B-Side: A Flipsided History of Pop

By Andy Cowan and Kid Acne

Pop music would be a different beast without the B-Side. Music history is riven with songs deemed throwaway that revolted against their lowly status and refused to be denied. Be it rock'n'roll’s national anthem (‘Rock Around The Clock’), disco’s enduring game-changer (‘I Feel Love’) or hip-hop’s most notorious dis track (‘Hit ’Em Up’), all three started life as the so-called ‘lesser’ track on releases primed for maximum chart impact. But the B-side has done much more than make stars of Bill Haley, Donna Summer and 2Pac.

Whether it was the Beatles, the Kinks and the Yardbirds in the 60s, Elton John, the Who and Queen in the 70s, Depeche Mode, the Cure and Prince in the 80s, or Oasis, Pulp and Radiohead in the 90s, the B-side allowed many of the world’s greatest artists freedom to experiment with no commercial constraints in an age where physical product ruled the roost.

A quickfire A-Z of 500+ flips, B-SIDE is the first serious examination of the format’s covert role in pushing the musical envelope. Best read with one eye on YouTube and one ear on a streaming service, its revelations will prick up the ears of music fans of all persuasions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Headpress
• Release date: Jun 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915316141

Andy Cowan

Andy Cowan graduated from cut-and-pasting photocopied fanzines Only A Rumour and White Lie in his teens to theeditor/publisher of Hip-Hop Connection – the world’s first rap monthly, where his interviews included Public Enemy, Ice Cube and 50 Cent. He has contributed to podcasts, documentaries, museum exhibits and worked extensively as a music metadata specialist. Andy has freelanced for The Independent, Flame Tree, Music Week and Q, among others, and is MOJO magazine’s jazz columnist. He has been a B-side obsessive since he first started buying singles in 1978.

Book preview

B-SIDES ABOUT B-SIDES

When ideas are running low, is writing one of these a last resort? Not always…

Like the author’s fear of a blank page, the need to summon up a quick flip has often led acts to spiral into a panic, get meta about their craft and write a B-side about writing a B-side. Jokes that seemed to resonate with their situation at the time, they often fail to relate to fans or age particularly well. It’s a B-side conundrum that seems particularly acute among comedians — whether shooting for credible pop careers or muddying the chart waters with novelty spin-offs.

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Tracey Ullman, who came to prominence on BBC TV sketch show Three Of A Kind (alongside Lenny Henry and David Copperfield) before going supernova with A Kick Up The Eighties, seemed to be showing off her serious face when she issued her kitchen sink take on Kirsty MacColl’s first single and, very nearly, topped the UK charts. Its more bizarre counterpart, ‘The B Side’ [‘They Don’t Know’, STIFF 1983] was a better glimpse into Ullman’s numerous personas, as she unleashed a battery of monologues — random excerpt: B-sides! Oh, go way! I don’t know why they have them — bemoaning the uselessness of B-sides. Needless to say, it only added to the pile.

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Harry Enfield took a very similar approach to ‘The B-Side’ [‘Loadsamoney (Doin’ Up The House)’, MERCURY 1988] as, between belches, his loud, obnoxious and cash-obsessed fictional plasterer Loadsamoney questioned why he had to record a B-side for his single. Reassured that he’d get paid loads of money for any old tat — a knowing reference to the 50:50 singles royalty split sometimes dubbed ‘the flipside racket’ — he unleashed an unintelligible sub-football chant. Jazzed up, just about, with some final minute synth squiggles, its sole redeeming feature was the sound of Enfield desperately trying not to crack up halfway through.

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As with Loadsamoney, one hit wonders Morris Minor and the Majors managed to extract the maximum mileage from the ill-formed bones of their creation, somehow parlaying the success of their inane Beastie Boys parody into a primetime BBC1 comedy vehicle Morris Minor’s Marvellous Motors (a show that everyone seems to have collectively wiped from their memories) and topping the charts in Australia. ‘Another Boring ‘B’-Side’ [‘Stutter Rap (No Sleep Til Bedtime)’, TEN 1988] rather laboured the point about filling up the other side with the product of considerable neglect with a repeated chorus refrain that, by its own admission, goes on a bit.

