Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #78 (Pt 4): 16.2.78 – Paint Along With Nancy Spungeon

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Simon Price, David Stubbs and Al Needham finish off a classic episode of TOTP by strutting through New York with a paint pot in hand, being delighted to learn that Sweep is a Punk Rocker now, contemplating the Agnetharse, and being repulsed at the thought of Rod Stewart doing it with a head on legs. BRING YOUR MOTHER TOO, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS! 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 to? Um, chart music. Chart music. It's Thursday night. It's 28 minutes to 8.

It's February the 16th. 1978 and all is right with the world because the latest episode at the top of the pops is fucking mint. We've had a bit of sharty punkishness. We're still working out our feelings about Kate Bush. There's been just the right amount of Daddysfaction. Mams been treated to Billy Joel and Oaky Brooks and now we're getting to the final course. Hey up you pop craze youngsters. and welcome to part four of Charp Music 78. I'm Al-Nidam. There's Simon Price and David Stubbs,

and we are exploding into the final furlong of this episode of our Thursday evening Fizzy Pop Treat. So let us not fanny about, and let's rejoin this episode in progress. Intoxicating, what? This week's highest duetry is in at 18. From the film Saturday Night Fever, it's the BGs with Staying Alive. We return to Kid with his spear and in his pocket,

with three more slightly better-dressed maidens of the studio floor. He leans over to one of them and says, intoxicating what? She doesn't have anything to say and smiles Game Lair. So he then goes on to introduce us to this week's highest new entry, Asterix. Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. We've dealt with the Brothers Gibb on numerous occasions on chart music, and this single, their 55th since they started in 1963,

has sealed their reputation as the sexy lions of disco. It's all started in 1976, when Robert Stigwood, their manager, bought the film rights for tribal rights of the new Saturday night, an article written by Nick Cohn for the magazine New York, about the burgeoning disco scene. After the film was shot and John Travolter had already been filmed dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boss Skaggs

and his navigation of the film rights for disco hits of the day was proving problematic. Stigwood contacted his charges who were sequestered in Chateau Leheroville working on their next LP, Children of the World, to put everything on hold right now and knock out a few songs for the soundtrack. And in one weekend,

knowing next to fuck all about the film, they hacked out, if I can't have you, night fever, how deep is your love, and this. It was immediately pegged as the theme tune for the film to the extent that Stigwood leaned hard on them to change the title lyric to Saturday night. But the band dug their heels in, stating there were loads of songs called that,

and they were worried people would confuse it for the Bacity Roller single, which caused Stigwood to back off and changed the film title from Saturday Night to Saturday Night Fever so he could latch on to one of the other songs. It wasn't even slated for a single release in America as RSO preferred how deep is your love. But when it appeared on the trailer for the movie in November of 1977,

people bombarded radio stations to play it. So it was put out in America in mid-December, spending four weeks at number one, including this. this week. Over here, it's the follow-up to how deep is your love, which got to number three for five weeks in December and early January, and even though Saturday Night Fever still hasn't come out in the UK and will only have its British premiere in five weeks' time, we are fully primed for that polyester look. It's entered the charter fortnight ago at number 34 and only moved up

three places to number 31, but this week it's soared. 13 places to number 18. So here's the official video, which has been shot at MGM Studios backlock number two in Culver City, California, while the boys are filming Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. And yet, let's go back to that asterix, the highest new entry confusion, because kid is clearly seeing this as the highest new entry in the top 30,

which is what Top of the Pops is using at the time. So in a way, he's really. Right. But obviously for me and Simon's generation, it's all about the top 40, isn't it? And if you go on that metric, the highest new entry is that free EP. As far as Radio 1 goes, well, Tom Brown is currently broadcast in the top 20 on Sunday tea time. So, all very confusing. It's all going to be tidied up at the end of the year when the chart rundown on Radio 1 goes up to a top 40. So there we go. Who's right? Who's wrong? Who cares? For me, anything below the top 30 was like non-league football.

That's my generation. Yeah. Yeah, all about a 40 for me, definitely. Chateau Deruville, that was also where Sweet recorded their album level-headed. So, you know, like the idea of the Gibbs and, you know, Steve Priest knocking around together. And around the same time as Saturday Night Feeb was being made, David Bowie was in there making low. All right. I don't know how many studios they had going at the same time, but you can imagine

some quite bizarre scenes in the green room let's say. Anyway chaps, a clear indication that we are into the second month of 1970 Gibb. They've got an actual promo video like they have in the 80s. You know, it's not an on-stage performance. It's not set up like a TV performance. And it's not even the band having fun in the studio. God, it's like a film. Yeah, I mean, it is a disused film set on the MGM lot,

but it looks like a ghost town. And the video is kind of disco urban. isn't it because of that? You know, they're just walking around this sort of deserted, derelict looking buildings. And it is fitting in a way because there is sort of weird

Wild West Showdown feel to staying alive, I would say. It does kind of fit the music. What's even more mental, this song is soundtracking the opening of a film we haven't seen yet. That's actually cut like a music video. You know, you can see it now.

John Travolta strutting around in New York with a paint booking. And that's burned into the mind of everyone who hears. this song. I mean, they could have put that out as the pop video and we'd have been more than satisfied by that because we are going to see a lot of pop video slash movie tie-ins over the next few years and they almost always follow the same pattern. You know, clips of the artists mix with the best parts of the film, which kind of reached a peak with Billy Ocean and the cast of romance in

the stone on when the going gets tough. But as we can see, cross-platform Synerger, it clearly isn't a thing yet in 1978, but then it doesn't have to be because the BGs are going to be just as important to this film as John Travolta is. Yeah, you're right. I think that even people who to this day have never seen the film, Saty Night Fever, can picture Travolta walking down the street just from that opening thing, just maybe from the trailer, or just from seeing clips of it. Because yeah, it's very memorable. He's kind of like Richard Ashcroft or Shaw-Nelson, but in a bit more of a hurry, you know? Well, a bit more up-tempo. It does have that kind of confrontation there You've got it with John Travolta as well.

And I think at the time, it's almost like there was a certainly cultural primacy of disco, because, you've mentioned, there's a great deal of condescension towards disco, and the whole idea of disco that's faithly racist at times. It's like black people aren't capable of doing anything that's even more than superficial or ephemeral. Of course, the irony is that the people really asserting that are white, and the people that become these kind of great disco icons are white. And straight. Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah.

I mean, a great thing about this song is it is utterly open to parody, you know, the hebie-gibis and all that. But it is utterly brilliant. And I think it's a test of the brunt. It's the fact that it's open to parody it resists it, like Wateroff a duck's back so successfully. You know, it's struts in its tight white trousers into eternity. Very tight white trousers. God, yes.

Barry dresses to the left. You can certainly see that. I mean, what they would have done, if this was made in like 1988, they would have reshot John Travolta strutting about with his paint pot. But having the Bee Gees in the background. Yeah. Through the windows of the paint.

shop or in the doorway, that would have been fucking brilliant. Or it would have been like, you know, against all odds or something where you get clips from the film and then it goes to a bit of singing, then back to the film and it's all a bit clunky, but this is better. It's so weird actually seeing the kid introduce it as a film called Saturday Night Fever. Similar to the kind of Billy Joel thing, really. It feels like it's been around forever. And, yeah, him just introducing Saturday Night Fever as if it needs explaining.

Yes. We're witnessing a time in history when the kids around him and the kids watching at home. We're like, never heard of it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking hell. In the video, we see the sexy lines themselves strutting through some vaguely famous and very knackered upsets. If you're into your old films, you might be able to spot the quality street set.

Yeah. That was used in the Three Musketeers in Young Frankenstein. And the Grand Central Station set that was used in the opening sequence of that's entertainment with Fred Astaire. But you'd really have to know what you were looking for because everything's just fucked. Shame there wasn't. a bit where the entire side of a building falls on them and they step over the doorway that they were conveniently positioned and strut off into the next scene. Well, in a way, they look so futuristic, or least so of the time, that it emphasises how

fucks the surroundings look. And it does look kind of post-apocalyptic, doesn't it? Yeah. There they are in their silver bomber jackets, looking like men from the future, just striding through this, you know, it looks like World War II was just ceased or something. Or it's like disco who's exploded everything. Yes, and now they struck triumphantly across the child landscape. There's been a disco inferno. Yeah.

