CLIFF RICHARD
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1958–2020 |
Early rock’n’roll |
Move It (1958) |
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Album
released: April 17, 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Apron Strings; 2) My Babe; 3)
Down The Line; 4) I Got A Feeling; 5) Jet Black; 6) Baby I Don’t Care; 7)
Donna; 8) Move It; 9) Ready Teddy; 10) Too Much; 11) Don’t Bug Me Baby; 12)
Driftin’; 13) That’ll Be The Day; 14) Be-Bop-A-Lula; 15) Danny; 16) Whole
Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On. |
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It
is quite notable that Cliff Richard and the Shadows’ (actually, at that time,
still the Drifters’) first LP was recorded live at Abbey Road Studios — in
front of an actual audience of several hundred fans, politely screaming their
heads off at certain culmination points but far from all over the place, so
that each instrument and every overtone of Cliff’s young voice could be heard
crystal clear. In 1959, live albums from rock’n’roll artists were a relative
rarity even in the US, and I certainly do not know of any major rock stars
from that time who would start out live. In a way, this is quite a symbolic
gesture — hinting at the overwhelming power of spontaneity and on-the-spot
energy associated with rock’n’roll, and, more importantly, at the magic power
that a 19-year old’s presence could hold over the audience. In 1959, Cliff
Richard was Britain’s first major teenage idol — and it was important, nay,
essential to market him right from the start as the UK’s authentic and
respectable answer to Elvis Presley. |
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The principal attraction
of the show is stuck in the middle — ‘Move It’, the song that, in the eyes of
everybody including the Beatles themselves, started rock’n’roll in Britain.
Musically credited to the Drifters’ original guitarist Ian Samwell, there is
not much «writing» involved in the actual melody, which simply exploits a
well-established fast rockabilly pattern, but at least the lyrics are
moderately original, not to mention prophetic — "They say it’s gonna die
but please let’s face it / They just don’t know what’s a-goin’ to replace
it" — and both the original echo-laden single and this far more
in-yer-face live version are loaded with genuine enthusiasm: finally, we are
taking something invented by the Yankees and running away with it! just go,
Hank, go! (Though, honestly, I am not quite sure why Hank seems to have
gotten offkey and offtempo at the end of his solo in the middle of the song —
a pretty mood-killing moment, that one). That said, Cliff is
anything but a great record, and right from the start, it succeeds in showing
all the limitations of both Cliff Richard, the artist, and the Drifters /
Shadows as his backing band. The 19-year old kid was clearly passionate about
the devil’s music, but neither did he have a particularly great set of pipes,
nor was he allowed to cultivate a wild enough stage presence to pass for
anything other than a decent local substitute for the real thing — be that
real thing Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, or Jerry
Lee Lewis, to name some of the people whose material gets covered on this
release. At best, he could probably serve in the league of Ricky Nelson
(whose ‘I Got A Feeling’ is also here and is actually a bit tougher than the
original), which isn’t too bad but pretty much excludes you from the Bad Boy
category. His is merely an ordinary vocal, and I cannot imagine a single
reason on Earth why anybody could ever prefer any of these versions to the
originals. Musically, one could point
to the Shadows as Britain’s first instrumental rock band of any importance —
here, they already get two instrumental numbers completely to themselves —
but for all the legendary synergy between the band’s rhythm section and Hank
Marvin, the lead guitarist, the Shadows have a compensating flaw: too much
discipline and restraint in their ranks, making their performances into
pleasant and respectable musical exercises rather than the exciting ritual of
exorcism that prime rock’n’roll is supposed to be. This is where the idea of
the live recording really falls flat — it feels weird hearing those teenage
screams while the band is presenting their near-mathematically calculated
take on rock’n’roll on ‘Jet Black’ and ‘Driftin’, two numbers with dreamy
surf overtones whose atmosphere is almost closer to «artsy» than
«headbanging». On a technical and perhaps even compositional level, the
musicianship here arguably surpasses the early Beatles — but on a visceral
level, the Shadows might just as well be the Icebergs, in which case the
screaming audience would rather bring on associations with the passengers of
the Titanic... Of course, this is
precisely why Cliff and the Shadows were perfect for each other — he the
embodiment of polite, watered-down rock’n’roll, they the embodiment of
«discipline over passion». But this perfect matching only makes sense when it
is accompanied by original material — heck, even ‘Move It’, derivative as it
is, is a perfectly suitable vehicle as long as your mind has nothing direct
to compare it to. On the other hand, this version of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’
Goin’ On’ with which they end the show, once you fall into the hands of the
inevitable association with Jerry Lee Lewis and the Nashville Teens at the
