The 20th of February 1974
Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 17th to Saturday the 23rd of February 1974
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 16th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 17th,
and published on Wednesday the 20th of February 1974.
Andy Williams
Solitaire
At No.4, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart”, the week of my 2nd Birthday, is Andy Williams with Solitaire.
Over the years,..
…there have been break-up albums, divorce albums, heartbreak albums…I could go on and on.
The whole essence of the music world revolves around various and infinite interpretations of love, and when that four-letter word gets so overwhelming, for whatever reason, whether it be falling into, or falling out of it, then sometimes words are never enough, and we turn to the artists, the poets, the notes on the page, and the sounds emanating from the speakers, headphones, wherever, for something, or someone, to make us feel we’re not alone in the whole mess of things.
It reminds me of that touching scene in the film Love Actually, where the son confides to his concerned father that the reason he’s been so distant lately, is because he’s fallen in love…
Well, for this album,..
…Andy was experiencing the total agony of the latter, and it shows.
Here was a man, and in the words of the title track, a lonely man, who seems at this stage in the break-up, to be almost at the end of his tether, to the point now, where it’s gone from begging to outright pleading. Honestly, you can almost feel the tears fall, the nose running uncontrollably. When he sings ‘My Love’, every “Woe” is straight from somewhere deep. It literally all comes out, that you expect to lift the needle at the end of each side and have to wipe away the residue it’s picked up along the way.
The reason for all this heart pouring,..
…was due to his very real desolation and grief from losing the absolute love of his life.
He’d married Claudine back in December 1961, and they’d had three wonderful children over the next several years. But by the end of the sixties, cracks had begun to appear, and they ended up separating at the dawn of the seventies.
Andy, at that time,..
…was also re-evaluating his own career path; and so may have not been as focused on his own family, while he was winding his own way through his own relevance in the music and TV entertainment world, and trying in someway to keep connected to an ever-evolving new wave of artists currently emerging into the hearts and ears of the music-buying public. But it seems to have come at a devastating price of losing his own wife and family along the way.
Although, Claudine and Andy, and his whole young family, never really fell that far out of love and respect for each other, even through this separation, it must have had a terrible effect on his own self-consciousness, to have to go back to his own home every night and not have the embrace of his wife and young children there to have and hold any longer.
The whole of this album…
…is therefore of heartbreak, and the growing and bone-deeply frustrating acceptance that the love which had felt once so secure had now somehow, and inexplicably, been lost. And yet, in those dark places in the words and music, there is still that stubborn defiance, that maybe, just maybe, everything could come back again. A fine example of this, is his choice to cover the classic Everly Brothers classic “Walk Right Back“. But at this point, the one he was singing it to, was still yet to respond to such a last ditch demand.
No more is this so evident as the stark cover of this album itself, where Andy sits, seeming to wait in a room, with nothing but a chair to sit on, and a phone which, although connected, seems to never ring; and except for the sound of his own aching heart within, the silence in that room seems deafening.
So as the cries of lost love and hope play out on this LP, and eventually the last song fades, and his cries fade with it, you hope that Andy is finally getting to leave this long dark lonely tunnel of grief, and is walking back out into the sunshine of a brighter future.
The album…
…had entered into the chart at No.40 just before Christmas, on the 16th of December last year in 1973, and had stayed in the background at that same position for a second week, while everyone was enjoying the festivities, but then it would step away from the charts just before the second wave of New Year celebrations kicked in.
As everyone settled back into normality for the beginning of 1974, so sales of this album began to pick up once again, and it ended up re-entering back into the charts a few weeks ago on the 27th of January.
Now, whether there was a huge sympathetic wave of heartbreak consuming the United Kingdom between the now long since past Christmas period, and the few weeks before the peoples of the British Isles braced themselves for the upcoming Valentine’s Day, who can be sure; but in the run-up to that next hallmark holiday, this album (unlike in Andy’s native United States) grew wings and flew straight into the Top 10 for its second week in the chart, and by the time Cupid’s arrows were flying all across the country, this album took that opportunity to hit its highest peak of No.3.
This week, after everything has died down a little, we find the LP has only slipped one place back from that Top 3 position. Maybe everyone who had the indignity of being spurned last week had decided to focus their attention on this record instead, and were now crying into its record sleeve, who knows.
From here,..
…the album will slip gradually back down the Top 10, as winter takes its leave, and spring begins to take over, before it takes a heavier drop through the numbers and lands outside the Top 20 in mid-March.
Its descent slows up once more, but keeps heading in the same direction, until it begins to fall outside the Top 30 during April, but then, like being lifted by a soft spring breeze, it floats back up to No.18 during mid-May.
As summer approaches, so the album slowly backs away once again, until it eventually lets go after the 6th of July.
After a week away, it returns for one last attempt at a reconciliation, now having spent a respectable half a year in the chart, but is forced to leave for good after the 20th of that warm summer month, and as yet, is to return once more.
Side 1
Side 2
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