THE SEARCHERS
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1963–1988 |
Classic pop-rock |
This Empty Place (1964) |
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Album
released: August 1963 |
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Tracks: 1) Sweets
For My Sweet; 2) Alright; 3) Love Potion
No. 9; 4) Farmer John; 5) Stand By Me; 6) Money; 7) Da Doo Ron Ron; 8)
Ain’t Gonna Kiss Ya; 9) Since You Broke My Heart; 10) Tricky Dicky; 11) Where
Have All The Flowers Gone; 12) Twist And Shout. |
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There’s
your big difference between the Beatles and the Searchers right from the
start. The Beatles’ first single — and their second, and their third, and so
on... — was a completely original song written by the band members
themselves; not a great song, but a decent foundation upon which they could
and would quickly improve. The Searchers’ first single was a Drifters cover —
and even if ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ was unquestionably a better song than ‘Love
Me Do’, ensuring a formal victory (‘Love Me Do’ peaked at #17, whereas
‘Sweets’ went straight to the top of the charts), it also predetermined the
band’s career: never would they properly make it as independent songwriters,
and that meant that as of 1963, the band was doomed to, at best, 2-3 years of
fame and success. Of
course, this should not detract from the fact that of the many groups to
emerge from the Liverpool scene along with the Beatles, the Searchers were
the very best (no offense to such nice lads as the Merseybeats and Gerry and
the Pacemakers). Even a brief listen to what they did with ‘Sweets For My
Sweet’ should be convincing. Replacing the quiet piano backing of the
Drifters’ song with arpeggiated electric rhythm guitar and laying on a thick
bassline, they turned the tune into a Merseybeat anthem that preserved the
sweetness and tenderness of the original (the band faithfully reproduces the
honey-like falsetto harmonies of the Drifters) while endowing it with extra
toughness and power provided by the energetic onslaught of the rhythm section
— drummer Chris Curtis, in particular, gets busy filling up most of the empty
space, possibly inspired by Ringo and probably foreshadowing the arisal of
Keith Moon next year. |
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That said, as of late 1963 the Searchers were still
searching. Most of the material covered here is the same American R&B and
rock’n’roll that the Beatles were doing, and the band just cannot provide the
same level of passion and energy. They did put their own ‘Money’ on record
before the Beatles, it’s true, and Tony Jackson delivers the lyrics with
quite a bit of nasal arrogance and defiance, but when you bring on John
Lennon with his primal vibe, Tony is immediately dethroned — not to mention
that the Beatles’ arrangement, with parallel guitar and piano tracks, is
juicier and mightier than the Searchers’ competent, but amateurish
guitar-only performance. The decision to end the record with ‘Twist And
Shout’, the exact same track that also bookmarked Please Please Me, is even harder to comprehend — again, Jackson
is thin and insecure next to John, and the entire performance must have felt
like a simple fan tribute even back then, let alone now. The band fares slightly better on lighter, jokier
pop-rock numbers like Don and Dewey’s ‘Farmer John’ (which they also end up
«merseyfying» with extra whoah-yeah uh-uh-uh’s) and Richie Barrett’s ‘Tricky
Dicky’; the latter was actually penned by Leiber and Stoller, and they also
do their ‘Love Potion No. 9’, originally recorded by the Clovers. Ironically,
when that song was released upon the American market a year later, it became
the Searchers’ one and only Top Ten hit on the US charts — God works in mysterious
ways indeed. Admittedly, it is true that into this bit of comic vaudeville
about a voodoo spell gone horribly wrong the Searchers somehow managed to mix
a bit of melancholic sadness, making better use of its Am and Dm chords than
the Clovers — in their hands, it became more of an ‘I’m A Loser’-type
personal anthem — but why this approach struck such a particular chord with
American audiences is anybody’s guess. Anyway, even if these novelty tunes suit the
Searchers’ vibe better than the brawny braggardly rock’n’roll stuff, it is
still amusing that only one of the songs on here really nails the style for
which the band would soon become famous — Pete Seeger’s ‘Where Have All The
Flowers Gone’. Forget Pete, forget Peter, Paul and Mary, forget Joan Baez and
the Kingston Trio — the intertwined guitar playing of Mike Pender and John
McNally de-solemnifies and colorizes the somber nostalgic folk anthem,
presaging the soon-to-come sound of the Byrds, though, in the absence of
12-string guitar jangle, the sound is still much closer to the generic
Merseybeat of 1963. This, however,
is the type of music that the Beatles had not claimed for their own, and it
is a good thing for us that the Searchers quickly realized it, too. A bit of that sound can also be heard on the B-side
to ‘Sweets For My Sweet’, not included on the original album but added as a
bonus track on subsequent CD releases: ‘It’s All Been A Dream’ is the band’s
only self-penned tune from that era (credited to Chris Curtis, the drummer),
and although in its form and essence it seems to be just a regular dreamy
