An Evening Spent in 1974

 

I’ve spent a lot of time in this blog trying to give an impression of how it felt to watch television in the 1960s and 70s. So when the BBC offers up a whole two hours of Saturday night viewing from fifty years ago, you can be sure I’ll be tuned in. Thus it was that, last night, I saw Abba win the Eurovision Song Contest, fifty years and one day on from the original broadcast.

My 1974 Letts’ Schoolboys’ Diary makes no mention of it, but I certainly sat and watched that evening’s broadcast live from the Dome in Brighton. Our television was still a black and white set, so this time around I had the added bonus of colour. Which, on the whole, didn’t add a great deal to the proceedings.

Compared to the garish spectacles we see today, the 1974 contest was comparatively austere in its staging, although it looked pretty swish to us at the time. The actual presentation, however, was mired in 1950s technology: the broadcast kicked off with a creaky rostrum camera montage of historic images of Brighton, with some perfunctory CSI captions overlaid. Across this we heard the voice of sports commentator David Vine giving us some historical and cultural context. Vine, unseen, would provide similar introductions to each of the acts, who had been pre-filmed on 16mm and caught on VT during rehearsals. Vine’s role would later, and more memorably, be filled by Terry Wogan.

The contest itself was presented by Katie Boyle, clocking up her third appearance as hostess of the event. With so much experience under her belt, one might have expected a slicker presentation, but she was quite hesitant and fumbling at times, as though overwhelmed by the knowledge that this live broadcast was being watched by a sizeable chunk of the planet. Even Koreans were tuned in, as David Vine assured us.

There was minimal ballyhoo: each act was briefly introduced by the aforementioned film clips, with a few of them making feeble attempts to look wacky. This year’s line-up included several groups, where former years had been dominated by solo performers or duos. Once the artistes had all performed their songs – accompanied, in most cases, by Ronnie Hazelhurst’s orchestra – the brief interregnum before the voting was filled, somewhat bizzarely, by a montage of songs by The Wombles. That’s a montage as in two songs. No Wombles band appeared: instead, viewers were shown a tatty looking 16mm film clip showing the costumed characters larking around in Brighton. At the end of this tawdry item, a sole costumed Womble wandered onto the stage with a placard urging viewers to vote for the Wombles. Was this really the best home-grown entertainment that Britain could offer up? Admittedly, the pop charts were a little odd during 1974, with Glam Rock not quite dead in the water, and nothing else ready to take its place. But really, the Wombles? If anything, this left me realising how much I hated the ‘band’, if you can dignify a bunch of session musicians in furry suits with such a title.

How about the songs themselves? On the whole, they were of a far superior standard to the formulaic computerised tosh that’s churned out today, although that’s not to say they weren’t without their own moments of cliché. Over the past couple of decades, the focus has shifted away from the craft of songwriting and onto performance, which has entirely defeated the original objective of the contest. Back in 1974, songwriting was still the order of the day, and while there were a few risible outfits on display (Yugoslavia’s ‘Korni Grupa’ in shiny coloured trousers), the emphasis was on putting across the song. The Netherlands’ act included a couple of puppet characters in a kind of musical box, which certainly set them apart, but on the whole, the artistes’ appearance hardly screamed out 1970s. Abba, of course, had their platform boots and glittery costumes which were about two years out of date over here, and visually stood out amongst a rather lacklustre bunch. Wooden spoon for the least sartorial effort went to Israel’s ‘Poogy’ group, who appeared in sleeveless charity shop style pullovers. Their song, a dismal piece of watered-down folk-rock was also instantly forgettable.

Ah yes, the songs. That was the whole point, wasn’t it. On the whole, there was nothing particularly offensive on offer, aside from a tendency towards the clichéd ‘oompah’ stylings that had come to dominate Euro pop since Sandie Shaw’s ‘Puppet on a String’. Britain’s entry was no exception. ‘Long Live Love’ even appropriated the title of a completely different Sandie Shaw hit, but wedded it to a dreary plodder with an inevitable ‘oompah’ chorus. Olivia Newton John did the honours, managing a surprising fourth place with this lacklustre effort. And what of our fellow nations?

Finland’s Carita performed ‘Keep Me Warm’ in English, an ambitious song, over orchestrated, that might have been a demo for a Bond movie. Spain offered a flamenco-style song, performed by a kind of Tom Adams lookalike, sounding like the soundtrack to a Costa Brava package tour. Norway’s effort sounded suspiciously like Stevie Wonder’s ‘For Once in My Life’, and was again delivered in English. Greece gave us a ‘la-la-la’ intro, one of several this evening, and a bouzouki player straight from the nearest cheese shop. The song was generic and bland. Israel’s Poogy had the aforementioned pullovers and a British Baldwin 12-string guitar. There were five vocalists, none of whom appeared to be more important than the others. Unlike almost every other entrant, they performed without the orchestral assistance of Mr. Hazelhurst et al.

Yugoslavia had a Matt Berry lookalike handling lead vocals at the head of a bunch who resembled Open University presenters. Theirs was definitely not a crowd pleaser, and stylistically all over the place, drawing one of the most muted responses of the evening from the audience.

