Rock reminiscences of an 80-year-old in 2036 (Ch 3)

 

Chapter 3

‘That’s so cool,’ says Jane, like her brother Tony also a promising musician quite capable of singing in tune. She too has accumulated a wealth of knowledge in the course of her 14 years. Hence, her follow-up question was predictable.

‘Grandad, tell us about the influence of radio on your generation. I mean, that was before South Africa even got television, let alone all the modern technology we saw introduced from the 1990s and which has escalated to a point where even we, digital natives, struggle to keep up.’

‘Jane it was like another world back then. Far simpler, for sure, but remember that the 20^th century saw amazing progress, some of it destructive for sure, in nuclear physics and biochemistry. The sequencing of DNA was occurring for the first time around when I was a baby in the 1950s.

‘As it so happens, I also wrote about this era in my old blog (it sounds so dated a term now, but was short for web log) while still living in Port Elizabeth, outlandishly renamed to some obscure isiXhosa word in early 2021, soon after I published my book, 200 Years, A Celebration of Port Elizabeth, 1820-2020.

‘Let me quote to you directly from that post. But be warned, you’re going to have to concentrate, because the following information will be quite intense, especially since you guys will not be able to identify much with the music itself. But you might find the anecdotes of interest, and I’d encourage you to search the web for some of the songs mentioned. They are iconic, even if here we are only scratching a small part of the surface. This is what I wrote around 2008, looking back to my childhood and teenage years:’

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I grew up just as South Africa was becoming a thoroughly modern country. Thanks to our links to Britain, in particular, the latest technological advances were replicated here not long after their discovery in the West. The legacy of this is to be found in our status as by far the most industrialised nation in Africa.

And it was probably no coincidence that the advent of teenage-based popular music coincided with advances made with radio broadcasting. Because, initially, it was from the radio, during the early 1960s, that we got most of our music.

A perusal of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s website reveals that the first “wireless” broadcast in this country occurred in Johannesburg on December 18, 1923 – ironically made by South African Railways. Over the next few years, similar progress was made on a small scale in Cape Town and Durban. The Schlesinger organisation combined the three in 1927 to form the African Broadcasting Company. The government soon intervened, and in 1936 passed an Act of Parliament establishing the SABC.

Initially it broadcast in English, but Afrikaans soon followed, and African languages ensued in the 1940s.

The first commercial service, Springbok Radio, was introduced on May 1, 1950, with a full FM (frequency modulation) network starting in 1961, taking services countrywide. With various African language stations, and regional channels like Radio Good Hope (1965), Highveld (1964) and Port Natal (1967), by the time yours truly was five (in 1961), he was able to soak up those crisp, static-free radio waves to his heart’s content.

I tried to find a website listing Springbok Radio’s Top Twenty throughout its existence (it folded at midnight on December 31, 1985), but without success. However, South Africa’s Rock Lists Website provides lists of the top 20 singles of each year in South Africa. It doesn’t explain how it arrives at the lists, but they nevertheless provide a useful insight into just what we were listening to at the time.

The late 1950s, as is to be expected, were dominated by Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. According to the 1958 list, the Everlys’ All I Have To Do Is Dream was the top single. While I probably know that song only from having heard it much later, there are several I don’t know – though it is always possible on hearing them that they will register somewhere in the subconscious. The next tune from that year I recall is At The Hop (No 6) by Danny & the Juniors – though I know it from much later, at Woodstock (1969), when it was performed by Shanana.

I do not recall Elvis’s Don’t (No 10), but obviously know his Jailhouse Rock (No 11). Other songs that ring bells include Perry Como’s Catch A Falling Star, The Chipmunk Song by, well, The Chipmunks, and Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls Of Fire, which always seemed to have a sexual connotation in a house of four boys and just one girl.

Of the top 20 hits in this country in 1959, only two were familiar to me – Cliff Richard’s Living Doll, at No 1, and Smoke Gets In Your eyes by The Platters (No 3). I cannot recall Elvis’s A Fool Such As I, which was No 2. Again, many of the others might be familiar if I heard them – like Buddy Holly’s It Doesn’t Matter Anymore (No 14). In fact, I think I know the Everly Brothers’ Till I Kissed You (No 11), but can’t be sure. Johnny Horton’s The Battle Of New Orleans (No 17), if it is the same song that the Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band did a decade or so later, is then also familiar.

Then came the Swinging Sixties. And what was on top of the charts in South Africa in 1960, as that great decade got under way? Why, another Elvis song, It’s Now Or Never, which again is on the very periphery of my memory. So too is Apache by The Shadows (No 2), and Three Steps To Heaven (No 5) by Eddie Cochran. I do recall another Cochran song, Summertime Blues, which however, never seemed to have made it big on the SA charts. (The Who did a wonderful version of it on their Live at Leeds album a decade later.) Virginia Lee’s Seeman (No 8) is a blank, but definitely not The Drifters’ Save The Last Dance For Me (No 9), which I think became a standard dance tune over the next decade. Setting the tone for the permissive society which was to emerge in the Sixties has to be Brian Hyland’s Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (No 11), which has to be one of the longest song titles ever, yet it describes one of the smallest garments to grace the female form. Significantly, the bikini was named after the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific Ocean, where more than 20 nuclear weapons tests were conducted by the US between 1946 and 1958. So, while this was an era to be characterised by “sex, drugs and rock and roll”, spurred on by the invention of the contraceptive pill for women (and first approved for use in the US in 1960), this whole outpouring of creativity was often overshadowed by the harsh reality of a nuclear world, where a war between the communist East and capitalist West was almost guaranteed to result in mutually assured destruction (MAD).

As popular music grew in influence, many musicians and composers started to reflect these concerns, but few of them made it onto the charts in South Africa. No, sadly the best of the rock world, some of which I’ll get into later, was barely represented in the hit parades of the most popular songs in this country. But those songs became virtually a living backdrop – a soundtrack as it were – to life itself, since they dominated the airwaves, and increasingly were played on record players. It was only later, towards the latter half of the decade, that we really started to discover the joys of the long-playing record, or LP. It was here that the serious and important musicians performed their magic for a global youth who just couldn’t get enough of their product. Watching my own sons grow up in the 1990s and 2000s, I would liken the obsession we must have had for pop music then, to their obsession with the first cellphones, playstations and computers, not to mention television, which keeps many a brain in neutral for hours on end each day, and the Harry Potter books and movies.

But the era of records was not yet truly upon us in the early 1960s. Sure our folks had the odd 78, but initially we just got our kicks from the radio. My eldest brother, Ian, would have been seven in 1960, second eldest Alistair six, and me four going on five. But even at that young age, we were aware of the music that was happening around us. We knew Lonnie Donegan’s fun cockney tune My Old Man’s A Dustman (No 16 in 1960), Elvis’s Are You Lonesome Tonight? (12) and Roy Orbison’s Only The Lonely (14). Neil Sedaka’s Oh Carol must surely be the same song we got to know when Chuck Berry resurrected his career in the 1970s, and sang that song, which he composed.

Ricky Valance’s one-hit wonder, Tell Laura I Love Her, (No 20) was not familiar at the time, but when Billy Connolly did a rip-off of it decades later, I knew the song subliminally.

So much for 1960. The next year offered the same sort of fare, very much still a continuation of the 1950s, with Elvis’s Wooden Heart, which I can’t recall, topping the South African charts. Petula Clark’s Sailor (No 2) doesn’t spring readily to mind either. But this was the time when the Twist revolutionised dancing, and Chubby Checker was at No 7 with, well, The Twist. However, the crooners of that year made the most memorable impact. Danny Williams’s Moon River was at No 12, while Pat Boone’s Moody River (which I can’t recall) was at No 17. And how’s this for a nostalgic trip: Walking Back To Happiness by Helen Shapiro was at No 13, Michael Row The Boat Ashore by The Highwaymen was at No 14, and Take Good Care Of My Baby by Bobby Vee was at 15. Those are tunes that will probably live on forever.

Interestingly, one Mickie Most had a song, D In Love, at No 6 in 1961 in South Africa. Born in England, Most recorded this while living in SA from 1959 to 1962, which isn’t a long time in a person’s life, yet we managed to make him a South African thanks to that brief sojourn. The fact that he returned to the UK and produced such great talents as Herman’s Hermits, The Animals, Donovan, Suzi Quatro and Jeff Beck made us only too ready to claim him as our own.

None of the top three from 1962 can I readily recall – Telstar by the Tornadoes, I Remember You by Frank Ifield and The Locomotion by Little Eva (although the title rings serious bells). I do recall The Young Ones by Cliff Richard and the Shadows (No 4), Elvis’s Can’t Help Falling In Love (No 5) and Chubby Checker’s Let’s Twist Again (No 6). There were a couple more Elvis and Cliff songs on the charts, but the world was waiting for the great phenomenon of the Beatles, which occurred, in South Africa anyway, from 1963. I would have been seven, but their songs are indelibly part of who I am.

So what was the top single in SA in 1963? It was indeed From Me To You by the Beatles. She Loves You (yeah, yeah, yeah) was at No 2, and for good measure, I Want To Hold Your Hand was at No 6, there just ahead of Op My Ou Ramkiekie by Dawie Couzyn and Doris Brasch, whoever they were. Other memorable tunes from that year were From A Jack To A King by Ned Miller (No 10) and Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday (No 12), which even kids today will know, so catchy is the song. I do recall seeing the film of the same name, but no doubt it was some years after the single became a hit. Slipping in at No 20 was a thing called Blame It On The Bossa Nova by Eydie Gorme. I’m sure I’d recognise it because the title’s so familiar, but I can’t recall it at all.

Not mentioned in these lists is the fact that in 1963, Bob Dylan released The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. While not to everyone’s taste, other sources indicate Blowin’ In The Wind and Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right did very well that year on local charts. So too did Peter, Paul and Mary with the Dylan song, Puff the Magic Dragon, which many later averred had drug connotations.

I find it hard to believe that the Beatles were a one-year wonder in this country, but it seems, according to these lists, that after 1963 they never again had the year’s top hit.

In 1964, that accolade went to Heart by Gene Rockwell – is that the one that goes: “Yes I’m telling you heart…”? Anyway, No 2 was You’re My World by Cilla Black (which I’m hazy on), though I do recall very well the No 3 hit, Chapel of Love by June Muscat: “Going to the chapel of love / Gonna get a married…” In fact, since I turned eight in 1964 and was that much older, it is small wonder that I know, even today, at least 60 percent of the top songs from that year. The Singing Nun became famous with the French tune Dominique (No 5). Then there was that immensely popular tune, Shabby Little Hut, by The Bats (No 7), one of the first really big South African hits. At No 11 was Cilla Black’s Anyone Who Had A Heart (boom boom), while The Shangri-Las made it to No 12 with Leader Of The Pack. I recall the sound of revving motorbikes on that one. Ray Charles’s Everyboy Loves Somebody (No 13) sounds familiar, while The Beatles made their first appearance at No 14 with A Hard Day’s Night. I remember Glad All Over (No 16) by the Dave Clark Five, and Sandie Shaw’s Always Something There To Remind Me (No 17). Finally, at No 19, there was the legendary Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, with Hello Dolly.

