Bee Gees: "I Started a Joke"

January 20, 1969 (2 weeks)

I couldn't take a joke,

Which made us leave Clive's chat show

Watching the Bee Gees' fateful appearance on Clive Anderson's All Talk show, it is striking just how tame it appears to be. While Barry Gibb doesn't look especially happy, it seems to be going okay and his brothers Robin and Maurice both look quite pleased. While Anderson could have kept his mouth shut and allowed them to answer some of his questions, it doesn't feel like a situation that is about to go badly. The interviewer isn't very good and neither is one of his guests but when was that a particularly unusual situation?

At one point, Anderson asks them how they managed to get along so well over the years, as opposed to the Jacksons. Barry comments that it helps that they share the "same sense of humour". I'm guessing that means all three Gibb brothers have no sense of humour. And this is born out by their status as one of the most serious and least humourous acts in pop history. That is the irony of their hit "I Started a Joke": the Bee Gees are last people who would've made anyone laugh — even if plenty have laughed at them ever since.

I will say in their defense that this may well have been the whole point. They were this Anglo-Aussie pop act with cheery smiles but an earnest Barry was always prominent. They had begun to break through in many parts of the world but critics couldn't or wouldn't take them seriously, a predicament that they found hard to shake through much of their fifty years of activity. Somehow they had become an object of ridicule and hadn't the faintest idea how or why it happened.

This ought to be catnip for those of us who scoff at how the Bee Gees have been favourably reconsidered in recent years (and I say this as someone who nevertheless rates their 1969 album Odessa as damn-near perfect) but for one thing: "I Started a Joke" is rather good all things considered. To have the warbling and vulnerable Robin rather than the carefree Barry on lead was a wise decision. I buy his lamentations when I probably wouldn't had his brother been on the mic. The melody is dreamy and distracts from how trite the lyrics quickly become. It isn't anything spectacular — Bee Gees' singles seldom are — but sturdy enough and a noticeable improvement on previous Canadian chart topper "Words". Plus, I might as well take it from some of my musical idols (Pet Shop Boys, The Beautiful South, Paul Weller) who've seen fit to record passable versions of their own.

Barry Gibb's decision to abruptly leave the Clive Anderson interview probably prevented it from completely going off the rails. The last straw for Barry may have been the host's crack about future hit "Don't Forget to Remember" which he rather hackishly retorts with "I forgot that one". It's just too bad they never got the chance to discuss "I Started a Joke" but, then again, I don't suppose there would've been much laughter anyway.

Score: 6

Young-Holt Unlimited: "Soulful Strut"

January 13, 1969 (1 week)

It was in around 1939 that Duke Ellington reached the peak of his long and illustrious career. He had recently hooked up with a young Billy Strayhorn, who would go on to be his main collaborator for nearly thirty years. He also recruited the even younger Jimmie Blanton, an inventive and deeply influential bassist. The final piece of the puzzle was when tenor sax player Ben Webster joined Duke's extraordinary band whose lineup already boasted the likes of Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams. With standards already at an all time high, the great bandleader went to work on compositions such as "The C Jam Blues", "Concerto for Cootie" and "Never No Lament", numbers that would become fixtures of his peerless concert setlist for the remainder of his life.

Still, nothing ever stays the same. Blanton passed away in 1942, just shy of his twenty-fourth birthday while the volatile Webster left the following year. On a much less serious note, those three great instrumental works would eventually have lyrics added to them so they could go on to become beloved standards. "The C Jam Blues" became "Duke's Place", "Concerto for Cootie" was altered to "Do Nothin' Til You Hear from Me" and "Never No Lament" transformed into "Don't Get Around Much Anymore". What were once tight little dance numbers with concise solos and impeccable group interplay became vehicles for Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Willie Nelson to dazzle audiences on their own. While there would still be a place for instrumental pop and jazz, the writing was on the wall: the public will generally opt for a singer over a bunch guys taking turns on their respective instruments.

Somehow or other, though, the gentlemen behind Young-Holt Unlimited never got the memo. "Am I the Same Girl" had been recorded by singer Barbara Acklin, who had already scored a Top 20 hit in both Canada and the United States with "Love Makes a Woman", in 1968 but then it was decided to see what it was like without her on it. A new piano part was placed on it but otherwise it was the same song. Except it had now been renamed "Soulful Strut".

As readers of this blog may have noticed, I'm a bit of a sucker for instrumentals. Two of the first three number one hits that I gave a full score of ten out of ten happen to be vocal free (or, in the case of "Telstar", lyric free but that's close enough). I also rate fellow Canadian chart toppers "So Rare" (again, close enough especially since it is the chorus drags it down), "Sail Along Silvery Moon", "Walk - Don't Run" and "Wonderland by Night" highly. Sure, "Raunchy" and "Beatnik Fly" are nothing special but nor are they dreadful either. Yet, they all operate in a pop landscape in which lyrics aren't required. Like fellow RPM chart topper "No Matter What Shape (You Stomach's In)", "Soulful Strut" smacks of that instrumental cut that eighties and nineties bands would occasionally toss off on albums or B sides, the sort of thing that they clearly couldn't come up with words for. (Examples include The Smiths' "Oscillate Wildly" and The Housemartins' "The Mighty Ship")

While it leaves a satisfying first impression, "Soulful Strut" eventually settles into a pleasant, head nodding vibe that is fun to listen to but fails to make a serious mark. It has a nice groove with tinges of gospel and the piano solo in place of Barbara Acklin is effective. Still, it can't quite kick into another gear. While many of the great instrumentals by Booker T. and the MG's have moments that make them worth coming back to, Young-Holt Unlimited's one major hit sounds more or less just as it did the first time you heard it. There's nothing wrong with having it on but do you really need to hear more than once or twice?

