In the autumn of 2012, myself and producers Ian Callaghan and Lorna Skingley sat down in the Kings Arms in Salford (above - now run by Paul Heaton) and drew up a long list of the kinds of songs and topics we wanted to include. I was adamant that this shouldn’t be the same canonical list of revered classics that gets trotted out in every broadsheet and magazine listathon. I wanted this to be a series that would place equal value on Y Viva Espana (the British go on holiday to Spain) or My Boy Lollipop (the sound of the commonwealth coming to Britain post Windrush) or Goth or Northern Soul or Heavy Metal as any of the critically sanctioned sacred cows.

 

As soon as we began to tell people of our intentions, we struck a chord. Just short of 200 people were interviewed, from nuclear submarine commanders to Greenham Common protestors and the result is, I think, a brilliant mosaic of music, analysis, reportage and testimonies spanning 50 hours and as many years of British Life.

 

In that kitchen in North Cumbria, a year ago I heard the first show go out – Vera Lynn, We’ll Meet Again and the Second World War – and felt both elated and a little drained. I thought that we had done a brilliant job. But I also knew we had 49 more to go and the thought was as daunting as it was challenging and exhilarating.

 

And now we have. The People’s Songs is over. And I am as proud of it as it is possible to be, and grateful to everyone who made it happen.

Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?

Well, no… not yet (we hope), but all the signs are here: the adverts with fake snow (when did it EVER snow on Xmas day, unless you live in the Highlands?); the shop windows and high streets stuffed with festive ornaments; and it can only be a matter of time before one of our presenters cranks up the Yuletide hits.

But here at The People’s Songs, as we approach our final month on the air, are preparing for episode number 50, which, as you know, will be about Christmas! And, as the entire series has been about you, the listener, we still welcome your memories and your thoughts on how December  25^th was enhanced, enlivened or just plain ruined by pop music.

From the family ritual of watching the Top Of The Pops Xmas Special (always a disappointment as it nearly always consisted of number ones from the preceding year: never a guarantee of quality) to the endless soundtrack of cheesy yet heartwarming hits, from Slade, Wizzard, Wham! or Shaking Stevens to the jazzy jive of Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ or Greg Lake’s prog-tinged ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’. In fact, if you think about it, just about every genre or act that has featured in the series has eventually succumbed to the idea of a ‘Xmas hit’.

So don your Santa hats, and send us your festive memories… You know how to get in touch. After all, Iiiiiit’s Chriiiiiiistmaaaaassss!

With less than a score of episodes to go in this landmark series we thought it was time to both take stock and to give you, the people who helped put this epic show on the air a chance to get a little more up close and personal with our very own Stuart Maconie!

With that in mind, on October 23rd, following our show about the British love of shaking a collective tail feather - ‘You Should Be Dancing’ – Stuart will be taking an hour to answer your questions via his Twitter account : @StuartMaconie.

Your questions can be on or about anything to do with the show: the songs chosen; the songs missed out; how the show’s put together etc. and you can send them ahead of the night via our own Twitter account at @BBCPeoplesSongs or via email on thepeoplessongs@bbc.co.uk.

Mark your email questions with the subject line: ‘People’s Songs Q&A’ or with the hashtag #AskStuart and we’ll pass them on to Stuart on the night, so keep an eye online to see whether yours gets answered!

We look forward to hearing from you…

 

It's a fascinating thought: that back in the early '70s if your record was banned, the only way the curious could hear it would be to actually go to a shop and BUY it!

History has proven time again and again that there's very rarely such thing as bad publicity. A band which appeared earlier in the series, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, certainly reaped the benefits of Mike Read taking against their debut single, 'Relax': sending it to number one. And, let's face it, no one in their right mind would have gone overboard about Judge Dread's notorious reggae-themed 'Big' singles, with their smutty nursery rhymes if they hadn't been banned by the Beeb. I can still remember my schoolfriends reciting the 'Judge''s lyrics in the playground, undoubtedly learned from big brother's copies at home, played while your mum and dad were out.

But this week’s show, focussing on the political importance of Paul McCartney and Wings’ ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ is an especially fascinating example of the BBC’s censorious nature. For a start, how many people do you know who have actually heard it?