Star Club, is an official glass of warm milk, even if there also happen to be
acknowledged lovers of warm milk in this world. The best that could be
said about Cliff is that for a live recording from 1959, even one
recorded live in the studio, the LP is a marvel of engineering — each cymbal
crash, each bass pluck, every shaky inflection of Cliff’s voice is captured
so perfectly that it puts many, if not most, of contemporary American
rock’n’roll recordings to shame. This is, of course, more courtesy of Abbey
Road’s experienced sound engineers and producer Norrie Paramor than Cliff or
the band’s — but, in a way, it is also a handy precursor to the clarity of
sound on the Beatles’ records, and a small hint that at least some of the popularity of the early
British Invasion overseas just might have been due to the fact that, for the
first time ever, the kids were able to hear some of those exciting
rock’n’roll sounds without any accompanying sonic muck. But then again, the
Beatles were all about original and inventive pop melodies — Cliff, on
the other hand, pretends to be all about driving rock’n’roll, and where do
you get driving rock’n’roll without a solid serving of sonic muck? In
retrospect, this is all about «you had to be there», really — and, perhaps,
all about showing thousands of hungry British kids the way to musical
nirvana. |
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Album
released: Nov. 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) Blue Suede Shoes; 2) The Snake
And The Bookworm; 3) I Gotta Know; 4) Here Comes Summer; 5) I’ll String Along
With You; 6) Embraceable You; 7) As Time Goes By; 8) The Touch Of Your Lips;
9) Twenty Flight Rock; 10) Pointed Toe Shoes; 11) Mean Woman Blues; 12) I’m
Walking; 13) I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do); 14) Little Things Mean A Lot; 15)
Somewhere Along The Way; 16) That’s My Desire. |
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REVIEW
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The very fact that exactly
half of the record is for the kids and the other half is for their parents is
nothing to write home about — pretty standard fare for late Fifties’ and
early Sixties’ teen idols — but the sequencing is notable. Put all the
rock’n’roll on one side, and chances are the second side will never ever be
listened to. Put the rock’n’roll and the oldies next to each other, and
chances are that just as the angry parents reach the limit of their patience
and burst in the kid’s room to smash the record, ‘I’ll String Along With You’
or ‘I Don’t Know Why’ comes along and melts their flaming hearts. The new and
the old hand in hand — teenage rebellion soothed by reverence for the elders
— conflict and harmony in one soothing package — «supreme versatility», as
Norrie Paramor himself proudly states in the liner notes on the back of the
LP. «Supreme» is, of course, a
bit of an understatement, given that Cliff and the Shadows’ studio take on
rock’n’roll is not too different from the live one — quiet, restrained, and
well-disciplined, a far cry from most of the artists who get covered here and
hardly an essential listen for anybody other than a music historian. The band
is tight, Hank Marvin’s playful and slightly jazzy leads are technically
impeccable, and Cliff’s vocal range is astoundingly impressive for a 19-year
old, but this is still a strictly diet version of rock’n’roll, with passion
and excitement replaced by an almost academic approach to performance — the
last thing one really needs when planning to bang one’s head off to a ‘Mean
Woman Blues’ or a ‘Twenty Flight Rock’. (For instructive purposes, just play
the opening bars of Eddie Cochran and Cliff back-to-back — note how «nasty»
the thick and slightly distorted tone on the original is compared to the
clean, thin, muffled tone on Cliff’s version). Melodically, the one song
in this section which differs the most from its better known counterpart is
‘I Gotta Know’, which most people probably learn from the slower, doo-woppier
version by Elvis; surprisingly, Cliff recorded it before Elvis (probably just a coincidence), and in a version that
was musically closer to Elvis’ early rockabilly numbers, with a much more
pronounced Nashville spirit. The Elvis version, however, would be far more successful
in exploiting the song’s melodic potential, and Cliff’s vocal journey hits
far fewer peaks and valleys than Elvis’. Still, if you thought Elvis’ version
was way too slow or something, you can find yourself a formal excuse for
singling this one here as an outstanding performance — no such luck with
anything else, I’m afraid. As for Cliff singing ‘As
Time Goes By’ or ‘That’s My Desire’, I suppose this will largely boil down to
how much you enjoy the standards and how much the 19-year old’s sweet-husky
voice gets your own juices flowing. There’s nothing particularly wrong with
this stuff — technically, Cliff sings it miles better than, say, Paul
McCartney ever could — but neither is he Frank Sinatra, and there can hardly
be any talk about the man being able to lay down some sort of unique
personality touch here: this is all just technically flawless imitation. And
when somebody does equally admiring imitations of Carl Perkins and, say,
Kitty Kallen (‘Little Things Mean A Lot’), you know that’s all there is to
it, really: «Britain Got Talent» is what this is all about. Still, at least
there is no denying that Britain really got talent — in 1959, there was