Finally, as I just alluded to, Young-Holt became a one hit wonder (and one of the less renowned examples at that). Eldee Young and Isaac "Red" Holt had been jazz musicians, backing the acclaimed pianist Ramsey Lewis before trying out some of this pop business. The Wikipedia entry on "Soulful Strut", however, mentions that they may not have even played on their lone hit with studio musicians taking their place. Certainly sessioners from the record label Brunswick must have joined them on horns but I prefer to think that this is indeed them. With an increasing number of impostor acts in the late sixties, I shudder to think that even experienced jazz cats were being replaced so easily. They may not have been cornerstones of Duke Ellington's Orchestra or anything but the Young-Holt guys were more than capable of being the foundation of a good but underwhelming pop hit.

Score: 6

1968: Each Bird Keeps Singing His Own Song

 4 — The Union Gap: "Woman, Woman"

 3 — The Rose Garden: "Next Plane to London"

 8 — The Small Faces: "Itchycoo Park"

10 — Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart: "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight"

 8 — The Foundations: "Baby Now That I've Found You"

 4 — Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich: "Zabadak"

 6 — Classics IV: "Spooky"

 7 — Herman's Hermits: "I Can Take or Leave Your Loving"

 4 — Bee Gees: "Words"

 1 — 1910 Fruitgum Company: "Simon Says"

 2 — Georgie Fame: "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde"

 6 — The Delfonics: "La-La (Means I Love You)"

 2 — The Monkees: "Valleri"

 2 — The Union Gap: "Young Girl"

 1 — Bobby Goldsboro: "Honey"

 8 — The Rascals: "It's a Beautiful Morning"

 6 — Simon and Garfunkel: "Mrs. Robinson"

 7 — Four Jacks and a Jill: "Master Jack"

 4 — Ohio Express: "Yummy Yummy Yummy"

 4 — Richard Harris: "MacArthur Park"

 3 — Herb Alpert: "This Guy's in Love with You"

 7 — Merrilee Rush: "Angel of the Morning"

 5 — Gary Puckett and the Union Gap: "Lady Willpower"

 7 — The Doors: "Hello, I Love You"

 5 — The Rascals: "People Got to Be Free"

 9 — Steppenwolf: "Born to Be Wild"

 2 — Jose Feliciano: "Light My Fire"

 3 — 1910 Fruitgum Company: "1, 2, 3, Red Light"

 5 — Jeannie C. Reily: "Harper Valley PTA"

10 — The Beatles: "Hey Jude"

 5 — The Crazy World of Arthur Brown: "Fire"

 3 — Mary Hopkin: "Those Were the Days"

 4 — Johnny Nash: "Hold Me Tight"

 8 — Steppenwolf: "Magic Carpet Ride"

 7 — Dion: "Abraham, Martin and John"

 5 — Diana Ross and The Supremes: "Love Child"

 7 — Glen Campbell: "Wichita Lineman"

Average Score: 5.19

Yes, the Canadian number ones have hit an all-time low. While "Simon Says" and "Honey" are the obvious low hanging fruit culprits of such a poor average score, they are far from the only offerings here that drag it down. As a matter of fact if you take out all four extremes — 1910 Fruitgum Company and Bobby Goldboro at one end, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and The Beatles at the other — the mean actually goes down slightly. Poor-to-average has become the norm; the outliers are the increasingly scarce outstanding tracks.

The simplest explanation for this is that the two major formats at the time had branched off with little opportunity for reconciliation: album acts were thriving while singles groups continued to shit out substandard fare. Groundbreaking albums such as The Beatles (aka The White Album), Beggars Banquet, Electric Ladyland, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Bookends, White Light/White Heat and Eli and the Thirteenth Confession had virtually nothing to do with what was on the Top 40. While critically acclaimed, many of these LPs failed to sell in huge numbers which indicates that releasing 45s on the old school hit parade was still the place to reap the big commercial rewards — but there was no longer much desire to make grand creative statements on the lowly 7" single.

This trend would carry over into 1969 and, indeed, well into the seventies. As for '69 in terms of the RPM chart toppers, there should be an uptick in quality as bubblegum pop begins to fade away (though not before its crowning achievement takes its rightful place at number one). Things, however, begin to get more serious with the arrival of a jazz rock monolith whose time at the top was brief but which certainly left a mark. Not unlike '68, 1969 is yet another year renowned for some remarkable albums but the singles scene is a whole other thing indeed.

Oh, and at long last, the Canadian power play is coming!

Glen Campbell: "Wichita Lineman"

December 16, 1968 (4 weeks)

And I need you more than want you,

And I want you for all time

A lyrical passage can sometimes make all the difference. Jimmy Webb wrote two major hits in 1968, both of which have lines that are known to this day. Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" is now chiefly remembered for "I'll never have that recipe again", a line so bad that it completely overshadows what is otherwise a good — though not great — composition (even if Harris himself botched it with his faulty singing; as I have already discussed, recording a decent rendition of "MacArthur Park" was beyond all but a relatively obscure Scots prog rock act though we'll eventually get to yet another version of it in time).

"MacArthur Park" was then followed at the very end of '68 with "Wichita Lineman" by former session musician/short-lived touring Beach Boy Glen Campbell. It, too, has a memorable set of lyrics which are quoted above. Webb wasn't too thrilled with it and later admitted that he would have changed the words to a proper rhyme had he been allowed more time to finish what he'd begun. (While 'time' and 'line' do not rhyme, they are close enough and rare reminiscent of the classic 1979 Squeeze hit "Up the Junction" which pairs "Clapham" with "happen" and "tenner" with "better"; while this ins't something I've put a ton of thought into, I think that having these awkward off rhymes gives a song a more natural realism, as if vocalists like Campbell or Squeeze's Glenn Tilbrook were just firing off lines off the top of their heads) Campbell got a hold of Webb's demo and got straight to work on it leaving its composer with little choice but to leave it be.

