Songs for Europe
Cliff Richard dressed as Austin Powers, a ‘legal’ Dana looking about twelve, Agnetha’s sequinned tea-cosy hat, Clodagh Rodgers’ hot-pants, the Bucks Fizz girls having their skirts ripped-off, Russian lipstick lesbians Tatu drowned in boos, Jemini’s nul points, transsexuals with and without facial hair, singing grannies, thrash metal bands in fright-masks – one can never accuse the Eurovision Song Contest of being boring.
Like many events that begin on a small-scale – the Olympic Games and the World Cup spring to mind – the Eurovision has swelled to gargantuan, bloated proportions in recent years; since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the number of countries wanting to participate has increased so much that there is now a qualifying tournament. Yet, even when the numbers have been whittled down before the actual Contest itself, there are still so many contenders that midway through the marathon, the first dozen songs have already been permanently erased from the memory. By the end, only the last four or five can be recalled. This is why spectacle and image have overridden the actual musical content of late; we all remember last year’s bearded lady, but could anybody hum the tune he/she sang?
How different from 1956. As one of those wonderfully idealistic ideas to bring the battle-scarred continent of post-war Europe together (the Common Market being another), the formation of the European Broadcasting Union was an attempt to unite the various public service broadcasters of Europe under a banner of beneficial co-operation. Developments in television technology could be shared and therefore the product of each individual member country could be traded, something that British TV audiences enjoyed with the glut of dubbed children’s serials that dominated holiday schedules in the 60s and 70s. But it was felt a grand gesture was needed to test the strength of this new mutual admiration society, and Marcel Bezencon, the director of the EBU, proposed a song contest in which the infant medium of broadcasting events from one country to several others could be stretched to its technological limits.
Staged in Lugano, a town in the famously neutral Switzerland, the first-ever Eurovision Song Contest was held on May 24 1956, with just seven competing countries represented by two songs each. Although the UK, along with Denmark and Austria, missed the deadline for submitting an entry and therefore failed to participate, the event was nevertheless broadcast live on the BBC, brought to British audiences via a complex sequence of cables running under the Channel in the pre-satellite age. The host nation won the inaugural Grand Prix and although no recordings of the event exist, in a year that saw the first burst of rock ‘n’ roll the presence of a 24-piece orchestra to back each singer suggests a strong MOR slant to the ditties was probable.
By 1960, when the Eurovision was held in the UK for the first time (at London’s Royal Festival Hall), the Contest was slowly establishing itself as an annual institution with its own distinctive hallmarks and clichés – the switch between French and English of the host/hostess, the huge scoreboard dominating the stage once the performances were over, an interval act of an indelibly surreal nature, and the detached voices on the telephone announcing the votes (‘Hello, London! This is Brussels calling, and here are the results of the Belgian jury!’) Perhaps the most notable innovation of all, however, was the emergence of a style of song unique to the Contest, one that would never have been penned without it in mind; the strict rule of contestants having to sing in their native tongue limited the potential commercial success of the song outside its country of origin, leading to the much-mocked and simplistic ‘la la la’ lyrics that could be understood in any language.
With Britain’s global domination of pop gradually coming to define the decade, it was time to ditch the ‘Housewife’s Choice’-type crooners in dinner-jackets by 1967, and one of Swinging London’s leading songbirds in the shape of Sandie Shaw scooped the UK’s first success with the oompah-oompah rhythm of ‘Puppet on a String’, a pattern that continued with Cliff, Lulu and Clodagh Rodgers; by the early 70s, however, the event was beginning to look and sound increasingly anachronistic in the age of T. Rex, Slade, Gary Glitter and the Sweet. Not until Abba’s 1974 victory with ‘Waterloo’ was a genuinely great contemporary pop song brought to the table, one that was good enough to have been a hit without the Contest. Participants were now free to sing in English, a new addition that occasionally resulted in some bizarre translations, though I always prefer the native tongue for maintaining the mystique, exemplified by the 1965 winner, the Serge Gainsbourg-penned ‘Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son’.
