Don't Talk To Me About Love: Cliff Richard: "It's All In The Game"

There are certain moments when everything comes into focus, almost too sharply, the contrasts are almost too precise and vivid to look at for very long...and in this case, the two songs - this one at two and the other at one - set out the differing paths of music (at least chart music) for pretty much the rest of the decade.

What is most interesting is that the struggle here, if it even is a struggle, isn't between two generations but two whole ways of thinking about music itself. On one side is the new, the brash, the massive "YEAH" of The Beatles (whose "She Loves You" prevented Cliff from getting to the top); on the other is The Man plc, who told Cliff repeatedly that this whole rock 'n' roll thing was a kid's game and that to really make it in "the industry" he had to branch out, to become an all-around entertainer*, and this gift would give him a kind of immortality. Clearly Cliff had already chosen this route (if in fact it hadn't been chosen for him by his label) and thus here he is, doing a song whose music predated the birth of his own producer, Norrie Paramor. In the face of the Huge Inevitable that was The Beatles (after this song Beatlemania, which had been building up all summer, simply exploded), Cliff and Co. may have felt that the best way to deal with it was to retreat, retreat into a past that was theirs for the taking. The song is barely sung as such but quietly pronounced; he sounds not as if he's been through the ringer romantically (though of course he had; Jet Harris had left The Shadows because his wife and Cliff had an affair - how much of this the public knew I don't know) but has been disappointed himself too many times and is now content to sing about love rather than experience it. That may seem like a harsh judgement, but Cliff was already paying the price for having a loyal female following (nicknamed The Screaming Nellies) - no girlfriend - and so whenever he sighs or moans it always sounds as if there is something vital and messy being avoided - or is that just plain old English reserve?

In the face of the winking knowingness and good humor of The Beatles, Cliff does his best (and this was also his biggest hit in the US at the time); but the yawning maw that was "the industry" was indeed making him immortal, bit by bit, separating him and those of his "ilk" from the vagaries of music, if not rough, vernacular life itself. But, I wonder, who could change him and give him back, rescue him from The Man plc? That will be answered in time, but when we get back to him, it will be with something much creepier than this.



*Clearly Cliff's career in the UK was a copy of Elvis Presley's, right down to making reasonably good movies and churning out hit after hit to an admiring and fervently loyal following; he may have felt it unfair that he had to go head-to-head with The Beatles, but then so did Elvis, with middling results. Cliff has been married to "the game" (as Tim Westwood would put it) for so long, but does he get his due? Some may think that the metaphoric worm has turned over the decades, but if so, where are the deluxe repackagings of Cliff's albums from the 60s? Hm...

Manchester Enters: Freddie and the Dreamers: "I'm Telling You Now"

In popular culture there are some places that generate certain sounds; you hear a group or artist and you can just tell where they are from. The closer you are to the place, the easier it is; thus, if you were from the UK you'd know that Freddie and the Dreamers were from Manchester (clearly where the ravening horde of agents and managers went once Liverpool was picked clean), but your average American wouldn't know a Liverpudlian from a Mancunian, and so this song was a hit all over again in the US two years after it was here, under the general understanding they were Merseybeat when in fact they weren't; but with such unselfconscious exuberance, there was no mistake they were part of the massive British Invasion of the time.

Freddie and the Dreamers are Mancunian in that they have a lead singer who did a wacky dance, was not in the least conventionally 'sexy' and wore glasses. It was his spirit (and the band's co-ordinated dancing) that made them so successful, even if musically this is not exactly Lennon/McCartney*; the Other here is maybe not able to understand he loves her (or to understand what he's saying, altogether) for all the standing-jumping-jacks Freddie is doing. But then Mancunians have a way of reminding everyone they can sing and dance and not be mistaken for anyone else; a delightful awkwardness which is matched by confidence and persistence. Though swept up in Merseybeat as the UK was, Manchester stakes its claims to greatness in a typically oblique manner as if to say: "You think this is good? Wait and see what we have in store."

*Freddie and the Dreamers' effect on The Beatles was interesting; after they copied the arrangement of cover The Beatles did at the Cavern Club ("If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody") and had a hit with it, The Beatles realized they had to start writing their own songs, songs presumably too complex for just anyone to hear once and then cover themselves. Thus began the long period of hide-and-go-seek that The Beatles played with pop music, never really resting in once place long enough to be caught. (That a song by Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas kept this off - "Bad To Me" by Lennon/McCartney - is one thing; that "She Loves You" was released the same week shows just how ambitious they were.)

