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*MUSIC, 18 With A Bullet

“Woodstock” by Matthews Southern Comfort

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Paul Fitzpatrick: January 2023

Every now and then we get invited to write articles for other blogs.

Recently we were asked to submit a piece on our ‘favourite number one single’, at which point I realised that very few good songs actually made it to the top of the UK charts in the 70s.

There were a few exceptions of course – “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, “Maggie May” and a few others, but in truth there wasn’t a lot to work with.

I think it’s true that most beloved songs are beloved because they evoke memories and there’s one particular number one from 1970 which takes me back, as a 12 year old, to the first social event of my own choosing, the youth club disco – a rites of passage if ever there was one.

At 12 you have to handle that unsettling transition from primary to high-school – in status terms you go from being a big fish to a teeny tadpole.
At the same time hormones are kicking-in and some of your friends have baritone’s and fuzzy facial hair whilst others squeak like Barry Gibb.

It is a trigger for change though and one of the big changes for me was getting interested in music, which was recognised by my lovely mum who came home one day with the *Top of the Pops volume 12 album, featuring hits from – Free, The Kinks, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Cat Stevens.

Captivated by the cover, (remember the hormones were kicking in) I proceeded to take control of the family gramophone, but after a few tracks my enthusiasm for this treasure-trove of hits began to wain.

Free’s Paul Rodgers’, or should I say the imposter who was trying to emulate him, sounded like a pub singer with laryngitis, John Fogarty’s Rickenbacker definitely needed re-tuning, and “Lady D’Arbanville” was more cats chorus than Cat Stevens.

The Pickwick Paul Rodgers murdering “All Right Now”

Of course, I had no idea at the time that the reason Pickwick could compile all the hits of the day for such good value, AND position a diversionary-tactic glamour puss on the cover, was because the original artists were nowhere to be seen.

It was a genius concept, aimed at two types of consumer – those who were quite happy to hear covers and those who wanted to peer at the COVERS.

Anyway, back to the youth club disco, it may have been 52 years ago but there are a couple of things that have always stuck with me….

First of all, despite the relatively small age-gap, the gulf between us young uns and the youth club veterans who were all of 14 or 15, was seismic. They were so much more mature and sophisticated – particularly the girls with their make-up, mini-skirts and tank-tops who looked like they’d jumped off the cover of the aforementioned Top of the Pops albums.

Secondly, the music….. apart from the Kelvin Hall carnival I’d never been anywhere where the music was so good… or played so ear-splittingly loud.
Every song the DJ played was a classic and to be fair we handled the volume pretty well until Sabbath’s “Paranoid” scattered us from our perch beside the speakers.

It was an all-out attack to the senses but we were quite happy sitting in the peripheries, drinking our fizzy-pop, taking everything in, and letting the epic soundtrack wash over us.

This was way more fun than watching Val Doonican with the family on a Saturday night.

Coming back to the music, it was a bit of a golden-age for singles and if you look down the list of 70s number one’s, you’ll struggle to see a hot streak of number one’s to match the following in 1970.

The sequence kicked off with two soul classics, compulsory picks on any decent jukebox – Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown” and Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold”.

“Woodstock” by Matthews Southern Comfort was next off the rank, followed by Jimi Hendrix’s posthumous “Voodoo Chile”.

The year was closed out by Dave Edmund’s “I hear You Knocking” which stayed at number one for 6 weeks before being replaced with Clive Dunn’s “Grandad”
The quirkiness of the UK record buying public, was never too far away.


I remember hearing all of those songs that night, along with Purple’s “Black Night”, McGuinness Flint’s “When I’m Dead and Gone” and T-Rex’s “Ride a White Swan”, but the track that takes me back to that church-hall every time I hear it is “Woodstock”, penned by Joni Mitchell and performed by Matthews Southern Comfort.

Joni’s an icon, but in 1970 I had no idea who she was, or who Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were. The fact that Matthews Southern Comfort’s rendition of “Woodstock” was the third version of the song to be released that year, was news to me.

All I knew was that it had a great melody and a very trippy vibe…..
“we are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves, back to the garden”.

I had zero awareness at the time that it was a hippy anthem about the Woodstock Festival, or that it had been composed by a pissed-off Joni Mitchell, confined to watching live coverage of the festival in her hotel room – coerced by her then manager to appear on the Dick Cavett show instead of performing at Woodstock.

Mitchell’s version had been released as the B side to “Big Yellow Taxi” and whilst CSN&Y’s version was mega in America and Canada, the version by Matthews Southern Comfort, fronted by former Fairport Convention vocalist Ian Matthews was the most successful internationally, giving them their one and only big hit.
  
A life-changing moment, which as it turns out, was a happy accident.