I mean, they claim in interviews that they knew fuck all about the film when they wrote this song. But, bleeding out, if you can make sense of the lyrics, it practically tells you everything you need to know about Tony Minero and what happens to him. The gist is, look, don't bother me. I'm out for the fan air. I live in the most important city in the world, but it's shit. and I've been treated like shit, but I'm dead good at this one thing,

and I live for Saturday night, and it might even be the key out of my rubbish existence. And all the bits in between last Saturday and the next Saturday, all me and everybody else is doing is just staying alive. Yeah, I mean, living for the weekend is quite a common trope in pop music. But there's something quite dark about this one. Apparently, it was Robin Gibb, who started it off by scrolling some lyrics on a Concord ticket.

You can't get more 70s pop Babylon than that, can you? God know. But yeah, stuff like, you know, life going nowhere, somebody help me and feel the city breaking and everybody's shaking. Because New York, it's a very New York record. New York was a broke and broken city in the 70s. And even if the lyrics don't completely hang together in a satisfactory way, you do get a sense of somebody just striving to live through that,

urban survivalism through disco dancing, you know. The one bit that, you know, famously is harder to figure out is the line, we can try to understand the New York Times effect on man. Yeah. Right? Which the effect the New York Times currently has on this man is that I can't get out of bed until I've completed Wordle. Right.

A hundred percent record. My threes come to be clear of my fives, but my fours are way out in front. Right. And all my other games, Traveler, Worldler, and unzoned. Sometimes chrono photo, is a day. treat. But the New York Times effect is a phenomenon in journalism, whereby if the New York Times goes big on a certain story, other publications follow suit and give it prominence. And then that has a knock-on effect on the actual world. And I've seen it argued that BGs are using that

as a metaphor about the social pressure to conform and disco dancing being a rebellion against that. Yeah. Not that Saturday Night Fever was originally actually about disco, of course, it's secretly originally about Northern Seoul because Nick Cohn who you know he wrote that article the tribal rights

of the new Saturday night he'd moved to New York and he'd only just got there and he hadn't really had time to sort of look around and get acclimatized he was immediately commissioned to write a piece

about the disco scene and he's not going to say no to the work but he had no experience of the disco scene so he faked it based on his experience of Northern Seoul

back in the UK and he wrote it up and under that you know, the headline tribal rights the new Saturday night. Robert Stigwood saw that and got the idea for the film, but yeah, that's really funny that the defining film of the disco era

was kind of initiated by somebody who had never experienced disco. Yeah, but I think he was very much into the idea of it being a kind of a working class phenomenon, and I think I guess one of the things that gave disco a bad name at this point is Studio 54. Yeah, yeah. Elitism and stuff like that. I think he's

like reclaiming disco as something that's almost like brutally working class. in lots of ways. We can try to understand the Wiggin' posts effect on man. I bet it does translate, weirdly, so it does work. And when the sweet go low,

the beegeys go high. I mean, we got a taste of that falsetto last year with you should be dancing, but fuck it, it's in full effect here. Sounds good, but you don't understand half the fucking lyrics. And I still don't. It's one of them songs where you go,

you know what, now might be the time to learn what they're actually saying in this song. But then you think, well, why bother? Will it detract from your enjoyment of it in future? And being 10 years old, I had the album way before I saw the film. Anyway, chaps, Disco, the name's been around for ages as a DJ term for anything you can dance to in a club. Simon, you'll remember the early days of Chompies when we did that 1975 episode with Emperor Roscoe.

And he introduced Her So Good by Susan Cadogan by saying, we're going into disco land right now. Yeah. It's like punk, you know, a label that have been floated around for all of the 70s, just waiting to attach itself to a movement. Properly breaking out in America, not quite yet here, to the extent that it actually has to be explained to the readers of the Evening Standard next week by Amanda Lear, who is currently being touted as Europe's first white disco queen, because apparently we really need a white disco queen.

Anyway, quote, in the States, they don't want to know about anything but disco. When I was there, the head of Billboard, you know, the big magazine, he said, Amanda, disco is the new religion. It will bring people back to God on the dance floor. I thought, wait a moment,

maybe this guy is some kind of religious nut, but he explained that people want to perform and they can do that on the dance floor. It's healthy and exciting, and it takes away the energy you might spend on beating up old ladies, or who are. else you want to beat up.

I guess in England there is not much money and if you don't have money to eat then you can go to discothex. The kids go to pubs instead and that's why you have punk rock but I think they will like disco too. It will catch on. So there you go.

The music of 1978 explained and encapsulated by Mandelaire and God catch on it did because you know at the end of the year we're going to see the world disco dancing championship in the empire ballroom at Leicester Square, broadcast on ITV, and hosted, of course, by David Hamilton.

And, yeah, we're going to get a lot of that shit. Even Kid Jensen got involved in 1979 champs. He hosted something called the UK boy girl disco dancing championships. Yeah, well, this is that, you know, proper disco heads often make the argument that disco died at this exact moment, or died with Saturday Night Fever in any case, because it went fully overground. and the squares and the straits got into it

and children like me, like me and you, you know. I also remember reading the Daily Mail at the time, an article about where interviewed of, you know, people who actually did frequent discos and said that anybody who sort of acted up like solo on a dance floor like John Travolta, they'd get their arse handed to them, you know, laugh at all the politics of,

it's much more of a communal thing. The film itself, how old were you when you saw Saturday Night Fever? David, weren't you old enough to see it or old enough to sneak in? with a moustache. I was kind of monastic and very reclusive at this point. The most recent film would have seen at the cinema would have been a family outing to see Star Wars.

There really wasn't any question of my going to see Sidney Feeder at that time. I just didn't really do that. So I was probably about 28 when I first actually saw it. Simon? I was probably about 28 as well. You know, it would have been sometime in the 90s. I had the album way before I saw the film because it was an ex. And yeah, I'd shagging in it or something and swearing.

Same thing with Greece, which I think was a. double a I had the album and I had to invent the film in my head from the songs and a few photos in the gatefold sleeve you know you try and figure out what the narrative is but as a result

disco is absolutely how I imagined adult life to be I thought disco would still be there waiting for me when I was older to be going out but of course it was all fucked by then but yeah I love this album Satin' Night Feeva I just played it to death yeah the disco wave in the UK

it's mainly down to this lot, which is Menkel, you know, the second Division 60s band, becoming the dominant of force of disco. That's like smoky being in the Vanguarda Techno, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, Herman's Hermits or whatever, yeah, yeah. It is a bit weird, though, because, you know, Britain has bought lots of disco records before that, like, you know, go back to George McCray,

rock your baby being number one and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, bigger hits here than in America. Yeah, but you're right, you know, it's the BGs who really bring it overground for better or for worse. David says that the parodies were water off of a duck's back. I'm not so sure, you know. I'm sure they were very sensitive about them, yeah. Yeah, they were.

In his BG's biography, Children of the World, Bob Stanley argues that the backlash against disco, his words now, affected the BGs far more than other acts like Donna Summer, Sheik or Michael Jackson, all of whom survived the backlash, adapted and prospered. And Bob thinks that's strange because he says, it's clear with hindsight that the resultant American kickback against disco

slick rock acts like Journey and Ario Speedwagon, especially Toto, owed far more to silky late 70s bg's recordings than it did to the guitar ethos of Bruce Springsteen or Led Zeppelin, which is a good argument, I think. But Barry Gibb was really hurt by the backlash against disco, and the fact that for all that they'd achieved before Saturday Night Fever and all they achieved after Saturday Night Fever, they are forever pinned as being this sort of slightly comical disco act.

When there was a Saturday Night Fever reunion concert in 1998 and younger people showed an interest in it again. He made comments the effect of how come you all suddenly want this song by which he meant staying alive, but you hated at the time. I think it's right, they are pretty thin-skinned people of the be you. He walked off Clive Anderson. Although he was being a dick, to be fair. It was, absolute dick.

Yeah, but when I was talking about Walter Rufford Tucker, I think I was talking about the entity, the song, and talking from the point of view of the far future. Okay. You know, that, obviously there was a whole disco-subs thing and everything like that, which not a lot of people sideways, including Sheik, of course, but I mean, Sheik and our Rogers are absolute treasures these days. Here's a fascinating fact about Staying Alive.

The drums from Stain Alive are the drums from Night Fever. Did you know that? Really? Yeah, Night Fever was already recorded, and they were in the middle of making Stain Alive when the drummer, Dennis Bryant, had to fly home to Cardiff because his mother was very ill. Right.