But the omission of the Beatles song, Can’t Buy Me Love, from this list seems glaring indeed.

By 1965 the pop machine was pumping out songs thick and fast. This year I score about 70 percent in terms of remembering the tunes from the top 20, not least the No 1 song, The Carnival Is Over, by the Seekers, an Australian group whose harmonising saw them integrate a folk rock sound into the mainstream of popular music. I don’t recall Gene Rockwell’s Torture (No 2 – what a title!), but the Beatles were up there at No 3 with Ticket To Ride. This was still at a time when the Beatles songs relied heavily on their tight harmonies, with neither John Lennon nor Paul McCartney really taking the lead as an individual on any of the tunes. The group pops up again at No 8 with Help!, the title track from my first Beatles album, which I would have got for probably my ninth birthday. The Beatles were to collide head-on that year with their main rivals, the Rolling Stones, whose catchy tune Under The Boardwalk came in at No 5. This song went nicely with the Bats’ Shabby Little Hut. Tom Jones had a magnificent voice, and was a favourite of my mother. His song, It’s Not Unusual (to be loved) was at No 9, while the delightful What’s New Pussycat was at No 18. The Seekers were really big that year, with World Of Our Own, which I also recall well, reaching No 10 that year.

The first local commercial success for that legend of our lifetime, Bob Dylan, came in the form of The Byrds’ rendition of Mr Tambourine Man, which was at No 14. Another US band who would achieve cult status, the Beach Boys, reached No 16 with California Girls, which introduced the surfing sound. This resonated with my siblings and I, because at Bonza Bay beach were we grew up, surfing, body-surfing, sunbathing, lifesaving, bikini-clad girls and so on, were part of the beach culture into which we were happy to slip from the early 1960s.

The Stones, cementing their success, reached No 17 that year in SA with Satisfaction, another of those songs which will live in our memories, and those of future generations, for a long, long time to come. Indeed, few other songs probably have as recognisable opening bars. Others will recall the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody (No 19) and the Staccatoes’ Come Back Silly Girl (No 20), but I don’t.

It must have been around this time that we started listening to the shortwave broadcasts from LM Radio. The official announcement from this station, broadcasting out of the then Mozambique capital of Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) was the only bit of Portuguese I ever heard. It went, according to an LM Radio, website: “Aqui Portugal Mocambique, fala-vos o Radio Clube em Lourenco Marques transmitindo em ondas curtas e medias.” This roughly translated as: “Here is Portugal Mocambique calling you from the Radio Club of Lourenco Marques transmitting on short and medium waves.” Whether this remained the same throughout the life of LM, I can’t tell.

The first radio station in LM started broadcasting in 1933. In 1935, South African G J McHarry got involved and in 1935, Radio Clube de Mocambique was launched, broadcasting mainly in English. A former general manager of the International Broadcasting Company of London, Richard L Meyer, together with John Davenport took over its management in 1947. David Davies was to run the commercial station with another announcer, David Gordon. Having broadcast various variety shows (often recorded in Johannesburg) in the late 1950s, no doubt cognisant of the rise in popular music, the station underwent a format change to cater for the younger generation . Its Top 20 became widely popular, and it was this, plus numerous other shows, which we stayed up late into the night to listen to – much to our sleep-deprived parents’ chagrin. Sadly, the station started folding in the early 1970s, and in 1975, following Mozambican independence, it was closed for good. It was replaced in South Africa by Radio 5 – although it was hardly a replacement, given its ties to the state-owned SABC.

It was only be at the end of the Seventies that a worthy successor to LM Radio would emerge, with the advent of Capital Radio 604. But more about that later. In the mid-1960s we relied on Springbok Radio and LM Radio for the bulk of our sounds, along with a growing collection of seven-singles and the odd LP.

In 1966 I turned 10, and today can recall 16 of the 20 top singles of that year, according to the SA’s Rock Lists Website. Who, even today, doesn’t know Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walking, which was at No 1? It has become a timeless classic.

I recall Jim Reeves’s Distant Drums (No 2), with its slow, steady beat, mostly due to a friend, many years later, parodying it by singing it in what we used to call a white-coloured accent: “I hear the sound – dum, dum, dum – of deeeeestant drums – dum, dum, dum – faaaarrrr away – dum, dum, dum – faaaaaarr away…”

Nancy’s father, Frank Sinatra, was third with the immortal Strangers In The Night, while the British pop band The Troggs were fourth with With A Girl Like You. Just like the early Beatles songs, most popular UK tunes dealt with boy-girl relationships. Roger Williams’s Lara’s Theme (No 5) remains a vague recollection (I’d know it if I heard it), but not so the Ray Coniff Singers’ Somewhere My Love (there will be songs to sing), which was sixth. At No 7 was Tommy Roe’s catchy but horribly commercial Sweet Pea.

Dickie Loader and the Blue Jeans were at nine with Sea Of Heartbreak, but it was the seminal The Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel at No 10 which really gave pause for thought. Here, suddenly, was a duo taking an altogether existentialist look at life itself. Paul Simon, as we’ll see later, became one of the great icons of the era.

Des Lindberg was a gem on the South African folk scene, and he pulled the mickey out of the hegemonic Afrikaans language with Die Gezoem Van Die Bye (No 11). How, as kids, we guffawed at the line about the aasvoels aas, which sounded rather rude. The New Vaudeville Band captivated many with Winchester Cathedral (No 12), while The Seekers’ The Carnival Is Over (No 14) was yet another winner from this melodious outfit. A sense of the exotic was provided by Guantanamera (No 15), by The Sandpipers, while I always enjoyed the way the tempo speeded up to reach a crescendo, before again subsiding and then building up again in Bend It (No 16) by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beeky, Mick & Tich.

With the war in Vietnam starting to cause major schisms in the US between its supporters and those “peaceniks” vehemently opposed to it, it took a military man, Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, to put the case for the defence with his ultra-patriotic Ballad Of The Green Berets (No 18). And with “bubblegum music” to the fore, two such songs concluded the top 20 – The Pied Piper by Crispian St Peters at 19 and Jimmy Come Lately by South African outfit Four Jacks & a Jill.

While this list excludes any Beatles songs in the Top 20 in 1966, it is interesting to note that in his book, South Africa In The 20th Century (Struik), Peter Joyce lists three Beatles songs among his selection of hit singles that year. They are Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby and Paperback Writer. Also out that year, says Joyce, was California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas, reinforcing the US west as the land of milk and honey.

As I go through these lists, what they reveal to me is just how many memorable classics were composed in those years. Many have become part of the modern argot. While the term “silence is golden” is probably as old as the English language, today you cannot say it without thinking about the song by the same name which was a No 1 hit in this country for The Tremeloes in 1967.

If someone says to me: “I’m a believer”, I automatically hum the song by that name performed by The Monkees, which was at No 2. Engelbert Humperdinck’s The Last Waltz (No3) literally will last forever. No-one who heard it will forget it. So too for Sandy Posey’s Single Girl (No 4). We’ll forget Sandy’s name – I had, completely – but the song lives on, definitely not “all alone in this great big world”.

Tom Jones’s The Green Green Grass of Home (No 6) would be parodied by the youth, including us, when we started smoking dagga (marijuana) a few years later: “It’s good to smoke, the green green grass of home.”

Then there was that lovely whistled tune by, well, Whistling Jack Smith, called I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman (No 7). And, despite a prejudice (born of apartheid) for Afrikaans at the time, I like many could sing along to Groep Twee’s Ou Kraalliedjie (No 9).

My mother was a Max Bygraves fan, but I can’t remember Remember When (No 10). But other classics were lurking in the lower half of the draw, including That’s My Desire (No 11) by The Hollies, and Timothy (No 12) by South Africa’s own Four Jacks & a Jill. Indeed, the song was so popular, an Afrikaans singer with a tricky name, Carike Keuzenkamp, also made a hit of it at No 14. I remember being asked by my teacher that year what my favourite song was and saying Timothy. I was right into all this commercial stuff. I was lapping it up! And there was so much of it about. At No 13, Engelbert powered through with Release Me, while Gene Rockwell had a hit with Save The Last Dance For Me. There were great songs galore this year, in terms of their lasting impact. Who’ll forget This Is My Song (No 16) by Petula Clark (Pet Clark, please), or Sandy Shaw’s Puppet On a String (No 17)? Or the super-catchy Ha! Ha! Said The Clown (No 18) by Manfred Mann? And then, at No 19 only, we had the epochal A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harem. But Let’s Live For Today by The Grass Roots, at No 20, I can’t recall at all.

Peter Joyce’s book reminds us that this was also the year when The Beatles did Hello Goodbye and Penny Lane, The Seekers did Georgy Girl, Scott McKenzie did San Francisco, and another group that would have a profound impact, The Doors, recorded Light My Fire.

Indeed, Joyce’s book notes that in the summer of 1967, the youth of the US “opted out of society to seek personal freedom, peace, gentleness, love, compassion and brotherhood – and to protest the horrors of the Vietnam war”. The year had seen the seminal Monterey pop festival which featured Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and many more leading lights. Writes Joyce: “They are known as hippies, and as the ‘flower children’ for the blossoms that garland their hair. They wear headbands and beads; they listen to Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez; they make love openly and without shame; they take drugs (marijuana for the most part; LSD for the real trip); many live in communes; one of their favourite words is ‘psychedelic’, which describes the vivid colours, perceptions and sensations their hallucinogens create.” But on October 21, 1967, a massive anti-war protest in Washington ended in the protesters being baton-charged and teargassed, with dozens arrested.

It was this mood of resistance that we tapped into, led no doubt by elder brother Ian. But, while we identified with the anti-Vietnam war movement, we had our own problems back home, not least of them the pernicious policy of apartheid. We were conscientised (if you’ll pardon that struggle term) from a young age, thanks to the liberal stand taken by the Daily Dispatch newspaper, and of course by my father. As young white males, we also knew that in the not-too-distant future we’d be eligible for military conscription. So this dual agenda was always at the backs of our minds: opposing apartheid and conscription. It would rub off on the sort of music we listened to, but we refused to become hidebound by one philosophy, always retaining an open mind on matters musical.

The fare to which the majority of the predominantly white youth were listening in South Africa in 1968 was anodyne. We were all still celebrating the new freedom given to youth, I think. I would have been in my second last year at Beaconhurst Primary School then. It was a time when we were forced to have short back and sides haircuts, while all our musical heroes were wearing their hair longer and longer. Indeed, the mop-tops, as the Beatles were known, had ditched their neat pudding bowl haircuts and were now wearing their locks luxuriously long. So too were the Stones and just about everyone else. Except for Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, I suspect.

