The UK Top 50 of 1967 Poll

At first glance, it seems more like the summer of 50 year-old housewives than the summer of love.
But if you look beyond the Engelbert Humperdinck dominance, there's still an unusual amount of really great songs here.

Voted "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" because of the great double a-side thing, but "Waterloo Sunset" "A Whiter Shade Of Pale", "All You Need Is Love", "A Teenage Opera", "Hole In My Shoe", "Flowers In The Rain", "Itchycoo Park", "I Was Made To Love Her", "Night Of Fear" and "Death Of a Clown" are all GRREEAAAAAAT songs.

Itchycoo Park

This is the most like-duh poll ever.

And the most greatest year for pop ever.

WHY DON'T YOU CUT YOUR HAIR????!!!!!

Beginning of the fatal pop/rock and single/album schism; all the smart thinkers upgraded to albums, leaving the singles chart clear for the advent of the Brylcreem balladeers. Note also the sudden, steep qualitative decline in the singles chart after September, i.e. when the pirate stations fell silent and Lord Reith Knows Best took over again.

In fact, the singles charts were better in September onwards. Before that, it was all about Engelbert and only The Beatles and a few others released great stuff. By the end of 1967, everyone wanted to sound like "Sgt. Pepper", which gave the world some excellent singles such as "Hole In My Shoe" for instance.

Meanwhile, in the real world, this was the singles chart as of Christmas '67 - more or less a 50/50 balance:

1. Beatles - Hello Goodbye
2. Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour (E.P.)
3. Tom Jones - I'm Coming Home
4. Val Doonican - If The Whole World Stopped Loving
5. Gene Pitney - Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart
6. Cliff Richard - All My Love
7. Monkees - Daydream Believer
8. Long John Baldry - Let The Heartaches Begin
9. Scaffold - Thank U Very Much
10. Four Tops - Walk Away Renee
11. Des O'Connor - Careless Hands
12. Traffic - Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush
13. Engelbert Humperdinck - The Last Waltz
14. Simon Dupree And The Big Sound - Kites
15. Bee Gees - World
16. Dave Clark Five - Everybody Knows
17. Diana Ross And The Supremes - In And Out Of Love
18. Georgie Fame - Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde
19. Small Faces - Tin Soldier
20. Frankie Vaughan - There Must Be A Way

Judging from the charts, it seems the older non-rock generation stopped buying singles around 1970.

are you sure about that? I can think of lots of post-1970 non-rock singles.

who bought eg. A Millenium Prayer/ Sailing/ Mull of Kintyre/ Grandad ?

Cliff fans/Rod fans/the type of audience who doesn't buy records/kids, in that order.

Mind you, Tom's started going through 1975 on Popular, and that is a very strange year for number ones.

which is my point, I think - despite what Geir says about 1970, the older MOR bizzaro pop-non-pop generation never stopped buying singles, certainly not going by that Popular column anyhow.

Not really, but they didn't dominate the charts to the extent that they did in the second half of '67/first half of '68.

If you look at the average 1968 Top 40 it's basically a Radio 2 chart.

maybe, but that's only through the prism of time. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't many of the same people buying both The Beatles & Englebert

I'm going to vote for Keith West, partly because I reckon enough other people will vote for The Kinks and The Small Faces anyway, and partly because I rather suspect that some people might not remember / realise what "Excerpt From 'A Teenage Opera'" actually is....

"Grocer Jack, grocer Jack, get off your back,
Go into town, don't let them down. Oh no, oh no...."

One of the first pop records I can remember. The rest of the Teenage Opera (as subsequently released on CD) was surprisingly nothing like it.

who bought eg. A Millenium Prayer/ Sailing/ Mull of Kintyre/ Grandad ?

The same people who used to be into rock/pop back in the 60s. Those songs have rock elements, as opposed to what Engelbert Humperdinck did.

You seem to be assuming it was only old people who were buying Engelbert/ Tom Jones etc - it probably wasn't... mind you, there is no logical explanation for Harry Secombe

I remember one other song from "Teenage Opera", something like "Hello Mr Weatherman" which I defy anyone to describe as 'not sounding like "Grocer Jack"!"