And there's actually a lot of Welsh input on Saturday Fever that Vigi's keyboardist Blue Weaver is from Cardiff. So anyway, they took four bars from Dennis Bryan's drumming on Night Fever and spliced it into a tape loop. And that's what you hear on Staying Alive. And also the intro, and this might interest David if they didn't already, but the intro is partly inspired by Stevie Wonder's superstition. That riff, you hear the start, was originally played on a clavinet by Blue Weaver before they redid it with guitar. And if you think it, you can imagine it. done. You can absolutely imagine it done on Clavenet

in that superstition style. Yeah. Yeah. So the following week staying alive jumped four places to number 12. The week after that, it got all the way to number four, but for some reason Robin Nash elected not

to play it again, and it got no further. But the follow-up, Night Fever, crashed into the chart at number 14 in April, soared 12 places to number two, and then spent two weeks at number one. their first ascension to the summit of Mount Pop since I've got to get a message to you

nearly 10 years earlier. One of the years most talked about new bands is this one. They're called magazine and here's their debut single shot by both sides. Kid! Now slarming about on one of Legs and Co's accessibility ramps, he's very keen to introduce us to what he called calls one of the years most talked about new bands and points a finger gun at us to press home the point. As the camera swings round,

and just before it plows into the kids like a crimpilline and denim harvester, he raises a leg to show off his tan cowboy boots and the cut of his trousers, which are not flared. It's a new era, everyone. As that camera pans across a load of old men who are probably younger than us now, we realise that he's talking about shot by both sides by magazine. Born in Scunthorpe in 1952,

Howard Trafford's family relocated to Leeds in the 60s, and after having a dabble in electronic music, ended up at the Bolton Institute of Technology in 1972 to study psychology. In 1975, he changed his name to Howard. would Devoto after a friend of his landlord and place an ad on the notice board of the common room looking for musos who wanted to place Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground, which was responded to by Peter McNish and before the end of the year they had formed Buzzcocks. After playing their first gig at college in April of 1976, they were swept up by the excitement

generated in the music press by the Sex Pistols, which led them to travelled to High Wickham to see the band, which led to them organising a sex pistols gig at the lesser free trade hall in Manchester that summer, which led to them becoming one of the first named punk bands in the provinces. By March of 1977, however, Devoto wanted out, as he was well dischuffed by the direction punk was heading to, and returned to the Bolton Institute to finish his studies. But he wasn't done with music and a month later he was introduced to an arts graduate called John McGiotch and together they formed a new band, magazine. They were almost immediately picked up by Virgin and this is their first single, named after an argument about politics Devoto had with his

girlfriend which ended with her telling him he'll end up being shot by both sides. Oh, clever conversation, Howard. It was released less than a month ago and entered the charts last week at number 46. This week it's nipped up three places to number 43, but Robin Nash, with his finger on the pulse as always, has rushed them into the studio for their debut Top of the Pops performance. And Chaps, this episode of Top of the Pops, has taken yet another strange turn, hasn't it?

Because as we've discovered on our chart music odyssey chaps, Robin Nash is not going to cock his nose up at the news sounds emanating from the punk uprising as long as they're pulling the weight in the charts and not been banned. But this would have been an absolutely huge surprise for anyone in the know who's watching Top of the Pops at the time. This is proper our band business here, isn't it? Yeah. I just wished I could have liked magazine more.

I mean, I felt like I ought to block them more. Oh, David. Fucking hell. Well, it's all right. Doesn't like Trio. There's various things. I think musically, it's just a bit too ordinary for me. You know, the progression, do, do, do, do, do.

That just didn't do it for me. The sentiment of the song, it's a very centrist sentiment. Yes. I think that there's something painfully non-committal about a lot of people in a new way with it's time. Deep self-conscious, I'll go on to that in a second when he's being interviewed about this performance. Painfully non-committal and yet very, very self-conscious

about the whole idea of being in a band and, you know, working within the capitalist industry and all that kind of stuff. Everybody's talking along those lines. He's got that kind of alien-like Brianino-esque look. I mean, and a very conscious choice of haircuts if he's wanting to show off his big brain. Yes.

The me-con of post-punk. Yes. Yeah. He was the absolute epitome of the ultra-self-conscious new waver because people weren't talking about post-punk yet. He was interviewed about this performance at the time. Right. And this guy, Bob Edmonds, who interviews,

and he said, you know, he's describing what it's like to interpret. of you. He says like, put full stops after every word and you'll get something of the pace at which he talks. On occasion people sitting nearby hold entire conversations in the time it takes Howard to begin to answer a question. You can't deny that he does a lot of thinking.

And he's talking about this performance. And so the pop's like oh yeah, sure, there was absolutely no way that, I mean, I can't fake enthusiasm, there was absolutely no way that I could get worked up about anything in the top of pop situation. So he worked on a very negative performance. Oh, so you were working against the jolly face of rock and

role. Exactly. What do you see? All these people jumping about. So I just wanted to stand there, let the camera come to me. Elky Brooks wasn't jumping about me. Exactly. I know. So, enough, his performance doesn't seem to be actually that kind of self-sabotage. He's got this opportunity to being on top of the pops and he's kind of subverting it for the sake of some obscure principle. Well, I've been trying to work out how and why and everything. Because, you know, this is a song of number 43 in the charts, a band that nobody outside people who read the music special, know of if he shagged their mam.

And I have worked out that they've been in London this week. They recorded their first peal session a couple of days ago. So they're practically in reception. Maybe someone pulled out of the last minute. I don't know, but anyway, here they are. There's something in Record Mirror. They actually lost a slot the previous week because they insisted on playing live.

So they almost blew it completely. Oh, right. Fucking out. But they're not playing live here, are they? I don't think they. No, certainly not. No. But it's clearly magazine's time because next week, Howard's very distinctive head is going to be staring out from the cover of the NME, complimenting an interview by Charles Shaw Murray, which clearly lays out what they expect from him.

Quote, Devoto's face fits his music as if they've been designed by some bright art student. He could be a 2,000-year-old man who discovered the secret of youth in his early 20s. He has the ear of a man who's been somewhere else. On stage he gives the impression that he's just been somewhere other than isn't a sleazy dressing room, that he's arrived at the gig by Space Warp, and the fact doesn't bother him unduly. When I saw him on, so it goes. He came on with the most powerful presence I'd seen since I first clapped eyes on Johnny Rotten, or Elvis Costello, or Ian Jure. the kind of guy who gets the big hoopla but also deserves it.

By next week there'll be a big deal. The most convincing post-punk band so far. The true inheritors of the mantle of the original Roxy music. So yeah, big things expected of them. Yeah, the music critics were obsessed with Howard Devoto. Melzi Maker put him on the front cover saying Devoto, the man for 78. Right. And there is a phenomenon in 70s rock and pop, Howard Devoto, Brian Eno, whereby balding men with names ending in O, who leave the band early, get hailed as the real genius behind that band.

And it made me think that if Bob Fish had been called Bob Fischo, he could have quit darts for a critically acclaimed career in avant-garde post-do-op, post-wop. Like David says, Howard DeVoto doesn't attack the camera, but he is. quite a beguilingly alien presence. He's got one vein throbbing in his temple. He's got the emaciated teeth-bearing scowl of a recently exhumed corpse and a thin stroke of eyeline under each eye. I can imagine he would have been quite an arresting sight in 1978 if you're a viewer. God, yeah.

Because again, like Kate Bush, unsecling terror has come upon the youth of the nation. The sight of Howard Devoter would have sent me to the bedside of my mum and dad at 3 a.m. tonight, whining to be let in. Because he looks like the sort of bloke. When you're a 10-year-old, he looks like a sort of bloke who you prayed wouldn't knock on your door while your parents were out

with some leaflets in his hand. That's the irony. It's a very impactful performance, actually, despite any of any attempts at self-sabotage. I mean, we've discussed it before, haven't we chaps? Fear on top of the pops. You know, the grown-ups behaving in a way

that you as a child just can't understand. Yeah. You know, he looks like an extra in which find a job. general, doesn't it, here? And there's a lot of colour in correction on the various shots of the band in an attempt by top of the pops to jazz up what is

a pretty bog standard performance. The kids are not freaking out in the slightest. One or two of them are gingerly bouncing about like they're waiting for a bus in the middle of December, but that's it, isn't it? One positive that stood out for me.

You know how I often express concern for keyboard players on top of the pops and the damage that they're clearly doing to their posture when they play standing standing up. Well, Dave Formula who's just joined the bad. He's come up with a solution because he's got his keyboard on a stand like everyone

else, but he's tilted it back so the keys are at a more manageable height. Yeah, it's more ergonomic. Be a bit awkward to get to the back to the knobs and the black keys, but maybe he doesn't need them because it's post-punk and I'll wait of that man's feeling the benefit now.

Well done, Dave. Yeah, so the lyrics, like David says, are about Howard Devoto being a bit of a centrist dad. You know, the both sides being the left and the right. And he had that argument with his socialist girlfriend. He was supposedly playing devil's advocate saying, yes, but. And she got exasperated. I said, oh, you'll get shot by both sides. Yeah, and I've heard some things about Jeremy Thorpe, mate.

