The Seventies Danny Baker's Rockin' Decades

"Time is a concept by which we measure our pain," said John Lennon.

And you know what? It is.

Time is also a concept by which we file our music,

in decades, to be precise.

Oh, I know what the smart set say.

They say decades are a specious concept,

which is why you won't be hearing from

any of the smart set on this programme.

Decades, musically at least, really do exist.

Over the next three programmes, I and three other rock geologists

intend to look back over three great rock music decades,

the '70s, the '80s, and the '90s -

30 years in which British rock was up there leading the world,

just like British Steel, British cars, British TV.

"Five years, that's all we've got," famously shrieked David Bowie.

Not tonight, Dave, we've got 10, 10 years that shook the world -

the 1970s.

MUSIC: "Evil Woman" by ELO

Trust me, viewers, British rock in the '70s

was a marvellous, mixed-up, shook-up world.

Nobody seemed to have a clue what was going on, really.

Well, I've dragooned some fellow foot soldiers from the '70s

to better make sense of the decade that shrugged off its 1960s hangover

to take up with art rockers, heavy rockers, pointy head pixies,

before having an almighty punch-up with punk.

# I've got a feeling inside of me... #

Was that what really happened in the '70s, though?

The bass player from Joy Division,

the inspirational guitarist from The Slits,

and a man who wrote for Rolling Stone, met the Velvet Underground

and got to number 49 in the UK charts, just might have the answer.

Joining me on this endeavour are a woman who intimidated me

the first time I met her and continues to do so.

It may be a crush! It's too late to say so.

There's Viv Albertine, formerly of The Slits,

but a musician all round in her own right,

on this side, that devil, devil, devil of a Mancunian on bass...

well, air bass tonight, thankfully, perhaps, Peter Hook,

and on this side, now formally known as Jet Bronx, but for ever

in my opinion, rather tragically, the Pete Best of MasterChef.

There's Loyd Grossman. That's just the bona fides.

I'd like each of you to start this off.

Start with you, Viv, tell us the first gig you ever went to

and I hate the word gig, it's a concert.

If you can even remember how much you paid for it, what was it?

I don't remember how much I paid,

I remember it was the Edgar Broughton Band,

whose song was Out Demons Out. It was the first live band I'd ever seen.

I sat in the front row in a little wooden chair, like a church chair.

It was at the country club in Belsize Park,

-just behind the tube station.

-Wow!

I was with a couple of older boys. And it was an absolute racket.

I couldn't differentiate between the sounds

because I was used to hearing produced music on a record,

and suddenly, I just had these speakers right in front of me,

I was in the front row. Couldn't make head nor tail of it.

Given the glory period five or six years later,

-they really were anarchic.

-They really were a punk band.

Not in a good way. Peter, the first concert you ever attended.

The first live band I ever saw were a band called Smithy,

which was led by Mike Sweeney,

then they became the Salford Jets once we all got to punk,

and I paid 30p as part of the youth club that I went to.

And was it like seeing Elvis Presley in '53 at a Tennessee hayride?

No, they were glam rock at the time. They were OK.

It was the first live band I'd ever seen. It was interesting for that.

Loyd, the first band you saw?

Well, the first band I saw was Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians,

in the late 1950s!

But the first rock gig, as we musos say, I ever went to

-was The Kingsmen.

-Oh, all right.

-Of Louie Louie fame.

-Um...1965?

-Wow, well done.

Yeah, I got in for nothing because I carried someone's amp.

-And did it change your life?

-Yeah!

-Yeah.

I still don't know what the lyrics to Louie Louie mean,

but, yeah, it changed my life.

Did he want you to carry his amp, or were you...?

I was trying to carry it away from the gate!

I was going to say,

carrying it in Steve Jones at the Sex Pistols kind of way.

Time to time travel.

If the 1960s proved one thing, it was that rock was hugely popular,

but still shambolic.

At the turn of the decade, the '70s promised great things,

however, a global audience now stared at musicians and said,

"OK, we've heard your pop, we've heard your psychedelia.

"What else can you do?"

MUSIC: "Baba O'Riley" by The Who

1970 -

and as this exciting underground futurescape dawned,

everyone seemed, well, a little confused.

After the astonishing decade preceding it,

you'd expect 1970 to be a vintage year for rock.

Yet, this was the year the Beatles broke up,

leaving rock music leaderless...

..and then Jimi Hendrix choked to death in London,

not long after headlining the Isle of Wight Festival.

Meanwhile, music journalists were getting worried that 30

might be too old to rock.

So who would be the first new band of the decade to fill the vacuum?

# In the summertime, when the weather is hot... #

Answer - jug and banjo-toting Mungo Jerry,

and, of course, no-one in the group was actually called Jerry, or Mungo!

# Instant karma's gonna get you... #

Meanwhile, the former Beatles themselves

were choosing alternative lifestyles.

George immersed himself in gnome chic...

..John was making a statement with his new haircut,

Paul took up sheep-wrangling in Scotland,

and Ringo found Jesus.

Well, the carpentry side, anyway.

-How long have you been designing furniture now?

-About 18 months.

MUSIC: "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield

In the meantime, 2,630,000 Brits

were still waiting around for 1973,

and the release of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.

Eventually, it was decided that the decade

had better get its act together, and start.

In 1971, a torrent of absolutely fantastic albums arrived.

Sticky Fingers, Hunky Dory, Who's Next, Led Zeppelin IV,

and John Martyn's Bless The Weather.

And those were just the British releases.

Having just turned 14, I took all this booming creativity for granted.

In fact, I secretly felt partially responsible.

Dozens of sounds and sights were busy being born.

Who really knew what was going on?

Was it panto rock?

Was it pants rock? Weird beard rock?

Space rock? Double denim rock?

Deutsche rock?

Plus, whatever it was that Bowie had decided to become that week.

It was clear that the '70s would be defined by

a wonderfully confusing creative chaos.

Would this be as good as rock would ever get?

# Friends say it's fine... #

People don't believe in decades, per se,

they think it's a media invention.

But I think there was a definite feeling

that coming out of the 1960s, Loyd,

1970 had to prove itself.

What do you remember about going into that decade, musically?

Well, I think musically what was most interesting was

the fact that there was such a great variety of stuff.

-Right off the bat?

-Right off the bat.

I mean, from the time of the early '60s, for example,

a lot of American bands were rediscovering country and western music.

That was really interesting.

A lot of the British bands were going back to folk roots.

Psychedelia was still hanging around.

Prog was just bubbling under.

And of course, you know, one was overwhelmed by heavy music,

by Led Zeppelin, by blues-based stuff like Fleetwood Mac.

