Classic Real Charts

Retro Real Charts From The Past

The Classic Charts page here now only includes charts were special events happened. There will be detailed commentaries on why the chart is special plus background information and images from the time. 

All the other full charts have been moved to dedicated decade pages and none will be posted here.  

For now there are three charts, two from 1977. The first is when the banned Sex Pistols record failed to get to Number One in the chart, plus the story of why it didn't get to the top!

After that is the chart following on after the King of Rock, Elvis Presley died. The third chart is from 1968 when the BBC's Top of The Pops show had THREE number ones to play! 

Selected Charts from 1977

I thought you might like to see the most controversial chart of all time, the week the Sex Pistols failed to get to number one....

Orange coloured tracks will fall out next chart!

Banned But No Rude Words

If you don't know the story then here's a quick recap for you. It was of course the Silver Jubilee year of the Queen, but a lot of young people were suffering badly as a result of the bad economic conditions. The band the Sex Pistols had picked up on this a written a song called "No Future". After an incident on TV which involved the band swearing at the presenter, media interest had picked up on the band and they wanted blood! At that time the band had signed a deal with EMI. However that company didn't just make records. They were trying to flog a new piece of medical equipment called a body scanner in the American market. However the USA had adopted import restrictions on products from outside the USA and so EMI was having big problems trying to sell the scanners. Then when the thing blew up over the Sex Pistols, the Americans were even more reluctant to buy from a company who had acts who swore like that and had low moral standards. So the man in charge of EMI ordered the Pistols out of EMI. But one person watching the TV and not thinking the band were the Antichrist, was Richard Branson. Now he was as dodgy as they come. He had already been caught fiddling his taxes, but his record company, largely set up to get Mike Oldfield, was out for new acts to sign. So he was on the phone straight away to the band. However Richard was seen as hippy rock king by the band, so they went to A&M Records, which turned into another disaster for the band. So they had no choice but to sign with Branson and Virgin. 

With the Silver Jubilee coming up it was decided to release "no future" under the title which is featured at the start of the record "God Save The Queen" and to put the record in a picture bag featuring the safety pin in the picture of the Queen. However if you look at the lyrics of the record it contains no rude words and the only offensive word is calling the Queen a "moron".  

The record of course was quickly banned from record stores and radio stations around the country. It was only ever played by John Peel on late night radio and sometimes on Capital Radio. The ban was entirely cultural and the record only caused offence to those who supported the Monarchy at that time. These days the record was even used on daytime TV on the BBC's antiques show Flog It!  

In the charts of some record shops the name was left blank! And when the chart made by the British Market Research Bureau came out it was only number two. Not number one. Which meant that TOTP did not have to play it! So it quickly went around that the chart had been fiddled by the chart makers. One story is that Branson's chain of shops - Virgin - had been removed by the company as a directive was issued connected with record stores connected with record labels having too much control of the chart. Another record company person said that as far as distribution was concerned the Sex Pistols were shipping more copies that the BMRB number one from Rod Stewart. But no-one can really tell what the real position was till now. 

As you can see the Sex Pistols were NOT top!!! But neither was Rod!! So it looks like the chap from the record company was right. However the BMRB chart was made up on less than 250 shops to represent many thousands of shops. And when you put them all together you get Country act Kenny Rogers going to the top a bit earlier than the BMRB chart has him. Not to say there wasn't some fiddling going on in the BMRB chart. Has it has Alessi Oh Lori in the chart! A record that is there because some record company people has gone around the chart shops buying up and getting staff to enter the record in the log books of the BMRB. It was hyped!! In fact it was revealed the following year to have happened. But as you can see the track is not in the Real Chart!

The truth is that if the other stores had stocked the Sex Pistols then even if they had not sold a lot it would have sold the others by a big margin.

The Elvis Chart

Following the death of Elvis Presley on the 16 of August 1977 fans went mad for his records. His latest single was in the Real Chart on the 14 of August at number 50, where it was turning into a bit of a flop having moved up just two places!  It sold just 11,000 copies at number 50, the following week 220,000 had been snatched of the shelf. Sometime in May of that year RCA had issued a lot of his back catalogue, so these records were also found in various record shops and also two singles that had been hits earlier in the year.  Making a total of 11 records in the chart from Elvis. Top of The Pops also created a demand for Loving You, which wasn't part of the re-release of May, but nevertheless some stores and people managed to find 6,000 copies of it, before stocks ran out and it vanishes next week. The British Market Research Bureau Chart used by TOTP was clearly not showing true sales figures because they failed to have Elvis going to the top the week after his death. Instead they had the Floaters Float On top, something that never happened on the Real Chart. Meanwhile the next number one after Elvis comes in at number 15 for David Soul.  And landing at number 36 is the first single from Bob Geldof's band The Boomtown Rats. It's worth noting the low sales compared with later Real Charts. With just 5K at 100. The sales symbols show which records past certain points, but you can see the full sales for each record in the first column. Other records of interest include 10cc which was the last single from their big album Deceptive Bends, which will fail to make the BMRB top 50. The Rubinoos hit at 63 will become a number one for Tiffany in the 1980's. And Linda Lewis track at 72 will become a big hit for Gladys Knight and The Pips. Two films had produced two hits and James Bond lands at 12 for Carly Simon, while her ex husband is a 62! The other film "The Deep" would see Donna Summer on a different record label to her other chart topper, she's at 13 with the soundtrack song. 