Of course, living as we were on the southern tip of Africa, without television, we were a couple of years behind the rest of the world with most things. So in 1968 I suppose we were still pretty happy to soak up the likes of Sunglasses, by Hilary, which was No 1. Equally evocative of the beach culture we were enjoying was Cornelia’s Picking Up Pebbles – “and throwing them into the sea” (No 2). There was something a little bit disturbing about Four Jacks & a Jill’s Master Jack (No 3). It was indeed becoming “a strange, strange world”. But for the 1910 Fruitgum Co a little game of Simon Says (No 4) would suffice. The Bee Gees continued to produce quality songs, such as Massachusetts (No 5), with their distinctive vocal harmonies again becoming the stuff of legends. They also had I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You at No 8. The Equals were at No 6 with Baby Come Back, while Tom Jones was his imposing self at No 7 with Help Yourself.

Then a ray of a different light. Percy Sledge popularized soul music as few others have, and the fact that My Special Prayer was at No 9 that year shows that many whites were indeed colour blind when it came to music. I personally loved his voice.

This is one year where I can recall almost every song listed on the top 20. Next up, at No 10, was Lazy Life by Quentin E Klopjaeger. And it was indeed a “kinda lazy life, I know” for us young kids growing up beside the sea. Who could be blamed for exclaiming What A Wonderful World, as Louis Armstrong sang in this 11th placed song. For some reason I associate this song with a classmate who lived up the road from the school. I cannot recall his name.

Tom Jones was back again at No 12 with Delilah (my, my, my Delilah!), but it is Paul Mauriat’s Love Is Blue which proves unlucky No 13 for me: I can’t place it.

Manfred Mann was there with Dylan’s Mighty Quin at 14. Here, if people bothered to listen, was one of the first commercially available examples of Dylan’s genius for melody and, in particular, great lyrics. Of which, more later.

Many groups, I am convinced, were virtual one-hit wonders. I will always remember Judy In Disguise – “with glasses!” (No 15), but John Fred & The Playboy Band, who did it, rings no bells at all. The Troggs, of course, were unforgettable, and Love Is All Around (No 16) was just one of a string of hits they had at the time. So too The Monkees, with Daydream Believer (No 17) yet another highly popular hit.

For apartheid-blighted South Africa, the emergence of The Flames in Durban was a breath of fresh air. The picture on the cover of their single, For Your Precious Love (No 18), shows four turbaned Indian/coloured men, with the front guy holding a sitar. This made them ultra hip, given that George Harrison had pioneered the use of this Indian instrument in rock music just a few years earlier. What was particularly good about this song was the long spoken introduction which ends, “maybe Blondie will give you a better understanding of what I’m trying to say”. I often wondered how a dark-skinned guy could be nicknamed Blondie.

The Tremeloes were at No 19 in 1968 with My Little Lady, and No 20 was filled by the Ohio Express with Yummy Yummy Yummy, the epitome of bubblegum music. “Yummy yummy yummy I’ve got love in my tummy/ And I feel like loving you” – or suchlike. But, like so many other equally commercial hits of the Sixties, this one will live on in our memories – probably precisely because it is so banal!

I have to stress that this was the commercial side of our listening experience. All the time, as we grew older, the albums of the great names missing from these lists, and of course the likes of the Beatles, Stones, Bee Gees, Simon & Garfunkel and so on who did achieve remarkable commercial success, formed the bulk of our listening pleasure. This was a time, particularly in the early 1970s when I went into high school, when teenagers exchanged albums with each other. The key was to listen to something someone else had and cut a tape of it. I know the purists will say taping kills music, but it was not as if it was done for a profit. Kids could not afford the sort of bucks needed to buy that many albums, so this was a way of hearing more stuff than otherwise would be the case. And of course music was a great, a key, part of our upbringing. How could it not have been? My contention is that there has never been a richer epoch in the history of music than the 1960s and 1970s. So when I borrowed an album by Jim Capaldi, formerly of Cream, called Oh How We Danced, from a classmate, I was devastated when I foolishly left it on the back seat of my mother’s car, and the sun worked its warping magic on the thing. I think we ended up having to pay my mate Jeremy out. Records were brought to school and swopped. Or you went around to your mate’s house and listened to his latest discs. It was a music culture that sprung up – even if most of us weren’t very musical. I battled along on a cheap acoustic guitar, trying to emulate some of my heroes, but received no musical training. Some who did, however, were later able to draw on those rich years of experiencing top-rate music, and in turn forge their own careers in music. But then again they probably did not get taught to play like The Velvet Underground, whose deliberately discordant walls of fuzzy, monochordal guitar became a hallmark for the Underground revolt which emerged in the late 1960s against the increasingly smug mainstream pop industry. It was among this Underground movement that many of the groups we latched onto were to be found.

But as the year 1969 played out, a relic of the 1950s was still dominating the charts in SA. Elvis’s Suspicious Minds was the top hit of that year, followed by The Bee Gees’ Don’t Forget To Remember, both memorable ballads. Strangely, as I’ve perused these lists, I am taken by the absence of such other great Bee Gee tunes as World, Words and The New York Mining Disaster 1941, to name but a few. However their brother Andy Gibb, going solo, was also on the charts that year with Saved By The Bell (No 9).

The Troggs were still there with You Can Cry If You Want to – “’cos you’re the one for me” (No 3). I don’t recall Herman’s Hermits’ My Sentimental Friend (No 4), but another favourite was Tommy James and the Shondells’ Crimson And Clover (No 5), which, unless I’m very much mistaken – which I probably am – was among the first pop hits to employ echo effects.

The Staccatos’ Cry To Me was at No 6, while Booker T and the MGs proved you could make a hit instrumental with Time Is Tight (No 7). The Archies lowered the tone with the sugary Sugar Sugar, while The Casuals had a memorable hit with Jesamine (No 10). “What am I supposed to do with a girl like Jesamine?”

Put A Little Love In Your Heart by Jackie de Shannon was at No 11, and I can’t recall it. But another great group – worth buying their albums – was Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose Proud Mary was at No 12. The Hollies maintained their successful formula with Sorry Suzanne (No 13), but I’m battling to recall the 1910 Fruitgum Company’s Indian Giver (No 14). I’m sure I’d know it if I were to download it off the Internet… something that was as impossible to imagine those days as flying to the moon. What am I saying? In fact it was on July 20, 1969, that Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. It was an event, a process, which would be explored by numerous rock and pop musicians over the coming decade.

Back on earth, in South Africa in 1969, Joe South made waves with Games People Play – “every night and every day” (No 15), while Tommy Roe kept up the inane side with Dizzy – “you’re making me dizzy” (No 16). Peter Sarstedt, it was, who provided the first real bit of titillation with the classic, Where Do You Go To My Lovely – “when you’re alone in your bed / Tell me the thoughts that surround you / I want to look inside your head” (No 17). The song dwelt on very personal stuff about womanhood. I recall a line about “getting an even suntan, on your legs, and on your back”, or suchlike.

But enough of that! Enough already! Leapy Lea kept the year trilling along with Little Yellow Aeroplane (No 18). Only One Woman (No 19) by The Marbles rolled below my radar, but Hair by The Cowsills (No 20) was a beacon at the end of a tumultuously creative decade – if, as I suspect, this is the same song that formed part of the hit musical by the same name, which took the free world by storm in 1967. For probably the first time ever, audiences were exposed to full-frontal nudity on stage. South Africa, under the whip of the apartheid masters, would have none of it. But this song somehow slipped through, and extolled the virtues of “long, beautiful hair”, one of the key hippie “virtues”. Writing this now, with a pate that is rapidly balding, I can understand why the old toppies at the time were so offended by young people with long hair – especially young men and teenagers. Because it is a painful reminder of the ageing process. You can’t have long beautiful hair if you’re an old goat like me today.

Peter Joyce’s book confirms that “Hair” did indeed have a major impact in South Africa that year, with Aquarius and Let The Sunshine In by the Fifth Dimension listed by him as among the year’s other hit singles. Another, which I too recall, was In The Year 2525 by Zager and Evans. More pertinently, Joyce records an event the youth considered even more significant than the moon landing: the Woodstock music festival in New York State, which featured some of the leading musicians I’d become interested in, most of which never made it onto our pop charts.

Look, I am going to get back to all the good stuff from this pivotal era later. But for now, let’s fast forward through the hit-parade songs, the – as it were – background music to the next decade or two. I’ll then unleash some of the gems – both groups and solo artists – which for good reason were not worldwide hits, but which, together, shaped a global consciousness by providing layer upon layer of fascinating listening matter.

Okay, so Woodstock came and went, its best acts never to find an outlet on commercial radio stations like Springbok Radio. The top 20 hit singles from 1970, according to the South Africa’s Rock Lists Website, are virtually all, as you’d expect, far removed from the progressive rock, heavy metal, folk-rock and so on that we were listening to on LPs at the time. But that doesn’t mean these songs didn’t contribute massively to the cultural enrichment of the world. Many have become absolute classics in their own right; unforgettable tunes which stay with one throughout one’s life, and indeed are often transferred down the generations either through cover versions or in advertising. Indeed, 1970 was, judging by this list, one of the richest years, with a wide diversity of sounds.

Topping the SA charts that year was Pretty Belinda, by Chris Andrews: “On our block, all of the guys, call her Belinda …” It was catchy and fun, a certain hit. I was just asking myself who Andrews was. Was he a one-hit wonder, I wondered. Well I see he had another song at No 14, Brown Eyes, which, frankly, I can’t recall.

The second-placed song was another global mega-hit, Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime. Was this a reggae song? It certainly seemed to have a lilting, Caribbean feeling to it. Then, from that upbeat song, at No 3 was a lovely Dave Mills ballad, Love Is A Beautiful Song, ideal for those up-close moves on the dance-floor – for those still into things like waltzing, which was totally infra dig in those days.

“All those burning bridges …” It all comes back to me when I read the titles. The Mike Curb Congregation was the odd name for an outfit that did Burning Bridges, which was at No 4. Superstar Neil Diamond had a huge hit with Cracklin’ Rosie at No 5, while South Africa’s own Jody Wayne hit No 6 with The Wedding. I had to search on YouTube to recall how that went. I didn’t need reminding how Shocking Blue’s Venus (No 7) went: “I’m your Venus, I’m your fire, I’m your desire.” Like Paul McCartney, The Tee-Set – odd name! – used a bit of French to add an exotic touch with Ma Belle Amie (No 8), while Tom Jones again powered his way to No 9 with Daughter Of Darkness. And this contrasts sharply with another Chris Andrews song (it was evidently his year) Carol OK – “It’s a long, long way to Carol OK” – at No 10.

Then, ladies and genitalmen, please welcome warmly, Mr Percy Sledge. What a relief, in the midst of all the above, to get the mournful soul sounds of Mr Sledge with Come Softly To Me at No 11. I can’t recall the Tremeloes’ Call Me Number One (No 12), but The Kinks produced a revolutionary sound with Lola (No 13), which addresses the whole transgender issue: “She walks like a woman and talks like a man does my Lola…”

Yellow River. The title of Christie’s song, at No 15, is repeated regularly, but who was Christie? I’ll leave that to you to Google. We do know that the Hollies were really big at this time, and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (No 16) was but one of a string of hits they enjoyed. Even the Monty Python team used this next song in one of their sketches. Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head by BJ Thomas made it to No 17. I don’t recall Spider, Spider (No 18) by Tidal Wave and only vaguely remember Cha-la-la, I Need You (No 19) by The Shuffles. But Mike Holm’s Mademoiselle Ninette (No 20), which also employs a bit of French, was a highly popular tune.