arguably nobody else on the island who could find his way into the hearts of
the old and the young as smoothly as this kid. |
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Album
released: Oct. 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) I’m Gonna Get You; 2) You And
I; 3) I Cannot Find A True Love; 4) Evergreen Tree; 5) She’s Gone; 6) Left
Out Again; 7) You’re Just The One To Do It; 8) Lamp Of Love; 9) Choppin’ ’n’
Changin’; 10) We Have It Made; 11) Tell Me; 12) Gee Wiz It’s You; 13) I Love
You So; 14) I’m Willing To Learn; 15) I Don’t Know; 16) Working After School. |
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Arguably
Cliff’s finest hour, and not just because of the genuinely funny pun: this
was the first (and last) of his albums to feature mainly original compositions, though Cliff himself had little to
do with them — his Shadows were more than silently happy to take on most of
the job, with credits more or less equally spread between Hank Marvin, Jet
Harris, Bruce Welch, and former member Ian Samwell. (Cliff himself only takes
a humble co-credit for ‘I Love You So’ — probably for writing the truly
unforgettable lyrics "I love you so / I’ll never let you go / I want you
to know / That I love you so"). |
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None of the Shadows were
geniuses when it came to songwriting, of course, but the album, along with
concurrent Billy Fury records, still remains in history as one of the
earliest and most consistent attempts to introduce a «British school» of
rock’n’roll songwriting, at least formally stripping the Beatles of that
claim. With fast, pushy, rocking numbers like ‘I’m Gonna Get You’ and
‘Choppin’ ’n’ Changin’ (both of them symbolically positioned as A- and B-side
openers), the Shadows are doing here for themselves and Cliff the exact same
thing that the Beatles would soon be doing with ‘I Saw Her Standing There’
and ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ — combining their own pop instincts with imported
rock’n’roll energy. And, curiously, sometimes it feels to me as if the main
thing holding them back was not even their inability to find that perfect
chord change, but way too much dependence on Duane Eddy and early surf music
— those thin, squiggly tones with their predilection for melodic symmetry and
technique over all-out emotional excitement. Then again, maybe not,
because the chief weakness of an overall cool pop-rock tune like ‘I’m Gonna
Get You’ is not so much the squeaky-fragile tone of its guitars as it is the
disappointing resolution to each verse — after the first fast-poppin’ three
lines, seemingly building up hungry frustration ("I’m acting like a
crazy love sick clown... been looking for you all over town... it seems that
you’re nowhere around..."), the verse breaks down on a stuttering,
tempo-shifting "I’m gonna get you!" which sounds like the singer is
temporarily stopping to catch his breath or something before resuming his
doomed pursuit. Compare this to something like the Beatles’ ‘I’ll Get You’,
with its similar message — that song is slower, poppier, happier, but each
verse is rounded up with a positively triumphant exit, whereas ‘I’m Gonna Get
You’ just suffers breakdown after breakdown — a classic case of good
intentions marred by unsuccessful songwriting ideas. ’Choppin’ And Changin’ is
the better rocker of the two, but, unfortunately, precisely because it contains
almost no original songwriting ideas rather than the opposite — it is just a
stereotypical fast-paced blues-rocker in the vein of ‘My Babe’, but at least
the Shadows find the perfect pacing and Cliff is capable of singing it in a
«dangerous» state of mind, building up from a menacing tone early on to a
histrionic one, while Hank supports the frenzy with his own pitch-raising
strategy. This is good stuff which you won’t actually get from the Beatles
because of their typical aversion to strictly blues-based numbers; in fact,
it sounds very much like a precursor to the classic angry garage sound of the
early Sixties, and would not feel out of place on Nuggets or any other
such compilation. That said, this is as far
as «menace» goes on this album: everything else ranges from friendly pop-rock
to sentimental balladry, with the exception of ‘She’s Gone’, a Chicago-style
mid-tempo blues-rock lament presaging some of the early Stones this time (do
note the man’s versatility — all of these may be inferior blueprints, but
they are blueprints for the early
careers of, like, 90% of classic British Invasion bands). ‘You And I’ is a
nice steady-rollin’ pop ballad in the vein of Buddy Holly; ‘I Cannot Find A
True Love’ is something like a funny cross between ‘That’s Alright Mama’ and
‘I Got A Woman’; and ‘Tell Me’ gets the dubious achievement of probably being the first British song
by a major star that puts its full trust into the power of "whoah whoah
whoah"’s and "yeah yeah yeah"’s — the verse melody is pure
Everly Brothers, but the chorus is something which the Beatles must have
picked up quite early. Curiously, those of the
songs which are not credited to the Shadows seem to have been commissioned
from the same team of corporate songwriters which was handling Elvis’ career
at the time — Otis Blackwell, Sid Tepper, Ben Weisman and Fred Wise, Aaron
Schroeder, etc. Overall, this isn’t much of anything other than a symbolic
wish to mold Cliff as Britain’s answer to Elvis, and they’d have made a much
more wise choice if they turned to Leiber and Stoller instead. Still, the