The Eurovision Song Contest as we knew it really changed forever from the 1990s onwards; the merging of the Eastern European OIRT network with the EBU saw an influx of old Iron Curtain nations added to the mix, a change that extended the length of the event so that it seemed to go on all night. Unlikely participating countries such as Israel and Morocco were joined by unlikely participating countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia; it quickly became apparent that there were too many entrants to accommodate a three-hour programme and thus was instigated the ‘relegation’ system and pre-Contest qualifiers. By the end of the decade, the live backing orchestra, viewed as an archaic irrelevance, was finally dropped
With the introduction of the qualifying tournament and televised semi-finals, the Eurovision – like Christmas – now spans a full week rather than just the one night, but the bias of the voting system, in which political allegiances are upheld, has served to do more damage to the event than any deficiencies in the actual songs submitted. Russia’s neighbours tend to save their highest votes for their former overlord in the manner of a playground bully’s protection racket, whereas both Greece and Turkey always give a nod in the direction of Cyprus – whilst the UK can usually rely on Ireland (if nobody else). The impossibility of winning without the backing of political allies has led many veteran Eurovision nations to submit comedy numbers as a form of protest, refusing to entertain the effort of a well-crafted song sung by a decent performer when the likelihood of leading the scoreboard is so remote. Even Terry Wogan eventually hung-up his commentator’s microphone in disgust at this development.
But on and on the eccentric institution goes – this year, even bloody Australia have been invited to the party. Yet, for all the tweaking of the past twenty years, the Eurovision remains an utterly unique event with no real competition. A venue of aircraft hangar-size proportions may now be needed to host it, but the strange parade of performers knocks the bland conveyor-belt ‘X-Factor’ androids into a cocked hat. And I suppose it does serve as a reminder that there’s more to Europe than unelected faceless bureaucrats specifying the width of sausages.
The Eurovision Song Contest was one of the annual TV highlights in my household as a child, and along with ‘Jeux Sans Frontieres’ and UEFA Cup football, beamed oddly exotic-sounding locations into the living room that were inaccessible anywhere else. The world may appear considerably smaller these days, but I now watch because it’s so strangely entertaining, and I’ll be watching tomorrow. I do miss the television commentator sounding as though he has a sock stuffed in his mouth, though.
Petunia Winegum
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May 22, 2015 at 9:17 am -
Eurovision seems to have attracted the queens of the desert country too.
As Fred Flintstone would have said, I hope they have a gay old time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32834471 -
May 22, 2015 at 9:43 am -
The thing that always fascinated me was the polyglot Katie Boyle, introducing the thing in French. As someone who speaks that language reasonably well, but with an English RP accent, I liked the way she managed to pull off the French more “Duchess” than “Duchesse”.
The other high point in 1974 was Clive James’s Observer TV review. I defy anyone not to fall about in helpless laughter when reading “What Katie Did” in the “Visions Before Midnight” compendium.
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May 22, 2015 at 10:42 am -
Katie Boyle – now there’s a blast from the past. Is she still with us?
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May 22, 2015 at 10:48 am -
Apparently so, and now 88. The ever-helpful Wikipedia also tells us that she was born in Florence; the daughter of an Italian marquis. I wish I’d known that before, as it explains a fair bit, as does her marital record.
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May 22, 2015 at 10:51 am -
I’ve got a few old TV magazines from the Fifties where her “Princess” genealogy is still her selling feature. In one of them we are given a tour of her very genteely furnished flat with a Louis Cathorse decor. She must have had a canny PR guru who spotted that the days of “the classy Princess” were over and Katie was the way to go… the price of our modern celebrity…
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May 22, 2015 at 10:54 am -
Hmm, sounds like the original ‘People’s Princess’.
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May 22, 2015 at 10:56 am -
She was a cover girl, but referred to as Katherine Boyle (or was it Catherine? – have to check) . Italian Princes were very fashionable back then too.
Here you go:
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/320x407q90/697/image002no.jpg-
May 22, 2015 at 11:07 am -
Hah! She looks strangely older there than I remember her in the 70s.
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May 22, 2015 at 11:33 am -
Different dollybird on this cover but this is the edition where we get to see “Catherine Boyle’s new flat”. Very refined if not exactly to my taste.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/240x320q90/96/p1070815r.jpg
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May 22, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
Thank you for that. When my wife complains about me keeping piles of old magazines from the 60’s and 70’s, I shall inform her, with great pleasure, that someone has TV magazines even older.
Declutttering?
What’s that?
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May 22, 2015 at 11:13 am -
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May 22, 2015 at 11:36 am -
Good Lord… Olivia Newton-John…. Her song for Europe seems to have been the reason the 1974 “Clunk-Click” existed. Olivia was featured heavily, singing the songs the viewers could vote for, in between Jimmy Savile’s largely ad-libbed links. How’s about that then, for the mystery of ‘istory and it’s strange dots lining up to be joined…. and Australians in Euroland…. Exquisite.