But clearly this website’s lists are not as comprehensive as one would like. What does Peter Joyce’s book say were the hit singles of 1970 in South Africa? Well top of his list is the seminal Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel. Other songs omitted on the website list include Lookin’ Out My Back Door by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wanderin’ Star by the great crooner Lee Marvin, I Hear You Knocking by Dave Edmunds, and also – a nod to the heavier sounds emerging – Free’s All Right Now (baby it’s all right now).

Hey, it’s 1971 and I’m in Standard 7, or Grade 9 in today’s parlance. And hey, I’m falling under some bad influences, man. I’m like smoking fags – have been for a couplie years now – and also a fair amount of zol. It’s like affecting my studies at school, man, but hey, so long as … Hey, what was I saying, man? Look high school saw me practically drop out of society. Like I went through the motions, man. Occasionally bathing, brushing the old tande, sometimes wearing clean clothes. But like the thing to do was to wear old bell-bottom denim jeans, slip-slops or nothing on the feet, maybe some beads but definitely a denim jacket, with badges bought from Wearwell Outfitters. Like Wearwells was in Buffalo Street, the black people’s answer to hoity-toity Oxford Street in East London. Wearwells was a small corner shop with a mainly black clientele, but it was also the hippest shop in EL. It was our answer to Carnaby Street, and that is where we shopped for clothes. That is if we ever needed to. Because remember: old and shabby, torn and tattered, patched and faded, were IN. And not artificial all of the above. Real old and faded and torn and patched, after years of wear and tear. A pair of jeans was only worth something if they had acquired a couple of months’ worth of grime. They had to be able to virtually stand on their own. The juice from a dagga pipe or bottle neck only added to the fabric’s texture. Your jeans became a part of you. They were moulded to your body, the flares dragging into tatters around your feet. Shirts were incidental. Sommer anything chucked on your top that didn’t look naff, or square, or uncool, or unhip. There were no designer labels. Or if there were, they were to be avoided like the plague, since they represented the commercial, capitalist world which we, as young socialists, anti-apartheid activists in the making, rebels with or without causes, anarchists, nihilists – teenagers, in other words – rejected. That was me, us, as we entered the 1970s in earnest. School was just something that had to be done. Sure we played a bit of cricket and tennis, eschewing rugby altogether thanks to its association with the Afrikaner-dominated apartheid-enforcing Establishment. Soccer was big, because it was where a black man, Pele, dominated. It was also a great way to get exercise without nearly getting yourself killed. Ball control remained a way for us to get our kicks, apart, that is, from the copious quantities of grass bought from any black oke you’d find on the corner in Bonza Bay.

Ja, so while all this was happening, at its core was the music, man. I mean the real music. Hendrix, Canned Heat, Jethro Tull. I could go on and on, but you know that that is what this project is going to be about. When I get to actually tackling these issues, and sharing with you something of the era. But these lists, man, they tell a different story. They tell of a populace out of touch with the real reality. And at the time I couldn’t give a toss, it seems, in retrospect, for virtually anything. Not even myself. I just existed for the music. The real music.

Not Mammy Blue, by Charisma.

Yes, that was the No 1 song in SA in 1971. Look, I’m not knocking it. It was catchy, and I’ll always remember it. But it’s just that so many of these songs lacked gravitas, lacked purpose, lacked soul, feeling, guts, emotion, reason, depth, despair, euphoria. You know, they were just somehow superficial. Yet they were part of the background of our lives. Unavoidably present. Funny that I can’t recall even half of the 1971 list. And I don’t think I’ll blame the grass. Take The Sweet’s No 2 hit Co Co and No 4 hit Funny Funny. No recollection. But Dawn’s Knock Three Times (No 3) has tormented me ever since. “… On the ceiling if you want me / Twice on the pipe (clang, clang) if the answer is no”. Alan Garrity’s Put Your Hand In The Hand (No 5) is also there, burnt on my brain. But not so Giorgio’s Looky Looky. Thank heavens! Three Dog Night, a reputable band, had Joy To The World at No 7, and I was tempted to be seduced by its message of joi de vivre. But then my home town’s own The Dealians had to issue a warning, Look Out Here Comes Tomorrow (No 8) and I crawled back into my carapace. The Archies – what a name! – did A Summer Prayer For Peace (No 10) and I’d like to hear it again, because I can’t recall if it was a sincere call for peace. I mean was it about the Vietnam war, or just a puffy piece about general peace, global peace? Are there bands today, I wonder, who are writing scathing stuff about the Iraq war, like was done by many at Woodstock – to which I hope to return when I get back to the real purpose of this venture. In trying to find out more about this song, Wikipedia informs that the Archies were a fictional garage band with members based on those in the animated television series, The Archie Show, and the ubiquitous comics. It featured session musicians, and Sugar Sugar was one of their biggest hits during “the bubblegum pop genre that flourised from 1968 t0 1972”. I finally found one site with the lyrics to the song, which includes the lines, “Three billion people together forever / Three billion people sing a summer prayer for peace.” The song lists, in a spoken voice, most of the word’s nations and their population tallies. Since the world seemed to have about half the population it has today, South Africa’s is given as 19 million. Today it is closer to 45 million. Another verse goes: “Oh look, look around you / See what we have done? / Where’s the world that God intended with love for everyone?” Another goes: “Sing, oh sing of freedom / Sing a song of joy / Altogether makin’ better what some would destroy.” For all that, I can’t really recall the melody.

Anyway, Dave Emunds was back at No 11 with a catchy ditty, I Hear You Knocking, but I regret to say I can’t recall No Matter What (No 12) which may have been a good ’un because it was by, if I can put on a George Harrison accent for a mo, “the Apple band Badfinger”. Dylan seems to have again made it onto the SA charts at No 13 – albeit that If Not For You was sung by Olivia Newton-John (or Neutron Bomb, as we would have it).

Thank heavens for Creedence. Have You Ever Seen The Rain came in at No 14, offering a bit of sanity in an otherwise rather dippy chart, thus far. And, at No 18, The Seekers were still at their melodious best with Never Ending Song Of Love, while Tony Christie tried to justify his actions at No 19 with I Did What I Did For Maria.

Again, the website list includes glaring omissions, probably because some of the better tunes never did make it to the Top 20. Peter Joyce, in his book South Africa in the 20th Century, cites among his “songs of the year” such gems as Harrison’s My Sweet Lord, Rod Stewart’s Maggie May and a lovely Carole King song called It’s Too Late off the Tapestry album. Also mentioned is Hugh Masekela & The Union Of South Africa, who released an album to remind us that the exiled jazz trumpeter was among the cream of the rock revolution, having performed at Monterey in 1967.

Nou ja, and so on to 1972. I’m now mos 15 going on 16 and in Standard 8, or Grade 10. The dope is still much in evidence, apartheid military conscription is threatening, eldest boet Ian is out of school and about to be snatched by the state for so-called national service. They were not pleasant times, thinking ahead about “what you wanted to do” with your life. The kak was getting kakker as the apartheid state clamped down on the “communist” black opposition, having a decade earlier shoved Mandela and his comrades into tjoekie on Robben Island, there to rot and break stones and study through Unisa. Funny that. That they let them educate themselves by doing correspondence courses. But at the time no one knew there were compassionate people among the apartheid apparatchiks. They were simply the enemy, and every time we hit the Bonzies beach for a joint, we were convinced the drug squad were following us and would bust us. Paranoia strikes deep, man, as CSN&Y were singing at about this time. But more of them later.

No, despite all this, Johnny Nash was having a good time of it. I Can See Clearly Now (the rain has gone) he sang in his SA No 1 hit. Equally chuffed was Daniel Boone with Beautiful Sunday (No 2), which I can recall our gardener, Wells (Wellington, his surname we never did bother to find out), singing, accompanying himself on my cheap acoustic guitar, in his bottom-of-the-yard shack, while we shared a joint. In that rich African accent he sang: My, my, my, it’s a beautiful Sun-day.

And then, Imagine. Shock! Horror! John Lennon actually made it to No 5 in SA with one of the world’s most memorable songs. It was, of course, later to be if not banned, then warned against most sternly (I heard the warning in the army in 1980). The whole concept underscoring Imagine was of a stateless, Godless, communist world, we were told. Love didn’t enter into it.

Just below Lennon on the list was another gem, Melanie’s Brand New Key, which I recall being all about roller-skates. And finally, Paul Simon was there, at No 9, with Mother And Child Reunion from his first solo album. The Hollies were at No 10 with Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress, which my bad influences (older brothers, their mates, you name it) soon subverted to having sexual relations with a black woman. Sies!

I’m sure I know Come What May which Vicky Leandros had at No 11, and Jessica Jones’s Sunday Monday Tuesday (No 12), but like most of the remainder on this list, I can’t be sure till I hear them. Even Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (No 17) while so familiar title-wise, remains a blank.

But what did Peter Joyce ferret out for 1972 that these lists missed? Well, he notes that this was “the year of the teeny-bopper – the 10-, 11- and 12-year-old fan, who idolizes David Cassidy, the too-good-to-be-true Osmonds and, most of all, the Jackson Five and its child star, Michael Jackson”. Jimmy Osmond gave us Long-haired Lover From Liverpool, and Donny offered Puppy Love. But Joyce also notes that this was the year that Don Maclean released American Pie, arguably one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The Seekers also brought out the delightful I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing, which they sang in perfect harmony, unlike the world itself which was beset by turmoil, the Vietnam war being the most notable example. And then. And then a certain Neil Young provided Heart Of Gold. And suddenly, by mentioning Young and Maclean, one opens up two worlds of fantastic music, of unique qualities born of a time when so many talents just rose to the surface and burst upon the world. Small wonder I wasn’t too interested in my studies. And of course there was much, much more. But, as I promised, we first have to get through the background music that accompanied me in high school and college in the 1970s. Please bear with me. These things have to be done. As a sign of respect, a sort of epitaph to one-hit wonders, or real wonders, or money-obsessed fakes, or a combination of all of that and much else besides. These hit songs were very much a part of the fabric of society, even if they served to distract the masses who were missing out on the real diamonds just below the surface.

Come 1973 and, I see in Joyce’s book, that due to “intense pressure from large sections of the American people, and especially from the youth”, President Nixon was forced to abandon the war in Vietnam. The world heaved a sigh of relief, as the South Vietnamese prepared for the worst under their communist North Vietnamese conquerors. But who cared? The US was out of another nasty war, and their youth lost a major cause to rebel. Not so us in SA. Our war troubles were only just beginning. Already shit was starting to happen in Rhodesia to our north, and with every year military conscription was growing in duration, as “the border” started to be spelled with a capital B. We were to have our own “Nam” war, on the northern border of Namibia, then still called South West Africa. In 1973 I was in Standard 9, Grade 11, and had already been forced, in 1972, to register with the SA Defence Force. They gave me a service number, the first two digits of which are 72. That’s the year they got me on their books. It was to hang over me for the next two decades. But hey, I’m a whitey, a honkey, an mlungu. Those two lost decades or rondfok mean nothing. I can’t today be called “previously disadvantaged” even though conscription hung like an albatross around my neck for so long. But that’s another story. Now, in 1973, I was studying a bit at school, reading the odd good book, still smoking it up, watching my father live out his last couple of years in growing pain and discomfort, and not thinking much further than the joys and escapes afforded by music. By the likes of David Bowie. But don’t expect to find him on those hit parade lists. No, he was too alternative for mainstream pop lovers. Well almost. He did register at No 3 with probably his most commercial song, a cover called Sorrow, from an album of covers called Pin-Ups. Which is still a cracking album, of which more later, hopefully, if I ever get past the best of the Sixties.

