What? It’s December ’91 already here at TOTP Rewind? Wasn’t the last post on the blog from mid November? Well yes but we’ve missed the final show win November due to that confusing scenario of one of the presenters not giving permission for the repeats to be aired. We skipped numerous episodes back in the 80s due to the late Mike Smith not giving permission before his death in 2014 and the issue has raised its head again in the early 90s shows. So who is it that hasn’t given his blessings for these repeats to be aired? His name is Adrian Rose or rather was Adrian Rose. He’s not dead but he goes by a different name now. Or should that be names as I’ve found him referred to on the internet as Adrian Woolfe and Adrian Rose Woolfe. It turns out that he went on to have a successful career in TV production (he was involved in bringing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? to our screens) though that doesn’t explain his reluctance to give permission for his TOTP shows to be repeated. There’s a whole load of theories circulating on the internet about what his reasoning might be with some tweets on the subject having been deleted so I’m not about to launch into an investigation as to what happened here for fear of any litigious action. However, Adrian’s fellow presenters Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin, both of whom seem very willing to tweet along with these TOTP repeats and answer questions about them, did add to the debate on Twitter :

err….

Hmm. If you really want to dig deeper into this issue, there’s lots more out there online not least from Tony and Mark but my take on it is that when the presenters were being supplied from the Radio 1 DJ roster then their existing contracts with the BBC covered any stints on TOTP but the presenters in the new format must have had separate and different contracts with clauses that required permission for future repeats to be shown but hey, I’m no lawyer…

Anyway, the bad news is that we will miss out on 15 TOTP shows that feature Adrian Rose between now and Sep ’92 but it’s OK as I’ve checked the running order for the shows affected and all the acts on them were crap anyway. I’m kidding! Having said that, there is an awful lot of shite we won’t be subjected to (I’m looking at you 2 Unlimited) but there are some good tunes in there as well. One of the very first casualties of the Rose pruning effect is the now iconic Nirvana performance from the 28 Nov ’91 show but I’m not going there in this post as I’ll try and round up the most notable missed performances in the review the year.

Enough though of those that we missed, how about the ones that we are getting to see all over again 30 years on? Well, after last week’s rave-tastic running order, we’re right back in amongst it again with opening act Shades Of Rhythm and their hit “Extacy”. Now as I’ve said many times before, I was no clubber or indeed raver but this looks and sounds to me like all kinds of wrong. What were they all wearing?! Have they come in their pyjamas?! Nobody could sleep in those surely?! I thought they’d topped the look off with a Santa hat (it being December and all) but on closer inspection they’re like those fur lined Russian hats with the flaps but colour coded to match the rest of the outfit with the flaps done up. If the ‘performers” on stage looked bad enough, what was going on with the backing dancers? Seriously, they look like an off his tits Andy Pandy! Please tell me people weren’t going to actual clubs dressed like that at the time. As for the track itself, it seems like a pretty unexceptional rave by numbers effort to me with the TOTP live vocal policy yet again not helping much. And that title! Surely the show’s producers must have realised what the theme here was?!

Interestingly, Shades Of Rhythm were on ZTT Records. Like many I’m sure, the acts that leap to the front of my mind when I hear that record label mentioned are Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Propaganda and Art of Noise but ZTT didn’t get stuck in the 80s as they had already had huge hits this decade with the likes of Adamski, Seal and 808 State.

“Extacy” peaked at No 16.

Before we get to the next act, just a quick note on how the charts were being handled in this period of TOTP history. Basically, they’ve f****d it! If new producer Stanley Appel was given the task by BBC bosses of coming up with the worst possible way to do a chart rundown, then he couldn’t have imagined anything better than this. For a start, there is no Top 40 countdown anymore just a Top 10. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they throw it away within the first 5 minutes of the show including revealing the No 1 record. We get to see tiny clips of the Top 10 records on screen (be they the official promo video or a TOTP appearance) but we don’t hear any of them as the new theme tune plays over the top of it. It’s insane! Appel seemed to be trying to move away from the show being based on the Top 40 singles as it had been for the whole of its existence this far by meddling with the countdown and having these new features like ‘exclusive’ performances and incorporating the album chart as well. New doesn’t always mean better and this certainly wasn’t.

