CHAD & JEREMY
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Main genre |
Music sample |
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1963–2010 |
Classic pop-rock |
September In The Rain
(1964) |
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Album
released: 1964 |
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Tracks: 1) A Summer Song; 2) Now And
Forever; 3) Dirty Old Town; 4) Like I Love You Today; 5) September In The
Rain; 6) Yesterday’s Gone; 7) If She Was Mine;
8) Willow Weep For Me; 9) Only For The Young; 10) Too Soon My Love; 11) The
Truth Often Hurts The Heart; 12) No Tears For
Johnnie. |
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With
a little extra push, David Stuart Chadwick from Windermere, Westmorland and
Michael Thomas Jeremy Clyde from Dorney, Buckinghamshire just might have become the British
equivalent of Paul Frederic Simon from Newark, New Jersey and Arthur Ira
Garfunkel from Forest Hills, Queens — especially given how much in common
there was between the two duos. Both met in school, both started out as a
folk duo, both made a transition to the pop scene, both had one reliable
songwriting member (Chad / Paul) and one pretty boy (Art / Jeremy), both broke
up due to exhaustion and internal strife, both would occasionally reunite,
and both would have one member pursue a semi-successful acting career in the
aftermath (Art and Jeremy). This, however, is where the similarities largely
end, and the differences begin — differences which more or less transparently
explain why everybody remembers and loves Simon & Garfunkel, while Chad
& Jeremy have largely passed into oblivion, their memory kept alive
mainly in the heads of their still surviving contemporaries. (It may have
been briefly refreshed by the recent passing of Chad on December 20, 2020 —
at least the New York Times published a long and detailed obituary, which may
have been more than poor Chad could ever have hoped for). |
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For starters, there is something unbearably corny
about the duo’s name itself — as a musical act, they may have been a bit more
interesting than their chief UK competition in that niche at the time, Peter
& Gordon, but it feels as if there’s just one tiny half-step from «Chad
& Jeremy» to «Tom & Jerry» (which, ironically, was precisely what
Simon & Garfunkel used to call themselves before realizing they would
never have a serious career with such a name). Why they couldn’t have gone
with the so much more royal-sounding «Stuart & Clyde» totally beats me,
but then again one should never underestimate the childlike innocence spirit of
the early Sixties; and indeed, the problem of Chad & Jeremy is that, just
like quite a few of their contemporaries from the same years, they never
really managed to grow out of it. For a brief while — that special time window of
1964, the golden era of pop-rock’s disarming innocence — they were really
good at it. I don’t know how it would be possible to dislike ‘Yesterday’s
Gone’, the duo’s first single, written by Chad in alleged collaboration with pop
manager Wendy Kidd (alleged, because he claimed that he had to give her
songwriting credit for permission to use her piano) and produced by none
other than James Bond’s court composer John Barry. For September of ’63, when
it was quite aptly released ("I loved you all the summer
through..."), it had quite a fresh sound — being, in fact, one of the
first fully authentic «folk-pop» compositions / recordings on the market. The
fast, bouncy tempo and the hummable catchiness agreed well with the
Merseybeat attitude, but the chord changes, the wistful lyrics, and the soft,
half-whispered vocals suggested something quite different — and even the
quirky acoustic guitar break combined elements of pop, rock, and folk
attitudes. Like most of the things Chad & Jeremy ever did, the song is a
bit phoney — it feels as if it is supposed to have some subtle depth, when in
reality it most probably has none. But unlike, say, ‘Dust In The Wind’ or any
such similar ballad, it never actually demands you to accept it as a
spiritual beacon: totally and utterly unpretentious, it just breezes along,
telling a simple-as-heck story of a finite summer romance which you remember
fondly for a minute, brush off, and go your own way. It’s cute, catchy,
good-timey, and unforgettably forgettable. For their second single, the boys decided to move
even closer to pure pop: ‘Like I Love You Today’ basically sounds like a
heavily (is «heavily» even the right word here?) folksified arrangement of a
potential hit by the early Hollies or the Dave Clark Five — simply replace
the loud and boisterous vocals by the same high-pitched semi-whisper, the
electric guitars with acoustic ones, and the saxophone lead with a recorder
and some strings. The result is another nice and catchy tune, but this time
without even the faintest hint at «depth»; in terms of any potential
intrigue, it is as if the duo had taken an explicit step backwards, and the
single flopped. This was essentially the end of Chad & Jeremy’s good
