The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 56-60

For better or worse, my musical tastes were born out of the British Invasion, so it's no surprise I'm hitting a run of mid-60s English rock in the heart of my list -- and no surprise that I've already written about so many of today's songs. Some of these bands belong to that elite group of artists who've nabbed more than one spot on my list (guess which); others are more in the category of one-hit wonders, but as my write-ups explain, don't dismiss them so quickly.

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

56. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" / The Animals (1965)
The last great Animals single to be recorded with Alan Price on organ -- and oh, it's a sizzler.

57. "Sunshine Superman" / Donovan (1966)
So many great Donovan tracks, it was hard to choose just one. (I'm prepared now for the onslaught of comments telling me which Donovan tracks you thought were better.) But in the end I had to go for "Sunshine Superman" because it encompasses everything we loved him for -- folkie innocence, hippie psychedelia, and a nifty world music groove.

58. "Time of the Season" / The Zombies (1969)
Thank goodness I've got links for the rest of today's songs -- that leaves me plenty of room to write about this song. As many of you know, I go weak in the knees whenever I think about the Zombies. They weren't around very long -- in fact they broke up a full year before this single was released. Fun facts to know and tell: Wikipedia tells me that it was rock & roll zelig Al Kooper, who'd recently become an A&R exec at Columbia Records, that pushed to lift this track from their 1968 farewell album Odessey and Oracle and put it out as a 45. How cruelly ironic, then, that it turned out to be their best-selling single ever, at least in the U.S. (The Zombies were one British Invasion band that didn't really catch on over here, though I can say I was a Zombies fan from the get-go.)
Talk about the Spookiness Quotient -- this song is simply drenched with it. Some songs just deserve to be heard in the dark, late at night, and this is one of them. That mysterously tip-toeing bass line, the descending triplet on the organ, strange little percussion accents like bumps in the night -- dig that one repeated tic, a lightning-swift combo of block clap, cymbal, and gasp (sounds like somebody's being whipped down in the dungeon). Above all, it's Colin Blunstone's other-worldly voice, doubled and echoed until it sounds like it's coming from some parallel dimension. And on the second verse, all those overlapping voices, falsettos and booming baritones, coming out of the woodwork like a spirits at a seance: "What's your name? (What's your name?) / Who's your daddy? (Who's your daddy?)/ (HE RICH) Is he rich like me-ee? / Has he taken (Has he taken) / any time (any time) / (TO SHOW) To show you what you need to live?" It's like an allusive, coded conversation, something heard through a wall maybe; we have no idea what they're talking about. In the bridge, the imaginary voices take the lead: "(Tell it to me slowly!) / Tell you what?/ (I really want to know). . . " Then they all chime in together in thick clotted sacral harmonies for the refrain: "It's the time / For the see-ea-son for loving," ending on a VERY disturbing chord. After which, off goes Rod Argent's lunatic, inspired organ solo -- I've got to think that Al Kooper was grooving on that. The baroque textures of this song tap into so many dark psychological states -- it makes me think of time travel, of drug trips, of haunted houses, of black magic, of kinky sex, of mad wives locked in the attic, of evil clowns and malevolent ventriloquist's dummies coming to life. You know, like The Twilight Zone on acid, with a script by Ray Bradbury, directed by David Lynch, starring Jeremy Irons and Amanda Plummer. Gothic and stylish, a pure class act.

59. "Concrete and Clay" / Unit 4 + 2 (1966)
Ah, just listen to that cowbell intro. A fluky hit, catapulted from obscurity by pirate radio stations (raise your hand if you saw the film Pirate Radio, a.k.a. The Boat That Rocked), this irresistible little swinger was best listened to on a transistor radio snuggled underneath your pillow. Few songs transport me back as totally as this one does.

60. "A World Without Love" / Peter & Gordon (1964)
The fact that this song was written by Paul McCartney is one-hundred-percent beside the point. I adored Peter Asher, and the heavenly harmonies on this record were pop perfection.

"I Don't Want to See You Again" / Peter and Gordon

R.I.P. Gordon Waller, 1945-2009

I'll admit, this death has hit me a lot harder than Michael Jackson's. True, it was his partner Peter Asher who was my hearthrob back in 1964 (in the brief intervals when I despaired of Paul McCartney ever falling in love with me) -- a strawberry blond mop and black-framed specs, who could resist? But even then I knew perfectly that the sweetly earnest voice carrying the tune was all Gordon.

Granted, how could they lose, when Peter's sister's boyfriend Paul was handing them tunes like this to record? This is possibly the tenderest kiss-off song in the history of pop. In fact, that title phrase -- "I don't want to see you again" -- doesn't even come from our singer; he's just ruefully quoting what his girl said to him. Talk about a deft switcheroo. And he's such a sweetheart, he's just aching . . . which makes your average teen girl with her ear pressed to her transistor radio yearn to comfort the poor guy. A second switcheroo!!

