Can you easily name your favourite recording artists? When asked this question, I generally rattle off a rapid list of Led Zeppelin, ELO, Yes, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd – these were the formative artists who shaped my early listening, and their albums feature large (monumentally for Led Zeppelin, given I bought all nine of the 2014/5 deluxe box sets) in my vinyl collection. If I check my streaming history, however, only ELO and Yes feature there strongly, and even they are both outranked by Philip Glass and 10CC, and are quite dominated by Alex the Astronaut, who thankfully saves me from a list entirely devoid of contemporary artists. But there is an omission.
I have long suppressed from my list the band which may have been most influential of all on my formative musical taste, as well as my appreciation of an extensive range of musical styles, and my understanding of orchestration, not to mention a lifelong hate of littering. As you’ll have gathered from the headline above, that band was The Wombles. Some of you will now be fist-pumping the air and yelling ‘Yeh! At last, the truth will be told!’ The rest of you probably know the Wombles primarily as blokes in large shaggy suits, last seen playing to an appreciative but slightly confused Glastonbury crowd in 2011.
And that was great to see. But you don’t know the half of it. The Wombles were the most successful UK chart act of 1974.
Yes, 50 years ago. David Essex – he did well; he was the second most successful. The T.