Birthday Number 1s: 1983 - Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)

It will be nice when doing this causes me to reassess a singer and a song, and that is what is happening with

Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home) - Paul Young

Although Paul Young did write songs, nearly all of his biggest hits were covers, and Wherever I Lay My Hat is, famously, written by the great Norman Whitfield, the great Barrett Strong and the grrrrrreat Marvin Gaye, and was originally performed by Gaye.

It was a b-side, not a hit song, and is, actually, quite an undistinguished record (though certainly the bones of a good song). Paul Young really makes something of it. Slows it down, sings the hell out of it. It struck me quite hard that despite joking about it down the years (with Morrissey and Young being amongst my go-to silly impressions), I really like his voice. In terms of all the blue-eyed soul singers coming out of Britain those days, from Boy George and George Michael to Tony Hadley and Robert Palmer, Young's is by far my favourite voice.

He didn't sustain success like some others, but he was a large deal at the time. He sang the first line of Band Aid ... doesn't get much bigger than that. I guess the fact that he wasn't a natural writer of hit songs went against him. Also, Rick Astley was a pretty straight like-for-like replacement in the public eye (but again, I think, a lesser singer).

Paul Young kept on having moderate hits in the 90s, and has stayed moderately, quietly famous and never made any kind of disgrace of himself in the public eye. I imagine if I'd seen him, say, playing mid-afternoon at Latitude in 2009, I'd have enjoyed that enormously.

There are two Paul Young song lyrics which lend themselves to adaptation - Senza una donna, I, quite nichely, change to Nkrumah Bonner, no more pain and no sorrow (Nkrumah Bonner being a West Indian cricketer), while Living in the love of the common people is endlessly adaptable, and ticks over in my head pretty much ever day ...

Going to the pub with Sir Paul McCartney ...

Getting in a fight with the boys from Busted ...

Running for the bus with Anita Brookner ...

Falling off a tree with Romano Prodi ...

you get the idea.

Anyway, good for you, Paul Young.

Birthday Number 1s: 1982 - Fame

 Number 1 on my 4th birthday was

Fame - Irene Cara

This is the summer before I first went to school, and also the summer I first went to Spain (I want to live forever!) on a plane (I want to learn how to fly! High!), though I associate Prince Charming by Adam and the Ants with that trip, not this.

Nevertheless, this song, Fame, was, as a child, as entirely engrained in me as Happy Birthday or Old McDonald Has a Farm. There was no chorus I was more familiar with in my early years. For, though I have ended up having quite mundanely male taste in all things, I was the younger brother of sisters, sisters who had friends, and so I experience an awful lot of dance routines to Flashdance, Dancing Queen, and Fame.

Fame has been a lot of things, a few actual places, a film, a TV show, a stage show, a concept, but the best of them still might be the bit where Irene Cara sings "Remember my name, fame! - I want to live forever". Though I think, weirdly, I have never actually seen the film 'Fame' or even more than a few minutes of the TV show. I think when I watched it at the time, I found it weirdly downbeat and not as fun as the song.

It is hard for me to know how influential "Fame" was as I don't remember what came before, Clearly, there was fame. There was Andy Warhol talking about fame and David Bowie singing about fame. But it does feel like "fame" as the aspirational be all and end all for talented young people, with clear pathways to achieving that, is something that has grown and grown since 'Fame'. It feels a bit like it set the template for the prevailing, genre and medium-unspecific, youth movement for the next 40 years.

Perhaps that's gibberish. 

In any case, Irene Cara died, not particularly famous, last year, and Gene Anthony Ray, who played Leroy in fame, was rumoured to have died several times when I was at school, but was still alive, but did actually die in 2003.

Fame, fame, fatal fame, can play hideous tricks on the brain. Is that the right song?

Birthday Number 1s: 1981 - Green Door

I have a choice for the first time. I can visit the Ghost Town or open the Green Door.

I choose

Green Door - Shakin' Stevens

which hit Number 1 on 1st August 1981 and stayed there for four weeks.

I've realised I simply never loved Ghost Town as much as I thought I did. I put it on many playlists but usually skip over it. I wouldn't do it justice, and it's had enough written about it. It's a great song, but I've got nothing to offer on it.

Shakin' Stevens had four Number 1s. He was the most successful singles artist of the 1980s in the UK. More so than Michael Jackson, more than Madonna. His prime lasted until about 1986, when I was eight. After that, he was not really famous. He has been, since then, about as famous as Paul Nicholas or Nick Heyward, less famous than Rick Astley or Chesney Hawkes.

