“Little Children” / Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
There was a heady moment in time when it seemed every musician in Great Britain was from Liverpool. Take Billy J. Kramer (born William Ashton -- he picked the surname Kramer out of a phone book to sound less “posh”), who slipstreamed behind the Beatles and Gerry & the Pacemakers into the limelight in 1963. Not coincidentally he was also a client of Brian Epstein, who’d plucked him from obscurity mainly for his fair-haired Ricky-Nelson-like looks. Epstein teamed up Billy J. with a Manchester group called the Dakotas and, on the heels of the Beatles’ success, got them a Parlophone recording contract. Billy J. Kramer was a very lucky man.
The Epstein connection also snagged Billy J. some foolproof material to record – namely a handful of Lennon-McCartney cast-offs, including his first UK hit, “Bad To Me”, which topped the charts in August 1963. (I guess songs were pouring out of John and Paul so fast, they never could have recorded them all.). Yet Billy J.’s biggest hit – his only major US hit – was “Little Children,” written by Shuman and McFarland, a team of Elvis Presley songwriters. I don’t blame Billy J. for wanting to record at least one song that wasn’t a hand-me-down from two guys who, just a few months earlier, had been his mates around the Merseyside club circuit.
“Little Children” caught my ear immediately, thanks to its witty premise – it’s addressed not to his girlfriend but to her pesky younger siblings, who won’t leave the couple alone. The angle’s oblique, but the pent-up urges of horny teenagers percolate through all right. It certainly was sexy enough to make me curious in 1964, when I was still a pesky little kid myself. “Little children / you better not tell on me,” Billy J. starts out, his light voice more desperate than threatening. “I’m telling you / Little children / you better not tell what you see.” Next comes a line that should have tipped me off that this was an American song -- “I’ll give you candy and a quarter / If you’re quiet like you oughtta be” – though Billy J.’s British accent on “oughtta” preserved the Merseybeat illusion for me (back then I had no idea that UK currency didn’t include quarters!).
Billy J.’s voice was undistinguished, but it was certainly virile, more so here than ever. Maybe it was the Elvis vibes. He practically channels The King, sliding chromatically from note to note in the bridge: “You saw me kissing your sister / You saw me holding her hand / But if you snitch to your mother / Your father won’t understand.” I get a special kick out of the impatient little asides slipped in here and there -- “(I wish they would go away),” “(I wish they would take a nap)” – turning this into situation comedy. He waits until the last verse to reassure us that he’s not just taking advantage of her, that the relationship’s serious: “Me and your sister, we’re going steady / How can I kiss her, when I’m ready to / With little children like you around.”
Nobody “goes steady” anymore, which is too bad, because it fit perfectly into that sly rhyme. The whole song was a throwback even then, given the sexual freedom hinted at in other contemporary songs (“Please, Please Me,” “How Do You Do It,” even Billy J.’s earlier “I’ll Keep You Satisfied”). The hits stopped coming for Billy J. Kramer in 1965; he moved to America and now works a steady round of British Invasion revival shows. But he had his moment in the sun -- and very sweet little moment it was.
Little Children sample
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Monday, May 07, 2007
“Ferry Cross the Mersey” / Gerry & the Pacemakers
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
Little-known fact: Gerry & the Pacemakers – another Liverpool band managed by Brian Epstein – had a #1 UK hit before the Beatles. The song was “How Do You Do It,” a tune that George Martin had forced on the Beatles too. They, however, insisted on releasing “Please Please Me” instead -- and it only reached #2, while their hometown pals beat them out with the song they had rejected.
Well, a month later the Beatles would begin their reign atop the charts; in the end it didn’t matter. But Gerry & the Pacemakers did very well for themselves in the mid-60s, with a string of likeable pop hits through 1967. Front man Gerry Marsden had a wide face, a toothy grin, and a velvety voice full of vibrato, and the band could pull off both cheery upbeat rockers and warbly ballads, so long as their producer George Martin provided undemanding standard arrangements. (Their cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” apparently became an anthem for the Liverpool Football Club.) In early 1964, when the Invasion first hit America, the first Pacemakers track I heard was “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying,” a strings-heavy number with a clarinet lick that to this day chokes me up if I’m not careful.
This particular song came along in January 1965 -- a perfect time for a song that was, at least to my 11-year-old ears, about the British Invasion. Gerry Marsden’s Liverpool accent was always much thicker than any of the other Merseybeat singers, but for this song especially, that was perfect. It wasn’t a love song about a girl; he had written a love song about Liverpool, sketching a fond portrait of Scousers going about their daily business. (We’d have to wait until the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” for another such evocative city-in-song.)
It begins almost sleepily, like an early-morning commuter's routine, with Gerry’s brother Fred lightly brushing the drums, Gerry playing a mechanical acoustic lick on his guitar: “Life goes on day after day / Hearts torn in every way…” Yes, a string section swoops in on the chorus, but Gerry’s singing is so bloody sincere it works: “So ferry 'cross the Mersey / ‘Cause this land's the place I love / And here I'll stay.” That last chord hangs expectantly, a nice touch.