romantic Merseybeat pop ballad, the guitar jangle and the tender harmonies
are somewhat close in execution to the style of ‘Where Have All The Flowers
Gone’. It is actually strange that they did not attempt to put any more
original material on this LP or, for that matter, the next two LPs as well —
the song is, at the very least, on the level with whatever most of their
Liverpool contemporaries, Beatles excluded, were producing at the time. Still, despite the lack of confidence, Meet The Searchers is at least fully
competent from a technical standpoint. Produced in true stereo by Pye’s
resident producer Tony Hatch, played and sung by good musicians and singers
who were not nearly as tame as most
of the crowds around them, very few of these tracks leave you with a feeling
of misery and pity (except for ‘Money’ and ‘Twist And Shout’ if you already
know your Beatles, and whoever even in 1963 would know his Searchers before
knowing his Beatles?). And in retrospect, knowing that the Searchers would
never go to truly great heights, Meet
The Searchers does not disappoint nearly as much as, say, the Kinks’
debut — when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose, and when you
actually got a little, who’s gonna roast you for the times when you got
nothing? |
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Album
released: Oct. 16, 1963 |
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Tracks: 1) Sugar And Spice; 2) Don’t You
Know; 3) Some Other Guy; 4) One Of These Days; 5) Listen To Me; 6) Unhappy
Girls; 7) Ain’t That Just Like Me; 8) Oh My Lover; 9) Saints And Searchers; 10)
Cherry Stones; 11) All My Sorrows; 12) Hungry
For Love. |
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REVIEW
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And «sappy» was something that the Searchers really
did not want to associate with themselves too much, given that most of the
songs on their second LP are still in the rock’n’roll vein. We got us some
Buddy Holly, some Carl Perkins, a little Coasters, even a bit of Ronnie
Hawkins, and, of course, ‘Some Other Guy’, a song that every British beat
band was playing at the time (the Beatles included — you can see them rockin’
it at the Cavern in just about every Beatles documentary). Are the
performances adequate? For the most part. Are they particularly outstanding
or memorable? Not any more than the first time around. Once again, the
Searchers try to prove to us that they are capable of being tough
rock’n’rollers, and once again, if there is anything to laud about all these
performances, it is only in the sphere of the boys’ vocal harmonies. They
stay more coordinated and more in key on ‘Some Other Guy’ than the Beatles on
the BBC Sessions (but only because
that performance was live — I’m sure that if they did the song in the studio
with Martin, the Searchers would be out of a job); they add tons of extra
backing vocals to Buddy Holly’s ‘Don’t Cha Know’ (not that the song really
needs them, but hey, if you got an advantage, you should use it in any
context you can, right?); they throw on a rowdy Isley Brothers-style
call-and-response coda to ‘Ain’t That Just Like Me’, making the Coasters’
joke song more anthemic as a result. None of that is particularly necessary,
but hey, at least the boys show us that they are working. Also, to be fair, at least the song selection, ‘Some
Other Guy’ excluded, is not quite as predictable this time around. With
Perkins, for instance, they try out a lesser known title (‘Unhappy Girls’)
rather than ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ or ‘Honey Don’t’. Ronnie Hawkins is hardly one
of the most covered American artists, either — and neither are the Chiffons
(‘Oh My Lover’), at least not until George Harrison began ripping them off
(heh heh). The most outstanding inclusion, for which I had even to do a bit
of research, was ‘Cherrystone’,
an upbeat pop-rock hit from 1959 by the Addrisi Brothers (a former acrobatic
duo from Massachusets!) — but so little known even at the time, apparently,
that it was confused by the record makers with the popular song ‘Cherry Stones’, by
John Jerome, and included under that title and credited to that composer, so that the poor Addrisi Brothers
most certainly never saw one red cent from those sales; as far as I can tell,
that particular mistake has not as of yet been corrected in any discography source... because, I
mean, who cares? It’s not the frickin’ Beatles or anything. And once again, just like last time around, there is
only one song on the album that properly showcases the Searchers’ main
strength — beautiful folk harmonies set to pretty ringing folk guitar
melodies. This is ‘All My Sorrows’, which they probably nicked from The
Kingston Trio who were the ones to perform the song with this title (rather
than the original ‘All My Trials’, under which it was performed by most of
the Greenwich Village artists). The guitar «weave» on this song is quite
exquisite, with John McNally’s clear acoustic rhythm guitar echoed by Mike
Pender’s oddly distorted electric arpeggios (I’d swear he is running them
through a Leslie cabinet, but apparently this is a bit too early for such
trickery), and the whole thing has an ethereal-magical aura around it which,
of course, you shall never find on «purist» versions. An entire album of this
type of sound might have been overkill, but two or three more tunes like this
