Elton John’s next single came out in 1970. It was the gospel influenced Border Song from his second LP Elton John. Border Song almost tickled the UK charts. In fact Elton sang it on Top of the Pops as a single “bubbling under” – as they said in those days. Such an appearance was something which usually presaged a surge in sales for the next week. With Border Song the opposite happened. Whatever the reasons for this decline (beyond a tendency to didacticism in the last verse) the fact that the song’s hook, “Holy Moses!” wasn’t its title and its title didn’t appear in the song must have contributed. I can still imagine folk walking in to record shops to ask for “Holy Moses” only to be told it didn’t exist.
Border Song does showcase the variety in Elton’s song-writing at the time though.
Elton John: Border Song
A You Tube clip of Elton singing Border Song live is apparently the earliest video of him still to survive.
Ringo Starr was, you might have thought, the least likely member of the Beatles to have a pop career after the Fab Four broke up. He did, though, have some singles success in the 1970s – including this, his first solo UK hit. He had some help from George Harrison with it, however, not least the distinctive guitar intro and outro.
Ringo Starr: It Don’t Come Easy
Edited (6/10/21) to add: I’ve just come across this version by George Harrison who, contrary to what I wrote above, apparently composed the whole song himself and gifted it to Ringo.
Even though it breaks the artificial rules of this category by being an album track, given the weather over recent months it somehow seems appropriate.
I wasn’t much into Uriah Heep (not at all to be honest) but a friend of my youth was. Rain was atypical of Uriah Heep’s output; as I recall they were mostly heavy rather than balladeers. This song is the only one of theirs I can remember, though.
Another couple of songs that might as well have been from the 60s.
As you might expect from the title the first is a jeu d’esprit. From a band known rather peculiarly as Three Dog Night – apparently something to do with Australians on cold nights warming themselves up with dingos – it was a hit in 1971.
Three Dog Night: Joy To The World
Their other UK hit came a year earlier and was a Randy Newman song, a warning about the dangers of strange places and unusual substances.
Most folk would choose I’m Not In Love as their 10cc song of choice but I feature this mainly because I always wanted to write a parody of it – to be called I’m Randy. Try Me. (But I never got around to it.)
A wonderfully laconic offering from Michael Nesmith – post Monkees.
Michael Nesmith: Rio
One of those oddities that crop up from time to time concerns Nesmith. His mother invented Liquid Paper – correction fluid of this type is known as Tippex in the UK – see also Mike’s Wiki entry. He inherited her fortune.
This is one of the few songs from the latter end of the 70s that will make it here as I never much went for punk and its aftermath.
However Tom Robinson partly surfed the punk wave and I was predisposed to his work as I had actually seen him performing on-stage at the Apollo in Glasgow when he was supporting someone or other – exactly whom I now forget – as part of an acoustic trio named Café Society (not, I think, the South African band Wiki links to.) The Café Society Tom was in were good, very good indeed. I wasn’t surprised when he went on to success.
The Tom Robinson Band was harder edged as this live performance attests.