A Strand of Sand: The Shadows: "Atlantis"

This somehow reminds me of the last weekend before it's too cold to go to the beach; to sit and picnic; to happily just gad about, getting lost and then finding your way. It reminds me of these things because, as big as The Shadows were, the tide (so to speak) was turning against them. They had lost Meehan and Harris (replaced by Brian Bennett and Brian "Licorice" Locking, both from Marty Wilde's band) and thus had also lost some of the energy that made them so popular in the first place. "Atlantis" is a sprightly song that sounds almost ready-made for Winnipeg boys Young and Bachman to practice for hours on end, not to mention many others, but it is also a bit too polite, even as a song about a long-lost probably (how can anyone know?) mythical water kingdom can be.

The whole thing sounds unreal, Marvin's guitar as liquid as can be, the soothing strings a song that doesn't even sound like the 60s, or at least my understanding of the 60s; I don't know if The Shadows were at all envious, say, of the Surfaris (about to have a hit with this) or The Chantays (who had just had a hit as well). It could simply be that the saltwater-in-your-face abandon of The Surfaris or the hang-ten cool of The Chantays were simply beyond the experience of The Shadows; or perhaps it just wasn't their style, or that they were produced by Norrie Paramor, not a man given to adventure as much as George Martin or Joe Meek (how would they have sounded produced by either of these men I leave up to you). The neatness and tidiness that served them well as it could in the late 50s/early 60s was beginning to be beside the point; of course they still had hits after this (and remain popular to this day - witness their successful tour with Cliff a while back). But it is poignant that I get to them when they are still popular but are about to be eclipsed by many groups who were inspired by them, from The Beatles on down. I can only salute them as pioneers, once and future kings of British rock, imitated and copied but never really duplicated.

People Who Know People: Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas: "Do You Want To Know A Secret?"

One of the continuing threads in the charts of the 60s - starting very successfully here - is the Beatles album track being covered by another group and made into a hit single. I don't know of any other group being covered so much in their own time, with (of course!) their permission and indeed help; Billy and his band were from Liverpool themselves and thus knew The Beatles when no one would give them the time of day, and so were more than happy to help their pals out with not just already-recorded songs but songs they had written but didn't, for whatever reason, want to record themselves. Other groups may have been jealous of handsome Billy and his tremendous luck, but Billy could definitely sing and The Dakotas could definitely play and this song survives the transition from shadowy flirtation to gleeful proclamation quite well. It seems to move closer and closer incrementally, just as "Can't Get Used To Losing You" seems to move further and further away, bit by bit. The joy is in knowing that the secret is theirs and theirs alone, and can be that way, deliciously, as if their new happiness was a particularly rich cake they can either eat and/or admire...

The generosity of The Beatles here is amazing, but even more amazing are the songs that were just left on albums for others to cover; I don't get to write about any of the others, but suffice it to say by the time The Beatles prove themselves to be more than a passing fad, it is a regular occurence, whenever an album of theirs was released to pounce on it for any songs that could easily be covered. Of course at this time there were almost no unsigned bands in Liverpool, as managers and agents went on a veritable gold rush of whatever they could find, and soon the charts were full of Merseybeat, produced by George Martin (as this was). (In almost too perfect timing, this was a hit around the time of the Profumo Affair, when secrets were spilled, lives changed, and the Sixties, as understood by many, really begin.)

A Woman in the Background: Jet Harris and Tony Meehan: "Scarlett O'Hara"

The past is sometimes just the past; I sometimes wonder why it is that people would ever worry about it being 'hunted' or 'mined' when the past is like a vast cave that in reality most people are happy to consign to, well, their own past. There have always been periods of unease that can create (later on) nearly inexplicable crazes for this decade or era or that; while other times collect dust, or are overshadowed.

Jet Harris and Tony Meehan left The Shadows - they were the rhythm section - and had immediate success with "Diamonds" (much later sampled by Chipmunk in a song that was about being aspirational without talking about pushing himself to the limit). The follow up was this, a Jerry Loudon composition that takes the Gone With The Wind heroine and makes her into something of a cool 60s "dolly bird." It is a jaunty instrumental, rocks just as hard as The Shadows could, with that cool man-about-town edge that Harris simply exuded (what is it about bass players?) - a cool that was unfortunately aided and abetted by his troubled life, including a chauffeur-driven limo accident that left him and his then-girlfriend Billie Davis in a mess, both physically and other ways (she was 17 at the time, he was married*).

