Golden Sunsets Redux - 60 Years of Memories - Part 14 - 1980

We move into a new decade, I become a teenager, and an album featuring the *other* composer with the initials JW becomes my favourite of the year...

1980:

The trivia:

• The Rhinoceros Party were one of the most famous satirical political movements in Canadian history. It was founded in 1963 and became particularly well-known in the 1970s and 1980s for its absurd campaigns. They often ran candidates who promised to resign if elected. In the 1980 federal election, they received over 1% of the popular vote, despite promising to: repeal the laws of gravity, build taller schools to provide 'higher' education, count the 'Thousand Islands' to see if the Americans stole any, and tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could see the Pacific sunset.

• Photographer Robert Landsburg spent many weeks photographing the Mount St. Helens volcano in the lead up to it's catastrophic eruption. When the mountain exploded on 18th May, it unleashed a massive ash blast moving at hundreds of miles per hour. Landsburg was only a few miles from the summit and realised that he would never escape the rapidly advancing cloud. Winding his camera film back into it's case to protect the images he had already taken, he placed it into his backpack and then lay on top of it in attempt to protect the contents from the intense heat. Seventeen days later his body was found buried in the volcanic ash. Remarkably the film was recovered and successfully developed, and the images provided valuable scientific insight into the eruption and its immediate effects.

• In 1980, IBM introduced the first ever hard drive with a capacity of 1 gigabyte. It weighed an astonishing 226 kilograms, was the size of a refrigerator and cost nearly £ 18,000 (around £80,000 when adjusted for todays inflation). It used a large cabinet and required special cooling and power systems. For comparison, a modern microSD card costing less than £50 can hold 1 terabyte (1,000 GB), weighs less than a gram and fits in your pocket.

The memory:

Sky 2

No, not the now-defunct television channel from the Murdoch media empire, but the second album from the quintessential classical / prog-rock "supergroup".

Sky were formed by the coming together of five musicians at the top of their game:

• John Williams - one of the most acclaimed classical guitarists in the world, probably most famous for "Cavatina" - the theme from the movie "The Deer Hunter".

• Herbie Flowers - former member of "T. Rex" and recognised by many as one of the best bass players in the world. He appeared on albums with Elton John, David Bowie, Cat Stevens and Paul McCartney, and also played the prominent bass line on Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side". Plus he worked with Jeff Wayne on his musical version of "War Of The Worlds".

• Tristan Fry - a drummer and percussionist on (amongst many other things) the Beatles "A Day In The Life" and the timpanist for the "Academy of St Martins in the Fields" chamber orchestra. He also played at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

• Kevin Peek - an Australian guitarist who for many years was part of Cliff Richard's regular backing band, alongside session work for Manfred Mann, Lulu, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey He also played on many film soundtracks.

• Francis Monkman - founder member of pioneering psychedelic band "Curved Air". He was an accomplished harpsichord player and a fan of free-form musical composition techniques.

Williams, Fry and Flowers had been friends since the early 70s when they had performed together (along with others) on Williams' non-classical release "Changes". They stayed in touch over the years and when Francis Monkman joined them on the 1978 album "Travelling", they realised that they wanted to set up their own full-time cross-genre band, combining pop, classical and rock elements. Recruiting Kevin Peek (fresh from working with David Bowie), the quintet was complete, and Sky released their first self-titled album in 1979. It combined versions of well known classical pieces along with original compositions by Monkman and Flowers. With much critical acclaim, it quickly reached gold record status and sell out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and the Dominion Theatre followed.

With their mix of genres, styles and instruments (they were the first to combine acoustic and electronic instruments in such a way), Sky appealed to a wide breadth of music fans. People who traditionally would not listen to classical music found themselves drawn in by the rock interpretations. Classical enthusiasts attracted by the Williams name enjoyed the more free-form original material. 

I was completely unaware of this success though. While I had a growing interest in pop music, I also really enjoyed instrumental albums. The disco-style versions of classic film and TV science fiction themes by Geoff Love were some of my favourites. Plus as I've already documented, Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" was a passion, and hardly off my turntable since it's release. However, I had been too young for the peak years of the prog rock explosion  - and as for classical music? Well up til now, 99% of that left me cold, as it seemed to be the stuff for ancient granddads who liked listening to the eternally dull BBC Radio 3.

Then, on an episode of "Top of the Pops" in May 1980, I saw Sky perform the track that became their most well-known and successful single - "Toccata". This was an arrangement of Bach's famous "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", but with the usual organ and orchestra replaced by synthesizers, frantic drums and electric guitars. Now this was classical music I could get into to! They also seemed to be having a lot of fun, perhaps hardly able to believe that they were on the BBC's flagship pop music show with a single that eventually reached number five in the charts. See for yourself:

Intrigued by the performance, I ambled along to my local record store in search of more music by the band, and there, still in the top 10 was their second album "Sky 2" - a double LP no less. Thankfully I had enough money saved up from doing odd jobs around the house that I could afford to buy it. I took it home eagerly, opened the gatefold sleeve and placed the first vinyl record on the turntable. And now my musical education really began...

The first record is made up of original Sky compositions - and some lengthy ones at that. Jeff Wayne aside (and that's a special case I think), I was more used to the more traditional three or four minute pop /  novelty songs of my early childhood. The jaunty "Dance of the Little Fairies" was fairly brief, but two tracks ("Hotta" and  the Arabic-influenced "Sahara") were around seven or eight minutes long. What's more, the fourth, "FIFO" - a four movement ode to computer programming no less - took up the entire B side, effectively one seventeen minute prog rock opus. That was my first real exposure to this kind of thing, and I immediately fell in love with it.

