summer 68 and the end of 69. Before and after that, his songs are sometimes pretty good, but mostly mediocre. It's like he spent years working up to being a really good songwriter, and then when he got there, he just instantly went off the boil and never returned. But lately we keep hearing these weird puffed up overestimations of his talent. I don't get it. Like, as if he was some sort of overlooked genius

and we're all somehow missing how great you like me too much is or, you know, only a northern, or the LP gone troppo. Yeah. It just baffles them. It's like people telling you Clifford T. Ward was as good as Lenin and McCartney. Fuck off.

Yeah. Those drawbacks, those limitations to refer to about his guitar style is one of the reasons why the Beatles as a whole were eclipsed in the late 60s. these onwards, you know, people like everyone from Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendricks, you know, even like Pete Townsend or whatever, you know, who did evolve a guitar style that was kind of of the kind of volume appropriate for the era.

Yeah, but that kind of guitar playing makes the song superfluous. That's the thing. If you had one of those in the Beatles, it would have kind of wrecked it because he'd just have been wanking off over the, you know, the nice tunes. Yeah, there were never that kind of band, yeah. So what have the Beatles been up to in 1971?

Well, Paul's put out his second solo LP, Ram, formed wings, put out their first LP wildlife, and is currently getting ready to tour again. John's moved to New York, put out the Imagine LP, and is bitching with Paul via Melody Maker, and Ringo's had a big hit with It Don't Come Easy. It's currently appearing in the Frank Zapper film, 200 motels, and generally doing a lot of ring-going. But George is clearly the main man at this time, isn't he, Chavs? You know, thanks to John and Paul knocking back his song. in the late 60s. He's got a backlog of songs that were never recorded by the Beatles.

And unlike John and Paul, he's not having to deal with the loss of a songwriting partner or being burdened by the weight of expectations. And on top of that, thanks to the concert for Bangladesh in August with his mates Ravishankar, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Ringo, and the first live appearance by Bob Dylan in five years. He's come as far out of his shell as he's ever going to, isn't he? Yeah, there's no, yeah. It's obviously no deny on that. Of course the people of 1971 weren't to realise that he's absolutely spunked his creative load on his first album and its diminishing returns from here on him. But at the moment, yeah, George Harrison, of all people, is the dominant beagle.

Yeah, enjoy it while at last. I'll tell you what, none of this posthumous overestimation of George Harrison is half as bad as the attempts to now paint him as a rock and roll sage. This is what really pisses me off. What people talking about is spirituality and his deep wisdom without realising they're just telling on themselves. Because I can't for the life of me understand why anyone sees this as anything other than what it obviously was.

A bloke in his early 20s, a former apprentice electrician with very little formal education and not a lot more informal education, taking some drugs hearing about Eastern religion, falling for the kind of money-grabbing Charlotte and Guru who's basically one step up from El Ron Hubbard who in fact the Maharishi

was a big admirer of which isn't suspicious at all and then instantly clambered onto his psychedelic soapbox and fucking lecturing the rest of us about how ignorant and small-minded we are compared to him for engaging in scepticism

and critical thinking or for knowing some stuff about science or psychology or the history of religion. And it can get really embarrassing when you listen to some of these songs because his newfound so-called spirituality did not make him gentle and non-judgmental. And the preening moral superiority and pompous finger-pointing of George Harrison's religious songs, especially at a time when he was cheating on his model wife almost every night and yeah preaching about how possessions are meaningless

and the spirit is all that matters while doing everything he could get out of paying his fucking taxes and then a bit later preaching Ari Krishna while shoving Coke up his nose and just the smug pious tone of it is horrible and it's tempting at first to let him off because you think well there was a you know there was a lot of that about at the time which is true but why was there a lot of it about because of him Nobody got into Harry Krishna stuff before the Beatles popularised it, except a few burnt out businessmen and nervous breakdown victims.

And then George picks up a sit-ar and suddenly we're all surrounded by hairy young idiots, like seeking a deeper truth man through solipsism and mythology. And we still see it today in various forms that nobody is more certain of their own rectitude and philosophical superiority than the gullible and the semi-informed. But I think that very particular kind of ignorant, groovy, rock-and-roll piety, it wasn't a feature of rock culture or rock music before him. Nobody admired Cliff for his deep spirituality, did they, right? So in a way, because there was no precedent, you can't blame George for not knowing any better.