name of Otis Blackwell at the very least sounds promising, and, true enough,
‘You’re Just The One To Do It’ is quite a charming little ballad — this is a good example of how
brilliantly you can resolve a three-line verse, one from which the authors of
‘I’m Gonna Get You’ could have learned a valuable lesson; and it is an
excellent example of Cliff’s flexibility and charisma as a singer, as you
watch him smoothly descend from cooing serenader on the three-line verse to
suave baritone charmer on the one-line chorus. So maybe he does do this thing
as a boy where Elvis would have
done the same as a man, but now
that we are no longer in the cold grippin’ hands of ageism, why should one
necessarily be better than the other, right? It could be tempting to
speculate that an album like Me And My Shadows could have been a
prelude to something great, but of course it could not: even with all the
original songwriting, it is all about latching on to established formulas and
modifying them with tiny tweaks here and there — no genuine signs of some
sort of original vision, just enough of those little changes so as to be able
to pocket most of the songwriting credits. Still, it is honorable enough that
Me And My Shadows preserves a good dose of the rock’n’roll spirit, and
that its pop inspiration comes from the likes of Buddy Holly and the Everlys
rather than Pat Boone or Frankie Avalon: in that little interim era of
teenage idols that separated classic Elvis from the Beatles, the presence of
Cliff and the Shadows actually mattered. And out of all their records, this
is the one which is still quite listenable and enjoyable today, regardless of
historic context. |
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Album
released: 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) What’d I Say; 2) Blue Moon; 3) True
Love Will Come To You; 4) Lover; 5) Unchained Melody; 6) Idle Gossip; 7)
First Lesson In Love; 8) Almost Like Being In Love; 9) Beat Out Dat Rhythm On
A Drum; 10) Memories Linger On; 11) Temptation; 12) I Live For You; 13)
Sentimental Journey; 14) I Want You To Know; 15) We Kiss In A Shadow; 16)
It’s You. |
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Cliff’s
third studio album was released upon the heels of ‘When The Girl In Your Arms
Is The Girl In Your Heart’ — an acoustic Tepper/Bennett «original» which
could, perhaps, be mildly memorable if sung by Elvis, but hearing it sung by
Cliff only makes you wonder if you’d thought any better of it if it had been
sung by Elvis. Unfortunately, the same feeling accompanies much of Listen To Cliff!, an album that
throws the promise of Me And My Shadows
out the window and pretty much symbolizes Cliff’s concession to the role of
tame teen idol. |
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Although the Shadows still
back Cliff on many of the numbers, all five Shadow-related compositions,
credited to Bruce Welch and his friend Pete Chester, are unremarkable pop
ballads — sweet, inobtrusive, with no major original hooks to speak of and no
details worth mentioning. In fact, next to them the Rodgers and Hart
standards like ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Lover’ feel positively stunning — even if
there are no reasons whatsoever to prefer this run-of-the-mill version of
‘Blue Moon’ as performed by the «Norrie Paramor Orchestra» to Billie Holiday
or Elvis (heck, even Bob Dylan had a more musically interesting version on
the universally hated Self-Portrait). The album still pretends
it might be of interest to the dying-out breed of rock’n’rollers by opening
things up with a Rough and Rowdy performance of Ray Charles’ ‘What I’d Say’,
with all the provocative lyrics taken out and, for no particular reason,
replaced by a verse from ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ — and, what with the
Shadows stepping in for the Raelettes on backing vocals, the song’s infamous
group sex act imitation now sounding more like a bunch of guys lugging heavy
furniture across the room. (It doesn’t even sound much like a group gay sex act imitation, which would at
least have been a socially outstanding move back in 1961). It is still an
okay performance, largely saved by Reliable Hank’s immaculate instrumental
break, but what is essentially the point of performing a quintessentially
provocative number while taking out all the provocation? diet Coke all over
again. The only other instance of
rock’n’roll on the album is stuck far away on the B-side, a cover of Fats
Domino’s ‘I Want You To Know’, whose main attraction, unsurprisingly, is once
again a couple of jagged bluesy guitar breaks, very reminiscent in tone and
structure of the types of solos Keith Richards would soon be playing on early
Stones’ numbers. Just a few more of these numbers couldn’t have hurt — but
alas, the closest we get to «energetic» elsewhere is ‘Beat Out Dat Rhythm On
A Drum’ from the Carmen Jones
musical, another strange as heck choice where little white boy Cliff Richard
has to step into the shoes of big black girl Pearl Bailey and try to stir up
jungle-level excitement... why? The sad truth of the
matter is that, of course, Cliff was still being marketed as the British
answer to Elvis, and this transition had to mirror Elvis’ own transition — if
Me And My Shadows was Cliff’s Elvis Is Back!, a record that
could still combine pop hooks with leftover rock’n’roll energy, then Listen
To Cliff! is more like his Something For Everybody, a record which