So there was a tremendous variety going on.

And that defies the idea that, you know, 1970s,

suddenly everything changed, music became very slick and bland

and then we just waited around for punk, which didn't happen.

It's an odd thing to think that it was only seven years

-between Woodstock and the Pistols.

-Yeah.

And plenty happened in that time.

And it seemed to be...

there's a lot of talk about being in tribes and stuff.

I don't remember that, I bought all kinds of stuff. How was it for you?

Yeah, I think the '70s were very disparate,

and there were lots of different things going on. People struggling.

I think what was bad about the early '70s is it was very derivative.

Especially English music.

You know, you had the sort of pub rock which I was very involved in

cos I was working at Dingwalls as a barmaid.

So there's pub rock, Kilburn And The High Roads,

Dr Feelgood, who were using the blues.

And then there was, like, soft soul or white soul,

and you got The Average White Band, Jess Roden, Kokomo.

They were all great bands

but they were not inherently and honestly English.

They didn't do that thing that needed to be done to make music your own.

I think in '70 and '71, there was...

because there were groups, whether it was Yes or Free,

I hadn't heard anything like that before.

But what I think is very interesting is Viv's point

about a lot of the English bands being very, very derivative.

And very based in a whole American rhythm and blues...

But I had no idea, I was 13, 14, I had no idea...

But that's why it's kind of important,

although we all dismiss the English folk rock scene,

bands like Fairport Convention...

-Pentangle.

-..and Pentangle were genuinely trying to find

an English tradition that they could draw on.

And if you remember the liner notes for Liege & Lief,

that wonderful Fairport Convention album,

it was virtually a history of the English folk tradition.

And whilst it seems silly in retrospect,

at the time it was a very important effort to create an English genre.

It did feel like history. It felt like a lesson to me.

It was quite didactic.

I must say, I don't know about you, Hooky, but I was aware that

I was part of something that hadn't happened before.

As rock music, British rock music kind of expanded out into the void.

The interesting thing about us, we sound the same age,

I was 14 in the '70s when it began.

I went through the pop phase, as you do, when you're 14.

By the time I got to 17, when I was getting a bit serious with myself,

I went through the heavy rock.

Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple,

and then just as I was trying to look for

something else in the world, I got punk. I got the Sex Pistols.

So for me, it was a wonderful decade, it went

from the sublime to the ridiculous.

If you look at '71 particularly, which was pointed out on there,

it is just about the most fertile year in terms of albums

that now people presume, you know, have always been around.

You think, Jeez, Hunky Dory in the same year as Stairway To Heaven

and all of this, which now, it's hard for me

to separate from being "classics" and "heritage".

But I remember being extraordinarily excited by it and not bound by it.

I bought pop records alongside of it.

And you ended up at Edgar Broughton, as well as, I'm sure, having...

Well, I think for me, I was casting around

because I'd come out of the '60s which had been so full of,

um...sort of lessons in a good way.

I'd learnt stuff from the '60s, protest songs, anti-Vietnam songs,

songs about psychedelic drugs. You took journeys with the musicians.

Yet, coming into the '70s, that was gone.

I think what the '70s musicians took from the '60s was experimentation.

Because you would see a band like Soft Machine alongside

Pink Floyd, alongside some really commercial band, Third Ear Band or...

Did you feel that this was something different

from what your elder sister

or friends' elder sisters had been listening to?

It wasn't Woodstock any more.

Even as early as '70, '71, it felt there was a change.

-With King Crimson, say, and that kind of band?

-Yeah.

-No, I didn't.

It just went on and on building, in a way, the experimentation building.

I didn't even sort of feel "All hippies are dead,"

because I was still watching hippies, I was still watching blues,

I was still watching experimental bands like Henry Cowell.

-All of them were a big jumble.

-That's the key, the big jumble.

The jumble and the fact that it wasn't,

as you said, it wasn't tribal.

We were all listening to all sorts of stuff.

And the other thing to remember, I think, is as well,

people presume that it was the culture then.

Everyone was talking about all these bands. It wasn't.

And you knew two or three mates who'd got it.

Didn't exclude your other mates, but if you were going to play

your records, we all had a majority of mates who said, "What's this?"

So much of the DNA of rock and pop is American.

Yet one band, from Birmingham,

could claim to have created a new kind of rock music

in the early '70s.

It was oppressive, it was menacing,

and it weighed about 20,000 tons.

MUSIC: "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath

Let's face it.

Selling your soul to the devil is pretty much an everyday event

in the music business.

But it seems that one band from the Black Country

took it a bit more seriously than others.

For their end of the deal,

Black Sabbath created a brand-new kind of rock.

Nobody was doing anything remotely as heavy

as Sabbath did on their first two albums.

A band so utterly Satanic and evil

that they all had to sleep in the same room together

after watching The Exorcist.

The name "heavy metal" somehow stuck to this strain of mutant music.

And in a trice, this very gloomy British virus spread.

Former beat musos were now re-emerging, hairily,

in bands like Atomic Rooster.

One glance at their Death Walks Behind You album

shows we're a long way from the "smile, boys" era.

# Fire... #

Doubtless, the Rooster were inspired by their old boss

and headcase Arthur Brown, whose vocal pyrotechnics offered

an early prototype for the wilder singer of the '70s.

MUSIC: "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin

To this day, arguments can break out in bars

as to whether certain bands are heavy or hard rock.

Either way, the constituent elements of both were indisputable -

the drums that thundered,

the riffs that pulverised,

and the vocals that wailed about serious, mysterious stuff...

# Oooh, yeah... #

..and above all else, magnificently loud.

1972, a concert by Deep Purple at London's Rainbow got them into

the Guinness Book Of Records as the loudest band in the world!

116 dbs,

still the only concert that could be heard from the moon.

# As the hours roll by... #

For sheer heavyweight riffery, you can't beat the '70s.

In fact, to paraphrase the '60s,

if you can still hear the '70s, you weren't really there.

CHEERING

Heavy rock, heavy metal, a derided term and rightly so in some ways,

began with Black Sabbath, we're saying,

because that sound still sounds very different.

I don't know how they did it,

whether it was like the Glenn Miller story, one day he broke a string

and said, "Ooh, it sounds like that."

It's interesting it could be a recording technique that gives them the different sound,

but I do remember hearing Black Sabbath the first time.

A friend from school took me home, he was called Daniel Avin.

He took me home to play me this record

and he was playing the record in the living room

and sort of after about two tracks,

he just stood up and tried to jump through the window.

-Did he?

-And bounced off! He was only 14.