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May 22, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
Thanks very much for posting that link. I remember Mr James on TV, but have never read him. Early on in my stint here Ms Raccoon compared my own style to his and the comparison is more flattering than ever now!
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May 22, 2015 at 3:26 pm -
I’d never read him either, Petunia, but his archive looks well worth a gander. And how about this for prescience from a 1972 article, speaking about Frank Bough (“Auntie goes to Munich”):
“There’s been controversy about this man. It’s been questioned whether one commentator, however gifted, should be asked to talk for the full 26 hours, 385 minutes every day of the Games. Rumours of anabolic steroids and jaw-strengthening injections have threatened to cast a shadow over the achievement of this astonishing boy from Wood Lane who did his training on Grandstand.”
Well ahead of the pack there, Clive! Poor old Boughie… he was driven to it.
Right-o, off to sharpen my point-scoring pencil ready for the spectacle tomorrow. [Not a joke, I/we really do do this once a year!]
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May 22, 2015 at 4:18 pm -
Thanks for the link, of which I was unaware.
My normal source for James reviews are the now dog-eared paperback books, and my newspaper cuttings scrapbook of his reviews; many of which are unpublished (in book form) but almost all of which are as good as the ones which found their way into the collections.
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May 22, 2015 at 4:55 pm
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May 22, 2015 at 9:45 am -
Let’s just fervently hope and pray that Scotland never goes independent..
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May 22, 2015 at 12:53 pm -
The UK’s entries to the Eurovision over the last few years have often been terrible. Jemini’s performance in 2003 was absolute shite; the fact it got nil points was blamed on the Iraq war but that is nonsense.
I defy anyone to listen to the song and think it was worth anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu5kgSeZHfw -
May 22, 2015 at 3:15 pm -
“Developments in television technology could be shared and therefore the product of each individual member country could be traded, something that British TV audiences enjoyed with the glut of dubbed children’s serials that dominated holiday schedules in the 60s and 70s. ”
Nit-picking alert:
Whatever any ambitions for sharing technology may have been, it didn’t work very well. The Francophone countries generally used the incompatible SECAM rather than PAL as a broadcast video system.
A transfer from one video system to another looked like complete $%£*, not to mention “%*^! and *&$%^£)*$.
For that reason (as well as quality), many series, both for adults and children, were shot on film if they were intended for export.Plenty of other children’s shows from around the world were shown without the benefit of the EBU, such as Whirly Birds from Canada and Skippy from Australia. Even quite a few of the dubbed programmes were from behind the Iron Curtain, so not part of the EBU either.
I suspect that the main reason for these programmes being shown were their cheapness (it’s always cheaper to buy in a show than make your own of an equivalent quality) and the broadmindedness/evangelical nature of those in charge of children’s TV at the time.
Some of the imports were, of course very popular, which would accelerate the trend.-
May 22, 2015 at 3:36 pm -
the politically motivated decision to adopt the 819-line-standard was taken exactly with the intention, to secure French television industry from foreign competition. In a note entitled “Summary report about the situation of French television and its possibilities of extension”, the French Member of Parliament Max Brusset wrote: “It is the national interest in military defence as well as the protection of our industry that motivated the decision of the French Government and Parliament to choose a line-standard different from those chosen by other industrialized countries. This decision not taken by our Government and Parliament, the French market would have been the easy booty of the big foreign trusts, because of the retardation of our local industry caused by the destructions of war making any competition impossible”
http://www.birth-of-tv.org/birth/assetView.do?asset=1413260435_1133285440
The statement of Brusset expresses so to speak the concept of modernization in post-war France: By the way of a planned economic reconstruction and technological modernization (“planification”), France had to regain its lost political and economic grandeur (Cerny 1980). In this concept, television as a symbol of modernity, had to play the role of a “champion national” (Cohen 1995). In terms of Pierre Bourdieu, the 819-line-system with its higher picture quality compared to those of the other nations, was the “symbolic capital”, which had to promote French technological know-how throughout the world (Bourdieu 1999). Because of the central place that modern technologies as television (819-line-system, SECAM), aviation (Mirage, Concorde) or nuclear energy occupied in the French model of modernization (Hecht 1998; Le Roy 1997; Cohen 1992), a European harmonization of the television line-standards wasn’t attractive for French political authorities. Unless the other countries would have voted for the French standard! -
May 22, 2015 at 4:53 pm
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May 22, 2015 at 6:17 pm -
And I suppose it does serve as a reminder that there’s more to Europe ………….
The Eurovision Song Contest was one of the annual TV highlights in my household as a child, and along with ‘Jeux Sans Frontieres’
Same for me as a child, back when Abba were still COOL.
