CHICORY TIP - “Son Of My Father”
(#310, 19th February 1972)
I’ve spent the last three months on a crash course - is there any other kind? - in fatherhood, and I’d love to report that Chicory Tip have served as guides and mentors in this process. But they haven’t - mostly because Peter Hewson’s chewy way with a lyric makes it quite hard to work out what their child-rearing advice would actually be. “Moolin, I was foolin, I was free from drive” - great lyric, especially “moolin”, a combination of mooching and rolling, perfectly capturing the free-and-easiness of the irresponsible pre-Dad lad. Also: wrong lyric. According to every source I’ve found it’s “Moulded I was folded I was free from draft” - an indictment of risk-free parenting. Who’d be a lyricist?
Hewson’s performance is terrific, anyway, helping to ground the track’s instrumental novelty in rock and stomp. He’s not what anyone remembers “Son Of My Father” for, though - it’s the Moroder involvement, and the chorus, and the moog, the moog, the moog. “Chicory Tip invented techno”, as one running joke puts it, but even if you can’t hear that strand of tomorrow in “Son”, you can locate signposts to many other routes synths in pop took. The solo nods to the contemporary Keith Emerson, knives-in-keyboards school. The mighty riff establishes a mini tradition of banging glam robot rock which has been picked up intermittently ever since (the Rah Band, Denim, Daft Punk). In the rub of Hewson against the buzz and shimmer of his backing, you see the origins of Phil Oakey’s ambivalent futurism. And in the spangly background flourishes that give the track colour, you can hear the joy in synthesised sound that motivated all these and almost everyone else. 8
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FT's Tom on March 15th, 2007
Apologies, by the way, for the lack of recent posts here - nothing to do with new fatherhood, everything to do with a brain-melting blizzard of work, which has now started to ease.
jeff w on March 15th, 2007
haha I have been gaga with anticipation for this post, had sort of worked out in my head some things I was going to say, and you’ve pretty much preempted every word! Not least the indecipherable “moolin, foolin” line… but it’s “pre prom dry” surely? :)
And is it “sadistic” or “statistic” minds a bit later on?
This is the third (and final) Popular entry that was included on The First LP I Ever Owned* - Joe Cocker and “Get It On” being the previous two. Thus “Son Of My Father” would have always been a potential 10 for me. But those astonishing moog parts push it over the top. A perfect pop single in my book.
(*The LP also included another Chicory Tip song, “What’s Your Name”, which lyrically is a bit naff and un-PC (not in the “Baby Jump” league by any means but in a similar vein) but again has dazzling, shimmering synthesizer parts - which are satisfyingly different in sound to the synths on “SOMF”. No one-trick pony, Moroder, even back then.)
IIRC the artwork and cover picture of the Son Of My Father LP has more of the look of country rock record rather than a proto-techno album!
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on March 15th, 2007
had the “proto techno” look even been invented yet? kraftwerk sleeves sported traffic cones at this time!
(in fact what WAS the first sleeve to feature eg a ROBOT? tell me it wasn’t queen)
(of course there are some hyper-modernist CLASSICAL sleeves in the 60s, tho they tend to be expressionist-futurist rather than cubist or pop-cubist)
Rosie on March 15th, 2007
Ah! civilisation returns at last!
Let’s see, what am I doing at this time? Mock A-levels are over. I’m busy with rehearsals for the school play, The Crucible, which was great fun - it was said of the cast that they didn’t have to act, they were like that anyway. Afterwards we, or at least the oddball faction to which I belonged, would often go to the bar of the Barn Theatre to chill out and set the world to rights and flirt outrageously. I, who had been so quiet and mousy up to this point in my life, began to become outrageous.
I didn’t care much for this, though, despite its positive associations. I’ve never been wild about electronics, I’m afraid.
Kat on March 15th, 2007
Sing along with the video! Words may be subject to change.
I looked it up because I thought I didn’t know this song. Of course I know this song! What a brilliant moog solo.
scott on March 16th, 2007
i’d be surprised if this was the first, but ringo’s ‘goodnight vienna’ (1974) has a robot.