Yeah. Here's what Simon Reynolds says about it and rip it up and start again about this song. It captures the era's sense of dreadful polar. and the vacillation of those caught in the crossfire with the centre ground disappearing beneath their feet. It is about a non-combatant and inactivism. It's a defence of the bourgeois art-rock notion that the individual struggle to be different is what really matters. I think that's great. And Reynolds goes on to say that in an era where you've got these battles between the anti-Nazi League and the National Front,

that it's actually a bit of a dereliction of duty. you know, Devoto's refused to stand up and be counted is questionable. I'd go along with that. It's also a song about disaffection with punk itself. And the thing with that is, if you want to cultivate the mystique of an artist who is ahead of the game, then almost as important as being an early adopter is being an early rejector. And this song is Howard Devoto rejecting punk.

The lines, I wound my way into the heart of the crowd. I was shocked to find what was allowed. I didn't lose myself in the crowd. The crowd, I assume he's referring to the punk crowd, the Roxy, the Vortex and all of that. We've been gobbing on him. Yeah, yeah. I was expecting David to be Captain Post Punk here and really speak up for magazine. But I do personally think the magazine are a bit overrated by posterity, by critics, by history.

For me, they are notable as a precursor band. You've got the great John McGeach on guitar who was moonlighting in Vizage at this time. and went on to play with the Banshees and Pill. You've got Barry Adamson on bass, who was also a Vizage, later became a bad seed. You've got Martin Jackson on drums, who less gloriously ended up in Swing Out Sister.

And Dave Formula, as you mentioned. I've tried with magazine's actual albums. Oh, I just, yeah, I can't get into them. Maybe you had to be the right age at the right time. But David was and wasn't into it. That said, for me, shot by both sides is an absolute banger. I often play it in my Spellbound DJ sets, even though it's from the 70s, because you would always hear it in alternative nightclubs in the 80s.

The main riff is danger music, you know what I mean? It's car chase music. It's very exciting that riff. Later this year, of course, Buzzcocks repurposed it on lipstick, which is fair enough because it was co-written with Pete Shelley when they were in the Buzzcox together. You can also hear that same motif towards the end of Check at Love by Kim Wilde slightly interpolated. And that's fine because Kim Wilde is Kim fucking Wilde and she can do what she wants. This performance is kind of late.

the ground for Gary Newman, isn't it? Yeah. I guess it is. Someone a bit weird and distant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a thing. For me, there is that element of the alien and the other about Devoto, but it doesn't really carry through for me into the music here. I mean, Simon, like, you know, danger music.

I personally prefer the theme to the professional. It's got a bit of that about it, though, yeah. And of course, Devoto only appeared on one Buzzcox release, you know, spiral scratchy people. So it must be kind of heartening that he's beating his old band to the top of the pop stage by two months because they're going to make their first appearance in April with I

don't mind but oh a choice between magazine and Buzzcox fucking buzzcocks fucking buzzcocks all day mate yeah yeah yeah I still can't get over Howard Devoto walking out on the buscox after just one EP that's fucking Menkel isn't it yeah yeah well things are fast moving at the time you know have you seen this clip that's going around at the minute of so it goes in 977 with Matthew Corbett and Sutty in the studio yes no And Sweep comes out dressed as a punk rocker with a guitar, and he starts singing boredom, and him and Sutty start pogoing.

It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life, man. But Howard Devoto must have seen that, and thought, fucking, what have I done? What have I walked away from? But then again, when Sweep's covered you, is there anything more to achieve with that band? So the following week, shot by both sides, dropped three places,

to number 46 and although it rallied the following week getting up to number 41 it got no further the follow-up touch and go failed to chart as did their next five singles and their nearest they ever got to chart success was the ep suite art contract which got to number 54 in july of 1980 by which time three members had splintered off to form visage and after myriad line-up changes they split it's up in May of 1980. I don't have a fear of heights because they're back at the top of the charts once again. Another number one. This time it's for Take a Chance on me.

If you change your mind on the first in line. Honey, I'm still free. Take a chance on me. We cut back to Kid in a box at the bottom left-down corner of the screen. as the text pods at the BBC prepare to do a bit with their Quintel DFS 3,000, I think. I know it's not paintbox

and that's not coming along for another three years. You know, basic as fuck, but would have been an absolute mind-blast in 1978, wouldn't it? Jesus. Yeah. I mean, in July, Thames are going to go absolutely menkel with it on the Kenny Everett video show.

But yeah, God, it's the future, everyone. He then introduces this week's number one, Take a chance on me by Abba. We've done Aba many a time and often, and this is the follow-up to the name of the game, which got to number one for four weeks in October. It's the second cut from their fifth LP, Aba, the album, which came out in Scandinavia on the 12th of December last year,

but completely missed the Christmas rush over here due to the massive amount of pre-orders in the UK and the inability of the British pressing plans to fulfil them, meaning it only came out in the UK three weeks ago where it immediately smashed into the album chart at number one, dislodging rumours, and is currently spending its third week there. It entered the single chart at number 10,

the highest new entry of Fortnite ago, then soared eight places to number two last week. And this week, it tapped Figuero by, the Brotherhood of Man on the shoulder and barged it aside to become Abba's seventh number one and their third on the bounce. Abba happened to be in the UK

right now. They flew in two days ago to promote Abba the movie, which is having its British premiere in Leicester Square tonight before hitting the rest of the country tomorrow and yes they make an appearance on BBC 1 today but on

Blue Peter where they've been interviewed by Leslie Judd while giving Shep a proper fussing. Consequently, they've elected not to appear on top of the pops, so we get the video again. And yes, chaps, here we are at Peak Abba. By this time, they are officially the biggest group in the world. They're being trumpeted as the first band in the world to outsell the Beatles.

They've just put out the biggest selling LP of 1978, which is nothing to do with John Travolta, and their film is here. So why the fuck are they not on top of the pops to receive their triumph? That's Menkel. It is, but the video is almost as sort of groundbreaking as Bohemian Rhapsody or anything like that. So it's quite right that we're seeing it. I'd like, or rather didn't like, how Top of the Pops try to set up kids' introduction so that he takes Bjorn's place in the four-way split-screen start of the video.

But he crashes the vocal when it comes in. Shabby, kid, shabby stuff. Yeah, it's not good, is it? The other thing I noticed about the split screen in the video is that the four of them repeatedly swap partners. What could they have been trying to tell us? There's also a bit, and David as a comedy connoisseur would have noticed this, where Benny Anderson becomes Benny Hill at one point, chasing after Frida with hoping, groping hands. He's probably seen a bit of Benny Hill in a hotel or something.

He's thought, oh, all right, this is what the Brits want. Let's give him it, you know. He doesn't slap Bjorn on the head, though, repeatedly, which is a good thing. No, fair play. Yeah, as far as Top of the Pops goes, they've not been in the Top of the Pops studio since Fernando in April of 1976. And as it turns out, they never will again.

Well, they're too big. They're too big. Well, yeah, yeah, they are. They're in their imperial phase. Most definitely. They could not be more imperial right now. And as you say, they are, you know, one of the biggest bands in the world,

probably excluding America because they never really did over there. That's right. You know, playing Australia and Japan, you know, all sorts of places. They can't be everywhere. And to this day, you know, that's why they've got the bloody Amazon.

a voyage thing going on because if they existed as a flesh and blood band you could not have a run of dates or a venue big enough to accommodate it so that's why they have to do this sort of virtual thing that they're doing now so I suppose this is an early example of that they're too grand to be pushed around by Robin Nash

at this point yeah because in interviews around about this time Benny bangs on about how England was always the most important market for them when they were starting the goal was we want to be big in Britain because they saw that as the epicenter of pop in the 70s.

I bet he says that to all the girls. So it's strange that the showcase television show of pop, they're cocklingozo pat it. It's very strange. Robin Nash must have said something. I guess so. It's interesting what you're saying about the record sales and the pressing plants and all of that.

It does give you a hint that I think 1978, you'll know the stats more than me probably, but we were approaching a peak of people buying records, buying physical records. Definitely, yeah. Saty Night Fever is a lot. also an example of this. Apparently, record shops were constantly having to stick signs in the window saying, we'll have some more copies this afternoon. You know, because they just could not keep up

with demand for that album. And I think, yeah, the same was clearly happening to Abbott. Yeah. I mean, by the end of the year, we'll have Abergraced its volume two on our wall unit. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And I've got to admit that Aneta Falstco was my second crush. After Rosemary, the telephonist with the classy chassis from Hong Kong Foui, Hello, hello. Where's Madame Cholay then? Oh, yeah, you're right. I suppose Annetta goes down to third.

