The 1970s.....A personal view (Life For Me in the 1970s)

Member Name: GentleGenius

Product:	Life For Me in the 1970s
Date:	21/10/08 (742 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for TV and cinema & some music. The punk era at the end brightened the decade up.

Disadvantages: Rather a wasteful 10 years that contained some pretty tedious chunks, especially in the middle.

This is the second and final part of my little project on the way I as an individual perceived the 1960s and 1970s - I hope you enjoy it. Before I begin, I'd like to say thanks for the ratings, nominations and lovely comments on the 1960s article. No doubt, as was so with the 1960s article, I shall reluctantly have to use discernment for the sake of brevity - and I apologise in advance to anybody who feels I have omitted something which should have been included.

A lot of people look back to the 1970s with the same fondness that I view the 1960s, but for me the 70s was a rather disjointed decade whereby though a lot was happening, it didn't seem to hold the excitable feeling of euphoric forward movement that the 60s did. With hindsight, it appears to me that the 1970s were more about misunderstanding the 60s dream, living it out in a wasteful, rather than a solid and productive way. The decade began with the gradual erosion of the hippie/peace & love philosophy, although it was some time before the ideology faded away entirely. The Beatles had disbanded, though each one pursued successful solo careers, with John and George occasionally collaborating. In the early 1970s, there was a brief re emergence of some 1960s bands and solo singers/songwriters who had been inactive for a couple of years, and our charts were blighted (that's my own opinion!) by an influx of rather sickly teenybopper pop music, delivered by the toothy grins of Donny Osmond, and the boyish good looks of David Cassidy. For the first half of the 1970s, the major pop music force was the glam rock bands. With hindsight they aren't now so bad as they seemed at the time, and in a way I do feel their presence to be significant in that along with David Bowie (of course a far more serious and talented singer/songwriter), they began to fuzz up the gender line somewhat. One member of the band Mud wore a kaftan, one member of Sweet wore makeup (as did T Rex's Marc Bolan) and was decidedly "camp", and a number of Bowie's songs made reference to bisexuality. There was a somewhat gothic edge to T Rex, and I believe this may have in a small way, opened the door for the influx of Goths and their way of life in the 1980s/1990s. Girls drooled over gravel-voiced Rod Stewart all through the 70s, and we were treated to some pretty dreadful country singles such as Tammy Wynette's "Divorce", Billy Jo Spears' "Blanket On The Ground" and J J Barrie's "No Charge", amongst other monstrosities. Musically, the first half of the 1970s seemed to, regarding the appearance of the pop singers, concentrate on a boy next door kind of cuteness. Up and down the nation, girls everywhere had pictures of not just Donny Osmond, Marc Bolan and David Cassidy on their bedroom walls - the incredibly handsome David Essex, with his boyish, yet slightly rugged gipsy looks, was a serious threat to the sickly smiles of the clean-living Osmonds.

The public in 1970 decided they'd had enough of Harold Wilson, and in the general election that year, Ted Heath was voted into office. In 1971, the country was thrown into confusion for a while, when we abandoned our old pounds, shillings and pence currency and went decimal, in preparation for joining the European Union on 1st January 1973. It wasn't very long before the economical climate began to look grim, as inflation was very high, unemployment was rising, and the Trade Unions began their battle with the government. At various points throughout the 1970s, the UK was riddled with strikes. Following a series of miners' strikes, Ted Heath in late 1973 introduced the now infamous "three day week" as an energy-conserving exercise. There was even a time, in I believe 1973, when bread was rationed. Queues and queues of people formed outside bakers' shops and supermarkets up and down the country, and each household was only allowed one loaf per day. There were many power cuts in the UK here and there throughout the 1970s, brought about by striking workers, and I distinctly remember being in the office typing letters out on a manual typewriter by candlelight, then walking home in total darkness during power cuts as there were no street lights on - just to sidetrack a bit with a question that's popped into my mind. If we had those power cuts now in the 21st century, with our streets plunged into darkness, I wonder how safe it would be to walk home in the dark? Back in the 1970s, though it was an inconvenience to walk home in total darkness from work in mid winter during a power cut, there was little or no fear of violence on the streets.

Bored with Ted Heath and the Conservatives, the British public in the 1974 general election put Harold Wilson back into power, but he seemed to lack the sparkle which had emanated from him during his 1960s reign as Prime Minster. Two years later in 1976, Harold Wilson resigned, handing the reigns to Jim Callaghan, and the country continued to struggle its way through continuing strikes and industrial unrest. In 1979, the country went to the polls again, and voted in Britain's first female Prime Minister - the infamous Margaret Thatcher....who I won't dwell upon, as she is more of a 1980s than a 1970s figure. In the USA, President Nixon fell foul of the Watergate scandal, and the Vietnam War raged on until April 1975, when Saigon surrendered. After the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford took over the US presidency, until democrat Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977.

