Jan. 13, 1980: Looking back at the 1970s

 

Nothing like a milestone to make us newsies look back at how far we’ve come. In the case of the ‘70s, those 10 years made quite a difference!

Jan. 13, 1980

The Decade in Review

         Virtually everything on the face of American culture since World War II came to a head and popped in the ‘70s. It was an era when popular music lost its innocence. The ‘70s were the decade in which the Beatles broke up and Elvis Presley died.

         Presley’s death in 1977 was the most earth-shattering passage, but he wasn’t the only one to cross over to Rock ‘n Roll Heaven in the ‘70s. The obituary list reads like a Who’s Who: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Duane Allman, Keith Moon, Ronnie Van Zant, Jim Croce, Donny Hathaway, Mama Cass Elliott, Sandy Denny, Phil Ochs, Lowell George, Ron “Pig Pen” McKernan of the Grateful Dead.

         For the record industry, it was a continuation of a golden age, and eventually a platinum age, that began in 1953. For 25 years straight, business kept getting bigger and better. Sales doubled between 1970 and 1978. Music became a $4 billion a year operation.

         Twelve-inch 33 rpm albums outpaced seven-inch 45 rpm singles in sales, becoming the primary artistic vehicle. And albums sold like hotcakes. Carole King’s 1971 “Tapestry” hung on the charts for five years and sewed up what was at that time an incredible 5 million in sales.

         Even more incredible were the superalbums of the late ‘70s. Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive” sold 10 million copies in 1977. The Bee Gees’ “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack chalked up close to 30 million worldwide in 1978.

         Then, in 1979, the bubble burst. The trade was hit by a slump, aggravated by high retail prices, gasoline shortages and general inflation. All through the industry, expense accounts were cut and staff was tightened. No longer could home entertainment be considered recession-proof.

         As the record business got bigger in the ‘70s, it passed from small entrepreneurs into the hands of the corporate giants. Over the past couple years, national record distribution has consolidated around six major companies. Two of them – Warner Bros. and Columbia – control about half the market.

         But there was still room in the ‘70s for an aggressive independent. Robert Stigwood’s RSO Records hit the jackpot on the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton. Neil Bogart’s Casablanca Records scored with timely exploitation of the disco dance craze and teen rock with acts like Donna Summer and Kiss. Miami record distributor Henry Stone’s TK Records rode the disco fad to the top with K.C. and the Sunshine Band and dozens of lesser artists.

         In Buffalo, record distributor Leonard Silver started his own Amherst label and found a winner in the local jazz-rock group Spyro Gyra. Amherst, however, was no match for the massive merchandizing machinery of the major companies. In early 1979, Amherst entrusted its national distribution to Infinity Records, itself an offshoot of MCA, one of the Big Six.

         Just as the business of selling records grew bigger and more elaborate, so did the recording process. Multitrack recording, which was in its infancy in the ‘60s, became the state of the art in the ‘70s. While the Beatles composed the complex “Sgt. Pepper” on four tracks in 1966, the major recordings of the ‘70s routinely used 24 tracks or more. Supergroups like the Eagles spent as much as $1 million fine-tuning a record.

         The most significant musical instrument of the decade was the keyboard synthesizer. One of the device’s pioneers and major manufacturers – Robert Moog – moved his plant to Cheektowaga after he merged with a Buffalo company. The synthesizer can be tweaked into reproducing any sound, bass drums to violins. In its most common application, it screeched and swooned like a spaced-out Hammond organ. It gave keyboard players as much charisma as guitarists. Some of decade’s major figures were keyboardists. Keith Emerson. Elton John. Stevie Wonder. Barry Manilow. Billy Joel.

         AM radio kept programming the hit pop singles, but music directors drifted away from the teen audience toward the “adult contemporary” crowd aged 18 to 49. There were fewer teens as the ‘70s progressed, anyway. The postwar baby boom had reached adulthood. FM radio, which began the decade as a little-noticed outlet for “underground” rock and beautiful music, grew by leaps and bounds. By 1979, it was attracting more listeners than AM in most major markets. As it became more profitable, FM rock evolved from the progressive freeform of the late ‘60s at WPHD to the highly selective album-oriented superstar formats practiced currently by WGRQ and WBUF.

