ALWYN TURNER chooses his favourite British singles from 1977.

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When m’learned colleague Ben Finlay selected the ten best British albums of 1976, he concluded by saying that he’d reached the outermost limits of his period, and that ‘someone else can do the late seventies’. I took this as a personal challenge (as it was probably intended). I turned fifteen in 1977, that year of punk, and music was – if not my first love – then certainly important to me.

The problem, though, is that there were so very few genuinely great British albums released that year. The Sex Pistols, to take the most obvious example, were a fine singles group and obviously of huge importance, but their one album, Never Mind the Bollocks, is frankly wearying, since the music is so limited. You can tell this from their subsequent careers – Johnny Rotten went on to make much better albums with PiL, because he was the talented one, while Steve Jones never did anything afterwards that you need to hear.

So, after several failed attempts to list the best albums, I abandoned the idea of following directly in Ben’s footsteps, and have instead opted for a collection of twelve-track compilation of songs that were released on single in 1977.

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A playlist is available on YouTube

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SIDE ONE:

1. Bryan Ferry, ‘This Is Tomorrow’
A swaggering rock single, not far removed from what Ian Hunter might have done, while also setting the template for Robert Palmer’s 1980s career. And, it being Bryan Ferry, it’s a bit arty as well, the title taken from the 1956 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery that launched British pop art. The key work in that show was Richard Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, which was evoked in Roxy Music’s ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’ (1973). Ferry had studied under Hamilton at Newcastle University, and knew whereof he sang.
You’ve got to admire the chutzpah of an opening couplet that rhymes June and Moon. Also, that’s Chris Spedding on guitar, that is.

2. David Bowie, ‘Be My Wife’
If I had been doing the best ten albums, then Low would have been at #1, with the next two places empty, just to show that nothing else could come close – not even “Heroes”. This was the second single released from Low and it reached the less than dizzying heights of #57 in the charts, which is a shocking indictment of the nation. I’ve seen it described as being ironic, but I never heard it like that; it feels genuine to me, and I think it’s Bowie’s best love-song since ‘In the Heat of the Morning’.
In the video he offers a blueprint for Alfred Molina’s turn as Kenneth Halliwell in Prick Up Your Ears. On piano, British rock ’n’ roll veteran Roy Young.

3. Fox, ‘My Old Man’s Away’
I loved Fox. They were ‘like a Junior Choice version of Slapp Happy,’ as I wrote elsewhere. The third and final album, Blue Hotel, wasn’t quite as strong as its predecessors, and the obvious single from it, ‘S-S-S-Single Bed’ had been released the previous year to great success – top five in Britain, #1 in Australia. ‘My Old Man’s Away’ was the follow-up and did nothing. The melody’s a bit reminiscent of ‘Love Ship’ on the debut album, and the chorus isn’t as hooky as their best work, but it’s still a fine, quirky little record.

4. Roogalator, ‘Love and the Single Girl’
Singer/guitarist Danny Adler was American, but he’d been in Britain for five years by now, playing the pub-rock circuit with his band Roogalator, so he counts as British, as far as I’m concerned. This was released on Virgin, following a single on Stiff, and really should have been a hit. It was written by the band’s keyboard-player Nick Plytas, who was later in the Tom Robinson Band (briefly) and in African Head Charge.

5. Elvis Costello, ‘Mystery Dance’
The B-side to Costello’s third single ‘(The Angels Wanna Wear) Red Shoes’, this was my favourite track from My Aim Is True, a wonderfully frantic, jittery account of a first sexual experience – spluttered out in 263 words that take just 1’38”. It feels a little like a sequel to Buddy Holly’s ‘Oh Boy!’, all the exuberant anticipation replaced by frustration that it didn’t turn out as well as had been hoped: ‘I can’t do it anymore and I’m not satisfied.’
Later in the year came ‘Watching the Detectives’, which became his first hit.

6. Dr Feelgood, ‘Lights Out’
Jerry Byrne’s staccato rock ’n’ roll classic ‘Lights Out’ (1958) was tailor-made for Dr Feelgood and Wilko Johnson’s choppy guitar. It was released as the B-side of their first top-50 single ‘Sneakin’ Suspicion’, the title track of their fourth album. That was also the last record Wilko made with the group before he left. I was going to say ‘regrettably’, but I don’t know that I do regret it, because Wilko went on to form the Solid Senders, and their 1978 debut album is fantastic, better than anything the Feelgoods did.

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SIDE TWO:

1. XTC, ‘Science Friction’
I’m aware that XTC went on to bigger – and, in the eyes of most, better – things with their neo-psych English pastorals, but I always missed the first incarnation, when Barry Andrews was playing keyboards and the whole thing was jerky and awkward, like they hadn’t been to bed all weekend.

2. Soft Boys, ‘Hear My Brane’
One of the great things about punk was that it allowed all sorts of people to get in on the act. And here on Raw Records (who also brought us the Killjoys, the Users and the Unwanted) were the Soft Boys, ploughing their own furrow. This was from their first release, a maxi-single titled ‘Give It to the Soft Boys’, which I loved. And I was right – Robyn Hitchcock turned out to be one of the country’s greatest rock artists. This is not punk in any way, but a warped take on r&b and proudly silly:
‘Ever since I went away, I’ve been wishing I was back;
Oh yeah, wishing I could quack.’

3. Clash, ‘Complete Control’
This was the first Clash single I bought, and it’s still one of my favourites. In pursuit of the group’s love of reggae, it was co-produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, though quite what he contributed is anyone’s guess. The debut album had been a perfectly fine piece of garage rock but this was the first indication that they might have some musical depth to sustain them over the medium-haul.

4. Generation X, ‘Wild Dub’
Punk and reggae really didn’t go together, what with punk being the whitest, least rhythmic music this side of Black Sabbath. But that didn’t stop people trying. Generation X’s second single was ‘Wild Youth’, and for the B-side they made the daft decision to do a dub version. The record was produced by Phil Wainman, who was a great producer – the best Sweet stuff was his work, as was the best Sensational Alex Harvey Band album, Next (1973) – but he was no Lee Perry. Despite its manifest absurdity, though, I really like it. ‘Heavy, heavy dub, punk rockers.’ Indeed.

5. John Cooper Clarke, ‘Psycle Sluts’
I heard this on John Peel’s show – listening on a white earphone under the bed-clothes – and man, was it a revelation. The music was scratchy, almost abstract, the closest thing, in fact, to dub that came out of white rock that year. And then there were Clarke’s words, which were witty and brilliant, like a punk Roger McGough: ‘Motorcycle Michael wants to buy a tank – only twenty-nine years old and he’s learning how to wank.’ I don’t think he ever got better than this on record.

6. Ian Dury, ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’
Apart from Bowie, the one really great album in 1977 was New Boots and Panties!! And rather splendidly, it was so self-confident that it didn’t include Dury’s great anthem, which had come out as a single the previous month. It sold very poorly indeed, despite its ubiquity. The jazzy piano solo is delightful.

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