But on the other hand, you didn't see Paul McCartney or ringings. go star doing this shit, did you? Even John Lennon tried it for six months and then worked out the Maharishi was a con man. And when even John Lennon can work out that he's being taken for a ride, you know he's really being taken for a ride. It wasn't hard to gull that fucking rude, was it?

And Jane Asher realised within 10 seconds, it's why I can't watch documentaries about George Harrison, because it's just a load of fools going on about how wonderfully wise he was. even as we're sliding into a second dark age, thanks to the various forces of God, there's still people cheerleading this fucking medieval insanity. It's awful.

You're right, though, Taylor, this is really a landmark in the unsavory vogue of God Rock, even though it's not about lovely white God. George Harrison obviously didn't start this. You know, you could take it back to Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum. And in the UK, a northern comedian called John Paul Jones could easily have had the Christmas number one in 1970 when he put out the man from Nazareth with the assistance of 75% of 10cc.

Sadly, a strike at the record plant held it from release and it only got to number 25 in January. But fucking hell, what a song, and what a top of the pop's performance. Video playlist, everyone. Fuck me. I love it, they put it out of January. They didn't think to wait to Easter.

It's only a few months. I know. Menkel. But also the first London run of God spells currently happening at the Roundhouse before it moves to the West End next month with David Essex's Jesus, of course. So up yours, Paul Nicholas.

Jesus Christ's superstars currently on Broadway. But it has to be said, the curse of the trendy vicar is already taking a hold on the nation's youth. And the finger of blame has to be pointed at George Harrison. Article in the Nottingham Guardian dated April the 8th. girls' church jig. A girl dressed in tights and a blouse

danced down the chapel aisle in front of the congregation to the sound of a pop record. But it was all part of the service. The girl, shapely 19-year-old dance teacher Alison Willett, was helping the Reverend Stuart Burgess illustrate his sermon. I wanted to add a new form of expression to my sermons, said Rev Burgess. Alison has appeared four times in my sermons,

but not as a gimmick. She is a symbol of freedom and the joy of living. Some see it as too much like television's top of the pops. Even a few young people are opposed to the idea, but some members of my senior congregation reveled in it. One old chap of seven te said me he thoroughly enjoyed the service. So, yeah, there we were.

go, Nottingham, the tabernacle of pop, if you will. Anything else to say about this? Because, yeah, as far as George Harrison goes, all his songs in the Beatles were always a sonic piss break for me. And the fact that he started to dominate a bit in the latter stage of the Beatles career, that just reminds me why I just don't like the Beardles. Anything after the White album, mate, I'm not interested. Yeah.

They should have split up after the White album. Fucking out. would have probably put out the greatest LP ever. George Harrison's LP would have been even better and he could have got two decent LPs out of it. I don't know. I like Abbey Road if just the idea that there's a great rock album made by people who look like they were members of the gunpowder plot.

The thing about God rock, right? Like obviously there's been a huge amount of wonderful religious music made over the years. But not rock and roll. Because rock and roll can only again. exist underneath an empty sky because it's a fully and necessarily secular form. It's carnal, it's impulse driven, it's all about sensation in both senses, and it's fundamentally a replacement for this absent cosmic parent, except that rather than trying to substitute

something else for God or Daddy, it redirects you back towards yourself as an animal. and it celebrates transience and the intensity of the moment and it teaches you to live as what you are, which is to say a spark that's going to go out any time now. So when people try to pour religion into Western pop music, it always failed unless they're extremely oblique and allegorical, which, let's face it, George Erison never was. I can listen to some of Bob Dylan's religious songs,

like slow train off his born-again Christian album, right? But as far as I'm concerned, it's a semi-listenable comedy record. There's nothing profound about it. It's the shallowest stuff he ever wrote. It wasn't that Bob Dylan has always progressed to a deeper, wiser philosophy.

It's the point where people realise that however creative and, you know, insightfully might be in some ways, on a basic level, Dylan didn't know very much and could actually be quite thick. Yeah. Have you heard that?