A flute counterpoints the vocal on verse two, rising up like a circling gull: “People they rush everywhere / Each with their own secret care.” It’s nicely cinematic, panning back to an wide-angle shot of commuters rushing to and fro; and what makes it different from any big city? He tells us in the bridge: “People around every corner / They seem to smile and say / We don't care what your name is boy / We'll never turn you away.” Ah, there’s the hometown touch.
There must have been a video of this song; I remember seeing black-and-white footage of Mersey ferries steaming into the Liverpool docks, and Gerry Marsden leaning over a railing singing earnestly into the mist. (Am I hallucinating?) Apparently there was also a movie called Ferry Cross the Mersey, starring Gerry, the Pacemakers, and Cilla Black, but I’m betting it was awful, because it has disappeared even deeper than the Dave Clark Five’s Having A Wild Weekend. No matter how assiduously Brian Epstein marketed these lads, they’d never be able to rise beyond a certain fame. But I don’t think Gerry Marsden ever expected to be another John Lennon; he was happy enough to be another Tommy Steele.
By the time this song came out, the Merseybeat era was already dying. The Beatles had gone south; bands all over the U.K. had found their own beat; the talent flight to America had begun. So there's something especially wistful about the end of “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” with Gerry declaring over and over, “And here I’ll stay…here I'll stay...here I'll stay.” It’s a moment in time, captured forever: the pure essence of 1965. It was a very good year.
Ferry Cross the Mersey sample
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
Little-known fact: Gerry & the Pacemakers – another Liverpool band managed by Brian Epstein – had a #1 UK hit before the Beatles. The song was “How Do You Do It,” a tune that George Martin had forced on the Beatles too. They, however, insisted on releasing “Please Please Me” instead -- and it only reached #2, while their hometown pals beat them out with the song they had rejected.
Well, a month later the Beatles would begin their reign atop the charts; in the end it didn’t matter. But Gerry & the Pacemakers did very well for themselves in the mid-60s, with a string of likeable pop hits through 1967. Front man Gerry Marsden had a wide face, a toothy grin, and a velvety voice full of vibrato, and the band could pull off both cheery upbeat rockers and warbly ballads, so long as their producer George Martin provided undemanding standard arrangements. (Their cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” apparently became an anthem for the Liverpool Football Club.) In early 1964, when the Invasion first hit America, the first Pacemakers track I heard was “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying,” a strings-heavy number with a clarinet lick that to this day chokes me up if I’m not careful.
This particular song came along in January 1965 -- a perfect time for a song that was, at least to my 11-year-old ears, about the British Invasion. Gerry Marsden’s Liverpool accent was always much thicker than any of the other Merseybeat singers, but for this song especially, that was perfect. It wasn’t a love song about a girl; he had written a love song about Liverpool, sketching a fond portrait of Scousers going about their daily business. (We’d have to wait until the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” for another such evocative city-in-song.)
It begins almost sleepily, like an early-morning commuter's routine, with Gerry’s brother Fred lightly brushing the drums, Gerry playing a mechanical acoustic lick on his guitar: “Life goes on day after day / Hearts torn in every way…” Yes, a string section swoops in on the chorus, but Gerry’s singing is so bloody sincere it works: “So ferry 'cross the Mersey / ‘Cause this land's the place I love / And here I'll stay.” That last chord hangs expectantly, a nice touch.
A flute counterpoints the vocal on verse two, rising up like a circling gull: “People they rush everywhere / Each with their own secret care.” It’s nicely cinematic, panning back to an wide-angle shot of commuters rushing to and fro; and what makes it different from any big city? He tells us in the bridge: “People around every corner / They seem to smile and say / We don't care what your name is boy / We'll never turn you away.” Ah, there’s the hometown touch.
There must have been a video of this song; I remember seeing black-and-white footage of Mersey ferries steaming into the Liverpool docks, and Gerry Marsden leaning over a railing singing earnestly into the mist. (Am I hallucinating?) Apparently there was also a movie called Ferry Cross the Mersey, starring Gerry, the Pacemakers, and Cilla Black, but I’m betting it was awful, because it has disappeared even deeper than the Dave Clark Five’s Having A Wild Weekend. No matter how assiduously Brian Epstein marketed these lads, they’d never be able to rise beyond a certain fame. But I don’t think Gerry Marsden ever expected to be another John Lennon; he was happy enough to be another Tommy Steele.
By the time this song came out, the Merseybeat era was already dying. The Beatles had gone south; bands all over the U.K. had found their own beat; the talent flight to America had begun. So there's something especially wistful about the end of “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” with Gerry declaring over and over, “And here I’ll stay…here I'll stay...here I'll stay.” It’s a moment in time, captured forever: the pure essence of 1965. It was a very good year.
Ferry Cross the Mersey sample
Saturday, May 05, 2007
“We Gotta Get Out Of This Place” / The Animals
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
I know I’ve written about the Animals a few times already – they were, after all, the band that gave Alan Price his start – but I couldn’t really do a British Invasion month without writing about the Animals, could I?