certainly couldn’t have hurt — at the expense of, say, the Searchers trying
to be the Coasters, an enterprise about as futile for them as trying to be
the Marx Brothers, or the Dalton Gang. Still, once again, this is a fun little record to
listen to if you’ve got nothing better to do. The McNally / Pender guitar
duo, in particular, keeps improving, and by the standards of late 1963
proudly holds its own to the Lennon / Harrison sound, at least when it comes
to softer and folksier parts of the repertoire. In a way, they could be
regarded at that precise time period as sort of a transitional ground between
the Beatles and the Shadows — tighter and more attentive to professional
musical discipline than the Fab Four, but looser and more rock’n’roll-like
than Cliff Richard’s homies. This is not necessarily a good thing (because
middle ground can be a treacherous territory), and the near-total lack of
original songwriting is a serious downside, but they do have their own identity even on those early records. |
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Album
released: May 1964 |
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Tracks: 1) It’s In Her Kiss; 2) Glad All
Over; 3) Sea Of Heartbreak; 4) Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck; 5) Where Have You Been;
6) Shimmy Shimmy; 7) Needles And Pins; 8) This Empty Place; 9) Gonna Send You Back To
Georgia; 10) I Count The Tears; 11) Hi-Heel Sneakers; 12) Can’t Help
Forgiving You; 13) Sho’ Know A Lot About Love; 14) Don’t Throw Your Love Away. |
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If
you feel like the Searchers are subtly mellowing out on their third LP,
surreptitiously nudging out good old rock’n’roll in favor of their folk-pop
side, then this is very likely to be related to the first big and unpleasant
rift within the band, in which bass player — and, once upon a time, primary
lead vocalist, too — Tony Jackson found himself pitted against drummer Chris
Curtis and, to a lesser extent, lead guitarist Mike Pender. Details can be
looked up in biographical sources, but there is a definite correlation
between Tony and much, if not most, of the band’s harder-rocking material: from
this point of view, I could not really argue with Chris that the Searchers
excelled far better at the sensitive stuff than at trying to outplay the
Beatles or the Stones when it came out to lean and mean rock muscle. It is
unfortunate that Tony only got one lead vocal on the album (and far from the
best one), or that he left the band soon afterwards... but it may have been
for the best, after all. |
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In any case, It’s
The Searchers is as good as it ever got for this band — which is still
not that good, but there is no
better collection of Searchers tunes to justify the band’s appearance on this
planet. The most glaring crime is that nobody in the band could still take on
any songwriting responsibilities: all the songs are covers, and usually not
even obscure ones (or ones written specially for the band) — I suppose that
by mid-’64, releasing an LP without a single original track was already
known, or at least felt, to represent a soon-to-be-executed death sentence
for any of that early generation of British Invasion bands. Yet the Searchers
were still rooting for an identity, and while their hazy oscillation between
raunchy rock’n’roll and pensive folksiness on the first two records kind of
muddled the listeners’ senses, It’s
The Searchers almost got it nailed for us. Where the Beatles would
largely be about odes to joy and the Stones would be about salacious
serenades to sex, the Searchers wanted to become Young Werther and the Sorrow
Singers. It all begins with one of their biggest hits and
arguably the song that is still most commonly associated with the Searchers
(or, more accurately, it is the Searchers who are most commonly associated
with that song) — a cover of ‘Needles And Pins’, which was a fresh, but very
minor hit for Jackie DeShannon, written for her (or with her, according to the lady herself) by Sonny Bono and Jack
Nitzsche. Honestly speaking, both versions are quite comparable, and Jackie
certainly sings the tune with more fire and energy than Mike Pender — the
question, of course, being whether the song requires fire and energy, or whether it should be delivered with
more sadness and melancholia, as befits a chorus that goes "because of
all my pride, the tears I gotta hide". That the song became a much
bigger hit for the Searchers even in the US is probably due to the fad of
British Invasion — it was breaking through at about the same time as ‘I Want
To Hold Your Hand’ — but there is also no denying that, vocals aside, the
Searchers also have the upper musical hand: that droning opening electric jangle
pretty much creates the blueprint for the Byrds, and from there, for all the
folk-rock explosion to follow all the way up to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul and beyond. McNally and
Pender’s guitars just walk all over the place, setting a drizzling-rain sound
pattern so appropriate for the general atmosphere — and so totally not a
concern in DeShannon’s version, where Nitzsche just seems worried about
getting the basic chord pattern right. Three months later, ‘Needles And Pins’ were followed
by yet another mega-hit for the band: ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’, which
