Christine McVie has recently rejoined Fleetwood Mac, and here’s a little post about her. The story of that band is like the quintessential story of a rock band, it’s got everything – early different band line up, fortuitous meetings, relationships, break-ups, drugs, fall outs, huge success and longevity against the odds. Plus, some damn good songs.
This is from the Pelham Pop Annual of 1970 (and the only year it was published as far as I can tell). Before Christine McVie married John McVie, she was Christine Perfect (her real name), a blues musician and member of the band Chicken Shack.
This is a lovely late 60s cool girl photo of her in a cafe, along with pics of other singers Marsha Hunt, Clodagh Rogers and Pat Arnold.
These are the last bits here that I’m going to post from Radio Luxembourg’s official magazine annual, Fab 208, from 1976.
Incidentally, this was a present in about 1996 from my friend Neil, as you can see below, at one of our crazy student Christmas meals. Due to timey-wimey things, the book is nearly exactly twice as old as it was when I first got it. It seemed so funny and ancient at the time, and the fact that nearly as much time again has passed just seems impossible. Horrible thought – do current teenagers see the 1990s as funny and ancient right now? I suppose they must.
Here they ask Freddie Mercury about what type of girlfriends he likes. He’s obviously totally messing with them with his answer of Liza Minnelli and “…I enjoy a challenge as well!” Here, though, I’m mainly looking at lovely Richard O’Sullivan’s lovely face.
Fab 208, 1976
I like the incredulous, “what does he look like?” tone about this 1972 picture of Eric (my fave) from the Bay City Rollers, when he looks perfectly fine. It reminds me of 1970s Bob in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads taking the mickey out of what appears to us as Terry’s much more sensible haircut.
Fab208 Annual, 1976
Plus, aw, Alvin Stardust. RIP, glove-meister. And thanks for this:
Did you know that the early independent radio station Radio Luxembourg used to work out its own pop charts? Wanting to stay ahead of the game, they’d base their chart on what they thought was shortly going to be popular rather than the usual one based on actual record sales. I wonder if they ever got it terribly wrong?
I was an enormous Beatles fan as a teenager (well, I still am). In fact, they’re the reason I live in Liverpool now. I came up here for a University Open Day twenty-two years ago, spent all of ten minutes in the history department, then took the rest of the day off to look for another kind of history – old Beatles haunts around the city.
I remember reading about how their song Golden Slumbers from the 1969 album Abbey Road came about. Paul McCartney was saying he had seen a music book at his dad’s house with a old song of that name in it. He liked the title and, as he couldn’t read music to find out how the tune went, he wrote his own melody instead.
This is the original, from The Weekend Book, 1938. As you can see, Paul kept part of the lyric mostly intact.
Just like today, Victorian magazines were interested in celebrities. The Strand Magazine had a series called “Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times in their Lives”, showing a range of paintings, photographs and biographical information over the person’s life. 1890s celebrities, however, seem to pretty much be either members of the nobility or clergymen, like some kind of Jane Austen fantasy.
I like seeing pictures of the children who would become Very Important Men. Infants had their own clothing styles which to us look extremely feminine – as seen here with The Duke of Wellington and the Bishop of Worcester in an issue from 1894.
The Duke seems to morph from Mia Farrow to Thomas Walsh of The Duckworth Lewis Method in 45 years.
The Strand Magazine, 1894
The Strand Magazine, 1894
Any excuse to link to the divine Duckworth Lewis Method, frankly! Here’s “Test Match Special”, a little cricket-pop treat for you (Neil Hannon 4 Eva):
Well, I was going to post up this interview with the relatively newly-Christian Cliff Richard this week anyway, but due to recent events, he’s rather more newsworthy at the moment than I was expecting.
This is from 1970 and featured in the weight-obsessed Pelham Pop Annual (see my previous post on the subject here – https://skittishlibrary.co.uk/cilla-black-likes-being-skinny/). This is a good fit for the “slimmed-down” Cliff, as he seems equally interested in dieting.
It sounds like he would be surprised to still be famous now – “…I mean, just how old can a pop singer be?”
Maurice Gibb is talent hunting, Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
From the Pelham Pop Annual in 1970, an interview with Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees on his new record company, started with his brother Barry Gibb. Their first signing was Billy Lawrie, the brother of Maurice’s new wife Lulu. This interview is mainly a call out for talent to be signed up by them, with a little look into the domestic life of Maurice and Lulu – they are trying to be a traditional couple and he even gives her housekeeping money.
He talks about the names they were thinking of for the company “Lemon” (discarded for being too similar to the Beatles’ “Apple”) or “BG” but fails to mention its chosen name – all he says is “the title you all know it as”. It took a bit of digging to find out the name, as there are very few references to this company now. It turns out it was originally called “Diamond” but changed when they realised there was a record company of that name in the US. It then became “Gee Gee” for the two Gibb brothers involved. But, unfortunately for the Pelham Pop Annual, this was already old news by 1970, with Maurice and Barry splitting up in December 1969 and the record company going by the wayside.
Interestingly, Maurice talks about their film Cucumber Castle here, except at the point of the interview it was a 13-week series. In the event, it became a one off television special. It was only released on video for a very short space of time, and was considered one of the rarest commercial releases ever. Now, though, you can see the whole thing on Youtube. It has quite a cast – as well as Maurice and Barry, there were Frankie Howerd, Vincent Price, Eleanor Bron, Ginger Baker, Lulu and Spike Milligan, to name a few. Maurice talks about the tens of thousands he’s spent on video equipment for the film, but looking at it, perhaps it needed a little more – although the songs are lovely, of course.
Maurice Gibb is talent hunting, Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Maurice Gibb is talent hunting, Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Maurice Gibb is talent hunting, Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Maurice Gibb is talent hunting, Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Maurice Gibb is talent hunting, Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
The Pelham Pop Annual of 1970 was strangely weight-obsessed. So much so, that there’d be serious Twitter outrage if this kind of thing was printed now.
It’s even the headline on a Cilla Black interview:
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Every pop profile contains the exact weight of the stars. If you want to know how heavy Dusty Springfield, The Tremeloes, The Marmalade and Fleetwood Mac were, you’ve come to the right place:
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Pelham Pop Annual, 1970
Mick Fleetwood is apparently 6’6 and 10 stone 4. I guess he liked being skinny too, that’s a BMI of 16.6!
My favourite bits are the “Likes” and “Dislikes” sections. The Tremeloes’ Alan Blakely’s “Small noses” and “Large noses”, especially.