There's really appalling lyrics on that album. Yeah, I bought it at the time. Good God. Of course. I mean, you could argue maybe in a sense it's not actually a rock album in the full learned sense. But yeah, it just shows that Dylan is just as weak-minded as George Harrison. Yeah, he swallowed all the American Christian shit in one mouthful. There's stuff on that record where he goes, he's singing about like,

there's pornography in the schools and all this sort of stuff. This is about how he hates Arabs. and how young women these days are all whores, you know. And in fairness, however sanctimonious George Arison got. And if you listen to some of his 70s albums and managed to stay awake, you'll realise that was pretty fucking sanctimonious. At least he never became a Hindu nationalist

or something like that. Just a Tory. Oh, despite the fact that nowadays, the money demanded by the Transcendental Meditation cult goes to the Maharishi's surviving family, in India who donate large sums to Narendra Modi's fascist, Hindu nationalist BJP. So perhaps some of the royalties from here comes the sun did eventually end up paying for the persecution of religious minorities. Although speaking of politics, did you know, George tried to get the two other surviving people to stand as MPs in Liverpool for the natural law part?

Yeah, for the 1992 general election. So like right at the point where Liverpool. needed serious regeneration after the economic assault on it by Thatcher in the 80s. It would now have three MPs committed to the promotion of yogic flying. But, yeah, fairly enough, Paul and Ringo weren't that interested in doing that. Too busy watching Family Fortune. Although, I don't want to sound like I'm slagging George off too much, because there are things that I like about.

Oh, handmade films. Yeah, I think he might actually have been the Beatle that, certainly in late, a life it would have been the most fun to hang out with because he wasn't a guarded egomaniac like Paul and unlike John he wouldn't suddenly lamp you if he had one brandy too many which is just one brandy he would not take his truth and I like his dry humour and cynicism about the Beatles phenomenon right it makes a refreshing change and I don't even mind that he'd moan relentlessly about everything because that's what sexy people do, right? Let's not pretend he was some sort of village elder or wise man.

You know, he was a good but not great guitarist, a reasonable songwriter, and one more victim of populist religion, you know, like a screaming imbecile in an American mega church, but just a bit mellower. So, my sweet Lord would spend five weeks of. number one, eventually being betrayed and crucified by Baby Jump by Mungo Gerr. It became the biggest selling single in the UK of 1971, flogging 890,000 copies over here. But as early as February of this year, a lawsuit was filed by Bright Tunes Music Corporation, claiming that Harrison had completely ripped off the 1963 chiffon single,

he's so fine. And when the country singer Jodie Miller had a top 10 hit in America with a cover of He's So Fine that slipped in the opening riff of My Sweet Lord, the litigation was ramped up, lasting all the way to 1998

and ending with Harrison paying the new owner of the song, Alan Klein, nearly 600 grand in exchange for the rights to He's So Fine. As John Lennon said, he could have changed a couple of bars, in that song and nobody would ever have touched him but he just let it go and pay the price maybe he thought

god would just sort of let him off yeah jo lennan should know what's funny is how pissy george got at being called out on this as well like the entitlement was absurd and it's not the first time he behaved like being a beatleman that you could just stroll in like lord of the manor and take whatever you fancy He did a solo album in 1969 or something called Electronic Sound, which in the self-indulgent spirit of the time was literally just an album of him fiddling with his new Moog synthesizer. Except it wasn't even that. One side of the album was him tinkering with his new Moog synthesizer.

The other side was a recording of a bloke called Bernie Krause, demonstrating how it worked for George's benefit. which George recorded without telling him and later put out as one side of this album credited to Chiarism. Yeah, because who gives a fuck? Who gives a fuck about ordinary people? Ari Kreshener. And the terrible thing is it's one of his best solo albums, isn't it? The follow-up, Bangladesh, got to number 10 in August,

but his next single, Give Me Love, would be his last top 10 hit in 14 years, when he got to number 8 in June. of 1973. But my sweet Lord would be re-released in January of 2002 in the wake of his death and enter the chart at number one, making it, at the time

of recording, the first and last solo Beatle number one. And of course, one of those dancing dollies, Babs' Lord, would go on to marry Jesus himself, Robert Powell. The day you're old. It may have this year

This one got to number two in the top 30 Fabulous sound The Rolling Stones and Brown Sugar We're white transitions straight into the next act And it's another bigan The Rolling Stones with Brown Sugar We've covered the stones

Only once on chart music Chart Music No 42 Non-Stop Erotic Cato Meat When they took Start Me up to number 7 in August of 1981. After surviving the 60s, they started the new decade by Downing Tall singles-wise

while they tried to get out of their deals with Decker and Alan Klein, releasing the live LP, Get You Yoyars out, and Gimme Shelter, the film of the Altamont gig. Their only new single of 1970 was cocksucker blues.

