A few years ago I wrote a column in Word magazine. It appeared under the headline “1971 was the annus mirabilis of the rock album”. It seemed a suitably provocative headline. It was only after I read the piece again that I realised it was true.
1971, the subject of my new book, casts the longest shadow in rock: 45 years on, the music of 1971 doesn’t sound quaint or dated. The big albums of that year — Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Led Zeppelin IV, Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On and even a record like Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter, which was a flop at the time — still represent a gold standard, even for fans who weren’t born until years after they were made.
This music was never improved upon, not even by the people who made it. When Keith Emerson died recently his fellow band member, Greg Lake, poignantly admitted that he was always trying to capture “that spark of effervescence” they had in those days. However, there was no getting back to the state of sublime cluelessness in which they and their contemporaries had gone about their work when it was all new and ahead of them.
David Bowie took his first trip to the United States on Saturday, January 23, 1971. He was delayed by immigration at the airport in Washington because he was dressed unconventionally. In his luggage was a male gown, acquired recently from the designer Michael Fish. There was no budget for Bowie’s visit and he didn’t have a permit to perform live. He lodged with people from his American record company, Mercury, who happened to be fans.
At a Velvet Underground show in New York a few days later, he cornered the band’s singer and enthused about how much he admired his work. Only afterwards did he realise that he had spoken not to Lou Reed but to Doug Yule, his replacement. Reed had left the band some months earlier and retired to suburban Long Island. In the days before video and social media, it was easy to make this kind of mistake.
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While in Los Angeles, Bowie played Lou Reed’s Waiting For the Man with the rock critic John Mendelsohn’s band, Christopher Milk, in A&M studios. He didn’t know this was the same place where Carole King had just finished recording what was to be her multimillion-selling album Tapestry.
King had been in Studio B. Next door in Studio A were the Carpenters, making their third album. This included a Leon Russell song they had just heard sung on Johnny Carson by the unknown Bette Midler, whose musical director was the equally unknown Barry Manilow. Through the other wall in Studio C, Joni Mitchell was working on a record to come out that summer, which was to be called Blue. King asked Mitchell to sing backing vocals on her record with their mutual friend James Taylor. This was easy to organise because he was in another studio a short walk away, making Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon.
That same month, Taylor went to Nashville to record a TV special with Johnny Cash. While he was there, Neil Young got him and Linda Ronstadt into a studio to sing on one of his new songs, which was called Heart of Gold. At the time Ronstadt was putting together a backing band which featured Don Henley, then starving, and Glenn Frey. By the middle of the year they would be the core of the Eagles and they would persuade their unknown friend Jackson Browne to give them first go at his new song Take it Easy.
Rock was still a small world and chance meetings that had far-reaching consequences were common. George Harrison was working on a soundtrack with Ravi Shankar when the war in Bangladesh became front-page news. The Concert for Bangladesh, which featured Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr and became the template for all-star rock fundraisers from Live Aid on, was improvised in a few short weeks that summer.
“The Beatles had broken up and there was a vacant crown
It wasn’t the only template established in that hectic year. The marriage of Mick Jagger to Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias in St Tropez on May 12 fixed his image as a globetrotting popinjay, as much at home with society friends as mere musicians. This is an image that endures to this day.
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In the same month, Stevie Wonder, just turned 21 and free to make his career decisions himself, started working with Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff and their amazing new polyphonic synthesizer, with which he would compose all the hits of his golden age.
In 1971 there weren’t a hundred different music scenes. There was just the one. All the people making music bumped into each other, heard each other’s music and often played on each other’s records, with no concern for genres. Rick Wakeman began the year with the folk-rock group the Strawbs, supplied the piano glissando at the beginning of T. Rex’s chart-busting Get It On, the hymn-like piano part on Cat Stevens’s Morning Has Broken and the flourishes on David Bowie’s Life On Mars? and by the end of the year was wearing a cape and playing Roundabout with the progressive rock band Yes.
In 1971, rock was still a minority interest. In March, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones followed each other into the same British universities for what would be the last time. For the former it was their Back to the Clubs Tour, which saw them playing places like the Nottingham Boat Club; for the latter it was their “farewell to the UK before tax exile” tour.
The students who sat on the floors of these venues and nodded approvingly were hearing Stairway to Heaven or Brown Sugar months before they came out on record. As soon as the tours were over, the Stones disappeared to Villa Nellcôte in France and into their own myth and Led Zeppelin ascended into a new super league of rock stardom, where there would no longer be any call for Nottingham Boat Club or the refectory at Leeds University.
“Rock was a small world and chance meetings had far-reaching results
Why was this rock’s golden year? There were numerous factors. The Beatles had officially broken up at the end of 1970 and there was a vacant crown to be had. Three of the artists vying for that crown were former members; George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord was the song on every radio in the early part of the year, Paul McCartney released his best solo album, Ram, in spring and come October we had John Lennon’s sour rejoinder, Imagine.
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Many acts were contracted to make two albums a year, which meant they were unusually productive at an age when they were most likely to produce good stuff. Yes did two albums in 1971, as did McCartney, Carole King, the Faces and many others.
The work-rate boggles the contemporary music business mind. Everybody played live all the time. There was none of the write-record-promote cycle of today. Pink Floyd may have been in the studio making Meddle but every weekend they were playing universities up and down the country. Neil Young wrote and recorded his biggest album, Harvest, while on the road in 1971. He even did two tracks at Barking town hall. All the big breakthrough singles made by T. Rex in 1971 were recorded on the run while they were touring the USA. Nobody could afford to take time off. When Black Sabbath took a few weeks to record Master of Reality their manager put an advert in the Melody Maker apologising that they might not be at your local hall for the next few weeks.
Could 1971 be repeated? Probably not. Then there were no competing distractions. There were three TV channels in the UK and four weekly music papers. I was 21 that year. All my consumer desires were channelled into records. I simply didn’t want anything else.
Music was still overwhelmingly a young person’s game. People went to gigs to live — not re-live — their youth. The ticket holders were those who could be bothered to queue at the venue, not those with credit cards and speed-dial. Like football, music was dominated by young people and, like football, it was cheap fun. You could see Led Zeppelin at the Empire Pool Wembley, as it was still called, for as little as 75p in the newly decimalised currency. Albums were still comparatively expensive at £2.15.
Acts were building careers, not eking them out. They all looked fabulous without any help from make-up artists and stylists. The elegantly wasted look, now expensively emulated in fashion spreads, could be achieved by simple neglect. You can do that when you’re young.
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In 2016, there are too many distractions for music to be as central as it was in 1971. Social media parts the clouds of mystique. If the smartphones of today had been around in 1971, it would have been impossible for James Taylor, Led Zeppelin or David Bowie to have behaved as they did, because not only would their wives have found out, so would their fans.
A look back at 1971 teaches that no matter how prolonged a rock career may be, the moment of actual inspiration is often fleeting. Catchiness is a finite resource. Many top acts used up their ration in 1971 and have spent the next 45 years trying to do by craft what they once did by a magical combination of instinct and ignorance.
Maybe the Who’s manager, Kit Lambert, knew this in 1971 when he held up a handwritten sign to the control-room glass as the band were performing at their tumultuous best in a studio in New York. This was the year of Won’t Get Fooled Again and their best album, Who’s Next. On the sign were two words: “Don’t stop.”
1971: Never A Dull Moment by David Hepworth, £20, is published on April 7 by Bantam Press