For the rest, 1973 yielded fewer and fewer songs that I can actually recall. However, years after his best albums, I see Cat Stevens finally made it with Can’t Keep It In (No 6). Talking of Cat, and I’ll do so at length later, I just find it so hard to reconcile him, now Yusuf Islam, with a religion, Islam, which is so law-bound, so doctrinaire. Here was this amazing free spirit, who sang of world peace and flowers and things, suddenly subsumed by a religion which seems to be the antithesis of what he stood for. Well back then, I dug Cat. Still do. Got his DVD recently, MagiCat. Couldn’t understand his chat about religion on there though. Anyway, back on the hit parade, Don Orlando & Dawn were probably celebrating the end of the Vietnam war with Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree (No 10), while good old Paul Simon was back with Take Me To The Mardi Gras (No 12). And then there was nothing else I can recall.

And what did Peter Joyce have to say about 1973? Well two conspicuous omissions from the website list he mentions are You’re So Vain by Carly Simon and Yellow Brick Road by one Elton John, of whom much more later if, as I said, I get past the giants of the Sixties.

My matric year, 1974, and I turn over a new leaf. After the death of my father, I finally decide to give up dagga and cigarettes, and to exercise more. It seems I realised that I might one day have to fend for myself. What a bummer! Small wonder, perhaps, that I recognise only about half a dozen of the songs on the top 20 list for that year. I clearly had other things on my mind, not least passing matric, which in South Africa is like a rite of passage.

I knew the No 1 song because it was by one of the era’s greatest songwriters and singers, Kris Kristofferson. Why Me was an overtly Christian song, which somehow had universal appeal. It cleverly uses an accusatory approach, with the singer imploring: Why me Lord? What have I ever done to deserve even one, of the pleasures I’ve known?

From the sublime … At No 2 someone called Carl Douglas gave us Kung Fu Fighting, which had everyone jumping up and down on the dance-floor, throwing all sorts of punches. Terry Jacks (who he?) had a cover of Rod McKuen’s Seasons In The Sun at No 6. As a sign of where the sub-continent was at, one of the ugly versions of this song which filtered through to us from the beleaguered Rhodesia, where a serious guerrilla war was under way, had a Rhodesian soldier singing: “We had joy, we had fun, killing k*****s in the sun.”

Many of the other groups in the Top 20 list are familiar, but the next song that rings a bell is Waterloo by Abba, at No 14. They had Ring Ring at No 13, but I can’t recall it. The only other song I do recall was at No 20, Paul McCartney and Wings’s Band On The Run. All in all, a thin year for memorable hits. Or was it? Let’s see what Peter Joyce found. Not much. Of the seven songs he lists as “top of the pops”, the only one I recognised was a classic: Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.

The next page in Joyce’s South Africa in the 20th Century has as the key event of 1975, “SA forces enter Angola”. I was due to start my so-called national service in July that year. I think the sentence was 18 months then, or maybe it was still just a year. Whatever. I was lucky to land a job as a junior reporter on the Daily Dispatch that January, having long admired the courageous anti-apartheid stance of its editor, Donald Woods. I quit at the end of May, giving myself a month before I was due to report for “duty”. For some unknown reason, however, I was informed at the last minute that my call-up had been postponed a year. I registered with the local tech for a three-year art diploma course, and managed to get through the first year despite missing those first four or so months. Since I was now a student, it freed me up to become more active in the Progressive Party Youth, and to write letters against apartheid for use in the Dispatch. It also meant I was able to jol to my heart’s content, and indulge in our newest fad, drinking. Ja, after my dad’s death – he who devoted his life to the god alcohol – here were his kids, having forsaken dagga, thank heavens – leaping out of the frying pan and into the proverbial. But I guess we needed some means to escape the reality of a future at the behest of the National Party’s war machine.

The hit parade, such as it was, played little part in my life by this stage. We were following our own noses, experiencing all the sorts of music this project will set out to discuss. But, for what it’s worth, in 1975 the first song I recall is Fox On The Run (No 2) by The Sweet. At No 3 was Love Hurts by Nazareth. To the nation’s credit, it managed to put John Lennon at No 7 with Stand By Me. I probably would know Abba’s S.O.S (No 8) if I heard it, as well as The Carpenters’ Please Mr Postman (No 10). Neil Diamond was still fairly popular. His Longfellow Serenade was at 14. I should remember Lady by Styx, but don’t.

Joyce notes that in 1975, tests were being done to prepare South Africa for the advent of television in January, 1976. He picks up on a couple of classic songs not mentioned in the pop hit lists, including Rod Sewart’s Sailing and the massive hit, Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen.

In 1976 we experienced television for the first time from January 5, and the political future of the country was transformed completely with the June 16 uprising by school pupils in Soweto, which spread across the country. Hundreds were killed by the police, others were detained and many fled into exile. The commercial pop fare seemed as far removed from this reality as it is possible to be. Elton John and someone called Kiki Dee were at No 3 with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. I also recall Abba’s Fernando at No 5 and Glenys Lynne’s Ramaja. Abba were back at 10 with Dancing Queen, and John Paul Young’s I Hate The Music was at No 11. For the rest, there was one Carl Malcolm with Fattie Boom Boom at No 19 – a song that has probably been used ever since to disparage overweight people.

Among the songs Joyce saw as hits in 1976 were When A Child Is Born by Johnny Mathis and Mississippi by Pussycat.

It’s 1977, my third and potentially final year at art school, and each year I have had to apply for a postponement from military conscription. Fortunately, each time I have been successful. So I am still a free spirit, as it were. Except that under apartheid we were all to some extent in chains. The whites if you had a conscience, the blacks always, but especially if you refused to collaborate with the regime. One man not collaborating, at all, was Bantu Steve Biko, from Ginsberg location near King William’s Town, about 70km up the drag from East London. His Black People’s Convention was being given good space in the Dispatch by Donald Woods, so it came as no surprise really, shocking though it was, when it was reported, the day before my 21st birthday, on September 13, 1977, that Biko had died in security police detention the day before. With the country still simmering after the Soweto uprising, the state then clamped down on the media in particular, with several newspapers banned and newsmen silenced. Among them was Woods, who was placed under house arrest and prevented from carrying out his duties as an editor. He fled the country and into exile in the UK soon afterwards.

Meanwhile, another black person was born that year, whose parents would not have thought in their wildest dreams that he would become a national hero, for white and black. Also from the King William’s Town area, Makhaya Ntini would reap the benefits of a democratic, non-racial South Africa – although its arrival was a long way away. But it was something my siblings and I were campaigning for within the Progressive Federal Party of Helen Suzman and other courageous white leaders who had long opposed the racist policies of the National Party.

On the music front, it seems Pussycat’s Mississippi straddled the years, because the website lists it at No 1 for 1977. Not that I can recall it. Julie Covington’s Don’t Cry For Me Argentina was at No 2, with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice having established themselves as one of the great songwriting teams of the age. The stage show Evita only opened in 1978. Heart (is that the one that goes: “yes I’m telling you heart”?) by Barracuda was at No 3, while Kenny Rogers was at No 4 with Lucille (you took a fine time to leave me, loose wheel). Peter McCann was a little bit forthright with Do You Wanna Make Love (No 5), while someone or something called Sherbert brought in a cricket allusion with Howzat. Of course at the time in South Africa we had been out of world cricket for about seven years. The local Currie Cup was the height of our players’ opportunities in a sport which the state decreed be played along racial lines. I don’t recall too many of the Top 20 hits, but Yesterday’s Hero by John Paul Young (No 10) was played so persistently there was no escaping it. Indeed, it was about this time that yours truly and his brothers realised that in order to ingratiate themselves with the local ladies of the circuit, who would have been a few years younger, you had to kinda get into the music they were listening to. So we ended up even listening to the hit parade on occasion, like when we spent a “dirty weekend” – I wished! – at a resort on the coast north-east of East London. This was a time when we also had to pretend to be interested in astrology, since many of these young women took a great interest in their stars. Clearly they weren’t meant for us in the long term. Anyway, there were a few more respectable songs on the chart that year, like Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now at No 11. The Brotherhood of Man had the catchy Angelo at No 13, while Smokie’s I’ll Meet You At Midnight was at 19, with Bonnie Tyler’s Lost In France at No 20. Clearly too, judging from the above, the popular music scene was spluttering on as directionless as ever. There were no stand-out stars around at this time – except if you happened to be listening to the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Don Maclean. But they rarely made the charts. Peter Joyce’s book has little else to offer for 1977, apart from that seminal Paul McCartney song, Mull of Kintyre, which of course is attributed to his group, Wings.

One sport to escape the sporting ban was surfing, with Durban’s Shaun Thompson winning the world championship that year. I had watched him surf during the Gunston 500 at Nahoon Reef around that time, and can vouch for his ability – though they didn’t do nearly as radical maneouvres as the guys do today.

Hey its 1978 and I’m still young. Only 22. But too old to go to the army, where many of the okes are just out of school. My call-up is for July 1978, but fortunately I have a cunning plan. No I’m not about to bolt and run to the newly “independent” Transkei, or overseas, like some of my mates have done. No, I have decided to do a fourth year, a higher diploma in art and design. Fortunately, my postponement is again granted. Another year of freedom beckoned. It was the year of the disco, and John Travolta and, most unlikely, the Bee Gees, let the fad.