When "Wichita Lineman" became a huge hit around the world this line began to take on a life of its own. People adore it and with good reason. Granted, it's a great example of why song lyrics aren't poetry: reading it doesn't make much of an impression — especially if you look at it in the context of what the lineman is up to (is this creepy guy eavesdropping on her?). No, Webb may have provided the song but Campbell does the heavy lifting with a resigned, quietly determined delivery that is impossible not to feel moved by. He isn't the flashiest of singers but when you're interpreting a song about a lovelorn blue collar worker in small town Oklahoma then the last thing you need to be is a Sinatra or an Elvis.

So, the lyric is really good and Campbell makes it even better but what about the rest of the song? It's very nice. Yeah, that's about all I can say on the matter. I like it. Now, I'm not convinced it's a masterpiece but I can certainly see the appeal. Hell, it appeals to me at least up to a point. Bob Dylan has described it as the greatest song of all time but I'm not quite there. (I think "Wichita Lineman" has gotten a lot mileage out of Dylan's high praise but I'd be willing to bet he's said the same thing about at least two dozen other songs during his eighty-five years on this planet) YouTuber David Hartley has made a very convincing case for its musical merits and no doubt many musicians think very highly of it. I, as a listener of extremely modest musical ability, just find it a very enjoyable listen but is it actually mind blowing?

It's almost as if people decided to overcorrect their criticisms of "MacArthur Park" by overdoing it on "Wichita Lineman". And to an extent, they would have been right to do so. One is highly ambitious but also flawed while the other is deceptively simple and touching. The better Jimmy Webb song comes out ahead but let's not go nuts here.

Score: 7

Diana Ross and The Supremes: "Love Child"

December 2, 1968 (2 weeks)

It's actually a wonder that The Supremes managed to last as long as they did. They took their sweet old time trying to have a hit single only to then start reeling them off one after another, with a success rate second only to The Beatles during the mid-sixties. Yet, by 1968, they appeared to be headed down the dumper. Chart places suffered. Tension within the trio mounted. Amid a dispute over royalties, longtime in-house songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland left Motown. Label boss Berry Gordy had been not so subtly grooming Diana Ross for a solo career. The quality of their singles had become inconsistent.

Eventually the decision was made to keep the golden goose going for a while longer. Longtime member Florence Ballard was out, replaced by Cindy Birdsong. A re-brand to 'The Supremes with Diana Ross' was then scrapped in favour of 'Diana Ross and the Supremes'. They had a new group of songwriters/producers working with them known as The Clan. (Seriously, The Clan? Jesus, Motown, read the freaking room!) This would be just what they'd need to carry them forward just as Stevie Wonder had begun maturing as an artist, as Marvin Gaye's work began to get more gritty and as the Four Tops reached their zenith.

While I can certainly understand the appeal, there's something unlikable about "Love Child". It's too busy, too over-stuffed with ambitious ideas that the song and The Supremes themselves seem to get overwhelmed. Tom Breihan perceptively points out in his glowing review that it anticipates disco by a decade but it's a brand of seventies' dance music that hasn't worked itself out yet. "Don't fuck with the formula" is what Beach Boy Mike Love is supposed to have said - and he almost certainly did say so, if not in so many words — and it's a point that is worth considering, especially when there's really no direction to the music that is being made. While The Beach Boys went from strength to strength creatively (even while their commercial prospects dwindled), Motown's stable had more mixed results when it came to moving forward. With the trio of Ross, Mary Wilson and Ballard (and, now, Birdsong) left out of the decision making process for the most part, committees seemed to be calling the shots. Finding a balance between their established perfect soul-pop and some kind of future direction proved to be impossible. While a brave attempt, "Love Child" is at best a semi-failure that did manage to really give Ross an increasing amount of the spotlight.

And yet the score I have given it below is right in the middle of the 'not bad' range even though I have almost nothing good to say about it. I can barely get through its three minutes. What can I say, it gets bonus points for its ambition and for it cleverly predicting the future. Mind you, this isn't even strictly down to the record itself. The real future it foretells is that of a pop scene without The Supremes — or, better yet, one in which The Supremes were able to return to being a fine pop group without the pressures of their mid-sixties' imperial period hanging round their collective necks. It also predicts Diana Ross' solo career, which, much like her old group, was a mixed bag itself. Much as singer and group may have once needed each other, they were probably better off apart from this point forward. Thus concludes The Supremes' relevancy in this space — and I can't say I'll be sorry to see them go.

Score: 5

Dion: "Abraham, Martin and John"

November 25, 1968 (1 week)

Dion Dimucci was one of a handful of performers on the Winter Dance Party tour who didn't board the Beechcraft Bonanza four-seater aircraft on the night of February 3, 1959. Future country music star Waylon Jennings was another who didn't get a seat on this particular jet. Those who did embark were Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. All three lost their lives that night when their plane went down.

Like many up and coming rock and roll singers, Dion looked up to Buddy Holly. He later admitted that the untimely death of his idol left him confined to his bedroom back in New York for two weeks. Gradually recovering from grief and shock, he resolved to follow Holly's example and make the music that he wanted to make, spurning the commercial pressures that had been on him since emerging as a teenage pop star in 1956. He began exploring blues music, a genre that would become his life's passion. He would leave pop and doo-wop behind.

With all due respect, Dion would have been better off had he been more musically curious. (To be fair, he probably had been that way inclined until the blues came into his life) While it was certain there was far more to him than "A Teenager in Love", he was also capable of more than "three chords and the truth". He had been a great pop star and had developed into a talented singer-songwriter. A folk song like "Abraham, Martin and John" didn't have to be an anomaly. Better yet, it could have been but one of many lifelong anomalies in a musical life that would have benefited from being as all over the place as anyone could imagine.

