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In 1971 I went up the stairs next to a fashion boutique at the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street and entered a record store. There I paid £1.90 for a copy of Five Bridges by The Nice. It wasn't the first album that I bought. Ignoring childish indiscretions from pre-teen years, I think that four of the first six albums that I bought were Sgt Peppers (mono version, from the hippie floor at Harrods, where we used to hang out a lot as kids. It looked like Clockwork Orange land), Bridge Over Troubled Water, the soundtrack to Hair, the soundrack to 2001, A Space Odyssey, and Tommy (from WH Smith's in the Elephant & Castle shopping centre)
Anyway, this record store, which was no more than the size of a large living room, was the first ever Virgin store, the beginning of today's sprawling Virgin brand empire. I have no idea if Richard Branson was behind the counter, although I somehow doubt it.
I was reminded of this when watching episode three of "The 1970s" on Channel Five, referred to by some upstart kid continuity announcer from what sounded like a Yorkshire ex-mining village as "the decade that taste forgot". What would he know?
In fact, making a TV series about the 1970s is a mistake from the word go, because there was no decade of the 1970s, not in fashion or musical terms. What there was, was a hangover of the 1960s (musically through to 1976) and a foretaste of the next 30 years (Sex Pistols, Gil Scott Heron, The Clash). The same can be said of fashion. Prior to 1976 lots of people had long hair. Anyone with long hair after 1977 was likely to be strumming an air guitar and reading Sounds or Kerranggg! (if the latter had been launched then).
Bespectacled junior entrepreneur Branson appeared on this programme, looking his age at the time.
Watching this series makes you realize how hotrrific that decade was. I mean, man, how unucky could you be to be (as I was) 15 in 1970? The most formative years of my life (14 to 21) were spent amidst three-day weeks, near hyper-inflation, rising unemployment, an oil crisis, a country quite undeniably heading down the sink as fast as the water could carry it, and governments on both sides that quite clearly had not a clue what to do about it.
My first day at university should have given me a clue that things were not going well; Egypt and Syria thought that it would be as good a day as any to invade Israel. Within four months the lights were going out every other day and the TV was being turned off at 10.30 in the evening. We were being told to have baths in about three inches of water. Luxury, not. Within six months of my first year there was a minority Labour government, and within a year Nixon had told us that he was not a crook. within two years, the North Vietnamese had united Vietnam in what can only be seen as one of the sorrier days in America's history. Yes, say what you like about my three years as a politics and economics undergraduate -- uneventful it was not. Indeed, Kent University actually made the leader pages of the Daily Express, mainly because we had occupied something or other because the University wanted to send someone down for, as far as I can remember, not doing a stroke of work. I wonder where Joe Cotter is now? The event seems even to have passed Google by.
The 1970s were, up to 1976, utterly miserable, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I guess that I had some good times. But the years themselves were not glorious days to be alive. It was 1976 before the decade found its voice, and that was a voice that didn't include the Austin Allegro or James Callaghan.
This has been a party political broadcast on behalf of the nearing Miserable Old Git status party.
Anyway, this record store, which was no more than the size of a large living room, was the first ever Virgin store, the beginning of today's sprawling Virgin brand empire. I have no idea if Richard Branson was behind the counter, although I somehow doubt it.
I was reminded of this when watching episode three of "The 1970s" on Channel Five, referred to by some upstart kid continuity announcer from what sounded like a Yorkshire ex-mining village as "the decade that taste forgot". What would he know?
In fact, making a TV series about the 1970s is a mistake from the word go, because there was no decade of the 1970s, not in fashion or musical terms. What there was, was a hangover of the 1960s (musically through to 1976) and a foretaste of the next 30 years (Sex Pistols, Gil Scott Heron, The Clash). The same can be said of fashion. Prior to 1976 lots of people had long hair. Anyone with long hair after 1977 was likely to be strumming an air guitar and reading Sounds or Kerranggg! (if the latter had been launched then).
Bespectacled junior entrepreneur Branson appeared on this programme, looking his age at the time.
Watching this series makes you realize how hotrrific that decade was. I mean, man, how unucky could you be to be (as I was) 15 in 1970? The most formative years of my life (14 to 21) were spent amidst three-day weeks, near hyper-inflation, rising unemployment, an oil crisis, a country quite undeniably heading down the sink as fast as the water could carry it, and governments on both sides that quite clearly had not a clue what to do about it.
My first day at university should have given me a clue that things were not going well; Egypt and Syria thought that it would be as good a day as any to invade Israel. Within four months the lights were going out every other day and the TV was being turned off at 10.30 in the evening. We were being told to have baths in about three inches of water. Luxury, not. Within six months of my first year there was a minority Labour government, and within a year Nixon had told us that he was not a crook. within two years, the North Vietnamese had united Vietnam in what can only be seen as one of the sorrier days in America's history. Yes, say what you like about my three years as a politics and economics undergraduate -- uneventful it was not. Indeed, Kent University actually made the leader pages of the Daily Express, mainly because we had occupied something or other because the University wanted to send someone down for, as far as I can remember, not doing a stroke of work. I wonder where Joe Cotter is now? The event seems even to have passed Google by.
The 1970s were, up to 1976, utterly miserable, as far as I was concerned. I mean, I guess that I had some good times. But the years themselves were not glorious days to be alive. It was 1976 before the decade found its voice, and that was a voice that didn't include the Austin Allegro or James Callaghan.
This has been a party political broadcast on behalf of the nearing Miserable Old Git status party.
