About This Time 50 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of March-ish 1975!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

It’s an F#.

That’s the note Minnie Riperton is so effortlessly hitting. That’s the note where, surrounded by birds effortlessly tweeting their own high notes, Minnie shows them how it’s supposed to be done.

• It’s a note so high you need a whole new type of singing to hit it: “head singing.”

• It’s a note so high it’s sometimes referred to as “the whistle register.”

Those bird noises are both so corny and so beautiful that it’s tempting to assume that the song was recorded on a sunny day.

Or, if you are of a more cynical persuasion, that they were from a special effects tape. But the story is more complicated than that.

So, Minnie was working with Stevie Wonder.

Minnie had been around for ages, mostly doing backing vocals – including on Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me” (it’s a 9) – but also recording her own album, “Come To My Garden”, a perfect example of free-love hippie soul. But because there is no justice in the world, she hadn’t yet had a hit. Not even with “Les Fleurs,” (which is a 10) which of course translates into “The Flowers.” Minnie did often tend to have flowers sticking out of her hair.

It was songs like “Les Fleurs” that earnt Minnie the right to work with Stevie Wonder. And it was Stevie who heard the birds outside the window.

Stevie heard the birds and he said: “get the bird.” But the bird had flown away. So they went down to UCLA Botanical Gardens to record some other birds. So there’s Minnie and there’s Stevie and there’s a little tape recorder, and they are in the middle of the garden and Stevie’s like “ok Minnie sing for the birds.”

So Minnie sings for the birds. And the birds sing back.

Those birds were mockingbirds. At least that’s how they are described on the album’s cover. They are also credited to “God.”

Minnie Riperton didn’t write “Lovin’ You” for the birds, of course. She wrote it for her daughter, who would grow up to be Maya Rudolph. Technically she already was. “Lovin’ You” was written as a lullaby to Maya.We know “Lovin’ You” was written for Maya, rather than Minnie’s other kid, Marc, because she whispers “Maya”, numerous times, towards the end.

Minnie only sings the “Maya” bit on the album version though. The single version is different because the label was worried that people would think it was a religious chant. People are weird.

“Lovin’ You” started as a chord progression that Minnie’s husband, Richard, has been playing around with for years. Until one day, whilst she was cooking, Minnie just started going “la la la la.” And “do-do-do do-do-do.” And “oooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Minnie would sing that to Maya, as she lay in her bassinet. But Minnie and Richard wanted to have some – and I quote – “grown up time” together. Makin’ love with Richard is all Minnie wanted to do. So every time they… oooh! they’d put on a little recording they made of “Lovin’ You” and leave it running, on a loop, so that Maya, whilst lying in her bassinet, would think that Minnie was still there, singing to her: “la la la, la la la, do do do do, ooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeee” over and over again.

So “Lovin’ You” was a lullaby written so that Maya Rudolph’s parents could have sex. I wonder how she feels about that?

“Lovin’ You” would have remained a just a private little sex-enabling lullaby, except that Minnie’s album was in need of one final song. And Stevie, comedian that he is, asked Minnie to play him her most embarrassing song. A sex-lullaby was the obvious choice.

Curiously enough, about the time “Lovin’ You” was peaking on the charts, Stevie was having his own baby experience, as his daughter – Aisha – was born in April.

A song that – because Stevie was clearly a fan of sound effects – kicks off with a baby’s first cry right at the moment of birth.

It’s not Aisha though, because that would be weird. Actually, it’s plenty weird anyway. And Stevie mentions his daughter by name, just like Minnie did! Nobody thought that was a religious chant though.

(“Isn’t She Lovely” is a 7.)

“Lovin’ You” is a 9.

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Meanwhile, in Metal Land:

Heavy metal: it’s more than just loud guitars, and louder drums, and even louder screaming.

From it’s very beginning heavy metal was big on fantasy. From the moment that Black Sabbath took their name from a satanic novel that the bass-player Geezer Butler

… had been reading one night. The night he had a dream he saw a hooded figure at the end of his bed. A hooded figure that then stole the book. A hooded figure that was probably Ozzy Osbourne in a dressing gown.

