The Top Hits of 1970 - Volume II Quiz

Answer: Everything Is Beautiful

Ray Stevens first came to the public's attention with a series of novelty songs such as "Ahab, The Arab", "Harry The Hairy Ape" and "Gitarzan". A precursor to this song and reflective of a more serious Stevens was his 1968 hit "Hey Mr. Businessman". He returned to the charts in 1974 on more familiar turf with his parody of the streaking phenomenon current at the time with "The Streak". Essentially, that signaled the end of his run on the pop charts but he has continued on right into the 21st century with his humorous takes on contemporary issues which have found favor among fans of the country genre.

Answer: He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

Allan Clarke, lead singer for Hollies, was never in better form in my opinion...a powerful, sensitive rendering of a lyric that demands that sort of reading.

The song was a collaborative effort between Bobby Scott and Bobby Russell, the latter having written similar style songs such as "Little Green Apples" for O.C. Smith and "Honey" for Bobby Goldsboro. I'm uncertain as to the intent of this song but the title is the motto of the famous Boys Town facility for wayward and troubled youth founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1917 by Father Edward Flanagan. It, of course, became famous after being the subject of the 1938 Spencer Tracy movie "Boys Town". Recognizing Russell's penchant for writing about emotional issues and topics, I'd guess that there's a connection, especially since the facility has a statue of one youth carrying another with that caption. More recently, I've heard the song often being used for such causes as inter-faith groups, child poverty and the like. Incidentaly, Neil Diamond covered the song later in 1970 and produced a Number 20 hit with it.

Answer: Ball Of Confusion

By the Temptations, the urgency of the lyrics together with their no nonsense, rat-a-tat delivery made this one heavy duty protest song about the state of planet at the time. In fact the full title of the song was "Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today)". Cynics might ask in 2007, "What's changed?"

Answer: Lay Down

Sung by Melanie, the full title of the song was "Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)". Melanie performed at Woodstock and surely had to be one of the lesser known acts to perform there. After all, she had not had a single charting release to that point of her career. During her performance, a brief cloudburst occurred and afterward, the audience flicked their Bics and held them up high to let everyone know they were still there and appreciative that she continued to perform despite the weather. She was so moved by the spectacle that she wrote this song about the experience. Personally, I think that this was her best performance but the bigger commercial success and the song that brought her the most fame was "Brand New Key" the following year.

Certainly no other year of the rock era produced more thought provoking and "message" songs than 1970. Beyond the first four songs noted in this quiz, there were "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "War" and "American Woman", songs I featured in a previous quiz. Other songs in the Top 100 that also fit the bill were "Reflections Of My Life" by Marmalade (ranked 60) and "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is" by Chicago (ranked 61). Quite an array!

Answer: Lookin' Out My Back Door

This was one of the five Number Two hits that Creedence Clearwater Revival would chart during their fantastic run during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It's really too bad not one ever made it to the top... they were pretty cool!

Now this song had to be about drugs... after all elephants playing in a band? Flying spoons, no doubt of the cocaine variety? Nope! John Fogerty was inspired by a Dr. Seuss book he had read as a child, "To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" dealing with a parade of wild and wonderful creatures. He simply wrote the song to amuse his young son.

Answer: Come And Get It

McCartney wrote this song for the movie "The Magic Christian" starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. During some down time at the studio, McCartney did a demo of the song playing all the instruments himself and apparently his version is included on the Beatles Anthology 3 CD set and sounds virtually identical to the hit version recorded by Badfinger. Badfinger, when given the song, wanted to adjust it a bit to suit their style more, but McCartney was insistent that they record it just like his demo and assured them that if they did, they had a hit on their hands. Voila!