openly admits that the rock’n’roll fad is largely over, the kids are all
grown up, and society is all but ready to return to a more dignified and
civilized existence. "I’m gonna take a Sentimental Journey, gonna set my
heart at ease, gonna make a Sentimental Journey, to renew old memories"
— no truer words have been spoken on the album. And while this was certainly
not the end of Cliff’s career, this was definitely the cut-off point after
which he’d lost all hope to remain on the cutting edge of Britain’s popular
music. |
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Album
released: Oct. 14, 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) Happy Birthday To You; 2) Forty
Days; 3) Catch Me; 4) How Wonderful To Know; 5) Tough Enough; 6) 50 Tears For
Every Kiss; 7) The Night Is So Lonely; 8) Poor Boy; 9) Y’Arriva; 10)
Outsider; 11) Tea For Two; 12) To Prove My Love For You; 13) Without You; 14)
A Mighty Lonely Man; 15) My Blue Heaven; 16) Shame On You. |
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REVIEW
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So, first and foremost
getting ‘Happy Birthday To You’ out of the way (a nice surfing arrangement
from the Shadows, interspersed by tons of barely intelligible «party banter»
that, weirdly enough, presages the style of The Beach Boys’ Party! by
a good four years), let us take a quick look at the original material. The
Shadows only contribute three tunes, of which ‘Without You’ is a catchy
little Elvis-style pop rocker, while ‘Shame On You’ is a slightly more
original early example of pre-Merseybeat Britpop... wait, no, I think I am
just confused by all the sweet yeah yeahs, because the melody is rather in
the style of the Everly brothers. Of the third song, the honey-dripping
‘Y’Arriba’, the less said the better (it is for this kind of material that
the horribly abused term «cultural appropriation» has been originally
invented, I hope). Two more tunes were
commissionned from the Elvis-supporting team of Tepper and Bennett, both of
them syrupy upbeat ballads whose blatant sentimental cuteness is not much
helped by either Hank Marvin’s warm and wobbly guitar tones (‘Catch Me’) or
the thin festival-style orchestration (‘Outsider’)... but I guess Cliff sings
them with enough of his still believable teenage innocence to not come across
as completely unbearable. Speaking of songwriters connected with Elvis, Cliff
actually does a much better job on the toughened and tightened rock version
of Johnny Otis’ ‘Tough Enough’, a song whose original catchiness suits the
Shadows’ robotic style to a tee — I’d love to hear this kind of song
delivered by the likes of John Lennon, but in his absence, Cliff Richard will
have to do, as long as he can pull off a good roar on the chorus and as long
as Hank keeps playing those alarm-like rock’n’roll licks. For even more rock’n’roll,
check out the cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Thirty Days’ (which, for some reason,
becomes ‘Forty Days’ — did they transcribe the words by ear? and did Chuck
mess up his interdentals on the recording? bizarre...) and... well, actually,
nothing else. But what is perhaps more interesting than Cliff’s meek take on
Chuck Berry (nothing, really, that the Beatles or the Stones could not do
with twice as much energy and debauchery) are the Shadows’ innovative takes
on such old standards as ‘Tea For Two’, which is given a moody quasi-bossa
nova arrangement, and ‘My Blue Heaven’, with some delicious bass work from
Jet Harris; both songs also feature unpredictable key and tempo changes in
their mid-sections, suggesting that the boys might have been thinking about coming
up with a new kind of progressive jazz-pop (and then, of course, the Beatles
came up and murdered that idea in its cradle). All in all, this is
definitely a rebound from the helpless sweetness of the previous album, if
still not quite up to the energy and freshness standards of Me And My
Shadows. At the very least there is enough subtle creative nuances here
to suggest that, if not for the rock revolution, this style might have
eventually grown into a truly mature brand of art-pop, well, I mean, given a
decade or two... but, of course, the world just wasn’t going to wait that long, was it? |
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Album
released: Sept. 14, 1962 |
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Tracks: 1) It’ll Be Me; 2) So I’ve Been
Told; 3) How Long Is Forever; 4) I’m Walkin’ The Blues; 5) Turn Around; 6)
Blueberry Hill; 7) Let’s Make A Memory; 8) When My Dream Boat Comes Home; 9)
I’m On My Way; 10) Spanish Harlem; 11) You Don’t Know; 12) Falling In Love
With Love; 13) Who Are We To Say; 14) I Wake Up Cryin’. |
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Damn
digital era — my copy of this album
actually runs for 33 minutes and 16 seconds, and I have no idea if this is
just because of extra intervals between tracks, or because there has been a
bit of slowing down during the analog-to-digital transfer, or because it’s
the general theory of relativity that’s been at work here... though the
latter would probably be too much of an honor for an album that is not in the
least memorable. Actually, it is not a serious drop down in quality from 21 Today, just a bit blander and less
inspired on most counts, giving you a very clear idea that absolutely nothing
has changed in the field of British popular music from late ’61 to late ’62.