I suppose it goes, Madam Shole, Rosemary, the telephonist, and then Annetta. Well, she's the most popular human one. Yeah, exactly. I'll give her that. This video probably had a lot to do with it, because it's the way she winks at the camera over her shoulder in soft focus. Must have triggered something in me. You know, the girl with a golden hair to quote the lyrics, she's absolutely bewitching. Yeah.

And I must similarly have been affected by Frida's crimped, crinkle-cut hair. She gets on it early, doesn't she? She does. Ten years later, I was crimping the fuck out of mine, as well as dying it a similar shade of Hennar Red. So it must have lodged in my subconscious somehow. And the song, like the video, is just brimming with playfulness and flirtatiousness. And I might even prefer it to Dancing Queen as an Abago disco tune.

And it's timely, you mentioned the name of the game, it's timely to have a happy Abba song. Yes. Because this was their third number one in the row. Coming after knowing me, knowing you and the name of the game. It was all getting a bit bleak, you know. But this is just so full of joy. And it would take a soulless, life-hating loser not to love this song. David, over to you. Yeah, I mean, I, yes, I appeared intimately on that documentary,

the BBC Ford documentary about Abba. And I was there to play devil's advocate, really. So I received pelters for that, absolute pelters. About a million people saw it the first time around. And they cut getting repeated. And so, yes, I was that soulless loser. And you'll never be allowed to forget it, David. Anyway, for a lot of people, chaps, this could well be the first time they've seen this video,

if they were too busy to see it on Cracker Jack or Swap Shop, of course. Two weeks ago, it was lumped on with a chart run down. Last week, it was emoted to by Legs and Co. And this week we finally get the video. And yet, it's a continuation of the Abba image, isn't it? Two lovely ladies slinking around in Scandinavian knitwear and massively long principal boy boots and two bloke sitting around and generally keeping out the way.

Cut with saucy winks and snapshots of domestic bliss. And I can actually recall a rumor that ripped a gouge through the playground of the time that Agnetta was actually naked. when she filmed the wink of it, even though it's a head and shoulder show. Why would they do that? Well, the Swedish, Simon. You know, that's who they are.

That's what they do. Just walk around naked the whole time, yeah. You're right, Simon. The song is a step down from the one-two punch of knowing me, knowing you in the name of the game. And, you know, you can see it as a swung song for Phase 1 Abba. You know, it's an uncomplicated come on to some lucky young man with a ton of breezy hooking us baked into it.

I mean, the take a chance, bit sung at the beginning. A tachad, tick chad, that came from Bjorn, who was an avid jogger at the time. And while he was

slogging his way through the parks of Stockholm, he'd pretend to be an eyeball the engine-like locomotive in his head. And again, this exposes the rank

hypocrisy of David Stubbs because, you know, when craft work make noises like trains, that's all right. But when the toothpaste society do it, it's cat shit.

You fucking hypocrite. I know, I know. If Abba were Welsh, the song would start a... Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I say, the thing is, if I had sexy thoughts about Abba at the time, I would have suppressed them on principle. But what I could never admit, certainly back then in 1978, was that this is a really brilliantly turned pop song.

It's, you know, brilliantly, completely turned. It's not common denominator. It's inventing its own denominator. And the thing is, like, in the critique of Abba that I made, it was years later, I kind of said that there wasn't really a trace of black or blues about them and it's interesting that yeah they could be the biggest group in the world without really breaking America but then the thing about that is you know so I'm saying they're a bit sort of suspiciously aerial or whatever but why should they be you mentioned craftwork is absolutely right and the whole thing about crackwork is the rejection of Anglo-American blues was vital in the sense of establishing a sense of cultural identity

which black kids ended up body pop into five years later absolutely yeah so that really isn't the problem that I kind of made it out to be while playing devil's advocate Paul Morley said that simple mind to post-Aba not post-punk you know there was a lot into that so I get their gleam. The only slight problem I have with this is although yes it is

a very sort of vivacious flirtatious sight, the narrator aware she's basically saying to this bloke like have your fun with everybody else and when they've all fucked off I'll still be around and I do actually imagine perhaps Sagita you know reading this lyric she's a loser oh I'll happily wait around for many years, decades

decades it takes until you've shagged every other woman in Sweden and one by one they've got bored of you because you're a beardy stone age asshole sure I don't have standards I don't have any of self-respect you expect to sing this shit you sexist little twerkut chik-a-choo-chook-a-choo-choo-chook off I want a divorce go and see if you're non-existent ideal female is still free and take a fucking chance on her you can't there is this air of desperation about it which is odd when you add the video to it because yeah as you've already made you. mention some. You know, Agneta is clearly being positioned in this video as the Swede that all the boys want

to mash. Because the notion that Sweden was the crumpet mecca of the world, it was at its absolute pinnacle in 1978, wasn't it? You know, Mary Stavines, the reigning Miss World, films like Made in Sweden, spell M-A-I-D, and what the Swedish bookloss are still getting in airing at the local wank pits. and in a few months' time, Ingrid Svensson is going to be introduced to the second series of Mind Your Language as a direct competitor to Danielle. Oh, there's also that Pepsi advert where Ken at a Citizen Smith chats up this girl who turns out to be speaking in Danish. But everyone in Britain assumes she was Swedish, so that counts too.

And you've got Britt Eklund knocking around with Rod Stewart. And this week, as Abba navigate the choppy waters of the British press, Agnetta's ass is getting a lot of attention. To the point where the journalists are night in 778 are always obliged to say, Agnietta has the nicest bottom in Europe, like today's journals, are obliged to say,

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor denies all allegations of Robb. And it has to be said that this is all Abba's fault. We'll talk about the film in a bit, but there's a scene in it where they're reading the reviews of last night's gig. And much mention in the press is made of the Agnetter's, And she reacts by saying, don't they have bottoms in Australia? And this week as Abbermania reaches a peak,

a Eurovision arse contest has broken out in the media. Article in the Daily Mirror tomorrow, accompanied by a shot of our sweet advertising friend Jilly Johnson. Headline, top of the bottoms. B-side blushes for Aber Bute. When it comes to backing, these two singers, the rest behind.

Model and singer Jilly Johnson, whose record on Saka on Saka is riding high in the Japanese charts, doesn't object to her B-side being a hit, but Abba Girl Agnetta Foltzg was much more coy. At a press conference yesterday to promote the London premiere

of Abba the movie, she was asked how she felt about being dubbed the girl with the sexiest bottom in Europe. Agnetta blushed and whispered, but I don't like it. On the same day, the London evening news steamed in with a second opinion,

quote, bottoms are rapidly becoming the tops, but who has the sexiest posterior? The pop world tried to get to the bottom of the matter with two principal contenders, Agnetta Falscog of Abba

and Cathy McKinnon, girlfriend of Diddy David Hamilton, a daughter of the judge in the N-word, Rao. Last month he let off a racist cunt who was done for being a racist cunt in public and he gave the newsreaders and

newspapers an opportunity to drop the N word quite a lot. First, Agnieta. Her bottom is described as the best in Europe. But is it? At a cafe royal party after the premiere David Hamilton announced

it's a nice bottom but a bit too large for me. Now, Cathy. She said, I think my bottom's okay. I've been complimented on it once or twice. Agnetta is a very sexy lady, but I didn't watch the film and think, wow, look at that bottom. Personally, I prefer men's bottoms. My favourite is David Hamilton's. It's nice and trim. But Mick Jagger is a close runner-up. Keith Moon, Wild Man of Rock, was at the party with his girlfriend, Annette. He brought up the rear with a comment of his own.

Yes, they've nice bottoms, but Mayonets is better. So, yeah, well done, Abba. You could have been on top of the pops, but you chose to throw a party where people are coating down Agnettas' ass. Other searing questions asked at that press conference included, have you really sold over 50 million records in less than four years? And are you millionaires yet? an unnamed music paper

presented them with three trophies for coming top in various categories in their recent end of year poll but the Daily Record reported that those awards were still lying on the table after the group had gone. We don't really see much of Agnetta's ass in this video do we? Well it's shot from above mostly

isn't it? I guess the main trick or the main conceit in the video apart from the fourth scrething is that Bjorn and Benny look so bored and uninterested by these clearly beautiful women who are dancing around them. Apart from the moment where Benny goes all Benny Hill.

Apart from that, they just sat there, looking completely not into it. Deliberately. Yeah, comfortable with each other. That's the kind of feeling you always get from Aber. They're comfortable in their

rarefied position. Rearified, yeah. Oh, very good. Anyway, chaps, the film, have you seen it? Oh, years ago, I can't remember it. Essentially a corporate video for Abba the brand, isn't it?

