Life in the Seventies was very different from now and nowhere are developments more pronounced than in the technology used for entertainment and communication.
Today, many teenagers would find life without a mobile phone unimaginable. So it comes as something of a shock to learn that as recently as three or four decades ago fewer than half of British households had a landline.
For the majority of people receiving calls at home was impossible and making one entailed using a call box. One of the first questions they would ask of new acquaintances was: “Are you on the telephone?” Nowadays this sounds as bizarre as asking somebody if they have electricity.
For most youngsters the only way of communicating with friends was to walk to their house, or cycle round on your Chopper bike, and see if they were in.
At the beginning of the Seventies, record players and transistor radios were the only means for kids to enjoy their music. Seeing singers and groups perform meant tuning in to Top Of The Pops on Thursday evenings. There was no way to record programmes and so it was necessary to watch them as they were broadcast – more often than not on a black and white television. Being able to listen to favourite music on demand was not something young people took for granted. Records were expensive and it was possible to build up only a modest collection at home.
Making tape recordings from records or radio broadcasts became possible as the decade progressed but the quality of such illegal “downloads” left a great deal to be desired. Some lucky teenagers had their own cassette players, although these were expensive and the music sounded nowhere near as good as it did on record players. Perhaps the greatest dream of many was to be able to play their music on an eight-track stereo. This system, with its chunky great cassettes, appeared in 1970 but had dropped out of use by 1980.
Without the internet and the ability to access music and information about singers at will, news about the music scene had to be gleaned from such magazines as New Musical Express and Melody Maker. Fan magazines catered for the need to know more about the private lives of the members of such bands as the Bay City Rollers as well as providing the pin-up posters to be found on nearly every bedroom wall.
Television was far more of a social activity for families. With only one set in the average home and no video recorders, everyone had to watch the same thing at the same time. There were only three channels and this effectively meant that almost everybody would be watching certain popular programmes such as The Generation Game or Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. These days the different generations watch whatever they want on their laptops, televisions, DVD players or a host of other electronic devices. Viewing is no longer the communal activity it once was, which is a pity. The television was a focal point for households in the Seventies and the teenager sitting and laughing at On The Buses with his parents inevitably felt a closer bond with them than one watching an entirely different programme from the rest of the family up in his bedroom.
The Seventies has been called “the decade that style forgot”. Teenagers wore some of the more outlandish fashions which have come to sum up the era. Platform shoes, flares, bell-bottom jeans and hotpants were all enthusiastically championed. The strange thing about many of these phenomena is that they emerged promptly in 1970 and then disappeared in 1979, fitting neatly into the decade. The 16-year-old girl wearing platforms in 1970 would have been a daring trend-setter but nine years later no sartorially savvy teenager would have been seen dead in them.
This was the period when young fashions spilled over into, and had a profound effect upon, the adult world. Photographs of families at the seaside during the Sixties show middle aged men sitting on the beach wearing collars and ties. By the Eighties this would have unthinkable. The longer hair adopted by many youths in the Seventies, together with the more casual way of dressing, became universally accepted.
The most noticeable difference between the lives of teenagers then and the way things are today lies in how they communicated with one another. As private telephones were available only in a minority of households their use by teenagers was strictly controlled. Phone charges were very high and most young people would only be able to make brief calls. This meant that practically all conversations took place face to face; social life invariably meant meeting other people and talking to them.
These days an enormous amount of interaction takes place via the printed word on Facebook and by texting on mobile telephones and it is possible for someone to enjoy a rich social life without having to leave their bedroom. This type of existence would be a bizarre concept to a teenager from the Seventies.
Yet the digital revolution which made such things as mobiles and the internet possible had its roots in this fascinating 10 years and was one of the things that made it such an exhilarating time to be young.
When the decade began we all used mechanical typewriters, cameras, gramophones, clockwork watches and slide rules – the kind of technology that had existed in Queen Victoria’s reign. By 1980, however, there were push-button telephones, digital watches, electronic calculators and even the very first computer games.
Making the transition from child to adult during a period of such dramatic change was tremendously exciting. There has never been a decade quite like the Seventies. Few generations can say that they have witnessed the birth of a new era but millions of now middle-aged men and women really did see the drab, post-war world transformed in front of their very eyes.
To order a copy of A 1970s Teenager From Bell-Bottoms To Disco Dancing, by Simon Webb, (The History Press Ltd) at £9.99 send a cheque or PO made payable to Express Bookshop to: 1970s Offer, PO Box 200 Falmouth TR11 4WJ or tel 0871 988 8367 or online at www.expressbookshop.com UK delivery is free. Calls cost 10p per minute from UK landlines.
No comments:
Post a Comment