And the charts reflected it. Disco “classics” Staying Alive (No 4) by the Bee Gees wearing too-tight underwear, and Night Fever (No 12, from the film Saturday Night Fever) paved the way for an era of strobe lights and the sort of dancing and dress which were not good for the soul of laid-back surf-loving, former hippie dudes. Still, it was at places like the Holiday Inn disco in East London that the chicks were to be found, so that is where we ended up sinking our Castles. The No 1 hit that year, says the list, was Boney M’s Rivers Of Babylon – or babelaas, in my case on many Saturday mornings, after some serious over-indulgence. South African women’s group Clout were at No 2 with Substitute, while Exile were third with Kiss You All Over, which was another rather risqué subject for a song. Another year-straddler, Mull Of Kintyre, was at No 5, while MCully’s Workshop, also from South Africa, were at No 6 with the rather pleasant Buccaneer. The Bee Gees, enjoying a second wind, even included a ballady song that year, How Deep Is Your Love, at No 8. I actually remember most of the songs from this year. It must have been that period when doing so was important as part of the relentless pursuit of young women. Also popular that year was It’s A Heartache (“nothing but a heartache” – No 9) by Bonnie Tyler and You Light Up My Life (No 10) by Debbie Boone. Whilst I couldn’t argue with the sentiment, I can’t for the life of me recall Kelly Marie’s Make Love To Me (No 11). And then there was old Peter Lotis, a famous South African radio personality, newsreader and actor, with Heidi, at No 13. Copperfield – a British band based in South Africa – were at No 14 with So You Win Again, while John Paul Young’s Love Is In The Air was at No 15. This evoked a homophobic joke about the song being sung after a gay man has passed wind. Yetch! Then there was Jerry Rafferty. Finally a truly great song, Baker Street, with its haunting opening saxophone lines, made it to No 16. Oh and that disco thing got another winner with Travolta and Olivia Newton John’s You’re The One That I Want at No 17. Abba, ever grateful for their success, were at No 18 with Thank You For The Music. Marshall Hain was at 19 with Dancing In The City, while the name of Lesley Hamilton’s No Hollywood Movie (No 20) is familiar, but I just can’t place it.

Peter Joyce’s book doesn’t add much to the hit list, apart from another Boney M song, Mary’s Boy Child.

For me 1979 was the big one. The military, which I had avoided for the past five or so years, finally caught up with me. That July, I had to “report for duty”. Failure to do so could have resulted in a six-year prison sentence. But, while I was to be taken out of my, let’s face it, rather cushy lifestyle, my mates, even the odd girlfriend, would be free to keep on jolling. And, mos, the disco scene was still humming that year, judging by some of the high-voltage hits. Probably the “disco hit” of all time was Le Freak (No 8) by Chic. I recall this thing going along with the flashing lights forever. You didn’t try to talk at these jols. It was drink, drink, kiss if you had a chick, and dance. If you could call it dancing. We just sort of moved to the music. Ironically, given all this disco hype, the No 1 song that year was by a coloured South African, Richard Jon Smith, with Michael Row The Boat Ashore. Surely not! I can’t recall him doing that old folksy, Boy Scouts type song. But that’s what the lists say. The Bee Gees, riding their wave, were at No 2 with Too Much Heaven and No 14 with Tragedy. There’s quite a lot here I don’t recall, but Billy Joel’s My Life was at No 10. There was even a breath of the New Wave that was sweeping Western music in the wake of the Punk Rock revolution of a few years earlier. The Boomtown Rats scored a commendable 11th with I Don’t Like Mondays. Suzi Quatro & Chris Norman were at No 12 with Stumblin’ In, Gloria Gaynor was at No 16 with I Will Survive (which I hoped I’d do when I eventually entered the army), Kiss were at 18 with I Was Made For Loving You, onse eie Laurika Rauch was at No 19 with Kinders Van Die Wind, and then the old kid on the block, Cliff Richard, was hanging in there were We Don’t Talk Anymore at No 20.

Among those songs selected by Peter Joyce for 1979 are YMCA by The Village People, and Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel, the only real hit I can recall him having as a solo artist. Meanwhile, a man who I had seen as a youngster racing saloon cars around the Grand Prix circuit in East London, Jody Scheckter – I bought my first and only motorbike from Scheckter Harris Motors in 1975 – well, Jody became our first Formula One motor-racing champion for Ferrari. I’ve often wondered why I couldn’t recall the event. But of course it would have happened while I was doing three months’ basic training at 5 SA Infantry Battalion, Ladysmith, Natal. We were pretty cut off from the outside world, although I do remember the likes of Dire Straits and a few other treasured tapes providing some welcome respite from the relentless military madness.

So it’s 1980 and I’m, what, turning 24, and being chased around the veld and along dusty roads near Kimberley as part of a Burgersake, or Civic Action, course. Ja, I thought this was a good gyppo, or cop-out, going into the 1 Intelligence Unit. Didn’t realise, in my haste to get out of the infantry, that this was a most hated part of the security forces responsible for all sorts of dirty tricks. Not that I ever encountered any, since I succeeded in getting myself booted off the course and placed in an innocuous media centre, where I had to while away the last 18 or so months of my time, every month or two hitch-hiking the 800km back to Slums for a weekend pass. I didn’t even realise when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe at independence on April 17, 1980. I never even heard about the attacks on the Sasol and Natref installations on June 2. I do know that Prime Minister PW Botha called for a “total strategy” to defeat the “total onslaught” being waged against South Africa by “the outside world” – and that we in the military were the chosen ones with the honour of serving our country in this time of need. Bollocks! All of us, barring a few weirdos, simply wanted to get the whole nightmare over with and get back home, there to pursue whatever career paths we might have, assuming that we weren’t too dispirited by the prospect of another 10 years of camps – three months one year, one month the next.

So I’m slap in the middle of the military in 1980. And what are all the good folk requesting on Forces’ Favourites, the SABC programme on a Saturday afternoon for “all the troepies in camp or on the Border”? Well it wasn’t a bad year really. Since I was in the media centre, we had access to a good couple of TV sets and video recorders. And we’d religiously tape all the Pop Shop shows on SABC, and watch them repeatedly. We also watched a couple of tapes by anti-apartheid people abroad exposing the horrors of apartheid forced removals and the like. These were not meant for our eyes, but were used by the leierskap to show them the nature of this thing called the “total onslaught”, “die totale aanslag”. There was a great song by a black South African group, Joy, called Paradise Road, at No 1. The next four I don’t recall, but at No 6, someone called Marti Webb had the song Take That Look Off Your Face (and that was an order). The Village People were at No 7 with Can’t Stop The Music. And then. And then at No 8, those legends from the early 1970s, Pink Floyd, finally hit the commercial scene with Another Brick In The Wall. And they caused a furore. I don’t think it was banned, but we were certainly warned against this song by the military commissars. “We don’t need no education … we don’t need no thought control.” This was interpreted as supporting the simmering student rebellion in the country since June 1976.

Local band Ballyhoo were a decade late, but nevertheless made a great song out of Man On The Moon (No 10), while black as the ace of spades Diana Ross showed those white boys how sexy she could be with Upside Down (“boy you turn me, inside out and round and round” – No 11). While most of our testosterone-crazy minds were continually thinking one-track thoughts, Captain & Tennile didn’t help with Do That To Me One More Time (“I just can’t get enough of a boy like you” – No 14). And then, just to rub it in, we had Exile at No 15 with (“touch”) The Part Of Me That Needs You Most. Janis Ian’s Fly Too High (No 16) was another song which certainly didn’t lower temperatures. The top 20 ends with the great Don McLean’s Crying at No 19, and Leo Sayer’s More Than I Can Say at 20. Well what more can I say about 1980? I’ll deal with it in more detail later when I tackle all the stuff these charts omitted, but Peter Joyce’s book reminds me that this was the year that John Lennon released “Starting Over”, only for his second beginning to be snuffed out with a bullet on December 8. It was also the year that The Police, who had already made waves with songs like Walking On The Moon and Roxanne, had a hit with Don’t Stand So Close To Me. The reason I missed out virtually completely on the U2 phenomenon is probably because they released their first album, Boy, in 1980. I never heard it, and U2 simply failed to have any impact on me, although I’ve enjoyed the bits I’ve heard down the years, especially when Bono has performed traditional Irish music, as he did years later with The Chieftains. But more of that a little later, hopefully.

I haven’t yet mentioned it, but at the end of 1979, while I was in the army, Capital Radio 604 burst upon the scene. I haven’t been able to retrieve much info from the Net, but I am told that it started transmitting on 604 kHz (ie medium wave) on Boxing Day 1979. It was, I recall, a momentous occasion. I was on a bit of leave from the military, and the jol was very much on at our home in Bonza Bay. The broadcast was from a studio at Port St Johns in the Transkei, which coveted its nominal independence from South Africa. I recall the signal as being generally quite good, but what was most impressive was the music selection, the professionalism of the disc jockeys and the very clever use of jingles. It also offered what it called “independent radio news” every hour on the half hour, if I recall correctly. This usually involved journalists from the English newspapers, who were generally anti-apartheid, working as stringers for their areas. At last there was an electronic media alternative to “his master’s voice” at the SABC. Evidently 604 was closely based on Capital Radio 194 in London (now Capital Gold and Capital FM). What this meant is that this country, which suffered for decades due to a British ban on television links with it, at least had this small window through which we could experience a taste of what the best minds in British radio were up to. Evidently someone called Bill Mitchell from the London station reworked their voice drop-ins by simply replacing 194 with 604. Even the Capital 194 logo was simply modified, with the bird changed to a seagull, and the number changed.

But it was the highly polished presentation that was the hallmark of the station. The transition from jingle, to presenter, to song, to jingle, to clever quip and so on kept one entertained, day and night. I can still recall many of those jingles, though I won’t try to sing them. One went: “Capital Radio, coming from the Wild Coast, lots of fun in the sun”. Another: “It’s cold outside but it’s warm in here with 604”. The best, however, was a long one based on the Beatles When I’m Sixty-Four – which became “tune to six-oh-four”. Alan Mann was probably our favourite deejay, but there were many other great voices and characters, including Kevin Savage, Oscar Renzi and Treasure Tshabalala. I remember Tshabala’s evening show of blues and jazz, a really laid-back couple of hours titled Treasure’s Pleasure, which he hosted in his rich baritone voice. Since when, ever, had whiteys in South Africa sat and listened to a black man, a Zulu, on the radio? It was a first. Alan Mann was a diminutive giant, who sometimes hosted a disco at the Numbers venue in East London, the brainchild of Peter Thesen, an old friend who launched a career in providing jols at a time when the rest of us were simply jolling.

So while on pass, or once ensconced at the media centre at Kimberley, Capital Radio provided us with an almost subversive source of news and entertainment which, had our commanding officers realised it, they probably would have banned. I recall us sitting around in our little media centre office pretending to be busy, with Capital blaring, and then in would walk the sergeant-major and someone would have to be on guard to ensure the radio was instantly turned off, so as not to offend. Fortunately both the corporals I had in charge of me in the centre, Callie Shimwell from Pietermaritzburg and Craig Glenday of Cape Town, were fairly progressive-minded and avid Capital fans. It was thanks to Capital and being in the media centre that I probably was so familiar with the top songs of 1980. But by 1981, with thoughts about the future no doubt weighing more heavily, I seemed again to lose touch. I finally escaped the military’s clutches (temporarily, because those “camps” still loomed large) at the end of June, 1981. But looking at the hit list for that year, I know very few songs. Of course everyone remembers the silly No 1 hit, Shuddap Your Face by Joe Dolce, and the haunting Bette Davis Eyes (No 2) by Kim Carnes. Shakin’ Stevens’s This Ole House (No 4) seemed to be a blast from the past. For the rest, nothing stands out until No 19, probably The Police’s most inane offering, De Do Do Do De Da Da Da. But then The Police’s music was more about the beat that anything else – a sort of frenetic freedom which appealed to the youth, which I still considered myself, although I turned 25 soon after clearing out of the army. I chilled for the next six months as I pondered my future.

