Johnny Rivers: "Memphis"

July 6, 1964 (1 week)

In one of the last scenes of the final episode of the early nineties' Australian series Brides of Christ, Naomi Watts' character Frances and her friends celebrate the end of their days attending a convent school in a local diner. Buttoned down and reserved Bridget had been considering becoming a nun only to suddenly remove her habit in an act of defiance. The girls get up from their booth and begin dancing and singing along to a version of "Memphis, Tennessee" by Dave Berry and the Cruisers. The song clearly means a lot to them which begs the question: why?

This isn't meant to be a slight against composer Chuck Berry, Dave Berry (needless to say, the two were not related) and everyone else involved either as a performer or fan but I just can't see it. My teenage crush on Naomi Watts was even dulled a bit by her character's enthusiasm for what I could already tell was a very average song. Yet, in 1963 and '64 people ate this shit up. Chuck's original went to number six in Britain while Dave's hit number nineteen (and number eight in Australia so clearly Frances, Rosemary and Bridget weren't alone). Meanwhile on the Hot 100, Lonnie Mack took it to number five and then Johnny Rivers sent it all the way to number two. The Beatles even performed it on some of their famed BBC sessions.

As I have taken pains to say, I'm not especially keen on listening to Chuck Berry's music. The dude couldn't sing (if you ask me he had nerve to appear so shocked by Yoko Ono's wailing when they appeared with John Lennon on The Jack Douglas Show). But he did write some fantastic songs. "Roll Over Beethoven" is rock 'n' roll myth making at its finest: a celebration of the then-new craze while humourously sending it up at the same time. The same goes for "Rock and Roll Music" though it is admittedly more earnest. "Johnny B. Goode" is a gas too. In fact, I dig plenty of Chuck — just so long as it's someone else doing the singing.

"Memphis, Tennessee" (shortened to "Memphis" here because I don't think anyone was in danger of confusing it for Memphis, Egypt) doesn't have the wit of Chuck Berry's best remembered hits. Even "No Particular Place to Go", a current Top 10 smash on the RPM chart, is far more amusing even if it pales in comparison to what he was doing nearly a decade earlier. Quite how it managed to be revived after several years languishing in obscurity as a Berry B side is also beyond me. How I would like to quiz folk back then on how it managed to touch a nerve in so many musicians and fans alike because I'm at a loss.

Johnny Rivers does the best with what he had. The single opens with some bar band blues riffs and the sound of what almost certainly isn't an audience (I imagine it was the sound of people clapping their hands and hollering in the studio which, I suppose, is a kind of audience) According to reputable sources, however, "Memphis" is from the live album At the Whisky a Go-Go which means it's the genuine article! A live album without all those studio touch ups! Honest to goodness rock 'n' roll — warts and all!

The recording sounds both too clear and too deliberately messy in order for me to believe that it's purely the product of a stage show in LA from January 15, 1964. The crowd seems too subdued. (That said, perhaps that's actually a point in its favour as a real ale live album: had it been entirely the result of studio artifice, producers and engineers would have surely manipulated the faux crowd noise to exaggerated levels of excitement, not unlike the famous "Medley Live from Northern Quebec" on Gram Parsons' posthumous masterpiece Grievous Angel) Much as it doesn't sound live to me, I'm prepared to believe that it's a concert recording that was given some attention in the studio — not unlike an awful lot of live albums.

Energetic and a good advertisement for what an attraction Johnny Rivers must have been on stage, there's still no escaping the fact that "Memphis" is nothing special as a song. Rivers would go on to have several more hits throughout the sixties, including two more that topped the RPM Top 40 in Canada so we'll be seeing him again. And a good thing too since while Chuck Berry could (and did) do better, Rivers himself was also capable of a lot more. Either that or you just had to be there. Plus, if I'd had Naomi Watts as a dance partner, who knows what kind of crap I might have convinced myself to like?

Score: 5

~~~~~

Hey! Where's...?

With all due respect to Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" and Dusty Springfield's "Wishin' and Hopin'", there was one real standout on the RPM charts in July of 1964: "The Girl from Impanema". Still the defining sound of sixties' bossa nova, it proved to be by far the biggest hit of Stan Getz's long career as well as establishing João Gilberto and soon-to-be ex-wife Astrud as major artists in their own right. Like other one off jazz success stories of the time (Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", Vince Guraldi's still massively popular A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack) it may be easy to sneer at but there's really no denying just how wonderful it is. I'm sure there are purists of some sort who also look down upon the single edit but it gets to the point quicker, we don't need to hear vocals from anyone other than Astrud and it doesn't feel as though it has been hacked to pieces. A Top 5 hit in both Canada and the United States but one that still feels a tad too low. Oh how I wish I could be writing an essay about it in place of the ho-hum "Memphis".

The Beach Boys: "I Get Around"

June 29, 1964 (1 week)

Whether it's the very best, the utterly incompetent or all those charming groups somewhere in between, the vast majority of chart topping acts are represented fairly well by their biggest hits. No, not every Beatles' classic made it to number one but several did. The same goes for Elvis, Bee Gees, Michael Jackson and Madonna. But not quite everyone. Many of Elton John's number one hits disappoint compared to some of the brilliant songs he recorded at the same time — and the same goes for The Beach Boys.

If anything, it's their number twos that give a stronger impression of the quintet. "Surfin' USA" had been a chart runner up a year earlier and it would eventually be followed by "California Girls", "Barbara Ann", "Sloop John B" and "Good Vibrations". I know, "Barbara Ann" is a silly throwaway and there are many who think "Sloop John B" is a botch (they're wrong, by the way) but you can't tell me "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations" aren't among their finest moments. (That said, "Sail On, Sailor" is another of their remarkable singles and it limped to number seventy-three)

"I Get Around" might be the best of their trio of Canadian chart toppers but even it isn't quite at the level of their absolute best. And while you could chalk that up to a major improvement in the quality of their work over the next couple years, it shouldn't be forgotten that an arguably superior song ("Don't Worry Baby") was on its B side and that it had already appeared earlier in the year on their fifth album Shut Down Volume 2. (The front cover of the single sort of implies that "Don't Worry Baby" was meant to have more prominence; the CHUM chart has them marked as a double A side)

"Surfin' USA", "Surfin' Safari" and "Surfer Girl" established The Beach Boys as a group who sang a lot about, well, surfing. In spite of the best efforts of the Wilson brothers, it was a reputation they could never fully shake. Indeed, the subject of cars and transportation is even more apparent in their work, possibly because it was something they could all relate to. (Famously, Dennis Wilson was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed; on the other hand, it's a good bet they all possessed a drivers licence) Hits like "Little Deuce Coupe" and "Fun, Fun, Fun" got the ball rolling on this second phase, one that would carry forward on much of their silly but technically marvelous 1965 album Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!). While its predecessor, The Beach Boys Today!, tended towards the serious, tracks such as "The Girl from New York City", "Amusement Parks USA", "Salt Lake City" and the sublime "California Girls" painted a picture of a madcap road trip around the United States.

Burnout — something that Brian Wilson knows all too well — was the biggest drawback when it came to how astoundingly prolific everyone seemed to be in the mid-sixties. (Aside from The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding and The Rolling Stones all released two albums apiece in '65; "Only two?" asked members of The Supremes who put out four LPs that year) But another side effect was that it could result in a lot of thrown together projects. The idea of putting together a unified long playing disc had already been done in jazz and was obviously the foundation of cast recordings of musicals but it wasn't really a thing yet in pop. Thus, the aforementioned Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) only toyed with the idea of being a travelogue (a topic they would explore more fully on their 1973 classic Holland) since it had to accommodate whatever else they had in the can. Had Wilson been given more time and had there not been such heavy demands placed on artists such as him, he might even have been able to find room for "I Get Around" on it. For that matter, the extra time he might have had could have been spent on making it shine even brighter.

What we got instead was a rushed affair that still manages to be a triumph — at least to an extent. I'm sure it would have been mighty impressive in the context of what they had been recording up until the midway point of 1964 but it's hard to hear it that way now. The group that made so many near-miss number ones in the years ahead blows their earlier work out of the water. I must confess I don't feel proud writing this. I hate it when people judge The Beatles the same way, as they somehow seem to feel that a late period song like "Let It Be" far outpaces, say, "Please Please Me" even though it's the other way around in my mind. Yet, I'm no different when it comes to The Beach Boys. Good as many of them are, songs like "I Get Around" is best kept to when they did surfing and hot rods but before they really began to blossom as artistes.

Score: 7