fortunes in their homeland — but an end that came at exactly the same time
when ‘Yesterday’s Gone’, unexpectedly, began to climb up the charts in the
US. How exactly it was that this dis-dynamic duo managed
to establish a firm chart presence in the US, which already had its much
superior Everly Brothers and which would very soon get its own Simon &
Garfunkel, is unclear — but it’s not as if there was anything horribly wrong
with this turn of events, since it did lead to the revitalization of the Chad
& Jeremy formula and the creation of a few more nice hits which the world
could easily live without, but it still feels cozy to have them in their
right place. Case in point — ‘A Summer Song’, which works kind of like a
prequel to ‘Yesterday’s Gone’, except the melody and arrangement are even more fragile and dainty, augmented
this time by soundtrack-style strings and moving forward with the sentimental
delicacy of a Peter, Paul & Mary number. I honestly want to hate it for
all sorts of aesthetic reasons, but the only thing that truly evokes a
negative gut reaction are the cheesy, predictable strings — as long as it’s
just the hushed vocals and the lovingly played acoustic guitars, it’s cuddly
as a fluffy little doggie. I don’t want to own a fluffy little doggie, but if
I am near one, I can’t help but pet it, you know. After the boys scored yet another US hit with a
cover of ‘Willow Weep For Me’ (nice if you like the song in general, but not
exactly necessary), the World Artists Records label invited them to put out a
full-fledged LP (only in the US and Canada), which collected all the hit
singles as well as gave the boys a chance to show their incredible stylistic
versatility... not. But the album
does hold a few surprises for those who think of Chad & Jeremy as nothing
but simplistic troubadours of courteous teenage romance. First, it’s got one of the best covers of Ewan
MacColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’ in existence. If you know the song, you probably
have heard it performed by Ewan himself, or, more likely, the Pogues, in a
rough and grizzled fashion, and that’s a good thing. But it works
surprisingly well in this «tepid» version just as well, with a melancholic
old Western-style harmonica part thrown in for good measure; Chad and
Jeremy’s hushed vocals are well-trained for songs that say goodbye, no matter
if it is to a summer crush or to an old life, and their "we’ll chop you
down like an old dead tree" even takes on a slightly more sinister
attitude than you could imagine. Unfortunately, their second attempt at
sounding socially relevant does not work the same way — Tom Springfield’s
early anti-war anthem ‘No Tears For Johnnie’ is much less suitable for the
hush-hush approach, and the final climactic lines ("so Johnnie, keep on
marching till we forget what you’re marching for!") are chanted in a
trembling near-falsetto that might be okay to conclude a psychedelic song,
but not a protest one. To remind us that they are actually musicians, the
boys also include the instrumental composition ‘Only For The Young’ (credited
to Jimmy Seals, later of Seals and Crofts fame) — cut the strings, maybe, but
the acoustic guitar pattern is pretty, poppy, and catchy, perhaps even with a
slight baroque tinge in the middle. And then there are two or three songs
written with clear Beatles influences — the funniest is probably ‘The Truth
Often Hurts The Heart’, which manages to incorporate at least one move from
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ (the way they sing the opening line "can’t give you love...") and an older
hook from ‘Hold Me Tight’; the «stuttering» segment of the bridge, the one
that goes "your eyes... I see... begin... to smart...", is almost
certainly nicked from "hold, me tight, tonight, tonight", though
the final resolution is slightly better — in fact, the irony is that I always
had a nagging feeling about a certain «incompleteness» of this
less-than-ideal early McCartney number, and here it is almost as if the boys
are coming up with their own way of bringing that melody to a satisfactory
conclusion. Of course, by late ’64 it no longer really mattered. To enjoy the album in all of its twee-folk glory,
you have to seriously lower your expectations — but other than a lack of rock
energy, there is hardly anything here that would make it worse than the
average Dave Clark Five or Hollies record from the same year. The «hushy»
twin harmonies of Chad and Jeremy can get monotonous, and it is not a good
thing that they pretty much always sing in unison (at least Simon and
Garfunkel could have plenty of fun weaving their voices in intricate
patterns), but at least they are never openly annoying. The acoustic
arrangements are generally tasteful, and they — or whoever is actually
playing, since I am not sure about the degree of involvement of session
players — have a generally solid guitar technique on display. Strings could
have been used more sparsely, but at least they never drown out the guitars
or vocals. Pop hooks — check, semi-decent lyrics suitable for 1964 — check.
