1970: Music Memories

I’ve always been a big music fan. A couple of weeks ago, I created my Songs of the 60s post about songs that I remember as a child from the 1960s. I wondered if I should do something similar for the 1970s. I was big into pop/rock music from 1972, so maybe one post couldn’t cover it all.

So, I’ve decided to do a year-by-year series. But I wasn’t very aware of pop music in 1970. I don’t want to focus on songs that I discovered from 1970 in later years. I might mention a few, but I’d like to list the ones that I actually remember hearing. Often, these would be played in supermarkets or maybe I’d see someone singing them on some Irish entertainment show. I was only 8 years old in 1970. These might mean nothing to my readers in other countries, but I always enjoy seeing references to songs that I remember from my earlier life.

So here goes – beginning with the ones that I remember hearing at the time:

• Wand’rin’ Star: Lee Marvin, from the musical Paint Your Wagon
  • I’m hoping that my voice will be deep enough to sing that someday 😀.
• Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head: BJ Thomas, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  • Everybody knew this one.
• Can’t Help Falling in Love​: Andy Williams
• All Kinds of Everything: Dana, Ireland’s Eurovision winner
  • I still love this song. Recently, I saw a YouTube video with Terry Hall (The Specials) and Sinead O’Connor singing it.
• Knock Knock Who’s There: Mary Hopkin: The UK Eurovision Entry
  • I still like this one too. Mary Hopkin had a wonderful voice. Her biggest hit was probably Those Were The Days.
• Back Home: England World Cup Squad
  • We all knew this. No-one wanted to be seen as England supporters, but most of us did support them, if they weren’t playing Ireland 😀.
• Everything Is Beautiful​: Ray Stevens
  • I remember him as a guest on the Andy Williams show. It has a slight spiritual theme to it. It begins with “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” It reminds me of a song that I used to hear Up With People sing in the early 70s – What Colour is God’s Skin. I have to confess, I thought the song was a little corny at the time, but it makes a good point.
• Cottonfields: Beach Boys
  • I don’t know how I remember this one, but I do.
• (They Long To Be) Close To You​: Carpenters
  • I didn’t know who sang this one, until a couple of years later.
• New World In the Morning​: Roger Whittaker
  • I never thought much about the lyrics, but I think that it means that what you do today matters. Don’t put it off until tomorrow.
• Snowbird: Anne Murray
  • This was the first Canadian song I ever remember hearing. The writer, an evangelical Christian, also wrote Put Your Hand in the Hand, which I knew around the time, but I don’t think it was a UK or Irish hit.
• Cracklin’ Rosie​: Neil Diamond
• Grandad: Clive Dunne
  • This big joke about Clive Dunne was that he was done up to look old in Dad’s Army. He wasn’t all that old at the time. Now, sadly, the youngest of the team, Ian Lavender, who played Pike has passed away at 77.
• Amazing Grace: Judy Collins
  • This was my introduction to this wonderful hymn. It was fascinating to hear someone sing without musical accompaniment at the time. Acapella became quite popular in the early 1980s. I think of the 1983 hit Only You by The Flying Pickets.

These are might two favourites among these.

It was amazing to see a Christian hymn do so well in the charts. It was written by John Newton, a notorious slave trader, who was saved on March 10th 1748. It’s the first time that I ever heard that hymn, and everyone knew it after that. I don’t remember singing it in Mass, but it was well loved by Catholics. In later years, when I started attending evangelical churches, we sang it all the time. Now, modern churches sing a newer version, which featured in the Amazing Grace film – the story of how William Wilberforce and others campaigned to end slavery.

All Kinds of Everything isn’t a Christian song as such, but you can easily convert it to a hymn, simply by allowing all kinds of everything to remind you of God. It’s true that when you fall in love, it’s hard to get the person out of your mind. But God is the one who created love, along with everything else, so all kinds of everything should remind us of him.

For UK hits my favourite site has always been Retrocharts. I use Microsoft Co-pilot for research too, but it tells me lies sometimes 😀.

Next, I’ll list my top 10 songs from 1970 that I only heard in later years.

• Come And Get It​: Badfinger
  • This one was written by Paul McCartney. He had his own version on Anthology 3.
• Instant Karma​: John Lennon, Yoko Ono & The Plastic Ono Band
  • Karma is a concept rooted in ancient Indian philosophy, especially in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and it refers to the idea that your actions—good or bad—have consequences that shape your future. Perhaps that’s something that all religions can agree on. I don’t know why Lennon spoke of instant Karma, but maybe we all wish that evil people were dealt with instantly.
• Bridge Over Troubled Water​: Simon and Garfunkel
  • I remember hearing a Christian sing a version with “Jesus will lay himself down” rather than “I will lay me down”. But Jesus calls on all of us to love one another, so the song is fine as is.
• Let It Be​: The Beatles
  • “Mother Mary comes to me” isn’t about the Virgin Mary. It’s Paul McCartney’s own mother, who died when he was young. But her influence remains. I don’t think he was speaking of an apparition. Our minds and lives are shaped by all kinds of people, particularly our parents. So even when they’re gone, their light still shines. Bono compared his mother’s love to a star that might be long gone but that still lights the world in Iris (Hold Me Close).
• Rag Mama Rag​: The Band
• The Seeker: The Who
  • The lyrics, which I assume Pete Townsend wrote, say “I won’t get to get what I’m after Till the day I die”. I would reply with a Bible text: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. (Jer 29:13)
• Band Of Gold​: Freda Payne
• Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)​: Stevie Wonder
• I Hear You Knocking​: Dave Edmunds
• Nothing Rhymed​: Gilbert O’Sullivan
  • I did hear this one a few years after when I bought the LP record Gilbert O’Sullivan Himself. That particular song had a scratch, so it repeated one phrase infinitely – “from say, winning a bet, from say winning a bet..” 😀. The line actually ends with “winning a bet is to lose.” But you had to life the needle to escape from the scratch.