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Self-consciously wacky New Yorkers Blotto took it one step further on ‘The B-side’ [‘When The Second Feature Starts’, BLOTTO 1981], contending that you’re probably not even listening to this right now. It was possibly nearer the knuckle than they intended — their popularity quickly plummeted when MTV grew tired of playing their escapist fable ‘I Wanna Be A Lifeguard’.

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Using the B-side as a dumping ground for problematic songs or ill-formed ideas is nothing new. Songwriter Ross Bagdasarian was a regular abuser, who was paid rather handsomely for knocked-off B-sides after his stage alias David Seville scored a 1958 hit with ‘Witch Doctor’ — paving the way for his animated band the Chipmunks to take over. And while the sound of his sped-up, high-pitched warbling helped his furry troubadours Alvin, Simon and Theodore became the most popular musical cartoon of all time, a consistent thread ran through B-side instrumental ditties ‘Almost Good’ [‘The Chipmunk Song’, 1958] and ‘Mediocre’ [‘Alvin’s Harmonica’, 1959] that peaked with ‘Flip Side’ [‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’, LIBERTY 1959]. Brief, at under 90 seconds, its whistled coda, simple drumbeat, handclaps and repeated piano melody had the feel of demo sketch, at best, but still resonated with Chipmunks’ vast pre-teen audience.

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When New Order linked with the England football team to record a self-congratulatory anthem for 1990’s World Cup in Italy their intended demographic was probably not ageing Joy Division fans. While the A-side avoided most of the obvious pratfalls and chimed with the loved-up club culture of the time, Englandneworder’s ‘The B-Side’ [‘World In Motion…’, FACTORY 1990] presented the song’s original demo (once cheekily titled ‘E For England’) with much harder percussion (courtesy of ex-Swans man Roli Mossiman) and an additional verse, but mercifully free of the Eng-ger-land chants that marred the A-side.

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Love And Rockets decided to explore their whimsical side as the Bubblemen by playing against type, advising listeners to wobble over slinky basslines and nonsense rhymes. The 12-inch ‘B-Side’ [‘The Bubblemen Are Coming!’, BEGGARS BANQUET 1988] took the advice of its third track ‘Bubblemen Rap’ — to make like a bee in a commotion — totally to heart, offering just under four minutes of buzzing sounds.

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Paul McCartney was open about the financial incentive behind the sole single by Suzy and the Red Stripes [‘Seaside Woman’, A&M 1978]. A throwaway reggae number, written by his photographer wife Linda during a family visit to Jamaica, it was designed to prove to ATV, his suspicious publishers, that she deserved to share in his recent songwriting credits for Wings. If anything, its throwaway flip, ‘B-Side To Seaside’, might have made them pause about the wisdom of that arrangement.

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Its title was nonetheless given a further twist by the Scottish Springsteen with the Forsyth chin, BA Robertson, on a slightly sticky wicket after his first major label single badly bombed. The slightly impenetrable ‘2(b) B Side The C Side’ [‘Bang Bang’, A&M 1979] seemed closer to its curious creator’s heart than the strangely cockney flavoured A-side and was the Glasgow bard’s second consecutive self-referential flip, albeit a much better one than the luck lustre Elvis impersonations of ‘The B-Side’ [‘Goosebumps’, 1979].

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Not all B-sides about B-sides are the poorest runts in the litter, however. On the back of their first US number 1 after leaving producer Phil Spector (with Bill Medley retaining the grand ambience of Spector’s wall-of-sound production style) the Righteous Brothers’ ‘B Side Blues’ [‘(You’re My) Soul And Inspiration’, VERVE 1966], found the Californian duo of Bobby Hadfield and Medley channelling Ray Charles and showing off the power of their voices. As Hatfield’s soaring tenor matched Medley’s deeply soulful baritone punch for punch over a 12-bar bass figure and bluesy piano run, its suitably crunchy and gritty sound nodded way back to their formative motions in the Paramours.