It all started when Matthews’ newly put together band were invited to record four live songs for a BBC session but with only three prepared they hurriedly put together an arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” on the spot.

As it turned out their ad hoc rendition of “Woodstock” was so well received that they were encouraged to put it out as a single, something their record company weren’t keen on and only agreed to if CSN&Y’s version didn’t chart in the UK, which fortunately proved to be the case for Matthews.

With the song recorded, released and struggling to sell due to zero record company promotion or support, the third piece of luck kicked in when Tony Blackburn made “Woodstock” his record of the week, duly catapulting the single up the charts to the number one spot, where it stayed for 3 weeks.

Alas, this was Matthews Southern Comfort’s only chart success and the song has predictably fallen into the category aptly titled – ‘One Hit Wonder’.

I grew to love the Joni Mitchell original, and I’ve listened to most versions of the song including an interesting up-tempo interpretation by Stephen Stills, featuring Jimi Hendrix on bass & Buddy Miles on drums, however, the Matthews Southern Comfort version is still the best – well to this 12-year-old anyway!


(*If you want to read more on the Top of The Pops catalogue of albums, Colin posted a great article. Click here for more)

*MUSIC, Turntable Talk

Those Guilty, Guilty Pleasures

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Paul Fitzpatrick: London, September 2022

Colin and I were once again invited to submit a piece to TURNTABLE TALK on Dave Ruch’s blog, ‘A Sound Day.‘
Dave’s site covers all genres of music, the articles are interesting, the writing is excellent and it’s well worth a visit,

This time, the subject open for discussion was ‘Guilty Pleasures’

According to psychologists, the term Guilty Pleasure tends to be associated with shame or embarrassment rather than guilt itself.

In essence, a Guilty Pleasure is something we enjoy, but we know we’re not supposed to, because liking it, somehow reflects badly on us.
It’s why to this day, there are certain pieces of music we don’t include on shared or public playlists but are happy to listen to in our own ear-space.

Looking back, there were a raft of songs in the 70s that I could never admit to liking at the time….

If you want to talk about guilty pleasures – who was about to risk their credibility to sing the praises of the Starland Vocal Band’s ‘Afternoon Delight’ in 75 when the popular topic of the day was Bonzo’s powerhouse drumming on Physical Graffiti?

Afternoon Delight Anchorman Style

Decades on, I’m happy to admit that there’s loads of tracks in my current music library that I would have once distanced myself from.

Maybe it’s nostalgia or maybe we just mellow with age, but there are quite a few ‘dad-tracks; I remember grimacing to in his car that over time crept into my own music library.

I’m talking mostly about classic easy-listening artists like Glen Campbell, The Carpenters, and Neil Diamond, who’s song ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’, I was astonished to learn, is one of my most played songs – 222 plays to date, according to i-Tunes.

I loved ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ when it was released but it was a covert romance, Mr ‘forever in blue-jeans’ Diamond was my dad’s music not mine, although, cut forward to 2022 and ‘Sweet Caroline’ has become a UK crowd anthem and Diamond has attained national treasure status.

To make things worse, on its release in November 1970, ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ shared the UK charts with Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’, Deep Purple’s ‘Black Night’ and Jimi Hendrix’s swansong, ‘Voodoo Chile’, so in the ongoing effort to maintain credibility, as much as I liked it, ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ was never going to be the song of choice on any jukebox I was putting my hard-earned pocket-money into.

Here’s how tastes change though – according to my i-Tunes data, Paranoid, Voodoo Chile, and Black Night between them, have racked up 95 plays in the past 5 years, whilst ‘Cracklin Rosie’ trumps them with 222 plays….

I stand by the fact that ‘Cracklin’ Rosie’ is a great pop song… a breezy, upbeat track with a good melody. Just under 3 minutes long and with the backing of the exceptional ‘Wrecking Crew’ – the famous LA session players who played on almost every big hit of the 60s/70s.



Figuring out the high number of iTunes plays, it’s a song I include on a lot of playlists, probably because I get a rush of nostalgia on every listen… transporting me back to my youth and time spent with my dad and his 8-track player.

Funnily enough, it’s exactly the same vibe I get when I hear Smokey Robinson’s ‘Tears of a Clown’, or the Jackson 5’s ‘I Want You Back’. Two other sub-3-minute pop classics from the same era, the big difference I guess is that there’s no guilt attached to appreciating Motown greats….

Inspired by the topic I have rustled up a short 70s guilty pleasures playlist.

Looking down the list, I’m bugged that I was embarrassed to declare a fondness for a lot of these songs – they are all well-constructed, melodic, classic, pop songs, however, in context to what we were into at the time, few if any could be discussed, purchased, or even hummed in fear of public humiliation… thankfully we all move on!