What else do I remember about 1970? I was aware of the following news stories:

• First jumbo jet (Pan Am Boeing 747) landed at Heathrow. It was so exciting at the time when the jumbo jet and concorde were introduced. I used to see both quite regularly in Shannon airport. The last time that I saw a concorde was around 2001.
• 2850 died in UK of Hong Kong flu​. I remember talk of the Hong Kong flu at the time although I didn’t realize that it had such a devastating effect.
• UK Half-crown coin ceased to be legal tender. We got decimal currency around that time, which we regarded as new. It took a bit of time to get used to. Then, in Ireland, we got the Euro currency around 2001. I’m still not used to that 😀, especially the little coins. I always have to check twice if I’m using the right ones.
• A moon rock from Apollo 11 was displayed at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. We were big into the moon back then. People used to say that when I grow up, people will go to the moon for their summer holidays.
• Dr. Ian Paisley entered the Parliament of Northern Ireland after winning the Bannside By-election. He was a very scary character, but he mellowed as he got older. I once said hello to him in a Christian bookshop in Belfast. He looked a little puzzled. How many people out there can say that they puzzled Paisley? At least I’ve accomplished something in my life 😀.
• Apollo 13 landed.
• The Arms Crisis erupted: Ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney were dismissed over an alleged plot to import weapons for the IRA. Charles Haughey later became Taoiseach. I once shook hands with him in Kilkenny. I was always against the IRA. At the time, in Northern Ireland, Protestants were burning Roman Catholic homes, so I can understand why some might have considered giving them weapons to defend themselves. But generally there was very little support for the IRA in the Republic of Ireland. Thankfully, peace came in the 1990s.
• Riots in Derry over Bernadette Devlin’s arrest.
• BOAC Flight 775 is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after taking off from Bahrain – the first time a British plane has been hijacked​. I remember seeing planes being blown up on the TV. It’s sad that that area of the world is still so troubled.

I remember watching the World Cup Final on a colour TV in a pub near our home. That was the first time that I saw a colour TV. And there was a big fire in the Sean Jennings store in Cork. I remember The Desert Song playing in the Cork Opera House and seeing the real Bozo the Clown in person in a PG Tips Tea promotion in the Palace cinema in MacCurtain Street. And I remember almost getting the autograph of RTE newsreader, Charles Mitchell at the Southside Shopping Centre in Togher, but we overwhelmed him and he had to dash. I think that was the first time that I was close to someone famous. I had seen the Taoiseach (prime minister), Jack Lynch, in the distance sometime sooner.

What else? The Cork County Hall, the tallest building in Ireland officially opened as did the Pfizer chemical plant. Status Quo and The Move and The Throggs played in the Stardust club. and Fleetwood Mac, The Dubliners, Julie Felix, and Dana played the Savoy. And in October, Let it Be and Yellow Submarine was showing at the Savoy. I was too young for all that, but I remember seeing the following movies; ​Scrooge, The Love Bug, The Aristocats, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and When Dinosaurs rules the Earth. I was big into dinosaurs in 1970 😀.

I noticed in an old newspaper that Baptist minister, Hebert Carson, who I got to know personally in later years, gave a lecture in UCC on Conscience, Authority and the Bible.

One story that I came across in recent times in Limerick surprised me. It mentions a Maoist bookshop near King John’s castle in Limerick. Shots were fired at it. Read the story in the Forgotten limerick maoist bookshop article.

Nicholas Street Limerick

Finally, here are some notable albums of 1970. I wouldn’t have known about any of these at the time, but I did become familiar with Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd and Let it Be by the Beatles around 1976. And I would have seen all these in record shops throughout the 70s.

• Let it Be – The Beatles
• The Man Who Sold the World – David Bowie
• The Madcap Laughs – Syd Barrett
• Beaucoups of Blues – Ringo Starr
• All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
• Bridge Over Troubled Water – Simon & Garfunkel
• Moondance – Van Morrison
• McCartney – Paul McCartney
• Atom Heart Mother – Pink Floyd
• Tumbleweed Connection – Elton John

I suppose I should also mention big movies of 1970. Here goes:

• MASH
• Airport
• Ryan’s Daughter
• Tora! Tora! Tora!
• Woodstock
• Zabriskie Point
• Kelly’s Heroes
• The Aristocats
• The Railway Children
• Scrooge

In 1974, I remember my teacher telling me that he’d been down on the Dingle peninsula, and he saw a little village especially built for Ryan’s Daughter. Then they demolished it. It’s a pity really. It might have made a nice tourist attraction.