The story of Badfinger is rather a sad one. At their apex, the group consisted of Pete Ham and Joey Molland on guitars, Tom Evans on bass and Mike Gibbins on drums. All but Gibbins contributed on vocals while Ham and Evans were the principal composers. While with the Apple label, they recorded four singles all of which charted within the top 14 on Billboard and an equal number of albums which sold decently. They also backed up George Harrison on a couple of his musical projects, were one of the headline acts for the concert for Bangladesh and toured extensively. Ultimately, they would be the second biggest act ever to represent the Apple label after The Beatles. They were making a lot of money which they entrusted to their manager, one Stan Polley. When Apple started to founder, the group signed on with Warner Brothers and quickly recorded a couple of albums on that label in 1974. Then the unthinkable happened. Millions of dollars went missing from the band's account through Polley's mismanagement (or greed). Another escrow account of $100,000.00 set up by Warner Brothers and managed by Polley also went missing and Warner Brothers sued Badfinger for those funds and also withdrew Badfinger's albums from retailers. In a financial morass and deeply depressed, Pete Ham hung himself in 1975 and the group disbanded.

Molland and Evans briefly reunited in 1979 under the Badfinger banner then formed rival Badfinger bands in the early 1980s. In 1983, after a dispute over the phone with Molland over the division of royalties of a song they worked together on, Evans also hung himself. Gibbins died of natural causes in 2005. The sole surviving member of the group, Molland resides in Minnesota and occasionally tours with a "Badfinger" group.

Answer: Cecilia

Also the name of the song, "Cecilia" was the third of four songs drawn from the "Bridge Over Troubled Water" LP that would achieve Top 40 status on the Billboard singles charts.

One would assume that the song dealt with a gal that leaves her lover in the lurch but ultimately returns. Surely, Paul Simon would not write something that simplistic and he assuredly did not. St. Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians, the writer's muse. Metaphorically, making love to Cecilia is the equivalent of being in the writer's groove. Then comes a distraction, like leaving the desk to wash your face, and when you return to complete the task, the muse is gone... writer's block. Simon invokes the name of St. Cecilia in another song, "The Coast", from his 1990 disc, "The Rhythm Of The Saints".

"A family of musicians took shelter for the night
In the little harbor church of St. Cecilia
Two guitars, bata, bass drum and tambourine
Rose of Jericho and Bougainvillea"

Now that's Rhymin' Simon! Who else could possibly conceive of tying up Cecilia and bougainvillea and make it work within the context of a song? Sheer brilliance!

Answer: Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)

Tony Burrows was the vocalist who fronted the studio band Edison Lighthouse. In 1970 alone, Burrows recorded these songs with other studio bands: "My Baby Loves Lovin'" in front of White Plains, a Number 13 song that ranked 83rd for the year; "Gimme Dat Ding" by The Pipkins, a duo with White Plains colleague Roger Greenaway, a Number Nine song but unranked for the year; lastly, "United We Stand" by Brotherhood Of Man, another Number 13 hit that ranked 92nd for 1970. Burrows recalls one occasion where he performed on the BBC show "Top Of The Pops" three times in one night fronting three of these bands with their current hits and wondering if anyone in the audience would recognize him! He did strive to make his mark as a soloist but his only chart entry in the U.S., "Melanie Makes Me Smile", peaked at a dismal Number 87.

Answer: In The Summertime

The ubiquitous "In The Summertime" has become a perennial summer anthem everywhere, the record now believed to have sold more than 10,000,000 copies around the globe. It was written by Tony Dorset, leader of the British skiffle band Mungo Jerry. It would be the group's only charting success in North America, a true one hit wonder, but despite personnel changes too numerous to mention save for the perpetual presence of Dorset, Mungo Jerry continued to be a presence on the British musical scene for most of the decade. Dorset has continued to perform under the group's banner into the 21st century even as a solo act.

Incidentally, the song hit Number One in Australia for one week as recorded by Mungo Jerry - it was Number One for six more weeks by The Mixtures, a local Aussie band I suspect.

The song also was revived by Shaggy in 1995 as the flip to his "Boombastic" single and received ample airplay in its own right.

Answer: Spill The Wine

When Eric Burdon left The Animals in 1968, he spent a year or so looking for another backing band that would get his juices flowing again. Ultimately, he settled on a group of L.A. musicians without much of a pedigree that had been evolving into a pretty decent funk band. Joining the group he renamed War, and asserting creative control, they recorded three albums that were more critically acclaimed than commercial successes and one big single - this one. "Spill The Wine" was more created than written, the result of various riffs and lyrical concepts the group was fiddling around with over several jam sessions in the studio.

