Every UK #1 Single Of 1972 Discussion Thread

Its charging beat, though, seemed to anticipate Rihanna's "Pon De Replay" . . . one could do a mash-up of that with "Radar Love" and be none-the-worse for wear.

 

Rod Stewart - You Wear It Well / Lost Paraguayos
The main track is nice laid-back Sunday afternoon music, maybe a tad tiresome, but the Latin flavoured flipside is cool! Very nice instrumental action going on in the background.

 

Ah yes, Rod and the swedish actress Britt Ekland. During Stewart's period with Britt, my mother worked in a diamond shop at the dutch Schiphol Airport. One time Rod and Britt passed by in her store. As soon as Britt discovered my mother was swedish as well, they happily started chatting in their native language. But after awhile Britt turned to Rod, switched to english and said "Darling, I like that one!", while pointing at a diamond ring. When Rod saw the price of the precious ring, he dismissively replied "You buy it yourself". Cheap bastard

 

My mum had Britt’s autobiography (called True Britt) in the 80s. Ms Ekland was very bitter about her break up with Rod and I recall the book referring to his being ‘careful’ with money many times.

 

Yeah, "Revolution" and "Boy" are two of my favorite T.Rex tracks - but I only heard them for the first time when I bought the hits set 15 years ago or whenever.

 

Good point.

I'll see your '69 Alice Cooper and raise you one Rolling Stones from '66...

 

I love this one as well.

Rod committed the unbearable sin of having a lot of fun. How dare he! The incels were livid!

His music was never glam, but he did have that aura of decadence around him from a pretty early stage. If you specify that as a defining characteristic of glam, Rod kept getting glammier and glammier as the decade wore on.

 

As I recall, Rod continued getting more ‘glam’ well into the 80s too. Most people had stopped by then.

 

Thank God they didn't perform dressed like that!

 

I was gonna say - "Passion" was pretty glam, in an '80s / New Wave way (a lot of the New Wavers were huge Bowie and T.Rex fans, and took a lot of their image and attitude from glam).

 

If only!

 

Wasn’t Foolish Behaviour the album Rod said he most disliked of all of his? I believe he said there wasn’t one good song on it.

 

Just behind You Wear It Well on this week’s chart was Mott The Hoople’s All The Young Dudes. It would peak at #3 becoming the group’s biggest UK hit.

 

Schools Out was a great record. My brother had the LP, if I remember correctly the front opened like a desk lid, I can't recall the paper pants though.

 

I thought his low point was supposedly Body Wishes. The cover was certainly crap.



He had no hits off of this in the US if memory serves. Did quite well in the UK, though.

 

This might have been the '70s single most-deserving of a #1 that didn't get one.

 

I have that album.

Yes, Baby Jane was a number one and I think he had a couple of other top 10 hits too. Most of Rod’s 80s albums were patchy. I don’t think Body Wishes is bad, but agree that the sleeve is awful.

 

As I said before, it won my glam singles poll with great ease. It was in the lead from the very beginning. A lot of the records in that poll were much bigger (and I thought) better known hits too.

 

Yeah, you can make an argument for "All The Young Dudes" being the greatest glam single ever. A strong argument.

 

Fantastic single of course, I'm amazed Bowie gave this song away. If he had released All The Young Dudes himself it could've been his breakthrough in the States. All The Young Dudes charted higher in the US than any of David's own singles up to that point.


And although All The Young Dudes didn't make it to #1, I can't resist to post the dutch sleeve of the single:

 

Yes, I bet Bowie regretted giving that one away later on!

Still, as I said before, in 1973 he had an amazing year in the UK. No number ones, but 4 top 3 hits. I will of course be mentioning them as and when.

 

Totally agree.

You Wear It Well has a relaxed, playful, joyous vibe that is perennially uplifting. Beautiful intro and a (false) sense that the lyrics were just tossed in ad lib.

 

You Wear It Well was on the 1973 "Sing It Again Rod", his first greatest hits album which covered the first three solo albums and the one off Pinball Wizard.

Subsequent official Greatest Hits/ Best Of albums were post his 1975 move to Warner Brothers. Those albums, presumably for licensing reasons, tended to under represent Mercury tracks.

 

You Wear It Well
Thumbs up here...another great single. I prefer his early stuff but even his overtly 'sold out' period had some great singles.
4/5

 

As you know, Glam wasn't the force in the US that it was elsewhere. I only knew Mott through All The Young Dudes but the opening scene to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore turned me on to further investigate their catalogue. Love, love, love All The Way From Memphis! Synergy.