Nineteen Seventy One

In music as in so many other things, it is said that the year in which you come of age is the seminal year of your life. But having turned 18 in 1983 – the year of Karma Chameleon, Total Eclipse of the Heart and Kaja-bloody-googoo – I respectfully beg to differ. For connoisseurs of that particular strand of music referred to by my children as ‘dad rock’, one year stands proud of the others. Or, if it doesn’t, it should.

It is, of course, 1971. As if freed from the frankly fairly thankless task of trying to follow whatever The Beatles were up to, bands suddenly started producing not just their best music to date, but the best the genre had ever or, indeed, would ever see. This was the year in which the Stones’ Sticky Fingers went on sale, Led Zeppelin recorded Stairway to Heaven, and The Who released Who’s Next. It was the year of Bowie’s Hunky Dory, Janis Joplin’s Pearl and The Doors’ LA Woman. It was the also the year in which the Montreux Casino burned down and, after seeing the smoke still floating across Lake Geneva the following morning, Deep Purple’s Roger Glover thought the sight might make the basis of a useful little ditty.