~~~~~

C'Mon, Be a CHUM!

Introducing a new segment here on Old Familiar Tunes! Celebrating the CHUM number ones that didn't quite make it that high on the RPM chart. Jamaica's Millie Small took an obscure fifties record and transformed it into a ska-pop moment for the ages. A number two hit on both the British charts and the Hot 100, it fell similarly short on the RPM Top 40 as well. (It did, however, manage to go all the way to the top in Brazil, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa and Sweden; check out Aidan Curran's excellent review on his Irish Number Ones blog) Sounding girlish, charming and confident, Millie more than does it justice, she actually manages to make it seem like it's a far greater song than it is. Outstanding and a harbinger of things to come from Jamaica as well as being impactful in its own right over in the UK. It's great when something really influential also happens to be a lot of fun to listen to; you'd think the two would go hand-in-hand the majority of the time but that is not always the case. As Brian Eno once said, millions of people bought "My Boy Lollipop" and some formed bands — the rest just got on with their lives.

The Dixie Cups: "Chapel of Love"

June 22, 1964 (1 week)

And so the RPM era begins. Before moving on to more pressing matters, I'd like to quibble with the release of the first issue. Couldn't they have waited a few days so that they could have had it coincide with Canada Day — just as, I might add, a humble blogger would do some sixty years later? Perhaps they were going for a soft launch or the proximity of Dominion Day didn't have anything to do with it.

The CHUM hit parade was out as the national listing but that didn't mean it was going anywhere. I thought it might be worth looking at that week's CHUM and RPM charts just to see how they compare. (Please note: chart positions falling outside the Top 10 on competing listings are marked in parentheses)

The CHUM Top 10

1. Peter and Gordon: "A World Without Love"            
2. Lucille Starr: "The French Song" (14)
3. Millie Small: "My Boy Lollipop"
4. The Dixie Cups: "Chapel of Love"
5. Gerry and the Pacemakers: "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying"
6. The Dave Clark Five: "Do You Love Me" (13)
7. Elvis Presley: "Kiss Me Quick" (—)
8. Gerry and the Pacemakers: "I'm the One" (—)
9. Johnny Rivers: "Memphis"
10. The Wailers: "Tall Cool One" (—)

And now the RPM Top 10

1. The Dixie Cups: "Chapel of Love"
2. Peter and Gordon: "A World Without Love" / Bobby Rydell: "A World Without Love"
3. Millie Small: "My Boy Lollipop"
4. Gerry and the Pacemakers: "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying"
5. Dionne Warwick: "Walk on By" (16)
6. The Beach Boys: "I Get Around" (13)
7. Mary Wells: "My Guy" (11)
8. Johnny Rivers: "Memphis"
9. The Searchers: "Don't Throw Your Love Away" (22)
10. Chuck Berry: "No Particular Place to Go" (25)

As you can see, only five singles managed to make it on to both: "Chapel of Love", "A World Without Love", "My Boy Lollipop", "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" and "Memphis". It's more than a little odd that three releases that made CHUM's Top 10 — "Kiss Me Quick", "I'm the One" and "Tall Cool One" — failed to crack the RPM Top 40 entirely. Curious. The other quirk is Bobby Rydell's name appearing alongside Peter and Gordon. This is because the Canadian charts would recognize competing versions of the same song as one hit. In fact, we'll be getting to an example of a unique co-number one in the near future.

One more thing before we get to the chart topper in question. Though I'm no fan of Chuck Berry, I much prefer the look of the upper section of the RPM chart. Check out that trio taking up spots five, six and seven: "Walk on By", "I Get Around", "My Guy". Bangers all. Sure, they were all in the CHUM Top 20 at the same time but I'd rather see them closer to the top. (It's a little disappointing that we'll only be seeing one of them reach the very top but them's the breaks, I guess) Plus, The Searchers' "Don't Throw Your Love Away" is a minor gem, one that once again hints that they were The Byrds before The Byrds.

With so many discrepancies between CHUM and RPM, it's nice that the official number one single in Canada that week was a smash on both charts. And it's a good one too. "Chapel of Love" is pretty hard to dislike. (A horrible cover by The Beach Boys on their shitty 1975 album 15 Big Ones is the only poor rendition I'm aware of) Darlene Love had initially tried it out under the auspices of eccentric producer Phil Spector but it was shelved and wouldn't be released until 1991 when it was included on his Back to Mono boxset. Yet, the great big evil weirdo looms large over The Dixie Cups' recording. With the use of some echo and reverb, it is Spector-lite though it isn't anywhere near as grandiose - but maybe that's a good thing all things considered.

While you might expect that the trio of Barbara Ann and Rosa Lee Hawkins and their cousin Joan Marie Johnson would have had a lot of fun with "Chapel of Love", there isn't a whole lot of evidence of it, as if they're unsure of themselves or something. It's not a big problem and even adds depth to the song if the girls singing about their wedding day are in fact dreading it but it's still worth pointing out. My memory told me that they were a lot more upbeat but that is not how they sound.