This was the first track they recorded in June 1965 after Alan Price left the band (so see, I’m not writing about Alan Price again), but he was replaced by another Newcastle lad, Dave Rowberry, so this second incarnation of the Animals still had a lot of Geordie soul. Their producer, Mickie Most, was driving them continually in a more pop-oriented direction, urging them to record this song by Brill Building songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, but the Animals still were able to turn it into another gritty song about urban rebellion. (Can you imagine what the Monkees would’ve done with a song like this?)
It starts off with an ominous deep bass line, played like thrumming machinery by Chas Chandler (who’d become Jimi Hendrix’s manager in his post-Animals life); next John Steel gives us a warning ting! on the cymbals, like a factory gate clanging shut. Then Eric Burdon starts, in his bluesiest low register, “In this dirty old part of the city / Where the sun refuse to shine / People tell me there ain’t no use in tryin’.” Add the guitar and full drums as Eric warms up to his subject, his voice shivering with pity: “Now my girl you’re so young and pretty / And one thing I know is true / You’ll be dead before your time is due.” Those clotted Newcastle vowels (despite all his attempts to sound like a Deep South bluesman) and his smoky timbre bring all the darkness and sorrow they can into that lyric. The metallic cymbals and guitar, the wheeze of the organ, the echoing vocals, all read heavy industry to me. Forget Swingin’ London; this was a different United Kingdom, a place of sooty brick walls and smokestacks and pubfuls of men on the dole. A dirty old part of the city, indeed.
Eric goes up an octave for the next verse, getting worked up, yelping on the high notes: “Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin’ / Watch his hair been turnin’ gray / He’s been working and slavin’ his life away.” Sure, he’s sorry for his dad – but what really scares him is imagining himself going down the same road. “We gotta get out of this place,” the whole band agrees in the chorus, the voices behind the frontman shouting sloppily, desperately, “if it’s the last thing we ever do / We gotta get out of this place.” Things screech to a halt so Eric can sing a cappella – “Girl, there’s a better life / For me and you.” On the “you,” all the instruments come jerking back in, playing convulsive chord progressions against a relentless hammering drumbeat. I can’t help but feel that their escape is doomed, whatever Mann and Weil intended.
Eric Burdon’s always had a gift for phrasing – see how he pauses for dramatic emphasis before “dirty old,” lags meaningfully on “refuse to shine,” bounces off the beat on “for me and you.” All the extra “oh yeses” and “you knows” he throws in, testifying like he’s at a tent revival –and yet that dream of a better life shimmers just out of reach. Sure, there’s a love song in here – that brave young couple, like Romeo and Juliet, trying to escape their parents’ fate. (Cue up West Side Story and “There’s a place for us…”) But what really hit me about this song in 1965 was that image of the industrial city, like a trap from which the young can only dream of escaping. British bands were already reaching for something a little meatier. And where they would go next was anybody’s guess.
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place sample
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
I know I’ve written about the Animals a few times already – they were, after all, the band that gave Alan Price his start – but I couldn’t really do a British Invasion month without writing about the Animals, could I?
This was the first track they recorded in June 1965 after Alan Price left the band (so see, I’m not writing about Alan Price again), but he was replaced by another Newcastle lad, Dave Rowberry, so this second incarnation of the Animals still had a lot of Geordie soul. Their producer, Mickie Most, was driving them continually in a more pop-oriented direction, urging them to record this song by Brill Building songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, but the Animals still were able to turn it into another gritty song about urban rebellion. (Can you imagine what the Monkees would’ve done with a song like this?)
It starts off with an ominous deep bass line, played like thrumming machinery by Chas Chandler (who’d become Jimi Hendrix’s manager in his post-Animals life); next John Steel gives us a warning ting! on the cymbals, like a factory gate clanging shut. Then Eric Burdon starts, in his bluesiest low register, “In this dirty old part of the city / Where the sun refuse to shine / People tell me there ain’t no use in tryin’.” Add the guitar and full drums as Eric warms up to his subject, his voice shivering with pity: “Now my girl you’re so young and pretty / And one thing I know is true / You’ll be dead before your time is due.” Those clotted Newcastle vowels (despite all his attempts to sound like a Deep South bluesman) and his smoky timbre bring all the darkness and sorrow they can into that lyric. The metallic cymbals and guitar, the wheeze of the organ, the echoing vocals, all read heavy industry to me. Forget Swingin’ London; this was a different United Kingdom, a place of sooty brick walls and smokestacks and pubfuls of men on the dole. A dirty old part of the city, indeed.
Eric goes up an octave for the next verse, getting worked up, yelping on the high notes: “Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin’ / Watch his hair been turnin’ gray / He’s been working and slavin’ his life away.” Sure, he’s sorry for his dad – but what really scares him is imagining himself going down the same road. “We gotta get out of this place,” the whole band agrees in the chorus, the voices behind the frontman shouting sloppily, desperately, “if it’s the last thing we ever do / We gotta get out of this place.” Things screech to a halt so Eric can sing a cappella – “Girl, there’s a better life / For me and you.” On the “you,” all the instruments come jerking back in, playing convulsive chord progressions against a relentless hammering drumbeat. I can’t help but feel that their escape is doomed, whatever Mann and Weil intended.