Their attempt to give Decker an unreleasable song as their final contractual obligation, forcing Decker to release Street Fighting Man for the first time in the UK instead, which got to number 21 in July of this year. They began 1971 by setting up their own label, Rolling Stones Records, and put out their nine studio album Sticky Fingers in April. And this is the League Cup from that LP,

which came out a couple of days previously as a follow-up to Honky Tonk Women, which got to number one for five weeks in July slash August, 1969. It was actually recorded at Muscle's Shoals in December of 1969, played out at Ultimate and on their European tour of 1970, and with the assistance of a top of the pops area in the week before its release, it entered the chart at number 21, then soared 17 places to number four. And a couple of weeks later, it dug in at number two.

for three weeks, unable to dislodge knock three times by dawn. And here's a repeat of that Top of the Pop studio performance. A rare return to the UK from here on in, as they've just been informed that they actually haven't paid any tax in the UK for the past seven years, so they've nipped off to the Coat Desior to live as tax exiles, where they did this, bitch, and wild horses as part of Top of the Pops'

album section. And chaps, we've coated down that album section for fucking about with the formula. But it's got to be said there have been some fucking blinding acts on there this year. Curtis Mayfield,

Labby Sifre, chairman of the board, Stevie Wonder, fucking gold, mate. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the time, the problem is not with the performances.

It's just with the fact that it breaks up top of the pops in a really ugly and unnecessary way. But anyway, chaps, the stones, they're back. And now that the Beatles are out the way, who's the fucking daddy now, eh? Yeah.

The thing about the Beatles is that the key word about them is love. You know, despite all of their kind of shortcomings that we've already touched on as characters. Love is something they project in a very real kind of way. I think, you know, domestic lives, I think all of them ultimately found true lifelong loving relationships. Yeah. I think even when they fell out with each other,

Ringo Star at the time said something, oh, you always hurt the one you love, and we love each other. And ultimately they did all kind of eventually reconcile them back together, you know, if not ever fully. Now, I mean, with the stones, obviously when they tried to do their kind of response to President Pepperie, we love you. I mean, you don't love us. You don't love us anyone. Led Zeppelin loved it. Although that song was a sarcastic message to the establishment that had just put him in prison.

Yeah, that's not what they're about. That is something that they can't sort of carry the head into the 70s. They can't say to take up that particular banner. But yeah, here they are. Starting the 70s is a mean to go on, which isn't surprising really, considering this song was recorded a mere six months after honky tot and women

and they've been sitting on it for 16 months. This is still Stone's 1969, isn't it? Yeah. And yeah, this song. Obviously, no offence to present company, including myself, but at one point previously, we were scheduled to do this episode of Top of the Pops for a chart music that never happened.

and it was going to be me and Neil. And I miss Neil most days in one way or another. Yeah. But the idea of a lengthy discussion with Neil, who had that great eye for racism in pop and wrote so well about it, talking about one of the most celebrated and in many ways, most brilliant songs by his all-time favorite group, which also happens to be the most spectacularly racist rock song

ever to attain classic status. I'll be missing that chance forever. Exactly. Only followed up by, you know, some girls later on, you know, which was banned by various black radio stations. What are you saying about racing? What's wrong with being racy? I know.

But imagine if you were in a group today and the singer came in with a sheet of paper and said, right, I've written some lyrics for that new song. What do you think? There's camera pans across the rest of the band sat there with jaws on their knees. Because I think if I think if I'm, were tasked with writing a more offensive lyric than this as a creative exercise.

Like something which didn't just sound like an obvious over-the-top parody of racism, I would really struggle. I don't even know if it would be possible to simultaneously exalt and degrade black people to this level, which is probably how they get away with it. Well, yeah. But it manages to turn the slave trade into a cackling dirty joke. it sexualizes black women in the most reductive way that would be humanly possible. And to boot, it rips off the music of the descendants of American slaves in order to do it.