Anyway, ho hum. On with the show and it’s those old reliables Andy and Vince of Erasure with their new single “Am I Right?”. These two had been TOTP staples since the mid 80s and were still a safe pair of hands into the new decade. That being said, this wasn’t one of their better tunes. The third single from their “Chorus” album, they’d gone for a slowie to follow up on the title track and “Love To Hate You” which had both had much faster bpm. Was it a definite decision at attempting to be a Christmas single? Certainly the staging of this performance would suggest so. Up there on stage with the duo are some Christmas trees, a sleigh and reindeer (of the plastic variety) and a rather forlorn looking snowman. It reminds me of the Santa’s grotto I worked in as Father Christmas in Debenhams back in 1989. I was only 21 but I filled in for the regular guys when they were having their lunch breaks. I must admit to looking at the collection of elves and penguins etc on the floor beside me and thinking to myself “where is your life heading mate?”.

Back with Erasure though and all of that paraphernalia is nothing compared to the fake snow coming down for the studio ceiling in the most unconvincing of ways. Snow has surely never been so inconsistent in its precipitation anywhere in the world as it is in this TOTP studio. I hope Andy and Vince didn’t watch the playback as they were totally undermined by this nonsense.

“Am I Right?” peaked at No 15.

Oh great, it’s Simply Red (sigh)! Hucknall and co (whoever the hell those people were) were never bigger than they were at this point. “Stars” was the title track from their fourth album and it felt like every other purchase made by a customer over Christmas ’91 in the Our Price store where I was working in Manchester was that album. We sold it over and over and over again. Then we went home, came back the next day and sold it some more. It was a monster. I guess it was the default present for all those blokes who didn’t know what to get their partner (see also, Celine Dion, Dido etc). The title track would certainly have helped sell it being a sultry, smooth as velvet pop/soul standard perfectly suited to Mick’s confident vocals. It sounded like it had been written to be played on the hour, every hour on daytime radio – indeed it probably was. Having to perform a live vocal on the show in keeping with its new policy wouldn’t have worried the Huckster at all. However, he should have been worried about the outfit that he chose for the show. He appears to have come dressed as a Wild West cowboy with his waistcoat and sheriff’s badge.

Talking of Mick’s appearance reminds me that we had a guy working as a Christmas temp in the shop who looked a bit like him. He certainly had the long, curly ginger hair anyway. In fact, now I come to think of it, didn’t he tell us that he had roadied for Simply Red before coming to work in the store? I’m not sure he was telling the truth and anyway, he didn’t last the whole of the festive period due to an incident at our pre-Christmas do. I say ‘do’ but I think we all just went to Manto bar in Canal Street which was the newly opened super bar that was packing in them in down at the gay village at the time. I think the Hucknall lookalike got pissed and decided it would be a good idea to tell the store manager exactly what he thought of him via the medium of insults. When we tried to advise him that it wasn’t a good idea he said, “What? Just because he’s the manager? F**k him!” and proceeded with his plan. I’m pretty sure we never saw him again after that night.

“Stars” the song peaked at No 8 and was the highest charting single taken from the album.

After all that talk of presenters at the top of the post, I should say that tonight’s hosts are Mark Franklin and Elayne Smith who pops up on our screen to introduce the ‘exclusive’ section of the show. This was the second of only two appearances for Elayne who, in an interview with BBC Radio Three Counties presenter Edward Adoo back in 2018, described her TOTP experience as “daunting” and that she was “completely rubbish” on it. To be fair to Elayne, there have been far, far worse presenters of the show down the years than her.

Anyway, the exclusive on tonight’s show is a screening of the video for Guns N’ Roses version of “Live And Let Die”. The original was of course written by Paul and Linda McCartney and recorded by Wings for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name. Now I had always believed that the Wings version had been a huge hit so was surprised to discover that it only made No 9 in the UK. It did better in the US where it stayed and No 2 for three weeks and was kept off the top spot by three different songs including “Touch Me In The Morning” by Diana Ross (more of whom later).