Finally, "Chapel of Love" spent just one week at number one which would be the first of many one week wonders to top the RPM chart. While I don't know quite what to make of this trend, I would say it tracks with the way young people used to consume music: kids would hear a song, love it to death then get sick and tired of it, rinse and repeat. Nowadays, singles may sit comfortably at the top of the charts for ten or twenty weeks so something changed over the past sixty some years. Perhaps I'll try to figure it out as this blog continues.

Score: 7

~~~~~

Can Con

Doing remarkably well over on CHUM while struggling a bit nationally is Boniface, Manitoba's Lucille Starr with "The French Song", aka "Quand le soleil dit bonjour aux montagnes". Renamed due to producer Herb Alpert allegedly not being able to pronounce the French title and, I presume, his assumption that no one else would've been able to as well. (At least the re-titling of "Ue o Muite Arkuō" to "Sukuyaki" was an acknowledgement of it being Japanese; would it have been so hard to have re-christened it "Bonjour" instead? Or, failing that, "Beef Bourguignon"?) Starr's voice quivers an awful lot — it was the style at the time — but her attempt at Franco-country music isn't bad. It is a little jarring, however, when she switches over to English, especially since this is "The French Song" and all.

Peter and Gordon: "A World Without Love"

June 8, 1964 (2 weeks)

The pair are a study in contrasts: while one lounges about smoking and prattling on about a variety of topics, the other fusses about, getting us cups of tea, answering the telephone and hunting down file folders of still-unused lyrics. One jokes while the other is mostly serious. One is a study in decorum while the other has his shirt untucked and a necktie loosened. Yet, on matters of music business, they are a two-headed monster.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney were once part of the biggest act in pop. The Beatles commanded the charts and conquered the world in 1963 and '64 before it all began to crumble around them the following year. Where once their creative decision making had never failed, they're missteps only seemed to compound. Lennon believes the decline began with the title of their second film.

"Dick Lester came in and told us, "I've got it! It'll be called Eight Arms to Hold You". I went home and tried to write something with that in mind and couldn't come up with anything good. But I thought, "well, Paul will think of something". The next day, Paul came up to me and said, "I have no idea! What should we do?" We normally work so easily but this time we were dry. I had a feeling we might be in trouble at that point, you know".

The decision was soon made to scrap having a title track but their troubles only continued. Fans who flocked to see A Hard Day's Night a year earlier mostly stayed away ("I think they were turned off by the title," McCartney speculates, "Everyone must have thought we'd be fighting an octopus or something"; "Or embracing one", Lennon quips) Some of the songs they ended up using were as strong as ever but others missed. They still insist that the tune Paul wrote for the song "Scrambled Eggs" is still among the finest they've been attached to but they acknowledge that its lyrics are "naff". Once again, they couldn't come up with anything better.

Still a reliable chart act for the next year, The Beatles foolishly embarked on a disastrous world tour. The venues they played were half full at best and with the smaller attendance figures came a considerable reduction in the screaming which had once been so deafening as to drown out what their playing. Then they began to hear the boos. Audiences could hear them and they evidently didn't like what they heard. Finally, Lennon's infamous 'Bigger than Jesus' remark was printed in American newspapers and the backlash was complete. While some protested by burning Beatle records, others laughed at the absurdity of such a claim. ("I might have got away with it had I said it a year earlier, you know," Lennon shrugs) It had only been three years since the Fab Four took the UK by storm but now it was all over.

While drummer Ringo Starr returned to Merseyside to open a hair salon ("It's a nice place," says McCartney, "He and Maureen are set to open a second shop soon") and guitarist George Harrison has done session work for the likes of Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton as well as tentatively getting a solo project going, Lennon and McCartney are now full time composers, contributing songs for old colleagues like Cilla Black and a returning Peter and Gordon. They've also been in touch with Hollywood producers over possible film scores and there have been persistent rumours that they'll be writing old rival Cliff Richard's potential entry into next year's Eurovision Song Contest. ("We might do it if we can think of something to rhyme with 'Jesus'", Lennon claims) They're even currently at work on a West End musical that will either be about their childhoods back in Liverpool or a fancifully tale about a fictional band led by a hopeless individual called Billy Sheers. (Here's hoping it ends up being the former) Has their songwriting changed since the demise of The Beatles?

"I don't think so," say McCartney confidently, "It's still very much the same process. If John gets an idea, he'll work on it and then show me what he's got and I do likewise. He's my favourite consultant and I hope I'm his".

"And I hope he's his", says a rueful Lennon. But are the songs they give to others in danger of being too much like the Fab Four? "I think we worried bit a about that when we moved into full time songwriting but I don't think about it anymore, you know. Besides, we get some groups who'll call us up and request material that sounds like The Beatles".

"Yeah, back when we were stars we also wrote songs for other people", chimes in McCartney. "Usually we'd give them stuff that didn't suit us, like when we gave Peter and Gordon "A World Without Love". I thought about us recording it but John hated how it opened with that line...how did it go?"

"Please lock me away", Lennon responds in a comedy operatic voice. "That bit always left me in hysterics".

"But I think we learned how to write with other people in mind", McCartney says helpfully. Indeed, their song "Misery" had been written with an eye on submitting it to teen singing sensation Helen Shapiro but her handlers balked at the very idea of it. And even though The Beatles are no more, the Lennon-McCartney credit still carries plenty of weight. Do they feel that their mere presence guarantees a number one smash?

"No and I'm not sure that's ever been the case", the former bassist argues. "I'm sure it helps quite a bit but nothing's for certain. We gave "A World Without Love" to Peter and Gordon and "Bad to Me" to Billy J. Kramer and they both went to number one but nothing else we didn't perform on ever did that well".

"Who else did we give our castoffs to?" lennon asks his partner.

"Let's see, The Fourmost, The Applejacks...". McCartney can only think of a pair of examples.

"The Dirty Laundry Ladies, Herbert and the Squires 4, The Passion Sharks...we made stars out of a lot of nobodies in our day, you know".

And what of the future for the pair? Do they foresee getting their old band back together?

"Maybe someday but we don't have plans to do so anytime soon", says McCartney.

"Let's see if anyone remembers us in the future first", Lennon agrees. "For now, I'm happy to suspect I'm a has-been but I'd rather not have it confirmed". Their time as kings of pop may be at an end but I think we'll be enjoying the fruits of the Lennon-McCartney partnership for years to come.

~~~~~

This entry brings the CHUM chart era to an end. While the longtime Toronto-based radio station would continue to print Top 40 or Top 50 listings until the mid-eighties,the lauch of RPM magazine meant that there was a true national alternative to opt for. I was going to say that it was more reliable but, sadly, that isn't the case. While the dedicated folks at CHUM printed charts every week (while also having fun doing so: their April Fool's hit parades being an annual treat), RPM would take weeks off or go on hiatus for extended periods. Then there's the fact that almost every chart topper from this point through to the end of the sixties was just a one week wonder; very few singles managed two or more weeks on top. I'm still planning to use the invaluable CHUM Tribute Site for reference purposes and to compare chart toppers. Good as it is, there's no escaping the fact that it was a Toronto chart that just sort of became Canada's national hit parade because there was nothing else. Time to go naitonal: on to RPM!