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The Hendrix-loving Lenny Kravitz’s own take on ‘B Side Blues’ [‘Heaven Help’, VIRGIN AMERICA 1993] arrived in the midst of a creative purple patch, with MTV constantly rotating the title track of his classic rock oriented third LP Are You Gonna Go My Way. It nonetheless proved a bare-faced dig at his label’s A&R department. They say I got to write some new songs, he complained over a great scuzzy blues riff. The feeling that its lyrics had been improvised in-the-now were enhanced when Kravitz declaimed Take this song and shove it up your ass and by the sound of in-studio laughter at its denouement. Nonetheless its openly hostile and wonkily menacing guitar solo made it feel far more essential than the A-side’s sweet-voiced but inconsequential Curtis Mayfield tribute.

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With their calling card three-part harmonies, genre-fluid Californians Three Dog Night snagged 22 US hits, thanks to a sixth sense for picking the right songs. Lambasted in the press for not bothering to pen their own material, they avenged that notion forever with ‘Our ‘B’ Side’ [‘Shambala’, DUNHILL 1973] — a single-fingered salute that skipped between rock, blues and reggae and let their families and children into the recording booth. However, its shaky promise Someday we’ll write an A-side, maybe never came to pass, after their chart fortunes tapered off in the mid-70s.

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In the right hands, the very concept of the B-side could prove a super cool allegorical tool. No one takes me seriously/I’m the B-side, snarled Charlotte Cornwell on the ‘B-Side’ to her offshoot single from pioneering TV musical drama Rock Follies alongside Julie Covington, Rula Lenska and Sue Jones Davis [‘OK?’, POLYDOR 1977]. One day they will rate me, she continued as, in a case of life imitating art, its tale of struggling actresses in London’s west end turned the quartet into bona fide UK charts stars (despite being denied the oxygen of a Top Of The Pops slot).

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San Francisco new wavers Pearl Harbor and the Explosions knew how to pen a pop hook (as evidenced by 1979’s big indie hit ‘Drivin’’) and garner press attention (that deliberately provocative name), although their fortunes fared less well when they hooked up to the major label machine. ‘Busy Little B Side’ [‘You Got It (Release It)’, WARNER BROS 1979], a knowing rock ’n’ roll ditty about putting out a single, having it fail, before watching its B-side take off — a narrative evidenced several times elsewhere in this book — showed they deserved much better.

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Public Enemy made no bones about their preference for harder, non-radio-friendly flipsides with the sentiments of ‘B-Side Wins Again’ [‘Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos’, DEF JAM 1988], a track whose simple raw beats and purposefully distorted vocals were meant to emulate the Prophets of Rage’s formative years rapping in parks, ballcourts and basement jams in their native Long Island. It was a fitting contrast to the A-side’s nerve-shredding flip of Isaac Hayes’ piano solo in ‘Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic’ — sampling at its most artful and inventive.

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The first audible hint that Robbie Williams solo career might be one in the eye for Gary Barlow arrived with ‘Average B-Side’ [‘Old Before I Die’, CHRYSALIS 1997]. A far more sophisticated affair than the A-side’s stodgy pub rock, Williams’ clever and knowing dissection of a romance that had long ago withered on the vine suggested he might survive the transition from MOR boy band star into a nuanced rock entertainer after all — as long as he stopped effectively tossing his best songs into the bin.

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There was little allegory but a whole sky full of promise to Shyheim AKA The Rugged Child’s ‘The B Side (Bring The Drama)’ [‘On And On’, VIRGIN 1993]. The 15-year old rap wonderkid from Staten Island showed a looser contrast to the A-side’s dissection of crack ills on a rugged posse cut with Down Low Recka, K-Tez and Rubbabandz that seemed to confirm his abundant potential over producer RNS’s sinister jazz horns and dusty boom bap beats (replete with a fantastic sudden ending). Just to confuse matters, Shyheim also titled the flip of his next single ‘The B Side (Licka Shot)’ [‘Pass It Off’, 1994].

