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.