In fact, the first time I heard the single was on the juke box in the People’s Songs gallery at the O2 centre as we were setting up the exhibit: this, despite the fact that I’m old enough to remember it being in the charts when it was released. In other words, when someone banned your record in 1972 there was a very good chance that a large part of your audience wouldn’t EVER hear it. I’ve always been a Macca fan, but because I had no disposable income at the age of 12, I had to wait 40 years to hear it!

Of course - despite not only the BBC but stations such as Radio Luxembourg banning the record, and poor Alan Freeman on the chart rundown on Sunday night being forced to call it "a record by the group Wings" – ‘Give Ireland…’ still got to number 16. It was by an ex-Beatle, and not even Lord Reith could stop an ex-Beatle in those days. But it’s probably certain that the political sentiment of the single was considerably muted by the blanket censorship.

The biggest revelation for me, however, has been the simple fact that ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’ is one of Sir Paul’s weakest efforts by far: a real plodder that sounds as knocked off as it undoubtedly was. Typical: 40 years waiting for that…

The notion of banning records now seems quaint, especially when you look at the innocuous fare that made the list over the years. Yet the recent death of an ex-Prime Minister raised the spectre of the old nanny state once more. Maybe there’s still some kudos in getting on the wrong side of the corporation?

For years, when people would ask me was there a book I really wanted to write, I would make some vague noise about my ‘slim volume of difficult modern verse’ or such, but really one non-fiction project simmered somewhere in the back of my consciousness: a readable one-volume history of British pop that would eschew the usual worthiness; that would be as much about  the Bay City Rollers, Larry Parnes, Kylie, the Bee Gees and heavy metal as it would be about the sanctioned corpus of rock that gets handed down through those earnest retrospectives in the rock mags.

 

It would be little to do with Nick Drake and more to do with Nic Rhodes. It would celebrate in all its wild plurality the silly, beautiful, rich story of pop and the British people.

 

 

I didn't expect to get the chance to write that book though for many years to come. There were other books that would come first, like a sequel to Pies And Prejudice. But then Bob Shennan, the fine and noble controller of Radio 2 and 6 Music, asked me to write and present a landmark documentary series on the history of pop. Instantly and cheekily, I asked him could I focus and sharpen that idea into something closer to my heart; a history of post war Britain told through pop singles; pop singles in all their dizzy, daft, dazzling glory, and how the British pop charts reflected the times they existed in. Instantly I knew that this would be a very different pop history than the ones I'd read before, one about the times, their politics, their flavour and their people, rather than makes of guitar or recording dates. And I knew that there should be an accompanying book, THAT book I had always wanted to write: an authored narrative where I could stretch out and give my thought and theories about what pop means and why it means so much to us in this country.

 

After a long winter of late nights and burning the midnight oil, that book came out this week. It's my first hardback, you could stun an ox with it and I am very, very chuffed and proud. I hope you enjoy it. 

 

The People’s Songs: The Story of Modern Britain in 50 Records by Stuart Maconie  is published by Ebury Press - find more information on the Random House site.

 

Each show is also available to buy a week after its first broadcast on Radio 2. If an episode is available, you'll see a link labelled 'Buy Online' on its page. Click through to download an MP3 from the providers listed. Alternatively, you'll find a link to a list of all episodes which are available to buy on The People's Songs homepage.

 

You can transfer MP3 files to most mobile or portable devices and listen on the move, wherever and whenever suits you.

 

Please note - the MP3 downloads will not include all of the music that you hear in the full programme, because of rights restrictions. Some songs will be shortened or removed.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch at thepeoplessongs@bbc.co.uk

Winter 1982: I saw my first gig. It was Saxon at the Brighton Centre and it was a life-changing event. Saxon were my favourite band at the time, which meant I had a couple of their LPs and a patch on the back of my body-warmer (and for those who care such details, it was the Wheels Of Steel cover with the eagle astride a motorbike wheel: a thrilling artistic conceit to a 12 year-old lad). I love those albums, I loved the songs about freedom and motorbikes and hordes of denim and leather-clad hedonists... And then, to be among that crowd (from the safety of the balcony) was mind-blowing. The lights, the screaming guitars and the sheer volume (which was like being repeatedly kicked in the chest by a small horse) was frightening and thrilling. Life wouldn't be the same again.