I admit it's a little out of place to be using a simplistic folk song as an example of creatively stretching out but it's what we have to go on. And even by folk's modest standards, this is basic stuff. The three title characters — Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr and John F. Kennedy — each have a verse devoted to them but they're exactly the same beyond their names being different. They all freed a lot of people (did JFK really free that many individuals of colour, especially compared to Lincoln and MLK?) but the good they die young. Normally I deplore repetitiveness but I'll make an exception in this instance. If anything, it probably works better this way, rather than needlessly elaborating on how they stood apart from one another. The fourth verse is dedicated to the recently assassinated Robert F. Kennedy who, let's be honest, never even had the chance to free anyone at all. Instead, he's spotted on a hill alongside his slain brother, Lincoln and MLK. Touching but superfluous.

Good as "Abraham, Martin and John" is, I'd argue that Dion was capable of writing a better tribute to these fallen leaders, even if only musically. My esteem for the man is complex: I admire his steadfast refusal to do what others expect of him but I sort of feel his output isn't as interesting at least partially as a result. The challenge brought forth by The Beatles invited some to rise to the occasion while others retreated; Dion, by contrast, wasn't interested. While it's commendable that he used Buddy Holly's example to go his own way, he would've done well to have been similarly exploitative rather that confining himself to one particular thing. As his two Canadian number ones suggest, there should have been so much more to him.

Score: 7

Steppenwolf: "Magic Carpet Ride"

November 18, 1968 (1 week)

During the first eleven years of the Canadian singles chart — combining the CHUM and RPM eras — only seven homegrown talents managed to reach the number one spot. Then, over the space of just eleven weeks, two more were added to the list. Both, it just so happened, by the same Can-Am rock group: Steppenwolf, the ultimate two-hit wonder who just so happened to have around a dozen actual hits. Thus, they are the first of several Canadian acts to notch more than one domestic chart topper.

"Magic Carpet Ride" is almost as well remembered as their previous number one smash "Born to Be Wild". While their breakthrough hit would become an anthem to bikers and, eventually, metalheads, this follow-up would seem to be more for the hippie crowd. The title alone gives away that it's all about massive drug intake, going on crazy trips and, hopefully, some enlightenment as a result. It's their "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", their "Incense and Peppermints" and their "See Emily Play" — at least up to a point.

But just as "Born to Be Wild" was just as much a gesture to the beautiful people as it was the motorcycle gangs, "Magic Carpet Ride" has one foot in the rougher camp of Hell's Angels and the Sturgis Rally while the other foot sips tea and pretends to be moved by the works of Carlos Castaneda. First, it opens with a few seconds of buzzsaw feedback before giving way to a storming Bo Diddley-esque melody. John Kay's guttural vocal stands in contrast to the more tripped out and/or beatific singing of the acid rock age. The longer, inferior album version ends with a lengthy jam which is both acid-fueled and laced with more than a little menace.

This being the late stages of 1968, it's hard to hear "Magic Carpet Ride" and not get the feeling that something suspect is going on in the background. The idealism of '67 had rapidly vanished during a year of student demonstrations and jackbooted government crackdowns on protests. Rather than sounding like a wise old sage tripping balls on LSD and proclaiming peace and love, Kay gives off the vibes of a opportunistic cult leader looking to recruit young and impressionable drug addicted high school dropouts to become his followers. This magic carpet ride of his is meant to lure them in.

(Such a perspective is inevitable given the nightmare that unfolded a year later when the Manson Family went on their killing spree. The members of Steppenwolf weren't to know what was to unfold but there's no question that their brand of psychedelic rock leaned more in the direction of pleasing one's primal desires rather than achieving a higher level of understanding)

The other important thing to consider about the time period is that many had already abandoned the hippie subculture and its accompanying drugs and music by the time "Magic Carpet Ride" had come out. (If acid rock had been little more than a fad then it was equally true that giving up on it was every bit as fashionable; I will be expanding on this point in an upcoming review from the early part of 1969) Rather than dispensing with it as The Beatles and The Byrds had done by this point, Steppenwolf seemed to be adapting it to the hard rock they had already begun to master. Unfortunately, there wasn't much left in that well and so they evolved into more of a straightforward rock band as the seventies approached. Though the law of diminishing returns began to impact their chart placings, they still had a decent run of hits for another five or six years. Still, they'll always be known for two songs and rightfully so.

Score: 8

Johnny Nash: "Hold Me Tight"

November 11, 1968 (1 week)

I didn't know who he was at the time but it's very likely that my favourite singer as a boy was Johnny Nash. Was this because I was fond of "I Can See Clearly Now"? No but I would eventually come to love it. Or "Tears on My Pillow", his lone number one hit in Great Britain? Wrong again. No, I got sucked in by Nash's work on the theme to the cartoon The Mighty Hercules.

Hercales (as it was known at the time, at least in the household I grew up in) was a very low budget series of shorts based on the Greek demigod of the same name. (Yes, yes, I know he was originally called 'Heracles'; in my experience, the people who insist on always bringing this very well known fact up are the same folk who claim that "the Romans copied the Greeks" which is a bit of an over-simplification) 'Based on' ought to be used very loosely. It was made as if someone had chosen a bunch of Greco-Roman names at random and thrown them into a whole host of stories that were vaguely from antiquity. Episodes were short and typically involved the titular character, along with friends Helena, Newton and Tewt, foiling the evil schemes of Daedalus, Wilhelmine and/or Murtis (aka the Mask of Vulcan). Plots were dreadfully predictable. I couldn't get enough of it — and that goes for Johnny Nash's theme song as well.

Hercules, hero of song and story,

Hercules, winner of ancient glory,

Fighting for the right, fighting with his might,

With the strength of ten ordinary men

Hercules, people are safe when near him,

Hercules, only the evil fear him,

Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs

Virtue in his heart, fire in every part

Of the mighty Hercules!

