Every UK #1 Single Of 1974 Discussion Thread

Have to mention this week’s #6. It’s probably the most deserved #1 in the top 10 for me, but like so many Sweet singles it peaked at #2.

 

Another genuine bona fide glam masterpiece. You had to feel for Sweet, at the top of their game and releasing yet another fantastic single, only to take the bridesmaids position for the third time in a few months.

 

I seem to remember that the royalties for Teach The World To Sing went to charity, something Lyn Paul was still fuming about in an interview years later.
I don't think they did well financially out of the New Seekers. Eve Graham worked in a department store afterwards selling bra's, or as she put it ''empowering women''.
She was wasted there, she could easily have had a good career as a spin doctor

 

Another often overlooked band is the Stylistics. Rockin’ Roll Baby would begin a run of hits that would see 9 top 10 entries and another single that made #12 over the next 2 years. The Best Of The Stylistics LP would be one of the best sellers of the decade too.

 

I think one of the reasons Peter Doyle left was because he wasn’t making any money. I can understand Lyn Paul going for a solo career when she did. She didn’t have much to lose, I suppose. Unfortunately there were far too many pretty blonde girls who could sing well, but didn’t write their own material so had to depend on others for their hits..

 

Unless I'm hallucinating, three albums by the leg end that was Max Bygraves were propping up the album chart!

Strange times.

 

This leads us to the question: WHY Teenage Rampage was released the same week as Tiger Feet? This killed all the chances to be number one.

 

Up until this point Mud would not have been seen as a threat, they were kind of second tier at the time...

 

Since they released Dyna-Mite, they were beginning to be something more interesting than in the early stages of 1973

 

You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me.
New Seekers were fuddy duddy MOR for me.
Once in awhile I can listen to it...should it come on anywhere. Harmless enough.
2/5

Talking Sweet...yes a travesty Teenage Rampage was kept off No1 by the impending Muds Tiger Feet.
Incidentally... Sweet were offered Tiger Feet by Chinn and Chapman... but chose not to record it, as they wanted to go in a Rockier direction... even tho they knew it would be a smash hit.
Glad they chose that route....as Tiger Feet is s tad Cheesy for my tastes...tho suited Mud well.
1974 was the year I started buying albums!!!!

 

He was the manager!

Just think he retired from performing.

 

Mud were quite odd really. Very successful, but they didn’t rule the charts like Slade and Gary Glitter. They weren’t a ‘lad’s band like the former either. You wouldn’t call them heartthrob material... Perhaps the closest comparison would be Showaddywaddy.. Kind of a good time, fun group.

And as we’d find out later, Les Gray could do a pretty good Elvis impression.

 

Nice step-up dude. Carry that torch. I'm no expert (just lived it), but if I can contribute, I will.

 

As a 10-year-old I didn't much care if acts or particular records were cool or not, and yes, I did like The New Seekers - not that I actually bought any of their records at the time. However, I've had an Object Enterprises compilation CD for a number of years now, and a little while ago I picked up the Polydor LP We'd Like to Teach the World to Sing in Oxfam (not a bad album). I think 'You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me' is a well-crafted single, but there's no getting round the fact that pretty much everything from The New Seekers is very tame - instantly enjoyable but not very satisfying in the long term. But there's nothing wrong with that.

 

Looking through the album chart I see that Alice’s ‘Muscle Of Love’ has just made its entrance at No 45. At the time I was disappointed with it. Not as engaging as the previous two, Billion Dollar Babies and School’s Out, both of which I adored. ‘Muscle’ seemed a lesser album. Don’t think it sold particularly well over here either. Now, after repeated listens through the decades, it is a clearly a fine body of work. My bad. Thoughts, other Alice fans?

Yeah, I know it's a 'singles' thread, but the 45 off it - 'Teenage Lament '74' - was tremendous, so it's kinda relevant.

 

The New Seekers try their hand at acting and environmental concern in this old cinema Keep Britain Tidy advert. The song, We’ve Got To Do It Now, was their single before You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me. It flopped. In the clip, Marty Kristian is harangued by the rest of the group for throwing a piece of paper onto the ground. Marty was the heartthrob of the band (just look at Popswap) and glancing at the clip from around the three minute mark I will say it’s plainly obvious where he kept his packet of Rolos. My, trousers were tight in the 70s.

 

New Seekers - duller than ditch water. Sweet, Leo Sayer, or even Golden Earring, would have made a far better #1.

MOL made #34 here (a relatively 'disastrous' position, considering all previous six albums had gone Top Thirty; yes, even the first two!), but still did very well in North America. The associated single, Teenage Lament, fared the opposite though: doing well here, but poorly across the pond.

The album was basically the band's 'falling apart at the seams', hubristic, swansong; guitarist Michael Bruce & whizz kid producer Bob Ezrin having a major row in the studio at the outset. Ezrin quit the project, Alice was lukewarm at the others' insistence on a non-theatrical record, whilst other guitarist, Glen Buxton, was off his head on heroin. Thus, the album resembled the state of the group: fractured, unfocused, uneven.

Warner Brothers also severely muddied the waters in Northern Europe by re-releasing the first two albums, Pretties For You & Easy Action - as a double, entitled Schooldays - on the back of Billion Dollar Babies' #1 success. Schooldays' amateurisms were a million miles away from BDB, yet many thought it a new album, and propelled it to #13 in the UK charts. There was plenty of "WTF is this", when folk placed Schooldays on the turntable; hence a seeming reluctance, from many, to splash out on the 'real' new record a few months later.

 

You won't find another fool like me / Song for you and me
I loved the previous New Seekers number one, but these songs leave a little bland feeling, even if the main song is quite a clever composition. This reminds me of a certain type of Nashville country.

 

How many confused this group with Peter, Paul & Mary:

 

That title also seemed to anticipate that of a big comeback hit for Lou Rawls two years from here.

 

The A side - I sort of remember it, but apart from the sax it sounds now like it could easily have been sung on Leonard Sachs' music hall TV programme The Good Old Days by an old bint in Mary Poppins get up doing a medley with Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do etc.
I don't mind that though - I quite like schlager and still watch TGOD occasionally with a few cans of beer.

I think there should be an intensive TV and social media anti-litter campaign like Keep Britain Tidy again, concentrating particularly on teenage schoolkids, McDonalds consumers and car drivers. The New Seekers and others did their bit, and people have got back into really bad habits. It's shocking how people like to throw their rubbish out of car windows.

BTW looking at that video, I think the semi-aroused Marty Kristian must have been up to something other than collecting litter in the bushes.

 

Yes - I really like that one!

 

It was perhaps the only U.S. Sweet single issued on RCA - albeit in "export issue" form:

This was between Bell dropping them and Capitol picking them up . . .

 

I bought that - I think mine had a rainbow/clouds RCA sleeve? It does now anyway. I used to buy ex-jukebox singles from the local newsagents.

 

It would have been one of the last with that company sleeve design . . . they altered it twice over in '74 . . .