You know, there's loads of footage of their tour of Australia in 1977, wadded out with backstage scenes where they're being chaperoned by a tour manager who looks frighteningly like Del Boy and being pursued by a hapless radio DJ. It's all a bit odd.

He's just like, look, just do a big film. You're fucking Abba. People want to see you. They're so big they can just do any old boring shit and people come along and watch it. Let's look at a review in the Sunday Express. A lively record of the gorgeously dressed It was 1978, after all. Two-man-two-girl group on a tour in Australia

now provides a chance for all to appreciate their clean-cut appeal and musical excellence. Australian actor Robert Hughes chases after them gamely in the film's daft linking story as a radio reporter striving to get an interview, but we never learn much about these opulent Swedes as individuals, save their names, ages, and that Blond Singer Agnetta won an award for owning the sexiest bottom in Europe deserves it too.

But I guess that's the whole point of the film, isn't it? That they don't want to be known. Yeah. They don't want people to know them. And proving ever elusive to that reporter is kind of the whole gag, I guess. And we don't realise it yet, chaps, but this is where the guaranteed number one's Mfor-Aber, isn't it? It's going to be a while before they get another one.

What would that be? Super Trooper or Gimmy-Gimmy? Winner takes it all? Yeah. In the summer of 1980. Why is that, do you think? Well, there you are, they strayed from the formula and they paid the price. When they get back to the kind of, you know, all the somber stuff, then, uh, Kaching.

So, take a chance on me would spend two more weeks atop the top the summit of Mount Pop, eventually giving weight and wuthering heights. It would become the ninth best-selling single of 1978, one below rat trapped by the Boomtown Rats, one above match-stalk men and match-stalk cats and dogs by Brian and Mike. fucking. Meanwhile, Abba the album would spend seven weeks in total at number one in the

LP chart and would become the best-selling album in the UK that didn't feature John Travolta on the cover. The follow-up Summer Night City would only get to number 5 in October of this year, however, and as mentioned before, they would have to wait until

1980 for their next number one when the winner takes it all got there in August. Finally, I'm the crazy. Honey, I'm still free. Take a chance of song. Hopefully, that's it for another edition of Top of the Pops.

I do hope you'll join us next week. I'm going to get my hot legs on out of here and wish you a good week and good love. Goodbye. By now completely engulfed by the maidens of the studio floor, including one girl next to him who appears to have come dressed as one of the techly teap folk, sadly informs us that our Thursday evening, fizzy pop treat is nearly over and throws us toward the studio lights to the accompaniment of Hot Legs by Rod Stewart. We last chanced upon Little Rabbit Arse in the last episode of Chart Music

when he kicked a garage fredo ball about in his encore presentation of Maggie May in the 1971 Top of the Pops Boxing Day special. Since then he's knocked out three more number ones, worn women's knickers, developed a tart and gimmick, knobbed off the faces, worn loads more women's knickers, fucked off to America, denied the sex pistols their rightful place at number one, and put some women's leopard print knickers on.

This single, the follow-up to Yeah In My Heart, which got to number three for three weeks in October, November 1977, is the second cut from the LP, foot loose and fancy three, his eighth solo album. It's entered the charts three weeks ago, number 35, then sought 17 places to number 18. And this week it's left nine places from number 14 to number five. And it is this song that has been chosen to accompany the usual top of the pop's credit sequence.

And oh dear. So chaps, only one episode ago, we chanced upon the young Rod Stewart in late 1971, still of school age, trapped in a sexual relationship. with an older woman and seven and a bit later, or how the tables have turned. Yeah, I think by this stage, you could kind of make a case for rod, isn't a sort of, I don't know,

an abiding symbol of glam transgressiveness, but, no, he's just gone. As you said, you kept the sex pistols off number one with, I don't want to talk about it. And we don't want to talk about it either. We certainly do not. I mean, everybody else is rocking against racism right now. Yeah.

Well, he's Enoch Powell. Yeah. He's Team Enoch. I mean, in 1970, he said, I think Enoch is the man. I'm all for him. This country's overcrowded. The immigrants should be sent home. That's it.

And then he fucked off to America. They all do, don't they? He mates with Donald Trump. He thinks we should give reform a chance. I mean, right wing this runs through him like rock through a stick of rock. I mean, we have to get this out before we dig in. Rod Stewart has made it clear that he never went down the playground, bang around route in the 70s. And no one has popped up to dispute him.

In an interview with a telegraph in 2021, he said the 70s were a hedonistic era, the shagging era. I did nothing wrong at all. I never had sex with anyone underage, never forced anyone to have sex. In fact, sex was always too much for me. It was always there and it became boring. So Rod Stewart there, not a bunty man, not a shrub rocketeer. nor is he the crazy world of Arthur Brown.

So that's out of the way. He just loves singing about it. So let's move on to the song, Chaps, because fucking hell, different times. Yeah, I mean, the first verse, it's like,

hot legs, you're wearing me out, hot legs, you can scream and shout, hot legs, are you still in school? I mean, fuck sake,

man, he loves a song about grown-ups having sex with school kids, didn't he? You mentioned Maggie Mae, where he's the jail bait, and yes,

indeed, the tables are turned on this one, but that's not Later on in the song, he takes it into the territory of taboo incest porn. Because it goes, hot legs, you're an alley cat. Hot legs, you scratch my back. Hot legs, bring your mother too. And if she's got any spare knickers going, she doesn't want.

Oh, yeah, the bigger the better, yeah. Yeah, you're right, Simon. The first verse, you know, Rod's at home going about his business when there's a knock on the door. And he assumes that it's quarter to four, which initially alludes to early morning, but the youth of the 70s would be well aware what he's getting at because as we all know at half past three we go home to tea or maybe a quarter to four and yes it's going to be rough and tumble rattle and noise at rod's house and no mistake governor. Rod makes clear that he is of working age but what he does fuck knows because while he invites

his paramour to love him all night she has to be gone in the morning which it leaves very little time to put a shift in, I feel. And it's made equally clear that she isn't of working age because, yes, as pointed out, he asks in the first chorus if she's still in school. But we're discovering a later chorus that, yes, she is still at school. And then we learn in verse three that she's actually 17. And, you know, Rod thinks he's boxing clever here, doesn't it?

Because, you know, 17, that's the British shorthand for old enough. You know, she was just 17. You know what I mean. but the problem is now Rod's now an American resident Yeah, good point And the video's been shot in America And yeah, we'll probably get to that later on Would you care to guess chaps the age of consent in California in 1978

18 Oh no Yes, as you pointed out Simon He implores her to bring a man next time But it also implies that Rod's still living with his dad Because he nearly has an incident When he sees a jet black suspender belt So it's all getting very Jeremy

Kyle, isn't it? Yeah. Do you think Rod's trying to arrange a double date for his dad? Who knows? Is it similar like the little house

on the prairie where just like generations and generations all live in one big house? And it's like, you know, bring your whole lot over. We'll all shag. Yeah, or Rod wants us to come over

to chaperone and just prevent any funny business from happening. We're only getting the single version here because the extended version on the album informs us at the end that she's making her mark.

She keeps Rod's pencil sharp. She's well equipped. Her pussy's whipped and Rod loves her lips. Oh, you've got very beautiful lips. That's the other ranch phrase as well, isn't it? When she talks about Abigail going out in her boiler suit and everything, she goes, foot loose and fancy free.

Oh, wow. Everything's connected. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the new wave groups at the time, you know, 978, they were very earnest and self-conscious and struggling with issues of sexism. I mean, 1978 was the first year I ever saw the word sexist related to Blondie. But none of that for Rod.

No, come on, Rod. A woman should be judged on the content of her character, not the temperature of her legs. Oh, man, that reminds me of the worst line in a song full of them. You know, the one where Rod says she's got legs right up to her neck. Ugh. So she pisses out of her throat, does she, Rod? Oh, that's sexy. That means her asses at the back of her head.

Like one those Teddy Boy, duck's-ass hair-dos, you know, just her hair sort of just curled in to hide the chocolate starfish, you know what I mean? And I suppose, chaps, this is yet another opportunity to broach the subject of the 70s pop star and their dalliances with the underage. And more importantly, the lack of a fuck anyone seemed to give about it at the time. I mean, we live in an age now that blithely assumes that every male in the pop scene of the 70s is a wronger,

up to and including Father Abraham and the Smurfs. But while there was tabloid furority over the paedophile information exchange at the time, paedophiles were always gay men who hankered after young lads. And when this single came out, there was absolutely zero outrage about it. Because after all, these girls know what they're up to. They know what they want. And if they're putting it on offer, well, who's going to refuse? Go on, Rod.