(My sister was less of a fan of it, composing such witty variant lines as "Hercules, he's made of ham and baloney / Hercules, he's just a big fat phony" and "With the strength of ten little paper men")

Through a very long career, Nash settled into being the first US reggae star. (John Lennon seemed to unwittingly start a myth that Americans didn't know anything about Jamaican music but this seems to have only applied to the white studio session players in New York that he dealt with) In reality, however, he had a smooth vocal range that could fit with just about any genre. While his first RPM number one "Hold Me Tight" was done in a rocksteady style, it could just as easily have been any number of genres that he saw fit.

As a matter of fact, "Hold Me Tight" sounds like it had originally been a country number that Nash then adapted to reggae. The singer's southern twang even betrays these supposed roots. However, country singer Johnny Carver had a minor American hit with his cover version of it in 1969, rather than the other way around. Yet, this seems to point to its one real weakness: at the end of the day, it's just a generic pop lament, just as forgettable within reggae as it is in country. Give credit to Nash for not dressing it up in phony Jamaican patois but it doesn't save what is a very bland offering. Give me The Mighty Hercules theme song any day.

Score: 4

Mary Hopkin: "Those Were the Days"

October 28, 1968 (2 weeks)

1968's pop legacy — for good or bad — is considerable. Between the apogee of bubblegum, the rise of soft rock and the earliest glimmers of metal, this has been a year with lots to answer for. Most egregious of all, however, might be the stretching of pop's time limits. While Bob Dylan's groundbreaking smash "Like a Rolling Stone" took the classic two-minute hit and pounded it into submission, it was an exception. Singles of around three minutes were becoming more common but few dared to go much further.

Then, along came "MacArthur Park" and "Hey Jude" and the economy of time vanished. Not unlike "Rolling Stone" before it, pop stars didn't exactly rush to put out seven minute behemoths of their own but the four and five minute singles that would come along often committed far greater sins. While "MacArthur Park" had been the stitching together of several shorter pieces and "Hey Jude" was a near even split of its song and coda, singles that would have been perfectly positioned to clock in somewhere in the hundred and twenty to hundred and eighty second range were now happy to hammer the point home.

This is the major fault in "Those Were the Days": it's too bloody long. (As an aside, I don't know about you but if I was to do a song about nostalgia I might include something about how it was better back when pop songs were brief) In spite of a languid pace in the verses which doesn't do it any favours, Mary Hopkin manages to fit everything in within the two minute, twenty second mark when a second helping of "La-la-la-da-da-da" comes in. It seems like a good place to let it fade away. But then it keeps going with further chance encounters in a tavern and a creeping sense of loneliness. A jug band joins her (and, possibly, a small choir) another minute or so later and, all right, this has got to be where it wraps up, right? Nope, there's still plenty more to go. I'd describe it in further detail but it's bad enough there's one of us whose been busy hammering the point home.

What makes this excruciating exercise even worse is that Paul McCartney handled production on "Those Were the Days". The same individual who masterfully composed a novella in a tidy two minutes and change with "Eleanor Rigby" two years' earlier thought that Hopkin's debut single ought to stretch out to two-and-a-half times the length of one of his finest compositions. Somehow, the public didn't seem to mind, taking it to number one in both Canada and the UK, as well as number two on the Hot 100. The Mary Hopkin story of being discovered on British talent series Opportunity Knocks and then being signed by The Beatles' newfound Apple label was a cool rags-to-riches affair. Plus, she sounded great and looked really nice. There was a lot to like about her. A pity it wasn't follow-up hit "Goodbye", a Lennon-McCartney original which happened to be a much more manageable two-and-a-half minutes, that took her to the top of the charts instead. We won't be encountering Hopkin again in this space but at least she had her five minutes of fame which she managed to drag out as much as possible..

Score: 3

Arthur Brown: "Fire"

October 21, 1968 (1 week)

The project was (and still is) known as 'The Crazy World of Arthur Brown' in the rest of the world but for some reason the Canadians weren't having it. I had assumed that chart compilers were lazily crediting the individual but even the label on the Polydor single has it as a solo effort. Perhaps my countryfolk figured 'The Crazy World of Arthur Brown' was a stupid name for a band (which it is) or they felt it ought to have been an album title instead (which it should have been).

Arthur Brown. Not a very rock 'n' roll name, is it? Had he been on the scene a decade earlier, a shifty impressario would have talked him into using a stage name. Indeed, some of the acts he influenced would also spurn the use of their real names (though, to be fair, 'Alice Cooper' is no less mundane than 'Arthur Brown' though the gender swapping no doubt helped). On the other hand, I can imagine cooking up a backstory about this very normal English bloke who had a few pints down at the local pub where some illicit substances were slipped in his pint. He then became convinced that he was Lucifer reborn and, thus, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown came into being with "Fire" as their anthem.

"The first time I heard this — age 14 or so," remembers Tom Ewing, "I thought it was hilarious." There are stages to appreciating the pop-rock's more outlandish subgenres, such as glam, metal and shock rock. When I was about four, I visited the small (and, sadly, short lived) record store attached to the Calgary Co-op near where I grew up. Still a bit too young to appreciate all the album covers, I was instead scared shitless due to their many Kiss posters. Had I been five or six years' older, I might have been captivated by them; had I been in junior high or high school at the time, I probably would've laughed at those knuckleheads. Timing is everything.