And hey, unlike Peter & Gordon they did not have to have the Beatles
writing their best songs for them! |
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Album
released: January 1965 |
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Tracks: 1) Coloring Book; 2) What Do You Want With Me; 3) From
A Window; 4) If You’ve Got A Heart; 5) No Other Baby; 6) Donna, Donna; 7)
Girl From Ipanema; 8) Four Strong Winds; 9) Only Those In Love; 10) You Know
What; 11) Sleep Little Boy; 12) My How The Time Goes By. |
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REVIEW
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Still, the duo’s albums when they were still in
their relative prime may be worth checking out, if only because they were
allowed a bit more creative freedom and general fun on them — the singles had
to follow the model established by ‘A Summer Song’ and ‘Willow Weep For Me’,
but the albums were less predictable... well, a bit less predictable, because, on one hand, it is a little
surprising to hear Chad & Jeremy cover ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, but then
when you think about it, it is not surprising at all, in fact, soon enough
you begin to ask yourself the question — «how could I ever doubt that, sooner or later, Chad & Jeremy would cover
‘The Girl From Ipanema’? Antônio Carlos Jobim must have written the
song specially for Chad &
Jeremy to cover it! Astrud and João Gilberto must have dreamed of Chad & Jeremy covering
it! You look up the concept of ‘DESTINY’ in any encyclopaedia and they show
you a smiling picture of Chad & Jeremy in the studio recording ‘The Girl
From Ipanema’!» Naturally, there is not a single reason in the world for
anybody to hear Chad & Jeremy singing ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, but that
doesn’t change a single thing about the sturdy threads of fate upon which, in
shiny golden runes, is carved out the prophecy — «not one year shall pass
between the release of a worldwide sensation such as ‘The Girl From Ipanema’
and a cover of it by Chad & Jeremy». Other songs on Chad
& Jeremy Sing For You that you no more need to hear than you need to
see Gus van Sant’s remake of Psycho
are ‘My Coloring Book’ (honestly, I don’t think that song needs to be known
in more than one version at all, just pick a number, any number), ‘Donna
Donna’ (yes, it is touching to see a couple of nice British lads try out a
classic Yiddish song, but what exactly do they contribute other than their
usual husky voices?), and ‘Four Strong Winds’ (what would they add to that
one after both the Seekers and the
Searchers thoroughly explored it? leave the poor girl alone already!). All of
that sounds nice and cutesy in the usual Chad & Jeremy way, and that’s
it. Of the non-original compositions on the album,
slightly more interesting is their take on ‘From A Window’, a relatively
unsophisticated Lennon / McCartney composition originally donated to Billy J.
