Easter '75

 

There's an annoyingly self-conscious band that calls itself ‘The 1975’. I’ve no interest in them whatsoever apart from their choice of name. What were they thinking? That 1975 was somehow the coolest year in history? A high watermark in pop music? None of them is old enough to have been there. I can attest to the fact that 1975 was just another year, mostly unremarkable, memorable only for a notable spell of hot weather during the summer, which was instantly eclipsed the following year. And as for the state of popular music... if you want proof, let my diary take you back to Easter of half a century ago...

It was a little over fifty years ago this weekend, because by the middle of April 1975, Easter was well out of the way, the holiday having fallen in the last week of March. And didn’t we know it – the weather had been more like Christmas than Easter, my diary for Thursday 27 March recording that ‘it snows, and how!’ The following day, Good Friday, I went down with a dose of the flu, brought on by the unseasonable conditions. It didn’t stop me from watching Thunderbirds, though – the episode Lord Parker’s ‘Oliday was broadcast by ATV at 10.30 that morning, affording my first ever opportunity to see the show in colour.

Other televisual ‘treats’ during the ‘75 Easter holidays included a Tintin serial, The Secret of the Unicorn, broadcast in daily episodes on BBC1. This was a decidedly unimaginative choice on the part of the schedulers, as the same serial had been shown during the Easter break the previous year. Why couldn’t we have had The Calculus Case or, better still, Objective Moon? Also being repeated in the morning schedule was the classic Yugoslavian/German drama White Horses, but we turned off even before the classic theme song had got started.

On Saturday, Dr. Who’s latest serial, Genesis of the Daleks, had reached its fourth episode. One is never aware at the time of watching that a particular piece of television will ultimately become iconic – back then it was just another Dr. Who serial, but ultimately it was a turning point in the mythology of Terry Nation’s memorable pepperpots. I was getting acclimatised to Tom Baker’s Doctor by this time, though he would never surpass Jon Pertwee in my estimation. Two weeks later, he would give us his famous ‘have I that right?’ speech as he contemplated the moral implications of committing genocide on the Daleks.

The same day, I’d got myself the brand new Target paperback Dr. Who and the Cybermen, adapted from the Troughton era serial The Moonbase, and the first story from his era that I experienced in any format. I would begin reading it the following week.

The weather remained wintry: on Easter Sunday, a scheduled race meeting was cancelled, and BBC1 plugged the gap by showing the Star Trek episode The Deadly Years. At the age of 14, seeing Kirk and co turn old and grey was kind of grimly entertaining – fifty years on, and looking as if I’ve recently set foot on Gamma Hydra 2 myself (sorry, Gamma Hydra 4), it’s not quite such fun any more. Was it even right of the series to present such a negative portrait of ageing?

Easter, of course, meant chocolate eggs. This year’s were a Terry’s All Gold – which wasn’t entirely to my liking comprising as it did of dark chocolate – and a Mackintoshes ‘Reward’. On top of that, I received an LP as an additional Easter present, 10cc’s latest, The Original Soundtrack. One of its cuts (‘Life is a Ministrone’) was currently in the top 20, whilst another, ‘I’m Not in Love’, would provide the band with a number one hit in the summer.

It being a Sunday, we listened to the Top 40 rundown on Radio 2, broadcast simultaneously with Radio 1, but having the added advantage of stereo. Did I say ‘advantage’? Not with the Bay City Rollers sitting at the top of the charts with ‘Bye, Bye Baby’. This was, of course, the high watermark of ‘Rollermania’. At number ten, we find The Goodies, on their way down from last week’s number 8 with ‘The Funky Gibbon’. According to my diary, I actually ‘did’ the Funky Gibbon with my mate Dave Hanks when he visited on Wednesday 2 April. Our mum had an old pair of furry gloves which came in very handy for throwing those Graeme Garden shapes… 

The Cricklewood trio were also in the middle of a brand new series on BBC1, and Easter Monday saw them striking oil beneath the Jollyrock lighthouse… and catching mumps in the process. The same evening brought a repeat broadcast of Ronnie Barker’s saucy wordless comedy Futtocks End, which had been broadcast back at Christmas.

The Goodies weren’t the only TV stars making records back in 1975: Telly Savalas had taken his, er, ‘reading’ of Bread’s ‘If’ to number one earlier in the month and was now slowly on his way down the charts. 

Comedy pop groups were nothing new, of course, and in the mid-70s The Monkees were hardly ever off the screen, despite their sound and image being almost a decade out of date. BBC1 was running episodes on Wednesday evenings at 4.50, and my diary confirms that we were tuned in on 2 April. Later the same evening, the Wednesday Film was Norman Wisdom’s 1963 comedy A Stitch in Time. Are you going to shout ‘Mr. GRIMSDAAAAALE!’ or shall I?

On the Thursday after Easter, our Uncle Cliff called round with some £2 WH Smiths tokens, in place of Easter eggs. I spent mine the following day on a copy of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album from WH Smiths’ record department in Lichfield.

The Easter holidays continued into the following week, but on Monday 7 April, the flu returned and this time I was packed off to bed: ‘miss blasted Goodies’ I grumbled in my diary – the episode was an ancient Roman escapade involving Roy Kinnear. The following day, though still confined to bed, I was able to catch the new chart rundown on my tiny transistor radio and, surprise, The Goodies were on their way back up the charts again, reaching an impressive number four. Otherwise, I passed the time in drawing, and reading some Horror magazines: World of Horror was a British effort rather like a professionally produced fanzine, that dabbled occasionally in science fiction – I’d been drawn to it by a cover featuring Mr. Spock. The following day, I ploughed through a pile of my brother’s Countdown and TV Action comics. Reading old comics was (and still is) the best thing about being laid up in bed…

Bedside reading, 1975 style: World of Horror and TV Action

By Thursday 10 April, I was well enough to get up and watch TV for the first time since the weekend. I packed in a lot of viewing that evening: Tomorrow’s World, Top of the Pops, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served, and the first in a repeat run of Thames Television’s pre-Sweeney crime drama Special Branch.

The new school term began on Tuesday 15 April. On the last day of the holiday, I picked up another new Dr. Who paperback – The Giant Robot – and a special packet of Weetabix containing some cut-out cardboard Dr. Who figures, now highly collectable (and still in my possession).

And that was Easter over and done with. It was cold, we watched some television, we played a few records. Some of us did ‘The Funky Gibbon’. At no time did we believe we were participating in an epoch-making moment in history. To ‘the 1975’ I have only this message: if you were looking for musical cool, you picked the wrong year...