As a grown man in his late forties who'd been largely unaware of "Fire" up until now, I feel I can admire his one and only hit and even enjoy it up to a point but there's simply no getting into it. It's cool listening to it draw upon mid-to-late sixties' trends (psychedelia most obviously but also Continental film soundtracks, free jazz and even Quincy Jones' magnificent "Soul Bossa Nova") while also pointing to the future. Like fellow recent RPM number one "Born to Be Wild", it would become the blueprint for a generation of metal acts but its influence spread much further. Considering the reach of such figures as Elton John and David Bowie, it's possible that Brown's legacy extends to a handful of groups who may never have even heard of him. Not bad for a one-hit wonder. Meanwhile, I might be tempted to blame my lack of engagement on the song not aging well but that's much more on me. I'm too old for this shit.

Score: 5

The Beatles: "Hey Jude"

September 30, 1968 (3 weeks)

It's easy to say so in retrospect — but, then again, I was born in 1977 so it's necessarily in retrospect — but The Beatles sure telegraphed their coming breakup. From the midway point of 1968 until the curtain officially came down two years later, the Fab Four put an awful lot of themselves into documenting their end times. I say "they" but this was mainly the doing of just one of them: Paul McCartney, the only Beatle not to threaten to quit the group only to be the first one to publicly do so.

The bulk of McCartney's end times works come from 1969. During the sessions at the beginning of the year that would eventually result in the Let It Be album he worked on the title track (about accepting what was to come), "Two of Us" (about old friends who might be drifting apart) and "The Long and Winding Road", a song that was so on the nose that it nearly became the title of their massively popular mid-nineties documentary series. (I still say it's better than Anthology, whatever that means) For Abbey Road later that year, he contributed the valedictory "The End" and "You Never Give Me Your Money", a song that Ian MacDonald argued was a proclamation that the dream was over, which was a good year before John Lennon said the same thing. But by far the most effective song in this trajectory is the earliest: "Hey Jude".

(All that said, there's no way Macca wrote all these pieces with their breakup in mind. Whatsmore, other numbers of his from around this time may be interpreted as calls for keeping the band together. The relatively trivial "Get Back" could be said to be his attempt at trying to convince the others to be the group they used to be while "Come and Get It", which he handed off to Badfinger, was a message to Lennon that his nibs shouldn't give up the good thing they had)

Last summer, I read Ian Leslie's wonderful book John and Paul — A Love Story in Songs. In the chapter on "Hey Jude", he discusses how the two had gradually ceased to rely on each other as their romances with the women that would define their lives were blossoming. (While much has been made over Lennon sidelining his longtime friend and partner in favour of Yoko Ono, Leslie brings up an anecdote of Linda Eastman joining the them for a limousine ride to a New York airport in which it became clear that two could play that game) This was the state of their friendship in the middle of '68 and the basis for one of The Beatles' most enduring hits. Lennon was convinced that "Hey Jude" was about him in spite of McCartney's claims. Truthfully, it's about both of them — and, indeed, it's about damn near anyone. (According to MacDonald, the music press assumed it was about Bob Dylan, to which I say...uh, sure, why not?)

Who it's very much not about was Elvis. The King had been slowly regaining his footing in the late sixties after several years of low budget movies and dismal recordings. His famed Comeback Special had already been filmed by that autumn and was awaiting its TV debut that December. The following year he would go on to make some of the finest music of his entire life, culminating in the incomparable From Elvis in Memphis. Unfortunately, there was at least one turkey that resulted from these sessions and that was his version of "Hey Jude". For all of Elvis' ill will towards The Beatles, he was never above reinterpreting some of their material but the majority of it was done in concert (including versions of "Get Back", "Something" and "Yesterday"). Needless to say, his version of "Hey Jude" is horrendous. Elvis stumbles over the words, uses the "take a sad song" line far too often and can barely be bothered to do the "na-na-na's". Even for someone who mastered the art of going through the motions, it's boring, pointless and almost shockingly lacking in warmth.

And it is warmth that makes "Hey Jude" what it is. McCartney's voice has never sounded so tender and poignant. While it's true, as Aidan Curran observes, that it is low on contributions from the other Beatles ("John and George are bit players here: no guitar solos, no vocal response lines or shared verses"; this point is dulled a little by the sight of Paul and John making playful faces at one another in the promo as well as Lennon having encouraged McCartney's lyric writing), this had become their M.O. by this stage. ("Hey Jude" couldn't possibly have found a place on the Fabs' concurrent album release The Beatles but they do share that much talked about 'solo Beatle with the rest as a backing band' dynamic) Yet, pushing the others to the side only makes McCartney's performance stand out even further. While Lennon was becoming more soul baring on tracks like "Julia" and "Dear Prudence", his old friend, who had so often been written off as a pop lightweight, had suddenly become every bit as much the voice of a generation — if only just this once.

Looking back on the first time she heard it, Marianne Faithfull hazily recalled being at a party, perhaps at the opening of a club. Paul came in and put on an acetate of The Beatles' latest single. They had done it again. What she failed to recall was that The Rolling Stones (a band you might say she had been intimately familiar with) had been premiering their new album at the same function. Beggars Banquet is often cited as the first great Stones LP (which is incorrect, it's actually Aftermath), one that would help carry them into the seventies where they became a concert juggernaut. Yet, Mick Jagger's ex seemingly had no memory of this monumental album's launch even while being able to bring back the first time she heard "Hey Jude".

When Oasis emerged in the mid-nineties, there was all this talk (much of it from Noel Gallagher himself) of how much they sounded like The Beatles. I could never hear it myself until 1997's Be Here Now, an album I tried really hard to like. The frequent name dropping of Fab Four song titles was bad enough but the real giveaway was that they couldn't stop, especially on the track "All Around the World". The great thing about "Hey Jude" is that it builds from Paul and his piano into a rousing coda for everything to join in on but without going too far. Whereas, the nine minute "All Around the World" which came awash in layers of guitar noise had no filter. If Elvis' rendition was "Hey Jude" on cruise control, this monstrosity ended up being "Hey Jude" to the absolute max.

