Eric Clapton once said that the first note of The Air That I Breathe had more soul than anything he’d ever heard. I know exactly what he means.

If the song sounds familiar, that might be because its melody was stolen wholesale by Radiohead two decades later for their breakthrough hit Creep. And again by Lana Del Rey for a song called Get Free.

In a bizarre legal twist, Radiohead themselves tried to sue Del Rey for stealing it off them, before backing down when they were themselves sued by the writers of this song, Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, eventually giving them a songwriting credit (and a share of the lucrative royalties).

What I love most about it, apart from that opening note, is Tony Hicks’s plangent guitar solo, which emerges from what is a slow and stately song just in time to save it from syrupy sentimentality.

When it came out in 1974 I I didn’t know that The Hollies had been churning out hits for more than a decade, though I do remember the curiously long titles of their two previous hits (Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress and… deep breath… The Day That Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGhee).

I also didn’t know this one was written by Hammond and and Hazlewood, who had also composed It Never Rains In Southern California and The Free Electric Band for Hammond (and Make Me An Island for Joe Dolan). Nor that the song had already appeared on two albums, by Hammond and Phil Everly.

The Hollies, who began life as a Beat group in Manchester, built around the three-part harmonies of Allan Clarke and guitarists Graham Nash and Tony Hicks, had become a different kind of band after the departure in 1968 of Nash.

He moved to California and joined Crosby, Stills & Nash, followed out of the band three years later by Clarke, who found even greater success as centre-forward for Leeds United* alongside future Clash guitarist Mick Jones, before returning to the band for this, the last of their two dozen hit singles.

The line-up here is Allan Clarke (vocals), Tony Hicks (electric guitar), Terry Sylvester (acoustic guitar), Bernie Calvert (bass) and Bobby Elliott (drums), with Gary Sprake between the sticks*. The sound engineer, by the way – and the man to whom Clapton confided his love of that first twangy note – was Alan Parsons of Beatles, Pink Floyd and Cockney Rebel fame.

*Not true. The footballing Allan Clarke and Mick Jones were no relation. And Gary Sprake was the Leeds goalkeeper, not a member of The Hollies.