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Manfred Mann were making increasingly complex forays into psychedelic and progressive rock as the 70s hovered on the horizon. The wonderfully evocative but woefully titled ‘A ‘B’ Side’ [‘Ragamuffin Man’, FONTANA 1969] found the sometimes moody multi-instrumentalists getting louche and loose over a low organ drone, wilding flutes and brooding guitars as they evoked a travelling lady who comes and goes like the wind and rain on the back of their final chart hit. A primer for their fully jazzed-out next incarnation, it enjoyed a longer shelf life soundtracking a risqué ad for Manikin Cigars.

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Adam Ant saved some of his grittiest material for his B-sides — the likes of ‘Press Darlings’ [‘Kings Of The Wild Frontier’, 1980] and ‘Red Scab’ [‘Goody Two Shoes’, 1982] becoming long-established live favourites. Ant archly greeted listeners to ‘B-Side Baby’ [‘Apollo 9’, CBS 1985] using spoken words to set the scene in sunny Soho on a Thursday afternoon before his long-serving guitarist Marco Pirroni let loose one of his most dirty, distorted and swaggering riffs. Bowling in on the back of a show-off harmonica solo, Ant delivered a nonchalant vocal turn about his girlfriend playing obscure B-sides and made bare threats towards Joey Ramone, seemingly upset at hearing Ramones’ B-side ‘Beat On The Brat’ [‘Rockaway Beach’, 1977] all day long in the flat. A vibrant slice of old school rawness that made the most of Bowie/Bolan producer Tony Visconti’s talents, this stadium anthem that never was sounded infinitely fresher than its overthought, overwrought and programmed half to death A-side.

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‘Baby I’ve Got It’

Jimmy Ruffin

SOUL 1966

A-Side: ‘What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted’

Motown heart-tugger plays against type.

Jimmy Ruffin handled adversity with grace. Hot in the running to join Motown’s male vocal group the Temptations in 1964, he was beaten at the last by his younger brother David, thanks to a slightly grittier tone. Jimmy bore his sibling no malice. Rather than just chalk it down to experience, he used it as a catalyst for a solo career whose blue touch paper was lit when Motown writers William Weatherspoon, Paul Riser and James Dean let him have first dibs on a song they’d written for the Spinners. The dramatic ‘What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted’ was gut-wrenching in its evocation of pain and loneliness, Ruffin’s supple, expressive tenor soaring above the melodic instrumentation of Motown house band the Funk Brothers. If the A-side all but guaranteed him a vaulted position amid soul music’s greats, the ex-gospel singer from rural Collinsville let his full range out on its swinging, horn-blasted B-side — a celebration of the giddiness of love achieved against all odds and the A-side’s polar opposite. It would prove a largely forgotten nugget as Ruffin struggled to escape being typecast as a lonely balladeer.

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‘Back For Good (Live Version)’

Robbie Williams

CHRYSALIS 1997

A-Side: ‘Angels’

Take That refugee cocks snook at his past.

Two years after he left Take That’s protective bosom, Robbie Williams still had a point to prove. Seemingly in thrall to Britpop kings Oasis, who he partied with backstage at 1995’s Glastonbury Festival, early singles such as his cover of Wham’s ‘Freedom’ and ‘Lazy Days’ were slight, stodgy fare, suggesting Take That’s refusal to take his creative ideas seriously had some foundation, exacerbated by an unseemly diet of beer, pies and cocaine. Pressganged into rehab before promotional activities for 1997 debut Life Thru A Lens began in earnest, a trimmer, more focused Williams emerged clutching a career-changing single to his heart. A guaranteed wedding weepie first thrust into his palm in a Dublin bar by songwriter Ray Heffernan, ‘Angels’ changed everything, pushing Williams up the pop totem pole as Take That slid down the other end. As if to rub salt into a gaping wound, he backed it with a punk-inspired hatchet job on his last significant outing with the boy band. Captured live in Manchester, his take on ‘Back For Good’ switched from lachrymose to thrash in a knowing blink and quickly became a live standard. They had publicly reconciled when Take That joined in the pogoing fun as Williams accepted a Brit Icon Award in 2016.