-And the vibes had led him there?

Yeah, yeah! That's what Black Sabbath did to him,

made him jump through the window.

-It was quite shocking.

-But had he read that's what Black Sabbath...

I don't want to analyse the story too much.

Maybe it put the seed in his mind.

-Because the test is...

-I was very happy he bounced off.

..to listen to Black Sabbath,

certainly the first three albums, they're extremely surprising.

You think they're going to be plodding, and they're not.

It's a word, and I hesitate, they're quite deft.

It's almost like they sat down in the studio and said,

"We can't just hit people over the head."

And there are little bits and pieces between tracks and during tracks

where they take the foot off the pedal and say, "We're going to second-guess you."

The trouble is, people don't go back and listen to them again.

What would be your relationship,

given that you've got the Edgar Broughton badge on,

what would be your relationship to, particularly, Black Sabbath?

My relationship to Black Sabbath would be,

I feel completely excluded from that whole thing, as a girl.

-The posturing, the pouting, the thrusting...

-They didn't!

-Viv, they didn't!

-The noise, the swinging the hair.

-Black Sabbath didn't do that.

-The distortion of the guitars.

-All unattractive.

-They gave birth to that but they didn't do it.

That's the extraordinary thing. I'm not making a case for them,

it's the idea that the reason that they are revered now

is because they actually didn't do that.

If you see Black Sabbath, there's no Robert Plant-ism about them.

Well, certainly, I wasn't interested at all on any level,

musically, visually. There was no way in for me as a girl.

You know what, though, I think... I think

the closest the Sex Pistols had was Black Sabbath.

It was the only album I heard after Black Sabbath that had

not a bone of black music in it. It's true!

I don't get that analysis at all, actually!

Because the Pistols as we know were steeped in reggae and black culture.

But their album couldn't be more rock.

And the only album before that...

If you listen to Led Zeppelin, if you listen to Deep Purple,

there's bits and pieces that are quite funky, even Yes.

The Pistols and the Sabbath albums

don't have a single black note in them.

You can't tell me that EMI or all these things that came later,

the only black in the Pistols had the word Sabbath after it,

and I don't mean as a sound, I mean as an experience.

But I think one of the interesting things

that was happening in the '70s was the fact that inevitably,

for technical reasons, and commercial reasons,

bands were getting louder.

-Music was getting much louder. You could...

-And very male, very male.

You wanted to play for bigger audiences,

so in the States you had very, very loud bands. Blue Cheer, MC5.

-Vanilla Fudge.

-Vanilla Fudge.

What Sabbath did which was so interesting to an American

is the fact that Sabbath took that sort of aggressive loudness

and they overlaid this kind of artful, Satanic, you know,

-this British arty stuff.

-But you said it's arty.

It sounds like the Midlands to me.

The weird thing about Black Sabbath was, I thought,

of course America had Iron Butterfly and all these groups,

but then Black Sabbath came along and surfers in California

retreated to their bedrooms to try and get closer to West Bromwich.

That's a frightening thought, that one, isn't it?

But I tend to think that perhaps too much emphasis is put upon

the cartoon of heavy rock, which, of course, it became very quickly,

rather than trying to look at, if you will, the art form of it which,

I don't think they knew what they were doing

and how they arrived at that sound, but it should be differentiated

from all the Def Leppards and everything that came after.

Deep Purple's an interesting one, I found them very exciting.

And I know you did.

I did. I did. I did like Deep Purple, I must admit.

And I suppose it's one of those interesting things that,

as you get older and hopefully become a little bit wiser...

-No! Don't do that!

-..you try and move on but can't.

It's interesting you saying that Black Sabbath had a lot of subtlety,

because I suppose with Deep Purple, musically, they did have subtlety,

in that they had different moods that they did throughout an album.

You had to have - you couldn't go out like now

and do one track over two sides,

the audience said, "Show us something else."

I must admit, it was one frightening thing

when we got back together again as New Order, in 2001, 2002,

we did a French festival and Deep Purple were on before us.

And Barney and I were laughing, going, "Deep Purple.

"Oh, man, this is going to be a cakewalk."

And oh, my God, to go on after them, they were fantastic!

They blew us off!

And it was the only time that I've actually been scared to

-go on stage, because it was after Deep Purple.

-That's extraordinary.

That was unbelievable.

It doesn't surprise me, because however mature

and wise we've become in the ways of music, when it goes,

"UR-UR-URRR, UR-UR-UR-URRR!" there is

a 15-year-old inside me goes, "I'm home!"

There's very few riffs, I suppose, but luckily,

Joy Division got one with Love Will Tear Us Apart,

that becomes that kind of riff, you know,

like an iconic riff that you hear throughout your life.

Those riffs were talking to young boys' penises, I think!

-And? The problem with that?

-That's my excuse for not being into it.

I guess so, but it can reverberate through the bones.

A top bonus of something new being born,

though, is that nobody really knows what's going on.

And that's a lot of fun.

So, corporations and money men took a punt on even the wildest,

wigged-out eccentric, just in case they missed the next David Bowie.

Speaking of which, just what was the Dame doing at this time?

MUSIC: "Sound And Vision" by David Bowie

Misfits, oddballs, mavericks,

the '70s sure rang the dinner bell for that lot -

making music you didn't know you liked yet.

Not content with making some of the greatest albums of the decade,

the Dame invited a couple of legendary lowlifes to visit

unsuspecting Blighty, all the better to shake some action.

In this great Mick Rock shot, he, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop seem

somehow still wide awake after a night at the Dorchester.

While the Bowie-produced Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges sank

into oblivion, Reed's David-directed Transformer relaunched his career.

At times in the '70s, it seemed that record companies were

forming a queue to sign anybody who was certifiably crackers.

Reed's old mate from the Velvet Underground, John Cale,

returned to the UK to make a series of great albums,

which went from the sublime to the demented.

The fact that he would perform in a hockey mask,

bite the heads of wildfowl on stage and call his album Guts,

well, that was just simply licence.

# Make me a deal and make it straight... #

This was a time when even being called Brian was no hindrance

to becoming avant-garde and happening. Thus, when this Brian -

real name, Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno -

met former ceramics teacher Bryan Ferry -

real name, Bryan Ferry - to create Roxy Music, we all rejoiced.

MUSIC: "Needle In the Camel's Eye" by Brian Eno

Eno, of course, went on to explore some wonderful sonic avenues.

And produce Travis.

MUSIC: "It's a Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)" by Faust

Odd to think that that the man behind some of the decade's

most challenging music was Richard Branson,

seen here getting a taste for a future life at altitude.