Back to music for a moment. At the beginning of the 1970s, there was still a little of the hippie stuff around, but it was more commercialised than had been in the 1960s. A rather good example is Hot Chocolate's "Love Is Love", which climbed to no.6 in the UK singles charts in August of that year. The Kinks took "Lola" to no.2 in July, replacing Free's "All Right Now" - both of which have turned into all-time classic anthems. One of the biggest driving forces in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, was black soul/disco. Artists such as Al Green and Marvin Gaye became icons, and discos were THE place for young people to hang out. Later on in the 1970s, The Bee Gees wrote the music for the infamous "Saturday Night Fever" and artists such as Herbie Hancock were exponents of funk and jazz funk. In the middle of the 1970s, it seemed that black soul music was the only true quality music around, as music in general had otherwise become rather bland. The long-hairs were into largely album productions, providing us with some rather pretentious and long musical inroads which you either loved or hated; the alternative to black music in the singles charts was throwaway stuff such as The Bay City Rollers and various sub-standard novelty songs such as "Nice One Cyril" and Judge Dread's mostly banned offerings; or, on the better side of the musical bed, we had regular chart contributions from people such as Elton John, Status Quo, ELO and The Eagles. There was during the mid 70s a few attempts at reviving old rock and roll standards, and the main exponents of this movement were drape suited, brothel creeper clad band Showaddywaddy, and the band Darts, with mad Dan Hegarty as the lead singer. The 1970s saw the birth of heavy metal music as we know it today, and it was a spin-off from the hippy/hairy movement. We also saw the advent of electronic music, with offerings such as Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", and Jean Michel Jarre took Part IV of his album "Oxygene" to no.4 in the UK singles charts in September 1977. Apart from the odd little one-off gem here and there, music seemed to lose most of its "oomph". Things were to change though, and in 1977, The Sex Pistols brought punk out from the underground scene, reaching no.2 with their banned "God Save The Queen". Punk music was all about anarchy at best and nihilism at worst, poking a finger at society - maybe in some areas the philosophy wasn't a million miles from that of the defunct hippies - but the message was delivered in a much more hard-hitting and aggressive way. I believe Johnny Rotten once said that he didn't feel The Sex Pistols had put on a good live performance unless at least three people in the front row had thrown up over one another. At long last, the scene was on the move....and up popped bands who left us a legacy of brilliant music - bands such as The Jam, The Stranglers, The Clash, Eddie & The Hotrods, to name just a few. The punk explosion unearthed a class breed of singer/songwriter, Joe Jackson being a good example. The 1970s went out in a blaze of musical glory, with a plethora of brilliant bands and soloists providing us with some of the best rock and pop music ever recorded.

To move away from music now....a lot of house building continued during the 1970s. The inner city slum clearance was still in progress, and as the decade wore on, we began to see the problems from high-rise living which, although the idea of had been one of good intent, the tower blocks ultimately destroyed the community spirit that had previously been present in conventional city residential streets. Outside of the cities and in suburbia, large and rather faceless estates sprung up; the brickwork became darker in colour and the windows smaller - society was closing its doors on the openness of the 1960s. Interior decor and furnishings weren't that dissimilar to the 1960s in actual design, but colours moved away from bright, almost mystical oranges and purples, towards shades of cream and dark brown. Wispy filament lamps with coloured glowing ends replaced the good old faithful lava lamp from the 1960s, and open-plan living rooms and kitchens were the in thing. Blankets on beds were beginning to be a thing of the past, as the continental quilt began to creep into our bedrooms, and most new houses were built with louvre windows which it was later discovered are very draughty.

Regarding places of work, I can only speak of the office as that's the only experience of the 1970s I have. The 1970s saw the advent of the open plan office, where it made it so much easier for even more people to get on everybody else's nerves. The 1970s saw the first rumblings of the anti-smoking brigade, and as there were very few places where smoking was banned, the workplace being one of many, it didn't make for good staff relationships. The 1960s had seen duplicating carried out on very noisy and messy Gestetner machines, but in 1970 a marvellous new invention found its way into offices up and down the UK - the photocopy machine. Electric typewriters replaced the heavy old monstrosities, and right at the end of the 1970s, we began to see the appearance of word processors in the office....the concept of the personal computer was just around the corner. A magical little piece of machinery known as the telex machine meant you could dial a number to another telex machine anywhere in the world, and tap out a message - telex machines later gave way to fax machines in the 1980s.