As incredibly popular as Harris and Meehan were, it is a sad fact that they - and so many other UK acts from this time - are more or less forgotten** (save for Brian Matthew's Sounds of the Sixties) by what I call State Radio. There the past is lovingly and almost obsessively catalogued and enshrined; and yet perhaps this is part of the problem itself - the past as a museum cannot fly beyond the lives of those who remember the music in the first place, who were there. In popular received history The Beatles simply own the charts now, with everyone else running a poor second,



*In case it needs underlining, we are in the 60s now, when being a ladies' man was very much in vogue; how much embarrassment this caused I don't know, as keeping things secret was just as in vogue.

**Cliff Richard and The Shadows did do a tour and new album recently - a single of theirs scraped into the Top 40 for a week and left again, but the tour was a rip-roaring success. But they are the exception here.

Holding On For Life: Andy Williams: "Can't Get Used To Losing You"

The plucked strings sound like a man itching, restless, pacing the floor back and forth, willing something to go away that just won't. He can't relax. He can't talk on the phone, not for long. The strings slide and glide in a way that is glassy, as if he is trying to walk on emotional black ice. He loves her, it's over, he still loves her, but it's no use. He could go out and yet she would be there, the pluckings now signifying his eye catching this and that, the steps of his walk, the beats of his heart. There is nothing to do but keep loving, because that at least shows he is alive, not just a bundle of nervous moments.

He has lost her, yet he plays it light. He doesn't, like Darin, look back - this is not a nostalgic song, but one that keeps trying, trying, trying to somehow move forwards. But there is no way out, at least for now (Williams' essential warmth means there will be a way one day). The very slipperiness of the song, its goings back-and-forth are elegant and neat, as if the rawness of the experience are gone, and now it is all routine, helpless, he still suffers but at least he is buoyant, proud in his own way to love and keep loving long after there is any real point to it.

There is a more general loss here, of course; the gradual loss of the early 60s, the Camelot age of the New Frontier. It hasn't gone just yet, of course, but by this time (May) the seemingly-placid world of, say, 1960 is pretty much gone. The last Aldermaston march/founding of the CND in the UK, Dr. King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail - these are just some of the more obvious pointers to the intensity of the sixties, and the corresponding need for songs like this (lyrically and sonically) that acknowledge that things are permanently changing, but put them in the most graceful and hummable context this side of Cole Porter (kudos to Pomus and Shuman)...

...my parents not being the easy-listening types (not that this is easy listening, exactly; the poor man does nothing but hit one void after another), the first time I heard this song it was by The (English) Beat; a version so faithful that Williams himself at first thought it was a remix of his own and not a cover. That it works is due to that semi-ska rhythm that is inherent in the song, but also Dave Wakeling's own soulful voice, one which meets the loneliness here head on and understands. ("Mirror In The Bathroom" is just an extension of this feeling, only there is no love for anyone else; just the self. I can only wonder if Williams has heard it.)

Playing His Ace: Ned Miller: "From A Jack To A King"

After the world-shaking clamor of The Beatles it is heart-warming and surprisingly reassuring to come across this; a song where a man is simply grateful that he took a chance, though as usual there are odd moments. I don't mean that the sentiment is off, because there is a universal emotion here - he proposed, she accepted, he feels like a king. To have this as a card game is what seems odd; as if she was an opponent and not a sweetheart. (Perhaps he had a rival for her that we don't hear about? If they are in love, why should "Lady Luck" have any say in the matter?) But the clearest feeling here is sheer relief; he says he wasn't sure (ah how I remember my anxiety!) and that there was a look in her eye (dubiousness? equal anxiety masked as something else?) and those are now gone, washed clean by her losing/giving in to him (if this is a card game, and his hand defeated hers, so to speak). His success is genuine and heartfelt, though - the song's story is clear enough, and the melody is simplicity itself (Miller wrote it as well as performed it). (For a female version of this, "Your Love Is King" by Sade must be it.) This is as much what folks in Scotland and Northern England were listening to as The Beatles, a constituency that was the same as Jim Reeves (who of course covered this song, as did Elvis). I can imagine a pub, a singalong, a basic story shared, a simple melody echoing around - humble and proud too, a good counter to the excited noises from next door...

(One thing that is endearing about this was that Miller suffered from terrible stage fright, and during the pre-video age this was most awkward for a performer. There will always be those who love to create but hate being in public, and Miller is definitely one of those.)