once again steals the thunder from an American original, this time by the
Orlons, a vocal group from Philly (written for them by professional
songwriters). The
Orlons’ version is actually quite cool, based on an unusual combination
of African percussion and choppy jazzy piano chords; but with electric guitar
being so much more in fashion at the time, the Searchers’ scratchy, in places
almost proto-funky delivery, spiced up with a little reverb, probably gained
more attention from the start — and placing Pender so close to the mike must
have helped, too (the Orlons, as was so common with American vocal groups
those days, always sound much too distant for any potential effect of
intimacy). It is interesting that on the LP, both of these big hits close one
of the album’s sides rather than open it — as if to stress, somehow, that the
Searchers are the modern day poets of Farewell and Goodbye, rather than of
Hello and Welcome. I must say, however, that my personal favorites on
the record are not the big hits, but two stylistically close, yet, in a way,
substantially deeper covers. On Side A, this is ‘Sea Of Heartbreak’,
originally performed by Don Gibson in a relatively extraverted manner, with a
primarily acoustic guitar melody lightly ornamented with quiet, sprinkly
piano rolls. In the Searchers’ interpretation, the piano (played by their
producer Tony Hatch) becomes the dominant instrument and engages in serene,
wavy dialog with Pender’s lead vocals, while Pender himself delivers the
vocal melody in a slightly dazed, shell-shocked state (as probably befits
somebody wading through a "sea of heartbreak, lost love and
loneliness"). If you listen very
closely, you will even notice that voice following the piano’s octaves —
going to bass levels right after the keys, as if imitating the ocean’s
inescapable pull. The resulting atmosphere, if you give in to it, is haunting
and mesmerizing, in a kind of intimately moody manner that nobody in the UK
could pull off at the time, not even the Zombies (when it comes to masters of
the dark brooding melancholic approach). On Side B, it gets even better with ‘This Empty
Place’, a Bacharach creation that they probably took away from Dionne
Warwick’s version. Melodically, I think this is one of the finest songs that
Burt ever composed — multiple unpredictable turns and twists in the vocal
melody which all make perfect emotional sense. But if anything, the Searchers
help the song realize its potential so much fuller than the Warwick version:
again, they bring in heavy emphasis on the piano (instead of horns, which
actually detract from the deep despair of the song), but the most important
thing are these vocal zoops from Curtis (who now takes the lead):
"there’s an empty (down) PLACE
(up) beside me... when I’m walkin’
(down) DOWN (up) the street...". A minor detail? Perhaps; but with this
tiny touch, they add a heavy, depressing aura which was really only hinted at
in the original version. Amusingly, the mood and style of the song remind me
so much of ‘Things We Said Today’ that I would not at all be surprised to
learn about Paul being subconsciously influenced by this performance — and,
interestingly, ‘Things We Said Today’ is said to have been written by him on
vacation sometime in May 1964, precisely the month that It’s The Searchers was officially released. Anybody know,
incidentally, what sorts of records Paul might have taken with him to the
Virgin Islands? As you can already see, all of these songs — the big
hits and inventive sleeper gems alike — are united by one major theme:
"sadness and tears, they’re such bad souvenirs". This is not an
exhaustive list (there is also Pomus and Shuman’s ‘I Count The Tears’, for
instance), but still, even with this decisive strategy of forever being
associated with seas of heartbreak, the Searchers leave plenty of space open
for more optimistic and heart-warming performances — such as their cover of
the big Betty Everett hit ‘It’s In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)’. The band
boldly discards all the shoop shoops, replacing them with a few intro bars of
‘Twist And Shout’ that weren’t there before — you know, just to let you
remember that this is still a true beat band you have here, not just a bunch
of world-weary depressed romantic losers. However, most of the rocking stuff
that follows is no more impressive than it was on the previous records: Timmy
Shaw’s ‘Gonna Send You Back To Georgia’ which is absolutely useless next to
the Animals version; Carl Perkins’ ‘Glad All Over’ which the Beatles did
better on their BBC sessions; and a particularly low point with the cover of
the Hollywood Argyles’ novelty number ‘Sho’ Know A Lot About Love’ — because
this is the kind of song that needs to be weird and humorous, and the
Searchers are not that good when it comes to weird and humorous. Too bad it
was Tony Jackson’s only vocal performance here. That said, when it comes to judgement, I am willing
to forgive a few missteps. An LP consisting of nothing but songs about
heartbreak and loss might be tolerable from some big visionary like Neil
Young or Lou Reed (then again, even then maybe not...) — the Searchers do the
right thing by interspersing the first-rate sad stuff with the fillerish
livelier stuff, making it more difficult to bore yourself to death and making
the sad songs particularly distinctive against the more common background.
