25 December 1970
British rock and pop of the ’60s never shook off its worship of bluesy ’50s US rock & roll, so you can’t really say ‘I Hear You Knocking’ embodies the start of the new decade’s ’50s revival. That said, a tinny, crappy vocal track on a much-covered old song suggests the creative choice here was to sound “authentic” and rootsy – a decision undercut by the pin-sharp production on the guitars and especially the incongruously cheesy piano chord that ends each chorus. ‘I Hear You Knocking’ may have been bracingly direct and stripped-back in its immediate context of orchestrated pop, lacquered Motown, and any lingering hippy shit, but now just sounds wilfully and tediously old-timey.
And so ends the first year of the new decade, with chart-toppers ranging from bubblegum pop to folk-cabaret schmaltz, but not yet any number one to blaze a trail for any thrilling new sound of the ’70s. We won’t be waiting on Dave Edmunds for that – but maybe he wasn’t far off. Just outside the UK and Irish top tens in December 1970 was another ’50s-riffing single: ‘Ride A White Swan’, by a band who had previously made hippyish folk-rock but had now refined their sound, their membership and their cumbersome old name of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Let’s see what 1971 has in store for them and for us.