The only rock element to "Grandad" was the rocking chair he used for TOTP.

A lot of the Engelbert/Tom demographic consisted of the slightly older generation who didn't swing with the sixties - they might have liked Elvis but felt the Beatles were shark-jumping time - and perhaps were struggling with kids, unhappy marriages, cost of living and so forth; so they wanted lush reassurance. Thus something like "Release Me" might have spoken for a lot more people in 1967 Britain than it's comfortable to assume - especially since outside London it might as well still have been 1937.

Harry Secombe can be explained by the then still prevalent generation who fought in the war for the likes of us (ditto Donald Peers etc.) who never had any truck with rock 'n' roll at all.

slightly older generation who didn't swing with the sixties

Meaning late 20s/ early 30s?

I'd say so - up to mid-'30s (i.e. my parents).

"He's Our Dear Old Weatherman" does have certain thematic elements in common with "Grocer Jack" it must be admitted.

As I understand it most of the alleged "rest of" A Teenage Opera never actually existed beyond the confines of Keith West's imagination, if indeed indeed it existed at all; the only other song which has been positively identified as an extract from the putative A Teenage Opera afaik being the subsequent single "Sam".

A couple of albums have been released bearing the names "Keith West" and "A Teenage Opera" but, whilst interesting, these have actually been comp.s of recordings by various bands and other projects Keith West was involved with (Four + 1, The In Crowd, Tomorrow, Philwit & Pegasus) and recordings by various other artists which he produced, rather than being the recreation of the (sadly) mythical "A Teenage Opera" that they might at first appear to be.

My granny had all the Beatles and Stones singles (and The Move etc etc) and she was 57 in 1967! I think that was because her house was the usual venue for parties - family and otherwise

As I understand it most of the alleged "rest of" A Teenage Opera never actually existed beyond the confines of Keith West's imagination,

Mark Wirtz's imagination surely?

This one is the one I've got.

As I always understood it, the whole "Teenage Opera" had been a bit of a con, in that it never was one...

Subsequently, I found that it was meant to be a 'test the market' thing, but by the time they got more into making it, the powers-that-be were all "oh, it's time is gone, the kids have no long-term memory, it's out of date if it's 6 months old, etc"

Whereas, I remember "Magical Mister Mistofelees" being previewed on Swap shop about 2 years before "Cats" opened. Also, "Evita" became an album to trail the stage show.

So, then as now, no-one likes to go too far outside accepted norms, unless they are the one with the upfront.

"Mark Wirtz's imagination surely?"

Well, both presumably - as I understand it Wirtz arranged and produced while West (frequently credited under his real name, Hopkins) wrote the lyrics - although you're absolutely right that I was getting them confused above; Wirtz was the producer not West and Philwit & Pegasus was a revolving cast centred on Mark Wirtz and his gf Maria Feltham and had nothing to do with Keith West afaik!)

Penny Lane & Strawberry Fields

i.e. as long as it's Lloyd Webber doing the opera (xxp).

Best bit of the sleevenotes is the quote from Blackburn when he first played "Sam" on his Radio 1 breakfast show - "OK, housewives, put away your ironing now, it's the new one from the Teenage Opera!"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

So much great music from 1967.. so little of it represented here..

All You Need Is Love

Strawberry Fields is the finest of all, and had it been the only A-side I'd probably have gone for it (mind you, if "I Am The Walrus" had been ...) but I went - with typical perversity - for "Death of a Clown", if only because it moves me, and nobody else probably will.

Thing is, Strawberry Fields wouldn't have worked half as well if you didn't have Penny Lane to balance it out, in the same way that you can only really "get" The Village Green Preservation Society if you first listen to "Death Of A Clown" since that's the other side of the coin which forces the retreat (K Rusby/D French/J Saunders please take note).

I'll have to 'get' VGPS one of these days...

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Lovely.

Who voted for "Release Me"? ;)

Hmmm. For votes for Engelbert. And also votes for "Edelweiss" and "If I Were a Rich Man"? You guys are crazy ;)

And.. (no I cannae)

curse those fan club lurkers