His fledgling Virgin label gave us

such bundles of fun as Slapp Happy...

Henry Cow...

and let it be noted, our bearded balloonist friend

succeeded in selling 100,000 copies of The Faust Tapes.

MUSIC: "I Want More" by Can

He even managed to get Cologne anarcho-disco merchants Can

on Top Of The Pops!

MUSIC: "Angel's Egg" by Gong

Perhaps best of all, he launched Gong, a band of wild-eyed,

pot-headed pixies who regaled us

with songs about teapots that flew and...stuff like that.

# The light gets stronger

# And all our eyes look yonder to see what's going on... #

Viv, could you connect any more with, let's say,

the fringe groups, by the definition they were fringe,

that you could with heavy metal or anything?

I could, but to be honest, I couldn't really understand

the music of Henry Cow and Third Ear Band, it was way over my head,

but I understood the premise, which was they were sort of questioning

the rules of rock, and I don't know why that mattered to me,

but somewhere deep inside me, it mattered that they were challenging

those rules and undermining them and going against them.

Even though when I listened to them, and I saw them a lot,

because they played a lot of free concerts,

like the Parliament Hill free concerts, Hyde Park, you know,

-Third Ear Band opened for the Stones at Hyde Park...

-Yes, of course.

You know, so you would see these bands quite easily, and free,

but they were hard to listen to.

But I liked that they were undermining, and often

they had a few girls in them, that's the first time I saw girls on stage!

I still couldn't relate to them, because they were

classical musicians, playing oboe, bassoon, things like that,

but it was the first time I saw girls on stage.

Someone like Gong would have this whole travelling theatre behind,

but it was very much the Earth Mother thing going on,

they would walk around with the sheepdog and the babies

while the fellas wigged out on stage.

You know, for a girl, it was kind of appealing, in a way, just to see women around.

I used to try and connect with bands,

I would look at record covers and see, who are the girls' names?

Were they dedicated to girlfriends?

Was there a picture of a girl on the back, you know, sitting around the table with them?

That was my only way in, through the girlfriends.

Yeah, and Peter, the idea of being outsiders, of course,

very much identified later with punk,

but it seemed, between '70 and '76 even, record companies put money

in and made album after album with people who had no hope.

-Even they had some worth now, but...

-They've always done that, mate, they've always done that.

They went broke, even someone like Kevin Ayers,

who people love now, you know, NOW people like it,

but at the time, they weren't popular.

And they were in all the second-hand bins everywhere.

Did you like groups just because they were weird ever?

I went through probably quite manly stages, I suppose you'd have to say.

Once I got into heavy rock, it became all-enveloping.

And the wonderful thing about LPs, as we see here,

is that walking around with them was like that badge, wasn't it,

the tribe that you belonged to?

And you were always searching for something.

I mean, walking around with a Henry Cow LP, or a Gong LP,

was not really going to get you anywhere, not in Salford, anyway!

But I did tread quite a normal path, musically.

And I must say,

not being a musician does enable you to enjoy music a lot more than

when you become a musician, because as soon as I became

a musician at 21, in 1977, everything changed.

-Really, you lose the enjoyment.

-Why did it change?

-You are critical.

You're always, yeah, hypercritical.

And always, the competition is what then drives you, and I must

admit, as I've got older, it's never left me, that competition.

-Groups are insanely competitive.

-Yeah.

Who would you say is the furthest limb you went out on?

Is there any one you liked that...?

The furthest limb that I went was Can, Faust. Krautrock.

Then into Kraftwerk, and that was through Ian Curtis,

who introduced us to it, and Steve Morris as well.

But even those bands, you know, they had songs,

they would be on Top Of The Pops. Kevin Ayers had fantastic songs.

You know, Kraftwerk did, Can had a few.

And the thing is that they weren't...

They were fringe groups, but they weren't deliberately subversive.

You know, the economics of the business, in those days,

record companies were making tons of money.

They never knew what the next big thing was going to be,

so they would sign anyone, there was the money there to sign loads

and loads of bands.

I think it's the other way round - I think

the record companies in those days were driven by people that

loved music, I think now, it seems to be about money, and you find

that a lot of the svengalis behind did love music, even the managers.

When you look at someone like Peter Grant or whatever, you would look

at them and go, "Oh, God, they're breadheads, just after money."

But they weren't, they believed in the bands, and they loved music.

What would you say was your obscure object of desire?

Was there anything you thought, "Well, I seem to like it, nobody else does?"

I grew up on music that had a message,

and I didn't know that I missed that

until something came along again that had a message, that had a whole...

that had art, that had philosophy, all wrapped up in it.

It wasn't just about this good song, or that funny-looking clothes,

or that loud guitar - it had to have a whole concept.

-Ducks Deluxe will only take you so far!

-Yeah.

I haven't asked you, Loyd, you sighed

when Viv Stanshall came on, why?

Because I loved the Bonzos.

The Bonzos, to me, were such a sort of inventive band,

they were genuinely...

They were very subversive, they were really subversive.

They wrote fabulous lyrics, great musicians,

and they were really, really English.

They were very distinctively English,

coming out of that whole art school tradition.

Extremely anarchic and brave to say,

"Rock music, pretty funny, ain't it?" Nobody said that at the time!

Well, this is the bit I've been looking forward to.

Either fall to your knees or run for your lives.

We are talking about the 1970s, we are talking about rock music, yes?

Therefore, no ducking the big one. Prog rock, God, I love it so!

MUSIC: "Yours Is No Disgrace" by Yes

Uncompromising, mad and brilliant.

Has any form of rock ever been more '70s than prog?

A world of arcane knowledge, of Mellotrons, Moogs

and triple albums with Roger Dean's artwork,

and costumes as testing as the chord progressions.

# I know what I like... #

This was rock that had been through college,

operating at a level above the common or garden boogie,

unafraid to mix in a little jazz or classical,

with a shovelful of bubbling bombast.

MUSIC: "Fanfare For The Common Man" by Emerson, Lake and Palmer

And the masters of this domain - Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Just a band of wandering minstrels,

travelling the open road with a few basic requirements.

MUSIC: "Red" by King Crimson

These were men - and they were mainly men -

who saw their guitars and keyboards as scientific instruments

and not just large props to impress the ladies.

MUSIC: "On The Run" by Pink Floyd

Whilst often impenetrable to the outside world,

Planet Prog itself was bestrode by such visionary colossi

as Van Der Graaf Generator, King Crimson and the mighty Jethro Tull.

# A poor man, a beggar man, a thief... #

For me, it was Tull,

who after creating a medieval flute that could sow seeds, went on to

create some of the most magnificent prog albums known to man,

and it was mainly men.