Eric Burdon’s always had a gift for phrasing – see how he pauses for dramatic emphasis before “dirty old,” lags meaningfully on “refuse to shine,” bounces off the beat on “for me and you.” All the extra “oh yeses” and “you knows” he throws in, testifying like he’s at a tent revival –and yet that dream of a better life shimmers just out of reach. Sure, there’s a love song in here – that brave young couple, like Romeo and Juliet, trying to escape their parents’ fate. (Cue up West Side Story and “There’s a place for us…”) But what really hit me about this song in 1965 was that image of the industrial city, like a trap from which the young can only dream of escaping. British bands were already reaching for something a little meatier. And where they would go next was anybody’s guess.
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place sample
Friday, May 04, 2007
“You Really Got Me” / The Kinks
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
We all know those harsh, grating opening chords – bah dunh-dunh dunh dunh – two chords, five forceful strums, muscling into the sugary world of the British Beat and demanding to be heard. There is no more efficient guitar intro in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, with the possible exception of the Kinks’ next runaway hit record, “All Day and All Of the Night” (bum ba-dunh ba dunh-dunh-dunh dunh).
That riff, twice, then a vigorous whomp on the drums, then in comes the lead vocal: “Girl / You really got me goin’ / You got me so I don’t know what I’m doing.” His voice is plaintive, whiny, confused, chasing around that slippery, unconventional melodic line. Still trying to pin down what’s happening in his desire-wracked brain, he repeats himself, adding “You got me so I can’t sleep at night” (that vocal flutter on “sleep AT night” tickles me every time). Someone stabs a few jittery piano chords behind him in rhythm with that abrupt, jerky guitar. Then he shifts anxiously upward to a new key, with back-up vocals joining to swell the volume. But it’s not enough; he’s not getting through to her -- so letting loose a desperate howled “Oh, YEAH!” he shifts up into yet a third key change, jacking up the volume too, racheting up his inarticulate passion to almost unbearable heights. Take pity on this guy, please.
I remember standing in our kitchen, listening to this song on the radio for the first time, and thinking, “Who IS this?” Ray Davies truly does sound like someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing, a guy who can’t sleep at night – gangly and vulnerable and yet somehow utterly charming. Has anybody else ever made obsessive compulsion this attractive? “See, don't ever set me free / I always wanna be by your side.” (A few singles later and he’d be begging the girl to “Set Me Free” after all.) And then there’s his unruly brother Dave, launching into his guitar solo in the middle eight like a kid possessed.
The lyrics barely change from verse to verse -- and why should they, when the singer has only one thing on his mind? It's two minutes and thirteen seconds of rock ‘n’ roll at its most elemental, sexual frustration and teenage angst and visceral energy all erupting like a volcano -- a volcano with irresistible hooks and a jazzy syncopated beat you couldn’t stop moving to.
This song came out of nowhere, hitting #1 in the UK in September 1964 and, released a month later Stateside, a respectable #7 on the US charts. They’d follow it up with “All Day and All of The Night,” “Tired of Waiting,” “Set Me Free,” “Till the End of the Day,” every one of them recognizable as a Kinks track the minute you heard it (it was all in the power chords). Then in 1966, as British rock embraced social satire, Ray Davies found his true calling with songs like “Well-Respected Man,” “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” “Sunny Afternoon,” “Dead End Street,” “Mister Pleasant”…well, it’s a LONG list. Add together the consistent excellence of their songs and their remarkable longevity (the band stopped performing in the mid-1990s, though they’ve never officially broken up) and the Kinks may well have been the most productive English band ever. The fact that Ray Davies hasn’t been knighted yet is a disgrace.
I didn’t surrender to my fate and become a true Kinkaholic for a few more years – not until the Beatles were well and truly broken up, the British Invasion a thing of the past. But in 1964, even a loyal Beatle lover like myself couldn’t help but like the Kinks, scruffy and outlandish as their public persona might have been -- they just always seemed to be having so much fun. And wasn’t fun the whole point?
You Really Got Me sample
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
We all know those harsh, grating opening chords – bah dunh-dunh dunh dunh – two chords, five forceful strums, muscling into the sugary world of the British Beat and demanding to be heard. There is no more efficient guitar intro in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, with the possible exception of the Kinks’ next runaway hit record, “All Day and All Of the Night” (bum ba-dunh ba dunh-dunh-dunh dunh).
That riff, twice, then a vigorous whomp on the drums, then in comes the lead vocal: “Girl / You really got me goin’ / You got me so I don’t know what I’m doing.” His voice is plaintive, whiny, confused, chasing around that slippery, unconventional melodic line. Still trying to pin down what’s happening in his desire-wracked brain, he repeats himself, adding “You got me so I can’t sleep at night” (that vocal flutter on “sleep AT night” tickles me every time). Someone stabs a few jittery piano chords behind him in rhythm with that abrupt, jerky guitar. Then he shifts anxiously upward to a new key, with back-up vocals joining to swell the volume. But it’s not enough; he’s not getting through to her -- so letting loose a desperate howled “Oh, YEAH!” he shifts up into yet a third key change, jacking up the volume too, racheting up his inarticulate passion to almost unbearable heights. Take pity on this guy, please.