Whatever be your or my verdict, it is difficult to argue that the album
represents a truly high point for the band: never again would they be this
inventive or consistent — and besides, Father Time himself would soon ban
them from even the lowest of high ranks for failing to pass the basic
songwriter’s test. |
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Album
released: March 1965 |
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Tracks: 1) Everybody Come And Clap Your
Hands; 2) If I Could Find Someone; 3) Magic Potion; 4) I Don’t Want To Go On
Without You; 5) Bumble Bee; 6) Something You Got Baby; 7) Let The Good Times
Roll; 8) A Tear Fell; 9) Till You Say You’ll Be Mine; 10) You Wanna Make Her
Happy; 11) Everything You Do; 12) Goodnight Baby; 13*) This Feeling Inside;
14*) Goodbye My Love; 15*) Till I Met You; 16*) He’s
Got No Love; 17*) So Far Away; 18*) When I Get Home. |
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REVIEW
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In discussing the band’s fourth album, and their
first with Allen, it is always fair game to poke fun at the title — it is
almost as if the group members themselves had second thoughts on whether they
are still making quintessential Searchers-style music, or are headed
somewhere completely different. One thing is for certain: after the generally
high quality and subtle musical innovations of It’s The Searchers, this
record is clearly a letdown. The biggest advantage of its predecessor was not
even the participation of Tony Jackson and the inclusion of some genuine
rock’n’roll numbers like ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’; it was their «jangly» folk-pop
formula, represented by such highlights as ‘Needles And Pins’ and ‘Sea Of
Heartbreak’. Sounds Like Searchers
finds no traces of it whatsoever, as if they’d forgotten their principal
strength — and this at a time when folk-pop and folk-rock were so clearly on
the move, with Dylan, the Byrds, and even the Beatles joining in the
revolution. Instead, most of Sounds Like Searchers falls into two categories — slow
sentimental balladry and light, fluffy, amicably danceable pop. The very
first song is telling already: a cover of Jeff Barry’s and Ellie Greenwich’s
‘Everybody Come Clap Your Hands’, a cuddly pop-R&B hybrid party anthem
originally recorded by the little-known R&B outfit Moody and the Deltas a
year earlier. The original version was heavily tilted toward establishing a
rowdy party atmosphere (overdubbed party noises, exuberant harmonies, brass
bursts, etc.); the Searchers push it more into the direction of melody, with
sharper and cleaner guitar riffs and slightly more intricate vocal harmonies
— but Frank Allen’s lead vocal comes straight out of a china shop, making me
visualize a target audience of 6-year old kids around a Christmas tree. It’s
all nice and cuddly, and the short, Shadows-inspired electric guitar solo is
awesomely melodic, but I’d still take the original version by the Deltas over
this milquetoast cover any day. Surely there might have been a better way to
introduce Frank Allen to the LP-buying public, if he makes Tony Jackson sound
like Eric Burdon in comparison. Weird attempts to adapt the «playful R&B»
formula to their own ends continue with the first single from the album, a
cover of LaVern Baker’s ‘Bumble Bee’ from five years ago. It was one of her
«joke songs», like ‘Tweedlee Dee’ and ‘Jim Dandy’, but a really fun one as
well, and theoretically, there is no sin in a UK band covering a LaVern Baker
joke song in March ’65, but why put it out as a single? Imagine the Beatles
putting out ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzie’ as the first single off Help!, for instance... or, for that matter, having ‘You Know My
Name (Look Up The Number)’ as the A-side and ‘Let It Be’ as the B-side. (Not
that I’d object, of course, but only because the Beatles have the royal right
to fuck with their fanbase; the Searchers never earned that right in the
first place). What’s worse is that the Searchers almost put up a serious face when covering the song —
LaVern does it in a goofy, vaudevillian way, with her backing band joining in
on the fun (in the original,
for instance, the guitar riff echoing the chorus of "a bumble bee, an
evil bumble bee" is heavily distorted, as if imitating the actual hum of
the blasted bumble bee in question; this tiny, but significant detail is
totally lost in transition). The Searchers, once again, deliver a tight,
well-polished, melodic version, with a cool tremolo guitar part replacing the
original vibraphone — but the actual playfulness
aspect is all but lost. Minor hint: if your band is not known for having any
sense of humor, maybe don’t make a
habit of covering humorous songs by other people? Meanwhile, the battle for originality seems to be
hopelessly lost — by early 1965, when «write your own or die» seems to have
been established as an unwritten law for UK bands, we find the Searchers
still doing mostly covers, with only three original compositions, all
credited to Curtis, found on the LP. They are surprisingly decent: ‘If I
Could Find Someone’, in particular, is a touching ballad with some surprising
vocal moves (like the emergence of the lonesome, plaintive "...and I
love to hear somebody say..." bridge out of the harmony mesh of the "...if
I could find someone" chorus — there are distinct echoes of the Beatles’
‘If I Fell’ here, but mood-wise rather than melody-wise), and ‘You Wanna Make
Her Happy’ is a catchy pop serenade with lots of quirky chord changes and a
cool little Chet Atkins-influenced country-pop riff used as delimiter in
between verses. (The third Curtis original, ‘Everything You Do’, is just a
brief rockabilly-style throwaway, but not particularly irritating, either).