Funnily enough I had thought about submitting an article to the Landlady for her consideration about why I will be voting “Yes” to Europe if the referendum does ever happen, and assuming i ever do get on the Electoral Roll, because at this moment i am battling through the mound of paperwork that my Kids require to renew their German passports and that has brought back memories of what we went through back in the days of the EEC just to be allowed to marry. In preEU Germany , for example, a Court had to decide whether or not a German girl might be allowed to marry a foreigner- and that foreigner (ME) had had to submit both blood and stool samples just to be allowed to stay in the country! Not joking, you had to send off a stool sample in a plastic pot inside a special wooden container just to get a residency permit.
But I couldn’t find a way to make the article ‘XXX’ rated and the Landlady would be terribly disappointed if any article from me didn’t threaten to ooze it’s way out of her inbox….50 Sheds Of Dwarf and all that.
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May 22, 2015 at 7:49 pm -
My advice is to concentrate on the kids’ paperwork until at least the end of 2017, only then start to focus on your electoral registration whenever – we need all the “No” votes we can muster.
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May 22, 2015 at 8:31 pm -
My name is The Blocked Dwarf and I’m a EUphile. There, I’ve said it. My dirty secret is out. I feel so much better.
If I had my way, the aged “Mother Of All Parliaments” would be dispatched to a pleasant little nursing home in Brussels, I’d like to see MORE Europe and less UK, all talk of ‘Sovereignty’ being somewhat meaningless since the Parliament Act of 1912 (or was it 1911?). Either we are a Kingdom or just another federal state (small ‘s’) in the EU-SA, either I’m a British Subject or a Tovaritch/Genosse/Comrade of the EUSSR.
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May 22, 2015 at 10:33 pm -
+1
I’m a liberal EUphile. No Hos, no Hums
I hate being a subject, with my personal rights dictated by, and foisted upon me from, the foibles, phobias and prejudices of the chickens and eggs that make up the readers, and the lick spittle writers, of the Sun, the Daily Mail or the Guardian, and the spineless politicians dragged along as their thralls
This article is about as good an analysis of that as you’ll get…..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/08/facebook_echo_chamber_or_the_british_media_and_the_election/
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May 22, 2015 at 10:03 pm -
I can’t understand why they just don’t enter my Eurovision song. It would walk it! Perhaps I’m missing the point and the object is to get ‘nil point’ rather than win…
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May 22, 2015 at 11:53 pm -
‘Sing little birdy’- a couple from the Billy Cotton Bandshow – wasn’t that an early entry? It must have entered my brain at some critical moment because I can still remember the tune, even though I very much don’t want to (or the BC B/Show, blight of my life along with The Clitheroe Kid..). It gave everyone something to unite and rebel against. Audio fascism.
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May 23, 2015 at 1:05 am -
Don’t recall if it was in early Eurovision, but I do remember it was by Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson (husband & wife duo) who had a hit with it in the mid 50’s, as my Dad had a bit of a crush on Pearl…
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May 24, 2015 at 12:48 am -
There were some unusual voting patterns tonight, not least Ireland only giving Blighty one point! Can’t possibly have been because the song was awful?
Anyway, it’s not the same without Wogan’s gleefull little-boy jokes and snide asides. I think even he might have had trouble interpreting the votes though. I still maintain Eurovision is a post-war form of conflict, where we’ve morphed gigantic armies, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear subs into crazy dance routines, camp songs and tactical voting. Russia could not be allowed to win, of course. -
May 24, 2015 at 10:54 pm -
Won at bowls this morning at Bognor, so this pm trying the acclaimed Lidl malt.
So now out of it’s sleeve comes first Ladies of the Canyon & now first side of For the Roses & it’s one of those thick pressings from the US, I bought it in Chicago in the late 70’s.
This is why I don’t watch the European whatever it it is -
May 26, 2015 at 12:07 am -
Late to the party again so I guess I get Nul point (thankyou Katie).
Last year I watched on Youtube (listened to the songs more than once) the 1963 contest: pretty high quality stuff I would say, overall. What I find so depressing about EuroVision is that the only truly popular song to emerge from the contest (Abba’s Waterloo) is easily their worst.
There is however one genuinely great song to emerge from a European contest for songs – not Eurovision – but San Remo and I am thinking of a song by Pino Donaggio, a song by which Dusty achieved greatness – You don’t have to say you love me.
The best music in Eurovision (the theme – do they still play it?) is courtesy of Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
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