Doctor Casino on March 16th, 2007
Glad to see this blog survives! I’ve been looking forward to this entry for many moons; to date, it’s my favorite of the songs I never would have checked out if not for this blog and associated list of all UK #1s. The Moog is so sweet and bright and pure - I think if I could have only one genre of music to exist it would be this type of thing. Not sure Daft Punk is really the heir here - something like Robert Schneider’s side-project The Marbles moreso. Ace popcraft married to a child’s enthusiasm for electronic sounds. It’s a great, great, great song, and a deserving #1.
“What’s Your Name” is nice too, but the use of the synth there is much closer to, I dunno, Switched-On Bach. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t feel half as fresh and four-tracky as this…
Marcello Carlin on March 16th, 2007
There’s a robot on the cover of Can’s Monster Movie (1969). The Tornados had a hit with “Robot” in ‘63 but unfortunately they didn’t do picture sleeves at that time.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on March 16th, 2007
well done can! it’s maybe borderline that it’s a robot (rather than a psychedelic fantasy moorcockian warrior-knight), but it’s absolutely proto-techno in style
Tom on March 16th, 2007
Isn’t it pretty blatantly Galactus on the cover of MM?
JACK KIRBY INVENTOR OF TECHNO!
FT's Rob Brennan on March 16th, 2007
Kat, that video was shot on Southsea seafront near my old house! I love this song. The moogwork is awesome and Hewson’s having so much fun that it makes me want to go and
ruinsing it at karaoke right now.FT's Rob Brennan on March 16th, 2007
I R HTML fule but you can probably work out where I meant to put the strikethru.
FT's Rob Brennan on March 16th, 2007
Except it’s now allowed it. Gah!
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on March 16th, 2007
maybe it’s a robot simulacrum of galactus!?
Erithian on March 16th, 2007
Such a perfect day – sun shining, lunchtime drink with friends, got a photo of 3-month-old Thomas in his Red Nose Day sleepsuit, got a ticket for the first game at the new Wembley and to top it all “Popular” is back.
The moment of glory for Maidstone’s finest, although they did have a few hits of diminishing size (I wouldn’t have called “What’s Your Name” un-PC, Jeff, more a straightforward tale of boy-fancies-girl, boy-finds-girl-fancies-him-back, happy ending). The indecipherable singer might not be the most successful P. Hewson in pop history but gt to Number 1 sixteen years before the other one.
But apart from the Moog, which everyone is justly celebrating, there’s another major contribution we can thank the Tip for. A couple of weeks after “Son Of My Father” was deposed from Number 1, Manchester City signed Rodney Marsh from Queen’s Park Rangers thinking he’d be the last piece in the jigsaw that would enable them to clinch the league title (he wasn’t , and they didn’t – but to be fair it was one of the tightest finishes ever). But it was City fans, IIRC, who were the first to adopt the recent chart-topper, turning it into “Ohhhhh Rodney Rodney, Rodney Rodney Rodney Rodney Rodney Marsh” – the template for any number of songs about three- or five-syllable footballers since. Maybe the City supporters’ talent for purloining previous hits rubbed off on a four-year-old Blue growing up in Burnage at the time.
FT's CarsmileSteve on March 16th, 2007
i was wondering who the first footballer was that this song was applied to, i think you’ve got a pretty strong case there though :)
Erithian on March 16th, 2007
Continuing the footy/music link, this was also the spring in which the first club-based (as opposed to England) football record made the top 10, in the shape of Chelsea’s No 5 hit “Blue Is The Colour”. Unlike “Good Old Arsenal”, which crept into the top 20 the year before, and most hit football songs since, this wasn’t linked to an FA Cup Final appearance – they’d reached the League Cup Final, but then as now the League Cup wasn’t something to make a song and dance about. Just a catchy tune and a trendy club. (It was followed into the top 10 by “Leeds United” by Leeds United, which was neither.)