However, it does feel as if — in accordance with Frank Allen’s complaints in
the liner notes — all these songs simply were not given enough gestation
time; the arrangements are minimal, the lyrics are fluffy, and the overall
feel is that, emotion-wise, all of this stuff is still hopelessly stuck
somewhere in 1963. I don’t even feel like discussing the rest of the
covers on the album, because they all suffer from exactly the same problem:
most of the songs are good, but it never feels as if there is a real sense of
purpose to the Searchers covering them. The best outcome is that they might
help one unearth some forgotten goodies — I’d never even heard of Moody and
the Deltas, for instance, before listening to this album, or of Lou Johnson,
the soul singer who first recorded Bacharach and David’s ‘Magic Potion’ in a solidly soulful version
which makes the Searchers’ one completely expendable. (I have a suspicion
they only recorded the song because they’d already done ‘Love Potion No. 9’,
so, as well-established experts in love potions, they simply couldn’t pass up
on this one). And what did they think to achieve by covering the orchestrated
waltz of the Drifters’ ‘I Don’t Want To Go On Without You’? Without a Steve
Marriott or a Rod Stewart-type singer in the band, competing with the power
of the Atlantic R&B sound on a vocal
level is a battle that’s lost before it is even started. In short, while time has helped me to somewhat
mellow out — there are really no bad songs on the album, and all the covers
are at least formally competent and listenable — Sounds Like Searchers still represents the start of a clear (and
fairly quick) downward slide for a band that took quite a bit of time to find
their special strength, then embarrasingly failed to capitalize on it. Interestingly enough, the small run of singles that
they would release throughout 1965 — available on the remastered CD edition
of the album as bonus tracks — does show that the race was not yet completely
run. Most of these songs are originals, and a few show some promising
developments, most notably ‘He’s Got No Love’, co-credited to Curtis and
Pender — the song is notable for containing much the same little pop riff
that Pete Townshend would later use (nick?) for his own ‘A Legal Matter’,
though one could argue that it is, in turn, itself derivative of the Stones’
riff for ‘The Last Time’. Anyway, that riff is encrusted inside an echoey,
reverberating arrangement, with gorgeous harmonies that are but one step away
from the baroque-pop explosion of next year. The B-side of the single, ‘So
Far Away’, was recorded in much the same style, but is just a tad weaker
because the overall melody is extremely derivative of Buddy Holly (the
opening is pretty much pilfered directly from ‘Listen To Me’). But then they
had to go and spoil it by choosing a Bobby Darin track for their next single
— ‘When I Get Home’ (not the
Beatles song), which may actually sound a little crisper than the Darin
original (at least it’s not a Drifters song), yet still completely ditches
that proto-psychedelic jangly reverberation of the previous single. In other
words, one step forward, one step back, same old muddle again. |
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Album
released: November 1965 |
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Tracks: 1) I’m Ready; 2) I’ll Be Doggone;
3) Does She Really Care For Me; 4) It’s Time; 5) Too Many Miles; 6) You Can’t
Lie To A Liar; 7) Don’t You Know Why; 8) I’m Your Loving Man; 9) Each Time; 10) Be My Baby; 11) Four Strong Winds;
12) Take Me For What I’m Worth. |
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REVIEW Apparently
the bulk of the songs that constitute the Searchers’ fifth and final (before
the reunion) LP was recorded as early as May 1965, but for unspecified
reasons the album stayed in the vaults until November — a delay that,
arguably, could not be more criminal for any other year than 1965, which pop
music entered as a horny teenager and left as an enlightened bodhisattva. That
said, while the album probably
would have sold a little better in the summer of 1965 than during the
Christmas season (when most people would probably rather buy an extra copy of
Rubber Soul than another Searchers
LP), there is no reason to think that a timely release would have seriously
influenced the band’s overall fortune. On a song-by-song basis, it is a modest improvement on Sounds Like Searchers, but it does
not really show the Searchers adapting to the changing times. They still
aren’t writing a lot of original material, they still keep falling back on
old covers, they don’t do much to expand their sound... well, you know the
drill. |
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The farthest they got was with the title track,
which they nicked from the American songwriter P. F. Sloan — who, at the
time, was a heavily Dylan-influenced aspiring folkie, occasionally recording
his own material but mostly peddling it to outside artists, ranging from Jan
& Dean to Barry McGuire (‘Eve Of Destruction’), the Turtles, and Herman’s
Hermits. He did not have much of an imagination, but the songs were good
enough to serve as passable second-rate Dylan: ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’,
which Sloan originally
released himself as an acoustic ballad, basically rips its message off of
an uncanny hybridization of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ and ‘It Ain’t
Me Babe’, but the melody is poppier than either of those two, so the original
version does indeed sound like a preliminary demo compared to the full-scale
folk-pop arrangement that the Searchers came up with for it. Sloan’s voice is
stronger and more «epic» than Mike Pender’s, but they get a sharp, jangly
guitar sound going on here that certainly trumps his own guitar strumming. Most importantly, by taking out the Dylanish
harmonica of the original and by adding group harmonies to beef up the "if you want me you’ll take me for what I’m
worth!" chorus) they succeed in brewing up a bit of garage-flavored
punkish nastiness — though it might not have mattered all that much by the
tail end of 1965, when Bob Dylan had already established a reputation for
being able to add in as much garage-flavored punkish nastiness to his output
on his own, without the need for any copycats to do that for him. Still, as a
somewhat more melodic and a tiny bit more sentimental (rather than purely
cynical) alternative to the don’t-mess-with-my-life-woman message of that
particular Dylan incarnation ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’ is a song that
deserves to be remembered. And as an unintentional metaphor, it also works as
a pretty telling swan song for the Searchers as a band: "And if you think about me in your lonesome
hours / And on your lips there’s a sweet word and not a curse / Then I’ll be
comin’ back one day when my wandering is over / If you want me you’ll take me for what I’m worth". Egotistic
and humble at the same time. I like it. This certainly does not imply that the rest of the
album is unworthy of your attention. If anything, it is even more polished
and disciplined and tighter-classier-sounding than anything they’d done up to
that point — there is not a single song on here I’d be embarrassed about
being caught listening to, regardless of whether it’s a cover or an original.
