THIS WEEK IN 1973
1 Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree Dawn featuring Tony Orlando
2 Hello! Hello! I’m Back Again Gary Glitter
3 Get Down Gilbert O’Sullivan
4 Tweedle Dee Little Jimmy Osmond
5 I’m A Clown/Some Kind of Summer David Cassidy 6 The Twelfth Of Never Donny Osmond
7 Power To All Our Friends Cliff Richard
8 Driver-In Saturday David Bowie
9 Never Never Never Shirley Bassey
10 Pyjamarama Roxy Music ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon…’ is told from the point of view of someone coming home on a bus after he has ‘done his time’. Unsure of the kind of welcome he’ll receive, he asks his love interest to tie a yellow ribbon around an oak tree if she wants him back. When he arrives, he can’t bare to look, so asks the bus driver to check – and gets a cheer from the entire bus as not one but 100 yellow ribbons are tied round the old oak tree.
The song has, reputedly, been recorded over a thousand times.
Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby both recorded versions, and Dean Martin sang it in a TV special.
Ringo Starr was famously first offered the song, but one of his record company bosses turned it down, telling the song’s writers,
Irwin Levine and Larry Brown, that it was ‘ridiculous’ and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Ridiculous or not, ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon…’ was one of the world’s biggest selling songs in 1973 and, to date, has sold over six million copies. Number one in the US for four consecutive weeks, it also gave Tony Orlando and Dawn a chartopping hit in the UK, Ireland and many other countries.
• Did you know… Roxy Music’s ‘Pyjamarama’ was the inspiration behind the name of one of the most successful girl groups of all time, Bananarama. When looking for a name, the trio thought ‘Banana’ sounded tropical. The rest came from Sara
Dallin, a big fan of Roxy Music, who looked through their song titles and found ‘Pyjamarama’.
• Our chart from 1973 has a rare example of siblings charting in the top ten in the same week. Donny Osmond was in the middle of a run of number ones with his cover of the old Johnny Mathis hit ‘The Twelfth of Never’, while youngest brother Jimmy was back in the top five with a follow-up to his only UK solo No. 1, ‘Long Haired Lover From Liverpool’.