Give a one for us, said the tabloids. As an example of the media's treatment of this sort of thing, here's an item in teasers, the NME's gossip column, in December of 1976. Keith Moon recently spent 500 quid on 100 imported Swedish and Danish magazines from the backroom of an adult bookshop in Hammersmith. PENTALS magazine reports that Moon's porno tastes are mainly for straight sex. although there appeared to be a slight tendency towards what's known in the trade as Juv gear,

that is, girls under the age of consent. As far as I know, boys, that wasn't even reported on in the newspapers, which would not have happened even ten years later. And if it had been someone like Huey Green buying all these mags, that would have been a massive news story, but hey, it's a wacky pop star. You know, maybe he was buying research material,

for his book. I mean, we've already spoken about fear being a driver of a 10-year-old's emotions. And one of the most terrifying things for me round about this time was sex. You know, this would be the year that some youth in my class had nick a wank-mad

catalogue out of his dad's garage. And it featured every fucking thing. Straight, gay, BDSM, even paedophilia. And I remember flicking through it and thinking, oh my fucking God. So this is what the grown-ups get up to.

Ah! And just the thought of Rod Stewart pulling down his knickers and fucking a head on legs like a panel in Dullogret by Brogel the elder. That would mean not wanting to eat your tea for a week and demanding all the lights on in your bedroom for a month. Imagine his face while he's doing it.

Jesus Christ. Well, we don't need to because we can see it in the video, can we? Not that we get to see the video. We don't get to see the video. What a shame. And thank God. Go on.

time and we've got to talk about the video. Yeah, I mean, it's got Rod and his band pissing about in a town that looks like but fuck Idaho, but is actually but fuck California. Yes. It's Peru in Ventura County. So we see the whole group sort of riding bareback on the bonnet of a truck and

we see his guitarist doing the duck walk along a dusty railway track. Or I should say, railroad track, because it's definitely a railroad track to the bewilderment of the mostly Mexican locals. Because Peru, right, Because it looks so desolate, but it's also quite close to Hollywood. It's been used a lot as a filming location.

It's been in Dexter, in Charlie's Angels, it's been in the Rockford Files, films like A Star is Born, and the film noir Desert Fury. Now, I haven't seen that, but according to Wikipedia, Desert Fury, has been praised as a seminal and unique Hollywood melodrama due to its bold overtones of homosexuality. Well, Hot Legs by Rod Stewart hasn't been praised as a seminal and unique music video due to its bold overtones of homosexuality. Hot Legs by Rod Stewart has been praised as a seminal and unique music video due to its bold overtones of heterosexuality. Sing if you're glad to be straight. Yes.

Several shots are filmed through the splayed legs of a woman in fishnets. You know a poster to the film, The World is Full of Married. men. Yes. Ninth-Neptation of Jackie Collins Milf's Miltflotation classic

with Carol Baker in a leather cat suit doing a sexy legs apart stance. It's like that, but only the bottom half. Like if you've got the record sleeve, snapped it and folded it in half.

That's basically the POV you're getting here. Or if you prefer Theresa May's Tory power stance. Oh yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you prefer George Osborne's Tory power stance,

wherever floats your boat, you know, I'm not here to kink shame anyone. But either way, we never see the woman's face. We see plenty of Rod and his face gurning through the gap in her thighs and looking pleased with himself. Because women aren't women to Rod, they're just giz receptacles, right? You know, legs up to their necks, as you say. And shaggy blonde hair, just like him, a mirror image so that he can, only figuratively, of course, go fuck himself. The thing is, that exactly. camera shot could have been replicated in 2004 in a video by say the darkness or

Harmar superstar and that would have been done with a certain layer of playful irony or whatever there's none of that with Rod he's entirely serious this is the OG of that stuff yeah absolutely and you can imagine the camera panning up from her legs to reveal the back of her head and she turns around to reveal she has Rod Stewart's face now at least in Robert Palmer's addicted to love, you get to see the faces of these women. Oh, she turns around as Bella Enberg or something, you know. Oh, yes. Yeah.

And then there's that bit where they bring some kids in, walking on the train truck. Hey kids, come and meet the woman. Yeah. Never mind bring your mother. Fucking hell. So we don't get to see the video. What we do get to see is that spinning six-sided fish-eye effect that they love around this period on top of the pops. Yeah.

But what they've clearly done here, right, Robin Nash and. Stanley Apple, they trained a camera on the empty studio and just set it running. Because midway through, if you watch closely, the central hexagon shows a man taking the drum kit apart. Right. The message of which is just horrible. It's like basically saying, fun is over. Do your homework. Get your uniform ready for the morning. Go to bed. Erase any dreams of a more fulfilling and in a way real life that pop music might have kindled in your nascent brain. Come on. on Stan the Apple. Come on Robin Nash, don't do that to us. Fuck it out. As far as the song goes, chaps, it's a bit of a farewell to rock, Rod, isn't it?

Things are going to change a little bit from here on in. I suppose you'd call it Southern Fried Bougar, which is short and for all the horrible old shit that punk was supposed to have got rid of. Oh, I hate it, man. I mean, it's a fucking stupid song, but it's burlesque boogie. It's music to strip to, isn't it? Yes. It's Rod in his full pomp of, you know, your leopard print leggings, Kenny Everett, inflatable ass phase. It's that,

and I don't mind it, you know. When I was a kid, and I probably mentioned this before, but my mum had four albums that she used to play while she was doing the housework. Simon Agarfunkle's greatest hits,

the Beach Boys 20 Golden Greats, an Elvis Presley live album from his Vegas jumpsuit era, and Rod Stewart's greatest hits. And it's that one where he's in a pink satin jacket against a pink satin backdrop. And the opening track, of that is hot legs.

Right. When I hear hot legs, I can smell the pledge polish and I can see the condensation inside the window from the vegetables being boiled free of all their nutrients, you know. I probably would have quite enjoyed it at that age

because at least it wasn't one of the boring slow ones. Yes. Got some in the about it. I mean, the interesting thing about this song and the video as well is that it prefigures ZZ Top in the 80s. Yes. And of course, the song and video for Gimmielder Loving, is this, but done absolutely properly.

Unlike this catalogue of crassness. Yeah, there's someone a bit more lovable about Zizi Top. I don't know. They just get past for me. Anything else to say, chaps. I must say I never found any wank mags in my dad's garage. No. But I did find a paperback called Love Positions in the top drawer of it.

Oh, God. I know. That's terrifying, isn't it? The only porn ever found, though, was behind a stone wall, which divided our school with the vicarage. Right. Oh, Sally Thompson was in there, Pods out. Really?

Someone who very much looked like Sally Thompson. Good God. So I don't know who it belonged to. A teacher, the vicar, the verger? It's probably the verger, isn't it? I've got my doubt about the verger, isn't it? Well, maybe mum's had these books on sex positions just in case they get invited round by Rod Stewart, you know?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, there was one magazine that I remember being stashed in a hedge near the house of my friend Alan Price, no relation. Right. And not the keyboardist from the animals either. I think I found the whole thing vaguely terrifying at that age. But I think I maybe did console myself with the thought that, oh, well, it's only people like Rod Stewart who actually have to do it.

The rest of us can probably live our lives and not have to worry about all that. Just a chore, wasn't it? He's taking one for the team. He's doing it for the rest of us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. There were a few wank mags under a chest of drawers in the wall unit of my mom and dad's bedroom. but they knew fuck all about it because I'd put them there

because I thought I was being really clever with my porn stash removing it as far from the scene of the crime as possible. But, you know, looking back, what a fucking cunt I was, that could have gone so fucking wrong. Anyway, anything to say about Rod? Yeah, I don't mind a bit of Rod, you know. He's a burke, but he's a redeemable burke. Obviously, his politics are sickening.

Yes. You know, we've mentioned the Enoch Powell thing. And by the way, he got about 5% of the shit for that that Eric Clapton rightly did. Yes. And yeah, the Farage thing. And it's hard to get past that. But even if he hadn't come out with that stuff,

his tin ear for racial matters, to put it politely, was made abundantly clear. Eleven years ago now, when he recorded the reggae track, Love and Be Loved, which is about an island full of happy people

with clothes so bright, on which there's a verse that goes, on the beach at the Coco Bar, little Jimmy, he plays guitar. He says, all the riches you can possess, they never bring you happiness, which is all very well to say when you fucked off to Los Angeles. Yes.

But you can imagine the accent Rod sings it in, of course. Oh, no. Yeah. So basically, if you're thinking at this moment of Mike Reed, you kick clipso, or maybe Sandy Shaw's reggae number, you're in the right ballpark. Fuck out of out. Video playlist, everyone. But he does have a good voice.

