Spirit of '76

Wings at the Speed of Sound... the sleeve was inescapable in record shops during 1976, and he album yielded the best song of the summer...

For those of a certain age, the current heatwave must be rekindling memories of the last time the UK enjoyed such a prolonged spell of hot, sunny weather. The heatwave of 1976 followed an unusually dry winter and spring, and a drought was soon declared, with the public urged to save water and the eventual appointment of a ‘Minister for Drought’, Dennis Howell (Wikipedia’s entry on Howell claims, risibly, that he was ‘ordered’ by Number 10 to perform a rain dance on behalf of the nation).

May 1976 saw mostly dry weather extending from the Midlands southwards, but it wasn’t until the end of June that the heatwave began in earnest. Even then, it wasn’t unbroken sunshine for the whole of the UK: my diary reports that it rained heavily in west Wales (where we were holidaying) on 19 July, and there were scattered thunderstorms around mid-month. But these events were mere blips in the long-term weather pattern, which remained hot and sunny until the very end of August.

Music always has the power to evoke memories of a particular moment in time, and there were plenty of chart hits that summer that would go on to become recognised pop classics: Abba’s Dancing Queen, Thin Lizzie’s The Boys Are Back in Town, Bryan Ferry’s Let’s Stick Together and, with an unbroken six weeks at number one, Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, which attained the top spot on 3 July. Yet for me, none of those singles truly evokes the spirit of the summer of ’76; they’ve lost their power of association through endless replay on daytime radio, compilations, and so forth. I’m more interested in those tracks that can instantly conjur up the memory of blisteringly hot days, parched lawns, curtains closed against the extreme heat and light...

Two of the first songs that lodged in my mind as being inextricably linked to that summer are Peter Frampton’s Show Me The Way and Wings’ Silly Love Songs, both of which were in the charts at the end of June when the heatwave got started. Another single from that same moment in time, then on its way down the charts, was Robin Sarstedt’s nostalgic cover version of Hoagy Carmichael’s My Resistance is Low. What’s notable about this track, if not the other pair, is its rarity as an item on radio playlists down the decades. The less one hears a particular track, the more it retains its original association with the moment in time at which it was first encountered. This phenomenon is especially true of one of the songs that, even at the time, seemed to embody the very essence of the long, hot summer of 1976: The Starland Vocal Band (whoever they may have been), making their sole incursion on the UK charts with the decidedly suggestive Afternoon Delight. The track didn’t do notably well on the charts, reaching a top position of just 18, but it clung on tenaciously to the lower reaches of the 20 and 30. I can’t have heard it that many times while it was out – I dimly recollect a solitary appearance (via film) on Top of the Pops – and when it finally exited the chart in mid October, it vanished into an airplay oblivion that would last for decades. The song was featured on the early 2000s themed compilation Guilty Pleasures, and if ever there was a musical guilty pleasure then Afternoon Delight was it (to say nothing of the guilty pleasure to which the lyrics referred).

This long absence goes some way to account for the reason why I associate the song with that long, hot summer, but it’s not the entire explanation. Even while it was still in the charts, Afternoon Delight felt somehow like part of the zeitgeist. The lush harmonies, 12-string guitar and synth washes just seemed like the way summer ’76 ought to sound. Aged 15, I didn’t fully appreciate how risqué the lyrics were; the title (derived from a restaurant menu) subequently passed into the language as shorthand for daytime sex, but the expression had never been used in that sense prior to the record’s release: had it been as familiar a term as it is now, the BBC might have found grounds to take offence...

The time it takes to record and release a single tends to mitigate against topical cash-ins, and although one might expect the charts of a long, hot summer to be packed with songs about heatwaves, love in the sun, or whatever, this was largely not the case. In fact, there appears to have been only one blatant musical attempt to cash in on the 1976 heatwave, and it came in the form of Cockney Rebel’s hastily-released cover version of The Beatles’ Here Comes The Sun, which entered the charts at the end of July, just in time to take advantage of the last few weeks of warm, sunny weather. For me, though, it was a failed attempt. I remember the track, but it seemed too calculated a move, and although it still retains some dimly nostalgic associations, its power is greatly diminished when compared with the other songs I’ve mentioned here.