I remember standing in our kitchen, listening to this song on the radio for the first time, and thinking, “Who IS this?” Ray Davies truly does sound like someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing, a guy who can’t sleep at night – gangly and vulnerable and yet somehow utterly charming. Has anybody else ever made obsessive compulsion this attractive? “See, don't ever set me free / I always wanna be by your side.” (A few singles later and he’d be begging the girl to “Set Me Free” after all.) And then there’s his unruly brother Dave, launching into his guitar solo in the middle eight like a kid possessed.
The lyrics barely change from verse to verse -- and why should they, when the singer has only one thing on his mind? It's two minutes and thirteen seconds of rock ‘n’ roll at its most elemental, sexual frustration and teenage angst and visceral energy all erupting like a volcano -- a volcano with irresistible hooks and a jazzy syncopated beat you couldn’t stop moving to.
This song came out of nowhere, hitting #1 in the UK in September 1964 and, released a month later Stateside, a respectable #7 on the US charts. They’d follow it up with “All Day and All of The Night,” “Tired of Waiting,” “Set Me Free,” “Till the End of the Day,” every one of them recognizable as a Kinks track the minute you heard it (it was all in the power chords). Then in 1966, as British rock embraced social satire, Ray Davies found his true calling with songs like “Well-Respected Man,” “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” “Sunny Afternoon,” “Dead End Street,” “Mister Pleasant”…well, it’s a LONG list. Add together the consistent excellence of their songs and their remarkable longevity (the band stopped performing in the mid-1990s, though they’ve never officially broken up) and the Kinks may well have been the most productive English band ever. The fact that Ray Davies hasn’t been knighted yet is a disgrace.
I didn’t surrender to my fate and become a true Kinkaholic for a few more years – not until the Beatles were well and truly broken up, the British Invasion a thing of the past. But in 1964, even a loyal Beatle lover like myself couldn’t help but like the Kinks, scruffy and outlandish as their public persona might have been -- they just always seemed to be having so much fun. And wasn’t fun the whole point?
You Really Got Me sample
Thursday, May 03, 2007
"Play With Fire" / The Rolling Stones
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
It’s always been a love-hate thing with me and the Rolling Stones.
Like the loyal Beatlemaniac I was in 1964, I took sides: Beatles good, Rolling Stones bad. After all, they’d been presented to us as the Anti-Beatles, thanks to their canny manager Andrew Loog Oldham. When they finally appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in October 1964, singing “Time Is On My Side”, I sat anxiously on my family room floor in front of the set, not knowing what to think. They didn’t wear matching suits, their long hair was ragged, and they were…well, UGLY. I was a ten-year-old clutching a fistful of Beatle cards -- cute was what mattered. And it didn’t help that there was an undertone of aggressive sexuality there that I was way too young to feel comfortable with. (Same thing that happened with House of the Rising Sun, minus that mesmerizing organ solo.)
It didn’t matter that the Stones weren’t actually the Beatles’ enemies – that they’d even recorded a Beatles song, “I Wanna Be Your Man,” as their second single (a track that still makes me wince). I simply refused to admit them into My British Invasion. In those days I was known to scoff that “Time Is On My Side” and “Heart of Stone” were the exact same song; “Satisfaction” and “Get Off My Cloud” had unforgettable hooks, I couldn’t deny that, but otherwise they seemed like the same song too. (Ten years old, and already a critic.) In secret, I liked their Mod-flavored ballads “As Tears Go By,” “Lady Jane,” and “Ruby Tuesday,” but I figured those didn’t count as Stones songs, following some obscure logic I cannot recall.
Now, years later, I can let go of that Beatlemania prejudice and admit how good these guys were. It took a couple of years, but once Jagger and Richards found their songwriting groove, they laid down some of the most memorable tracks of the decade. This one in particular haunts me. Set in a minor key, with just an acoustic guitar, a faint whisper of bass, tambourine, and harpsichord (played by Jack Nietzsche, of all people), its brooding delicacy is perfectly suited to the dark insinuations of Jagger’s voice.
And the lyrics – Jagger and Richards, a.k.a. Nanker Phelge, had made a quantum leap forward. Specific details – places, social customs – skewer the subject with pinpoint accuracy. Bring on the class warfare (so important to the British audience; I pretended I got it too), portraying the girl’s world of chauffeurs and couture and heiresses and diamond tiaras, which would all go up in smoke if she messes around with the singer. “So don’t play with me / ‘Cause you’re playing with fire,” Mick warns her in the chorus, his voice rising from the wary hush of the verses, like a coiled serpent striking. It didn’t matter that I'd never been to St. John’s Wood, Stepney, or Knightsbridge; I could tell what they stood for in this harsh little morality tale. And of course the local references made it ten times more evocative for me, besotted with Swinging London as I was.