And Led Zeppelin were more than just Jimmy Page ripping off blues riffs, Robert Plant ripping off entire blues songs, and John Bonham wacking away at those drums like no-one had wacked away on drums before. Led Zeppelin were also about Robert Plant’s obsession with Tolkien.

• “Misty Mountain Hop” – the Misty Mountains being that great big mountain range right through the middle of Middle Earth, although the song itself is about a Legalize Pot Rally
• “Ramble On” which features such couplets as:

“ ‘Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor
I met a girl so fair
But Gollum, and the evil one
Crept up and slipped away with her”

• And “The Battle Of Evermore:” Written when Jimmy Page picked up a mandolin and they just banged out a synopsis of Return Of The King on the spot.

Led Zep’s best songs sound as though they could have been written in medieval times. Their biggest album – Led Zeppelin IV or Zoso if you insist – features a cover that could have come from days of yore, if they had photos back then, or album covers to put them on.

When I listen to “Immigrant Song,” I close my eyes and imagine the band playing on the bow of a Viking ship crashing its way through the sea for a bit of pillaging (but hopefully not the other thing.)

And ‘Kashmir” is probably the most Tolkienesque sounding Led Zeppelin song of all. The song voted most likely to soundtrack a battle between dragons and orcs. It’s a little disappointing then to learn that the lyrics were inspired by something surprisingly pedestrian: Robert Plant went on a little vacation.

Not to Kashmir, or even anywhere near Kashmir.

“It was a single-track road which neatly cut through the desert. Two miles to the east and west were ridges of sand rock. It looked like you were driving down a channel, this dilapidated road, and there was seemingly no end to it.”

Honestly though, that’s not really important.

You could probably listen to “Kashmir” a hundred times – and you quite possibly have – you could have every crunching drum stomp, and every thunderous orchestral swipe, lodged deep inside your brain, and yet still not be aware of a single lyric Robert is howling other than “ooh, my baby, oh, my baby.” You may not even be 100% certain that he even sings the word “Kashmir.”

He also mentions Shangri-La, yet he’s never been there either. At least in this case he has an excuse: Shangri-La doesn’t really exist.

That’s not really important. The important thing is that you realize he’s off on some great big, Middle-Earth shattering adventure. Or, failing that, a beach holiday in Morocco.

“Kashmir” is a 9.

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Meanwhile, in Glam Rock Land:

Are you ready, Steve? (Uh-huh)
Andy? (Yeah)
Mick? (Okay)
Alright, fellas, well, let’s gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Different song, of course. But now you know the names of the members of the band.

The band called Sweet.

One of the biggest glam rock bands in the land! The only band member whose name you don’t know now is the most important: the lead singer.

No known relation to Billy, although who knows really? Brian’s teenage mother abandoned him in a hospital immediately after he was born. To be fair, if you are going to abandon your kid, a hospital is probably the best place to do it.

Glam rock had been a broad church. You had everything from visionary genius rock gods (Bowie, Bolan), to absolute nonsense, such as those illiterate leprechauns, Slade:

Everything from make-believe chicken-killing evil (Alice “Token American” Cooper) and actual genuinely evil (Gary Glitter). The Sweet liked to rock – and would have liked to rock some more – but were, for most of their career, far closer to the nonsense side of the spectrum.

But Glam Rock was pretty much over by 1975.

Marc Bolan, the metal guru who invented the whole thing could barely get arrested in his own town, let alone anywhere else… but it was then that Sweet had their biggest hit – give or take a “Ballroom Blitz” or two – and their proudest achievement. If only because they wrote the thing.

The boys from Sweet had not previously written many things.

The boys from Sweet had previously been the puppets of certified glam-rock hit makers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman:

Chinnichap – although mostly Mike – were responsible for pretty much every hit from the nonsense side of the glam-rock spectrum – “Can The Can” and “Devil Gate Drive” by Suzi Quatro. “Tiger Feet” by Mud.

Now,“Tiger Feet” might be a supremely stupid song with a supremely stupid song title.

But that was nothing compared to the songs Chinnichap gave Sweet: “Wig Wam Bam”, “Little Willy”, “Funny Funny”, song titles that made Roger “Chug-A-Lug” Miller sound like Bob Dylan.