Score: 5

Gerry and the Pacemakers: "I'm the One"

May 25, 1964 (2 weeks)

It's likely that the late Gerry Marsden cared far more for Liverpool than any of The Beatles. He maintained a home in Merseyside, was an avid supporter of Liverpool FC (Paul McCartney has nominally been an Everton fan for most of his life but he later had a fence-sitting 'I support both sides' stance which I think we can infer that he doesn't really give a shit about football) and was involved in many local causes. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that your average Scouser — particularly those of a by-now advancing age — has a genuine fondness for him over the Fab Four, not unlike the Irish who have more of an attachment to the likes of Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott or The Pogues' Shane MacGowan while regarding U2 as being for tourists.

Yet, there is one issue that I have with Marsden that is worth bringing up: he was as prone to myth making and revisionism as his Liverpool colleagues Lennon and McCartney. In the once definitive but still highly entertaining documentary The Compleat Beatles, the singer pumps up his hometownfolk as "nitty gritty" and "more real" than Londoners. As proof, Marsden takes the mickey out of Cliff Richard's million-selling smash "Living Doll", a single which, he implies, the young people around the Mersey would have sneered at. I have no doubt he was correct but it's still hard to swallow coming from the same person who sang lead on "How Do You Do It", a song The Beatles reluctantly tried out upon the cajoling of producer George Martin. It is even said they were so mortified by it that they would not have been able to "show their faces in Liverpool again" had it been released. But lifelong Liverpudlian Marsden and his fellow Pacemakers played on it with sufficient enthusiasm — which the Fab Four's earlier version noticeably lacks — that it even managed to go to number one in Britain. Not so "nitty gritty" and "real", eh Gerry?

Chartwise, Gerry and The Pacemakers rivaled The Beatles for a time. It's likely that the Fabs had laid the groundwork for them but there's no escaping the fact that they had three chart toppers on the bounce with their first three singles. They even managed to pull of getting to the top of the official charts before their chums. Yet, there's no escaping the fact that all three of their number ones — "How Do You Do It?", "I Like It" and future association football anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone" — had all been written by other people. It was only when their originals started coming out that their fortunes began to falter.

"I'm the One" isn't a disaster. It made it to number two in Britain and was a big enough hit in a number of territories (though, surprisingly not in the US). Whatsmore, while by no means a classic, it's an improvement on their run of British number ones. Marsden isn't an especially outstanding vocalist but he carries the tune well enough with a cocksure style he had patented. It also has a good beat and the piano part played by Les Maguire is ticklish fun. All that said,  the best things I can say for it is that it's respectable and that I don't mind having it on. "I'm the One" is good for what they were capable of but in the scheme of things, it's nothing special.

There's a chapter near the end of Craig Brown's book One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (North American publishers gave it the very boring alternate title 150 Glimpses of The Beatles) describing a parallel universe in which Gerry and The Pacemakers ended up the pop music legends with local rivals The Beatles an also ran. The segment is good fun even if I don't buy them having many of the same experiences (would Gerry Marsden have been able to put up with the Maharishi and Yoko Ono — and, indeed, would they have been able to put up with him?; and with all due respect to the singer, I have trouble believing he'd ever be the victim of an assassin's bullet) even though they did have the same manager and producer. While I enjoy the thought experiment, it doesn't play out as realistic. Had The Beatles faltered somewhere along the way — say, by breaking up during their chaotic Hamburg residency — so, too, go the fortunes of The Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas and Gerry and The Pacemakers. Had their chart fortunes evaporated after "Please Please Me", their Liverpool rivals would've had an even more uphill battle to make it. One group failing to make it doesn't necessarily result in someone else taking their place. Ian McCulloch of eighties' Merseyside indie rockers Echo and the Bunnymen once claimed that it could've easily been them who made it big rather than U2. It's more accurate, however, to say that U2 could have easily been Echo and the Bunnymen — and even more accurate to say that neither of them could have progressed beyond their respective hometowns. The same goes for The Beatles and The Pacemakers.

And in any case, Marsden was Mr. Nitty Gritty so he never needed to get out of Liverpool anyway. It's just as well he never bothered.

