Jon Savage loathed the 1976 singles chart so he’s made an album of should-have-been hits

Word In Your Ear

John Savage joins Word In Your Ear to explain why he loathed the UK singles chart of 1976 and compiled a double album of records that should have been hits. He contrasts the

Key takeaways

• John Savage says he hated the 1976 UK singles chart because it felt patronising, repetitive, and dominated by records like Fernando, Save Your Kisses For Me, and The Combine Harvester.
• He describes Radio 1 and Top of the Pops as having a near-monopoly on popular taste, which suppressed exposure to reggae, dub, disco, punk, and new wave.
• His compilation mixes tracks he loved in 1976 with later discoveries, including Miami's Kill That Roach, Pere Ubu's Street Waves, and Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper.
• He recalls buying the Ramones on import in London around April or end of April 1976 and forming a small
• with law-course friends Julian Wernick and Jill Smith.
• Dave Lee Travis is singled out as a DJ who made him feel nauseated, especially over novelty hits like No Charge by J.J. Barrie.

Main topics

• The dismal UK singles chart of 1976
• John Savage's compilation album Jon Savage's 1976: Something Was Going To Happen
• Radio 1, Top of the Pops, and the control of popular taste

Notable quotes

it was as though everything Pop had promised was just a rotten lie. presided over by simpering Radio 1 DJ.