Kramer and the Dakotas. It is useless to compete with the Beatles themselves,
especially if you were reincarnated as one half of Chad & Jeremy, but it
can make more sense to compete with the Beatles’ lapdogs, and on this
particular occasion I would say that at least Jimmie Haskell’s production of
the song, surprising as it may be, knocks the ground from under George Martin’s
feet — the rather mushy and muddy piano-based version of the Dakotas is
replaced by a sharper, crunchier folk-rock sound, with the soft distortion of
the electric guitar power chords forming a nice contrast with the echoey
vocals of the duo. Kramer’s ‘From A Window’ was rather wobbly and seemed to
come out from somewhere underground, whereas this version clearly descends on
you from above — and the boys make better use of the song’s vocal potential,
working harder on the high register and all; I also far prefer the slightly
more complex acoustic instrumental break here to the Dakotas’ rather
rudimentary electric solo on the original version. Not that the song is all
that good or anything — the Beatles themselves would probably not have used
it even on Please Please Me — but
it fits in very well with Chad & Jeremy’s overall aesthetics. Of course, the real reason why one might want to
give the LP a try is to hear the original material, songs that were actually
penned by Stuart, Clyde, and their American buddy Russell Alquist specially
for the album, and pronounce the ultimate judgement based on their quality. Here, it is interesting
to note that they make another small step toward the aesthetics of the Mersey
beat, rather than in the direction of «Euro-balladry» — the first original
single from the album, ‘What Do You Want With Me’, is a clear attempt to
write something in the style of all those second-rate Beatle donations, and
the result is a catchy song with a pinch of its own melancholic charm. It
surreptitiously weaves in a straightahead Beatles quote ("a love like
ours..." in the bridge section is sung exactly as it is done in ‘And I
Love You’), it has plenty of chord changes throughout the verse-chorus
sequence, and the melodic journey from the opening "what do you want
with me" to its repetition as the closing line is something that Paul
might have seriously appreciated. Another composition explicitly credited to Stuart /
Clyde on the LP is ‘No Other Baby’, which is surprising because it is not a
Stuart / Clyde composition at all —
it was originally recorded by British jazz and skiffle guitarist Dickie
Bishop in 1958 and quickly adopted by a variety of other skiffle bands,
including the Vipers (Paul McCartney would later use it to honor his skiffle
heroes for his 1999 album of covers, Run
Devil Run). What makes it even more surprising is that this is the duo’s
only attempt at a bit of «rocking out» — ooh, dark menacing opening chords!
moody organ! sharp, shrill, distorted electric lead! a wild scream before the
break! faster tempo! fast and complex bluesy guitar instrumental break! and
how about those lyrics, eh? "Lots of other women say be my daddy do /
But I don’t want no other baby but you". Oh you manly studs, you. But
seriously, it comes across as a bit of giggly fun — Chad & Jeremy trying
to be the Yardbirds or something, and they almost succeed. At least, when you
listen to something like this, it is possible to believe they could have
consistently rocked out on the level of, say, ‘Honey Don’t’. Perhaps it was precisely because they thought they
were reinventing the original song SO
MUCH that they took all the credit for themselves, proto-Led Zeppelin
style — though, granted, it might just as well have been an innocent
publishing mistake. Considering that the credits have never been rectified in
any of the modern sources, I’m assuming Bishop never sued World Artists
Records... well, he might have never known about its existence, especially
since the UK pressing of Sing For You
had an entirely different track list (except for ‘Donna Donna’, most of the
songs on it actually came from the US version of Yesterday’s Gone). Anyway, the original songwriting seems to be more
certain in the final four-song stretch of the album, but those tunes are
neither as melodically impressive as ‘What Do You Want With Me’ or as
good-mood-ridiculous as ‘No Other Baby’. ‘You Know What’ is a fast
country-rock shuffle with yet another nod to the Beatles (the repetitive
"...until the day I die, until the day I die!" fade-out coda is
exactly the same as "I wanna be your man!" — and, in fact, the
entire song could have easily been a back-gift for Ringo); Alquist’s ‘Sleep
Little Boy’ seems to be a variation on some Jewish lullaby, continuing the
vibe of ‘Donna Donna’; and ‘My How The Time Goes By’ is just a corny, catchy
little pop conclusion — they could have sold this one to the Dave Clark Five,
probably. Overall, the album produces a more lightweight
feeling than Yesterday’s Gone —
perhaps it is the relative lack of that Euro-autumnal mood and the relative
increase of naïve Beatlisms that is responsible, as well as a higher
percentage of classic tunes covered by just about everybody (I much preferred
them when they were doing ‘Dirty Old Town’ rather than ‘Coloring Book’). But
«lightweight» does not mean «ugly» or «unlikeable»; at this point, they were
still doing their own thing, and that thing still made certain diet-artistic
sense at the beginning of 1965. |
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Album
released: May 25, 1965 |
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Tracks: 1) Before And After; 2) Why Should
I Care; 3) For Lovin’ Me; 4) I’m In Love Again; 5) Little Does She Know; 6)
Tell Me Baby; 7) What Do You Want With Me; 8) Say It Isn’t True; 9) Fare Thee
Well (I Must Be Gone); 10) Evil-Hearted Me;
11) Can’t Get Used To Losing You. |
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On
March 27, 1965, Chad & Jeremy signed a contract with Columbia Records,
which symbolized their acceptance into the big leagues — apart from Bob Dylan
himself, one of Columbia’s leading artists at the time were Simon &
Garfunkel, and apparently the idea of propping up their American superstars
with a thematically similar British duo really appealed to somebody in the
management. To seal the deal, the kids were introduced to Van McCoy, one of
the major songwriters for the April-Blackwood concern, tightly connected with
Columbia — a reasonable choice, given McCoy’s knack for adorning the
compositions aimed at his R&B clients with «Europop» stylizations, e.g.