Three weeks later, the Beatles would release ‘Love Me Do’ — which is, even
all alone by itself, superior in spirit, if not execution, to everything on
this LP — but Cliff’s reign would still continue unabated for several more
months. It is kinda telling, though, that in this case he ended up upstaged
by his own backing band: the Shadows’ second album, released almost at the
same time, went all the way to the top of the charts while 32 Minutes stalled at #3. |
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Indeed, it seems as if the
Shadows, whose tracks now occupy slightly less than half of the album, were
by now saving their best efforts for their own career — as evidenced by the
fairly lackluster cover of Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘It’ll Be Me’ which opens the album,
on which Cliff clearly imitates Jerry’s grinning singing style but can never
hope to match it because, like the good clean English kid he is, he always
has to keep decorum and restraint in the back of his mind. Hank Marvin, too,
sounds distraught and unfocused with his solo, and the slow-as-hell and
robotic rhythm section has anything but true rock’n’roll drive on its own
mind. Released as a single, the song still became a Top 10 hit in many
European countries, but this simply reflected ongoing hunger for the real
thing. Other Shadows-backed
numbers include ‘Blueberry Hill’, this time imitating Elvis with the same
kind of pale-shadow effect; another Tepper-Bennett original, ‘I’m Walkin’ The
Blues’, a kiddy ditty with one of the cheesiest bridge sections ever found in
these cheesemasters’ repertoire ("when you moved out, Mr. Blues walked
in" — who the hell calls the blues mister?);
an okayish rewrite of ‘Saints’ (‘When My Dreamboat Comes Home’) on which
Brian Bennett’s powerhouse drumming may be the only point worth mentioning;
and a very, very weird arrangement of the blues song ‘You Don’t Know’,
credited to doo-wop artist Walter Spriggs and formerly recorded by B. B. King
— for some reason, the band here thought that it would be cool to set it to
the instrumental hook of ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and rework the vocal part to
the melody of ‘Fever’. Oh, and utilize only acoustic guitars for the
recording. The result is... well, at least it’s a little weird. Under these circumstances,
Norrie Paramor’s orchestral tracks almost end up looking superior,
particularly the solid cover of ‘Spanish Harlem’ and the proto-Dusty
Springfield upbeat vibe of Bill Crompton’s ‘Let’s Make A Memory’. Still way
too many Tepper-Bennett contributions on this side of the divide, though; but
at least the album closes with a Burt Bacharach composition (‘I Wake Up
Cryin’), and although I have never been swayed over by the Bacharach legend,
at least this song has a funny spider-ish bassline saving it from dissolving
into murky orchestral sap. On the whole, though,
trying to divide these songs into «quality cuts» and «filler tripe» is a
rotten affair — it is another of those records where you either buy into it
or not, period. At least there was some sense of purpose behind 21 Today
(to celebrate Cliff’s birthday!), but this follow-up does not even try to
surprise you with the diversity factor, and fails more so than before to
convince the world that the UK pop scene is anything more than a second-rate
imitation of the US scene. |
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Tracks: 1) Seven Days To A Holiday; 2)
Summer Holiday; 3) Let Us Take You For A Ride; 4) Les Girls; 5) Round And
Round; 6) Foot Tapper; 7) Stranger In Town; 8)
Orlando’s Mime; 9) Bachelor Boy; 10) A Swingin’ Affair; 11) Really Waltzing;
12) All At Once; 13) Dancing Shoes; 14) Jugoslav Wedding; 15) The Next Time;
16) Big News. |
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Summer Holiday was not the
first Cliff Richard soundtrack (the almost equally popular The Young Ones preceded it by about a
year), and certainly not the last, but given that it was arguably the most
commercially successful and yielded the largest number of hit singles, this
is the one I have chosen to briefly touch upon as a representative sample of
Cliff’s movie era, forfeiting the rest. In all seriousness, it is hilarious
just how literally Cliff’s managers took to heart the idea that he should
always function as the British shadow of Elvis — meaning that by early 1963,
his career revolved almost entirely around acting and movie soundtracks, and
even as the whirlwind of Beatlemania was shaking old-fashioned values to the
core, they kept doing and doing it, even if the UK film industry was never in
a position to catch up to the speed of Hollywood. Summer Holiday was followed by Wonderful Life in 1964, then Finders