The album’s only flaw is that it is hopelessly stuck in the summer of 1964,
rather than in the fall of 1965, in between which lies a distance of
"two thousand light years from home". But since we are now almost
equidistant from both, why can’t we just pretend that it’s a 1964 record and
get away with it? Especially since it’s not trying to «emulate» 1964, it just
lives and breathes 1964. Or maybe make it 1959, as the LP opens with quite a
fabulous cover of Fats Domino’s ‘I’m Ready’ — a song that, for some reason,
had never been picked up by anybody since its original single release. It’s
one of my favorite Fats tunes, and the Searchers do it almost perfect British
Invasion justice, apart from a somewhat clumsy guitar solo by Pender,
starting out strong with Berry-style trills and everything but then kind of
coming apart at the seams. Tony Hatch (their producer) is at the piano
himself, banging out a good Fats imitation, and Chris Curtis puts together
enough breath control to make us believe that he is indeed "ready",
"willin’", and "able". None of this suffices to make you
forget Fats’ original, but it does lend credence to the idea that of all the
different types of rock’n’roll music, New Orleanian rock’n’roll was the one
that somehow came most naturally to this particular band. Right after that, the Searchers come out with
another note-perfect cover — of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I’ll Be Doggone’, and
before you start wondering how on earth would they succeed in challenging the
magic of Motown, I’d like to remark that the song, written by Smokey Robinson
and several other Miracles, was actually founded on a riff nicked directly from the Searchers’ own
‘Needles And Pins’ (well, more correctly, Jackie DeShannon’s ‘Needles And
Pins’, but it’s more likely that Smokey himself heard it from the Searchers’
hit version); so, in a way, they were paying Motown back here for stealing
what was theirs in the first place. In essence, ‘I’ll Be Doggone’ is a
folk-pop song, and the Searchers’ version exploits that essence a bit better
— although, of course, outsinging Marvin is a far more challenging matter
than outplaying his backing band. They do have the added benefit of group
harmonies, rounding out the elegant effect of this semi-romantic,
semi-threatening little mood-swingin’ serenade. (I refuse to fight over which
of the two versions is better, but taken together, they definitely beat the
stuffing over the popular Tages cover from 1966
— kudos to the Swedish lads for trying to turn the song over on its head and
transform it into an angry blues-rock rant, but it was never intended to be
that and they can’t tame it). Of the cover songs that everybody usually knows, really
the only blatant misfire is the band’s take on the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ —
just because it is so utterly, perfectly pointless. They try as hard as
possible to preserve the oceanic production depth of Phil Spector, but it’s
clear as day that the best they can offer is an approximation, and who the
heck needs an approximation of perfection? Besides, the bombastic production
requires vocals that will cut through it like broken glass — something that
Ronnie Spector was able to provide, unlike poor Frank Allen, whose lead vocal
here sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. Perhaps if they’d
rearranged the song as a cozy, intimate folk-pop recording, the results might
at least be interesting, but instead it’s just a tentative answer to the
question, «can a band of four guitar-totin’ British kids replace Phil
Spector, Ronnie Spector, the entire Wrecking Crew, and a full-blown orchestra
to the exact same effect?» And I’m not even sure I want to wait for an answer
to that question, provided that I respect The Searchers as one of the best
bands of the early British Invasion era and not as a bunch of before-their-time
contestants for Britain’s Got Talent. Of the lesser known covers, though, one might single
out the band’s comparatively more interesting take on ‘You Can’t Lie To A
Liar’, a song that certain broken Internet algorithms, amusingly, ascribe to
the pens of Disney songsmith Frank Churchill and jazz vibraphone genius
Lionel Hampton (!!) — don’t put your trust in Wikipedia, because the song was
actually written by Bacharach-David disciple Paul Hampton, sometimes (but not on the original record)
co-credited with Texan singer Cinthy Churchill. (On the Searchers’ LP, the
credits just go «Hampton, Churchill» and then digital idiocy takes over from
there). This one was originally recorded by Ketty Lester, the
one-hit wonder of ‘Love Letters’ fame, as a sharp-edged country-western
number with prominent fiddle, which contrasted intriguingly with her