No one knew The Beatles would be all but finished just a year after "Hey Jude" hit the top of the charts around the world. Given their productivity — it's astonishing to think that they had two albums worth of material despite '69 being such a fraught year — there was still some ways to go in the tale. Still, "Hey Jude" feels like they're wrapping things up. It's as if McCartney had been gearing up for the conclusion just so he could be ensured of going out on a high note. And in the end, they went out okay but not like this, the last truly astounding single from this most astounding of groups.

Score: 10

Jeannie C. Riley: "Harper Valley P.T.A."

September 23, 1968 (1 week)

We seem to be in a post-hypocrisy world. Well, not so much post-hypocrisy as post-consequences of said hypocrisy. The bread and butter of online discourse has been about exposing the inconsistencies of others for so long that it has ceased to mean anything anymore. We may feel self-satisfied that someone on our side has "destroyed" a political opponent but such rhetoric never sticks. No one is ever destroyed, they just keep coming back.

No doubt that was what happened following the meeting of the Harper Valley P.T.A. While I'm sure that the Taylors, Mr. Baker, the widow Jones, Mr. Harper and Shirley Thompson were all shame-faced as they left this meeting, did Mrs. Johnson destroy any of them? I'm sure they all came back, ready for more gossip, rumour and innuendo to be spread out. In fact, its very poor sequel from 1984 indicates that very little changed other than the now grandmotherly Mrs Johnson (her junior high school-aged daughter must've married and/or given birth at quite a young age) is now far more God-fearing and, naturally seeing eye-to-eye much more with her old adversaries. Instead of making them be more like her, she became just like them.

For my money, though, the more interesting character is the schoolgirl whose mother has been causing all this friction round Harper Valley Jr. High. When the song begins, she comes home with a note from the P.T.A. and it seems like it's going to be all about her behaviour at school, getting up to no good with the boys, flaunting herself in scantilly clad garments and so forth. It is only in its second verse that we discover that it's her mother whose been causing a scandal in the neighbourhood. Then, the girl reveals herself to have been present at the P.T.A. meeting and even admits to being the one weaving this story all along. Quite why she chose to address herself in the third person earlier is a question no one seems to have an answer for. (In all likelihood, songwriter Tom T. Hall never thought about it)

This teenager seems relatively well adjusted for someone whose father has passed on and whose mother has seen half the bedrooms in the Harper Valley district. Isn't she mortified — and with far greater reason than the town's many busybodies? At the best of times teens find their parents to be intolerable and this is goes for those of us whose folks are perfectly normal. Yet, this girl is in her mum's corner all the way. She's proud of the fact that she "socked it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.". Could this lass be cut from the same cloth as her free spirited mother? So, while "Harper Valley P.T.A." does its part for feminist empowerment, it doesn't quite manage to nail the generation gap. Fair enough though, it's not as if one song is meant to be all things to all people. Nevertheless, I think even a nod to some tension between mother and daughter would have made things more captivating.

Part country-pop delight, part novelty song, it's perhaps easy to both over and underestimate "Harper Valley P.T.A.". While there's little to dislike about its laid back tune and Jeannie C. Riley's classic southern vocal, it's surprisingly inessential for such a huge hit that has had a life of its own in the years since. While Tom Breihan does his utmost to make a case that it is an extraordinary work of art (even if I'm not quite buying what he's selling), I fall more in the camp of seeing it as an enjoyable little piece that overachieved a little in hitting number on both the RPM charts and on the Hot 100 down south. Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful to pop listings of the past that had room for such singles to thrive, I just don't know what young people of the time would have made of it. Country music from this period seldom had kids in mind and this legendary track of a feisty, independent older woman and her daughter who doesn't do much but observe from the sidelines is no exception.

Score: 6

1910 Fruitgum Company: "1, 2, 3, Red Light"

September 16, 1968 (1 week)

It's never great when the best thing that can be said about a single is that it's "more of the same". Still, when it's a genuinely great song we're talking about that's one thing: a group might be repeating the same tricks in order to capitalize on prior success (record labels encourage such stunts and no doubt a few artists have at least given it some thought). But when your previous hit feebly pandered to kids, you really ought to give the whole 'don't mess with the formula' approach a good re-think. That said, kids bought the rotten "Simon Says" so why wouldn't they rush out to pick up a copy of yet another tribute to playground games?

The difference, at least in part, may be down to "1, 2. 3, Red Light" merely using the game to underscore relationship difficulties. (Your love life can't be in great shape to begin with if all you have to compare it with is the likes of Hide and Go Seek and Tag) The last time, it was about playing the game Simon Says in the song "Simon Says". No subtext required. This time, a game of (presumably) Red Light, Green Light becomes a metaphor for a troubled boyfriend-girlfriend dynamic. Not a great premise for a song but progress is progress all the same.

Fortunately, "1, 2, 3, Red Light" is a modest improvement on its predecessor, largely because it isn't nearly as gauche. There is very little to it but there are hints that the members of 1910 Fruitgum Company aspired to let loose. They don't make much of the opportunity — assuming it even was an opportunity — and the composition is badly undercooked so it's still extremely weak, just not to the wretched levels of their last attempt. 

(Well, actually...1910 Fruitgum Company did have a single that came between "Simon Says" and "1, 2, 3, Red Light". "May I Take a Giant Step (Into Your Heart)" somehow flopped while the numbers that bookend it managed to be big hits. I would imagine that Buddha Records failed to promote it properly since it's just as idiodically catchy as the other two. This began an odd pattern of Fruitgum singles either sinking or swimming. It did nearly crack the RPM Top 20 but that was by far the best it managed to do)

During the week "1, 2, 3,..." sat atop the Canadian hit parade, summer shifted over to autumn and with it a slight uptick in the maturity of what was to follow it. That's not to say everything was brilliant but perhaps bubblegum pop was beginning to wind down as a dominant force in pop. Yet, a mammoth of the genre is still to come in 1969 and even 1910 Fruitgum Company weren't yet done. And who knows? Maybe their next attempt will show further progress in their sound just as this their second number one had on their first. I'm not going to hold my breath though, especially since it appears they were about to trade the schoolyard for some casual racism. Oh the gems we have to look forward to...