You know, he's got a sort of voice which can turn bad material into decent. material and can make decent material deeply affecting, I would say, sometimes. In his defence, I would cite Reason to Believe. I would cite In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson. I would cite the first cut is the deepest, although I do prefer P.P. Arnold's version. And I would cite the super exciting runaway lovers narrative, young Turks from 1980, really underrated track. This, it's, yeah, it's just doth, wobble-bottomed blues rock. And I'd, and I'd Don't mind it in the scheme of things. So the following week,

hot legs developed cramp and drop back two places to number seven. The follow-ups saw Rod team up with the Scotland World Cup squad for Ole Ola, Open brackets, Spulla, Brazilian, close brackets. We've got to number four in June, but he closed out the year by ripping off Brazilians once more and taking DUR, you think I'm sex air, to number one for a week in November. And that closes the book on this episode atop of the Pops. Six days after this episode was aired,

white smoke billowed from the roof of Broadcasting House, and Dave Lee Travis was announced as a new pontiff of Radio One, taking over the breakfast show in April, a position he would hold until the 2nd of January 1981. But the Blow Kid must have suffered was soft and considerably by the second announcement, he would be taking over Travis's post-school slot, which he held for two years and a month before pissing off to America.

That's a good spot, isn't it? The one after school. Everyone goes on about the breakfast show. That could be just as important, you know. I mean, the thing is, though, I never got to hear the breakfast show, except when my dad gave me a lift to school in the car. That was the only time.

Yeah, I always used to hear the second half of Steve Wright in the afternoon when I got home from school. and I would rush home from school to catch it. So, yeah, it was quite an important slot. So what's on television afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with a repeat of the Good Life from the first series, where Tom puts his back out at Harvest Time, and Jerry and Margo are in Kenya on Safari.

Then it swings the drama series about the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and Paul McCartney's involvement in it, followed by the 9 o'clock news. Then it's over to last week. Vegas for this morning's title by it between Ali and Spinks, then Omnibus commissions the composer David Bedford to knock up

a tune for the White Horse of Uffington. After tonight, it's the weather and close down at 13 to midnight. BBC 2 is finishing up Newsday, then it's over to the countryside of Breckham for the 1977

International Sheep Dog Society's three-day events for the Supreme Championship. in one man and his dog. There's massive excitement at Clack's farm when a new polythrene greenhouse is erected in Gardner's world. Then George C. Scott goes mad after a military base gasses all his sheep and his son

in the 1972 film, Rage. After the late news, it's part five of men of ideas, where Brian McGee talks to a sort of philosophers, and after a recycle of Madrigal by Gobert, they closed down. down at five past midnight. That program about philosophers, I know it's about Wittgenstein.

And I just thought, fucking hell, all human life is here. That's proper public service broadcasting. One man and his dog and Vicenstein on the same channel on the same evening. Genuinely brilliant. ITV is halfway through the bionic woman, Steve Austin with a fan air,

who goes to Africa when her bionic hearing tells her there's a rigged election that needs sorting out. Then Ruth, takes up first aid training in rising damp, causing Rigsby to lie about pretending to need the kiss of life. My God. Youther Joyce puts the shits up her husband when she tells him she wants to be impregnated in George and Mildred. Then it's this week, the news at 10.

Pepper Anderson getting kidnapped by terrorists in policewoman. We're taught about bunker shots in Master Golf, and it's closed down at midnight. So, boys, what are we? talking about in the playground tomorrow? Did the man from darts really say do the wank? And on a scale of 1 to 10, how petrifying is Cape Boe? Yeah, we're very much talking about the weird whiny woman. I wonder if this is the first and last time we'll ever see her on telly.

No, I mean, if I'd have seen this episode, I would have felt sufficiently informed about the state of playing pop for the week, more than enough to have discussed it in the playground with authority and already looking forward to next week. What are we buying on Saturday? ABBA, BGs, although I had the album, Darts, and in later life at various carboots sales in the Vale of Glamorgan, Kate Bush, Rose Royce, Sweet and magazine. Good episode for me. Yeah, strong episode. Well, oddly, and I did, the Billy Joel.

Wow. Yeah, I know. Why? Because it's like, as that Stevie Wonder, like I say. And I was obsessed with Stevie Wonder at this time. But of course, he didn't release anything as such in 1978. And what I would have bought as well if I'd had my ears about me is, Starguard.

Yeah. Because I'm fucking excellent. And what does this episode tell us about February of 1978? Glad to be gay, no way. Glad to be straight. Lock yourself out. Yeah, it's that funny time.

It's like the aftermath of rock and roll where people thought, okay, well, that's that then. They didn't realize that this was, you know, that punk was going to be such a kind of pivotal moment. They just thought it was just a sort of phase like glam, whatever, that would just peter out. And then we get back to Sailor and stuff like that.

and Brotherhood of Man. You sound like it's a bad thing. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, brings us to the end of the latest episode of Chart Music. Use your promotional flange. www.chchartmusic.co.uk. Facebook.com slash chart music. Reach out to us on Twitter at Chart Music, T.O.T.P.

Or do likewise at Blue Sky at Chart Music, TOTP. Money down the G-string. Patreon.com slash chart music. Thank you, David Stubbs. You're welcome. God bless you, Simon Price. Yes, you are. My name's Al-Nidem,

and I have the nicest ass in Europe. Chart music. You up, you pop-craze youngsters. This is Al-Nidam, and I've been handed the following statement, which has been prepared by David, which I'm obliged to read. In the latest episode of chart music, I, Al Needham, cast doubt upon an assertion made by my esteemed colleague rock expert David Stubbs regarding the existence of a song performed by Rod Hull's Emu.

In response, David's solicitors have instructed me to introduce the following record. Fox's sake Ladies and gentlemen Boys and Girls A Friend Like Me By Enew You're so lucky to have a friend like me You'll never be on your own

Or miserable or alone Or blue It's true You're so lucky to have a friend like me To help you day along to cheer you with a song or two when they are troubles ahead In light of the proof that has been categorically presented to Mayor

I now realise that not only is David Stubbs a rock expert and Europe's foremost electronic music chronicler but also a world authority in British Light Entertainment and Emu expert And rather than scoff, rather than accuse Mr. Stubbs of confusing Emu with Keith Harris's Orville in his dotage, I was wrong, open brackets, emphasised the word wrong, close brackets, not to have taken his word for it, for he was right, open brackets, see wrong, close brackets, as in all matters. once again my humblest and most profuse apologies to David Stubbs furthermore on the subject of Arsenal FC I wish to no I'm not saying that

fucking assholes to Arsenal hit the fucking end bit a hit single the boy from New York City and some fine new songs offers such as hammy spoogy and I gotta go home Yeah, the same, same. Before I urge us now, I'd say you must be Cape Bush. What would be carl as head. Oh, well. Something about the voice.

Dirty as I please. I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty. People these days, I don't know, here with an in-depth investigation on the declining youth morality, Matthew Corbett and Friends. Thank you, Tony. Hey, Sitter, you wanted to talk to me about Sweet, didn't you? You think he's a punk?

Well, no, I know it's a little bit silly sometimes. Oh, I'm sorry. See what you mean? A punk rocker. Who's sweep? No, never. Not sweep. You can't stop him once it starts here? Sweep, can we just have a word? Thank you very much. Look, you can't make that din sweep. What are he making all that din about? You got into punk? Well, I wish you'd get out of punk quickly. Look, we're on the television, and so it goes. What, where's John Peel? He's not here. It's Tony Wilson. Tony Wilson.

He's in one of the beach boys. Of course he isn't. And what's that thing in your coat? What is it? A safety pin? Is that to make you look like a punk? No, it's to keep his trousers up. Listen, Sweep, you can't be a real punk because you know, punks read fanzines and things like that. Yes, fanzines. You see, and he couldn't...

Hang on, Sweet, you can't even read! You just look at the pictures. I don't blame you. Not, not do that, sweet. Stop him, Sophie. Now, don't you start. Look, if I... Boys, will you stop bouncing up and...

Now, please... Stop it, stop it. Look, what's with all the bouncing up and down, sweet? What on earth are you doing? You're po-going? Well, should be careful, you don't shake your brains out. Soutty says he's got the pistols in the studio sweep. The sex pistols?

No, the water pistols. Let him have it, Soutty. Not me as well. Anyway, sweet, I should stick to reading Bakoonian if I was you. There you are. So from one very wet... punk dog and sooty and myself it's bye bye everybody bye bye thank you very very much and those of you who didn't recognize it sweep was doing an extremely avant-garde version of boredom there a classic song from a classic band