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‘Bad Side Of The Moon’

Elton John

DJM 1970

A-Side: ‘Border Song’

Reg’s heavily orchestrated space oddity.

Reginald Kenneth Dwight secured his unlikely ascension to pop royalty in 1970. The ivory tinkling son of a Royal Air Force trumpeter shrugged off failed auditions with King Crimson and Gentle Giant to forge a formidable compositional partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin that found them penning hits for Roger Cook and Lulu as DJM’s staff songwriters. Even the failure of 1969’s solo debut Empty Sky failed to dampen John’s ardour, his persistence finally paying off when the plangent call for racial harmony of ‘Border Song’ made chart inroads in the States. While he capitalised with the evergreen ‘Your Song’ and a show-stealing turn at Los Angeles’ Troubadour Club (faithfully recreated in 2019 biopic Rocketman), many fans had fallen for the more off-kilter charms of ‘Bad Side Of The Moon’ — an almost military snare drum leading into a whacked-out, sci-fi inspired Taupin lyric that descended into an intergalactic rave-up. John would take it even further out there, pounding his piano’s keys without mercy on 1971’s live album 17-11-70. While his unparalleled early 70s output saw him amass an enviable array of killer Bs including ‘Take Me To The Pilot’ [‘Your Song’, 1970], ‘Skyline Pigeon’ [‘Daniel’, 1973] and ‘Bennie & The Jets’ [‘Candle In The Wind’, 1974], ‘Bad Side…’ became a staple of American classic rock stations in another guise, thanks to Canadian hard-rockers April Wine’s 1972 cover.

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‘Badgeman Brown’

Blur

FOOD 1992

A-Side: ‘Popscene’

Freewheeling Syd Barrett homage.

Dismissed as manufactured teen idols and a second-rate baggy band in some press quarters, Blur’s problems were mounting in 1992. Already in significant debt, an American tour was arranged to help alleviate that burden, accompanied by a brash, rocky new single, ‘Popscene’, that mangled up horn-fired 60s mod with punk. A pivotal release in many ways, it fell on deaf ears at the time, the ex-Goldsmiths guttersnipes carping that grunge’s popularity had scuppered its chances. All but stashed away on the CD single was ‘Badgeman Brown’ — an explicit homage to Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Blur had a little form here. Albarn’s lazy drawl owed a debt to Floyd’s chief madcap, while ‘Mr Briggs’ and ‘Uncle Love’ on previous year’s debut Leisure made his influence explicit. ‘Badgeman Brown’ took it to another level, guitarist Graham Coxon’s slashing riffs nodding to ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ as Albarn recalled Barrett’s little-boy-lost delivery from ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’. The song was despised by Blur’s label bosses Andy Ross and Dave Balfe, a situation that deteriorated when it was mooted for inclusion in a film directed by Barrett’s old artist friend Storm Thorgerson.

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‘Badges, Posters, Stickers, T-Shirts’

Dire Straits

VERTIGO 1982

A-Side: ‘Private Investigations’

Star mocks his most obsessive fans.

Sizeable transatlantic success in the early 80s gave Dire Straits carte blanche to do what they wished on their 4th studio album Love Over Gold. A sprawling, indulgent affair, it was characterised by lengthy experimental passages and languid atmospherics. But with only five long tracks, obvious radio-friendly hits were in short supply. That didn’t prevent a slightly appended though still almost six-minute edit of its unorthodox Raymond Chandler-inspired ballad ‘Private Investigations’ winding its way to number 2 in the UK charts, Mark Knopfler’s gruff voice dropping in private-eye clichés by the pound. Among several offcuts from the album sessions — another would become the title track of Tina Turner’s comeback LP Private Dancer — ‘Badges, Posters, Stickers, T-Shirts’ witnessed Knopfler adopt a not totally convincing Yorkshire accent for its sarcastic mickey take on intense fandom and collectorism. It peaked as this increasingly needy and emboldened protagonist leapt from requests for items of the band’s merchandise to snaffling the backstage rider over a skippy, ten-a-penny jazz/blues routine. Knopfler would successfully reprise its skewed sentiments on 1985’s overplayed chart-busting Sting duet ‘Money For Nothing’.