The only missed window here is that this song is at least in favour of miscegenation, which is something, I suppose. I mean, look, there won't be anyone listening to this who's never heard brown sugar. but there may be one or two who've never paid full attention to the lyrics. So very briefly, just in case anyone doesn't know, it goes like this. Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields sold in a market down in New Orleans. Scarred old slaver knows he's doing all right. Here him whip the women just around midnight.

Brown sugar, how come you taste so good? Brown sugar, just like a young girl should. Drum's beating. Cold English blood runs hot. Lady of the house wondering where it's going to stop. Houseboy knows that he's doing all right. You should have heard him just around midnight. Get down on your knees, brown sugar. How come you taste so good? Brown sugar, just like a black girl should. And it goes on for a bit like that. And these are quite well-written lyrics as well. Because they're from that period where Mick tried quite hard with his lyrics. So it's not just like, oh, we were drunk. in the studio and we didn't really

think it through. No, this was all deliberate. Listening for the first time, as I did in kind of like the mid-80s, it was just like, well, what's this? Is it about licking black women's fanis? Is it about heroin? Is it about the glorification of torture? Is it about paedophilia?

And the answer is, yes, to all of these. And it was one of the most popular songs of the decade. This got played at wedding dudes. I swear Dan, every wedding I ever went to all the way through to the mid-80s, if there was a band book for the do, this song got

played. The kids had skid on the knees across the dance floor, dad had loosen his tie and undo his westcoat and do his Mick Jagger impression and the band told us about how mint it is to lick fanny. Fucking hell, what a time to be alive.

I bet Punch knew it back to front. You know, they'd pitch up at a fucking working men's club in Gippton and the chairman had come out and ask them, oh, do you do the one about lasses getting whipped? The Rolling Stones don't play Brown Sugar on stage anymore. That's right, yeah.

As of just a couple of years ago, yeah. Only a couple of years ago. That's like women in Switzerland only getting the vote in the 1970. Yes. Well, Keith Richards is on record disagreeing with the decision to drop it from the set list. And he said, quote,

can't they see it's a song about the horrors of slavery, which would possibly make a bit more sense if musically, Brown Sugar, were not the most exhilarating and celebratory-sounding rock song anybody's ever heard. Because like, even if you've got a migraine,

you could barely hear the first four bars without wanting to pump your fists in the air and wiggle your ass. Because sonically, it's like doing a line of coke that stretches from here to the Grand Wizard's shack. And also that particular kind of raw, brutal sexuality of the sound, because it's also one of the sexiest sounding rock songs ever in quite an aggressive kind of way.

That ties imperfectly with the raw and brutal, but sadly non-consensual sexuality of the lyrics. And it underlines that rather than undermines that. So, yeah, I mean, brown sugar conveys the horrors of slay. in the same way that white light, white heat conveys the horrors of methamphetamine. Keith Richards also said Taylor, I'm trying to figure out with the sisters what the beef is.

And he would have said that in about two in 2022, wouldn't he? The 70s are going to be the decade of mandingo and roots. And this is setting the tone early, isn't it? Because he's essentially saying, yeah, I know this is bad shit here, but come on. It's only black women we're talking about here, isn't it? Yeah, it's setting up mandingo and roots by saying, OK, black people, now the ball's in York.

Yes. Because in the early 80s, I used to go around a mate's house after school and play darts in his dad's garage. And one night we came across this filing cabinet, and it was absolutely rammed with 70s grot. And I came across a copy of White House from the mid-70s. Uh-oh. And practically every page of the fucker is burned into my brain even now.

because it was like staring into the open wound of male sexuality. There was this double-page picture spread of all the different types of sexually transmitted diseases you could get. There was an advert for vasectomy club tie and blazer badge sets, which you were supposed to wear on nights out in an attempt to convince women you didn't need to use a john air. There was another advert for a vacuum pump, and the slogan was,

has your partner never said, stop, you're hurting me. But most of all, there was this piece of erotic fiction about the crew of a slave ship going absolutely berserk and ravaging a shipment of African women in the most fucking horrific manner before they threw them to the sharks that made Sven Hassel read like Barbara Cartland. And yeah, that was what Smut was like in the era of the Yorkshire Ripper.