Apart from Merry Christmas Everyone, I've never heard a song of his on the radio. Not on Capital, Virgin, Radio 1, 6, Magic, Heart, nowhere.

We had the cassette of Shakin' Stevens Greatest Hits and I must have listened to it a great deal in 86 and 87 because I remember pretty much all the songs on it - Hot Dog, Cry Just a Little Bit, This Ole House, Green Door etc. I haven't listened to any of them (well, maybe, This Ole House) in more than 35 years but I still remember them

I don't know why Shaky was such a phenomenon, but it is interesting that his hits were not Unchained Melody and Jailhouse Rock etc. They were somewhat more obscure songs that he could really take ownership of. It is also worth noting that he wrote some of his hits and also that he has released a couple of fairly acclaimed singer-songwriter albums in recent years, so clearly, as with Alvin Stardust, there was a pretty sharp musical sensibility underlying it all.

Green Door is a pretty good song - it was written by Bob Davie and Marvin J Moore and was a hit in 1956 - it's about some exclusive member's club the singer can't gain access to. I've just watched the video, so I guess this is the first time in 35 years I've listened to the song. Shaky was very handsome and had great moves. I'm sold. His enormous success is entirely understandable.

I remember my 3rd birthday, or rather I remember remembering it. I had a cake at my grandmother's which was a pick-up truck with a back bit full of Smarties. Can't top that, can you?

There are some decent Number 1s in 1981, including Prince Charming and Stand and Deliver. Prince Charming is the first song I was aware of, though I think that was in 1982. My memory is ... shaky. My mother is .... Stevens. 

Birthday Number 1s: 1980 - Use It Up and Wear It Out

 Use it Up and Wear it Out - Odyssey

1980 was a more uneven year in general for Number 1s than 78 and 79. Quite a few classics, but a lot more filler. It was a big year for The Jam and Blondie, but I've written enough about them, so probably for the best that Number 1 on 1st August is some of that filler, this solid disco banger by Odyssey.

I've always been quite intrigued by Odyssey, in that they left very little cultural footprint but had five pretty memorable massive hits in the UK,

I also remember seeing them on TOTP2 and they were pretty atypical, a mixture of races, styles and ages which suggested more of a novelty troupe than a chart-topping machine.

Their hits were Native New Yorker, Use it Up and Wear it Out, If You're Looking for a Way Out, Going Back to My Roots, Inside Out. They all stayed on the charts for months and went Top 6. The songs had different writers (not the group) including Sandy Linzer and Lamont Dozier. 

The main vocalists of Odyssey were the Lopez Sisters who, according to wikipedia, were all born in the early 1930s and died in the 2010s.

There have been many other acts called Odyssey, it seems, but this is the most successful.

Of those hits, all of which are pretty enjoyable, If You're Looking for a Way Out is the one that stands out to me. It's a very sad song. I remember hearing it when I was younger and thinking, that's an incongruously sad song. It seemed very grown up, in both lyric and melody. It's actually such a sad song that it was covered by Tindersticks. There can be no greater badge of honour.

Use it Up and Wear it Out is by no means such a sad song. It was covered by Pat (Sharp) and Mick (Brown). There can be no lesser badge of honour. That version was one of several singles released by the Capital DJs in aid of Help a London Child, and reached Number 22 in the charts.

Bearing in mind I heard it before the Odyssey version, it is hard to take the song seriously, but I've been listening to it this week, and the original is, needless to say, a lot better. I can understand why the young folks of the UK were dancing to it in the summer of 1980, just before they gave themselves over to The Winner Takes It All, Ashes to Ashes and Start!

Needless to say, being two, I am not yet following the charts, but that time is not that far off.

Birthday Number 1s: 1979 - I Don't Like Mondays

 I Don't Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats

The companion to Sunday Bloody Sunday in Partridgean bathetic misunderstanding, this was the second and last UK Number 1 for the Boomtown Rats, after Rat Trap. It's the song with which they're most associated and was Number 1 for 4 weeks.

Like with 1978, the Number 1s in 1979 are an impressive bunch - YMCA, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Heart of Glass, Tragedy, I Will Survive, Bright Eyes, Sunday Girl, Ring My Bell, Are Friends Electric, IDL Mondays, We Don't Talk Anymore, Cars, Message in a Bottle, Video Killed the Radio Star, then, breaking the run, One Day at a Time by Lena Martell, When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman, Walking on the Moon, Another Brick in the Wall.

There are, conservatively, eight classic singles in that list. Is I Don't Like Mondays one of them?

