I really loved that white jacket although now I come to think about it, I only ever wore it once. Oh well, before we get to it, let’s take a quick look at some of my 70’s pop star heroes.

David Cassidy

I wasn’t so much a fan of David Cassidy, I just wanted to look like him. I always thought he was a pretty cool dude and although I didn’t rush out and buy his music I always kind of liked him. Cassidy was an unexpected superstar, the son of actor Jack Cassidy who crops up frequently in classic Columbo episodes.

David began working as an actor and musician and was signed up by Universal studios in 1969. He worked on many TV shows of the time like Ironside and Bonanza until he was signed up for a part in a show called ‘The Partridge family‘. Cassidy and the show became a runaway hit and ten albums produced during the show’s run sold over a million copies each. David became a teen idol and his personal concerts were sell outs but a Cassidy mania, not unlike that experienced by the Beatles years earlier, caused numerous problems and culminated in a stampede at White City stadium where many people were injured and one girl fan sadly died.
In later years Cassidy was still singing and writing and appeared in many stage shows and musicals. You might even have seen him in a TV version of his life story, ‘The David Cassidy Story’.

On November 18, 2017, Cassidy was admitted to hospital with acute liver and kidney failure. He became critically ill and was put into a medically induced coma. He came out of the coma two days later in a critical but stable condition. Doctors hoped that Cassidy would survive until a liver became available for transplant, but he died of liver failure on November 21, 2017, at the age of 67.

According to Wikipedia, his daughter, Katie Cassidy, reported that his final words were “So much wasted time.”

Gary Glitter

Gary Glitter’s first big hit, back in the early seventies was ‘Rock n’ Roll’ parts 1 and 2, a double-sided single which on part 2 was mainly instrumental with group chants of ‘rock n roll’. Glitter followed this up with a string of hits throughout the early seventies with singles like ‘I’m the leader of the gang’, ‘I love you love me love’, ‘Do you wanna touch me?’ and ‘Hello hello, I’m back again’. His career faded afterwards but in the early 90’s his records were discovered by a new generation of record buyers and many modern artists have acknowledged that he was an inspiration to them in earlier years.

Back in 1976 my brother and I went to London to see him in concert. I’m pretty certain it was some sort of farewell concert but Gary soon made the first of many comebacks.

The late 1990’s saw his image become fatally destroyed by his arrest and conviction in 1999 for possession of child pornography. Some years later, in 2006, Glitter faced criminal charges and deportation from Vietnam after a court found him guilty of obscene acts with minors. Glitter was deported back to Britain and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life. These convictions turned Glitter from being one of the best-loved stars in British pop history, into a hated and loathed figure.

On 5 February 2015, Glitter was convicted of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one of having sex with a girl under the age of 13. On 27 February 2015, Glitter was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

On 3 February 2023, Glitter was released on licence after serving half of his sentence but on 13 March 2023, he was recalled to prison for breaching his licence conditions by allegedly viewing downloaded images of children.

David Bowie

Bowie is one of those stars who kept on making music throughout the years and constantly reinvented himself. One of the first tracks of his I ever bought was Life on Mars and a great early hit was Space Oddity. One of my personal favourites was The Laughing Gnome, originally released in 1967 in which Bowie sings with a ‘Gnome’ which was actually a speeded up vocal track.

Later Bowie created the character Ziggy Stardust and became one of the stars of the glam rock era. He changed style again with Young Americans, released in 1976. It was a big hit and even topped the US soul charts. In the 1980’s he had a hit with Under Pressure, a collaboration with Queen.

He also had numerous roles in the cinema playing an alien in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth and various others.

Bowie died while living in New York. He had contracted liver cancer and died on the 10^th of January 2016.

Cliff Richard

Cliff’s career began in the 1960s and has continued almost to the present day. In the 1970s he had twice sung the UK entry for the Eurovision Song Contest and had his own TV show on the BBC.

I can’t say that I was ever a big fan of Cliff however in the late 70’s and 80s he had a string of excellent hits that I really loved, songs that included Devil Woman, Miss You Nights, Carrie and Wired for Sound.

Cliff was involved in controversy in the late 1990’s when he complained that radio stations were not playing his records and he went as far as releasing a dance version of one of his songs under a different name to prove his point. The record was popular but radio stations stopped playing it when Cliff was revealed as the singer.

In 2014, Cliff’s property was searched in relation to allegations which arose from the Jimmy Saville investigation known as Operation Yewtree. The allegations were unfounded but Cliff was unhappy that they were broadcast on the BBC news and later sued both the South Yorkshire Police and the BBC receiving substantial damages.

According to Wikipedia, Cliff is the third top selling artist in the UK behind Elvis Presley and the Beatles.  John Lennon apparently said of Cliff that before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.