Erithian on March 16th, 2007
Weirdly, when I googled “Blue is the Colour” to check its chart position, I stumbled onto a blog called Troubled Diva, where the following has been posted this very morning. Tom, no offence taken if you edit this post if you think it’s inappropriate, but since it’s Red Nose Day, FT readers might like to know about this:
Bloggers publish book for Comic Relief.
100 bloggers have published a book to raise funds of the BBC’s Comic Relief appeal on Friday 16th March.
‘Shaggy Blog Stories’ features hilarious contributions from Richard Herring of ‘Fist of Fun’ fame, BBC 6Music presenter Andrew Collins, comedian Emma Kennedy, and James Henry, scriptwriter from Channel Four’s ‘The Green Wing’.
Authors Abby Lee, David Belbin, Catherine Sanderson and The Guardian’s Anna Pickard have also contributed pieces to the book.
The vast majority of contributions, however, are the work of many of the lesser known and unfamiliar heroes of British blogging; going under pen names such as Diamond Geezer, Scaryduck, Pandemian and Unreliable Witness.
Also contributing to ‘Shaggy Blog Stories’, and hoping to raise funds for the Comic Relief Appeal is local writer INSERT YOUR NAME, LOCALITY AND BLOG DETAILS HERE.
The book is the idea of blogger Mike Atkinson who writes the ‘Troubled Diva’ weblog. ‘Shaggy Blog Stories’ features comic writing from not only the cream of British blogging, but also the best up-and-coming and undiscovered writers publishing their work on their own websites.
Giving himself a “ridiculously short” seven days from idea to finished product, Atkinson admitted that he was overwhelmed with the response, which gleaned over 300 submissions for publication.
With a pool of talented writers, and the latest publishing-on-demand technology, Shaggy Blog Stories bypasses the usual snail-paced publishing industry, and offers a mail order service to customers who will receive their finished copy within days of placing their order, and only a couple of weeks after the original idea.
“Blogging creates complex, worldwide networks of friendship and contacts on the internet”, says journalist Alistair Coleman, one of Shaggy Blog Stories’ contributors. “By creating a buzz about this book, we can reach out to hundreds, thousands of readers who’d be willing to part with a few quid for this very good cause. Mike’s got some excellent writers on board here whose work deserves a wider audience. Everybody wins.”
For details of how to order the book, visit http://www.shaggyblogstories.co.uk.
For the background story on the creation of Shaggy Blog Stories, take a look at http://www.troubled-diva.com.
FT's Tom on March 16th, 2007
No worries - Troubled Diva is a good blog and a good bloke. If I checked his site more often perhaps I would have badgered Tanya Headon to submit something!
jeff w on March 16th, 2007
Troubled Diva is syndicated on LJ, so you can keep tabs on it through yr LJ friends page, Tom. That’s what I do. Saves the effort of having to check the site every day.
FT's Tom on March 16th, 2007
My LJ friends page is overrun with syndications as is. No, I need a proper blogroll agaun.
FT's doofuus2003 on March 19th, 2007
As a 16 year old at the time, with likes as wide apart as Dave and Ansil Collins and T.Rex from this list (as well as Black Sabbath et al) and with loads of mates who liked everything from Tamla to Crimson, I can safely say that we all hated this disc; especially the synth riff, which is annoying in a Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep kind of way. Thus I am puzzled by the positive thoughts expressed…
Grebbsy on April 4th, 2007
I always assumed the line was “moulded, I was folded, I was free-form packed…” i.e. wrapped up neatly and made to conform. But what do I know? I am but an egg.
VP on November 22nd, 2007
There’s a store in Bristol that still plays this! And I’ve written about it in my blog today and found you as the perfect link to explain what it’s all about.
Thank you!
baz music on December 6th, 2007
Chicory tip are still gigging (minus Hewson) With Richard taking lead vocals. Richard played the moog on the the record but now plays it on his 60’s strat.
Marcello Carlin on December 7th, 2007
Now this is a song which I want to see Rhydian tackle on X-Factor.