Elvis fans in Sheffield in 1977

The day Top of The Pops had 3 Number Ones to play

On the 29 August 1968, which was on a Thursday, the UK's top chart show was confronted with the fact there were three records all tied on the chart at Number One. So the BBC TV Top of The Pops had to show all three records being performed. The episode has not survived, wiped in a tape saving event that saw hundreds of episodes vanish without a trace. Of course many of them presented by Jimmy Saville of course, so could not be shown, but this one wasn't. Here's what was on:

The BBC were not pleased about it all. It was confusing to the viewers and it would lead to a major change in policy. 

But why were there three chart toppers?  It was all to do with the way they made up the chart. Years before Top of The Pops started in 1964, the BBC had compiled it's own chart from using the various charts published by the weekly music press. They didn't want to use a single chart from any of the papers as the papers were commercial companies and under the BBC rules they were not allowed to favour any of them. Instead they assigned points to each of the chart positions. From ALL the papers. Most people tend to favour the method of assigning the lowest chart positions with the least amount of points and the top seller with the most. But I believe the BBC did it the other way around. At first these charts were broadcast on the Radio with the Pick of The Pops show, presented by Alan Freeman. But when Top of The Pops started in 1964 they used the same charts. It has to be say these charts were not often calculated right, but it didn't really matter that much.  The trouble was that over the years some of the papers stopped making charts and so the chart selection became smaller. Which meant that you could get more ties of points. So the BBC chart often had two or three records in the same position all with equal points. But it had never troubled the top spot till that week. 

These are the charts from the week in question that caused the three way tie on the BBC chart.  I don't have a copy of the Disc chart, however that was using the Melody Maker Chart at this point. 

  

The first chart is the Melody Maker, the next New Musical Express and lastly The Record Retailer chart used in Record Mirror.  As you can see none had the same number one.  And when they added up the points the Beach Boys, Bee Gees and Herb Alpert all had the most points, but all the same points. 

The result of this was the BBC didn't know which was the best selling song in the UK that week, nor did the Music Press. This would lead to discussion between all the parties and the BBC wanted to produce a true National Chart that would at least not produce this situation again. This would lead to the creation of the British Market Research Bureau producing a National Top 50 in 1969. Based on counting record sales for the first time. As not even the charts above were based on that. They simply asked a sample of shops which was selling the most records and each shop produce at least a top 10 list, often done over the phone for each paper. The papers then used a point system to produce their chart. 

When the new chart by the BMRB came out, both NME and Melody Maker continued to make their own point based charts, as they didn't want to fund the new chart. Only the Record Retailer used this new chart. 

Attempts have been made to correct the chart system used by the BBC, using a system based on the sample size of each of the papers. The BBC treated each chart as being the same. 

And Mr Tibbs on UKMIX produced this chart. 

But is it accurate?  Well there's only way to find out. The Real Chart for the same week. As the other charts used the week ending system giving a date of the 31 August 1968, you might be wondering how Top of The Pops got the same chart on the 29 August? The answer is that it was out before then, often by the Tuesday (27) that week in time to be printed with the other charts for the Thursday edition of TOTP and the day the papers published their charts.  So the Real Chart covering it will be the 25 August 1968, covering the sales week 18 to 24 August. 

As you can see not one of the papers got the right number one and NME were miles out with Tom Jones.   

Finally I can't show you the BBC chart for the period, because the BBC now pretend that it doesn't exists. Instead they use the Record Retailer chart for the 1960's, which used the least amount of record shops. So they don't have to talk about the time the UK had three number ones the same week.   

So what happened in 1969 after the first British Market Research Bureau chart came out? 

Well because they couldn't produce a chart till the Tuesday of the following week, everyone else got to see it the week after. It used about 300 record shops to produce a sales chart, rather than points based charts of the others. And straight away it flawed them. Because it has the same number one as the Real Chart, but on the points charts of NME and Melody Maker Amen Corner (If Paradise is) Half As Nice was not even top five! The following issues of the Music Press were thus very interesting. But as far as I can tell NME didn't comment.  Melody Maker staff were clearly upset. Though they didn't mention the new chart, it was clear they had come under attack about the chart they had produced. So on the front page was this piece defending the paper. 

But it is clear that the Melody Maker chart had too many faults and just saying it was used by lots of papers doesn't prove it was good. Of course in 1964 it was probably a very reasonable chart. But after the chart had been reduced to a top 30 and the trouble in 1967 it was a shadow of it's former self. Unlike the new BMRB chart, it didn't responded a bit to the performances of TOTP. And the new records were slower to enter. The paper at one time boasted a sample size of shops of 250. But it is thought by the end of 1969 they had knocked the sample down to just 100 shops.