# Out on the wily, windy moors... #

Indeed, I will argue that with all her magic,

mime and songs of Old Albion, Kate Bush was the true

inheritor of all that was best and probing in prog.

Following albums like The Six Wives Of Henry VIII

and Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, Rick Wakeman's LP

The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur sold 12 million copies.

And then, he performed it live. On ice!

MUSIC: "Roundabout" by Yes

And do you know? It's back!

I never thought I'd live so long where once again,

young folk are saying, "Boogie's dead, Dad, long live the prog!"

I had every one of the albums discussed there,

and I found them a hard listen at the time to varying degrees,

but one of the gooder little pieces of information we may be able to bring to you is,

if you've got a copy of The Six Wives Of Henry VIII, Rick Wakeman himself pointed out that

when they did the cover shoot in Madame Tussauds,

the flash was a little too powerful, and have a look,

plain as the nose on your face, there is Richard Nixon,

standing behind, possibly, Catherine of Aragon, I don't know.

Something you probably never noticed, even though

you've played the albums, like you, Hooky, a million times.

-A live Richard Nixon?

-That would have been a live Richard Nixon, yes!

Dropping in on it. Here's the thing with prog.

Back, back, back, it's been a long time now,

and stripped of the first time experience of it,

I know my son and his friends listen to me and go, "You know what?

"This is good. It's nuts!"

It's not a revival of anything.

And like you said earlier about everything basically coming up

from the Mississippi or, you know, over from Europe,

prog wasn't, and whatever the opinions on it, it flourished,

it was difficult, until it got too difficult,

but something like the Yes album...

It's indulgence, though, isn't it? Is it too indulgent?

As opposed to what?

It's just that thing about, "Me, me, me, look at me doing this!"

I went to see Emerson, Lake and Palmer,

and he was doing all that with the keyboard,

then he got a knife out, which I thought was quite interesting,

and started attacking the keyboard. But that was the best bit of the whole concert!

That's an old bit of stagecraft - The Nice, in the '60s,

used to do it, it was a very dynamic piece of stagecraft.

Keith Emerson, for a relatively small guy,

could drag a B3 around a stage like nobody's business!

But what I thought was so ridiculous about prog rock is,

they were trying to prove a point that didn't have to be proved,

namely, "Hey, rock 'n' roll is actually serious music!"

I thought it was so pretentious -

why couldn't they just play stuff that we wanted to listen to?

Well, I wanted to listen to Yours Is No Disgrace,

and have done over and over and over again!

It's an extremely funky song, and it just is! The idea that...

Of course, it got a tipping point, like anything else,

it's like when you hear people say, "Oh, I was into punk rock,

"I went to see The Ruts once."

You think, "Well, there's degrees of it."

And I find that just the very idea that you would just go crazy

and say, "You know what?

"This is a whole side of a record." And it wasn't just one tune...

-Mountain, innit, Nantucket Sleighride.

-Mountain!

But you know, I agree with Pete's

analysis about the self-indulgence and, you know,

prog rock is five guys on stage, having a great time

-and 1,000 people being miserable, listening to it!

-No, it's not!

-That's prog rock.

-It isn't!

-I'm going to come out on the side of prog rock here.

-Oh, thank you, Viv!

-Why?

-I think there were some great songs and great melodies in there.

It was intimidating in terms of their prowess, their musicality was

shown off, but I really did really love The Court Of The Kingson Crim...

In The Court Of The Crimson King...

An Observation By King Crimson.

Genesis, there were some amazing songs in there.

And I think I felt there was more of a way in than there was for heavy metal, for me.

But again, the one thing I hope that these discussions,

and we are all friends here, say is that it's not the received wisdom.

The received wisdom is it's all done on a slide rule or a logarithm,

about how great I can play the guitar.

They are actually not, they are ensemble pieces,

for the main part, between '70 and '73, then it's over.

Then it's over, and thank God, you might say.

Because they started believing just what you're talking about.

But I think something like Tarkus by Emerson, Lake and Palmer,

the time... I don't know what musicians' time theme's like,

but it's something like 14/17! God love it.

Then it goes slow, it's a lot of songs stuck together,

but I'd rather that than perhaps a lot of riffing by Wishbone Ash.

Oh, I love a lot of riffing by Wishbone Ash!

I didn't know I was listening to different time signatures,

I was just completely open as a non-musician to what

I was hearing, and then when I came to make music myself

that was in my head and The Slits did all different time signatures

completely unaware, but just from having heard, I think, prog rock.

And the guy who taught me guitar, Keith Levene,

was taught guitar by the guitarist of Yes.

-Well, thank God. Steve Howe.

-Steve Howe, the great Steve Howe.

So, Steve Howe taught Keith Levene, Keith Levene taught me. So, there is a way...

Well, I would urge the two gentlemen here to go

and listen to something like Survival, and certainly Fragile,

with Roundabout - they are very fun, swinging...

-That is a great song, Roundabout.

-Roundabout is fabulous, and I have to admit...

-Oh, here we go, now!

I've got to admit...

Look, you're talking to someone who owns a Quatermass album!

At one stage, I went through this very bad period, you know

how we all have bad moments in our lives?

I went through this very bad period where

I would buy any album that had a cover designed by Hipgnosis.

-All right.

-I've never done that, I must admit.

-Peter Saville, maybe, but no...

-As I say, prog...

An audience, now, took a couple of palate-cleansing generations

to say, what's wrong with this? It's insane! Not all of it.

How many albums do you play both sides and think it's all great?

But certainly, when it's on its game...

-Would Mike Oldfield be prog rock, then?

-Yeah.

-Tubular Bells.

Hergest Ridge is beautiful... Not Hergest Ridge - Ommadawn.

Hergest Ridge was a misstep. Ommadawn is lovely in its own right.

-And it's taken a very long time to listen to it again.

-And of course, the Floyd.

Pink Floyd, the gods of prog rock,

still one of the most significant rock bands ever.

I suppose now, it's quite revolutionary again,

though, because the thing is, nowadays, music tends to be

based on singles, very vocal led, very traditional length,

three minutes, four minutes, nobody gets longer than that,

your Tinie Tempahs, your Disclosures, Skrillex,

they all have to be very strict formatted, in that thing. So I suppose, really, it is a revolution,

when you look at it, when you look back at something like that.

People didn't say, "Ah, prog rock." It became prog rock, but at the time, for a record company to say,

"What is it?" And we said, "We're not sure,

"but it's 19 minutes long." And yes, there were misfires, but

something like Caravan doing In The Land Of Grey And Pink was pretty...

