ROCK OF AGES
It’s 50 years since a golden summer for British music. Tim Newark takes a raucous stroll down memory lane
FIFTY years ago this month, four young musicians took to the stage at the Union Hall, Imperial College London. Their lead singer was a flamboyant 23-year-old art student born in Zanzibar. He had just joined the band and suggested they change their name from Smile to Queen. He’d swapped his own name from Farrokh Bulsara to the more catchy Freddie Mercury and July 18 1970 was their very first gig.
“It was a dream come true to play on that stage,” recalled Queen’s guitarist Brian May, who had booked legendary performers such as Jimi Hendrix to play there for his fellow students. “It got packed, so it was a major stepping stone for us.”
Queen’s combination of raucous rock with witty, quirky songs would go on to make them one of the world’s best-selling bands with 300 million records shifted, including 16 number one albums and 18 chart-topping singles.
The summer of 1970 was set to be a very rich season for British rock, which dominated the airwaves on both sides of the Atlantic.
The UK hit pop single of the year was Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime. It spent seven weeks topping the charts and goaded a 22-year-old hippy singer, Marc Bolan, with a similar sounding voice, to write his first hit single. “It killed Marc that Mungo Jerry got a No 1 with his voice,” said his manager at the time.
Recorded on July 1 1970, Ride A White Swan slowly ascended the charts to reach No 2. Throughout that month, Marc Bolan worked on T Rex, the album that helped make him a star. Swapping his kaftan and acoustic guitar for feather boas and an electric one made him the harbinger of Glam Rock, racking up four number one singles and three top albums.
Whereas Bolan would be mainly a UK success before his death in a
1977 car crash, heavier and more blues-inspired
British rock bands hit a rich vein of popularity in the US. In July 1970,
Free topped the charts with their album containing the rock anthem
All Right Now that would be a No 1 hit in
20 countries, reaching
No 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Free’s previous albums had not sold very well, but Fire And Water catapulted them to the top of rock, with more than 20 million albums sold when they disbanded. Lead singer Paul Rodgers went on to front Queen after Freddie Mercury died.
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones may have opened up the US market for British pop in the 1960s but it was louder, harder rock bands that kept the door open for UK talent in 1970.
Led Zeppelin’s powerful guitar riffs, pounding beat and Robert Plant’s soaring vocals made them an almost instant hit in the US. By the time Whole Lotta Love reached No 4 in the US charts at the beginning of 1970, selling over one million copies, they were superstars.
Earning $100,000 a show and with substantial royalties coming in, 1970 was the year they enjoyed the rock star life, buying farms and mansions. They retreated to a cottage in Wales, where they worked on Led Zeppelin III, with British folk influences, which made No 1 in UK and US charts.
It was while in Wales that summer that guitarist Jimmy Page began writing the song that would become Stairway To Heaven. Robert Plant added the lyrics and though it was released a year later, it would become their most famous song, continuing to top radio lists as one of the greatest rock compositions of all time.
QUIRKY: Freddie Mercury fronting Queen
Back in the USA in August 1970, playing to packed stadiums, they were hailed as “bigger than the Beatles”. The tour culminated in two sold-out concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
IT WAS the beginning of a decade in which Led Zeppelin became a byword for rock debauchery, travelling in their own jet airplane, the Starship, and renting out entire wings of hotels where they held orgiastic parties. Drummer
John Bonham rode his motorbike along hotel corridors.
Now ranked fifth best-selling album act of all time in the US, the only other British act to do better than them was the Beatles.
Record sales have been estimated at
300 million worldwide.
Led Zeppelin’s success was an inspiration to other British rockers in 1970. Heavy metal’s Black Sabbath used to lie on the floor of their studio listening to Zep albums, with bassist Geezer Butler claiming their most famous hit, Paranoid, was just a “rip-off” of Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown. The album sold over four million copies in the US.
British rock was definitely on a roll, with Deep Purple joining the trinity of mayhem. The cover of their album Deep Purple In Rock featured the five members of the band carved in stone on what looked like Mount Rushmore, famous for its colossal portraits of US presidents. The album projected a much heavier sound and consolidated Britain’s grip on the best-selling loudest music of the era.
The golden summer of 1970 had another highlight – the Isle of Wight Festival in August, attracting 600,000 people over five days. Headliners included Jimi Hendrix – a month before he died – the Doors, the Who and Free.
The organisers had sold some tickets in advance, but overwhelmed by the numbers arriving at the poorly planned show they declared it a “free festival”. Bad weather and poor sound made it a challenge.
“It was a total disaster,” recalled singer Kris Kristofferson. “At the end of the night, they were tearing down the outer walls, setting fire to the concessions, burning their tents, shouting obscenities. Peace and love it was not.”
Despite that, Somerset farmer Michael Eavis pressed on with his own first music festival near Glastonbury on September 19. Led Zeppelin’s thunderous performance at the nearby Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music had triggered him to promise free farm milk and the Kinks at his show.
But when the Kinks realised how small the event was they declined, allowing Marc Bolan to take the top spot. Singing Ride A White Swan, the rest was music history in that gloriously riotous summer of 1970. Fifty years on we’re still listening to that golden age of British rock.