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‘The Ballad Of Michael Valentine’

The Killers

LIZARD KING 2004

A-Side: ‘Somebody Told Me’

Vegas band’s mysterious road trip.

The Killers’ seamless blend of 80s synth pop, art rock, new wave and Springsteen-inspired Americana proved an irresistible pop confection. The Las Vegas band fronted with no little charm and abundant sex appeal by Brandon Flowers quickly proved that they possessed catchy hooks by the bucket-load, cheer-led by chunky riffage of singles ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘Somebody Told Me’. The latter’s almost unstoppable adrenalin wooed a ready and primed MTV audience and proved, to those who checked its widescreen B-side, the genuine depth in their songwriting ranks. A chugging, filmic, hugely romantic Stateside travelogue that took in Dallas, New Orleans, Memphis, North Dakota and namechecked Marlon Brando and Greta Garbo, the gambling man referenced in ‘The Ballad Of Michael Valentine’ was later revealed to be the alter ego of their long-time friend Rod Pardey — a professional poker player, whose own alt-rock band Romance Fantasy previously featured the Killers’ drummer Ronnie Vannucci. Many fans remain bewildered that it was excluded from 2004’s heavily manicured debut Hot Fuss.

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‘Beat My Guest’

Adam and the Ants

CBS 1980

A-Side: ‘Stand And Deliver!’

Ant music for sex people.

A good beating’s really where it’s at, asserted punk’s Peter Pan, Adam Ant, his tongue lodged firmly in cheek, on the flip of his band’s first UK number 1 hit. Restyled as a ‘dandy’ highwayman and channelling the look of ITV’s Dick Turpin in the enticing video shot at Hertfordshire’s Hatfield House, the single built on the thunderous Burundi drums that drove Kings Of The Wild Frontier to sustained success (replete with curious chorus yells of Huh! and O-yo-yo-yoy!). Gleefully smuggled onto the other side was a fresh, cartoonish update of an old Ant song hymning the joys of sadomasochistic sex, first debuted at their inaugural gig at London’s ICA restaurant in May 1977 and later featured in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. Very much at odds with their new Royal Variety Performance status, Ant urged a dominatrix to use a truncheon or a household brick and promised to be your dog for just one flog over a rollercoaster-paced glam/punk amalgam. Its sneering, pleading lyrics either sailed over the heads of their young fan base or caused them to snicker knowingly amongst their mates, making it quite the secret commodity.

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‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’

Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps

CAPITOL 1956

A-Side: ‘Woman Love’

Ill-fated rock ’n’ roller’s defining moment.

Leather-clad Virginian Gene Vincent was one of rock ’n’ roll’s first mythic figures, but an unlikely star. An ex-Marine who spent more than a year in a naval hospital following a severe motorcycle accident, the ever-limping rockabilly rebel used his convalescence to his advantage, working up the bones of ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ with fellow patient Donald Graves, their words inspired by comic strip Little Lulu. The song proved instrumental in winning a contract with Capitol — then looking for a slice of the emerging rock ’n’ roll pie — prompting Vincent’s wily business manager Bill ‘Sheriff Tex’ Davis to buy-out Graves’ share for a desultory $25 (and nab himself a lucrative cowriting credit). Yet when Vincent and his crack band of Blue Caps (Cliff Gallup, ‘Wee’ Willie Williams, ‘Jumpin’’ Jack Neal and Dickie ‘Be Bop’ Harrell) first laid it down at Owen Bradley’s legendary Barn studio in Nashville, it was for the B-side of the largely forgotten ‘Woman Love’. Where that floundered ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ succeeded, the slap-back echo on Vincent’s swooping vocals reminding listeners of Elvis after disc jockeys finally decided to flip the single. It would sadly prove to be the original bad boy’s only major hit — a string of similarly powerful sequels failed to capture the public’s imagination. Bedevilled by relationship woes, medical issues and his love of heavy drinking, Vincent nonetheless left an exquisite corpse when he passed from a ruptured stomach ulcer in 1969. He bequeathed a standard that has been revived by the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Cliff Richard and the Beatles, among many others.