-And Meddle by Pink Floyd, Echoes on that is a beautiful piece of music.

-Fantastic.

And it was against commercialism in a way,

it was a sort of two fingers up at the radio,

because it couldn't be played on the radio, it relied on, you know, people buying it, just word of mouth.

As I say, I'm glad if I could have just rekindled some interest

and go back and just to say that a couple...

We'll be going home and digging out these records now!

-Quatermass is going back on the turntable!

-There you go.

I'm going to draw the line at Quatermass, if you don't mind!

But if you're going to talk about prog, you've got to talk about punk.

Because punk came to rescue us from prog...didn't it?

The mid-'70s, they were boring!

Weren't they? Well, how about this?

Received wisdom is boring, and truth,

ironically in this instance, is far more anarchic.

MUSIC: "Sailing" by Rod Stewart

1975, the year before punk, and the music scene is a desert,

populated only by prog poltroons and aloof, spent old rockers.

MUSIC: "Roxette" by Dr Feelgood

Hang on. Hold on.

Let me get out my rock album almanac and check against...

What are they called? The facts? Oh, yeah. Hmm.

The sprightly Dr Feelgood had just written their first

prescription, Down By The Jetty.

Bob Dylan was staggering on with a little thing called

Blood On The Tracks.

MUSIC: "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen

While the new Bob Dylan, some fellow called Bruce Springsteen,

was slaying 'em at the Hammersmith Odeon in London,

in support of an album called Born To Run,

and then there was... Let's see. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here,

Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti,

Elton John's Captain Fantastic,

King Crimson's Red...

# I shot the sheriff... #

..and Bob Marley with his now legendary Live At The Lyceum album.

Whatever way you slice it,

it really doesn't seem like much of a pre-punk drought.

MUSIC: "Down Down" by Status Quo

All this and - don't laugh at the back - those three-chord wonders,

Status Quo, had just landed on the level at number one.

# Deeper and down... #

I always think if Quo had worn leather instead of denim,

they'd have been as critically lauded

as their New York soul mates, The Ramones.

# Do you know how to twist?

# Well, it goes like this... #

And another thing - hadn't those pesky Americans

already invented punk rock by 1975 with the likes of Patti Smith,

The Heartbreakers, Television

and the frankly rubbish Wayne, later Jane, County?

MUSIC: "Anarchy In The UK" by The Sex Pistols

Right...now!

Ha-ha-ha!

And then, of course, everything went Rotten.

It's an interesting point, because the received wisdom is,

"Oh, we were all so bored."

I don't remember being bored, and I think that's kind of been

grafted on by a lot of people saying, "Oh, prog!"

Prog was over by '73, it don't add up.

What was happening in '75 and probably responsible

was things now that are untouchable -

ELO, ABBA, things like that.

And I think people suddenly thought, "That's what we don't like,"

because what usually gets the blame was over by then,

and '75 wasn't a bad year.

But you probably weren't bored cos you were a couple of years younger

and still at home, but if you were a couple of years older and hanging out

on the corner or at a petrol station, we were bored, we were really bored.

We were in between, I was probably 17,

a couple of years older than you, and we were deathly bored.

I just remember the pavements and no phone, I had no phone,

couldn't call anyone, take a bus, which would take ages to come,

to get anywhere, the whole pace of life was so slow...

But were you aware of that?

Did you think, "Here I am in 1975, bored"?

-I was bored. I was so bored.

-Yeah?

Yeah. And I was going to art school, I worked at Dingwalls

and left there to go to art school and art school was boring, as well.

Did you necessarily look towards rock music or whatever to cure this?

No, actually I was looking more towards films, strangely.

Films were really exciting in the '70s and I was looking towards,

you know, Scorsese and Coppola,

and interesting films and interesting soundtracks

almost meant more to me than rock music then.

But it was there if you want,

and whatever you feel about the selection there,

and there's plenty more, without the American albums in there.

Yeah, I worked at Dingwalls and the DJ would play Wailers

and Dr Feelgood would play almost every week,

Kilburn And The High Roads, Wilko -

there was nothing that took hold of you and elevated you,

or took you out of yourself, which is what I thought rock music used to do.

Nothing that took me out of myself.

Yeah, The Wailers were great, jig around to that on a dance floor,

Wilko's funny, isn't he brilliant? Get down the front, watch Wilko.

But there was nothing that elevated me until punk,

until I saw the Sex Pistols.

-Did you have a normal job, as well, during the day?

-No.

I've never had a normal job.

I think that is what scared me when I left school at 16

and went to work thinking it was going to be this exciting world,

and then I ended up with a job at Manchester Town Hall,

and you were with a load of disgruntled, grumpy old blokes,

and you're looking round, thinking, "Oh, my God."

They'd been there for years and years and years,

and that was scary, thinking, "Is my life going to be like this?"

I think that's what punk gave me.

It showed me something that I didn't have to conform

and do what everybody else was doing. It showed me a way out.

Of course, you join a band

and then you end up with a bunch of disgruntled,

-grumpy old blokes!

-LAUGHTER

THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER

Well, the thing is that I think that there was a lot

of fabulously interesting music going on in the mid-'70s,

there's no question about that, but I feel it had all become

rather remote, it was very virtuoso.

There were very high production values.

And one of the things about pop music,

one of the things that makes rock 'n' roll

is the feeling that the audience should always be able to say,

"I can do that, I can try it, I can have a go at it."

-I disagree. I disagree.

-I think it's absolutely essential.

I don't think there's any chance of looking at Emerson, Lake and Palmer

-and thinking, "I could do that."

-Exactly, you can't.

David Bowie in '75 made Station To Station, you know.

-Which was wonderful.

-And I didn't think, "I can't..."

I wanted him to do it, I want great artists to do it. I can't do that.

But he was kind of...

I think that, still, the rock stars, the rock gods had become too remote

and too divorced from the audience and too virtuoso,

and there was something so thrilling about punk,

and even now, the great testimony to the Sex Pistols

is the fact that you put on Anarchy In The UK,

it sounds as if it was made this morning.

It is the freshest, most exciting single that you can imagine.

But my argument, if it is an argument at all,

is not that it's...

it's always pitted against previous musics.

And I think it's very much a full stop, rather than beginning,

because everyone I knew involved at that time

had all the same albums, whether they admitted to them or not.

They'd all - that crowd I mentioned earlier

who were into music - had these albums.

After punk, I don't know.