The Stones – well, Jagger and Richards – recorded this in January 1965, riding the crest of British rock’s rapid evolution. Suddenly it was cool to be arty, to use different instruments, to strive for poetry and social comment in the lyrics. Ten months later, the Beatles would trump this with “Norwegian Wood,” an even more disturbing little story with more surreal lyrics and a sitar. But for its time, “Play With Fire” was a gem; that whole album, Out of Our Heads, was wonderful stuff. I should have given it its due back in 1965. Instead, I had to wait until 1976 to “discover” the Rolling Stones. That’s when the love part of the love-hate thing finally kicked into gear. Well, better late than never.
Play With Fire sample
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
It’s always been a love-hate thing with me and the Rolling Stones.
Like the loyal Beatlemaniac I was in 1964, I took sides: Beatles good, Rolling Stones bad. After all, they’d been presented to us as the Anti-Beatles, thanks to their canny manager Andrew Loog Oldham. When they finally appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in October 1964, singing “Time Is On My Side”, I sat anxiously on my family room floor in front of the set, not knowing what to think. They didn’t wear matching suits, their long hair was ragged, and they were…well, UGLY. I was a ten-year-old clutching a fistful of Beatle cards -- cute was what mattered. And it didn’t help that there was an undertone of aggressive sexuality there that I was way too young to feel comfortable with. (Same thing that happened with House of the Rising Sun, minus that mesmerizing organ solo.)
It didn’t matter that the Stones weren’t actually the Beatles’ enemies – that they’d even recorded a Beatles song, “I Wanna Be Your Man,” as their second single (a track that still makes me wince). I simply refused to admit them into My British Invasion. In those days I was known to scoff that “Time Is On My Side” and “Heart of Stone” were the exact same song; “Satisfaction” and “Get Off My Cloud” had unforgettable hooks, I couldn’t deny that, but otherwise they seemed like the same song too. (Ten years old, and already a critic.) In secret, I liked their Mod-flavored ballads “As Tears Go By,” “Lady Jane,” and “Ruby Tuesday,” but I figured those didn’t count as Stones songs, following some obscure logic I cannot recall.
Now, years later, I can let go of that Beatlemania prejudice and admit how good these guys were. It took a couple of years, but once Jagger and Richards found their songwriting groove, they laid down some of the most memorable tracks of the decade. This one in particular haunts me. Set in a minor key, with just an acoustic guitar, a faint whisper of bass, tambourine, and harpsichord (played by Jack Nietzsche, of all people), its brooding delicacy is perfectly suited to the dark insinuations of Jagger’s voice.
And the lyrics – Jagger and Richards, a.k.a. Nanker Phelge, had made a quantum leap forward. Specific details – places, social customs – skewer the subject with pinpoint accuracy. Bring on the class warfare (so important to the British audience; I pretended I got it too), portraying the girl’s world of chauffeurs and couture and heiresses and diamond tiaras, which would all go up in smoke if she messes around with the singer. “So don’t play with me / ‘Cause you’re playing with fire,” Mick warns her in the chorus, his voice rising from the wary hush of the verses, like a coiled serpent striking. It didn’t matter that I'd never been to St. John’s Wood, Stepney, or Knightsbridge; I could tell what they stood for in this harsh little morality tale. And of course the local references made it ten times more evocative for me, besotted with Swinging London as I was.
The Stones – well, Jagger and Richards – recorded this in January 1965, riding the crest of British rock’s rapid evolution. Suddenly it was cool to be arty, to use different instruments, to strive for poetry and social comment in the lyrics. Ten months later, the Beatles would trump this with “Norwegian Wood,” an even more disturbing little story with more surreal lyrics and a sitar. But for its time, “Play With Fire” was a gem; that whole album, Out of Our Heads, was wonderful stuff. I should have given it its due back in 1965. Instead, I had to wait until 1976 to “discover” the Rolling Stones. That’s when the love part of the love-hate thing finally kicked into gear. Well, better late than never.
Play With Fire sample
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
“Glad All Over” / The Dave Clark Five
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
In 1964, every music pundit was dying to anoint some new band as the “Next Beatles.” When I first heard of the Dave Clark Five, that was the buzz – “These guys are going to be bigger than the Beatles.” For one thing, they had FIVE band members, not just four, and they had an organist. They were clean-cut and cute – what more could music fans want? When “Glad All Over” dethroned the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in January 1964, doomsayers predicted that the Fab Four were history.
Yeah. Right.
I tried to like the Dave Clark Five, honestly I did, and yet . . . . Maybe even as a kid I could tell they weren’t quite the real thing, even though they wrote their own songs (whether Clark deserved co-writing credit is another question; it’s also rumored that the actual recordings were done with session musicians). I was baffled by the name, since Dave Clark didn’t sing lead vocals -- keyboardist Mike Smith did, which was fine with me because he was much cuter. Though I was too young to judge, Clark wasn’t even much of a drummer – hence the group’s tendency to record very basic pop songs like “Do You Love Me,” “I Like It Like That,” “I Knew It All the Time,” and “Over and Over.” The only really rhythmically interesting record they ever made was “Catch Us If You Can,” which featured finger-snaps for most of the percussion. (The Monkees would later rip this sound off for their theme song -- "Here we come, walking down the street . . . .")