Score: 5

~~~~~

Hey! Where's...

An old friend of mine once told me that when Louis Armstrong dislodged The Beatles from the number one spot on the Hot 100 that New York City's entire jazz community had a party to celebrate. I'm not sure of his source but I sure like to think that it's true. I have no idea who happened to be living in NYC at the time (some would've been living in other parts of the States, while others would've been touring; this was also right around the time that a number of jazz musicians like Ben Webster, Don Cherry and Dexter Gordon began relocating to Europe for better payouts and less racism) but I like to imagine everyone from Cab Calloway to Albert Ayler was in attendance. Oh to have been a fly on the wall at that get together. Satchmo was no longer physically able to blow minds on the trumpet but that voice is as strong as ever and he gets through it effortlessly. It's isn't quite "Tiger Rag" or "St. Louis Blues" but he was still near enough to the top of his game. No wonder he knocked The Beatles off the top — he was just about the only person who was in their league.

The Dave Clark Five: "Bits and Pieces"

April 27, 1964 (4 weeks)

There's something a bit off about bands with pushy drummers. I mean, if you yearn so much for the spotlight then why would you play the instrument most closely associated with musicians who ought to know their place. Your average pop-rock percussionist plainly isn't going to have even a thimble-full of the showstopping skills of a Gene Krupa or a Buddy Rich so the vast majority don't even deserve an outsized amount of the attention anyway.

During the Second British Invasion of the early eighties, one of the leading bands was Culture Club, a rag tag quartet made up of a London club scenester with little experience fronting a pop group, a guitarist-bassist duo who perpetually looked just happy to be there and one very serious drummer. Jon Moss was all business, the sort of figure who was determined to get ahead no matter what happened to his bandmates who might as well have been — in the words of Trainspotting's Renton — the "most useless and unreliable fuck ups in town". Culture Club's drummer couldn't possibly overshadow tabloid favourite Boy George but he would nab an undue amount of the publicity. The man ended up on the cover of the great British music mag Smash Hits and would eventually lead his own, ultimately unsuccessful, post-Club outfit Heartbeat UK. (Amazingly, this was their actual name, rather than a North Americanized alteration a la Charlatans UK, The London Suede or The English Beat) (I highly recommend Dave Rimmer's excellent book Like Punk Never Happened if you wish to learn more about Culture Club and the role Jon Moss played)

But at least Moss was good enough to operate within a band. Boy George was a very capable singer, his bandmates could play Lover's Rock (like "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?") or Motown-esque pop ("Karma Chameleon", "Church of the Poison Mind"). And, indeed, the remaining four in The Dave Clark Five may well have been competent enough in their roles too. But you'd never know it judging by "Bits and Pieces", an appalling mess of percussion, stomps, some chanting and the feeling that they had as little joy in recording it as you'll no doubt have listening to it.

"Glad All Over" had been a breakthrough UK number one for The Dave Clark Five at the start of 1964, usurping The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and making some in Britain wonder if that whole Fab Four fad was winding down. To play off of the supposed changing of the guard, their percussion-heavy style was dubbed the 'Tottenham Sound'. Do a simple Google search and AI will inform you that this style is "most closely associated with the shouty and stompy East End outfit but that "other London-based bands like The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds also benefited from the beat boom of this era", a statement that tells us precisely nothing. Certainly all four groups owed a lot to the beat boom caused by The Beatles but there's nothing to suggest that Mick Jagger, Ray and Dave Davies, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jeff Beck had anything to do with drummer Dave Clark and his band. (In truth, many of them didn't have that much to do with one another. London being a far larger city than Liverpool developed a variety of scenes over differing locations)

While "Glad All Over" had been a spirited number which utilized the talents of the Five, there's little evidence that, say, saxophonist Denis Payton had much to contribute to "Bits and Pieces" beyond pounding his boots on a floorboard and maybe some shouting (oh, and he might just be playing some sax buried in the mix as well). Its predecessor had been a remarkably artless work but the group took it to the extreme here. The middle eight with its unexpected burst of melody and something approximating a real song should act as a welcome relief but it feels tacked on, as though part of some dodgy eighties' megamix of the group's hits. (Aidan Curran speculates that it could be "from a random other song lying around" which seems about right; fusing separate tunes together was yet another thing The Beatles had on the competition)

British Invasion acts will be heavily featured in this space for the time being — and it's worth pointing out that many of them were dismal. A great many figures of note emerge but it isn't always just the cream that rises to the top. An oafish band playing within a mostly imaginary scene featuring a drummer who had to make everything about himself isn't how most UK bands made their way in the music industry so I guess it takes all sorts. Yet, at this point I'd sooner have theatre school pretty boys like Peter Noone or Davy Jones than this lot who somehow or other managed to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And you'd think that they're proximity to The Beatles, Stones and the rest would have only exposed them as frauds.

Score: 3

The Beatles: "All My Loving" / "This Boy"

March 23, 1964 (5 weeks)

On February 9, 1964, The Beatles were sitting at number one on the Hot 100 for a third week with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" but the floodgates were only just beginning to open. As a matter of fact, it's likely that John, Paul, George and Ringo's appearance on American TV that night would be the catalyst for the forthcoming deluge of Beatle product. People may overstate its impact but there's no denying that the Fab Four going on The Ed Sullivan Show was a big deal.

With the American public unfamiliar with the vast majority of their repertoire, it fell to an unknown number to kick off this very important performance. Eschewing two of their UK chart toppers, they went with the Paul led "All My Loving". Just the sight of Paul McCartney's champagne smile would have been enough to sell them to the Americans but the song itself was a revelation. A breezy, effortless piece of addictive pop, Paul had his most uplifting and backed by John's frenzied rhythm guitar, George doing some fine country-ish lead and Ringo providing a beat that you hardly notice (as the cliche goes, you only really notice when the drumming sucks).

Since everyone in the United States was watching that night — actually it was seventy-three million people but that's close enough, right? — there must have been a few chart geeks who tuned in. They didn't have the internet and smart phones and there wouldn't even have been reference books to consult like The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. Still, the enterprising pop fan could have looked it up, even if it would have taken time and effort to do so. What they would have discovered was that "All My Loving" wasn't just a chart non-entity in the US but also back The Beatles' native England. Look it up now and that's still very much the case. It was only in Canada that one of the great Beatles' singles that never was managed to go all the way to number one. (Import copies from the great white north sold well enough to get it to scrape the American Top 50)

It wasn't until April of 1964 that Beatles' releases began to align in Britain and the United States. "Can't Buy Me Love" had been recorded at Paris' famed Pathe studio during the same sessions in which they reluctantly churned out German-language versions of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at a time when they still weren't quite number one Stateside. By the time it had come out, they were superstars on the verge of shattering a number of chart records no one ever imagined. The British took it to the top for a routine three weeks while it spent just over a month at number one in the US. But Canadians weren't about to follow suit since they preferred to have "All My Loving" / "This Boy" instead. They made the right choice. ("Can't Buy Me Love" did no better than number three in Canada, blocked from going any higher by The Dave Clark Five's "Glad All Over") 