Barbara Lewis’ ‘I’m Yours’ and the like. For Chad & Jeremy, McCoy quickly
came up with ‘Before And After’, a song that starts out almost exactly the
same way as ‘I’m Yours’, except the mode is predictably changed from major to
minor, because S-A-D. "His
future’s bright, my future’s dim / And all the dreams we shared, you share
with him" — it probably took McCoy one listen to any select side of
any select Chad & Jeremy LP to work out their «eternal bespectacled
loser» vibe. Admittedly, it’s a pretty well-written song, with a clever
build-up that could have been really
effective if the song were ever tried out by somebody a little less
milquetoast than those guys (as it happens, it was first recorded by The
Fleetwoods, then covered by Lesley Gore and The American Breed, and all those versions are even more
milquetoast than Chad & Jeremy’s. Dang!). |
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Anyway, the entire album, which they rather quickly
dashed off for Columbia in March 1965, sort of represents the peak of Chad
& Jeremy’s «Melancholic Loserville» vibe — most of the songs are dreary
and brooding, dealing with either the paranoid fear of losing your loved one
or the depressed aftermath of the breakup. Oh yes, there’s also that third
theme — quiet and shy adoration of the object of your desire without ever
getting the courage to turn dreams into action. That, for the record, is the
typical topic for the upbeat Chad
& Jeremy song: ‘Little Does She Know’, which I’m kinda sympathetic to,
stomps around with the smoothened and softened martial bravado of a Dave
Clark Five number, but where the similar DC5 number would be a triumphant
celebration of having gotten the girl, Chad & Jeremy can only admit that
"I’m gonna show her I could be
the apple of her eye", and get the appropriate support from a
squealy-squeaky two-note guitar riff in the background (is that even guitar?
sounds almost like a theremin to me). Don’t be too harsh on them, though. As
a sorely shy loser on that front in high school myself, I can seriously
relate, and so can hundreds of thousands of us nerdy guys. No wonder, then, that all those Beatles comparisons,
which were quite apt for the previous two albums, gradually fade away now,
replaced by a vibe that is clearly more Zombies-like in essence, even if
these guys do not share much of the Zombies’ melodic inventiveness, and their
backing band lacks a proper musical talent like Rod Argent to transform the
vibe into truly memorable and heavy-hitting art. It is a vibe that comes very
naturally to them, and it would be unjust to attack any of those self-penned
tracks for insincerity or lack of taste. In fact, each and every one of them feels
more sincere than, say, something
like ‘Baby’s In Black’, whose emotional palette is complicated but, as far as
I can tell, hardly produces a lot of associations with either true black or true blue. But ‘Baby’s In Black’ still sticks in your head, while a
song like ‘Say It Isn’t True’, despite formal catchiness and a nice stereo
separation of the two guitars, does not. A good hint is provided by the fact that when the
"well I know that I shouldn’t
believe it..." bridge section comes along, there are some clearly
discernible vocal parallels there with the bridge section of ‘How Do You Do
It?’, that soft little pop tune which The Beatles had rejected in 1963 in
favor of ‘Please Please Me’ and which went on to be associated with Gerry
& The Pacemakers instead. It shows that Chad & Jeremy’s songwriting
was really still stuck in the early Sixties, unable to cross the simplistic
teen-pop barrier that, for both The Beatles and The Zombies, had already been
left far behind by early 1965. Essentially, this is the «formula of 1963»
that, instead of being exchanged for something substantially more refined and
advanced, is simply polished and improved with better production, slightly
more thoughtful lyrics, and a bit of that pensive singer-songwriter vibe that
