Never a Dull Moment in a romp through music’s golden year

The concept of The Year In Music – the initial caps for added pomposity are deliberate –  is relatively recent. In 2016, REM’s Out of Time as released in a 25th anniversary deluxe edition. The 50th birthdays of The Beatles’ Revolver and, two albums which came out on the same day, Blonde on Blonde and Pet Sounds  were celebrated with bunting and several misty-eyed features. Belle and Sebastian, marking two decades since Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, played the albums in full at the Albert Hall on consecutive nights. The venue, in keeping with our 2016 theme, was “ram-packed.”

The nostalgia train over landmark records runs the risk of veering off the tracks. There have been, at last count, three features in major music publications about the 19th anniversary of Oasis’ Be Here Now this year, which is barely a proper anniversary, and is a classic album in the same way that Wayne Rooney is an expert on French literary theory.

Pausing to consider The Year In Music in albums rather than recently departed figures is tricky. Most Best Of lists from the year mark a distinct lack of agreement, save for the consensus of a high placing for Leonard Cohen and David Bowie’s final albums.

Therefore, what is required for the modern music fan is, as Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel understood all too well, some perspective.

Editor, writer and broadcaster David Hepworth provides this with his book 1971: Never A Dull Moment. Being 21 in 1971, he argues, “means that in terms of music, I have the winning ticket in the lottery of life.”

If the music fan in your life is looking for a Christmas present – or it’s you and you’re looking to drop hints – you could do a lot worse than this, which is certainly the best music book I’ve read this year.

His Whistle Test and Live Aid sidekick Mark Ellen’s book Rock Stars Stole My Life is concerned with his personal story, playing in a band with Tony Blair, flat-sharing with Anton Corbijn, editing Smash Hits magazine at its peak, and co-founding Q and The Word magazines. Hepworth, who was at his side for all three of those magazines, has gone for a broader history lesson in a landmark year for music.

What’s Going On, Who’s Next, Tapestry, There’s a Riot Going On, Led Zeppelin IV, Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World, Ram, Bryter Later.  These albums were recorded, released and sometimes ignored in a year before rock’n’roll became a multi-million pound nostalgia industry.

He writes in depth on several examples. Just three are George Harrison’s Bangladesh concert, the first attempt at the socially conscious rock star grand gesture 14 years before Live Aid. Carole King, previously a pop songsmith for hire, ushering in the singer-songwriter album with Tapestry, while Joni Mitchell’s Blue was recorded next door. This was decades before Adele was a twinkle in her mother’s eyes. Mick Jagger married Bianca Perez-Mora Macias surrounded by celebrities, on the same year the Stones would adopt tax exile status in France, recording Exile On Main Street. This was years before magazines were published off the back of stars’ weddings and celebs nipped abroad to avoid large cheques to HMRC.

Sly Stone, Nick Drake, Marvin Gaye, Richard & Karen Carpenter and the other Beatles – all their activities for 1971 are detailed and made sense of in light of how we view music now.

There wasn’t the same mania for Best Of lists 45 years ago. Newspapers didn’t write about rock musicians – that wouldn’t really change until after the death of Kurt Cobain – but Hepworth’s romp through the year in music suggests a more crowded field than we have now.

And if you don’t believe this, just wait for 2021 and the slew of 50th anniversary deluxe editions.