         In the meantime, the rock audience broadened and fractured into a thousand tastes, factions and demographics. There was art rock, classical rock, jazz-rock, country rock, heavy metal rock and progressive rock. Self-absorbed singer-songwriters like James Taylor and booming electronic blues riffers like Led Zeppelin characterized the early ‘70s. Glossy soft-rockers like Fleetwood Mac and blues-rock revisionists like Bruce Springsteen towered over the latter part of the decade.

         Dance music became specialized and formulized as a fresh round of dance crazes developed in the mid ‘70s. Disco’s beat overwhelmed all other forms of Black music and, in 1978 and 1979, dominated the pop singles charts. Rock protests against the Vietnam War in the late ‘60s have turned into protests against disco 10 years later.

         The ‘70s also fostered a revival of jazz. Jazz-rock fusionists like Herbie Hancock and pop-jazz figures like Rochester’s Chuck Mangione led the way, but many of the bop artists of the ‘50s and ‘60s were either reissued or staged comebacks. Jazz won a regular spot in the Statler Hotel downtown, in Artpark, on Buffalo’s two public radio stations and in a basement venue called the Tralfamadore Café. The Tralfamadore will open the ‘80s by moving downtown to larger quarters in the Theater District.

         Rock’s revolutionary impulses centered in the angry, nihilistic punk movement in 1977, which subsequently broadened into the more self-conscious pop-rock of the New Wave. The New Wave sought to strip the excesses from superstar music and return to the basic elements of rock. It also encouraged cheap, independent record production. Britain’s fledgling Stiff Records brought Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe to the forefront. Buffalo bands like the Jumpers and Davy and the Crocketts issued their own singles.

         The predominant style of the ‘70s, ultimately, was nostalgia. A directionless decade, it reached back and ransacked every other era since World War I, starting with Scott Joplin. Depression songs of the ‘30s and fast-stepping swing tunes from the ‘40s had the most artistic patois. But whenever rock stars like Linda Ronstadt wanted a hit, all they had to do was reach back to songs that had been hits already in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Nostalgia was so strong that the Beach Boys became synonymous with endless summer all over again for another generation of high schoolers.

         Locally-based Buffalo musicians spent most of the ‘70s looking to other cities for fame and fortune, but a couple of them – Spyro Gyra and Rick James – generated their hit debuts right here. The local scene was far from encouraging, though. Sound systems and deejays in record booths supplanted the live bands that thrived in the clubs in the late ‘60s. Bands rehearsed more, performed less and didn’t get paid much better than they did in 1970.

         Although the stars of the ‘70s outdistanced the old sales and attendance records, none of them shook the world the way Elvis or the Beatles did. It wasn’t because they didn’t think big. Rock went to the indoor arenas and the sports stadiums. The Rolling Stones played to more than 72,000 in Rich Stadium here in 1978 and took home more than $500,000. The 1973 Summer Jam in Watkins Glen attracted half a million to see the Band, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead.

         Stage productions became more grandiose. Electric Light Orchestra, on its 1978 tour, emerged from a $250,000 mock spaceship. The rock stars themselves attained the same sort of celebrity as film stars in the gossip columns of Hollywood, London and New York. The spotlight fell on Buffalo in the fall of 1977, when singer Cher and rock keyboardist Gregg Allman whirled their gloriously tangled marriage into town for a couple of months.

         For the fan, it was a decade that kept taking more and more cash out of his pocket. Prices of concert tickets steadily increased. A $5 set in 1970 costs $10, $12 or even $15 now. Record albums jumped from a $4.98 list price to $8.98. In the economics of concert promotion, a 3,000-seat show became a risky proposition. More concerts went to Memorial Auditorium. Fewer came to Kleinhans Music Hall.