There were lots of fads around in the 1970s. Many of you reading this will remember the space hopper (orange-coloured balloon-type toy that children would sit on and bounce around)...they actually arrived in the late 1960s, but didn't become widely used until 1970-ish. In 1971, the tender-natured of us were driven mad by two ball shaped monstrosities attached to each end of a piece of string. This irritating device was called "clackers", and the string would be threaded around the fingers, and jerked back and forth so that the ball shapes hit one another, making a very annoying clacking noise. A company called Ronco began selling some rather bizarre, and largely ineffective items such as an automatic hair cutting device, a flip-style record rack (which damaged everybody's LPs) and other such novel, but ultimately useless crazy inventions. Though Ronco's commercial output was for the most part hideous, they (together with another company, K-Tel) did put out a few LP records which were compilations of oldies pop music, and most of them were rather good.

As far as the clothes people (mainly the young) were wearing, at the beginning of the 1970s mini skirts were on the way out. Midi and maxi skirts made an appearance, and in the early 70s, hot pants and smock dresses were all the rage. Teenage girls stunk of Aqua Manda perfume, and the men stunk of Brut or Hai Karate aftershave. From about 1972 to about 1977, trouser flares became so wide that they looked like a full skirt, and I'm sure people who were young then and now are middle-aged, are finding their knee joints are suffering because of the 5" high platform soles they wore. Casual wear for men during that period was tank tops with flares, and smarter wear consisted of a suit, a coloured shirt (sometimes with a flowered pattern) and a pleat up the back. The fashionable length of hair for men who weren't hippie/hairy types, was just below the collar, well styled, and droopy moustaches were all the rage. Later on when the punk influence made itself felt, non punks wore mostly smart, straight-legged jeans with jumpers or tee shirts, but when the punks themselves arrived, we were astonished (temporarily!) to see groups of youths walking the streets wearing black plastic rubbish bags, tartan kilts, leather jackets festooned with chains - they wore safety pins through their noses, and had their hair greased up into huge, startling coloured Mohican quiffs - bright lime green, shocking pink, orange, red, turquoise and purple. Right at the end of the 1970s, there was a brief mod revival (aligned with two-tone music), and these new wave mods would wear suits with baggy trousers, and trilby or pork pie hats.

Our eating habits underwent a change in the 1970s. Due to our entry into the EEC and the increase in popularity of European package holidays, we began to see items on our supermarket shelves such as fondue, peppers, courgettes, aubergines, calabrese, many different types of continental cheeses - things which before in the UK could only be bought from specialist shops, if at all. People began to eat out much more than ever before, and though the first Indian restaurants appeared in the UK in the 1950s, the 1970s saw more and more popping up all over the place on every street corner, and curry was becoming a national favourite. Fast food began to expand outwards from fish & chips and sea front hot dogs. The early 70s saw Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaways blossoming, and in the mid-70s, chains of McDonalds restaurants were opened nationwide. Pizza outlets were becoming very popular, and for a short while in the mid to late 1970s, it was fashionable to visit a Tennessee Pancake House and stuff your face with both savoury and sweet pancakes, followed by Dayvilles American ice cream. In the early 70s, the rather short lived Cresta ("it's frothy maaaan!!") was probably the most popular soft drink, and Ruschian (a pale pink coloured mixer intended for vodka - I'm not sure if you can still buy it) was the in thing in all the newly opening wine bars. The mid-70s saw a phase of chicken, burgers or scampi being served with chips in a basket to customers in pubs. Spurred on by the "thin is in" fashion philosophy of the 1960s, the 1970s saw a massive increase in crash dieting. Energen Rolls were low-calorie "bread" rolls made largely of cellulose, and woman up and down the country who probably weren't even overweight, would starve themselves by living on one or two of these rolls per day, subsidised with a mug of "Limmits" tomato soup. Another diet involved eating nothing but eggs and grapefruit for a week - there was the pineapple and cheese diet, and the banana and peanut diet. Though it's my personal opinion that anorexia nervosa isn't at root about dieting and weight-loss (I think the psychology behind the illness is far more complex), the rate of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa were heavily on the increase.

All in all, I think a number of people found the 1970s a rather depressing decade - not long before his death in 1980, John Lennon, who had great hopes for the 1980s, said "weren't the 70s a drag!!". Maybe they weren't for everybody, but as a whole, I personally am in agreement with Lennon there. In my own mind, the 1970s came as a huge anti-climax after the swinging 60s, as all I could see was materialism, dross, sex just for the sake of it, football hooliganism, the fashion of streaking (which I just found absurd), political unrest and people using social changes from the 1960s in an ill-thought-out fashion. The Women's Movement took a huge surge forward in the 70s and a lot of good came from that - mainly in the areas of making divorce easier, more education regarding contraception, and the equal pay for woman bill which I believe was passed in 1975. More and more women began to unchain themselves from the kitchen sink and become people in their own right, rather than extensions of their husbands, but I found it very sad that the more extreme end of the Women's Movement went a little overboard and turned the whole thing into a bitchfest against men. There were three very wonderful things to come out of the 1970s though, and those things were TV, cinema and the glorious summer of 1976.