gives the final product a more sincere feel, like now this stuff is really coming from the heart rather
than merely written as a piece of commercial ware. Paradoxically, this gives the album... well, not a unique vibe for 1965, as obviously
there were plenty of similar well-behaved mediocrities all over the place,
but a vibe that, when you let it soak through your living room, generates
more nostalgia for the spring and summer months of 1965 than any Beatles
record. The Beatles, after all, strived (perhaps unconsciously so) to make
their music relatively timeless, with each of their albums existing more in
the context of their other albums
rather than in the context of the time and space around it; meanwhile, a
record like Before & After
best exists in the context of something like set of 3 retro hair model posters from "American
Hairdresser" (in stock on eBay for $21.00). It’s a kind of nostalgia
that I can certainly get behind, though, to some extent at least. However, I can only get behind it as long as Chad
& Jeremy are truly and sincerely doing their thing — singing nerdy teen
serenades or spinning teen tales of broken hearts. Conversely, when they try
on another old folk shanty nicked from one of Joan Baez’s albums (‘Fare Thee
Well’), they exchange the 1965 vibe for a wannabe-Greenwich Village sound
that is even less authentic than Peter, Paul & Mary. And God help them
when they decide to rock out: ‘Evil-Hearted Me’ is a diet take on ‘Long Tall
Sally’ (they even manage to copy Harrison’s lead guitar part almost
note-for-note!), one of those proverbial «we need to include a rock’n’roll
number to retain the hipness quotient» moments where you begin to wonder
about what happened to the concept of human dignity. They fare a little better with the cover of Gordon
Lightfoot’s ‘For Lovin’ Me’, which gets a nice twin guitar arrangement and a
more vocally polished sheen than the original — even if the song’s lyrical
message, with its (rather ugly, but highly traditional) Don Giovanni
attitude, seems fairly distant from the typical Chad & Jeremy formula.
Feels a bit weird for the same guys who, just a moment ago, complained about
losing their lover to an alpha competitor, now try to convince us that "I ain’t the kind to hang around / With any
new love that I found". But that’s just a matter of artistic
transformation, and even so, there is so much warmth in the singers’
harmonies that the breaking of character comes across only when you pay
serious attention to the lyrics. It does cast a bit of a shadow on songs like ‘Tell Me
Baby’, which is probably one of the best-written and arranged compositions
on here — the horns and strings could use a bit more energy, but the
triumphant way in which they waltz around each other is still infectious, and
the resolution of the melody is proverbially «glorious». However, given the
Gordon Lightfoot cover that preceded it, words like "can’t hide it from you, I want you so bad,
if he’s gone, I’ll be sorry for you, but for me I’ll be glad" come
across as, if not exactly «predatorial» (Chad & Jeremy look about as much
as predators as a couple of purry kittens... well, okay, kittens are predators), then at least a bit
sleazy. Then again, whoever said shy nerdy guys cannot be ruthless womanizers
deep down inside?.. To sum up, Before
& After has about a half-dozen expertly written, adequately
performed, and modestly catchy folk-pop or baroque-pop numbers, whose main
problem is an irritating lack of sharpness.
Give this stuff a bit more crunch, make these guys’ harmonies sometimes ring
out in true Beatles or Zombies fashion, let the songs sound with a little
less of that «we don’t want to offend anyone’s auditory senses, no really we
don’t!» attitude, and you just might have something there. As it is, the
dreamy comatose aura that Chad & Jeremy self-imposed on themselves became
their trademark and their curse.