As we girls all know, guys are emotional amateurs. Right now, our protagonist is gobsmacked by the break-up. "I hear that love is planned," he begins -- he's bought the pop party line on love-ever-after -- and he's confused, poor baby. "How can I understand / When someone says to me, / 'I don't want to see you again.'" Can't you just see the winsome pout?

But the folk-tinged sincerity of P & G's voices -- well-bred schoolboys still, with perfect enunciation -- keeps it honest. Push it just a little further, and it could have sounded like self-pity, or egotistical complaint. But no, not our boy -- he's crying at night, ladies, still mournfully rehearsing her cutting words in his ears.

Only in that thrumming bridge does the slightest bit of accusation edge into their voices: "As you turned your back on me / You hid the light of day / I didn't have to play at being / Broken-hearted." (Who said he was "playing"? Lemme at her.) Listen to how they shift in and out from unison to harmonies; whenever their voices divide, I feel more complex emotions burbling up. Just a touch of strings to schmaltz it up, and that doleful-yet-perky instrumental break -- is that a mellotron? a clavinet? whatever it is, it sounds like honking sobs. The production on this number is spot-on, isn't it? I assume it was George Martin at the helm (having a Beatle in-law was tremendous luck for these kids), but knowing that Peter Asher went on to be such a gifted producer himself, I'm willing to believe they had a hand in it themselves.

By the third verse, we already can detect a hint of perspective creeping in: "I know that later on / After love's / Been and gone / I'll still hear someone say / 'I don't want to see you again.'" Ah, well the first cut is the deepest and all that. I suppose we knew this was all cliche -- maybe Peter and Gordon knew it too (I'm betting Paul was always a true believer, at least when in songwriting mode). But as a distillation of teen heartbreak, this little number is nearly faultless. It's unironic pop magic, pure and simple, and we'll never see the likes of it again.

I Don't Want to See You Again sample

“World Without Love” / Peter & Gordon

MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!

One of the nice things about being a fangirl is that you can safely cheat on your true love. Of course I was in love with Paul McCartney in 1964 -- but I was also in love with his as-good-as brother-in-law Peter Asher, of the duo Peter and Gordon. Peter was the redhaired one, the one wearing Buddy Holly glasses (just like my OTHER love, Chad Stuart of Chad and Jeremy). I was impeccably discreet -- none of them ever knew.

Peter and Gordon were inevitably compared to Chad and Jeremy, who’d broken onto the British music scene a few months earlier, though they appeared in the US pretty much simultaneously. But Peter and Gordon had a special advantage over Chad and Jeremy – they got their songs straight from Paul McCartney, who was involved with Peter’s sister Jane Asher (Paul actually lived in the Asher family townhouse, an arrangement that still blows my mind). The McCartney magic touch wasn’t just a matter of the famous name listed on the record label – even when he wrote songs under a pseudonym, they were hits. And Peter and Gordon, with their sincere vocals patterned after the Everly Brothers, did them full justice. These were bright little midtempo rockers, with a sound somehow younger and fresher than That Other Duo -- no strings, for one thing (not until “I Don’t Want To See You Again,” at any rate); electric guitars instead of acoustics; and snazzy back-up drums.

“World Without Love” was Peter and Gordon’s first single, an impressive pop debut indeed. Singing in unison, they start with an anti-social grabber: “Please lock me away / And don’t allow the day / Here inside / Where I hide / With my loneliness.” It’s perfect adolescent petulance; you can almost see the kid stamping his foot and scrunching his face into a frown: “I don’t care what they say / I won’t stay / In a world without love.” But in the second verse, he’s more like Romeo, feeling that the time is out of joint, and their two voices split into tender, close harmonies: “Birds sing out of tune / And rainclouds hide the moon / I’m okay / Here I’ll stay / With my loneliness.” I love the melodic plot here – the way the first two lines struggle up the scale, the next two tumble wistfully downwards, the last one hangs uncertainly on a diminished chord. It could so easily become morose, and yet the upbeat tempo, the jazzy guitar licks, the cheery organ solo in the break, keep it all eager and hopeful.

At first we suppose his heart’s been broken by a cruel girlfriend, but in the bridge the emotional territory shifts: “So I wait and in a while / I will see my true love smile / She may come, I know not when / When she does, I’ll know / So baby until then…” That romantic idealism, the McCartney trademark (he’d mine this idea again, even better, on the white album in the song “I Will”), and I still buy it – you just can’t keep up a jaded mindset in the face of that lovely melody. This guy’s young and innocent – he believes his true love is just around the corner, and Peter and Gordon’s boyish vocals sell it just right.

In 1964, I knew Peter Asher was locked away in his room, waiting for me. I wasn’t sure what I’d tell Paul McCartney when he learned I’d eloped with Peter Asher – but, hey, I’ll deal with that when it happens.