The Isley Brothers were far removed from the effects of the British heatwave, yet their late summer single Harvest for the World (its release clearly timed with the season in mind) feels much more a product of the ‘76 summer than Steve Harley’s cash-in. It’s arguably a better song in any case (I’ve never been a huge fan of Here Comes The Sun, even in its original incarnation), and it slotted neatly into the zeitgeist in much the same way that Afternoon Delight had done – albeit with considerably greater chart success.

As previously mentioned, the number one slot was effectively annexed for the summer of ’76 by the pairing of Elton John and Kiki Dee with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, a song whose Philly soul aspirations somehow left me cold (and not in the welcome way that a summer breeze or an ice cream might have done). In fact, I soon tired of hearing it, and its mooring at number one began to feel as relentless as the heat baking the British landscape. It’s never been far from the average oldies playlist ever since, and, accordingly, any nostalgic power it might have evoked merely by association has long since dwindled to naught for me. In fact, it was the song kept off the top spot by Elton and Kiki’s endeavours that then, as now, felt to me like the absolute essence of that memorable hot summer.

The first piano chord is enough to evoke that Pavlovian response: a warm, B flat major seventh that feels like the door opening on a sun-soaked landscape. Not so much Let’Em In as let ’em out into the sunshine... It was, of course, Macca’s big single of the summer, following hard on the heels of the aforementioned Silly Love Songs, both tracks culled from the album Wings at the Speed of Sound, which had been released in March of the same year.

Macca had managed the same summer association thing (for me, at any rate), the previous year, when the single Listen to What the Man Said coincided with a long spell of hot weather that would probably have lingered in the popular imagination had it not been eclipsed by the heatwave of ’76. But Let’Em In, with its lazy, somnolent rhythm, somehow felt like the musical equivalent of the heady summer weather, the production conjuring up images of a small marching band flagging as it parades down a blindingly bright street in the relentless heat. Let’Em In charted on 7 August, reached number 2 on the 28^th (where it remained for three weeks), and finally slipped out of the top 40 in October. If I had to pick one single to stand for the summer of 1976, this would be the one. I’d venture to suggest it’s not Paul McCartney’s greatest ever composition, an opinion which I sure few would disagree with, although it does manage to embody a uniquely soulful sound which Macca would never recapture, and it was hugely popular at the time, on both sides of the Atlantic. I’ve no idea whether anyone else felt the same way about it as I did, but after weeks of relentless heat, a slow, plodding tune like this just seemed to fit.

Sadly, the same will not be true of the summer of 2018, whether or not it eventually takes its place in the record books. Pop music, as I’ve stated elsewhere (and will go on stating) has been a spent cultural force for nigh on two decades now. There’s nowhere left to go that hasn’t already been thoroughly explored by earlier and more talent-led endeavours, no seam of undiscovered gold waiting to be mined. Who can remember the charts of a decade ago? Not me, that’s for sure. When did you last see a retrospective of the 2000s pop scene on TV? Maybe, for those still coming to the ruins of pop music for the first time, there are singles amongst today’s crop of dross that will lodge in their memories the way the music of the 60s and 70s has lodged in those of my generation. But frankly, I think the memory of a ginger semi-bearded prat playing crap ballads on a rubbish toy guitar is one that will be best, and ultimately, forgotten. History will eclipse his like, for the greats of the past will continue to cast their shadow over all who follow in their footsteps. Did you ever hear of a kid who was mad about the mammalian life of the Pleistocene period? Thought not. But all kids love dinosaurs, ensuring that dinosaurs will be popular forever. And, like the dinosaurs (very much like them in some cases), the artists and songs that emerged in the first few decades of pop music continue to loom larger in the memory than anything that came after.

Those of us who remember the summer of 1976 will most likely not be around when the next long, hot summer rolls into view, such events tending to occur only once every forty or fifty years. But I can say without fear of contradiction that, however distant in time that next peerless summer might be, it’ll be the hits of 1976 that people look back to, and not the dismal efforts of 2018.