"Can't Buy Me Love" coincides with the height of Beatlemania in the US but it's not in the same league as "Please Please Me", "From Me to You", "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand", a quartet that makes up arguably the finest run of singles ever released in a calendar year. The rush, the thrill, the spirit of old isn't quite there anymore. The use of acoustic guitar on it looks forward to tracks like "I'll Be Back" and "I'm a Loser" later in the year but I think having a folk instrument as backing only emphasizes how how shallow McCartney's lyrics are. Plus, there's no escaping the fact that it's insincere: when Lennon put his vocal life on the line to scream about "Money" being the thing he "wants", it was a signal of their desire for fame and the spoils that come with it; by comparison. McCartney chirping on about how he doesn't "care too much for money" would register high on any credible bullshit meter.

The duality of Lennon-McCartney is something that tends to only be recognizable in the group's later work. The most obvious example is the extraordinary "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane", a pair of songs that manage to fit together in spite of the differences between the two composers. Lennon's imaginative isolationism contrasts with McCartney's outgoing absurdities but the two complement each other as well. The same goes for the equally outstanding pairing of "Hey Jude" and "Revolution": while the warm heartedness of the former may seem in conflict with the aggressiveness of the latter, lines like "the movement you need is on your shoulder" and the desire for peace rather than destruction suggest that they have a great deal in common.

But where did this contrast begin? Since Lennon and McCartney were very different people in the same band, it was probably always there but it wouldn't have really begun when their practice of 'eyeball-to-eyeball' songwriting came to an end. By the end of 1963, the two had settled in homes that were a good deal more than a short bike ride away so there was always going to be time apart for them to work out ideas on their own. "Can't Buy Me Love" / "You Can't Do That" proved to be the first of many 'Paul gets one side, John gets the other' singles but the Canadian-only release of "All My Loving" with "This Boy" does it far better.

While "Can't Buy Me Love" seems like an abrupt end to all that joyous pop from '63, "All My Loving" provides the very same lift of "Please Please Me" and "She Loves You". Prior to the release of their second album With The Beatles, no one would've contemplated discussing classic deep cuts. Yet, for a record intended to not have any singles released off it, it sounds like nothing but crammed with hits. And even alongside such gems as "It Won't Be Long", "All I've Got to Do" and "Not a Second Time" (along with their finest assortment of cover versions), "All My Loving" stands out as that a track that anyone else would have put out as a 45 in a second. As Ian MacDonald points out, "The Beatles' rivals looked on amazed as songs of this commercial appeal were casually thrown away on LPs".

As I wrote last time, "This Boy" ended up getting dropped from the North American release of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in favour of the much more radio friendly "I Saw Her Standing There". Picked up for "All My Loving" by Capitol Canada, it manages to for Lennon what its flip does for McCartney. The word play from songs such as "Please Please Me" and "It Won't Be Long" isn't present; in its place are beautiful three part harmonies and John doing some of his best down on bended knee pleading. (Though not nearly as similar as many might assume, "This Boy" and future Lennon compositions "Yes It Is" and "Because" all trade substance for loveliness; the same goes for his sublime solo "Love" from his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album)

There isn't a whole lot to "This Boy" but it is tremendous all the same. While the three part harmonies from John, Paul and George are what everyone takes away, it is also a great example of just what an outstanding vocalist Lennon was. There's that same raspy quality as heard on "Twist and Shout" but in this instance it's far more pained. While we hear Lennon put so much of himself into some of his more extreme and/or emotional material ("Cold Turkey", "Mother"), I'd argue this is a feature of his work as a whole. The lyrics may indeed be slight but the man was such a pro that he really makes it sound a whole lot more meaningful than it deserves.

Great as both "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" are, neither of them suggest that The Beatles would be dominating pop for the remainder of the decade. But hints that there might be more to them than simply a pop sensation were starting to seep through. "All My Loving" positions Paul McCartney as pop's foremost craftsman, a role he maintains to this day, while "This Boy" is the first clue that John Lennon was going to put it all out on the line. The two worked so amazingly well together that it must have seemed impossible that they could thrive even more when left to their own devices. The Beatles were already leaving their competition in the dust so all that was left was for them to start competing with each other. Game on.

Score: 10

The Beatles: "I Want to Hold Your Hand" / "I Saw Her Standing There"

February 10, 1964 (6 weeks)

For basically the entirety of 1963, LA-based Capitol Records didn't want to have anything to do with The Beatles. Then, the calendar flipped and suddenly they wanted nothing but The Beatles. (And they say the record buying public is fickle) Having dropped the ball repeatedly, they now wanted to carry it for as long as possible. Since this is an American football metaphor then they didn't simply wish to carry it into the endzone but to pull a Bo Jackson by running the ball down the ramp, out of the stadium and into the metro Seattle area — or something to that effect.

Milking it is an inevitability of commercial pop. When I was growing up, it was done to such obnoxious depths in pop that the likes of Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and Bruce Springsteen would release albums with eight or nine singles on them. But record labels back in the sixties weren't that crass — or, more accurately, they were crass in different ways — so their solution was to simply put out more LP's. The Beatles had a standard of thirteen or fourteen tracks on their first eight albums - released within the space of just over four years - and they also put out plenty of stand alone singles and even one EP of fresh material. Capitol's solution was to put out more albums by cutting the number of tracks to eleven or twelve and filling them out with odds and ends. The Beatles hated this practice and even addressed it on the controversial 'butcher' cover of the 1966 American release Yesterday and Today.

What isn't typically mentioned is that Capitol interfered in other areas too. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had initially been released in the UK near the end of 1963 with the thoughtful "This Boy" as its B side. It was a piece that chief composer John Lennon was justifiably proud of. Yet, the Americans weren't having it. Sure, it could be included as an album deep cut but there was no way something this melancholic was going to be on one of their singles. Instead, they chose "I Saw Her Standing There", the lead cut and one of the standouts from debut album Please Please Me. A hands down classic and the first of many album tracks that could easily have been a single in its own right. (For all the many number one hits the Fab Four would release during the sixties, they easily could have had at least half-a-dozen more)

(Capitol altering Beatles' singles in this manner would only occur once more when "Things We Said Today" was replaced as the B side to "A Hard Day's Night" by "I Should Have Known Better". Though this is another example of a ponderous offering giving way to something much more upbeat — which also could've been a hit in its own right — this change is more understandable, if for no other reason than it gave listeners the opportunity to have two songs featured in their first film on the same single)

Great as it is, I don't care for "I Saw Her Standing There" as either a B side or, in Canada's case, a double A side. It's hard to say precisely why but it just doesn't fit. Matched with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", the pairing feels like wearing colours that are kind of similar but which still manage to clash. It smacks of a calculated record company decision - which, indeed, it was. Beyond simply being a more uptempo beat tune to match the Beatlemania craze than "This Boy", it's almost as if Capitol was hedging their bets. "Well, if the A side doesn't catch on then maybe the kids will get into the B side instead". Had I been alive at the time, I might have reacted to it differently — "Damn, two bangers for the price of one!" or, to be more accurate to the era, "The B side is as groovy as the A!" — but knowing what I know now more than sixty years after the fact, it sounds out of place. "I Saw Her Standing There" was recorded only eight months prior to "I Want a Hold Your Hand" but in Beatles' time that's more like two or three years worth of development. The B side practically sounds primitive by comparison.