One of the contributors to the Paranoid episode pointed out, quite astutely, that this was music you're supposed to feel guilty or embarrassed about liking. Somehow you're supposed to grow out of it in a way that's not expected of, say, country or jazz or even rap, which can be every bit as clichéd or ridiculous. But we know metal's ridiculous: it revels in this fact and only a Manowar fan would think otherwise. But there is no music that has the visceral rush of Heavy Metal: the feeling that you've been picked up bodily by a huge, precision-tooled industrial machine and transported elsewhere at immense speed. The musicianship is astounding. And, yes, lyrically it can be trite or hoary. But it can also be smart, witty, polemical, probing or even existential. And then there are also songs about naked Amazonians riding dragons into war against robot assassins from Mars. It has it all, really.

And yes, I did move on in my late teens and discovered many other thrilling musical worlds, from bluegrass to trance. But as this series constantly proves, music can act as a time machine to transport you back to another time and place, all in under three minutes. And that's the power of pop music, even the really noisy stuff. 

Do you have a favourite desert island Heavy Metal track? Which riff can unfailingly get you headbanging? Why not send us your selection in an email to thepeoplessongs@bbc.co.uk, or in a comment on this blog and we’ll add it to our definitive Spotify playlist!

When that bright spark Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, the last use in he had in mind for it was music. He thought it would be used for speeches and such and to replace the business letter. That’s the way technology works; the business heads who promoted the mobile phone actually sniggered at the SMS messaging function, wondering what possible appeal that could have. Until teenagers picked up on it and the culture of texting was born

Little did Edison know that the phonograph would have no effect on secretarial work but would actually usher in an entirely new art form. And in truth, the story of pop music is as much about technology as it is about Terpsichore (She’s the Greek muse of music and dancing, you’re going to have to keep up, you know). Of course, before Edison’s invention, music only existed in the now, in the moment it was actually being performed and each performance was idiosyncratic and unique. Technology took that moment and sealed it in perpetuity (or however long a CD or cassette lasts or one’s memory lasts).

Technology brings out the grump in some. Whether it’s Neil Young’s refusal to countenance the release of some of his albums on CD or when he’s whinging about iTunes spelling the death of the album. But there has never been a golden age of pure music. Pop culture has always been shaped by technology. The rock album – whose death is so bemoaned by traditionalists – is actually a newcomer. Before The Beatles' Please Please Me, the EP and single was the dominant rock artefact. I have no problem with that becoming the case again.

The Arctic Monkeys are as northern as mushy peas and as traditional a rock band as you could wish for. But they made their name through the lightning fast connections and bush telegraph of the internet. Music thrives because of technology. Pining for the golden age of the CD is a little ridiculous and after all, an acoustic guitar is a machine too, whatever Neil Young thinks.

 

 

It’s clear that what makes The People’s Songs so powerful for many of you is the way it captures music’s ability to be both binding and deeply personal. And just as with Rob’s Audioboo above there will now be a generation of young people who will remember where and (more importantly HOW they first heard a song.

This week our show’s all about the rise of the ‘I’ word in the way in which we listen to, consume and express our (dis)approval of music: yes, the internet. It uses the Arctic Monkeys as an early example of how music now longer needs the traditional models of big record company promotion, heavy radio airplay or even an appearance on Top of the Pops to reach a huge audience.  More often than not the songs that gain commercial and audience approval will reach us via online channels, from fan sites to Youtube. Here’s Graham, a contributor from this week’s show talking about this change in the way artists grab our attention in a post-web age:

The big upside for us here at The People’s Songs is that these new frontiers in sharing and communicating also allow you, the listeners to share your experiences with us. Audioboo itself is only barely four years old while Youtube is only eight! History, it seems, is happening, even as we make the series…

 

And here’s Robin expressing how important all the great psychedelic acts of 1967 were in helping a 14-year old find his own musical taste:

Just to prove that we even welcome contributions from abroad, despite this being a history of British people’s songs, here’s another Kate reminiscing about how The Spice Girls were a vital part of the juvenile experience, even in the USA:

And finally - as if to prove how erudite our listeners really are, here's a male listener (and if you know who you are, get in touch - we'd love to properly namecheck you!) managing to tell a brilliant personal tale that manages to name check Stuart Maconie, Terry Wogan, Glastonbury and even has a personal appearance by Guy Garvey!:

So there you have it, even if the episode’s hit the airwaves we still need your memories and opinions and, hopefully, you too can become a part of The People’s Songs.