But the implication was pretty standard. throughout a lot of media, you know, it's unfortunate, but come on, at least they're not white women, because no one got othered in the 70s as much as non-white women. It's astonishing, like, you know, that people just kind of utterly oblivious to all of this in 19th century, when, like I say, a few years down the line, you know, with some girls and the kind of horrible lyric in that, that did create a sort of fury and rightly so. Yeah. I'm with Taylor, I was thinking about Neil, you know, and isn't the fact that his favorite group of all time,

you know, weren't public any of all the year or, as he might have expected that they were the Rolling Stones. No. But I would love to have heard him, and I'm sure that he was deeply alive to the kind of the contradiction of a song like this and what is the most overpowering aspect of this that's able to kind of a stench, even of the obnoxious racism, is the sheer power of the song that Taylor's already sort of alluded to.

You see, I was never a Stones. It's like I was a Wiz kid and not a Chip-I, I was a Beatles boy and not a Stones kid. And I think this might have been because I first saw them on top of the pops about 1969 when I was only about six years old. And I remember being pretty traumatised

because there was a sort of, you know, it was getting pretty rowdy and it was a sort of stage invasion of like, you know, these kind of pop crazed kids and, you know, and pandemonium

you don't normally associate with the top of the pops. And, you know, I think it traumatised me as a kid. I felt like, you know, something was being breached here in front of my very eyes and maybe, you know,

maybe that put me off from being fully involved died in the wool fan, you know, knows every trap on every album. Yeah. Much as I'm not a Stone's kid, I do appreciate them immensely. I can hold the thought of like, as article it by Taylor,

I'll just what a spectacularly racist song this is. And yet, if you think, remember in the Ruttles, Eric Idle goes out down to the deep south and he finds, you know, this kind of blues here. And he says, like, what, he said, I started to listen to the Ruttles. And that really got me to turn on to the blues. I think it's perfectly appropriate for a young African-American kid

to be turned on, the blues, and be inspired by the Rolling Stones. Yeah. You know, to play. And I think they have that authenticity. So the actual studio performance, clearly a huge deal for the BBC. They've emptied the studio art.

We don't see any kids. It's just the band. And at this point, the stones appear to be Mick and the Kens. Everyone else is pushed to the side while he's well in the forefront in his shiny pink suit, pink t-shirt with a number eight on it,

and a big Harlequin cap. He's foreshadowing Timmy Mallet here, isn't it? Yeah, doing his rock'em-sock and robots, dance like he's cross-country skiing on the spot. Yeah, I never really felt that he could dance. I mean, apparently, that Tina Turner taught him to dance, which perhaps explains a lot,

but, you know, just always reminds me of that, Seinfeld episode, sort of the little kicks to where Elaine in Seinfeld does this kind of weird little jerky sort of dance and everybody kind of stands back. Joey Seinfeld says, sweet, fancy Moses.

So I always end up saying, sweet fancy Moses whenever I see Mick Jagger dance. This is a year that Jagger, one of the most famous people on the planet becomes even more famous. The wedding with Bianca in France was a huge media event by mistake because they had to get married

in a public place. So just absolutely swamped with paparazzi. And he's being credited with dragging pop stardom right up into the levels of modern aristocracy. And in a time where his peers of the 60s are either stepping back and going on a farm or being bogged down in litigation or dying. He's still going.

He's rising to the top. Yeah. He's true professional. Yeah. I mean, the Stones weren't the Beatles, but, yeah, he is this great 60s survivor, yeah, and he is carrying on at that sort of level of energy. Yeah.

It's a good performance. Yeah. They look kind of, you know, suitably sulky and dissolute. Keith is all gothic and vultuous. Midway into his transformation into Count Drug. It looks very Claudia Winkelman here, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. The one thing that's a little bit unfortunate

is that the black sax player is down on a lower level. He's not allowed to stand on the podium with the stones. There wasn't even a black sax player on the actual record. It was a white bloke, Bobby Keyes, but I think he was probably allowed to stand on the same floor as them in the studio. It's like when you see the shadows in the late 70s and they've got a bloke filling in on base who's not one of the original members.

