I got a major telling off from my dad when the first Guinness Hit Singles book came out (1978?) since he reckoned I could have done it with a few weekends of research in the archives of the Mitchell Library…those dusty, pre-internet days of Proper Research, eh?…

Too late in the day, but it’s quite odd that Guinness didn’t persist with the NME chart (it was the first, after all) until the BBC/BMRB one was introduced in ‘69. Would’ve seemed tidier as well as causing less grief. No Bachelors on Popular either!

http://www.sickthingsuk.co.uk/images/gb-mem.jpg

I was 20 at the time (which oddly feels a little old for this record, I don’t know why), but to me it was like the pop equivalent of the first track on Led Zeppelin’s first LP, Communication Breakdown : you’re hooked within about half a second. (Like many others, that was the first half second I ever heard of LZ…clever layout on LP).

It doesn’t get any better than that first half-second, but in fairness neither does it get worse.

Think this rates a 9.

Since Record Retailer was the principal industry magazine its Top 50 was, strictly speaking, the official industry chart but the chart was never widely circulated outside the industry and was not used for practical purposes in the media, or indeed most of the industry itself - George Martin and the Beatles, for instance, have always regarded “Please Please Me” as their legitimate first number one.

In the sixties there were four main singles charts - the NME, Melody Maker, Record Retailer and the BBC. The BBC one tended to be a compilation or reckoning of the other three - based on points IIRC, so you might not want to trust them too much - but the NME one was generally regarded as the definitive list since it had the greatest number of chart return shops and a weekly Friday-Thursday compilation schedule which corresponded with record release dates of the time, since singles in those days were released on Fridays rather than Mondays. This for instance is why Beatles singles didn’t tend to enter at number one in the Record Retailer list since they based their chart on a Monday-to-Saturday schedule - i.e. only two days’ sales for new releases. Also, the NME chart allowed EPs, so several of their number ones (e.g. 1965’s Kinda Kinks, lead track “Well Respected Man” which reportedly outsold everything else that year bar “Tears”) do not register in Guinness at all.

Intriguingly, “Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane” did make number one in NME but everywhere else stayed second to Engelbert and thus that has passed into historical lore.

By 1968 there was pressure, largely from the BBC as well as certain quarters of the industry, for the chart to be standardised, and the contract was won by BMRB with effect from February 1969. Most of the 350 chart return shops in Britain registered with BMRB, with the consequence that, although NME and MM continued with their own charts, they suffered a steep decrease in sources and so became less authoritative.

I heard someone say once that before the BMRB there were three or four versions of the chart which were no more definitive than a variety of pre-election opinion polls, but I guess, given the NME’s circulation, its chart was, as you say, more credible than the rest. So in the eyes of most people at the time, “Please Please Me” was a number one and the Beatles habitually went straight in at one afterwards? Whatever, the Record Retailer list is the “accepted” canon now, which you no doubt see as Orwellian rewriting of history – but how exactly did it come about?

The fact is that the disc peaked at Number Two in one chart as I clearly stated above. The Record Retailer lists were by no means the definitive or official ones prior to the BMRB’s standardisation of the chart in February 1969; the NME chart carried far more credibility in the industry and it is a shame that copyright issues prevented it from being used as the official record for Guinness, as it should have been.

The “Stranger On The Shore” debate has always been a mute point but the fact is that the disc peaked at Number Two, as Erithian says, although it stayed in the the chart for months. It also has the distinction of being the first record by a British artist to top the charts in The United States. The first group/band were The Tornados not long after.

I’m assuming that “She Loves You” came top.

I have my ‘play this at my funeral’ CD all prepared, and ‘Alma Mater’ is the penultimate track thereon: brilliant, chilling, sad……..it would have been the final track as i go to my resting place, but frankly couldn’t resist Roxy’s ‘Both ends burning’ for the cremation.

As for “School’s Out,” it’s impossible to dislike but it stirs no particular associations for me except maybe the “History of Rock and Roll” special that used to run on PBS. It’s never been a major classic-rock staple; I’m surprised to discover how unfamiliar I am with it upon hearing it now. It’s good stuff though! Gotta love “We got no class, and we got no principals” (principles). That’s good, that.