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‘Begin The Beguine’

Artie Shaw and His Orchestra

BLUEBIRD 1938

A-Side: ‘Indian Love Call’

‘Complicated’ Cole Porter cover makes career.

‘Begin The Beguine’ spirited jazz clarinettist Artie Shaw into a celebrity status he found deeply uncomfortable. The New Yorker got his first breaks playing with Austin Wylie, Irving Aaronson and Willie ‘the Lion’ Smith before becoming a busy studio session player in the 30s. He had a brief retirement and a failed novel behind him when he launched his latest big band project in 1936, combining a string quartet with a rhythm section to create a swinging dance ensemble that found steady if not always profitable work. His fortunes picked up when he signed to RCA Victor’s budget label Bluebird and recorded a cover of Cole Porter’s ‘Begin The Beguine’, a relatively untampered tune from the Broadway show Jubilee. Based on a Jerry Gray arrangement that Shaw had tried and tested in many New York ballrooms, it made prominent use of his warm-toned clarinet, John Best’s cupped trumpet, Les Robinson’s smooth saxophone quartet and George Arus’ trombone trio. Despite delivering a piece where the song, arrangement and ensemble effortlessly combined, his label’s pessimism about a long tune nobody could remember from beginning to end saw it relegated to the B-side of Shaw’s almost parodic take on ‘Indian Love Call’. The struggling bandleader would laugh the loudest when the A-side was roundly ignored and its flip became a World War II classic, defining the swing era and selling more than any instrumental recording in history. The pressure of being a bandleader, combined with a succession of marital woes got to Shaw though — he wed eight times, including unions to Hollywood stars Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. He frequently broke up his successful orchestras and later moved into classical music.

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‘The Bells Of Avignon’

Françoise Hardy

UNITED ARTISTS 1970

A-Side: ‘Soon Is Slipping Away’

Signature fringe singer’s schlager rarity.

The face of 1960s French pop, Françoise Hardy proved a highly exportable style icon with enduring cult appeal in the English-speaking world. A reluctant pop star from the start, who hated her early recordings, Hardy shot to fame in 1962 with the million-selling yé-yé of ‘Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles’, the start of a seemingly ceaseless string of 60s hits. After becoming a sultry, unsmiling cover girl she attracted the attentions of Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger, but married the similarly debonair French singer and songwriter Jacques Dutronc instead. She opened the 70s by issuing a one-off German-language schlager album, Träume, to appease fans there and in Switzerland. Recorded in those same sessions, but issued on the British B-side of ‘Soon Is Slipping Away’, ‘The Bells Of Avignon’ was an enigmatic rarity written by Long John Baldry, Scott Walker and the Hollies’ hit-maker Tony Macaulay. While it cast Hardy on a long and dusty road where her suitcase weighs a load, it was much cheerier than the other side, evoking memories of its titular French town and a regretful yearning for the lover she left behind.

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‘Bend Over Beethoven’

Wizzard

HARVEST 1973

A-Side: ‘See My Baby Jive’

A rude riposte to former bandmates.

Self-exiled from the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) following a rift with his old Move bandmate Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood created an even more dramatic outfit that matched his futuristic onstage garb and multi-coloured mane. While Wood mixed a glittering array of strings, brass and backing vocals with generous ladleful of Spector’s wall-of-sound to their first UK number 1 ‘See My Baby Jive’, its B-side was an openly provocative pastiche of ELO’s recent cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, telling them exactly where to stick it. A Zappa-like, cello-powered jazz-rock instrumental, with sinuous saxophone/piano interplay and a hefty groove by fellow ELO renegade Hugh McDowell, it revealed a deeper side to what critics had already pegged as a light and fluffy singles band (as duly confirmed by the likes of ‘Angel Fingers’ and the perennial ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’). Although Wood and McDowell refused to air more dirty linen in public, the fact that McDowell re-joined ELO later that year suggested any real rancour was