Keepers in 1966, establishing the «Cliff Richard musical» formula, and
although in retrospect it seems like this decision at least helped Cliff
establish a relatively firm and stable niche (and not go crazy from public oblivion
or anything), it certainly killed off any hopes of getting him to somehow fit
in with the times, one way or another. |
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The example of Summer Holiday is telling — both the
movie and the album are pure sentimental fluff, typical British musical fodder
whose melodies, even when they exist and are potentially attractive, are so
choked up with ritz and glitz that you instinctively begin reaching for your
top hat (even if, admittedly, Cliff never wore one in the movie). Tracks such
as the opening ‘Seven Days To A Holiday’ simply put you on a vaudeville
merry-go-round and tell you to dance the night, all your troubles, and
anything that might remain of your brain away. Of course, there are moments
in time and space when this style is acceptable, but coming from the artist
behind the UK’s first rock’n’roll hit, it is generally depressing. It gets a little better
when the A.B.S. Orchestra and the Michael Sammes Singers go away —
unfortunately, they come back way
too often — and the Shadows step into the light: the title track, which was a
real big hit, is a lightweight singalong pop ballad with nice lead licks from
Hank Marvin, though still marred by excessive honey-drippin’ strings from the
Norrie Paramor Orchestra. Alas, it gets best when Cliff disappears completely
and the Shadows are left all alone for a few minutes: ‘Foot Tapper’ is one of
their best instrumentals — their last #1, the future theme song to Sounds Of The ’60s, and just an
overall fantastic tune whose lead guitar melody borrows a bit from the rockabilly
lingo, the twist idiom, and peters out in pure pop fashion. The other two
instrumentals, ‘Les Girls’ and ‘Round And Round’, aren’t half-bad either —
the second one, in particular, has an almost gritty guitar tone for the
Shadows’ standards, and while it’s on, those painful memories of the A.B.S.
Orchestra recede deep in the back of my brain. Only for a while, though,
because once the Shadows’ three-pack is over, we are back in schmaltz
territory. Fast forward a big chunk of the album, and you get Cliff back with
the band for ‘Dancing Shoes’, a passable and catchy twist number with a funny
alarm-bell guitar lead; ‘The Next Time’, a passable and catchy ballad with a
bit of that oh-so-early-Sixties autumnal French feel; and ‘Big News’, a
fast-rolling pop song with an annoyingly repetitive chorus. But at least all
these three songs have signs of life to them, which is more than can be said
for the rest. Actually, nothing much can be said about the rest, other than
as far as British schmaltz goes, this is fairly high quality schmaltz — but I
do not usually write about schmaltz, and even my forced poptimistic training
of the 2010s has not led me to re-evaluate schmaltz as a potential artistic
high for the pre-rock’n’roll era, rather than the outdated superficial muzak
which it was rightly viewed as by people with good musical taste at the time. |
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Tracks: 1) Angel; 2) Sway; 3) I Only Came
To Say Goodbye; 4) Take Special Care; 5) Magic Is The Moonlight; 6) House
Without Windows; 7) Razzle Dazzle; 8) I Don’t Wanna Love You; 9) It’s Not For
Me To Say; 10) You Belong To My Heart; 11) Again; 12) Perfidia; 13) Kiss; 14)
Reelin’ And Rockin’. |
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I
wish I could say that Cliff Richard’s first «proper» album after two years of
non-stop musical soundtracks and suave recordings in Italian and Spanish for
the Hot Latin Market was a «return to form»™. After all, it was self-titled,
and a self-titled album in the middle of a stagnant career often means some
sort of reboot, rehaul, reinvention, or at least an attempt at shaking off
some of the old cobwebs. But given that the recording sessions for the album
are listed as having been stretched all the way back to 1962 (!), and seeing
as how the opening track is a cover of an Elvis movie song from that same
year, you know your hopes will be nipped in the bud before you even put the
record on. |
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If we set March 22, 1965 —
the day Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home was unleashed upon the
world — as that one symbolic date which separates rock music’s innocent
childhood from its responsive adolescence — then, formally, Cliff Richard
(the LP), coming out just a few weeks later, can be excused for not paying