Score: 3

José Feliciano: "Light My Fire"

September 9, 1968 (1 week)

"So: a pretty catchy sex song from a band with godlike aspirations. But the Doors legend owes more to what they did with "Light My Fire" — refusing to licence it for a Buick ad, refusing to change the verboten "higher" line on Ed Sullivan — than with the song itself. The song itself is fine. It's not anything more than that."

— Tom Breihan

And so concludes the review of the original version of "Light My Fire" over on Stereogum. While the tale of The Doors agreeing to change the "girl, we couldn't get much higher" line only for them to go back on it is well known, I personally didn't know about the Buick commercial. Apparently, the others accepted an offer from the car company while Jim Morrison was in the UK getting laid. When the singer got word of what had gone down he used his veto power to quash it by threatening to smash a Buick.

The Doors sure had integrity. They fought back against network censors and refused to sell out to corporate dollars (well, one quarter of them did but one Jim Morrison is roughly equal to a Ray Manzarek, a Robby Krieger and a John Densmore combined). Way to sock it to the man, boys.

Among all this, they neglected to put the kibosh on José Feliciano's latin pop spin on the very same hit in which had been so precious to them that they wouldn't alter the lyrics. To be fair, they couldn't have known that the Puerto Rican singer would have a breakthrough smash with his cover, even if they must have known that it would be done in an easy listening style. Yet, they refused to distance themselves from Feliciano, no doubt appreciating the songwriting royalties and perhaps the mainstream approval. And even, perhaps, because the two versions really aren't all that different from each other. The Doors weren't quite as radical as they and their devoted fans seemed convinced of while Feliciano isn't quite the milquetoast pop minstrel.

Listening to it now, there's a sense that Feliciano was ahead of his time. The ironic cover version done in a different style from its source was something that didn't really become commonplace until the eighties or nineties. (I always think of Aztec Camera's acoustic pop version of Van Halen's "Jump" as the first example) On the other hand, it's just a bland, faintly pointless cover of a song that had been somewhat bland to begin with. It's not unlike very boring, very predictable carols that pop up on any random artist's contractually obliged Christmas album. Even still, flip side "California Dreamin" (yes, The Mamas and the Papas song) is even more lifeless and it is said that it had initially been meant to be the A side. It has grown on a bit me over the past few days but that only means it has gone from "ghastly shit" to "mildly irritating". Give it another week or so and I might regard it as "okay but nothing special" — not unlike The Doors' original in fact.

Score: 4

Steppenwolf: "Born to Be Wild"

September 2, 1968 (1 week)

There is considerable debate over what was the first heavy metal song. John Lennon maintained that it was his composition "Ticket to Ride" which probably says more about the clever one's lack of knowledge and/or interest in metal than anything else. The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" is another contender and it makes a far more convincing case. Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" has also been cited, as has Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". The fact that no one can quite agree is significant: clearly, metal was a seventies concern that sixties groups could only aid in building its foundation.

"Born to Be Wild" is yet another one that typically gets brought up. And, sure, the lyrics mention "heavy metal thunder" (even though that's a reference to motorbikes) and pounds like crazy. Still, it's much closer to hard rock or is at best a bridge between the two genres. Metal? I don't quite hear it, though, not unlike many of the above, it does do its part in mapping out the genre's future.

Even since its release, bikers have co-opted "Born to Be Wild" and with good reason. Its use in the 1969 motion picture Easy Rider alone justifies its place as an anthem for generations of leather clad outlaws speeding down highways. I'm not here to dispute this fact. What I would like to emphasize is that it is far from being about their subculture alone. If anything, it's the defacto theme song to every sixties' free spirit, be they biker or hippie. For every "get your motor runnin'" or "fire all your guns at once" there's a "take the world in a love embrace" or "a true nature's child". Rather than welcoming both groups in, it's as if Steppenwolf saw no differentiation.

Metal or hard rock, biker or hippie, "Born to Be Wild" was a much-needed shot of adrenaline to an increasingly dismal pop singles scene in 1968. With bubblegum pop going strong and the increasingly relevant soft rock emerging, a backlash was bound to materialize. It's impossible to say if the members of Steppenwolf had an antipathy towards the charts but there's no doubt that listeners reacted positively to the alternative they were presenting. (Hey, if they can be labelled as metal then why don't we also describe them as punks while we're at it?) The more abrasive side of garage rock that The Velvet Underground embodied failed to catch on with public at large while the popularity of The Doors was mainly down to their more melodic side (and, let's face it Jim Morrison's charisma). In Steppenwolf, there was now a hard rock act with commercial teeth, something that would carry forward even as the band itself began to fade.

Speaking of the band, it's worth noting that about half of Steppenwolf was Canadian. German-bron lead singer John Kay had spent some of his formative years in the Toronto area before relocating down south. He would eventually return to Ontario where he joined local group The Sparrows along with Nick St. Nichols and brothers Dennis — who didn't last as a permanent member but who would write "Born to Be Wild" — and Jerry Edmonton (sadly, not their real names). They would later head down to California where they soon became known as Steppenwolf. They would add a pair of Americans to their lineup by then but they still qualify for Can Con. 

So, what of Steppenwolf's legacy? Did they invent metal? It's highly debatable. Did they unite bikers and hippies? It didn't take but it was worth a try. Did they usher in a Canadian pop-rock revolution? Oh hell yeah. They're about to start rolling in.

Score: 9