Routinely chosen in polls as the best Bond theme ever, it did then beg the question as to why the world needed a Guns N’ Roses version? Well, it was just a song that Slash and Axl Rose both loved apparently so they recorded it for their “Use Your Illusion” project (it was actually on “Use Your Illusion I” for all the pedants out there). Not everyone was happy about this and the song seems to spilt opinion accordingly. In short, it’s musical Brexit. Look at these couple of tweets for example:

See? Where did I sit on the debate? I don’t mind the Guns N’ Roses version I have to say although they did seem to overdo it with the cover versions – “Use Your Illusion II” included a version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. Both covers would be big hits in the UK with “Live And Let Die” making it to No 5 whilst “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” peaked at No 2. As with Elayne Smith’s final TOTP appearance, the live performance promo video was the last to feature rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin before he left the band.

I did promise earlier that there’d be more Diana Ross to come and here she is with her hit “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”. Such a huge megastar is Ms Ross that she doesn’t need any backing singers or band up there on stage with her – nobody is stealing any of her limelight thank you very much – but to be fair to her, the live vocal isn’t too bad.

The sales of this single seemed surprising to me. Diana hadn’t had many big hits in the UK throughout the previous 10 years (the notable exception being “Chain Reaction” going to No 1 in 1986 obviously). It’s a huge, syrup filled power ballad which I guess went down well over the festive period when we’re all filled with love for our fellow human beings (supposedly) but even so. It would end up selling 200,000 copies in this country and *SPOILER* only missed out on the Christmas No 1 spot by a couple of hundred units.

Someone who didn’t see those sales coming was our aforementioned store manager. I distinctly recall him having a word with myself as chart cassette buyer and the CD buyer advising us not to get influenced by the success of the single into ordering loads of copies of the parent album (“The Force Behind The Power”) as in all his years of record retail, he had never seen a Diana Ross album sell well. Unfortunately, he said all of this within earshot of our colleague Andy who was a huge Diana fan and took it personally that the manager was dissing one of his idols. I think he actually said something along the lines of “ignore him, he knows nothing, go big on the album”. So who was right? Well, I think it was Andy. The album did sell well over time going platinum with sales of 300,000 in the UK despite it never getting any higher than No 9 in the charts.

Four Breakers?! Oh come on! OK, well we start with Cliff Richard (of course we do, it is nearly Christmas after all) and a little ditty called “We Should Be Together”. After bagging two of the last three festive No 1 records for himself (and he even featured on the one he didn’t as he was in Band Aid II!), Cliff naturally wasn’t not going to chance his arm again and released this…well…this! Very much his forgotten Christmas single, it peaked at No 10. Not a bad return for most artists but this was Cliff we were talking about…at Christmas! This was not a good result!

The schmaltzy video and its plot of an offshore oil worker coming home to join his family for Christmas is almost unwatchable not least for the fact that the two teddy bears that he brings as presents for his two young daughters look really crap! Very badly made. He should have gone to Build-A-Bear! Boo!

After Guns N’ Roses earlier, we now get Salt ‘N Pepa and like the former, the rap trio are also having a hit with a cover version. “You Showed Me” was written by Gene Clark and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds in 1964 and has been covered by loads of different artists the first of whom to have a hit with it were The Turtles in 1968 who slowed its pace right down from its original incarnation and took into the US Top 10. The hit that Salt ‘N Pepa had with it in 1991 also took it in a different direction, making it a sassy yet also smooth whilst the rapped punctuations added their customary edge. Yet another variation on the original theme came in 1996 when The Lightning Seeds released this trip-hopped, blissed out version:

It’s also been covered by Lutricia McNeal and was sampled by De La Soul (the Turtles’ recording) for their song “Transmitting Live From Mars (Interlude)” on their 1989 album “3 Feet High And Rising” for which they were sued by the LA band. I have to admit that although I do know the song, it’s probably the version by The Turtles that comes to mind rather then any of the others mentioned here. I’m not sure I even realised that the Salt ‘N Pepa take on it was the same song!