The Sweet – or at least various members of The Sweet – had been around since the mid-60s. Alumni of the extended Sweet universe would go on to (a) become the lead singer of Deep Purple, and (b) become one-hit-wonders White Plains, whose one hit was the bubblegum confection “My Baby Loves Lovin’”

This makes sense: The Sweet would spend their career basically attempting to invent bubblegum-metal. And the early 70s were the perfect time to create such a concoction. In the case of their sole UK Number One – although they came very close very often, and had very, many more Number Ones all over Europe– “Block Buster!” – aka “Block BUSTAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!” – this seemed to involve a fusion of “Immigrant Song” and The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues.”

But with more eye makeup, brighter colours and shinier outfits.

But that was over a year earlier, and things moved fast in the glam-rock scene. So fast that people were saying that Sweet were over.

The main reason that Sweet were being considered as has-beens in need of a come-back – other than time being a fickle-mistress and all – was that Brian Connolly had been beaten up by some local thugs outside of a pub in Surrey. They’d kicked him in the throat, seemingly in order to ensure that he’d never sing again. Clearly they did not succeed, but it was touch and go there for a while.

But this was not just a case of getting kicked in the throat by thugs, then dusting yourself off and releasing a hot new single just to spite them. That attack meant that Sweet had to skip the most important gig of their life:

This was an important show for Sweet for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that they were huge Who fans. They’d recorded a live medley of Who songs for BBC1 in 1971 and covered “My Generation” in 1974.

The Charlton Athletic concert wasn’t just any old Who concert though; it was a Who rock festival. Lou Reed was playing, as was Bad Company,

This was supposed to be the gig during which Sweet would prove to the rock world that they had rock chops. That they weren’t just manufactured pretty faces that Chinnichap wouldn’t even allow to play on their own records.

Things had been beginning to change on that front. First, Chinnichap started allowing them to play on their records. Then they let them write their B-sides, which always seemed to be slightly more rockin’ than the hits. And then, with “Fox On The Run”, they finally got to write a hit themselves.

But even then, the album version of “Fox On The Run” was a Chinnichap product-chappel. It’s only the – far superior – single version that Sweet produced themselves.

Sweet clearly still had that Who festival on their mind when they produced the single version of “Fox On The Run.” That spiralling sci-fi synthesizer – which Andy slapped onto both the beginning and the end whilst the rest of the band were down at the pub – is very “Baba O’Riley!”

Some of those notes – just before the guitars crash in – are higher than Millie’s! Some of the falsetto notes just might be too.

“Fox On The Run” is the sort of song that the Sweet boys could write from experience. Whereas the Chinnichap lads, probably not so much. For “Fox On The Run” was was about groupies.

• Brian presumedly got drunk last night and he slept with a groupie.
• But now he’s sober and… she doesn’t look the same. The way she did before.
• She thinks she’s got a pretty face, but the rest of her is out of place.
• Even worse, she’s hasn’t kept up with the music scene. She drops the names of bands, but the names she drops are second hand!
• She’s simply not cool enough to hang out with the boys from Sweet!

This of course begs the question of who exactly is the “fox” in this scenario? The foxy fox? It can’t be the girl, because she’s very clearly not being hunted.

Is it the boys from Sweet themselves? Are they the fox?

Once “Fox On The Run” became a big hit – not just in the UK, when they always had hits, not all over Europe, where their hits were even bigger, but in the US as well – Chinnichap were out. Unless, the band caveated, they came up with something really good. Because, as the band put it “once you’ve learnt everything there is to learn, what’s the point in carrying on with a tutor, when you can be teaching?”

Judging by “Fox On The Run,” The Sweet had learnt a lot. Sadly however, it wouldn’t be enough. That kick to the throat? It led to alcoholism.

Still, they had managed to escape the Chinnichap trap. I’d like to see Mud do that!*

“Fox On The Run” is a 9.

*One of the guys from Mud would later – much later – co-write Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” and other pop classics of the Y2K era… so let that be a lesson to you… something about never judging a glam-rock band just because they wear ridiculous outfits and sing songs with ridiculous titles.

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