If you'd asked me when I was 16, I'd have said yes, definitely. I loved this song for a year or so, probably second only to Going Underground. I was starting to get into new wave/indie, and I didn't yet know what, within those categories, was cool. 

I found out this wasn't, so I dropped it.

Geldof is a very strange cultural figure, isn't he? Weirdly, he's got me thinking about Nick Cave. I've never thought about that before. Gosh ...   i heard a phrase last week ... chaos conservatives. That's them.

Having said that, until the last week or two, Cave has never had the left turn on him like it turned on Geldof in the 90s. In the NME, they gave him no inch. I remember a review of some charity gig he was involved with and it went something like "and the, god help us, Geldof appears, still convinced he wrote at least one classic song, and launches into the tired intro to I Don't Like Mondays and everyone heads to the bar", which was pretty scathing really.

I remember a couple of interviews with him where he was painted as well, quite overbearing, but as times have moved on, the celebrity interviews where the interviewer tells us "this famous person is not nice" seem fairly bullshit to me. Being rude to an interviewer really is not a definite indicator of anything. It may, possibly, be a sign someone's not nice, or it may just be that the interviewer, whose questions are by definition annoying and interfering, crosses a line you can't bear. If I was ever famous, there is absolutely no way at some point an interviewer wouldn't do a hit job saying I was dismissive and unfriendly. 

Bit of a tangent, sorry, Anyway, Geldof became a celebrity. His songs have been pretty much entirely forgotten. He wants to right that, he reformed the Rats, he did a documentary. but still, the songs haven't really been critically reassessed yet. Maybe it's too late for that.

But, after all that, let me say, I think this is a great song. Or a great Number 1. whatever. A really very weird Number 1. In sound, in subject matter. I hadn't heard it much for 20 odd years, and I started listening to it again last year, and I thought, gosh, well done. 

Maybe, in this day and age, the subject matter is seen as even more exploitative than it was at the time, maybe it's seen as a  fatuous treatment of tragedy. But it's catchy and it's a bit beautiful.

Having said all that, and this may have already happened, i'm not hip as i used to be, but it really strikes me as a very likely candidate for a Running Up that Hill-style explosion with the TikTok kids.

Anyway, it was a Number 1 on my 1st birthday, which was not a Monday.

Birthday Number 1s: 1978 - You're the One that I Want

 OK, ok, I'll do a new thing, based, somewhat, on someone else's thing. There's a great Stereogum feature (now made into a book) where a US writer called Tom Breihan writes about every single Billboard Number 1 in turn.

There's a lot of good "write about a song" blogs out there (including Bob Dylan's book, which is basically just that). This blog of mine was always best as "write about a song" blog, in its own wandering way, so I'll write "about" every UK Number 1 single on my birthday, from the day I was born, August 1st 1978.

I'll be forced to write about lots of inconsequential shit I've no real interest in, which should hopefully help expand my horizons.

I've had a look through. There are a few classics, a few stinkers, lots of hohum - also a lot of pretty good ones which are just not quite Number 1 the exact week I want, which is frustrating. If  1st August is the day the chart updated, I reserve the right to choose the old or new or both.

The start of August is, or has been, an interesting, quite specific, period for the charts, and for my awareness of them, or lack thereof, all of which will come up.

Number 1 on the day I was born is a lil number you may have heard of called

You're the One that I Want, by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John

If my reaction to this song is anything to go by, this will be an exhausting and long series of blogs, as thinking about this song has triggered a great deal, funnily enough, but I don't think this will be typical, don't worry. 

The basics - it was Number 1 for 9 weeks, before the film Grease was released, so I guess it did a lot of work in making the film a monster hit. It was, like Hopelessly Devoted to You, written especially for the film to capitalise on Olivia Newton John's popskilz. It is still one of the bestselling singles here and worldwide, of all time, just one of the biggest, best known songs that exists.

I quite like it. I've hated it a few times, mainly when it was part of a somewhat infernal 'Grease Megamix' which clogged up the charts in the 90s, but it's a fun song, with some surprisingly lovely moments when Travolta and Newton-John interact and harmonise in the run-ups to the chorus.

It is within a series of extremely impressive Number 1s from 1978, nearly all of which are still notable in some way - it's a year made for "they don't make em like they used to". Mull of Kintyre, Uptown Top Ranking, Figaro by Brotherhood of Man (ok, maybe not that), Take a Chance on Me, Wuthering Heights, Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs, Night Fever, Rivers of Babylon, YTOTIW, Three Times a Lady, Dreadlock Holiday, Summer Nights, Rat Trap, Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? (yuk), Mary's Boy Child. That run of classics carries on into 1979 as I'll get to next time.