As for Sweden, it’s hard to view Abba’s performance without the benefit of hindsight, but even ignoring what we now know, theirs was clearly the outstanding entry of the year. ‘Waterloo’ was a properly crafted pop song with hooks and a singalong melody that managed to avoid the cliché traps that caught out lesser performers. I remembered their conductor coming on dressed as Napoleon, a gimmick that was entirely unnecessary. Back in 1974, with no idea of who Abba might be, their entry stood out as one of the only memorable numbers in the whole contest, and on the night, I was unable to decide between this and the Netherlands’ entry ‘I See a Star’, which was memorable but fell into the ‘oompah chorus’ elephant trap.

For Luxembourg, former Joe Meek and Barry Gray collaborator Charles Blackwell conducted Anglo-German singer Ireen Sheer who delivered a semi-uptempo ballad with (sigh) yet another oompah chorus. Better dig that trap a bit deeper…

Monaco gave us an Englebert by numbers effort, delivered by a chap in a glittery jacket. A clichéd ballad with French lyrics. Belgium trotted out more of the same, an unmemorable ballad with pop overtones and a clumsy arrangement. Singer Jaques Hustin had the widest shirt collars of the evening. He was followed by the Netherlands’ effort ‘I See a Star’, delivered by ‘Mouth and MacNeal’, an established act who had scored minor hits in America. ‘Mouth’, a chunky beardy guy in sunglasses, tried a little too hard to be wacky, and there were of course, the aforementioned puppets. There’s no denying that this song was one of the major ‘earworms’ of the evening, possibly even outshining Abba in that respect, but the ‘oompah’ chorus probably counted against it. The contest was clearly a shoot-out between these guys and Abba as far as I could see, although it was ultimately Italy who came closest to unseating the Swedes. M&M came a creditable third, and the song gave them a hit in several European territories including Britain where it reached number eight in the charts. Even before last night’s repeat, I could still remember it after fifty years.

Ireland were not on great form: Tina Reynolds looked rather dowdy and old fashioned in spite of her daring ‘cross your heart’ outfit, styled to reflect the song’s title. The lyrics, however, were the worst of the evening, including the line ‘cross your heart and hope to die.’ Given the then current situation in Ireland, this was not, perhaps, the greatest sentiment to have put across.

Germany’s Cindy and Bert performed a drearily unimaginative ballad that sounded like two songs stuck together, and not very well at that. The judges evidently thought so too, with the song finishing in equal last place alongside Norway, Portugal and Switzerland. The Swiss also opted for a dull ballad, following the clichéd formula of minor key verse building to a big major key chorus, but the melody didn’t linger. Singer Piera Martell at least had a decent voice.

Portgual gave us an uptempo ballad in a kind of Julio Iglesias style, but the singer looked like he’d come to audit the books. This was the kind of song that Tom Jones would have rejected.

Finishing off the evening (there was no French entry this year), we had Italy, whose entry ‘Si’ came hotly tipped by David Vine, possibly on account of singer Gigliola Cinquetti being one of the most photogenic performers of the evening. The song itself, though popular with the judges, struck me as being over complicated, with too many changes of mood, and the singer’s voice struggled to cut through in some of the quieter passages.

And with that, we were done. Once the Wombles had embarrassed the entire British music industry, it was time for the voting. Technically, this was the least impressive part of the evening, with Katie Boyle looking nervous and making a few flubs as she attempted to make contact with the various juries. This entire section was marred by cross talk from another station, with a foreign announcer’s voice interjecting and making it hard to hear what Katie was saying. This was either a technical error on the night, or the surviving video tape has been compiled from two different sources.

Abba led from the start, and only Italy came close to knocking them off the top spot. There was an error at one point when the scoreboard showed Ireland with 20 points against Sweden’s 19, but someone had slotted in the wrong digit and their actual score was just 10. The board was of the most rudimentary design, with numbers clearly being pushed into the slots by hand, not unlike the kind of thing one might see at a cricket pitch. In the end, the top three places were taken by Abba, of course, Italy and The Netherlands.

On the night, I’m not sure if I was patriotically rooting for the UK, but I remember being sure that the two best efforts had come from Sweden and the Netherlands. The big question, in retrospect, is what might have become of Abba if they hadn’t won? A second place would almost certainly have guaranteed them a chart release in most of the participating countries, and the group had the songwriting talent to consolidate on this unexpected success. As a comparison, consider the Netherlands, whose entry did well on several European charts, following which no more was heard from them. Might this have been the fate of Abba in an alternate scenario?

It’s rare to see such a piece of archival television offered up wholesale as opposed to being reduced to a clipshow, and as an example of BBC television staging and technique, it makes for interesting viewing, whatever you might think of the contest itself. Obviously, it was chosen for repeat on account of Abba, but if the BBC still hold tape copies, I’d happily sit through a few more examples from the same era, in preference to the tat-fest we’ll be served up in a few weeks.

Oh… and I still can’t get ‘I See a Star’ out of my head…