         In Buffalo, the ‘70s saw concert promotion become heavily competitive. A couple young UB grads, Harvey Weinstein and Corky Berger, bought an old downtown movie house, the Century Theater, and successfully challenged the monopoly of Festival East’s Jerry Nathan. In addition, major artists began taking local promoters out of the picture entirely by engaging Concerts West of Seattle to arrange their entire tours.

         The ‘80s may take a while to show their true stripes, but a few trends are already evident. Major acts are saying they’ll record more and tour less. They’ll probably dabble in movies and videotapes. Records probably will stay much the same until laser-beam tone arms come into general use. The first thing that’ll change will be the composition of vinyl.

         Some of the stars of the ‘80s will be people who already have released their first albums in the late ‘70s. Others are working the club circuits in their hometowns. New bands, managers and booking agents are beginning to work changes in the club scene here. Jamaican reggae, which is alive and well and thriving in England, and Latin salsa continue to hold the potential for igniting new crazes. So do the British Mods, who have revived the styles of the mid ‘60s. And there are religious themes, as seen in Bob Dylan’s 1979 “Slow Train Coming.” Meanwhile, with federal regulations loosened for radio, the pursuit of specialized demographics will become hotter than ever. If the ‘70s truly marked the end of an era, then the ‘80s offer an opportunity for a new one to be born. Stay tuned.       

         Here are 40 albums to celebrate the end of the ‘70s:

         Allman Brothers Band, “At Fillmore East.”

         Bee Gees, “Main Course.”

         David Bowie, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”

         Jackson Browne, “The Pretender.”

         Jimmy Cliff, “The Harder They Come.”

         Ry Cooder, “Paradise and Lunch.”

         Elvis Costello, “My Aim Is True.”

         Derek and the Dominos, “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.”

         Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours.”

         Jethro Tull, “Aqualung.”

         Elton John, “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.”

         Carole King, “Tapestry.”

         Kiss, “Destroyer.”

         Led Zeppelin, “IV (The Runes Album).”

         Little Feat, “Dixie Chicken.”

         Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Street Survivors.”

         Paul McCartney and Wings, “Band on the Run.”

         Bette Midler, “The Divine Miss M.”

         Joni Mitchell, “Court and Spark.”

         Van Morrison, “Moondance.”

         Randy Newman, “Sail Away.”

         Parliament, “Funkentelechy and the Placebo Syndrome.”

         Pink Floyd, “Dark Side of the Moon.”

         Ramones, “Rocket to Russia.”

         Rolling Stones, “Exile on Main Street.”

         Linda Ronstadt, “Heart Like a Wheel.”

         Roxy Music, “Siren.”

         Bob Seger, “Night Moves.”

         Paul Simon, “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.”

         Sly and the Family Stone, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.”

         Patti Smith, “Easter.”

         Bruce Springsteen, “Born to Run.”

         Steely Dan, “Pretzel Logic.”

         Rod Stewart, “Every Picture Tells a Story.”

         Donna Summer, “I Remember Yesterday.”

         Supertramp, “Breakfast in America.”

         The Who, “Who’s Next.”

         Stevie Wonder, “Songs in the Key of Life.”

         Yes, “Close to the Edge.”

         Neil Young, “After the Gold Rush.”

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IN THE PHOTO: Electric Light Orchestra performing with their spaceship in 1978.

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FOOTNOTE: What’s amazing is how much of the music of the ‘70s is alive today. That decade would never have listened to artists from 50 years earlier, but it’s a different story here in the 2020s. The ‘70s are all around us.

The ’70s are still with us in other ways too, especially the decade’s development of bigness. The record companies have become even more concentrated. National giants have squeezed out local concert promoters. The concerts themselves, the big ones, have gotten way more elaborate.

In other ways, things have changed so drastically that the ‘70s seem like another world. Radio stations have been gobbled up by conglomerates, but they have little impact on record sales. Thanks to developments only dimly foreseen in the ‘70s, most listeners don’t get their music from radio and records any more.