Still, there's no arguing with "I Want to Hold Your Hand". If not quite as thrilling as "She Loves You", it nevertheless wrapped up a banner 1963 in Britain while being an excellent entry point for the Americans in '64. While its predecessor has been picked over by critics for traces of subtext, there's little to suggest any kind of deep meaning here, particularly if you never heard the repeated "I can't hide" as "I get high". (Bob Dylan, for one, did mishear that particular lyric which led to him incorrectly assuming that The Beatles were already users of recreational drugs) Still, the song meant enough to John Lennon that he expressed a desire to someday re-record it, along with the likes of "Help!", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus". He never described it as "real" the way he did some of his more lauded works so perhaps he simply had good memories of writing it with Paul McCartney and, in particular, the way it so effortlessly took over the United States.

It should be said that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" means great deal to many people, especially in North America. It made them superstars in a country that couldn't have cared less about them just a week or two prior to it hitting the charts. People didn't pour over its lyrical depths, and not just because it doesn't possess any. All everyone wanted to do was be caught up in the sheer delight of listening to it. Famed beat poet Allen Ginsberg got up and danced to it in a New York club, no doubt losing hipster cred along the way. It prompted folk singers to embrace pop and thousands of youngsters ended up forming bands because of it. Those of us who would rather listen to music than play it ourselves couldn't bear to be without it. Why? Because it sounds so audaciously great. "If we were to ask the average listeners what The Beatles' lyrics mean, they would say very little", Ian MacDonald noted in the introduction to his book Revolution in the Head. "If, on the other hand, we asked the same listeners what The Beatles mean to them, we would get a very different response". The Beatles may have said little but they meant everything.

Score: 8

The Beatles: "She Loves You"

January 20, 1964 (3 weeks)

People love to crap on Dick Rowe, the record exec for Decca who turned down The Beatles, but I'm not so sure I would've been all that thrilled by competently played but ultimately pretty uninspired run throughs of "Three Cool Chicks" and "Besame Mucho" either. No, the far greater blunder was made by Capitol Records in the United States when they turned down "She Loves You" in September of 1963. "Love Me Do"? Yeah, I can understand the urge to take a pass. "Please Please Me"? They probably could've released it but maybe they were turned off by rumours that it was about a certain sexual act. "From Me to You"? In isolation, yeah, I might have turned my nose up too. But "She Loves You"? How on earth did they sit through its two minutes and seventeen seconds of running time and conclude that it was a loser?

With a little more faith in the commercial potential of British artists, Capitol's Canadian division had no qualms about releasing the latest Beatles' single even though the Fabs still hadn't managed to dent the CHUM charts either. It probably didn't hurt that Del Shannon's admittedly rather laboured cover of "From Me to You" reached the Top 20 a month earlier, far outpacing its peak inside the bottom quarter of the Hot 100. Helping out as well was Cliff Richard's recent run of hits north of the border: if one chartbusting English star could break Canada then why couldn't another — especially one that was even hotter? But the biggest factor of all was the role of Paul White, a recent transplant from Britain to Canada who landed a job with Capitol. The young rep began pushing acts from his homeland including this quartet from Liverpool who'd been racking up hits back home but who had so far been spurned down in the States. (You can hear more about White and Capitol Canada's role in The Beatles story by checking you this informative video on Andrew from Parlogram's YouTube channel)

"She Loves You" took its time catching on in Canada but once it had finally become a hit, there was no stopping it. Moving into the the Top 10 on December 5, 1963, it remained there for sixteen weeks. After its three weeks at number one had come to an end, it dropped to two and stayed there, a loyal companion to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" which had by then usurped it. (It had even greater longevity back in Britain: after four weeks at number one it then spent seven weeks either at numbers two or three before enjoying another fortnight back on top; it ended up spending a total of twenty weeks in the Top 5) I recently blogged about Jimmy Gilmer's very likable and very catchy chart topper "Sugar Shack" and how it outstayed its welcome by remaining on top for six very long weeks. While I am well aware of its many charms that helped it get to number one, its flaws would have been painfully exposed over that month and a bit. But I am unaware of anyone who ever got sick and tired of "She Loves You" (though, granted, I have known a handful of people who never liked it to begin with; we'll chalk that up to them being dead inside). How was it that people just couldn't get enough of it?

Before I get to its appeal, a word on what it actually means — at least to the extent that it means anything at all. Critics Tom Breihan and Tom Ewing have different takes: while the former likes the subtext of warning someone that if you don't start treating this girl right then they'll be the ones who'll swoop in and take her away ("They're The Beatles. They probably already [took her away]") while the latter eschews this in favour of the more optimistic view that it's really about friendship. It certainly can be read either way but it's also worth keeping in mind that John Lennon had got married while still twenty-one to a woman he would fall out of love with before long. The Fabs had already been getting up to no good with the ladyfolk for quite some time, a trend that would only continue as their fame grew. Could "She Loves You" be a message from co-writer and friend Paul McCartney or was it projection on the part of Lennon, a man who would one day compose a song all about an affair while gently avoiding saying so outright? The Beatles weren't about to position themselves as bad guys since everyone was counting on them to be the good guys.

Or, what if it's about Lennon and/or McCartney cruelly messing with their mate in question? Consider the song's second verse:

"She said you hurt her so

She almost lost her mind,

But now she says she knows

You're not the hurting kind"

What kind of toxic shit is this? Whatever this rogue did it nearly drove her to a nervous breakdown but now all of a sudden everything's forgiven? Whatsmore, he doesn't seem to have even apologized to her, so there's nothing to suggest he's been manipulating this poor girl. Everything is being transmitted from her to him via an intermediary who may not be completely truthful.

Here's the thing though: we're all way over-thinking things. Only a year prior to writing this, their biggest ever hit in Britain, they were thin on self-composed material and were fighting with producer George Martin over his suggestion that they record the moronic Mitch Murray tune "How Do You Do It?". The threat of making it big with a song they hated spurred Lennon and McCartney into upping their game as writers. While they were developing at a remarkable rate, many of these early efforts are nothing special, especially lyrically. (Lennon and McCartney just seemed pleased with the fact that they wrote it in the third person for the first time) Take the anecdote attributed to engineer Norman Smith who glanced at the words prior to a session and was none too impressed, figuring this wasn't going to be one of their winners. Then they started playing it and he was bowled over.

And well he should have been. "She Loves You" is the apogee of Beatlemania, even if it is anything but the prototypical Fab Four single. It opens with a drum roll and that unforgettable "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" chorus and there's no middle eight to speak of (which would actually be a welcome contrast to their slightly irritating habit of repeated bridge sections on many of the songs from 1965 albums Help and Rubber Soul). Subtext or not, all there is is pure joy, that rarest of songs that you're singing along with almost instantly. While the majority of fans in the twenty-first century opt for their more mature work from about 1965 all the way up to their break-up, they're missing out if they don't at least give the occasional listen to their peerless run of early singles. "She Loves You" may not necessarily be the best example of what they were capable of (more on that very soon!) but it certainly makes it clear they'd already mastered this pop caper.

Canadians ended up embracing The Beatles just before the Americans fell all over themselves for them, which, in turn, led to an even greater deluge of their product on the charts in the weeks ahead. As such, North Americans being forced to deal with a giant dump of Beatle product in a very short amount of time resulted in chart dominance but little appreciation for how far they had come in only just over a year as recording artists. The signs of what were to come were there but few would have seen them. Not only were The Beatles becoming vastly more popular but they were improving by the day. 

