Williams knew how to use television to his advantage

More than any of his contemporaries, [Andy] Williams knew how to use television to his advantage. He sang ‘Moon River’ at the 1962 Academy Awards show, which was watched by more than forty million people; he then made sure it wasn’t released as a single in spite of the huge demand, and smiled to himself as hundreds of thousands of his Moon River and other great movie themes LP flew out of the shops, all retailing at three times the price of a 45. The industry gave him a round of applause.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 525

It’s not about being smart, it’s about being alive

Rogers and Hammerstein changed Broadway. They took it forward by making it less a geographical location where hits were born, and more a standalone genre with new rules and regulations. With their exotic but defiantly non-metropolitan locations, they also took it back to a time when the book drove the songs, back to the time of light opera and operetta. … Certainly, ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’’ didn’t have the urban smarts of Rogers and Hart, but as Sondheim himself later responded, ‘It’s not about being smart, it’s about being alive.’

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 436

Fats Waller apparently had it written into his contract that he could not be forced to play boogie-woogie

But not everyone was a fan. Fats Waller apparently had it written into his contract that he could not be forced to play boogie-woogie. He considered it cheap and unmusical, all repetition and lacking in harmonics.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 331

No one wanted to kill him; they just wanted him to play the piano

[Fats] Waller’s playing was so special that it became a threat to his own safety. Leaving a show in Chicago in 1926, he was grabbed and bundled into a car, then ordered inside a place called the Hawthorne Inn with a gun in his back. Sweating, terrified, he was rather surprised to be pushed through the doors and find a party in full swing. He was the unwitting ‘surprise guest’ at Al Capone’s birthday bash. No one wanted to kill him; they just wanted him to play the piano. Making the most of a tricky situation, Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days, drank the place dry and earned thousands of dollars in cash-money tips from Capone and his cronies.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 265

It’s almost obscene how big a star Crosby once was, and how little he seems to mean now

It’s almost obscene how big a star Crosby once was, and how little he seems to mean now. His hugeness can be proven with science. During the war, his radio programmes attracted fifty million listeners in America. Of the five highest-grossing Hollywood movies in 1946, three of them – The Bells of St Mary’s, Blue Skies, Road to Utopia – starred Bing Crosby; he was the number one box office star for five years straight, from 1944 to 1948. He recorded nearly four hundred hit singles, an achievement no-one – not Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Beyonce or Kanye West – has come remotely close to matching, and probably no one ever will.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 220

No one would have guessed back in 1912, when it first made its presence known on vaudeville stages, that the blues would become one of the defining sounds of the twentieth century

No one would have guessed back in 1912, when it first made its presence known on vaudeville stages, that the blues would become one of the defining sounds of the twentieth century. No one in the nascent music industry thought of it then as anything more than a fad, a subset of ragtime even, only with a bunch of guitar or banjo notes played together and a vocal style that hovered around a tune, occasionally hitting the note, but more commonly sounding like a moan.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 139

This was a high water mark for musical theatre – for great American songwriting, even

In 1927, within a few blocks of Showboat you could have also seen George and Ira Gershwin’s Funny Face, Vincent Youman’s Hit the Deck or Rogers and Hart’s A Connecticut Yankee. This was a high water mark for musical theatre – for great American songwriting, even – but then two things come along to spoil the fun: the Wall Street Crash and talking pictures. In 1928 there were sixty-two shows along Broadway; this would decline to thirty-four in 1931. During the whole of the 1930s, the Great White Way would  host only sixty-eight new musical comedies.

With a very real lack of cash and opportunity for the New York songwriter, the lure of Hollywood – just about the only place in 1930s America where there seemed to be a silver lining – would prove irresistible.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 110

No-one had previously been aware that red-hot mamas were endangered

No singer was more indicative of America’s new found effervescence than the insatiable Sophie Tucker, who emerged in 1912, aged twenty-six, as ‘The Last of the Red Hot Mamas’, though no-one had previously been aware that red-hot mamas were endangered.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 40

Kids were given two choices over which form of heavy rock they liked

Metal had been born at the start of the seventies, when kids were given two choices over which form of heavy rock they liked. In Britain, this was roughly dependent on the number of O-levels they got. Grammar-school kids tended to go for the clever end, the progressive end, which got progressively cleverer until it imploded in a fog of maths in the mid-seventies. Metal was much simpler. It was formulated, which didn't mean musicians lacked technical ability (check Deep Purple's 'Fireball' for early, dextrous metal) but it did mean it was easier to follow.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 566

I think this chapter on metal is wrong, but it's very quotable and an interesting take. Later in this chapter, he also gets Queen spectacularly wrong (simultaneously a 'singles hit machine' and 'entirely detached from pop', p.569).

The elephant in the discotheque is the Bee Gees.

The elephant in the discotheque is the Bee Gees.

Their dominance of the charts in the disco era was above and beyond Chic, Giorgio Morodor, even Donna Summer. Their soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever sold thirty million copies. They were responsible for writing and producing eight of 1978's American number ones, something only Lennon and McCartney in 1963/64 could rival - and John and Paul hadn't been the producers, only the writers.

