500 Singles - Numbers 1,2 and 3 - ABBA - Knowing me, knowing you, Summer night city, The name of the game

It’s more than fitting that the first single I ever bought should appear on page 1 of the 500 Singles list.

From what now seems like a dangerously young age I used to walk one mile from our house close to Sunderland General Hospital (now known as Sunderland Royal Hospital) into Sunderland town centre, to meet up with friends and spend Saturday looking around the shops of the fine metropolis of Sunderland.

 

Sometimes I even had money to spend, and of course as everyone knows that was the only way to ensure admittance to Josephs’ toy shop. If you didn’t have any money to spend you simply weren’t allowed to idly browse the wonders on the first floor (it was boring sportswear on the ground floor) regardless of the amount you’d spent last week on a new Subbuteo team or a John Player Special in black and gold for your small oval of Scalextric track.

 

Then, one particular Saturday in 1977, something significant happened. We wandered down windswept Walworth Way (the bleakest environment outside the Arctic Circle) and instead of spending my pocket money on sweets or toys I made a bee-line for that most independent and cutting edge of music retailers, WH Smith and handed over my hard-earned for a copy of ABBA’s ‘The Name Of The Game’. My first single. Orange Epic label, orange paper sleeve. My second single was ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, but there are no prizes for second place. By the time I bought ‘Summer night city’ in 1978 I’d already shifted my musical affections in the direction of The Boomtown Rats. I guess that’s just the way life goes.

 

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