Conclusion

The episode is valuable as a cultural memory of 1976, showing how mainstream

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) 🎵 Speaker 3 (0:03) You're watching or listening to Word In Your Ear. Of course you are, as you're never alone with a show that alights upon everything ever invented in the art of conversation. Whether that's regrettable rock and roll footwear, daft things audiences do, epic stage names, tracks to play at wedding parties or the outer limits of Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera. Do leave a like or subscribe by going to patreon.com slash wordinyourear to discover further delights on offer. And now, get stuck into this. Speaker 2 (0:45) You're listening to a podcast from The Word. Speaker 3 (0:47) It's generally accepted that the British singles chart of 1976 was spectacularly dismal. But we're joined by an old pal who thought it was so exquisitely wretched that he has compiled a double album of great tracks that should have been hits. And that album is called John Savage's 1976, Something Was Going To Happen. John, it's very nice to see you again. Hi, Dave. Hi, Mark. Lovely to see you. Are you in Anglesey? Are you at home? I'm in Speaker 1 (1:16) Anglesey and it's sunny. It's sunny. And I've just got back from holiday, so I'm feeling good. And where was the holiday? Come on. Speaker 3 (1:25) Breed. Oh, God. Hence the turn. Anybody watching will notice that he has a deep Mediterranean turn. Speaker 1 (1:31) And thank you, EasyJet. My flight back was delayed by three hours. Of Speaker 3 (1:36) course. But did they still play that thing or is that Ryanair where when you land you all have to... No, it was too Speaker 1 (1:43) exhausting. That would Speaker 3 (1:44) be awful. So where were you living in 1976, John? From February till August, I Speaker 1 (1:52) was in a bedsit in Chester, living in total misery, doing a law course, the Law Society Part 1 at Christleton Manor, which was just outside Chester. And I was hating Chester and I was hating the law course. And in fact, I was probably hating everything. You know what it's like. You both will have been through this when, you know, we were lucky enough to go to university. And then you leave, you know, you're having a good time at university and then you leave. And it's like, what are you going to do? And the early 20s, I think they're very difficult for it, you know, for everybody because you're suddenly out in the world. and what are you going to do, what's going to help you get to where you want to go. It's tiny steps, but you have to make them. Speaker 3 (2:39) And one of the things that didn't, clearly it was 1976 UK singles chart. I'm just going to read you a little thing. I think it might be from your liner notes, actually. It says, it was as though everything Pop had promised was just a rotten lie. presided over by simpering Radio 1 DJ. I thought it was very funny, and I agreed, actually. But why did you feel so strongly about it? Because you could argue, actually, that 1975... Actually, I've just done it. 1975 was equally awful. Surely, there was Tally Savalas, The Rollers, Wizard, Whispering Grass, Shawoddy Woddy, The Osmonds, Glitter Band and Hot Chocolate. That's just a few of the hits. So why was 76 worse? Speaker 1 (3:19) Um... Brotherhood of Man, Ad Cutler and the Wurzels, Elton and Kiki, Jeans On, all of the stuff we're about to visit. And obviously there's a personal thing in there. You know, I would hear Fernando by ABBA coming to the walls of my bedsit and I just want to, I don't know, get violent or something. I really, really, really, really hated it. And this is why I was so primed for what happened later on in the year. um i mean we'd all grown up with this fabulous pop culture in the 60s and in the early 70s and rock culture and pop culture and with you know the glam years were huge fun 75 for me you mentioned the 75 was still dr feelgood who am i you know who i saw a lot during that year and who i really really liked so there still seemed to be forward motion the 76 uh yeah it was um I mean, you look at the reruns, well, you can't anymore, but when BBC was showing the reruns of Top of the Pops, you just wanted to strangle everybody concerned. It was so patronising and kind of creepy in that light entertainment way. And there were all those awful records like No Charge by J.J. Barrie. Yes. Speaker 3 (4:35) You know... They were novelty records, weren't they? Speaker 1 (4:37) Novelty records. And so something like Sailor at Last of Champagne. Yes. Fantastic. because it was actually quite a good pop record. Speaker 3 (4:46) The only one who'd strangle everybody. It's so Speaker 2 (4:49) true. Am I right in remembering that there seemed to be, at that stage, a great division between singles charts and album charts? Is that right at that point? Speaker 1 (5:00) I think you're right, David. And I think what also happened is that you had that brief period where cheap labels, reissue labels, Ronco, K-Town... Yes! got, you know, Slim Whitman's greatest hits to the top for months and months and months. And that was also a part of it. Speaker 2 (5:18) And Speaker 1 (5:18) also, I mean, I really liked, you know, unlike some of our friends, I really liked 70s American rock. And that seemed to be running out of steam. There was Desire, there was Hajira, and that was kind of it. I mean, there were good records being made. I really liked Station State. Station to station. But, you know, it was more the general feeling that you were, you know, you heard this ambient pop music that was absolutely dreadful and you couldn't, you sort of couldn't escape it like you were in Radio 1, you know. You just, you just couldn't escape it. Would you Speaker 3 (5:57) think we should, I'm going to just read out the titles of... half a dozen of these things and you can just react because some of them are kind of interesting some are absolutely fry fly I admit but Dancing Queen by ABBA Speaker 1 (6:08) yeah a banger it Speaker 3 (6:10) was a banger Fernando you've already said nauseated hideous hideous Speaker 1 (6:14) nonsense Speaker 3 (6:14) brother Speaker 3 (6:16) You see, that's the interesting thing, because nobody says that Speaker 2 (6:20) nowadays, Speaker 3 (6:20) do they? Speaker 2 (6:21) You've got to take ABBA as a whole, almost as all, haven't you? Yeah, sacrilege to say that they had Speaker 3 (6:26) good and bad points. They were just all good, yeah. Brotherhood of man, save you, because he's for me. Speaker 1 (6:31) Yeah, just nauseating for six weeks at number one. Can't Speaker 2 (6:35) we all do the actions the Brotherhood of Man used to do while singing that? Didn't it involve putting your hands up like I'm just doing now? Yeah, and weren't they wearing bib and brace kind of overalls? I seem to remember. They Speaker 1 (6:47) were wearing the sort of stuff that the PAs at Granada wore a few years ago. Speaker 3 (6:53) It was like, well, everything came with choreography, didn't it? Elton John and Kiki Dees, Don't Go Breaking My Heart. I Speaker 1 (6:58) have a confession to make. I actually danced to that record in a Chester disco once. Oh, okay. Speaker 2 (7:05) But, you Speaker 1 (7:06) know, I didn't like it, and I'm afraid I really don't like Elton's voice. I don't like Elton John at all. Speaker 3 (7:12) Okay. I Speaker 1 (7:13) don't have one Elton record. Speaker 3 (7:15) Wow. Okay, The Wurzels, The Combine Harvester, brackets, brand new key, close brackets. Speaker 1 (7:21) Just... Why? Why? Why? Why? Speaker 3 (7:27) Jeans On by David Dundas. Yeah, I listened to that this morning and Speaker 1 (7:31) I remember hearing it in my car radio outside Keele Service Station because I was driving up and down with Chester to London. And I have that, you know, you have that pinpoint memory of a certain moment with a song and that's my memory. Keele Service Station. And I remember liking it for about half a minute and then I realised it was just... I want to get on my motorbike and kind of be with you, girl, and all this kind of crap. It's awful. Speaker 3 (7:57) It is. It's smug, I think, isn't it? It is. It's an ad. And it was Speaker 1 (8:02) a Brutus ad. Very Speaker 3 (8:05) successful as an ad. And so he wrote extra words and changed it from, I pulled my Brutus jeans on to my old blue jeans on, and made a fortune. I was the number one. Wasn't someone the number one in Germany? They're huge in America. Anyway, God. Come on, two or three more. Wide-Eyed and Legless, surely good. Speaker 1 (8:20) I don't remember that at all. Speaker 3 (8:22) Do you not? Andy Fairweather. Andy Fairweather. Wide-Eyed and Legless. Speaker 1 (8:27) Gonna done it again. Blank and not helped by your rendition. Speaker 3 (8:33) I did it in a disservice. Candy Statton's Young Hearts for On Three. Yeah, Speaker 1 (8:39) it's just great. And it's a proper soul record, proper singer with a great backstory and very interesting lyrics. Speaker 2 (8:47) Of course, this was also another thing at the time. It was disco, wasn't it? Disco was the leading edge, wasn't it, at the time? It was Speaker 1 (8:56) hugely the leading edge in America. I don't think it got across to the UK as much. I think the problem was with disco in 76 for people in the UK is that you'd see it on top of the pops, danced to by Legs & Co. Or whoever, whether they were. But, of course, yes, it was. It was a great, actually, it was a wonderful period for black music in general. And it's to my eternal shame that I wasn't plugged into disco, but I was plugged into reggae and dub. Speaker 2 (9:25) Right, yes. And that is represented on your compilation. So what do you set out to do with your compilation? Speaker 1 (9:35) About half to two-thirds is stuff that I really did like back in the day. And then the other third is stuff that I found out about later and I think fits. So the Miami record, Kill That Roach, which is just fantastic, I only found about a couple of years ago. And it was in a story about a murder of the disco and they gave a bit of flavour. as to what was playing in that disco and Miami killed that roach. And so I looked it up and I thought, yeah, this is great. So it's a mixture. It's just trying to make something playable and