Matthew Worley

In Britain in particular, there was the close three-day week ramifications.

There was an increase in industrial conflict.

There were social tensions.

There was a sense in which the government, which was by 76, 77 years, a minority government, a labor government that can't quite really govern.

So a sense of ungovernability.

You've got inflation going through the roof, the National Front on the streets, a global oil crisis.

So there are lots of things that suggested the world was in a very unstable position.

So glam's kind of had its day.

Progressive rock's kind of almost getting parody of itself and ridiculous.

Top of the Pops is inundated or dominated by trite novelty records, Doobie the Disco Duck and all this kind of stuff.

It's aimed as much at your mum and dad as it is at the kids on the street.

So I think there was certainly enough people beginning to feel a sense that rock had lost touch with its grassroots.

It's a general disaffection that something exciting and new was needed to kind of re-enliven and reignite popular music in the 1970s.

1976 is when the IMF crisis means the British economy looks at its most vulnerable and people are talking about economic collapse.

A run on the pound.

Inflation is 25%.

Unemployment passes one million for the first time.

So you've got all those kind of social economic things too.

It's also the year in which someone like Mick Farron for the NME writes a famous article called the Titanic Sails at Dawn, basically saying rock and roll is lost.

We need something new.