That is pretty much all I have, specifically, to say about YTWTIW, but I have a lot of memories relating to Grease, and the song is not really separated from the film/musical. That's not really a slight, more a reflection on their shared enormity. For a song to transcend its musical source, it may often be the case that the musical itself is not a monster hit. How could anything escape from Grease?

I first saw Grease as a live show. I was maybe 11. Somewhat bizarrely, my mother took me to see the production at the school in Acton she was working. We arrived a bit late, just as poor girl was murdering, I mean murdering, 'Freddie My Love'. It is a sound that has haunted me forever.

I don't remember much else about that night. I liked the closing songs, which were, I suppose, YTWTIW and We Go Together.

But I watched the film Grease 2 before the film Grease. Quite badly thought of, it's really not that bad. Maxwell Caulfield, the thinking man's Tom Hiddleston, they say. And Michelle Pfeiffer, everyone's Michelle Pfeiffer.

I probably watched Grease the film some time in my late teens - it's ok, but, you know, I think I'd already watched Saturday Night Fever by then, and, well ... SNF is still one of my favourite films of all times - it's a whole different animal. I really think it's a bleak and beautiful masterpiece. The character Travolta plays is quite similar, a rapey narcissist, but Grease (reasonably enough considering) gives him an easy happy ending, whereas SNF is far more challenging and ambiguous. Unfair to compare, really, though one can say the songs in SNF transcend.

Anyway, I would later watch Grease another time on stage, and therein hangs the trip down memory lane.

In my last year at university (2001) there was a production. I'm going to change all the names here (most of them), cos, well just because. So, it was produced and directed by a student impresario called, let's say, Stewart P Macintosh, a somewhat comical fellow who I've remembered I shared the single most excruciating moment of my life with (and that's saying something) but also one that now makes me feel a deep affectionate melancholy.

For, I recall, at some hall of residence night out in first year at the local rugby club, I saw someone I thought was my friend Nick W (two years above me at school, and now in my hall), and I approached him from behind, put my arm around him, probably kissed him on the cheek, and said "lovely to see you dear boy" only to look in utter horror and see it was the aforementioned Stewart P Macintosh (in no way a friend or even really acquaintance, but also a skinny guy who wore glasses), for whom this moment was clearly just as excruciating, but, bless him, he tried to style it out "All right, mate, so you're playing football for the Atholl, yeah? Cool cool".

 I don't think the mere words can do the whole thing justice, especially if you know my general aversion to all physical contact, but it has reminded me about Nick, that great man he was, and how present he was in so much of my life for a few years, even though we were never per se best buddies, how entirely at ease he put me and other people (I' never have dreamed about being so overtly affectionate with most people), and, of course, that's made me really sad. So thanks, Grease, in a roundabout way.

So, yeah, back to last year ... Grease. It was in the last term, so I really associate it with finals and all that. Because Prince William was coming to St As the following year, Channel 4 had the wise idea of making a documentary about the place, and gave a video camera to a handful of students to chronicle a period of their lives. One of them went to my friend Mike, who was playing Danny Zuko in Grease.

Sandy was played by a girl in my Latin class called, let's say, Beryl, and Kenickie was played by Mike's old school buddy, now a pretty famous TV actor, let's say Steve Reeves.

There was also an American kid in the cast, playing one of the T-Birds, called, let's say, Demon. Demon wasn't great.

There was a party at Mike's flat (I think it was the last big party before exams) and it featured heavily in the doc, cut and edited to make it look like some bacchanalian hooha, which it really wasn't, though it was a good party. But, anyway, I remember watching the doc, which screened in September after graduation, at home, and my mum hovering in the doorway, utterly appalled by what she was seeing and saying things like "well, I don't know why i sent you there", "is that what the money pays for" and i think i pulled my "chill out, i got a first" card and, actually, the weird and wonderful realisation i've had is that i think that's the last time I've ever really got cross with my mother, or vice versa. The 23 years previous, it was pretty regular, but we've done pretty well in the 22 years as fellow adults, i reckon ...

What else? Grease was good. Mike was good, Steve Reeves was good, Grease is good. There was a cast party, which we tried to rock up at, but I remember Stewart P turning us away at the door saying "sorry, guys, this is cast only" which is entirely fair enough, though didn't seem so at the time.

I promise there won't be quite so much in future entries, but there we go, that's the Number 1 song on the day I was born.