"God Save The Queen" by the Pistols played on Sunday afternoon Radio 2!

One of the greatest British rock singles ever and it still sounds dynamic - the rest of that chart, frankly, needn't have bothered turning up.

Is there any definite data on which actually sold the more copies that week - the Pistols or Rod - given all the conspiracy theories which still persist, or was it just good publicity?

By accident yesterday I heard my reply to the Pistols by "Elizabeth" - God Save The Sex Pistols.

It is still very funny. Half a dozen copies were requested by Prince Charles to be sent to the Palace (freebies!).

I never rated 'God Save The Queen'. Strip away the obvious controversy and it doesn't have much going for it. 'Anarchy' and 'Pretty Vacant' were far better quality.

Seem to recall 'Telephone Line', 'Tokyo Joe' and 'Lido Shuffle' were each in the chart around that time. Good stuff. Good memories.

JK2006 wrote:
By accident yesterday I heard my reply to the Pistols by "Elizabeth" - God Save The Sex Pistols.

It is still very funny. Half a dozen copies were requested by Prince Charles to be sent to the Palace (freebies!).

I love that track !


Pachelbel must have been flattered by your constant attempts to get him another hit JK

Nice one Macca!
A thought from the post before yours.
"Telephone Line" ELO, Pachelbel again, but slower!(chorus only)
I think we need the definitive Pachelbel list!

With regard to whether Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen or Rod Stewart's I Don't Want To Talk About It/First Cut Is The Deepest should have been number one, I have, in the past tried to find out what actually happened.

Over the years I have spoken to many people, in many cases "off the record" and this is my conclusion.

In 1977 the charts were being compiled by the British Market Research Bureau, (BMRB). In order to compile the charts a number of retailers manually filled in diaries, noting the catalogue number, (or ticking a box for the bigger sellers), every time they sold a record. On Saturday the diaries were sent to BMRB's offices in Ealing. From all the diaries received, (At the time I believe around 750 were completed) and selection of just 250 were used to compile the charts. All of the sales from those 250 diaries were manually in put into a computer. The computer then simply added up the totals and produced a ranking. (This lead to what the industry used to call "panel sales", and sales data was presented in index-form until the mid-1990s).

The easiest way to change the results would have been to be choosy in the selection of which diaries to include out of the 700 available, (allowing for some that wouldn't turn in in Ealing on time), to make up the 250 diaries used to compile the charts. For example, the Sex Pistols record would be selling from Independent stores, HMV and Virgin type retailers. It was less likely to be selling well from Boots, Woolworths and WHSmith. In fact I believe that most of those retailers had actually banned the sale of the record through their stores. Therefore if you slightly increased the ratio of say, Woolworths diaries over Virgin diaries, you could quite easily alter the ranking.

Now to hearsay. I understand that the industry was worried that, because God save The Queen was on the Virgin label, then the sales through Virgin Record shops could be over-reported by "keen shop staff". Therefore, perhaps for this particular week, Virgin diaries should not be included in the sample. If that was the case, then you would need other diaries to replace the excluded ones, and what better than to use additional Woolworths ones - especially if there was a desire by certain parties to keep God Save The Queen off the No.1 spot at a time when the country was celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee.

The outcome was that by skewing the sample of diaries used in favour of general retailers against specialist retailers, a less controversial record retained the number 1 slot over a record that would possibly throw the record industry into a bad light.

Did it happen? Well, it's very feasible, and a number of sources who were in the industry at that time have confirmed that the record companies were concerned about the situation, and even spoke to BMRB. But would BMRB have changed the diary selection? I don't know, and I suspect we'll never know.

The Sex Pistols, being officially anti-establishment, probably didn't care whether they topped the charts or not.

I'm not sure that they weren't just spoofing the entire Punk movement. John Lydon has hinted at such since, but he might have been tongue in cheek even then.

The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle.
Indeed.

I remember several years ago that one of the BMRB board members of the time owned up and it was exactly as you had surmised. They took the 'executive decision' that a sales of a record sold in a record shop of that same label may have an unfair advantage in terms of advertising or promotion therefore they would exclude sales of say anything on the Virgin label sold in Virgin shops. It was a short-lived policy that only ran for the jubilee week and a week or two after.
Sorry don't have the link any more as it was probably six years ago.

On a "best selling hits" TV documentary not long ago Eric Hall, Promotions Chief at EMI in 1977, said he knew the sales figures for both records and that Rod genuinely outsold the Pistols that week.

You can see how that would be the case, the record buying public nearly always chose safe, comfortable music over anything edgy. Witness Engelbert's 'The Last Waltz' outselling The Beatles 'Strawberry Fields Forever' ten years before.

Tokyo Joe?? I remember Tony Blackburn not liking that one very much.

He flipped it over and played the other side, a cover of "Shes Leaving Home" which was from the OST to "All This And World War 2".

This very old thread from over 6 years ago, now revived, has had over 55,000 views in its long and prosperous life. Isn't The Net a weird yet wonderful thing?

NCS wrote:
On a "best selling hits" TV documentary not long ago Eric Hall, Promotions Chief at EMI in 1977, said he knew the sales figures for both records and that Rod genuinely outsold the Pistols that week.

You can see how that would be the case, the record buying public nearly always chose safe, comfortable music over anything edgy. Witness Engelbert's 'The Last Waltz' outselling The Beatles 'Strawberry Fields Forever' ten years before.

How would Eric Hall know the Sales Figures? The only organisation collating such data was BMRB. Shops didn't have EPoS in those days. Ship out figures wouldn't account for any unsold stock, and anyhow, Rod was shipped by WEA and my recollection is that CBS were distributing Virgin at the time - So EMI wouldn't even have access to the figures.

Eric the Frog pops into my latest novel Death Flies, Missing Girls and Brigitte Bardot.