So they make him stand right at the back. So he is quite literally in the shadows. But it's a bit unfortunate here because the optics are already so bad. Putting this flat guy, like, no, you stand down there, mate. The thing is, before we get hung up on this song and like, you know, as if, like,

the Rolling Stones were like a proto screwdriver or something. First of all, there are lots of, of other brilliant Rolling Stone songs which are almost as dodgy as this, right? And I'm not talking about stuff like you know, under my thumb or any of those like casually

misogynistic songs which are obviously wind-up. Stupid girl. Yeah, like meant to be a kind of joke. Yeah. I think in a song's like you know, stray cat blues which is more explicitly about sex with very underage girls than any other song

ever written. And if you think she's young, on the record you should hear the live versions and it does not sound like it's meant to be a song about the horrors of predation to put it mildly or even Midnight Rambler which is about a sex killer and

that one's not celebratory but it's got that sort of video nasty sensationalism to it a giggling shopper He's not regretful is it No but it's what a lot of this stuff is with the stones It's edge lordship before it's time right it's a deliberate attempt

to extend that old bad boy image into the new extremes that were being opened up by societal change because having collar length hair and not wearing a tie wasn't enough anymore to make you outrageous, you know? It was a deliberate move to remain outrageous. But in an era when people hadn't yet worked out the shape of the new society or where the boundaries were. So like, you know, this is a time when there were,

was some debate over whether the paedophile information exchange should be alongside gay helplines and women's refuges in the small ads of time out. You know, like there was, you know, maybe a chance this could be something constructive and forward-looking. We just don't know yet. And it's impossible to imagine now, but that's really how it was for a lot of people. So if you're edge-lawing it in that climate, I mean, we're almost lucky you didn't get something.

worse. But the thing is by this point, the stones now are all about decadence in their art and in their lives. And the nature of decadence is that pretty quickly everything turns to meaningless sludge. You know, it's all a joke and nothing is more serious than anything else. So you can do a song about an orgy on a plantation in the antebellum. Yeah, a very non-consensual Roger. And it's a party song. Lighten up, right? But it's obviously not because the stones were pro-slavery or pro-rape or pro-violence

against women. In fact, part of the reason they fell out with Brian Jones was his relentless woman being. There's those stories of a groupie turning up in the morning with two black eyes and Keith sending the bodyguard around to Brian's room to return the favour. Right, yeah. Because let's face it, the funny thing about all of this is that there were very few white Englishmen of this generation who were less racist than the Rowling Stones, who worshipped black American musicians. And to some extent black Americans generally and desperately wanted to be like them. What it is, on the level at which their songs are happening, they just don't care about anything.

So everything's up for grabs and let's see how far we can push it. And it's like anything else, when you're operating on the edge of what's acceptable in your own time, you can't predict for sure whether in the years ahead the cultural currents are going to follow you and your daring will seem ahead of its time or whether things go the other way. And in a few years, no one will be able to believe that you ever said or did something so crass or appalled. but I'm sure we all wrote something in the 90s that if we saw it now there would be a sharp intake of breath

not quite on the level of brown sugar perhaps if it is intended as a provocation then it appears to have had very very little pushback at the time as if there's no cognitive framework whereby people would sort of go deconstructing something like this just washed over people you know

brown sugar you know like a Bruce Springsteen verse. I think there were a few more political black people who weren't keen on it. No. But yeah, you're right. There was no major outrage. But I think, yeah, even in the Let It All Hang Out six fences,

maybe this should have been tucked back in again. Yeah. Probably should have been obvious. But the best and only defence here is just the usual defence for unimaginably crass pop songs, which is welcome to a universe with, different rules where none of this stuff really happens and ideas are all that exist. But understandably, when you apply that to things like slavery, not everyone is going to do a Fonzie shrug and put aside their objections.

You know what I mean? Even when it's as great a record as this, which, let's face it, this record is fucking amazing. Yes, it is. Let's not spend the whole of this just going all, it's a bit racist because it fucking is. but it's also an incredible record. There's the edge on the slashing guitar is eye-watering. And Charlie leaning into the tombs and bass drum every time the verse kicks back in, which is presumably meant to subliminally suggest African drumming,

which is a little bit dubious. But it sounds fantastic. And there's one of Mick Jagger's best ever vocals, right? And even though Mick Jagger was a terrible singer, he was a brilliant vocalist. and I don't know how anybody anywhere could ever resist the sound and feel of this record. Yeah. Just the sound and feel of this record. Unless they were fully dried up.