There was a couple of free years and all of this

and it gets into maybe U2 and everything else,

but I can see that seven years between Woodstock,

or indeed the ten years between Sgt Pepper and '77,

the year of punk, being all of a piece,

but the idea that it came along divorced from all that,

to burn away all that, it's lovely rhetoric...

Yeah, and it is rhetoric. We were all shouting our mouths off,

-we wanted to destroy everything that went before.

-Exactly!

You know, no-one was going to listen to us.

When I first saw Johnny Rotten on stage, I thought,

"My God, how can a boy from a North London council flat..." -

and I was a girl from a North London council flat -

"..think he can stand on stage and be listened to?"

It was beyond belief, and that clicked something in my brain

for the first time that I could do that.

But to be daring enough to do that,

to be revolutionary enough to have that thought,

cos revolution starts in there,

you have to trounce everything that went before.

Of course, yes.

Surely the thing about the Pistols, when I saw them,

was they sounded awful.

It was just the fact that they were so shocking,

because he was just screaming, "Eff off!"

-They didn't sound awful to me.

-No, I loved them.

I saw them, I've got a bootleg of that night, and it's great.

The bootleg's great, but on the night they just sounded awful.

Again you got that thought, you could do it,

"I could do that. I'm the same."

But while you might not listen to very many punk albums now,

there's no question that all the various tropes and themes

of punk insinuated themselves into all sorts of other types of music.

It was a DIY culture, the fact that you can do it yourself,

that inspired a lot of people to form record companies,

to handle their own affairs, to not get sucked into the machine.

I think we can all agree it was a tremendous amount of fun,

very liberating, wonderful to go through.

But a lot of the people who claim what it was about

are sucking the life out of it, what it was all about,

because I didn't have a road map, I didn't know anyone else who had

a road map when we were doing our fanzine and going to all the things.

Glad it happened, but I was happy for other people to do the...

It was a situationist thing and all of that.

Maybe, I don't know.

All revolutions ultimately end in the sort of banality

of a disco ball, don't they?

You know, the French Revolution produced Napoleon.

Inevitably, the punk revolution was going to end

-in very slick, corporate music.

-You see, I'm still doing it -

agreeing with people when I don't know what they're talking about.

You know, people who worry themselves about such things

call the period following punk "post-punk".

Fair enough, no harm in that.

Although as someone who was there,

I remember we had a much catchier name for it.

We called it "1978".

1978. Punk and the Pistols are history.

Right, what's next?

Well, from punk's lurid compost mushroomed a whole array

of bands who would write the style guide

for much of the alternative music of the 1980s.

# You never listen to a word that I say

# You only see me for the clothes I wear... #

A reenergised John Lydon led the way

with his cynically-titled new group, Public Image Ltd.

Boasting sheet noise, dub-influenced baselines

and ranting, PIL were regarded as either astonishingly new

or just a bit of a nuisance.

Now we're facing a cheapskate, comedy interrogation act,

and it just ain't on, pal.

# We are only making plans for Nigel... #

Some of the previously part-time punks had rather spoiled the joke

by learning to play a few more than three chords.

Now they were creating music so off-kilter and angular

that, properly harnessed, it could perform delicate eye surgery.

MUSIC: "Transmission" by Joy Division

And others, at last,

were writing songs that people could actually dance to.

And while reggae remained as hip as ever,

in the relatively unhip world of disco and funk

some were making history.

# I want your love... #

MUSIC: "Heart Of Glass" by Blondie

Frankly, nobody really knew what they were any more.

In fact, categories became wonderfully blurred.

# Once I had a love and it was a gas... #

Former punks Blondie came to London and went disco - and global -

with their hit, Heart Of Glass.

MUSIC: "What A Waste" by Ian Dury and The Blockheads

Post-punk also meant you didn't have to be handsome,

just musically brilliant.

The dogs were having their day, and nothing summed this up better

than the spectacular break-out of Ian Dury and The Blockheads.

# I could be a poet I wouldn't need to worry

# I could be a teacher in a classroom full of scholars... #

As the decade neared its end, it now seemed

that nothing mattered and anything was possible.

# What a waste

# What a waste... #

Post-punk. I'm looking at you now, Peter Hook.

First, when were you aware you were post-punk?

And how do the last couple of years of the '70s look for you now?

What was going on in your life?

Well, I mean, my life

was completely different.

It was revolutionised,

I suppose you'd say,

but I never thought I was post-punk,

I still felt very much punk.

And post-punk was something journalists, erm...said?

So it didn't really bother me, I was very, very,...

I mean, the strange thing about forming a group -

once you're in it, it becomes a 24-hour full-time occupation

to the exclusion of everything else.

Literally, we lived and breathed Joy Division, Factory Records,

and that was it, you know. The next...

The only thing you cared about was your next gig,

-or when you wrote your next record.

-Did that come as a shock to you?

Did you think it was going to be a lark?

Well, I was 21 and it was very difficult right from the start.

I mean, getting a gig was just impossible.

Getting a support gig was so difficult.

I suppose, in a funny way, it makes you want to fight more,

and the inspiration you took was that punk did seem a fight.

Everybody seem to be fighting - fighting to get heard,

fighting to get gigs, fighting to get, you know, your music heard.

It's true of all the '70s.

It was a very marginalised world

that, other than the NME and a few papers,

you didn't see it in the dailies,

-you didn't see it on television, not really.

-No.

It was an alien landscape.

Yeah, you were sort of on your own in it

and, like Peter said, in your own little world travelling around,

trying to break down a few barriers, literally,

by, you know, travelling to this country,

doing your little gigs and hoping a couple of hundred people turned up.

But, I don't know, it did feel it was almost over

before it began, actually.

For me, it was great when we were all not in bands, really,

we were just going round each other's houses,

rehearsing in basements, but as soon as everyone got in their band

and went off on their little careerist trajectories,

it was a bore. You know, you didn't see anyone

any more, you went to a club and no-one was there

because they were off gigging, all your mates...

And in music, all of a sudden, Blondie are doing pop music

and they were a punk band,

and everyone's getting their three-minute wonders in,

and the music business is at last saying,

"Oh, we get it. You CAN have hits with this."

And you never particularly wanted hits and stuff, I presume.

-Did you?

-No, we didn't want hits, we wanted to hang onto

what we thought of as the original premise of punk,

which was to break down all barriers and to be as honest as possible.

So you're honest in your lyrics, in how you dress, how you speak,

you don't put on an American accent or little girly voices,

and in our actual rhythms we didn't want to follow

12 bar blues progressions, we wanted to, you know...

So we did the funny timings, we did what came naturally,

and, of course, we were never commercial because of that.

Punk evolved, and even though Blondie became a big,

commercially successful band, punk was in their bloodstream.