Easter of 1976 was freezing - cold and snowy, and the spring as a whole was cool and unsettled. 1st June 1976 saw (in the place where I was at the time) close to zero temperatures around lunchtime - even a couple of stray flakes of snow fell - but, on 2nd June, up went the temperature and out came the sun. Again, I can only speak for where I personally was in the UK at the time, but my little corner from 2nd June onwards was treated to twelve weeks of totally cloudless blue skies, searing hot temperatures (it reached 100.5F one day in July), low humidity and plagues and plagues of ladybirds - they got absolutely everywhere. The intense heat and piercing, constant sunshine wasn't good for everybody though. Several elderly people died from the effects of the heat, and many people needed medical treatment for heat exhaustion at Wimbledon that year. The rivers and reservoirs dried up...one close to where I live had dried completely, and the mud at the bottom was cracked and baked, like something from the Sahara Desert. The grass everywhere turned straw yellow, and lots of houses, especially in the South East of England, had a hosepipe ban....some even had water standpipes in the street. The long hot summer came to a close on the last day of August, with torrential rains and severe thunderstorms.

By the time the 70s was upon us, most people had colour TVs in their homes, and the programme producers took advantage of this by televising things like snooker matches, which were rather pointless on black and white TV. Although wildlife programmes had been shown during the 1960s and 1950s, they took on a new meaning during the 1970s, being able to utilise the advantages of colour television, and advancements in zoom camera lenses, which could give us a much closer insight into the world of flora and fauna than ever before. TV progamming was, subject-wise, myriad in the 70s - we were treated to some excellent drama series, documentaries (a lot of which highlighted various social problems) some superb one-off plays, and there was what I believe to be a greater variety of quiz shows and sitcoms than in any other decade before or since. In 1970, humour took a bizarre and (for the young) delightful turn with Monty Python's Flying Circus, and in 1975 the first six of a total of twelve episodes of John Cleese's "Fawlty Towers" was shown on TV (the second series was shown in 1979). Towards the end of the 70s when the punk movement was underway, this set the scene for taking music seriously once more, and we every Friday evening were treated to "The Tube", which, I suppose, was a modern day version of "Ready Steady Go" from the 1960s. It seemed that popular culture was waking up again after a lull, and humour moved into the world of the "alternative". Every Friday evening after "The Tube", the youth and broader-minded older people would sit glued to Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Anderson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones in that wonderful satire programme, "Not The Nine O'Clock News".

Cinema offerings in the 1970s were interesting and varied, to say the least. There was so much to choose from. Hammer Horror films were regularly shown at local cinemas, and there was a significant number of movie spin-offs from TV sitcoms. Censorship regarding language/swearing in films was more lenient than it had ever been before, and in 1975 the nation was shocked, spellbound and charmed by the multi academy award winning film, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest". 1972 saw censors up and down the country banning "A Clockwork Orange" from their local cinemas because of its (by those days' standards) extremely violent content, and in 1974, "The Exorcist" (also banned from many cinemas) amused some people, scared the hell out of more, and shocked others. As well as Clint Eastwood introducing us to his "Dirty Harry" character, giving us at least three films on the theme, the disaster movie was born in the 1970s, spawning gems such as Jaws, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. Both sides of the Atlantic gave us a hark back to the 1950s - our offering was "That'll Be The Day", and the USA's offering was "American Graffiti" - these two films went some way towards sparking a feeling of nostalgia for the 1950s in certain circles, and it is possible that may have inspired the small revival of rock and roll music in the mid 1970s. Sci-fi films also were on the menu, the most notable being "Silent Running", "West World", "Logan's Run", "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind". To close my vague meandering into the world of cinema, it might be interesting for some to learn that when I saw the film "Deliverance", it was actually a "B" film - I can't remember what the main feature was, but the whole cinema audience much preferred "Deliverance" out of the two - and, it has become a classic.

How much longer can I go on for? Like with my 1960s article, I know that I have left out an enormous amount of highly significant stuff from the 1970s, but I think it's now time to wind down and put that decade where it belongs, in our memories, and in the past. I won't be doing anything on the 1950s as I wasn't even born for the first four years of the decade - nor shall I cover the 1980s/1990s or 2000s, as their significance from the timeline point of view in my life is minimal.

Thanks for reading everyone - I hope it hasn't been too boring!

Summary: A tragic waste of all that the 1960s opened the doors to.