What was the best-selling rock song released in 1970?
Make no mistake about it, the 1970s were the decade of rock.
Of course, the wider story was one of cultural diversity, where rock and its sub genres, prog, psych and punk existed alongside the worlds of soul, disco and even the early stages of hip-hop, but despite that, rock continued to reign supreme, with all of the major chart records of that era being loosely connected to the genre.
Records like Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours triumphed in an era where the electric guitar was the most valuable player, and the soaring vocals of the rock gods were the league’s highest scorers.
It was a trend that could have been clearly forecasted from the very first year of the decade, with the music industry staring down the barrel of opportunity in the 1970s. With The Beatles broken up, there was not only a widespread attitude for fresh innovators to take their place, but number one chart positions to finally be scored, now that one band would no longer dominate it.
In that opening year, artists responded. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released Déjà Vu, The Stooges released Fun House and Simon and Garfunkel became the new songwriting darlings with Bridge Over Troubled Water. The title track from that album became one of the biggest-selling records of the year as well, with over six million copies worldwide, and while many would loosely categorise the band as rock for these purposes, I’m going to dig a little deeper.
What was the best-selling rock song released in 1970?
Because sitting closely behind ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ was a track that truly embodied the rock spirit, which was Free’s ‘All Right Now’ that ended up just two spots behind Simon and Garfunkel’s hit in the 1970 year-end charts, and while the exact figure of units sold is difficult to confirm, it did officially reach platinum status which meant at least one million records were sold.
“It became a bit of an albatross around our necks, I have to say,” the band’s co-founder Simon Kirke explained, “Even though it elevated Free into the big leagues, it became a bit of an albatross because we couldn’t follow it. It became a huge hit all around the world, only because we wanted to have something that people could dance to, but then, of course, we had to follow it up, and Island Records were desperate for us to follow it up.”
He added, “Really it was just a one-off for us, and when the follow-up to ‘All Right Now’ died a death, it was called ‘The Stealer’, and the album that followed, Fire and Water, from which ‘All Right Now’ was taken, when that didn’t do very well, we took it to heart and the band broke up. So, in an indirect way, ‘All Right Now’ was not very good for the band, I have to say.”
Regardless of the band’s dwindling success after the fact, it was an important record in staking a claim for rock in this vibrant new decade.
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