Price: £19.95 (1,250 pages)
In this day and age - with an almost unlimited wealth of information
quite literally at our fingertips - it must seem odd that there could
ever have been a time where the details of every hit song or album
couldn't be easily located somewhere. Until the late 1970s, however,
that was the case, and until now they have never been featured together
in the same book.
Respected broadcaster Paul Gambaccini , in conjunction with fellow DJ
Mike Read and lyricist Tim Rice , came up with the Guinness Book Of Hit
Singles idea in 1975 (although the first edition was not published until
1977), which would be re-printed every two years thereafter with updated
facts and figures charting the careers of every artist and band who ever
graced the UK Singles Charts. It also spawned an Album version following
the same format, which was likewise updated every few years (initially
every two as with the Singles edition, but strangely there hasn't been
one since 1996).
Unfortunately, the more recent Hit Singles books have been pretty poor.
There was a change in compiler personnel (the reason for this is
unclear, though Gambaccini was outspoken in his criticism of last year's
error-strewn 12th Edition), and the established layout was continually
meddled with. A reference book with mistakes is, of course, a truly
worthless thing. Enter, then, The Complete Book Of The British Charts .
Tony Brown is - according to Gambo - "a chartologist par excellence" and
"our (Gambaccini, Read and Rice's) natural successor........the future
of chartology". High praise indeed. He graduated to the post of their
assistant on the Hit Singles and Albums series, after a chance encounter
in 1983.
It should be pointed out that this book is not merely the two Guinness
titles combined. There is an attention to detail, and a
user-friendliness, throughout the 1250 pages. Concise yet always
accurate background information is an impressive added touch within the
A-Z listings of hits by thousands of acts. Helpful yet not overly anal
snippets such as the reasons for a particular song being a hit (from a
film, to celebrate some occasion, and so on) is something previous chart
books of this kind never thought to include.
Furthermore, it is not designed to be a critique or an overview of pop
music's history. The numbers simply do the talking. The Beatles are
treated just the same as Boney M. If it made the Top 75 of either the
Singles or Albums weekly listings, you'll find it in here.
There are four sections : the A-Z of Chart Artists, all the Number One
singles and albums since 1952, and a Title Index of Chart Entries, while
the ubiquitous Various Artists have their own area as well. The format
is clear and easy to use, the print neccessarily on the small side but
still perfectly legible.
The A-Z lists have the act's name, total number of hits and total number
of weeks on the chart as a header. Chart entry dates, highest positions,
record label, and weeks on chart for each title are then listed
chronologically beneath. If the act in question has appeared on both
Singles and Albums listings, then there will be two sections under the
main header.
The Number Ones section is a chronological breakdown - by year, rather
than split into two separate lists - of every chart topper since the
respective charts began, with the number of weeks spent at the top given
in brackets.
All releases credited to Various Artists, meanwhile, are handily
collected together. It comes as no surprise that there are 50 pages of
them, listed by Record Companies, Films, Musicals, Christmas, Live
concerts & festivals, and Television among others.
The final chapter of a mightily impressive - and, it has to be said,
mightily heavy (almost unwieldly) - reference tool is dedicated to
separate index listings for every entry in the Artist sections, with a
year of entry and highest position for them all. If you know the title,
but not who recorded it, this is the place to look.
Now that the once-essential Guinness tomes are clearly more interested
in gimmicks and appearance than the accuracy of their content, The
Complete Book Of The British Charts has arrived at the perfect time. It
is unquestionably THE chart book par excellence, as Gambo himself might
say.
Review copyright © Jason Maloney, 2000.
E-mail Jason Maloney
Check out Jason's homepage:
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