....

Total pop domination can have fierce consequences. Elvis had been packed off to the army; the Beatles had received Ku Klux Klan death threat - the Bee Gees received the mother of all backlashes, taking the full brunt of the anti-disco movement. ... Almost overnight, nobody played Bee Gees records on the radio, and pretty much nobody bought them

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 472-3

Had a voice like John Lennon screaming down the chimney of the QE2

They became the most beloved group in the country. Dickensian singer Noddy Holder had a voice like John Lennon screaming down the chimney of the QE2; rosy-cheeked bassist Jim Lea looked as if he lived with his mum and bred homing pigeons; Dave Hill on guitar had the most rabbity face in the world; while Don Powell chewed gum and stared into space - even after he'd been in a horrific car crash and lost most of his memory, he looked exactly the same. ... [they] thought, sod this, let's get pissed and have a really, really good time.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 342

Short on custard pies, high on Genet references

The Bowie/Roxy glam axis - short on custard pies, high on Genet references - fitted the seventies rock critic's post-Sgt Pepper world more comfortably than Sweet or Mud, whose It's better than working album title didn't suggest much familiarity with Lorca.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 341

Looked just like a coke fiend from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novella

[Bryan Ferry] looked just like a coke fiend from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novella, which was entirely the idea.
Eno's full name was Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno*

*This it should be noted, is a name he gave himself, not the one he was given at birth. His dad worked for the Post Office.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 337 and footnote

Rewrote them with an abundance of exclamation marks

The hippie counterculture was politically committed to the present tense and largely mistrusted theatrics. ... Glam - garish, ultra-commercial and colourful as a Dulux paint chart - was its worst nightmare ... the likes of Mud, Wizzard, Suzi Quatro, Gary Glitter, Slade and Sweet picked up on certain lines of Bowie and Bolan's glam manifesto - the Bo Diddley riffs, the glittering artifice, the outrageous make-up, the tremendous sense of fun - and rewrote them with an abundance of exclamation marks.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 335

Decided to cloak their lyrics with Hobbitry, their artwork with pagan symbols, and dress up like sex gods.

For modern pop, Altamont was a decisive break  - the end of innocence, There was a darker side, we knew it to be true. One group picked up on this and, rather than look as ugly as possible to show their commitment to the devil's music, they decided to cloak their lyrics with Hobbitry, their artwork with pagan symbols, and dress up like sex gods. ... With bombast, Celtic mythology and blouses undone to the waist, Led Zep cleaned up while the Stones were still white-faced with post-traumatic stress.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 267

More likely to be on the terraces at 3 p.m. on a Saturday than quoting Ginsberg to first-year students in a smoky bedsit

[Fleetwood Mac]: What's more, B-sides like 'Someone's Gonna get their head kicked in tonight' showed they had a sense of humour, and were more likely to be on the terraces at 3 p.m. on a Saturday than quoting Ginsberg to first-year students in a smoky bedsit.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 263

There was room for primitivism amidst the rococo, and no beat group was more primitive than the Troggs

'Wild Thing' (UK no. 2, US no. 1) showed there was room for primitivism amidst the rococo, and no beat group was more primitive than the Troggs. Their manager Larry Page considered them so lacking in charisma and grace that he renamed the singer and drummer after the two most stylish people he could think of - Elvis Presley and James Bond.

...
Reg Presley also turned out to be a literal poster boy for Michelle Pfeiffer - his was the only poster she had on her teenage wall.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 203

Right here, friends, we have the pinnacle of sixties pop

A quick dissection of 'Good Vibrations': the opening keyboard sound always feels to me like sunlight through a kitchen window first thing in the morning, the death-ray theremin of the chorus sounds like Star Trek  (first screened in 1966), and when I hear the harpsichord section there's a girl in a white dress sat on my lap in the back of an old jalopy. 'Good Vibrations' can make synaesthetes out of all of us. On top of that, it's a pretty faultless love song. Right here, friends, we have the pinnacle of sixties pop.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 197

I don't think Good Vibrations is the pinnacle of sixties pop, but the point is valid, and the pages from which this is taken are brilliant on the extraordinary and rapid evolution of pop from 64-68.

Used to buy spare copies of any rare record he owned just to smash them and make his copy rarer

Doo-wop collectors are a fierce breed. Bob Hite, of blues-rockers Canned Heat, used to buy spare copies of any rare record he owned just to smash them and make his copy rarer.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 85 footnote.

For second-class money you get a second-class song

Yet no matter how accurate, original, sharp and funny his songs, the man [Chuck Berry] was hard to love: 'The dollar dictates what music is written' was his mantra. He would duck-walk across the stage in a strange, crouched shuffle, and seemed disdainful of his audience. He was the least charming of the original rockers, rude and incredibly tight-fisted. Publicising his biography on British TV in the eighties, he was asked if he could play his signature tune, 'Johnny B. Goode'. 'No,' he said. 'For second-class money you get a second-class song,' and he played 'Memphis, Tennessee' instead.

B. Stanley, Yeah yeah yeah: the story of modern pop (2013), 56-7