Even when the goddamn songs are good, they’re so smoothly oiled that they
just slip out of your brain. The remastered edition of the album on CD throws on
lots of bonus tracks, alternate versions, and awful San Remo-style outtakes
of the duo singing in Italian. Most of these are forgettable, but perhaps a
word of kindness should be spoken about the two tracks credited to «Chad
& Jill» — Chad Stuart’s duets with his wife, who temporarily filled in as
his musical partner while Jeremy was away in London, trying out for a music
hall acting career (a move that he has since come to regret, blaming it for
effectively killing off their American popularity). ‘The Cruel War’, in
particular, is a highlight — a harpsichord-led, livelied-up baroque-pop
rearrangement of the old anti-war folk song, popularized by Peter, Paul &
Mary, and Jill Stuart has one of those lovely fair-maiden voices that,
unfortunately, never went anywhere (allegedly, she felt herself roped into
the business, never aspiring for a professional musical career). |
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Album
released: September 27, 1965 |
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Tracks: 1) I Don’t Want To Lose You Baby;
2) Should I; 3) The Girl Who Sang The Blues; 4) Funny How Love Can Be; 5) The
Woman In You; 6) Mr. Tambourine Man; 7) I Have Dreamed; 8) Don’t Think Twice,
It’s All Right; 9) Baby Don’t Go; 10) There But For Fortune; 11) These Things
You Don’t Forget. |
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Let’s
hear it from Chad himself, addressing his fans from the back of the sleeve:
"I am writing these notes basking
in Californian sunshine, sitting by the pool at our apartment. This is the
life! Far removed from the rainy London of last May where we made this album."
[Cue Jill Stuart /in the background/: "What are you, nuts? You want to eliminate all of your London fans
I’ve spent so much time on assembling for you?" Chad: "Hey babe, you’re the one talking! Doesn’t
this back sleeve also have "Attention, Chad & Jeremy fans! Fan Club
Address: Jill Stuart, Box 1409 Beverly Hills, Calif." all over it?"
Jill: [gives her husband a death stare].
Chad [grumbling]: "Okay, okay..."
[pause, writing:] "I really love
London, too, but at this precise moment I rather go for California, too!"
Jill [sighing]: "You’re such an
ass, I’m never going out on stage with you again. Go sing under Judy Collins’
balcony or something if you want another stage partner." |
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No surprise that I Don’t Want To Lose Your Baby, Chad & Jeremy’s third album
of original material in one year, did indeed appear only in the US (some Web
sources list it as a UK release but this seems to be a mistake), while UK
audiences were only treated to the title track as a single. By the time it
came out in the fall of 1965, Chad was indeed enjoying the life in Beverly
Hills, while Jeremy was back in London to act in Passion Flower Hotel, and there was much talk about the duo
possibly separating for good — though, apparently, there were no such plans
when they hastily laid down the basic tracks for this LP in May before
contractual obligations would split them apart for nine months. Because there
was no time to sit back, think, and evolve, the album is not all that
stylistically different from Before
And After, and tends to get overlooked by reviewers; but if you hold no
expectations for the Chad & Jeremy sound to eventually «deepen and
mature» — and why should you, come to think of it? — then it’s got quite a
few more humble nostalgic morsels of pleasure to deliver, in addition to
feeling a little more wholesome and adequate than its predecessor. In particular, the record has no blunt attempts to
«rock out» like ‘Evil-Hearted Me’; the harshest-sounding bit on the entire
album is the grumbly-fuzzy arpeggiated riff that opens the duo’s cover of
‘The Girl Who Sang The Blues’, a Mann-Weil composition originally released in
1963 by the Everly Brothers — and even that one is immediately neutralized by
the gentle piano counterpoint. I must confess that I like the cover more than
the original, because Lor Crane’s arrangements make the song more interesting
(and vocal-wise, it’s not the kind of material that lets the singers truly
shine anyway, so both duos do pretty much the same job). And I do appreciate the humor of modifying
the bridge section where they take the original lyrics ("I still remember that fateful night / The
man with a big cigar / Walked in the club right up to her / Said ‘Hey girl
I’m gonna make you a star’") and replace the last line with "Hey girl, my name is Brian Epstein"
— and yes, Brian Epstein did smoke an occasional cigar, though it still might
be judged as a bit of a low blow. If anything, I am more worried here about the
conscious attempt to reimagine Chad & Jeremy as a shadow of The Righteous
Brothers: the title track and lead single, ‘I Don’t Want To Lose You Baby’,
credited to the duo’s American artistic guide Van McCoy, is such a blatantly
superficial re-write of ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ that it would be a
total embarrassment for any other artist; fortunately, Chad & Jeremy sort
