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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Tracks: 1) Everyone Needs Someone To Love;
2) Long Ago (And Far Away); 3) (All Of A Sudden) My Heart Sings; 4) Have I
Told You Lately That I Love You; 5) Fly Me To The Moon; 6) (Theme From) A
Summer Place; 7) I Found A Rose; 8) My Foolish Heart; 9) Through The Eye Of A
Needle; 10) My Colouring Book; 11) I’ll Walk Alone; 12) Someday (You’ll Want
Me To Want You); 13) Paradise Lost; 14) Look Homeward Angel. |
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REVIEW When exactly does one reach the
lowest point in one’s career? It might not necessarily be when the artist
releases his «worst» album (in terms of poor production, banal lyrics, lack
of original songwriting ideas, etc.). Sometimes all it takes is a combination
of two factors — striving for commercial success while simultaneously being
completely out of touch with the creative winds of the time. They do need to be combined, because «going
commercial» is not a cardinal sin per
se (look at the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac), and being «out of touch» has
more than once resulted in masterpieces such as the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society,
which ignored most of the fashionable trends of 1968 but ended up as an
artistic winner anyway. |
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This is why we tend to look upon Elvis’ recordings of 1965–67 as a
particularly embarrassing creative catastrophe — in the age of Rubber Soul,
Pet Sounds, and Jimi Hendrix their cringe factor was multiplied
tenfold compared to the effect the exact same performances would have had a
couple years earlier. Over across the other side of the Atlantic, his British
counterpart was showing a little more «pseudo-aristocratic class» than the
American idol (as befits all the stereotypical differences between Europe and
America), but this difference in style could hardly mask the lack of
difference in substance: like Elvis, Cliff Richard continued to exist in a
neon bubble. The Beatles, Dylan, the Byrds, the pop-rock and folk-rock and
hard-rock revolutions were sending out lightning bolts all around, and the
neon bubble still kept transmittting the message: «BEATLEMANIA DECLARED
SHORT-LIVED FAD FULL STOP LONELY MIDDLE-AGED HOUSEWIVES STILL MAIN TARGET FOR
MUSIC MARKETING FULL STOP TEENS STILL ONLY GOT POCKET MONEY FOR 7 INCH
RECORDS FULL STOP DON’T FORGET THE BOWTIE». The part about the 7 inch records, by the way, is somewhat significant
because the singles that Cliff kept releasing in 1965 were a tiny bit more interesting than his LPs
— precisely because, I believe, Columbia Records agreed that the man’s
singles should try to appeal to the younger generation, while the LPs should
strictly be oriented at a «grown-up» audience. The first of these was ‘On My
Word’, a folk-pop ditty written by American songwriter Chip Taylor (the
future author of ‘Wild Thing’) and apparently released by him in 1964 on a
single so rare that it is hard to find even in the digital world. Cliff,
however, somehow managed to make it into a Top 20 UK hit — even if his
arrangement, with a rather stiff shuffling acoustic rhythm and mechanical
piano, brass, and backing vocals supporting a pseudo-Latin-dance vibe, feels
rather lifeless next to all the exciting
ways in which folk-pop artists were using acoustic guitars in 1965. The B-side ‘Just
A Little Bit Too Late’, written by Hank Marvin and featuring the trusty
Shadows, is moderately more sprightly and catchy, but predictably sounds more
like a cross between Gerry Marsden and Chad Stuart than Lennon and McCartney. The
other two singles released in the fall of 1965 were ‘The Time In Between’
(originally a French composition by Georges Aber), also recorded with The
Shadows, and ‘Wind Me Up (Let Me Go)’, an almost archival outtake from a
Shadows-less Nashville session in August 1964. For some reason, the former
song — an uptempo pop-rock number — only reached #22 on the charts, while the
latter — a slowly plodding country crooner — climbed to #2, spending nine
weeks in the Top 10 for reasons beyond my comprehension. Neither of the two
is awful, but they all reveal the same simple truth: Cliff had fully settled
in his preferred role of romantic crooner, with his low, dreamy voice
delivering the same lovey-dovey message on everything he sings, regardless of genre, style, key, or tempo.