The festive period in 1991 was fast turning out to be Queen dominated. No, not her majesty and her Christmas Day speech (had the trend to not bother tuning in to that already started 30 years ago?) but the band of course. By the time this TOTP was being broadcast, Freddie Mercury had been dead for just 11 days, the announcement of his death coming 24 hours after his public statement the he had tested HIV positive and had AIDS. Although rumours surrounding his health had been rife for months, the timing of his demise was still shocking.

Queen’s “Greatest Hits II” album had been released at the end of October and suddenly it was a required purchase following Freddie’s death. I’ve never quite got why a pop star’s death inevitably leads to a rush in demand for their back catalogue. Yes, I know sometimes cynical record labels re-release material just to cash in but they do so knowing that people probably will buy it. It always seems a bit morbid. I guess it was a slightly different case with “Greatest Hits II” as it must have been scheduled for a late Autumn release for the Christmas market for some time. Or, could EMI have been hedging their bets what with all those rumours about the perilous nature of Freddie’s health doing the rounds? All I know is that we had loads of the album in stock when it was initially released and it wasn’t shifting until Freddie’s demise and then it went batshit crazy reaching No. 1 on the UK albums chart and, as of 2014, was the tenth best-selling album in the UK with 3.9 million units shifted.

In amongst all of this Queen-mania, a solo venture by their guitarist Brian May was released called “Driven By You”.

May’s only previous solo single had been “Star Fleet”, the theme tune to some long forgotten Japanese puppet sci-fi show in 1983 which I don’t remember at all (probably because it didn’t make the Top 40). I’ve just found it on YouTube and it’s horrible. “Driven By You” sounded much more like May’s day job and indeed was included on Queen’s “Greatest Hits III” album. Wasn’t it first used on a car advert though?

*checks internet*

Yes! It was used for a Ford advertising campaign! Apparently May was asked to write a song to soundtrack it and when the advert was broadcast, it was so popular it convinced Brain to re-record the song with some changed words, an expanded running time and additional verses. The result was the version that was released as a single and that would become a No 6 hit.

It would make it onto May’s solo album of the following year called “Back To The Light” which would also feature his “Too Much Love Will Kill You” follow up single that made the Top 5. However, what I recall most about the album is that it had one of the worst covers ever. Whoever thought that the image opposite would be just the thing that they wanted to promote the album….

What’s the best cover version ever? Don’t bother answering as you’ll all have a different answer depending on your musical tastes which is subjective anyway. My friend Robin used that line in defence of what I saw as an outrageous statement that he once made down the pub which was that he didn’t like any Elton John songs. None. “What?! You can’t say that!” I replied but of course he could. Talking of Elton, here’s his song “Rocket Man” back in the charts but done by Kate Bush. How so? Well, it was a track from the tribute album “Two Rooms: Celebrating The Songs Of Elton John & Bernie Taupin”. The album featured artists like Phil Collins, Sting, The Beach Boys and Hall & Oates to name but a few who all covered songs from the John / Taupin canon but it was Kate Bush with her take on her favourite Elton hit that was released as the second single from the album. She actually retitled it as “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)” for some reason, maybe to make a distinction between her version and the original? She needn’t have bothered as nobody would ever confuse the two. Kate’s take on it added a reggae lilt and totally reworked it. Well, if you’re going to cover a song, you might as well make it your own as the hateful Louis Walsh would no doubt have said if Kate had done this on the X Factor.

The black and white promo video sees Kate in a more playful mood than perhaps we were used to though her ukulele playing looks a bit suss. Meanwhile, the scene with the concertina player with his arm around her brought back memories of her duet with Peter Gabriel on “Don’t Give Up” to mind. Kate’s version would peak at No 12. Oh, and the best cover version of all time? That would be “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)” according to readers of The Observer newspaper who voted it as such in 2007. So that settles that then.

The KLF were a bit out of the ordinary weren’t they? That’s quite the understatement I know. Maybe I could put it in football terms. They were like a musical José Mourinho when he famously said “I’m not one of the bottle. I’m a…I think I’m a special one” and just like José, I don’t think we’d seen anything like The KLF for a very long time.