And what, according to Peter Joyce’s book, was happening in the world at the time? I see this was the winter when the Springbok rugby team were under siege in New Zealand as HART (Halt All Racist Tours) made their visit a misery. UN sanctions were tightened and a new disease, later called Aids, first appeared. I also recall watching the spectacle of Prince Charles marry Lady Diana Spencer on July 29 at St Paul’s Cathedral. South Africans, though, were barred from listening to the orchestra that performed at the ceremony due to the British Musicians’ Union ban on links with apartheid. Joyce’s book notes that Chariots of Fire was a hit movie, as I’m sure was its theme tune which is another of those long-lived classics. But of the four hit singles he lists, I recall none so well I could hum the tune.

By the end of the year I was gatvol of doing zilch, and managed to secure a low-paid job as an assistant to my brother Ian, who was the regional organiser for the growing Progressive Federal Party in the greater East London area. It has long been called the Border region, because of its situation on the border with the Transkei. By this stage, however, the region was bordered on both sides by “independent” black states – the Transkei and the Ciskei. Only problem was, the apartheid government then used these as dumping grounds for black people living in the “white corridor” between them. The aim was to forcibly remove tens of thousands to the “homelands” in terms of the nefarious aims of “grand apartheid”. This is what we in the PFP were fighting against as we campaigned to get people elected to join the likes of Helen Suzman, Van Zyl Slabbert, Alex Boraine and Colin Eglin in parliament.

But enough of politics. Since I was a relatively free agent for a while – pending my next call-up – in 1982 I gradually got back into civilian life, and with it the quest for a girlfriend, and the never-ending participation in the jol. Music remained a key player in the midst of all of this. Again, the hit parade stuff was almost unanimously superficial fare, like Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk (No 1) by Dr Hook, Eye Of The Tiger (No 2) by Survivor and Get Down On It (No 3) by Kool & The Gang. I also remember Soft Cell’s Tainted Love (No 5) and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts’ I Love Rock And Roll (No 7). Men at Work’s Down Under (No 8) could be misconstrued as a sexual reference if read as one sentence. None of the rest stays with me, except perhaps Abracadabra (No 17) by the Steve Miller Band – “I can be your abracadabra”?

Joyce’s book reveals that things were getting nastier on the political front, with anti-apartheid activist Ruth First being killed by a letter bomb sent by security agents in South Africa to her where she was living and working in the Mozambican capital of Maputo. In Durban, trade unionist Neil Aggett was found hanging in a security police cell – after 60 hours of interrogation. The SA Defence Force, of which I was a conscripted member, raided Lesotho, killing 41 “political” refugees – read ANC exiles. And in Pretoria the right-wing Conservative Party was formed after a break-away from the National Party led by arch-verkrampte Andries Treurnicht. Even PW Botha’s tinkering reforms of apartheid were too much for them. This was also the year of the bizarre Falklands war, when Britain recaptured a small group of islands in the south Atlantic which Argentina had seized.

While no Michael Jackson fan, it was this year, at the age of 24, that he released his album Thriller, which succeeded the equally successful Off The Wall of three years earlier. Hit songs not mentioned in the lists include Fame by Irene Cara, The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Tight Fit (which was evidently written originally by a South African, whose descendants are seeking compensation); and Come On Eileen, a great song by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Olivia Newton-John was still going strong with Physical.

By 1983 I had found a chick, got engaged, and in May got married. It was to last three years. We weren’t really suited. But, as they say, nothing venture, nothing gained. Experience is the best teacher. Once bitten, twice shy. I was toiling away for my pittance with the PFP, while the No 1 hit of the year, Words by FR David, passed me by completely. No 2 was I Don’t Wanna Dance by Eddy Grant which I obviously recall, as do most people the No 3 song, Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart. I see Jennifer Warnes & Joe Cocker (he of Woodstock fame) did a version of Up Where We Belong (No 3), which was written by the great Buffy St Marie, of whom, God willing, more later. The Police were there with Every Breath You Take (No 5), while Bob Marley & The Wailers finally made the SA charts with Buffalo Soldier (No 6). I remember savouring Joan Armatrading’s music while in the army. She reached No 8 with Drop The Pilot. Down at No 17 Toto Coelo lurked hungrily with I East Cannibals, while Olivia Newton-John seemed to be having problems with Heart Attack at No 18. The rest were outside my radar.

Did I mention that in 1982 I did a one-month “camp”. Ja, it didn’t take my new unit, the Kaffrarian Rifles in East London, long to call me up. About a year after ending my two year’s initial “service”, I had to do a month at Komga, on the “border” of the Transkei. Fortunately, a perforated eardrum (product of a little domestic tiff) came just at the right time and I spent most of the month manning the public telephone a few hundred metres from the base. Well, come 1983 and they really wanted their pound of flesh. I mean here I was, a soldier, trained to take lives with impunity, a skilled assassin, saboteur, you name it. Well hardly. In fact I was a pacifist, the type Rod McCuen sings about when he says: Soldiers who want to be heroes number practically zero / But there are millions who would far rather be civilians.

But, in terms of the Defence Act, they were entitled to four months of my life every two years. A one month camp one year, a three-monther the next. So 1983, the year of the great referendum on the new constitution, was to be the big one, on the real Border, there in northern SWA-Namibia. This distraction probably accounts for my knowing so few songs from that year, because, despite making every effort to get an exemption due to my working on the referendum campaign, and even trying to hand back my rifle, I ended up on that Flossie travelling into the heat in August – and returning without having fired a shot on November 11. The new constitution had been adopted, despite the PFP and CP opposing it for totally opposite reasons. The CP saw it as a relinquishing of white power; the PFP opposed it because it only included coloured and Indian people as junior parties while excluding the vast black African majority. The PFP had, in a sense, been echoing the sentiments of the United Democratic Front, which was formed on August 20 at a rally in Cape Town. This broad-based organisation – “UDF Unites, Apartheid Divides” – was to spearhead the final push during the 1980s which would see the collapse of apartheid. Meanwhile, on May 20 that year, the ANC orchestrated a blast in Pretoria which killed nine whites and seven blacks and injured 188, the worst terror attack in South Africa’s history. In those days, of course, the race of victims was always mentioned.

Joyce’s book reveals that I wasn’t perhaps as out of touch as I thought, music-wise. It cites as hits of 1983 the likes of Red Red Wine, a classic reggae-based tune by British outfit UB40, whose name derives from the official dole document; Uptown Girl by Billy Joel, Karma Chameleon by Culture Club, whose Boy George was one of the world’s first unashamedly camp pop stars, and Beat It by Michael Jackson.

Nou ja. By 1984 – think George Orwell, think dictatorship – things were getting fairly hairy in SA. My in-laws had given us a short coach-trip of Europe and a week in London for our wedding present in 1983, and we experienced an all-too-short break from the confines of what had become virtually a police state. As the UDF stepped up its defiance of apartheid, so the state would clamp down ever more severely on activists. But, probably fortuitously, the PFP made me redundant at the end of July that year – and, somewhat reluctantly, I managed to land a job as a reporter on the Evening Post in Port Elizabeth, where my wife’s brother was based.

Okay, so Joyce’s book pre-empted the hit lists, which had Red Red Wine as the top hit of 1984. Karma Chameleon too, which was placed at No 7. So what? It was Queen’s No 3 hit, I Want To Break Free, though, which probably summed up my predicament. I was stuck with a future of army camps in an apartheid state riddled with racism and in a marriage that teetered on the brink of collapse. But now in PE, as it is commonly known, I settled into my new role of reporter, having last done the job for those five months in 1975. After a few months I was reporting on the uprising which spread across the country, led by the UDF and its many, many affiliates. Among the other songs from that year I recall are To All The Girls I Loved Before by Julio Iglesias & Willie Nelson, Tonight I Celebrate My Love by Peabo Bryson & Roberto Flack, Say, Say, Say by Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson and Dolce Vita by Ryan Paris.

While all of us, black and white, revelled in the humour of a black American, Bill Cosby, on television, we remained poles apart within our own country, politically, socially and economically. However, the advent of the UDF did see a growing number of whites interacting increasingly with black leaders, among them those in the PFP who had always made such contact a sine qua non of their existence. So often when there was a massacre or if UDF leaders were detained, I would report on PFP leaders like Molly Blackburn, Andrew Savage and Errol Moorcroft holding the government to account for its actions. But I didn’t lose sight of the music, especially not songs like Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark and, a new development, a massed group of concerned artists jointly called Band Aid, who sang Do They Know It’s Christmas? to raise funds for good causes. Joyce’s book also reveals that that year Ray Parker Jnr brought us Ghosbusters from the popular film, and Stevie Wonder did the wonderful I Just Called To Say I Love You.

But if 1984 was to be the year of repression, then 1985 would see PW really flex his muscles, using the full brute force of his carefully constructed national security structure to snuff out, literally, anti-apartheid activists. And the Eastern Cape, with Port Elizabeth at its centre, was a key area in the struggle between the forces of resistance and repression. Botha acted against his opponents under the cloak of a State of Emergency, which was declared on July 21 under the Public Safety Act. Its announcement was timed to coincide with the funerals of the Cradock Four, Matthew Goniwe and three other UDF leaders who were found brutally murdered just outside Port Elizabeth. The same year, the Pebco Three – three prominent PE Black Civic Organisation leaders – disappeared. Their fate was only revealed a decade later under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So I was out there reporting on much of this stuff, while my marriage teetered further, and on occasion I still kept up with the music – when I wasn’t simply listening to what records I had managed to salvage from life’s upheavals, or the shelves of second-hand record shops, like the one in Parliament Street, Central. But some songs penetrate even the most fraught situations, like One Night In Bangkok by Murray Head (No 2), and Power Of Love by Jennifer Rush. Another of those do-good mass bands, USA for Africa, gave us the now-famous We Are The World (No 8), while Elaine Page & Barbara Dickson produced I Know Him So Well (No 10), from the stage show Chess (as was Bangkok). Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is (No 12) could have come from any of the past 10 years, but Agadoo (No 13) by Black Lace was so zany it belonged in no other era, thank heavens. Tina Turner turned cynic with What’s Love Got To Do With It (No 14), while that most overrated of performers, Madonna, seemed to debut this year in SA with Like A Virgin (No 20).

Meanwhile, my former bosses, Van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, quit parliament and the PFP that year to work for the extra-parliamentary opposition through a thing called the Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa (Idasa). It was to facilitate some of the first meetings between white business and academic leaders and ANC leaders in exile, among them Thabo Mbeki and ANC president Oliver Tambo.

While Kevin Curren narrowly missed becoming the first South African Wimbledon champion that year, losing to Boris Becker (aged 17) in four sets, the Boomtown Rats leader Bob Geldof underscored the concept of the global village with a 16-hour London concert beamed around the world (except SA).

And, Joyce’s book tells, us, this was the year that the compact disc (CD) first started replacing vinyl records. Among the hits in his book is the excellent Money For Nothing by Dire Straits.

