40 Year Itch: A-Ho-Ho Ho-A-Ho

When (Stardust) came on telly, (future Oasis founders Liam and Noel Gallagher) would mime along and pretend to be Alvin and I'd always catch them singing into hairbrushes and playing air guitar

-Thomas Gallagher, their dad

     40 years ago, glam bandwagon jumper Alvin Stardust celebrated his one and only UK#1 single, "Jealous Mind". Born Bernard Jewry, Stardust appropriated just about everything he could from Elvis's 1968 TV special. And the fans bought it...at least for a year or so.

"You, You, You" was another 1974 Top 10 hit.

In 1981, signed to Stiff Records,  Stardust returned to the UK Top 10 with his rockabilly-influenced cover of the Nat King Cole hit "Pretend"

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40 Year Itch: The Worst Singles of 1974

 Telly Savalas : If

"People know that singing is not my bag, but if I say 'Hey, this is how Telly feels about this or that song,' I can't make mistakes. I can only make mistakes by pretending to be a great singer."

   Telly Savalas hit #1 in the UK in 1975 with his 1974  spoken word, smooth as fuck version of the Bread classic "If". Did he know how God awful this was? I've learned never to underestimate the intelligence of a successful actor so I'm guessing he was.

Bonus Turd!

# 4 Gary Glitter : Remember Me This Way

What a remarkably lifeless Top 10 UK single! Sounds like a star who has run out of gas. Of course Glitter's well documented problems are still years away.

#3 Bimbo Jet : El Bimbo

Euro-disco at its worst. Released in 1974, the tune swept through Europe topping charts first in Bimbo Jet's home country of France then in Spain, Italy, Denmark and others before it narrowly missed becoming a Top 40 hit in the US.

#2 Donny and Marie Osmond  I'm Leaving It (All) Up To You

Let's ignore the incestuous overtones of a brother and sister singing about whether they want each other's love, and just rank this #2 because of the awful syrupy string section. What in God's name propelled this into the Top 10 on both sides of the Atalantic?

#1 Paul Anka : (You're) Having My Baby

"The need inside you I see it showin' Oh the seed inside you baby do you feel it growin'"

Not sure what's more creepy: the whole "seed inside you" concept or the graphic abortion allusions in the bridge"

"Didn't have to keep it Wouldn't put ya through it You could have swept it from you life But you wouldn't do it No, you wouldn't do it"

Despite protests from the National Organization of Women, who gave Anka their annual "Keer Her in Her Place" Award,  "(You're) Having My Baby" knocked Paper Lace from the Top Spot on the Billboard Hot 100. And you sure as shit know it wasn't the men who were buying this 45. Anka has always said the song is a "personal statement of a man caught up in the affection and joy of childbirth". Eventually he would make one small concession to Women's Lib: singing "having our baby" in future concerts

Bonus Turd: Anka's Nirvana cover

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40 Year Itch : Free To Be You And Me

On March 11, 1974 Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack performed "When We Grow Up" on the ABC television special Free To Be You And Me.

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40 Year Itch : To Blast Away The Clouds

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    Though it did nothing in the US, Alice Cooper's "Teenage Lament '74", from Muscle of Love,  hit the UK Top 20 despite competition from various other teen songs including "Teenage Rampage" by Sweet, "Teenage Dream" by T Rex,  "Judy Teen" by Cockney Rebel "Angel Fingers (A Teen Ballad)" by Wizzard, and eventually "Teenage Idol" by Elton John. Among the ladies singing back-up: Ronnie Spector and Liza Minnelli.This would be the last hit for the original Alice Cooper band.

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40 Year Itch : Slow Hand Row

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I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion. That kind of marriage has so far only come up with ponderous results. We play rock and roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz

-Walter Becker, Rolling Stone, August 15, 1974

  So maybe it's not fusion. But from the opening notes of  Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan certainly flirts with jazz . Those first notes of the Top 5 hit "Rikki Don't Lose My Number" borrow the Samba piano sounds of Horace Silver's "Song For My Father". At the end of Side One you encounter  a cover of Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" and, on Side Two, a salute to bebop giant Charlie Parker on "Parker's Band". (There's even a short "quote" from Parker's "Bongo Bop")

   Having played the studio musician/professional songwriter ( for Barbara Streisand no less)  route and already been bored by it all, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen discovered a passion for composing and arranging their own tunes. Mixing things up with lyrics that are sarcastic, ironic, world-weary and romantically disillusioned. On "Rikki" you get a Samba beat, a California pop sheen and the first perfect guitar solo of 1974 courtesy of  Jeff "Skunk" Baxter.

I'll tell you what I like about our group...outside of our technical accomplishments it's that our music scares me more than anybody else's. The combination of the words with the music--like a cheerful lyric and a sad or menacing lyric, or vice versa--I find that irony frightening.

--Donald Fagen, Rolling Stone, August 15, 1974

Of course the critics ate it up. Robert Christgau gave an A+ rating to only two albums in 1974: Pretzel Logic and the New York Dolls album Too Much Too Soon. When the Pazz and Jop critics poll for 1974 came out, Pretzel Logic finished second to Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark. 

But fans also bought the album which went Gold in three months. Pretzel Logic would be the last of the "band albums". The 1974 tour would be Steely Dan's last for nearly two decades. From Katy Lied on, Steely Dan's Becker and Fagen would rely on session musicians.

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40 Year Itch: Just Starfish on the Beach

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  On March 2, 1974 Terry Jacks began a three week run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with a tune he first suggested the Beach Boys record. They did, but never released it.

Originally written and recorded in 1961 by French artist Jacques Brel, "Le Moribund" ( or "The Dying Man") had already been covered by the Kingston Trio in 1964 with English lyrics translated by poet Rod McKuen.

After getting permission to revise the lyrics at the end, Terry Jacks recorded "Seasons in the Sun" in his home city of Vancouver. It sat on a shelf for more than a year before he finally released the single in Canada where it topped the charts first.

From Canada the song swept around the world--a number one hit in both the US and the UK. And then. And then Terry Jacks vanished. In 1983 he told Rolling Stone magazine: 

I got an awful lot of strange letters from that record. They had a contest at a school in Miami about how this person died. They knew when Terry Jacks was born and when he died. Nobody heard from me again, see?

Terry Jacks in Paris, January 2014

    That's been the way Terry's wanted it. Outside of some environmental work, he's become a self described "recluse" in his home country. He performs now and again in Europe and has made enough money off of "Seasons in the Sun" to spend winters in Hawaii and the rest of his time on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of Vancouver Island.

One footnote: Nirvana memorably covered "Season in the Sun" with Kurt on drums.

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40 Year Itch : The Grammys

Alice Cooper and Stevie Wonder

     On March 2, 1974 Stevie Wonder won four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year (Innervisions), Best Pop Vocal Male ( "You Are the Sunshine of My Life") R and B Performance Male ("Superstition") and R and B Song of the Year ("Superstition").

     Among the highlights of the night was the Jackson 5 ( with little Randy now filling in for Jermaine) singing the nominations for best R and B Performance by a Group:

Little Richard and Chuck Berry also sang the nominations for Best R and B Male Performance. Stevie Wonder gave the Grammy to his mother.



Just weeks from her divorce from Sonny, Cher showed up wearing an outfit that drew a lot of flashbulbs.

Best new artist went to Bette Midler. She beat out Deodato, Maureen McGovern, Marie Osmond and Barry White.

Other big winners included Charlie Rich and  Roberta Flack for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

  The biggest surprise may have been Aretha Franklin winning Best R and B Performance by a Female with the Quincy Jones produced "Master of Eyes". It was not a huge hit.

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