Perhaps if this were one of those special
voices with unique qualities, like Bing Crosby or Sinatra or Elvis, he might
have pulled it off occasionally. But Cliff Richard is merely an okay singer.
Even a guy like Ricky Nelson has these subtle undertones that make him come
across like a mighty magician hiding under a cloak of emotionless
indifference every once in a while; Cliff Richard does not have that
advantage. And
the dis-advantage becomes
particularly disadavantageous when we come to the LP, called Love Is
Forever (great title, isn’t
it?) and consisting of almost nothing but covers of old-timey Broadway show
tunes, contemporary easy listening pop, and a rusty country ballad or two in
between. Seriously, whoever designed that selection for Richard is a serious
contender for the title of «Superannuated Champion Of The Year» for 1965. I
think that ‘My Coloring Book’ is probably as close to «relevant» as it ever
gets for this particular setlist. My
own eye, of course, gets immediately drawn to the lonely two numbers on which
Cliff is backed by The Shadows, but they offer little consolation: ‘Have I
Told You Lately That I Love You’ is still drowned in strings and backing
vocals, and only the old country-pop hit ‘Someday You’ll Want Me To Want
You’, coming back at us all the way from 1944, has a tiny bit of rocking
energy, with a powerful drum beat and jangly electric guitar rather than
strings and shit driving the tune. (Not that it makes Cliff’s vocals feel any
more passionate than usual — honestly, the overall impression is that he was
kept sedated throughout the sessions). And
that is as good as it gets; everything else is pure, 100% unintrusive easy
listening that would require an absolute musical genius at work to make it
count even a little. If they had Wes Montgomery playing some of that jazz
guitar, or if they surreptitiously whisked Cliff out of the studio and
replaced him with Scott Walker, a bunch of these songs might have stood a
chance of generating a memorable impression. But perhaps it is a good thing,
on the other hand, that this time around they decided to raise the stakes and
get rid of any signs of the devil’s
music; at least it saves us from enduring Cliff’s castration of songs like
‘Razzle Dazzle’ and ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’ on his previous LP. Come to think of
it, the title of the album is clearly truncated — the full version should
have been Rock’n’Roll Is Just A Fad, But Love Is Forever, even if such
a full title might make sense in the year 2000, but in the year 1965?.. how
clueless does one get? I
do not seriously want to discuss any of the songs; listening to them as
background accompaniment was harmless enough, but focused listening to them
for analytic purposes may lead to irreparable damage of certain essential body
organs (like the gastrointestinal tract, for instance). Just one example
will suffice: track 6 on Side A is ‘Theme From A Summer Place’, a vocal
version of the same theme that, in Percy Faith’s fully instrumental arrangement,
had been the monster hit of early
1960 (and since then, became somewhat of a priority choice as wedding music
for couples who enjoy Mendelssohn but find him too antiquated). Not only is
this a symbolic declaration of nostalgia for the carefree magical innocence
of an era in which nobody knew of the Beatles (and Cliff Richard himself was
king), but it also somehow makes the composition even more toothless and mushy: Percy Faith’s version at
least boasted a string-based slow-dance hook on the level of Johann Strauss Jr.
— here, though, the instrumentation does not even struggle to form into a
memorable melody, with the waltzy hook completely relegated to Cliff’s vocals,
and any charm the hit version might have had is hopelessly lost in
transition. Even
so, one thing I’ll say is that it is good to have a record or two like this
one in your mid-Sixties collection: too often do we forget the complacent and
banal musical background against which all those records by the Beatles and
other «solid» artists had to stand out. And there was a lot of music like that, which I wouldn’t normally touch with a
10-foot pole; Cliff Richard has simply had the misfortune to transition to
that kind of music — and he could have hardly picked a worse time for that! —
from his once highly-esteemed role of «British Elvis». Then again, look on
the bright side: something tells me that Love Is Forever at least ain’t
the kind of record released by an artist you could possibly see dying on his
toilet seat at 42 through your trusty celebrity-edition crystal ball. |
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