Score: 9

1963: Playin' My Records, Keep Dancing All Night

 6 — The Rooftop Singers: "Walk Right In"

 2 — Paul & Paula: "Hey Paula"

 3 — The Cascades: "Rhythm of the Rain"

 7 — The Four Seasons: "Walk Like a Man"

 9 — Skeeter Davis: "The End of the World"

 6 — The Chiffons: "He's So Fine"

 5 — Little Peggy March: "I Will Follow Him"

 7 — Cliff Richard and The Shadows: "Summer Holiday" / "Dancing Shoes"

 8 — Lesley Gore: "It's My Party"

 6 — Richie Knight and the Mid-Knights: "Charlena"

 7 — Jackie DeShannon: "Needles and Pins"

 3 — Elvis Presley: "(You're the) Devil in Disguise"

 6 — Doris Troy: "Just One Look"

 4 — Inez Foxx: "Mockingbird"

 6 — Bobby Vinton: "Blue Velvet"

 6 — Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs: "Sugar Shack"

 2 — Cliff Richard: "It's All in the Game"

 3 — The Singing Nun: "Dominique"

 9 — The Kingsmen: "Louie Louie"

When I was a little boy, we just had a small black and white TV. Then we got a colour TV when I was around four and I quickly realized that there were still shows like The Three Stooges and The Little Rascals that still looked old and grey. Why was everything from a long time ago in black and white while almost everything now is in colour? I came to the only sensible conclusion a child with my brain could come up with: because the whole world was in black and white until colour was finally invented.

1963 feels like the last fully black and white year. Actually, I'm quite sure that almost everything from the year after was as colourless as ever but the dullness seemed to be fading away. To be fair, dullness didn't swamp the entire world of pop in '63 either, just far too much of it. It was just that '64 had this massive act called The Beatles. (As many people already know, they were also a pretty big deal a year earlier but North Americans weren't listening either because they didn't care or they hadn't been given the opportunity)

'63 seems like a grim year but it's not all bad. In fact, it's pretty much average. (In the previous year end round up, I gave average scores; this year's is a 5.53, which puts it right in the middle of the pack) The problem is, even some of the good songs — "Summer Holiday", "Needles and Pins", "Sugar Shack" — are pretty throwaway. Beyond the trio of "The End of the World", "It's My Party" and "Louie Louie", there isn't much here to get excited about. A handful of times over the last couple weeks I found myself at a loss. "What could I possibly have to say about bloody "Dominique"?" I asked myself just a few days ago. Turns out, not a whole hell of a lot!

'64 has The Beatles providing the first real challenge to the Elvis hegemony, as well as the first the Canadian number ones for both The Beach Boys and Supremes. But, as always, not everything that went to the top proved to be nearly as sturdy. Nevertheless, it's a significant year, not the least of which because it marks the changeover from the CHUM to RPM as Canada's national singles chart. The days of number ones staying on top for five, six or seven weeks are numbered — it's just about time for a whole slew of one and dones to step up!

The Kingsmen: "Louie Louie"

December 30, 1963 (3 weeks)

"Louie Louie, oh no, there's a wig I know..."

Misheard lyrics are one of my side passions in as a lifelong music nerd. That said, I think I'd rather not know I'm getting the words wrong to some of my favourite songs. The magic is lost when you discover that the line you've been singing along with isn't actually what you assumed it to be. On the other hand, a good mondegreen transcends even the most talented of wordsmiths: I am so accustomed to "there's a wig I know" in "Louie Louie" that I couldn't even tell you what the actual line is unless I look it up. (I will, however, acknowledge that it could be "Whig" instead of "wig", just in case the song has something to do with eighteenth century British politics, rather than eighteenth century hairpieces)

"All I want is to be your thing and a night that lasts for years..."

Sometimes changes are subtle but still alter something that can't be replicated. I love me some Roxy Music, especially their early stuff, and even some of Bryan Ferry's solo work is pretty good but he flubbed "All I want is the real thing..." because it's nowhere near as potent as "...to be your thing...". Now, I should admit that this is looking at it through a twenty-first century lens when using the word 'thing' to describe a couple being together is commonplace. (Characters on a TV sitcom will sometimes refer to their new relationship as a 'thing') Nevertheless, I think it's a genuinely better line. To "be your thing" is to have some kind of vague relationship — committed or casual, devoted or toxic, loving or lustful — while the "real thing" is just a clear case of expectations getting way out of control. Is that the secret to misheard lyrics: that they allow us to contribute to the songwriting?

"With my Cherry Coke, walls come tumbling down..."

Of course Paul Weller wrote something else. There isn't much humour in his work — even if "my old man was a dustperson till he got the shove..." is still a funny line, especially with his nonchalant delivery — and he wasn't really the type to name drop products in his songs. He was, however, very much the type to compare himself to Jericho. I must confess there's projection in this one: the idea of celebrating a revolution with a refreshing cherry cola beverage does appeal to me. Wild Cherry Pepsi if I had my druthers but I'll take what I can get, especially if and when western neo-liberalism is on the verge of collapse.

"The girl with colitis goes by..."

Colitis? Seriously?? There are people out there who thought that was the actual lyric in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"? The late John Fred may have been a lazy bugger in not checking the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve but at least "Judy in Disguise" is a plausible error to make. Of course, someone had to have misheard it this way but how did it become one of the standard examples of the pop music mondegreen, along with "hold me closer, Tony Danza" and "excuse me, while I kiss this guy"? It has become not so much the line everyone gets wrong as it is the one you always hear about everyone getting wrong.

"Say it loud, say it clear, you can whistle as well as you hear..."

A number of years ago, I had a blog that I was doing to commemorate the year I spent in the UK with my family. It covered a mix of my experiences as well as the music of 1988 and '89. Each entry's title came from lyrics to pop songs of the time. For one of that January's entries, I chose the huge hit from Mike + The Mechanics, "The Living Years". For some reason I can no longer remember, I Google searched the lyrics and discovered that I'd been getting it wrong for over thirty years. I was crestfallen for a time but I eventually got over it. "You can listen as well as you hear" may indeed make far more sense but I'm too far gone at this point to change my ways. Whatsmore, the world would be a much better place if whistling was just as easy as hearing.

"Louie Louie, oh no, you take me to where ya outta go..."

I type the correct opening line from The Kingsmen's signature hit single and I know that I am going to forget it as soon as I publish this review. Is it really a misheard lyric if absolutely no one hears it the right way? Also, deliberately slurring the lyrics makes it a mispronounced not misheard. We've been hearing it right all along, thank you very much. No wonder there were rumours these collegiate frat boy garage rockers were covertly trying to sneak in some foul language by making the words so incomprehensible. And when you've got yourself such an insanely catchy, ass kicking song like "Louie Louie" who the hell is going to worry about the damn lyrics anyway? I mean, apart from a silly music nerd such as myself...

Score: 9

~~~~~

Can Con

"From Vancouver Island to the Alberta Highland..."

Uh, what??? The province I was born and raised in has been called a lot of things but "Highland" is one I've never heard applied. And no, it's not a misheard lyric — and I should know considering I just read the words. We have the Foothills which begin on the west part of Calgary and they lead into the Rockies but Highland isn't something I'm familiar with. The Raftsmen hailed from Quebec so I suppose they can be forgiven for being unaware of Western Canada (either that or they were in dire need of something to rhyme with the word 'island'). "Something to Sing About" was a minor Top 50 hit on the CHUM charts for a couple weeks in the early part of the new year. Not really my thing though I will concede I can imagine it going down a treat at a Cape Breton watering hole. Also, I'm missing home and I despise Trump so it's just the kind of thing I need to hear right about now. Plus, I'm sure those Alberta Highlands would have been gorgeous had they ever existed.