 

And along with the end of rationing came the invention of something else to bind the country together: The singles chart. Suddenly young people could afford recordings as well as the means to play them at home. Here’s Maureen’s fantastic story of her ‘liberation’ of her sister’s Al Martino record:

Originally hosted by The New Musical Express, the chart had actually only begun the year before. And reflecting the mood of the country in the summer of 1953 - reaching number five - was Winifred Atwell’s jolly piano romp, ‘The Coronation Rag.’

 Often lumped in with Mrs Mills and Russ Conway, Atwell’s talent went way beyond just banging out street party boogie-woogie anthems. Coming to this country via the USA from Trinidad in 1946, she won a place at the Royal Academy and was the first female pianist to be awarded the Academy's highest grading for musicianship. Her ragtime ‘tack’ piano playing in clubs and pubs was used as a side project to pay the bills. Oh, and you may remember her ‘Black and White Rag’ as the theme tune to BBC2’s Pot Black, the first popular snooker show on British TV!

But Winifred and her hits are a perfect representation of Britain of the ‘50s. Later to become not only the first female instrumentalist to have a UK number one, she was also the first black person to have a British number one. Remember our episode on ‘My Boy Lollipop’?

Here was an actual example of how the post-war Empire was experiencing cultural breakthroughs which, coupled with such things as The Festival of Britain in 1951 made it a world-leader in everything from science to the arts while also setting the stage for the seismic events of the ‘60s.

And if you think that such a quaint record as ‘Coronation Rag’ doesn’t bear much musical importance compared to, say, the introduction of rock ‘n’ roll via skiffle, you’d be wrong.

Just look at this quote from Keith Emerson, the king of progressive rock keyboardists: "I've always been into ragtime. In England - and I'm sure Rick Wakeman would concur - we loved Winifred Atwell, a fantastic honky-tonk and ragtime player."

We’ll have to wait until episode 46 later in the year to explore the worlds of Emerson and his ilk, but as ever, these shows demonstrate the universality of music and its power to unite people. And as ever, whether you remember ragtime or prog rock, we want to hear from you. These are, after all, The People’s Songs…

Of course, The People’s Songs aims to create a living record of those times not through mere politics. Culturally the UK suddenly seemed to again be centre of the cultural universe. Not only did we have ‘Britpop’ (in retrospect: a useful label to pigeonhole a slew of excellent but very different bands together) but in the visual arts the YBAs, including Hirst, Lucas and Emin, were shaking up the establishment. It was almost like the sixties has returned, such was the optimism.

Here’s contributor Mark talking about the music of the time.

Most of us have distinct memories of  the time, whether it be Liam and Patsy on the cover of Vanity Fair, sharks in formaldehyde or even this week’s key song (played by the band with a future TV physicist on keyboards) blaring (sorry) over the new Labour election victory celebrations. And luckily for us, you’ve shared these memories to make this series so successful.

Not only that, you’ve shared some wonderful pictures as well. As a result, the website now has a rather fine gallery of pictures of many of our contributors. And some have even sent us pictures relevant to the times discussed on the show; from fanatical Amy Winehouse fans all the way back to where we started, in World War Two.

Personal favourites in the gallery are a picture of an original 2i’s coffee bar membership card (the place where Tommy Steele and Cliff and the Shadows got their first big break) and some gorgeous old snaps from contributor Angie Jackson of her parents back in the ‘50s, newly arrived in Britain.

Every week we’ll be adding to the gallery, and if you have pictures that relate to any of the shows, please get in touch via email or even Twitter. You’ll be helping us make history…