Song Of The Day 3/10/2015: Pilot - "January"

Overpop: The '70s: Pilot from Scotland had one of those fly-by-night, one-shot ’70s hits that’s almost too obvious for even this desperate-to-flag-your-attention word emporium. Said hit would be “Magic.” I won’t hold it against you if you don’t care to relive that, but it’s not bad. “Magic” bewitched the U.S. for a bit, but “January” was the bigger hit for Pilot in the United Kingdom – it hit #1 there on the ironic date of February 1, 1975. It’ll do. I don’t think you’re going to run out of the room screaming or anything.

In researching this song and little bytes of Pilot’s career I came across some interesting facts of which I wasn't aware. First of all, that three of Pilot’s four albums, including the ones that contain “Magic” and “January,” were produced by Alan Parsons. He was the engineer of quite a few albums, including some indisputable classics (Dark Side of the Moon), some that I think are classic (Wizzard Brew), and some that we could probably argue about (Wings’ Red Rose Speedway). Then Parsons went out and got himself a Project.

The other thing: Pilot’s primary, well, pilots were David Paton and the late Billy Lyall. When I looked up Pilot on Wikipedia, that foolproof source for info on Coca-Cola Company presidents and the Malaysian Paralympic Council, I discovered that both Paton and Lyall were “former Bay City Rollers members.” That factoid mixed up my brain a bit, because I thought the Bay City Rollers didn’t surface until 1975 when they squirmed out of the primordial ooze and hit it big in the USA with “Saturday Night,” or as we call it when we’re drunk, “S-S-S-Saturday Ni-hiiiiight.” The chronology didn’t add up, so I looked up the Bay City Rollers and discovered they’d first gotten together in 1967. What? They’ve been around as long as Sgt. Pepper? Two years from now the Bay City Rollers could celebrate their diamond jubilee? In the words of Slim Pickens, “I am depressed.”