one iota of attention to whatever was happening out there. The problem is
that it is corny, boring, and forgettable even according to the innocent
standards of 1963–64. Even if the record, as usual, is still divided into the
«sweeter» half with the Norrie Paramour Orchestra and the «harder» half with
the Shadows, this division is felt nowhere near as strongly as in the good
old days of Me And My Shadows or even 21 Today. This is because
when he is with the Shadows, Cliff now prefers to use them for his tepid
embrace of calypso and bossa nova, rather than for rock’n’roll — or for suave
country balladry, only a few steps removed from the generic sap of the old
standards he entrusts to the Orchestra. There are exactly two
rock’n’roll oldies in the track listing — one of them is Bill Haley’s ‘Razzle
Dazzle’, done very close to the original and adding absolutely nothing to it:
Hank Marvin imitating Franny Beecher and Cliff imitating Haley himself is a
curious one-time experience, but lends itself to repeated listenings with
about the same ease as the Foo Fighters covering the Rolling Stones on some
tribute album. The other is Chuck Berry’s ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’ (actually, a
mash-up between that one and ‘Around And Around’), on which Cliff and the
band show that they can neither capture and expand upon Chuck’s sense of
humor nor push the song into a properly aggressive direction like the Stones
could. In the end, both songs just feel like a couple of stale bones thrown
out to «rock’n’roll fans» who still need some proof that this is the same guy
who did ‘Move It’ six years earlier. A few of these songs were apparently
recorded in Nashville in late August of 1964, when Cliff’s American
marketeers decided to bring him over to record some properly «American»
material for his ever-more-skeptical overseas customers. This was the session
that yielded the non-LP single ‘The Minute You’re Gone’, which still failed
to make any impression on the US charts but did go all the way to #1 in the
UK (Cliff’s first #1 without the Shadows); the B-side, ‘Again’, which was
even slower and sappier, did make it onto the LP, as did ‘Angel’, the Elvis
cover. All three are about as interesting in terms of melody, arrangement,
and passion, as the average Doris Day record. Of the Latin-style songs,
the less said, the better just as well; I do like how the Shadows manage to
throw in a faint echo of Buddy Holly into Cliff’s otherwise completely
lifeless version of ‘Perfidia’ — if you follow Hank’s brightly jangling
guitar, you shall notice him briefly going off into ‘Words Of Love’ during
the instrumental section. (The Shadows themselves did a much more musically
inviting instrumental version of ‘Perfidia’ without Cliff three years
earlier, on their Out Of The Shadows album — should have stuck to that
arrangement). But ‘Sway’, following the Dean Martin / Norman Gimbel rewrite
of ‘¿Quién Sera?’, is a pure waste of the band’s acoustic
guitar skills; and ‘Magic Is The Moonlight’ kind of turns me off with its
title already — leave that stuff to Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole, who were
at least experts. You know things really go
downhill when the catchiest song on the album is a recent Ricky Nelson
recording (Mann-Weill’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Love You’) and when it sounds slothy
and overproduced next to the Ricky Nelson recording in question. You know
they really really go downhill when the most emotional performance is
delivered on the pop standard ‘House Without Windows’ and you are almost
ready to go, «wow, he finally made a bit of an effort on this one!», before
you remember that he is just trying to mimick Roy Orbison’s delivery from
1963’s In Dreams. Blast this modern era of total availability, right?
In 1965, there must have been plenty of British households without immediate
access to Roy Orbison’s imported LP-only material. These days, all you have
to do is the tiniest bit of clicking around, and the need for pale and limp
substitutes dissipates instantaneously. Overall, this is just bad
— a very, very dull pop record. It may be relatively free of thoroughly
tasteless embarrassments as may be encountered here and there on contemporary
Elvis movie soundtracks, but at least those Elvis embarrassments could at
least give you curious topics to write upon. Cliff Richard is simply
dead as a doornail, easily the least interesting and exciting record he’d
come up with up to that point. Still made the UK Top 10, though — it’s a love
that lasts forever, it’s a love that has no past. |
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