Elton John

In 1967 Reg Dwight answered an advertisement in the New Musical Express. Liberty Records had placed the ad as they were looking for musical talent and when Reg arrived at Liberty’s offices, he was given a sheaf of lyrics written by Bernie Taupin and so Reg promptly began writing music to Bernie’s words. When Reg decided to perform his new songs, he decided to use a different name and so Reg became Elton John.

1973 was probably my first record buying year. Up until then I really had little interest in music. The Beatles had pretty much passed me by and I was more interested in TV and film music rather than the pop charts. For Christmas 1972 my brother and I received a shared present, a new stereo record player. Of course, having a record player meant that I needed something to play on it. That’s when I discovered Elton.

I bought lots of Elton’s records throughout the 70s but I lost interest in his music in his later years.

In 2001 Elton released the album Songs from the West Coast. The album was received warmly by the media and I remember hearing many great reviews saying how Elton had returned to his piano based roots and so on. On Wikipedia I see that the album was recorded on analogue tape as Elton felt that gave the sound a warmer feel. OK I thought, sounds like a good time to try some of Elton’s latest music. While I was waiting to pay for the CD in HMV I noticed another album of Elton’s, Made in England, in the reduced section so I grabbed that while I was there.

Anyway, Songs from the West Coast was a total disappointment for me and not only that, I thought the whole thing had a tinny sound to it, not a warm one.

A few months later I noticed Made in England lying unplayed on a shelf so I popped it into my car to give it an airing. I’m so glad I did because Made in England is the album that to me, sounds much like his classic 70’s stuff with some outstanding tracks. A fabulous album, just as good as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Since then, Elton has been part of the first same sex UK marriage when he married his long time partner David Furnish and has seen his life story made into the 2019 film Rocketman starring Taron Egerton as Elton which includes a good many of Elton’s hits.

His latest album, Who Believes in Angels was released this year.

Marc Bolan

Bolan was a pop singer of the 1970s and is credited with beginning the glam rock movement by appearing on Top of the Pops, the BBC’s flagship music programme, with his group T Rex performing the single Hot Love wearing glitter make up on his face. The single was a number one hit and was followed up with my favourite Bolan/T Rex track, Get it On which spent 4 weeks at number one. Bolan and T Rex had numerous hits including Ride a White Swan, Telegram Sam, Metal Guru, Children of the Revolution and Solid Gold Easy Action. Bolan was great friends with David Bowie and Marc’s producer Tony Visconti later went on to work with Bowie.

In 1977 Bolan was involved with his girlfriend Gloria Jones. They went out to a nightclub in London, both had been drinking and Gloria was at the wheel of her mini when they crashed in south London. Gloria was injured but Marc was sadly killed. A shrine at the spot where they crashed is maintained by the T Rex Action Group.

David Essex

David Essex was another performer who made his name in the early seventies although in his youth he had ideas of becoming a footballer. He played the lead in the stage musical Godspell and then went on to star in the film ‘That’ll be the Day’. I remember seeing his album in a record shop and thinking what a cool dude he looked dressed in a white suit. The album was Rock On and the single went to number 3 in the UK charts in 1973. The next year David released one of my all-time favourite tracks Gonna make you a Star which went all the way up to number 1. He also appeared on the double album Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds and went on to star in many musicals such as ‘Godspell’ and Evita. In 2011, he joined the cast of TV soap ‘EastEnders’.

He is still writing, recording and performing today.

The White Jacket

When I saw David Essex singing ‘Rock On’ wearing a white suit on ‘Top of the Pops’ for the first time, I thought he was the epitome of seventies cool and it occurred to me that one way to transform my gangling self-conscious self into something better might be to get that very same white suit. I couldn’t afford a suit at the time so I settled for a jacket, a white jacket, and I well remember admiring myself in the mirror before my first Saturday night out wearing it, sometime back in 1973.

The first problem I encountered with the jacket came on the bus into town. I sat on the back seat and in those days, the back seats of our local buses were a little notorious for being dusty and grimy as they were over the engine and absorbed all the engine fumes. Also there were people who put their feet up on the seats leaving marks to which people like me (the twerp in the white suit) were highly susceptible. Another thing is that all my life I have been cursed with being clumsy and once I had met up with my friends I somehow managed to spill beer all down my sleeve. Anyway, the night went on, more or less successfully. I certainly remember having a good time although the white jacket failed in its primary function; that of attracting gorgeous girls.

Later on, we stopped at the kebab shop and somehow a sizeable portion of chilli sauce managed to attach itself to my jacket. Rather than feeling like David Essex, I felt a little like Alec Guinness in the film The Man In The White Suit‘, wanting to get away from everyone! I never wore the stained jacket again and it lingered sadly in the back of my wardrobe smelling of kebab, chilli sauce, beer and diesel fumes until my Mum, on a major clean up splurge, decided to throw it out.

Of course, it could have been worse: I could have gone out wearing jeans, a white t-shirt and a red jacket trying to look like James Dean. (Actually, that was another night!)

It’s only fair to mention that this post is a hugely updated version of one that I first published 10 years ago in 2015.

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