How did that get to no.1?
In the official UK chart ( that's the one where the Buzzcocks don't have half a dozen no.1's, i.e. not mine ) there have been some strange no.1's. A surfeit of appalling chart toppers definitely and even a few very good ones but here are some that were just too good to push their way through the chaff to the vertiginous peak that is the top spot, and yet they did, somehow.
SPECIALS : GHOST TOWN
It was 1981. Britain was ablaze. Uprisings were afoot. The country was in the grip of a twisted Cromwellian vortex. Disaffected black youth took to the streets. Certain newspapers declared Enoch Powell a modern prophet and demanded his vindication. Thuggish police bullied communities. This of course didn't happen in East Sheen where I was reaching out from puberty to embrace the sophisticated adult world. I was itching to man the barricades, a Molotov cocktail in one hand and a copy of this single in the other. I remember the video, a car racing through dark streets, the Specials inside, cosying up to one another in a defensive paranoiac huddle. Jerry Dammers and co. zoomed into the zeitgeist and became, for a few weeks in July, the spokesmen for an eruptive generation.I was working in a record shop in Clapham at the time and I remember this well dressed business woman walking in and asking for Ghost Town. She looked like she spent her evenings musing on the merits of Mahler whilst sipping wine and flicking through old opera programmes. She seemed a little affronted to have to purchase a record that span at a dizzying 45 rpm. Brazenly, in defiance of all her middle class reserve, she declared how remarkable Ghost Town was. I, a lowly scallywag who had recently touched a Dire Straits LP and forgot to wash my hands, nodded in agreement. I like to think that she lived in Brixton and was struck down by a flying bin.This amazing record, this beautiful lament for a dying Britain, remained atop the chart rubble for a revolutionary three weeks. Why for those three glorious weeks was the British public suddenly struck down with such good taste? Hazardous audacity it may be but I think this is, and always will be, the greatest no.1 ever. World order was restored when MI5 installed Green Door by Shakin' Stevens at no.1 at Ghost Town's expense.
ROLLING STONES : LITTLE RED ROOSTER
Inexplicably a no.1. How did this bluesy number beguile the British public, most of whom would never have heard of Muddy Waters or Son House. Jagger takes the name Partially Sighted Yelping Hyena and the lily white kids of suburbia can't control an urge to get down and mucky, if not in the farmyard at least in their own back gardens. Nowadays when R & B stands for raunch and boobs this sounds like an authentic slice of Mississippi blues with a rhythm as drowsy as a lazy dog but with a mean snarl if provoked. My theory is that its resting on the chart summit was due to perfect timing. A year earlier, 1963, the charts were in the grip of the frivolous uptempo sounds of Merseybeat; in 1965 the music scene went meaty and beaty. But in December 1964 there was a void that Cilla Black and Herman's Hermits were too insubstantial to fill. The signs were there in July when the Animals took House Of The Rising Sun to the top. It was lewd and spotty but that swirling organ softened its seediness and was pleasing to the ear. Little Red Rooster had a threatening indeterminate filth that seemed to sully the listener. No surprise then that it was no.1 for only a week, knocked off the top my those pretty boys in suits, the Beatles.