After selling more singles than any other act in 1991 so far, they decided to do a collaboration with the ‘First Lady of Country Music’ Tammy Wynette on “Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” ! WTF?! Bizarre? Out of left field? I’m not sure there are words to describe how weird this seemed in 1991. Surely the safe thing would have been to release another dance track in the mould of their ‘Stadium House’ trilogy of hits “What Time Is Love?”, “Last Train to Trancentral” and “3 a.m. Eternal” but then The KLF could never be described as being sensible. Apparently Tammy didn’t really know what she was singing about (she’d never head of a 99 ice cream) and originally thought the lyrics were ‘justified and anxious’ but somehow it all comes together magnificently.

The single with Tammy is radically different from the album version on “The White Room” which was a much less frenetic sound and featured the vocals of Errol “Black Steel” Nicholson which caused us record shop staff some problems when disgruntled shoppers, having bought the album on the strength of the single, returned them when they discovered that “that song about ice cream vans isn’t on it”.

And so to this TOTP performance. Would this have qualified as a water cooler moment had the phrase existed in 1991? I think maybe. So obviously Tammy wasn’t actually there in the studio with Jimi Cauty and Bill Drummond but was she really doing her bits live and in sync from “somewhere in concert in Great Britain” as Mark Franklin suggests in his intro? The staging of the performance has tribal drummers and some extras dressed in towering ice cream costumes with Tammy contributing to the visuals via a bank of TV screens in the background. It was officially bonkers. My eyes though are drawn to Jimmy Cauty (I think it’s Jimmy Cauty) who’s come dressed as Jeremy Healy from Haysi Fantayzee of “John Wayne Is Big Leggy” fame.

At the end of the performance, the ice cream van that was the visual image for the promotion of the single turns up at the back of the stage in which Elayne Smith pops up to do the link into the No 1 record. She does seem to waste the moment though, not making any reference to either the van or the performance that we have all just witnessed. Cauty and Drummond had a history of using vehicles to promote their singles – remember the American police car known as the JAMsMobile aka Ford Timelord that was the central image behind their “Doctorin’ the Tardis” No 1 from 1987 under their guise of The Timelords?

“Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)” was widely talked up as a potential Christmas No 1 but the death of Freddie Mercury put paid to that although it did go to No 2 in early 1992 which was the year when The KLF retired from the music industry by basically blowing up the whole project.

Now did I say that 1991 was remembered for being a Queen Christmas earlier? I may have jumped the gun as Elton John was certainly no shrinking violet (has he ever been?) when it came to records in the charts at this festive time. After Kate Bush’s version of his “Rocket Man” song earlier we now get the man himself with another of his older songs. I have to admit I’d kind of lost track of the timeline for Elton and George Michael‘s version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” being a No 1 hit. In my head I thought it was a chart topper much later than this but I realise I’ve melded together this record and the “Five Live” EP which was also a No 1 but in April 1993 and featured George Michael performing, amongst other tracks, “Somebody to Love” at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert held at Wembley Stadium in April 1992. In addition, Freddie scored a posthumous solo No 1 in the August of 1993 with a remix of his ‘Living On My Own” single. There was clearly a George/Queen/Elton frenzy going on between Christmas 1991 and the Summer of 1993 – no wonder my poor memory couldn’t cope.

So why was this George / Elton live version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” back in the charts? After all, hadn’t we already had a cover of the song in the charts recently courtesy of Oleta Adams from the aforementioned Elton John / Bernie Taupin album? Yes, yes we had – it peaked at No 33 back in October. Well, given that Elton donated the proceeds of his single 1990 “Sacrifice” to various AIDS related charities and that his friend Freddie Mercury had just died of an AIDS related illness and that he founded the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992, it’s no surprise that “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” was to raise money for 10 different charities for children, AIDS and education. George, of course, was no stranger to charity having been front and centre of the Band Aid single and having performed at Live Aid where he actually sang “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”. After his death, we learned that he had contributed loads of money incognito to many varied causes.

This live version of the song had been recorded on the final show of his Cover To Cover tour at Wembley Arena on 23 March 1991. The bit where George introduces Elton and the audience’s reaction to the surprise event is probably my favourite part. The single went straight in at No 1 (the fifth to do so in 1991 according to Mark Franklin) and would stay there for two weeks before giving way to the re-release of his old pal Freddie’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011myb/top-of-the-pops-05121991