But what was worst, somehow they just didn’t sound British, whatever that meant to my pre-teen ears. Tell the truth – if any of those songs came on the radio with no introduction, would you think “British Beat” right away? And -- no surprise -- from the spring of 1964 on, their records always did better in the States than they did back home.
Still, “Glad All Over” is a perfectly fine track. It has all those nice tight harmonies I had learned to love from my Beatles records, with a cheery call-and-response echo, and the sentiments were straightforward teen pop – “You say that you love me [say you love me] / All of the time [all of the time] / You say that you need me [say you need me] / You’ll always be mine [always be mine].” In the infinitely more complicated emotional territory of the Beatles, such absolute devotion could spell trouble, but for the Dave Clark Five, it inspires only one thing – it makes him feel “glad all over,” as he tells us three times in the chorus, setting off each repetition with two big whomping drumbeats. (Two honks on the sax, too – that rudimentary horn section was ahead of its time.)
Verse two declares his side of the issue – he’s gonna make her happy, always be true, et cetera – and verse three happily predicts that their love will last until the end of time, and all those other pimply hyperboles. In the bridge, there’s the briefest shadow of a problem – “Other girls may try to take me away [take me away]” – but it’s quickly resolved, with the loyal declaration “But you know, it’s by your side I will stay,” in the great tradition of grammar bent out of shape just to land a rhyme.
Simple. Loud. Fast. That’s what the Dave Clark Five could deliver, all packaged with neat-but-casual sweaters and Mike Smith’s adorable smile. So what if they couldn’t live up to the “Next Beatles” hype? In 1964 we were hungry for British bands, and these guys were first out of the gate. There would be more to come.
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
In 1964, every music pundit was dying to anoint some new band as the “Next Beatles.” When I first heard of the Dave Clark Five, that was the buzz – “These guys are going to be bigger than the Beatles.” For one thing, they had FIVE band members, not just four, and they had an organist. They were clean-cut and cute – what more could music fans want? When “Glad All Over” dethroned the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in January 1964, doomsayers predicted that the Fab Four were history.
Yeah. Right.
I tried to like the Dave Clark Five, honestly I did, and yet . . . . Maybe even as a kid I could tell they weren’t quite the real thing, even though they wrote their own songs (whether Clark deserved co-writing credit is another question; it’s also rumored that the actual recordings were done with session musicians). I was baffled by the name, since Dave Clark didn’t sing lead vocals -- keyboardist Mike Smith did, which was fine with me because he was much cuter. Though I was too young to judge, Clark wasn’t even much of a drummer – hence the group’s tendency to record very basic pop songs like “Do You Love Me,” “I Like It Like That,” “I Knew It All the Time,” and “Over and Over.” The only really rhythmically interesting record they ever made was “Catch Us If You Can,” which featured finger-snaps for most of the percussion. (The Monkees would later rip this sound off for their theme song -- "Here we come, walking down the street . . . .")
But what was worst, somehow they just didn’t sound British, whatever that meant to my pre-teen ears. Tell the truth – if any of those songs came on the radio with no introduction, would you think “British Beat” right away? And -- no surprise -- from the spring of 1964 on, their records always did better in the States than they did back home.
Still, “Glad All Over” is a perfectly fine track. It has all those nice tight harmonies I had learned to love from my Beatles records, with a cheery call-and-response echo, and the sentiments were straightforward teen pop – “You say that you love me [say you love me] / All of the time [all of the time] / You say that you need me [say you need me] / You’ll always be mine [always be mine].” In the infinitely more complicated emotional territory of the Beatles, such absolute devotion could spell trouble, but for the Dave Clark Five, it inspires only one thing – it makes him feel “glad all over,” as he tells us three times in the chorus, setting off each repetition with two big whomping drumbeats. (Two honks on the sax, too – that rudimentary horn section was ahead of its time.)
Verse two declares his side of the issue – he’s gonna make her happy, always be true, et cetera – and verse three happily predicts that their love will last until the end of time, and all those other pimply hyperboles. In the bridge, there’s the briefest shadow of a problem – “Other girls may try to take me away [take me away]” – but it’s quickly resolved, with the loyal declaration “But you know, it’s by your side I will stay,” in the great tradition of grammar bent out of shape just to land a rhyme.
Simple. Loud. Fast. That’s what the Dave Clark Five could deliver, all packaged with neat-but-casual sweaters and Mike Smith’s adorable smile. So what if they couldn’t live up to the “Next Beatles” hype? In 1964 we were hungry for British bands, and these guys were first out of the gate. There would be more to come.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
“Love Me Do” / The Beatles
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
The song that started it all.
This was the Beatles’ first single, and though it only reached #17 on the UK charts in January 1963 (and wasn’t even released in the States until May 1964, after “I Want To Hold Your Hand" and “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” had already burned up the US charts), it was truly the start of SOMETHING BIG.
I can imagine how it felt to a British teenager to have homegrown talent – a provincial Liverpool band, even better – burst open a music market long dominated by American pop artists. But I don’t have to imagine how it felt here in America; I remember it for certain, the delirious impact of that fresh new sound. For two or three years after Beatlemania broke, we were deluged by one British rock band after another, most of them astonishingly good. I was at a VERY impressionable age. The British Invasion made me the rock fan I am today; devoting a month to this music seems the least I could do.