Just as the Rolling Stones, no matter how successful they became,

were always basically a blues band.

You know, Blondie were out of that New York punk tradition.

Yeah, and they went on to conquer the world

and kind of lead into the whole '80s,

saying, "Oh, instead of beating you up in the street

"for looking like that, do you want to buy the outfit?"

I think a lot of fun, as well, of being that age

and being into that kind of music is the idea that it wasn't accepted,

and even though we moan and say, "Society was like this,"

having to creep out while someone behind you says

"You're not going out like that," that's kind of disappeared.

The lasting legacy of punk for me

is it still doesn't matter if you can't play.

It's all right for the first time, Eno says it,

all sorts of people say, "I'm not a musician."

It's the first time you could say, "I'm not a musician,"

and it would be a cool thing to say,

and I think that's still all right now to say that, because of punk.

It has long been wired into all old rockers

that nostalgia is the greatest sin, however, let's indulge in it

a little before we all shuffle off - in all kinds of ways -

and just to say we stand by the old decade of the '70s -

yes, Groundhogs and all, Third Ear Band in some cases -

we're going to bring on the flight case to the future

to do a little bit of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, the '70s version.

I asked everyone here to bring along an album

and a piece of the '70s they wish to be included.

What have you brought, Loyd?

The Low Spark Of High-heeled Boys by Traffic.

A very underrated band these days.

Stevie Winwood, one of Britain's best ever pop musicians.

There's a wonderful song about being a rock star

called Rock 'N' Roll Stew, which is particularly exciting

-because it has absolutely zero irony at all.

-Good for him.

It's so sort of serious, but a great bit of music.

And my bit of kit is a Gretsch,

a 1962 Gretsch Duojet guitar.

I saw Humble Pie at one of their first American appearances,

and both Frampton and Marriott were playing these guitars.

I said, "I've got to get one!"

So I went out and got one, it was a wreck,

and then, in a fascinating footnote to rock history,

-it was restored by Skunk Baxter...

-Oh!

-..lead guitarist of Steely Dan.

-The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan,

and now one of the great right-wing firebrands of the world.

We've all lived so long. Beautiful.

Viv, what album have you brought and what piece of memorabilia?

-OK, my album is Kokomo.

-Well done.

-Not so much because of the music.

The two reasons it resonates with me -

one, I saw them at Dingwalls when I was a barmaid there,

and there was a girl on stage called Jody Linscott, playing percussion.

First time I'd seen a girl on stage and someone behind the bar said,

"She can't play, she's not a proper musician."

And that set a little fire burning in my head.

So, thank you Jody Linscott for that. And it was produced by Chris Thomas,

who went on to produce the Sex Pistols, which is quite unusual.

Yes, and a couple or three members of the Joe Cocker Grease Band.

Yeah, a couple of links there.

-And my piece of memorabilia is...

-Go on.

..this doll from Christmas '76.

Johnny Rotten gave this doll to Sid Vicious as a Christmas present.

She was done up to look like Soo Catwoman.

She was all dyed, I mean, that's 30 years ago.

And when you pull down her knickers, it says "Soo" with a little arrow,

-Sid, down to her vagina.

-Oh!

And it was an amazing Christmas with all us punks

at Caroline Coon, the artist's house.

And the turkey ended up down the bog.

Oh, beautiful!

-Excuse me while I wipe away a tear at that lovely story.

-So sweet!

Peter, what have you brought and what's your memorabilia?

-I want that.

-We're all looking at that.

My LP is Euroman Cometh by Jean Jacques Burnel.

He's my hero, I suppose you'd have to say, my inspiration.

And as I got voted least likely to ever make a solo LP by Sounds

one year, and then Jean Jacques managed it,

I thought, "I can do it," and I used that as the template for Freebass,

which didn't exactly go according to plan,

but that's my...

Great record, actually, that one. And Sex Pistols again, you see?

This is my ticket to the Sex Pistols,

which was sold to me by Malcolm McLaren for 50p.

And he was all dressed in leather

and even that, before I went in,

I knew I was entering something very, very different.

And then the wonderful thing was I went to see them

when they reformed, which was wild, and I got Row A, Seat 1.

-Oh!

-How about that?

-How much?

-As you should.

-Well, it was free.

I knew the promoter, what can I say?

Rock aristocracy! They don't have to pay!

I tell you what, it wasn't far away, was it? Free - 50p! Pretty close.

The album I brought is, of course, a prog rock album,

but it's one that only I liked, so it's even more difficult.

And you can't play it to anyone, which is half the beauty

of the secret world of prog as it was.

It's Pete Sinfield, the King Crimson lyricist's album, Still.

It's...it's hogwash.

It's very, very difficult to listen to but, God, I played this a lot,

and all of my mates said, "You're nuts, you are, Baker, what's that?"

And so Pete Sinfield's Still, by some distance not the greatest

album of the period, but it's personal.

That's what they used to say to me about that!

-That's the key to a lot of it.

-That's the great thing.

Look at this. This is my memorabilia, another record.

But I worked in a record shop and Marc Bolan used to come in a lot

and one day when he came in - he was friends with the manager -

and said, "I'm going off to America, darling, for a long time."

And John was going out to dinner with him, I said,

"Quick, give me a record, get him to sign that for us."

Next day, John comes in. I said, "Did you get it signed?"

John went, "Oh, yeah, I've left it at home, I'll bring it in tomorrow."

I thought he didn't. John had very particular writing, spidery.

When he eventually brought it in,

I recognised this red on red thing here.

It says, "Hello, Danny, be good, love Marc Bolan." I thought, "OK."

30-odd years later I was on eBay, I saw a Marc Bolan autograph -

that's what he wrote like, as well.

And I nearly chucked this away so many times,

but there it is, a real Marc Bolan autograph, and God love him.

It only strikes me now this is quite appropriate, as well.

It's Whatever Happened To The Teenage Dream?

Well, back on your heads, everybody, back to the future.

Tremendous thanks over there to Peter Hook,

Viv Albertine and Loyd Grossman.

Well done, everyone, we acquitted the old generation well, I think.

So we began with a John Lennon quote, and here's the book-end.

"I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmermann,

"I don't believe in Beatles."

That was John in 1970, closing the book on the past.

He probably didn't believe in decades, either, but we do,

and in our next programme we look towards

that difficult era that followed - the 1980s,

which, of course, was tragically an era that didn't believe in John.

Good night.

# We're playing those mind games together

# Pushing the barriers

# Planting seeds

# Playing the mind guerrilla

# Chanting the mantra

# Peace on earth... #