For me 1975 was a great year in music in at least one respect – it was the first year in my life that Cliff Richard had not had a hit single. Because this single, Honky Tonk Angel, was banned… banned by Cliff himself.
A cover of a country hit by Conway Twitty, chosen for Cliff by his producer Bruce Welch of The Shadows, it was already in the shops, and on the radio, and Cliff had performed it on TV.
Then he was at a Christian meeting where he had to face the music – a girl broke the terrible news to him that he had just recorded a song about a woman of easy virtue. A hooker, she said. A whore!
“Well I defended it and said: ‘Of course it’s not about a prostitute, don’t be ridiculous!'” Cliff recalled. But the thought of it wouldn’t go away. And the implications for a clean-cut Christian like Cliff were just too ghastly to contemplate.
“When I got home I thought, I’ll just check it out. So I phoned people.” First he phoned his manager. Surely, he said, these “honky tonk angels” of whom he had sung so enthusiastically were merely young ladies who enjoyed playing the piano, perhaps in saloon bars?
But his manager didn’t know what a honky tonk angel was either. Neither he nor Cliff, apparently, had even heard the song Honky Tonk Women, which topped the singles chart six years earlier.
Urgent calls were made: “All the way from Weybridge to Los Angeles,” Cliff explained. The news from LA was not good. But it wasn’t as bad as first feared.
“It turns out that she’s not a prostitute,” a relieved Cliff reported. “She doesn’t sell herself. But she is a loose moral lady of the night. So I thought, I’m not going to upset the Christians by doing it. And I went back and said I won’t sing it again. And I’ve never sung it.”
Awkwardly, at this point Cliff’s single was already in the shops, already being played on the radio. More urgent calls were made. Local calls this time, from Weybridge to the BBC. And probably Capital Radio. And to record shops all over the land, urging them to cleanse their shelves of the offending seven-inch.
As an added precaution, Cliff decided to warn his fans publicly of the moral danger that might ensue if they bought his new single. “I hope it’s a flop,” he announced.
“I never want to hear it again and I hope most of the public never hear it. I knew honky tonks were something to do with bars but I completely misconstrued the meaning.
“Okay, some people might say I’m naive…” – I’ll just pause at that point, while we consider that proposition – “and obviously it’s very embarrassing for me.
“Now that I know what I’ve been singing about I’ve taken steps to do all I can to make it a flop. I hope no one buys it. If the record is a hit and I’m asked to sing it I will refuse, unless the words are changed.”
And so it was that, true to his word as a Christian, Cliff never sang that song again… Though he did later allow it to appear on three compilation albums.