When this single hit, I wasn’t aware I was hearing things out of order – that Capitol Records had scrambled to re-release earlier UK material. I should have noticed that “Love Me Do” sounded a whole lot more primitive than “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which was recorded almost a year later. (It’s stunning what fast learners the Beatles were.) All I knew was that I recognized those close Beatles harmonies, putting my ear close to the speakers, trying to tell which voice was John’s and which was Paul’s. I adored how their voices melted together on the dizzy loop of “Plee—ee-ee-eeee-ee-ee—eeeeze” before an offbeat of silence, then Paul coming in low and sincere to enter his plea, “Love me doo-oo / Oh yeah, love me do.” Could anybody EVER sing as sincerely as Paul McCartney?
Of course, the hook is that bold, blaring harmonica. I’ve read that George Martin didn’t even like this song until Lennon added the harmonica, and then suddenly the whole thing gelled. Otherwise, the song is dead simple. The chorus repeats one musical phrase three times, leading up to that drawn-out begging “Please.” The rhymes are absurdly basic – “do/you/true” – and repeating the chorus, they don’t even bother to give us new lyrics. The middle-eight comes as a relief because it’s different: “Someone to love / Somebody new / Someone to love / Someone like you,” with actual chord changes in it.
And yet this song just throbs with unfulfilled, just-about-to-burst-with-it desire. That puppydog pleading, with all of McCartney’s most adorable vocal flourishes, is just the tip of a hormone-steeped iceberg. Underneath – where Lennon’s insistent harmonica and Ringo’s shambolic drumming drive us – is a frantic undertow of sex, and when Paul drops his voice low for the “Love me do,” there’s more than a whisper of darkness and danger. That one line slipped casually into the middle-eight, “Somebody new” – it means he had a girlfriend before, who didn’t work out. He probably told her too that he’d “always be true.” And then you start to notice that it’s just “Someone to love” he’s looking for; it’s the love he wants, not the specific loved one. “Someone like you.” There’s plenty of fish in the sea, baby, so if you don’t put out he’ll find someone who will. You’ve got two minutes and twenty seconds to make up your mind.
And of course we all said yes.
MAY IS BRITISH INVASION MONTH!
The song that started it all.
This was the Beatles’ first single, and though it only reached #17 on the UK charts in January 1963 (and wasn’t even released in the States until May 1964, after “I Want To Hold Your Hand" and “She Loves You” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” had already burned up the US charts), it was truly the start of SOMETHING BIG.
I can imagine how it felt to a British teenager to have homegrown talent – a provincial Liverpool band, even better – burst open a music market long dominated by American pop artists. But I don’t have to imagine how it felt here in America; I remember it for certain, the delirious impact of that fresh new sound. For two or three years after Beatlemania broke, we were deluged by one British rock band after another, most of them astonishingly good. I was at a VERY impressionable age. The British Invasion made me the rock fan I am today; devoting a month to this music seems the least I could do.
When this single hit, I wasn’t aware I was hearing things out of order – that Capitol Records had scrambled to re-release earlier UK material. I should have noticed that “Love Me Do” sounded a whole lot more primitive than “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which was recorded almost a year later. (It’s stunning what fast learners the Beatles were.) All I knew was that I recognized those close Beatles harmonies, putting my ear close to the speakers, trying to tell which voice was John’s and which was Paul’s. I adored how their voices melted together on the dizzy loop of “Plee—ee-ee-eeee-ee-ee—eeeeze” before an offbeat of silence, then Paul coming in low and sincere to enter his plea, “Love me doo-oo / Oh yeah, love me do.” Could anybody EVER sing as sincerely as Paul McCartney?
Of course, the hook is that bold, blaring harmonica. I’ve read that George Martin didn’t even like this song until Lennon added the harmonica, and then suddenly the whole thing gelled. Otherwise, the song is dead simple. The chorus repeats one musical phrase three times, leading up to that drawn-out begging “Please.” The rhymes are absurdly basic – “do/you/true” – and repeating the chorus, they don’t even bother to give us new lyrics. The middle-eight comes as a relief because it’s different: “Someone to love / Somebody new / Someone to love / Someone like you,” with actual chord changes in it.
And yet this song just throbs with unfulfilled, just-about-to-burst-with-it desire. That puppydog pleading, with all of McCartney’s most adorable vocal flourishes, is just the tip of a hormone-steeped iceberg. Underneath – where Lennon’s insistent harmonica and Ringo’s shambolic drumming drive us – is a frantic undertow of sex, and when Paul drops his voice low for the “Love me do,” there’s more than a whisper of darkness and danger. That one line slipped casually into the middle-eight, “Somebody new” – it means he had a girlfriend before, who didn’t work out. He probably told her too that he’d “always be true.” And then you start to notice that it’s just “Someone to love” he’s looking for; it’s the love he wants, not the specific loved one. “Someone like you.” There’s plenty of fish in the sea, baby, so if you don’t put out he’ll find someone who will. You’ve got two minutes and twenty seconds to make up your mind.
And of course we all said yes.
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