1973 Let It Rock Critics Poll

Thirty-six years ago, I polled contributors to and friends of Let It Rock, the monthly magazine I edited: what, I wanted to know, were their highs and lows of 1973? Voter turn-out was impressive. While I can’t explain the no-show of John Peel and LIR columnist Richard Williams, I’m reminded what a small world music journalists populated back then. Alongside our magazine’s regulars were Melody Maker’s Chris Welch, NME’s Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray, Sounds’ Jerry Gilbert and Martin Hayman, The Guardian’s Robin Denselow, and a strong American contingent that included Lester Bangs, Lenny Kaye, Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh and Ed Ward, as well as London-based New Yorkers Paul Gambaccini, a Rolling Stone correspondent and recent recruit to Radio 1, and Robert Shelton of The Times.
Surprisingly, for such a disparate bunch, there was some consensus, not least in the dearth of positive nominations for the major artists of the day. Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Paul Simon’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and the Bob Dylan single, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, made a few lists, but for every vote in favour of Van Morrison’s sublime performance at the Rainbow Theatre in July, there was a nay for his Hardnose The Highway album, and there were as many boos for the moribund recording of Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert as there were hurrahs for the event itself, those cheers no doubt inspired at least in part by the sight of our hero on stage again at last. As a follow-up to Exile On Main Street, the Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup was evidently a let-down, as was The Who’s Quadrophenia after Who’s Next, while Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy’s only mention was as the year’s most disappointing record.
Our favourite single was Dobie Gray’s UK flop, ‘Drift Away’, but we shared record buyers’ enthusiasm for 10cc’s ‘Rubber Bullets’ and Stealer’s Wheel’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’. We rated Mott and, ignoring its 1972 release, were thrilled by Stevie Wonder’s new sound on ‘Superstition’. Thumbs were raised for the Average White Band, Blue Oyster Cult, John Fogerty’s post-Creedence Blue Ridge Rangers, the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, as well as the seemingly reinvigorated Beach Boys’ Holland.
This was, of course, prog-rock’s heyday, but Let It Rock didn’t like ELP, Genesis, Jethro Tull, the Moody Blues or Yes, a collective antipathy which, in the end, scuppered the magazine. Music fans weren’t yet middle-aged and moneyed, with lifestyle options to match, so there were no ads then for cars, whisky or male grooming products, just albums, and there was a limit, it turned out, to the number of times we could denigrate record companies’ flagship acts before their advertising managers angrily withdrew their support. (It wasn’t until 1975 – laughably late – that Yes were given a spread, and it still gives me immeasurable pleasure to report that not one of the magazine’s 35 issues found room for ELP or Jethro Tull.) That lesson would have to wait to be learned. In 1973 prog-rock barely blipped on our radar.
This was not because an attitude ascribed to LIR-er Michael Gray in a lately-published letter from the NME’s Kent and Murray – “his head so far up his ass that his ears are full of shit” – was rife; rather that our ears were aimed elsewhere.
An eclectic, timeless, rootsy music that would be lazily tagged “pub rock” had provided for some London-based writers an overdue alternative to record industry overkill, as it had for its practitioners. Either bruised by the business or uninterested in what it had to offer, bands like Bees Make Honey, Brinsley Schwarz and Kilburn and the High Roads had deliberately taken a detour from the well-mapped highway to Hitsville onto a musical B-road, where they could perform, freed from the pressures of commerce or fashion, a seemingly off-the-cuff mix of R&B, rockabilly, country, jazz, even post-war, pre-rock’n’roll jump jive – styles apparently too diverse to lump together under any more meaningful banner than the name of the modest venues where the bands chose to play. In his poll entry, Time Out music editor John Collis highlighted the appeal of “being able to hear the 1973 version of fifties and early sixties music – and drink at the same time.” Unsurprisingly, the above three bands attracted a significant number of votes. But the mindset that had drawn the Bees and Brinsleys to play in pubs would also make it hard for them to move on, and for Ian Dury to find his feet required more disciplined musicians than the Kilburns. Elsewhere in our poll, though, was evidence of more significant stirrings.
Support for reggae in general, and Toots & The Maytals and The Wailers in particular, was mirrored, I’m pleased to confirm, in the review section of the poll issue, where Graham Taylor wrote of Funky Kingston, “Shout it loud, this is a fine album,” and predicted that Burnin’ “could well turn out the most significant release of 1973.” (The following year, spellbound by the un-remixed pre-release cassette copy of Natty Dread that had soundtracked my summer, I talked Island Records into giving us 500 copies as a subscription giveaway. The response, for a small circulation monthly, was overwhelming, and Island generously doubled that number.)
While Let It Rock-ers were propping up the bar in the Tally Ho and the Kensington, writers in Detroit and New York were digging Iggy & The Stooges and The New York Dolls. Almost every one of Lester Bang’s responses in the best/biggest/greatest categories featured the Stooges, who also impressed Lenny Kaye at Max’s Kansas City, while the Dolls “anyway, anyhow, anywhere” were Dave Marsh’s live favourites.
Remarkably, those bands had been seen in the same cities by Nick Kent, and both had made a big impression. What’s more, his vision of 1974 was a prophesy of punk a year or more – according to your starting point – before it began. He predicted that “hordes of deranged mutant-youth will spring up from the suburbs primed on Iggy Pop and wearing Keith Richard death-head face-masks to assassinate John Denver, James Taylor and Carly (Simon).” Hats off.
A footnote: Was Charlie Gillett’s choice of Manu Dibango’s ‘Dangwa’ as a favourite record of the moment a straightforward acknowledgement of an outstanding track or were his ears already retuning from the USA to Africa? Not according to the sleeve note to his recent Honky Tonk compilation, where he says of Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’, “I could never have guessed that this track might be the signpost for the rest of my life, as I began to follow the trail of enthralling music from outside the English-speaking world.”
Voters included Lester Bangs, Karl Dallas, Robin Denselow, Simon Frith, Paul Gambaccini, Jerry Gilbert, Charlie Gillett, Michael Gray, Lenny Kaye, Nick Kent, Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh, Charles Shaar Murray, Chris Salewicz and Chris Welch, nine of whom – plus one non-musical event – provide the answers to the following questions:
1. Whose futile hope for 1974 was prog-rock kings Yes “returning to songs and simplicity”?
2. Whose ‘biggest downer of the year’ was “finding out Bette Midler hasn’t changed her show in two years”?
3. In the same category, who bemoaned “Gram Parsons dying; Neil Young George Harrison, Melanie and Leon Russell not dying”?
4. Who was gratified by “groups rediscovering their audiences” and looked forward to “dancing to live music”?
5. Which event prompted which writer to reflect: “At first it was pure glee to see all the bad guys take it on the chin, but now that we have found out how deep the evil cuts, how bad it really was and is, it is only scary, and no comfort for anyone”? (Two answers)
6. Who recognised as “a feat of some sort” the success of “the staff of the NME… in getting people to talk about themselves more than the artists they were writing about”?
7. Who welcomed “the return of a local (however haphazard) rock scene to New York”?
8. Who commended a David Bowie bootleg on the grounds that “our new kitten hasn’t crapped on the sleeve, like he did with a Neil Diamond album I took home to review”?
9. Whose ‘biggest buzz of the year’ was “falling in love, lying around every nite taking quaaludes and fucking yer brains out to Raw Power”?
As it’s Christmas, I’m offering a pristine copy of my 1991 Classic Albums interviews book to the first person who scores 10 out of 10 – unless I suspect you’ve looked up the answers in a well-preserved copy of Let It Rock. Anyone else got a better prize to offer?