The second LP began with live novelty favourite "Tuba Smarties", showcasing Herbie Flowers and his brass instrument. I'm sure I recall seeing Herbie perform this on later occasions, dressed as a kind of gnome, his tuba bedecked in multi-coloured fairy lights. Following that were several fairly traditional versions of classical pieces from Praetorius, Rameau and Vivaldi, before Mr. Fry had his own turn with the percussion focused "Tristan's Magic Garden" ( I particularly like the use of the vibraphone) and John Williams worked his Spanish folk magic on "El Cielo". The final side saw Sky's own take on the Curved Air barnstormer "Vivaldi" before the wonderful twelve minute "Scipio", that allowed everyone to get in on the action. The closing track was of course "Toccata".

Okay, so maybe it's true that the music was not going to set the world alight or create a cultural revolution - and maybe it's true the five members (apart from Monkman with his long hair) looked like the kind of respectable people your grandma might approve of, but for some reason their music really spoke to me. Millions of others obviously agreed because "Sky 2" was immensely popular, topping the charts - and the band made regular appearances on television. I had friends at secondary school who were also into the band, and we regularly talked about our favourite tracks.

The other thing that made the album stand out was the fact that it had liner notes from all the members of the band (another first for me), talking about the pieces and the music they had written. These were written in a jokey style, gentle taking the mickey out of each other and it really felt like Sky were connecting with the audience. On weekends I read these brief notes while I played the two LP's over and over again at as loud a volume as my parents would allow.

Sky's popularity continued to grow and their 1981 tour culminated with the first ever rock concert performed at Westminster Abbey in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Amnesty International. It was recorded and shown later as a special programme on BBC1, and I remember watching the show, as it was the first time I had seen Sky live in proper concert mode, instead of on something like "The Val Doonican Show".

By this point Francis Monkman had left the band, after becoming unhappy with the direction the music was going in (and is on record as being particularly acerbic about my much-loved “Scipio” on “Sky 2”, refusing to ever play it live). He was replaced by Steve Gray, a very active and well-regarded session musician pianist and arranger. He would go on to play a big part in the band’s future endeavours. 

The Westminster Abbey concert was also the first time that many tracks from the new third album were played to the public - and Grays involvement moved them away from the more psychedelic sound of some of the music on the first two albums. A tour of the UK, Europe and Australia supported the release. I’m pretty sure I bought "Sky 3" as soon as it came out and there are some great compositions  - the barnstorming “Moonroof” and ”Westwind” are particular favourites. I did play it regularly, but for some reason it just didn't feel quite as important to me. It seemed that my brief passion for the band was beginning to fade. 

Amazingly Sky kept going until 1995 through various line-up changes, but they never repeated the kind of mainstream success of their early years, and I never bought any of the subsequent LPs. I think part of it might have been that my tastes were expanding and changing - and I had discovered the electronic musical genius of Jean-Michel Jarre when a friend lent me his copy of "Magnetic Fields".

But that's another story...

Honourable mentions:

• The Adventure Game - The immensely popular 'science fiction' game show where celebrities had to solve a series of puzzles to get back to Earth, and clearly the inspiration behind "The Crystal Maze". Most people now seem to remember it for the "Vortex" game at the end where contestants could be evaporated  - which actually didn't come in til series 2.  I personally liked the more cerebral tasks such as figuring out which of the "Drogna" shapes could be stood on based on a scientific mnemonic, the backwards talking Argonds ("Doogy Rev") or having to use a creaky BBC Micro to negotiate a pitch black maze. The "Den of Geek" website has a lovely look back at the series here. Wonderful stuff which finally got a DVD release in 2017.

• Flash Gordon - As much as I adore the black and white Buster Crabbe serials that were endlessly shown on early morning television during school holidays, the 1980 Dino De Laurentiis rightly sits there alongside them. Yes it's tongue in cheek, but pretty much everything is perfect - the casting, the visuals and not forgetting the Queen soundtrack. It's cheesiness it part of the charm. Brian Blessed has spent the rest of his career bellowing two words at the world with great relish and try and find a heterosexual teenage boy who didn't have indecent thoughts about Onella Muti as Princess Aurora...

• Cosmos - By rights this ground-breaking science series should have run away with my personal memory top spot for 1980. It's thirteen peerless episodes affected me in ways that have reverberated down the decades and I learnt so much from Carl Sagan that I wish I had had the chance to meet him and thank him for all that he did for me. When we talk about personal heroes, Carl Sagan's name is in the top three. The amazing journeys into outer space echoed the wonder I felt the first time I saw "Cosmic Zoom" - and that was without the electronic beauty of the music of Vangelis. I've bought the music soundtrack, the accompanying book, the original and "special edition" VHS videos, and the DVD's (twice). I never get tired of watching it and Sagan's opening narration is ingrained on my brain forever. So why isn't it up there instead of "Sky 2"? Well partly that's because, as I've stated before, I'm trying to pick things that are slightly different, and partly because "Cosmos" is *so* important both personally and culturally that it deserves much more space devoted to it. It'll probably have to wait til much, much later, but I want to look back at each episode separately and in detail. Something to look forward to then...