In the midst of a European tour in 1971, Burdon left the group citing exhaustion. War had already been exploring other options and was intending to make recordings with and without Burdon, all with his blessing. As events evolved, Burdon essentially ceased to be a major factor on the music scene but War went on to have sterling success throughout the decade with such hits as "Low Rider", "Why Can't We Be Friends" and "The Cisco Kid".

Answer: Whole Lotta Love

This was Led Zeppelin's debut on the Billboard charts and it would prevail as the biggest hit they would ever have in North America. "Whole Lotta Love" was also the first "heavy metal" song to make an impact on the pop charts. The band was never much into creating hit singles for commercial radio play and that certainly is reflective of their roster of Billboard chart singles - only six entries with "Black Dog" at Number 15 being their next highest charting hit. What they were good at, however, was creating concept albums that were ideal for FM radio stations that focused on album tracks.

Hence, the aberration of "Stairway To Heaven", one of the most played songs in radio history but never released commercially as a single. The band remained a major creative force throughout the 1970s churning out several monster albums and being one of the biggest tour draws ever, especially at big concert venues.

In 1973, on their North American tour, they broke several box office records previously established by The Beatles many years earlier.

The group disbanded shortly after the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980, the remaining members losing the spirit to carry on. They have reunited occasionally for special events and Robert Plant and Jimmy Page have worked together over the years on a few musical projects. Otherwise, they continue to pursue individual solo careers into this century.

Answer: I'll Never Fall In Love Again

This was just one of 22 hits Dionne Warwick would place in the top 40 over eight years from 1963 to 1970 and all but two were written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Now that's a symbiotic relationship! The two exceptions were "Theme From The Valley Of The Dolls" written by André and Dory Previn and her rendition of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling", a collaboration between Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Phil Spector.

Her performance with this song earned her a third Grammy award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. Things were less rosy for her for the rest of the decade.

In 1972, Bacharach and David split up. She had a contractual arrangement to sing their songs which obviously could no longer be met by the song writing duo and her management company sued them for breach.

The suit was resolved but Warwick would be unable to reconcile with Bacharach for 15 years and her pipeline to potential hits dried up in the interim. She experienced a resurgence in the mid-1980s singing duets with the likes of Jeffery Osborne and Luther VanDross. Since then, she's been content to create the occasional easy listening album while maintaining a steady tour schedule world wide.

Answer: Brook Benton

From 1959 to 1964, Benton crooned his way to a total of 23 Top 40 hits. Then, like so many others, he fell victim to a change in musical tastes stimulated by The Beatles and the rest of the British invasion. Many of his earlier hits were self-written but "Rainy Night In Georgia" was conceived by Tony Joe White, famous for his "swamp rock" ballad, "Polk Salad Annie", a Number Eight hit in 1969. Benton hung on to the peripheries of the music scene throughout the 1970s with a series of easy listening albums, none of which made a significant impact on the album charts, and also spent a considerable amount of time in Great Britain and Europe on tour.

He passed away in 1988 at the age of 56 as a result of complications from spinal meningitis.

Answer: Lola

"Lola" marked the return of the Kinks to the Top 40 since their 1966 hit "Sunny Afternoon". Their lead singer, Ray Davies, allegedly wrote the song based on an actual incident while the band was clubbing in London. Their manager at the time was with them, had consumed a libation or two too many, and began hitting on and dancing with a "girl".

The rest of the boys recognized the object of the manager's attention was a transvestite but he never did even when "her" stubble started to appear deep into the evening. Nevertheless, the song was the first to openly deal with the phenomenon and obviously opened the doors for subsequent gender-bending artists such as Lou Reed and David Bowie.

Answer: The Long And Winding Road

It's only apropos to end our exploration of 1970 hits with The Beatles' final Number One. Despite the demise of the band, eight more of their singles would appear in the Hot 100 chart. Some were album tracks previously unreleased as singles such as "Got To Get You Into My Life" in 1976 from the "Revolver" album and "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" in 1979 from the famous 1968 "White" album. "Twist And Shout" in 1986 was a re-release that appeared in the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" while "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" released in the mid-1990s were studio demos recorded in the late 1970s by John Lennon that were embellished in the studio with instrumental and vocal tracks laid down by the surviving Beatles. We shall never see their like again.