In 1986 I got unmarried. The country was in turmoil, and so too was my life. The SADF attacked the ANC in several “Frontline States”, while at home the police and army cracked down on the ongoing UDF-led resistance campaign. In another too-little, too-late attempt to appease the masses, the government finally scrapped the hated pass laws, which gave de juro recognition to a de facto reality of black urbanisation which had been ongoing for decades, indeed over a century. But the Rubicon, which PW Botha had refused to cross, was encompassed in the demands made by the UDF: unban the ANC, SA Communist Party and PAC, free all detainees, allow the return of political exiles, abolish all apartheid laws, and engage in negotiations for a single, non-racial democracy.

I was unmarried and jolling again, sharing a flat in Central with a lesbian friend, which gave me an insight into a whole different sub-culture. But more importantly, as the UDF campaign continued, that little flat in Lawrence Street became a hub of non-racial interaction, as many prominent activists and journalists of all hues congregated there for some amazing parties. So what was hot on the hit parade that year – which while bleak in most respects, already had a hint of the spring of freedom that was around the corner?

Significantly, perhaps, it was a black man who topped the list, Lionel Richie with Say You, Say Me. He was also at No 5 with Dancing On The Ceiling. Many of the songs escape my memory, but not the Bangles’ Manic Monday (No 6). The military was still on my case, and, since moving to the Bay, I requested a transfer away from the border-camp obsessed KRs. I landed up in a thing called Regiment Piet Retief, and, while doing no more border camps, I was called up another three or four times to do one-month camps. It was at a time when the SADF was increasingly being used alongside the police “riot squad” to crush the uprising in the townships. On my first camp, I gave the commanding officer a note saying I would only do non-combatant duty – and refused to carry a rifle. Miraculously, I got my way with it and ended up again painting logos and other signs on walls.

Which brings me back to Billy Ocean’s No 8 hit, When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going. I recall this being used by military instructors bent on torturing you physically. It was later twisted to read, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

A band called Starship (no relation, I’m sure, to Jefferson Starship), did a thing called We Built This City (on rock and roll), which was at No 10. And, adding a touch of class, Dire Straits came in at No 14 with Walk Of Life. In another example of cross-cultural co-operation, Dionne Warwick & Friends (Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight) produced That’s What Friends Are For, which made it to No 17. The rest basically passed me by. In Peter Joyce’s book, it becomes clear the rosier future which was to be post-apartheid South Africa was starting to come to fruition in our nation’s music. He notes that Paul Simon, who defied the ban on cultural contacts with this country, collaborated with some our greatest exiled musicians and locally based vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo to produce his chart-topping Graceland album. At home and abroad, Johnny Clegg, who I had seen live with Juluka at Rhodes in the late 1970s, was making a serious comeback with a message of hope for a future non-racial nation, with his new group, Savuka, which again crossed the racial divides. Joyce also reminds us that Pieter Dirk-Uys continued to push the envelope with his satires lambasting the apartheid apparatchiks, especially the head honcho himself, Die Groot Krokodil, PW.

It’s 1987 and the madness continues. I’m still at the mercy of the military, and the country’s at the mercy of it too. But my former bosses, Van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine offer some hope via Idasa. They organise a massive meeting between mainly Afrikaner academics, professionals and business leaders and the ANC in exile, on July 12 in Senegal. I remember, as a reporter on the Evening Post, getting wind of this meeting several months before it happened, but being sworn to secrecy by Wayne Mitchell, the local Idasa chief and a prime mover in establishing the NGO in the first place. Tragically, he was to die in a car crash a few years later. Repression, meanwhile, continued in Fortress SA, and Chris de Burgh finally made it onto the hit parade, his The Lady In Red topping the charts that year.

Since I was very much embroiled in the alternative cultures mobilised around “the struggle” in PE, pop music played little role in my life at this time. But several other songs from that Top 20 stick in my memory. I Wanna Dance With Somebody (No 4) by Whitney Houston lingers, as does The Final Countdown (No 7) by a group called Europe. Freddie Mercury (sans Queen, it seems) made waves with The Great Pretender (No 10), but it was two quirky songs which caught most people’s imagination. I thoroughly enjoyed the attitude of the Fine Young Cannibals, whose Ever Fallen In Love (No 6) is one of the great songs of the 1980s. Then there was the Bangles’ Walk Like An Egyptian (No 8), which seems to have been around far longer than it in fact has. And who can forget the equally catchy La Bamba (No 17) by Los Lobos?

These were long years in South Africa. The late 1980s seemed to drag on and on. There were states of emergency all over the show, tens of thousands of people detained, released, detained again. Some white males joined the End Conscription Campaign and refused to do any military service. Many went to jail for their troubles. Personally, having endured so many years of my “sentence” I was not prepared to suddenly end up in tjoekie. By 1988 I was still being called up to Regiment Piet Retief. I was still not carrying a rifle, and was still being humoured by the Citizen Force people in charge. It was hell, though, having to attend those month-long camps next to the television mast in Cotswold; being part of the security apparatus which, through things like the Hammer Unit, was apparently carrying out all manner of nasty “counter-insurgency” operations in the townships, which were still boiling over with revolutionary fervour. In 1988 I moved from the Post to sister newspaper The Eastern Province Herald, which was established just 25 years after the 1820 British Settlers arrived in Algoa Bay. It was to prove a wise move.

I don’t recall anything by Rick Astley, so the number one hit that year, Never Gonna Give You Up, remains unknown to me. I did, however, know Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes’ song, (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life ( No 2), from the film Dirty Dancing. It’s hard to believe this film came out so late. I seem to associate it with the disco era of the late 1970s… Other easily recalled songs from that year include Heaven Is A Place On Earth (No 4) by Belinda Carlisle, I Think We’re Alone Now (No 6) by Tiffany, You Win Again (No 12) by those tireless campaigners, the Bee Gees, and Simply Irresistible (No 19) by Robert Palmer, formerly of a great trio whom I’ll hopefully discuss later. Then there was Pseudo Echo with the dreaded Funkytown (No 18) – “Let me take you to … Funkytown!” Ja nee, as they say.

Peter Joyce’s book tells us that in 1988 the imprisoned Nelson Mandela has TB and is looking very thin and old. He turns 70 that year, and is later moved to a small house in the grounds of the Victor Verster prison in Paarl. When Mandela starts moving, you realise something must be afoot. But what the future held for us, no one could guess in 1988. Certainly, with Mikhail Gorbachev introducing bold reforms in the Soviet Union and Poland having shown a commendable spirit of rebellion against its communist masters, things looked to be moving in Eastern Europe.

The lists of hit singles in South Africa on the South Africa’s Rock Lists website only run until 1989, which is perhaps appropriate. Everything after that is too recent history to be easily discussed. Also, 1989 marked a major turning point for the world, and for South Africa in particular. Many paint 1994, or 1990, as the key years, but the first major changes occurred at the height of apartheid repression in 1989. The first big change came when PW Botha had a mild stroke and resigned as leader of the National Party, which had been in power since 1948, with PW a part of its highly effective electoral machinery during those long, dark years. However, when the party elected FW de Klerk in his place, there was concern that, as leader of the NP in the Transvaal, he was even more conservative. But he did have a verligte brother in Wimpie, editor of the NP mouthpiece, Rapport. Later in the year, Botha was forced out of the presidency, and FW took over. And instantly there was a change of mood. He immediately relaxed certain emergency regulations, in particular allowing protest marches. I remember participating in a March For Peace from the Livingstone Hospital to the Centenary Hall in New Brighton in late 1989, alongside a young woman, Robyn Rodney, who would later become my wife.

Globally, as Joyce’s invaluable book recounts, it was a time of global upheaval, with the forces of freedom making major advances throughout the totalitarian states of Eastern Europe, and even in solidly communistic China. Most spectacular, visually and symbolically, was the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It was this wall, I suspect, that Pink Floyd had in mind with their epic concept album and film. But more of that later. While Eastern Europe shrugged off the yoke of communism, painfully and often bloodily, in China several hundred pro-democracy demonstrators were massacred in Tiananmen Square. Now, less than 20 years later, China is an increasingly free market economy, and as Van Zyl Slabbert always used to say, economic freedom must lead inevitably to demands for political freedom. How long before there is a real multi-party democracy in China?

In South Africa, I had already reported on the release in late 1987 of Oom Govan Mbeki, Thabo’s father, from Robben Island. He was the first of the Rivonia triallists to be freed, and was followed by the likes of Walter Sisulu and Raymond Mhlaba, another PE man, in 1989.

As you can imagine, with all this upheaval under way, the pop music of the time sort of passed me by. The only song I can readily recall from the Top 20 is the nonsense thing from Bobby McFerrin, Don’t Worry Be Happy (No 5). I suppose it offered us something to laugh about at a time of tremendous opportunity, and of course uncertainty. There were other songs, but they seemed to be reworkings of older stuff, like The Twist (No 10) by The Fat Boys and Chubby Checker and Forever Young (No 9) by Rod Stewart, which must surely have been a cover of the Dylan song. Not surprisingly, the Joyce book finds no space for hits of the year in 1989. There was really just too much else going on. Oh, and I had been chosen to serve for two years as the London correspondent for the Morning Group of SA newspapers. I had to give my army unit a letter from my employer to this effect, as well as show them my airline ticket and then, in later December I was out of here, with Robyn, whose mom had remarried a Leeds man. We watched in awe on the good old BBC as the last redoubts of communist tyranny were toppled across Eastern Europe, heralding a transformed world order in 1990. Even Russia, with the help of one man, Boris Yeltsin, would become a relatively free, market-based state over the next few years. But in 1990 I turned 34, and the days of hit parades were now something altogether in the past. Plus, working in London, I really had no time to bother with such things. I was in one of the cultural capitals of the world, and would soak up as much of it as I could, whether on radio, television, in art galleries, or in the theatre. I even got to see a few live acts by leading musicians – but more of that later.

Just a last thought regarding all the songs and performers mentioned thus far. While I might sound dismissive of many of these tunes, I believe the world would have been a far poorer place without them. The great outpouring of creativity which characterised the 1960s, ’70s and even to an extent the ’80s will probably not be repeated, ever. I know there are still good groups coming through, but sadly for them, and their fans, it is really a case of finding out that what came before is an impossible act to follow. Play me anything from the ’90s and 2000s and I’ll trace its roots back to the real McCoy from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. What follows, God willing, is an in-depth look at some of the many, many musicians who made those decades great. Many, as I’ve said before, were born in the ’40s and ’50s. Some have died, many are old, and some are still churning out stuff, some of it still good. But I have special memories of most of these musicians from the ’60s and ’70s, when they were just starting out and in their prime. I can go on a website and look up the discography of a group like Little Feat, whom I last heard probably 30 years ago, and instantly recognise the covers of two of their earliest albums as those that I listened to with such joy all those years ago. But who were Little Feat? Thanks to the Internet I am able to garner information about hundreds of musicians, composers, singers, guitarists who together have produced a body of work which is irreplaceable. People will look back, say in 50 years’ time, and say this was truly the golden era of modern music.

Hopefully, this very personal look at those heady days will serve as a humble tribute to the men and women who devoted, and sometimes gave, their lives to the cause of music.