typically African-American R&B voice, and although it was later covered
by the likes of Bobby Vee and others, the Searchers model their version after
the original, but replace the fiddle with fuzz guitar, throw in more of those
booming ‘Be My Baby’-like drums and borrow the New Orleanian rhythm of Fats
Domino’s ‘I’m In Love Again’ (it was not so prominent on the original). If
only they could get Ketty Lester to actually sing on the song... everything
is good, but the soul just so happens to be missing. It’s a song that needs a
passionate solo delivery, not timid double-tracked vocalizing. An unquestionable
win for the Searchers in all respects is Jackie DeShannon’s ‘Each Time’ —
this song of hers was first released by the minor U.S. girl group The Bon Bons in 1964
as, well, a typical girl group song with a corny-syrupy approach to the
vocals. The Searchers turned it into a sparkling guitar-fest instead (the
arpeggiated trills of the rhythm guitar and the harpsichord-style overlays of
the lead guitar are a complete reinvention of the original), and the vocals
melted down all the syrup and turned the song into deep-reaching dream-pop,
finishing each chorus with a head-spinning falsetto twist. Just compare the
way the Bon Bons sing "...EACH
TAAA-IIIM!" with the heights to which the Searchers take that
resolution, and then I dare anybody insist that Pender, Curtis, and co. had
but a mediocre ear for melody and harmony. It is just surprising to me that
with such a beautiful gift for taking a C-level song and elevating it to at
least a B+, if not higher, they kept smashing their heads against songs like
‘Be My Baby’, trying to out-perfect perfection. Surely there must have been dozens more of those tunes like ‘You
Can’t Lie’ or ‘Each Time’ that they could have successfully made their own. Or, perhaps, they could have simply written more on
their own, because the four originals included on Take Me For What I’m Worth are quite sympathetic as well. John
McNally contributes ‘It’s Time’, which shows he must have been listening to
the Byrds’ debut — same kind of catchy, fast-paced folk-rock, and there’s not
even any shame in ripping them off given how much the Byrds must have been influenced
by the Searchers themselves. His ‘Don’t You Know Why’ is a bit more traditional,
echoing the classic Merseybeat sound, but I think the song might have fared
better if they donated it to the Hollies, who would have polished and
sharpened both the guitar sound and the relatively limp vocals. Meanwhile, Pender
and Curtis make a dubious, but not senseless stab at marrying pop harmonies
to the Bo Diddley beat on ‘I’m Your Loving Man’ (not a highlight) — and then
come up with one of their very best folk-pop originals with ‘Too Many Miles’,
a graceful and super-catchy pastoral ballad with a quasi-baroque woodwind
lead part. I have no idea why the song has been so completely forgotten (it
was actually the B-side to the ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’ single, so it had
a real chance of getting some airwaves), but I think it belongs on any solid
compilation of early Sixties’ stately ’n’ sentimental folk-pop à la
Peter, Paul & Mary or Ian & Sylvia (whose own ‘Four Strong Winds’, by
the way, is also here). The fact remains that Take Me For What I’m Worth by no means sounds like a genuine swan
song — despite their commercial struggles and lineup perturbances, the
Searchers remained an inspired and creative outfit all through 1965. But they
were unwilling to move forward at
the same pace as everybody else, preferring to take it slow and sensible
instead. We see faint glimmers of baroque-pop, we hear occasional outbursts
of fuzz guitar, we sense that they were not stubbornly committed to forever adhering
to the standards of 1963–64, but, unfortunately, this kind of pussyfooting
was not enough for such a vibrant era as 1965–66. Personally, I would be
interested in hearing a Searchers’ LP from the psychedelic era but, judging
from the small bunch of singles they would put out in those years, they would probably not be too
interested in recording anything too
psychedelic or too «artsy» — and it
wasn’t even so much about the departure of their informal band leader, Chris
Curtis, in April ’66, as it was about the overall group spirit and its
refusal to adapt at the required insane tempo of change. If you want me, you’ll take me for what I’m worth — this kind of
bluff may have worked out fine for Bob Dylan, but the Searchers really
overestimated their chances with this one. But make no mistake about it, on my lips there’s definitely a sweet
word and not a curse when I listen to all these nice songs sixty years later. |
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