of had their reputation already established on the basis of shadowing their
superiors, so who really cares? Well, to a certain small extent I do care, because bombastic Spectorian
production and all-out operatic singing on a seabed of strings and walls of
acoustic guitars is simply not something these guys were born to do. The only
stylistic difference is that they still deliver the verses in a semi-whisper
rather than sing them, which makes an odd contrast between the humble voices
and the massive production — a contrast that evaporates by the time the
chorus comes along and strongly suggests that the gentlemen go back to
college, please. Which, happily for us, they immediately proceed to
do, and although some of the remaining songs are still a little louder than
others, generally they seem content to remain within their comfort zone —
friendly and unassuming folk-rock of the Beatles (you wish) / Byrds
(occasionally) / Sonny & Cher (for the most part) variety. At least there
are no Beatles covers, but there is
a Byrds cover and a Sonny & Cher one. And, somewhat predictably, while the
duo’s take on ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ (which closely follows the Byrds’
arrangement, not Dylan’s original) feels like a bland copycat effort that
only detracts from the original, their performance of ‘Baby Don’t Go’,
conversely, improves on Sonny & Cher’s 1964 recording — they play it a
little faster, a little tighter, a little denser, so that the original sounds
like a raw demo in comparison; the only thing that’s lost in translation is
the power of Cher’s young, treacly vocals that still somehow makes the
original feel more serious and mature than Chad & Jeremy’s «romantic boy
in the back of the classroom» delivery. They do pay a more direct tribute to Dylan by
covering ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ — a surprisingly belated choice,
considering that the song had already been done to death and all but buried by
mid-1965, and also one where they fall into the usual trap of interpreting it
as a gentle and tender ballad rather than the vicious and mercyless putdown
that it is (so you could say it’s really more of a Peter, Paul & Mary
cover than an actual Dylan one). But if you do need a version of ‘Don’t Think Twice’ where the protagonist is
more of a, let’s say, Montgomery Clift than Clint Eastwood, this one might
actually do the trick. It’s nice, humble, and tasteful, anyway. Other non-original material includes a cover of Phil
Ochs’ ‘There But For Fortune’, again in a faster and (folk)-poppier arrangement
than both Phil’s own performances or Joan Baez’ cover of that little
singer-songwriter classic; a cover of The Ivy League’s hit ‘Funny How Love Can
Be’, also slightly tightened and sped up but otherwise almost identical to
the original; ‘I Have Dreamed’ from The
King And I, made to sound like a Byrds song except for the annoying
intrusive orchestration; and another Van McCoy composition, ‘These Things You
Don’t Forget’, which at least does not attempt to rip off any more Righteous Brothers
but is still just an unremarkable and superficial mid-tempo ballad. All of this only leaves space for two originals,
though one of them (‘Should I’, co-written by Chad and Jeremy) soon acquired a
bit of international notoriety when it unexpectedly became a European hit for
The Hep Stars (the Swedish antecedent of ABBA) later in the year. The song’s
most outstanding musical feature is probably the smoothness of its melodic
alternation between a gentle folk-pop melody and a (comparatively) gritty
rhythm’n’blues pattern, though, unfortunately, this back-and-forth thing is only
restricted to the intro and outro — I’d like to see this genre mash-up taken
to further heights. Still, it’s definitely one of their best written pop
songs; the Hep Stars overrode them with more in-yer-face vocals and also by
expanding on the fast «rave-up» interlude, borrowing its signature for the
final verse of the song, but I still think the original is more natural. The
second original is ‘The Woman In You’, credited solely to Jeremy: a blues-pop
ditty that feels mismatched with the guys’ personalities, as it happens
pretty much every time they try to do something bluesy. Maybe the woman in the
unnamed you did truly succeed in bringing out the man in Jeremy (and/or Clyde),
but certainly not the kind of man necessary for such a performance, like,
say, a Mick Jagger. Clearly, with such an abundance of covers — and some
of them completely superfluous, like ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ — it is fairly
obvious that the album was rushed for technical reasons; but on the whole,
the selection is good, and the concept of Chad & Jeremy serving as «perfection
providers» for unpolished musical ideas, be it Sonny & Cher or Phil Ochs,
could even be a better one than the concept of Chad & Jeremy as second-,
if not third-rate songwriters trying to imitate their betters. Once again, if
you don’t set your expectations too high, this is perfectly enjoyable for all
those who just can’t get enough of those serenely idealistic vibes of 1965. |
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