It's like if somebody went back in time and people ask them, this jargon term of the future, problematic, what does it mean? And you said, well, perhaps it would be easier to explain in song. One particular song. Yeah. It is the stonziest. own single ever, isn't it? Yeah. And ultimately, people will let the stones off almost anything.

Yeah. They don't get a lot of the same scrutiny, shall we say, but their peers got for doing exactly the same stuff, because as well as being an incredible band, they are still, weirdly, avatars of freedom and the flight from responsibility. Like, obviously, back then, they were vitally important psychologically for a lot of people who were bumping up against like the still existing limits of society because most of those people never got to follow that trail all the way out. So the stones were two things.

They were a symbol of hope in the moment. And then as time went on, reassurance that being allowed to make all your own mistakes might not in fact be paradise, at least not all the time, right? But nowadays, I think they still fulfill that role in a different way. They sort of hover over the modern world, reminding us all of the sapping emotional labour that is demanded by the necessity of caring. That's ambiguous enough that on the one hand, they seem inspirational and they can lighten an unnecessary load. But then on the other hand, there are all these cautionary tales. But fucking hell, what a moment for Top of the Pops.

This is pretty landmark, isn't it? And it appears that the Rolling Stones might have a bit more mileage in the tank. Who knows, they might even last as long as 1975. I'd say Keith Richards was asked in 1978, you know, at this point, is Rolling Stones, you've been around 15 years now. Do you still see yourself being active in another 15 years? 1993, yeah. I don't have a fucking rest.

Anything else to say. Just one thing. I knew it! Yeah, while we're on the stones, because I may never get this chance again. I have to share something that was recently served up to me by Facebook memories. Something that I apparently posted many years ago. But this is a true story for what it's worth. I had a rock and roll dream last night.

I was supposed to be playing rhythm guitar for the Rolling Stones at some big outdoor show, the stones being roughly 40 in this dream, so neither in their pomp nor in the present day. but I'd lost my black telecaster backstage so I couldn't go on Keith Richards offered to help look for it so for about half an hour me and Keith went into different rooms in this backstage area

asking people if they'd seen a black telecaster at one point I thought I'd found it but no it was actually somebody else's guitar later I picked up what I thought was my guitar but when I looked more closely it was actually a banjo All this time, Mick and the lads were waiting on stage in front of the audience who were now becoming impatient. Occasionally, you could hear the rest of the band tuning up,

increasing the tension even further. A slow hand clap began. But backstage, people kept saying, no, sorry, mate, I haven't seen your guitar. In the end, I decided that it must have been stolen and I probably wouldn't see it again. Some people say that all the joy goes out, a life when you hit middle age but at least we still have our dreams

yeah wait to you the dream we're out to fill in on keyboard for it bites so brown sugar would go on to sell 360,000 copies in the UK finishing the year as the 18th best-selling single of 1971 one above stoned love by the Supremes one below for all we know by Shirley Bassett It would do even better in America, getting to number one for two weeks in May, and Sticky Fingers would spend five non-consecutive weeks atop the summit of Albumberg. It immediately became a nailed-on staple of the Stones' live set, originally as the opening song and then graduating to the finale,

with Jagger eventually easing out the lyric about whipping. And in 2021, they announced it had been dropped from the set list since 2009, with Jagger saying there were no plans to bring it back. The follow-up of sorts was the Decker release of Street Fighting Man, which had never been put out over here, which got to number 21 in July. But the proper follow-up, Tumbling Dice, got to number 5 in May of 1972. Whoa.

Well, I do believe that we're in dire need of a lie down after digesting all that fizzy pop excitement. So we're going to leave it there for now and we'll finish it off in the next episode. But don't forget, if you have stronger stomachs than us and you want the full episode in one go, with no advert rammell and days before everyone else, you need to join the pop craze Patreon people. It's simple. to patreon.com slash chart music and stick a bit of shrapnel down this here G string. Oh, and before I go, as always, there's a hefty video playlist of this episode, which I strongly advise you to have a look at because everything we talk about is right there

in an audiovisual format for the complete picture of late December 1971. Anyway, this is Al Needham saying, I really want to know you. I really want to go with you. And I really want you to stay pop crazed. Chart music.