March 1974: Can it be that it was all so simple then? 

The early 70s were transitional years. Time moved forward, but culturally everyone still seemed stuck in a gear clearly marked “60s.” 

The National Book Award winner for 1974 was Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers (later adapted into the movie Who’ll Stop the Rain), a bleak travelogue about smuggling heroin that starts in Vietnam and ends with a firefight on a California mountaintop equipped with speakers and lights to accompany Ken Kesey-styled Acid Tests. 

In the 1974 film The Parallax View, a shadow-shrouded federal “commission” rules that a lone gunman was behind a Robert Kennedy-styled political assassination, leading reporter Warren Beatty to track down a connection between the shooting and the equally shadowy Parallax Corporation. (A strange movie, sort of The Manchurian Candidate meets Cannonball Run, merging serious themes with a “smash-everything-in-sight” barroom brawl and a police car chase that ends with a car crashing through the front window of a supermarket. All that’s missing is Jerry Reed). 

In real life, even with Vietnam more or less over, as well as the military draft, Richard Nixon’s re-election in 1972 was enough to get the revolutionary arm of the counterculture to declare itself alive and well, and begin blowing up banks and ROTC training buildings. 

Combine these 60s hangovers with the OPEC oil embargo, Watergate and the unresolvable resolution to Vietnam and amateur sociologists will tell you that America’s reaction was to “go back to simpler times” – AKA the 50s. 

And we got back with a vengeance. Grease opened on Broadway in 1972, American Graffiti in theatres in 1973 and Happy Days on television in January 1974. In July 1972, New York City’s WCBS-FM changed to an all-oldies format. John Lennon released an album of favorite 50s songs in early 1975, as did the Band. 

Re-entering the Billboard charts in March 1974 was Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” 21 years after it was number one for eight weeks. Powered by its inclusion in the soundtrack to American Graffiti and as the first theme song to Happy Days, it reached #39 in May. 

Bill Haley & the Comets

The inherent irony in the rush for happier days was what got conveniently ignored, mainly the dark side of American society in the 50s: segregation, gay repression, cold war tensions and fear of The Bomb, the Red Scare. Joe McCarthy might have been the real face of the 50s, not the sassy drive-in carhop on roller skates who takes your order for a cheeseburger and a Coke. 

It took a long time to run its course, but the 50s fascination finally hit the wall in the early 80s; that Sha-Na-Na had its own variety show that lasted four seasons gives you an idea of how unescapable all this was. 

Here are Billboard’s top ten records for March 1974: 

SEASONS IN THE SUN –•– Terry Jacks

BOOGIE DOWN –•– Eddie Kendricks

DARK LADY –•– Cher

SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS –•– John Denver

THE WAY WE WERE –•– Barbra Streisand

MOCKINGBIRD –•– Carly Simon and James Taylor

JUNGLE BOOGIE –•– Kool and the Gang

SPIDERS & SNAKES –•– Jim Stafford

ROCK ON –•– David Essex

HOOKED ON A FEELING –•– Blue Swede 

“Seasons in the Sun” was a maudlin entry in the 70s genre of deathbed pop (“Yesterday When I Was Young,” “Reflections of My Life”). Terry Jacks was part of a strange run of studio vocalists who had multiple hits around this time, nearly all one-hit wonders and under different names. 

Jacks hit the top ten with “Seasons in the Sun” and in 1969 as part of the Poppy Family (Jacks and his wife) with “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” Ron Dante was recruited to sing lead on the Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar," Billboard’s #1 record for 1969. Later that year he recorded an album under the group name the Cuff Links and had a second top ten hit with “Tracy.” But nobody comes close to Britain’s Tony Burrows, who sang lead with five groups that didn’t exist outside of the recording studio, four of the five hitting the Billboard Top Ten: Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)"; White Plains' "My Baby Loves Lovin'"; the Pipkins' "Gimme Dat Ding"; Brotherhood of Man’s “United We Stand” (all from 1970) and First Class' "Beach Baby" (1974).