101. All About Eve - Flowers In Our Hair (Eden)

One week at number one on 1st August 1987

It sometimes feels as if people were mourning the death of the hippy dream within five minutes of the whole thing starting. I’m exaggerating for effect, obviously, but the nostalgia and regret seem to start fairly sharply. Thunderclap Newman’s 1969 number one “Something In The Air” drips with desperation – the line “We have got to get it together” sounding more panicked than optimistic, urging somebody somewhere not to just do something, but attempt it in an organised, unified way. 

More bizarrely still, the obscure track “Imagine”*, recorded by Elton John, Rodger Hodgson (of eventual Supertramp fame) and friends in the same year seems to be fondly looking back at an era which had only just passed. “You'll find that the flowers won't wait/ they will disintegrate” warns Hodgson; and by 1969 they had, broadly speaking. Both songs feel as if they’re taking place at a wake, or at least on the last bank holiday of August when a faint chill can be felt on the breeze.

The seventies weren’t without occasional dabbles back into the land of corduroy toadstools – Hawkwind’s entire damn career and Rainbow Cottage’s freak 1976 hit “Seagull” are indicative of that – but the children did indeed grow up, and the British kids who took their place post-1976 were often angry, marginalised and aggrieved rather than peace loving. There’s a frequently unspoken and unreferenced commonality between the underground hippies and the seventies punks, but the Year Zero effects of punk rock rendered the frilliest and softest edges of psychedelic pop redundant; there would be no more pollen on 45 for awhile (excepting The Damned's occasional dabbles).

Attitudes softened again in the eighties with a bunch of “Paisley Underground” types emerging in 1982, but few were bold enough to try to earnestly shove Flower Power front and centre of anything they did. References were made, but mainly in a very knowing, nudging fashion. This meant that by the time All About Eve’s “Flowers In Our Hair” emerged in 1987, music critics inevitably balked at the ludicrous balls on it; here was a single, after all, which seemed to be weeping a lament for the loss of a potentially transformative era, right down to the promo video which saw the heavy-handed imagery of a coffin daubed with the words “Hippy – RIP” being set ablaze. These people, concluded the journalists, were either very brave or very stupid. 

Or possibly neither. Despite their goth following, All About Eve were one of the few acts of this era to have a genuinely romantic and unironic view of the recent pre-punk past. Psychedelia didn’t play a prominent role in their musical thinking, but the early to mid seventies did. Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff scoffed that the group were like Fleetwood Mac**, but his barbs aside, they also clearly had Fairport Convention in their record collections too (or at the very least lead singer Julianne Regan certainly did). The group could rock out, but there was a floaty, measured, almost gentile aspect to everything they did – the airy softness and wondrous expression of Regan’s voice dictating the backdrop and ensuring the group were never going to be anchored to thundering basslines and reverb-heavy rhythms. You just can’t mix those kinds of flavours together.

Moreover, Regan wasn’t shy about passionately embracing topics of conversation the mainstream press almost certainly regarded as passé – she happily spilled forth about paganism and spells at a point in time where even Julian Cope could get a bit cautious around the subject. It was never exactly clear whether she simply didn’t give a shit whether she was being fashionable or was too carried away with her own trip to notice. Her interviews at this time were fascinatingly but almost innocently out of time, enthusiastic must-reads for anyone who didn’t want to wade through even more rock decadence and punk inspired nihilism.

Perhaps it would have been more surprising if such a group hadn’t released a single about the death of the hippy dream, then. Despite this, “Flowers In Our Hair” is, it has to be said, somewhat heavy handed, but with sentiments utterly in keeping with the kind of last gasps we heard in 1969. “We earn the flowers in our hair my friend/ So take my hand/ ‘One day’ is always too far away” Regan sings, with a bit of a regretful trill towards the instrumental break. The track also concludes with perhaps the key point a lot of journalists missed, unable to see the cynicism for the paisley patterns: “We only dare to say 'please love me'/ At the seventh glass of wine”. Aha. So it’s as much about buttoned-up English repression and how that ties in with disappointment and sourness and unrealised emotional aspirations. It also explains an earlier line “Do you ever think we’ll make it/ something more than a uniform?” 

Regan’s voice and easy, floaty charisma enabled her to get away with these ideas in a way very few other vocalists at the time could have pulled off. She’s too confident and powerful in her delivery to be child-like (which would have rendered this record an horrendous, twee mess – imagine it sung in a lisping, prim voice to get what I mean) but has enough natural charm and gentleness to also make the ideas seem almost palatable, even slap-bang in the middle of a Thatcherite decade where you were supposed to be either greedy or angry (or possibly both). She appeared to have inherited the independent spirit and waywardness of punk in terms of attitude, but the record collection of a mid seventies university graduate.

70. The Cramps - Can Your Pussy Do The Dog (Big Beat)

Three weeks at number one from 16th November 1985

Of all the groups to visit the NME Indie Number One spot, The Cramps have been the slowest to peak so far (unless we count Robert Wyatt). Formed in 1976, their wait for a stint at the summit position – and indeed a debut within the UK National Top 75 – feels sluggish to say the least. If it were any other veteran punk group, you would assume it was something of a Toy Dolls situation; a freak novelty breakout hit pestering the peak slot.

The Cramps were a strange group, though; their obsession with trashy, furious old school rock and roll and B movies made them seem a heavy influence on the psychobilly scene, which by 1985 was only just shifting downwards from its 83/84 peak. Then their proclivity towards PVC stagewear and even on-stage nudity, plus the use of heavy make up and the aforementioned horror flicks, gave them an appeal to the more vampish goths. Punks also appreciated the high-paced attacks they threw into all their songs, and then there were weirdos like Mark E Smith who appreciated them purely for being fellow outsiders.

Alan McGee was also a fan, and when they inevitably signed to Creation in the mid-nineties, bouyed up by the label’s influx of Oasis cash, I was astonished by all the number of my friends who suddenly came out of the woodwork saying they’d always been fans. Once again, the sexier and camper goths, anarchists and leather jacketed rock and roll boys who rolled their own tobacco nipped down to the local record shop to buy “Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs”. “Ha ha!” a friend of mine barked delightedly on learning of the title. “You couldn’t get a more Cramps song title than that”.

I’m in danger of making them sound like a gargantuan cult, though, one of those bands who accidentally pulled in so many freaks and art school kids that they were a constant Top 40 threat. That’s far from the truth. The Cramps played the club circuit and lived in the cracks and airless caverns of society, supported by a loyal fanbase but never making sense to quite enough people to come close to being called a phenomenon.

In 1985, “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog” proved to be the closest they’d come so far to a breakthrough, and given that, it’s surprising how much of a step backwards it sounds. It has the same wide-eyed swaggering rock vocals of The Damned in their punk prime, a similar hollow, under-produced yet heavy duty whack to last year’s psychobilly movement, and very faint echoes of The Fall at their rawest and scratchiest (in other words, the group The Fall had ceased to be). The key thing to remember when pulling these various similarities together, though, is The Cramps were on the opposite side of the ocean in New York while all these things were occurring in Britain. The psychobilly scene owed them a debt, and similarities to any other punk bands were usually either coincidental, or entirely due to transatlantic admiration of their work.