The Hollies: "Stop! Stop! Stop!"

December 19, 1966 (1 week)

"This may not exactly scream 'future Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famers' but I'm all for groups overachieving"

I stated the above in my previous review of The Hollies and, indeed, I had several paragraphs written expanding upon the idea of the Manchester quintet having gone well above their pay grade to put out a solid if unspectacular run of hit singles and, I assume, some respectable albums. (I've never listened to any LPs by The Hollies aside from a Greatest Hits that my mum had on cassette) I even went into some detail about how they were not unlike fellow Rock Hall inductees Duran Duran, focusing on how aside from having one really talented member apiece (Graham Nash and John Taylor respectively), they were of modest skill but still managed to carve out hugely successful careers. Too bad it was a load of crap.

If anything, The Hollies were probably underachievers. The Clark-Hicks-Nash songwriting partnership was starting to get going with at least one of them eventually becoming a strong composer in his own right — even if he would become somewhat overshadowed by his future bandmates. The other thing Graham Nash had going for him is that he could harmonize as well as anyone this side of Don and Phil Everly. Tony Hicks isn't regarded as a guitar hero by many but he deserves to be appreciated for his tight solos and abilities with virtually any stringed instrument handed to him. Similarly, Bobby Elliot had the misfortune to come along in the midst of a golden age of British drummers but he was (and no doubt still is) able to hang with them. For a group who had many hit singles and have a place in the Hall of Fame, they are still rather overlooked.

And yet The Hollies were held back by their inability to craft truly excellent pop, at least on a consistent basis. The Beatles had thrown down the gauntlet: while the likes of The Kinks, Rolling Stones and The Who were up for the challenge, it would prove elusive for The Hollies. But I think it's to their credit that they attempted to respond. They didn't shrivel up and die or resort to novelty pop pap or become an embarrassing light entertainment side show. As I have already stated, they were in that middle ground - just below The Yardbirds, right above The Dave Clark Five - that could out perform most of the crummy groups pedaling fluff but out of their depth when held up next to the big boys.

A song like "Stop! Stop! Stop!" might have been good enough for The Beatles eighteen months' earlier when they were putting together the soundtrack album for their second feature film Help! but it was the sort of thing they had all outgrown. Even the pop-friendly Paul McCartney had become a much deeper songwriter by 1966, composing the bleak "Eleanor Rigby", the delicate "Here, There and Everywhere" and the semi-comedic "Paperback Writer". Okay, comparisons with the Fab Four have never done anyone any favours (apart from The Beatles themselves) but Jagger and Richards were also maturing as songwriters, Ray Davies was busy sending up British society and Pete Townshend was already dabbling in rock operas, albeit on a small scale.

On the other hand, there are elements to admire. If you're only half paying attention to the lyrics you might assume that it's about not being able to keep up with a girl who loves to dance; pay close attention and you discover that it's about a young man overflowing with sexual energy for a hippie chick he's been lusting after. Well done on somehow being both explicit and subtle. Plus, the ever-reliable Hicks does a fine job on banjo (apparently it had been sped up in order to sound more like a balalaika but I don't hear it myself; for what it's worth, there is a lot of echo involved). Whether the influence there had been country or Eastern European, it was forward thinking of them to go with it.

Nevertheless, this song is still only passable. A definite problem The Hollies had that didn't seem to trouble either their superiors or even the more remedial side of British pop was their lack of hooks. "Bus Stop" had them in large part due to Graham Gouldman's songwriting skills but the Clark-Hicks-Nash team clearly isn't there yet. They were able to put together a perfectly enjoyable number, only the kind you'd forget all about as soon as it was over. Say what you will about Herman's Hermits, at least their songs have the power to stick to the brain.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" is the forty-ninth British chart topper in Canada since The Beatles hit the top of the CHUM charts back on January 20, 1964 with "She Loves You". (A considerable achievement consider there had only been seven UK number ones prior to it) As '66 draws to a close, it's safe to say that the First British Invasion was winding down. There would be only eight RPM number ones from Britain the following year — with three of them alone coming from The Beatles, so it wasn't as if they were well spread out either. Paced by The Monkees, American pop would be back in pole position. But just as the British Invasion proved to be all over the place in terms of quality so, too, was its US counterpoint. One more pretty good one closes out the year before we begin to slide into what promises to be a bleak 1967 for singles. No wonder everyone chose to get high all the time.

Score: 5

Peter and Gordon: "Lady Godiva"

December 12, 1966 (1 week)

He was a player in London's thriving avant garde arts scene, involved in the the operations of the famed Indica Gallery in London along with Barry Miles and John Dunbar. He befriended Paul McCartney, the pair sharing a loft on the top floor of his family's spacious home. He would go on to be the head of A&R for The Beatles' Apple Records, pushing for the signing of a young James Taylor and supervising the recording of albums by both doomed power pop group Badfinger and jazz legends the Modern Jazz Quartet. He then went into management and record producing in Los Angeles. Yes, you might say Peter Asher has accomplished a great deal over his eighty plus years. It's just a shame his actual music wasn't up to much.

Hot on the heels of "Winchester Cathedral", music hall was everywhere! You couldn't throw a beer bottle in disgust without it hitting an opportunist looking to cash in. Having rode the wave of Lennon and McCartney's generosity for more than long enough, Peter and Gordon weren't about to change course at this point. Sure, they could've followed the example of The Beatles and embraced more exotic types of music while also doing some studio experiments of their own. Alternatively, they could have done the obvious thing and moved in the direction of folk rock. They could've been Britain's answer to Simon and Garfunkel, for Pete's sake!

Nevertheless, something had to be done. The rise of The Monkees on the other side of the Atlantic likely signaled an end to the British Invasion. Thus, "Lady Godiva" appears to be an attempt at maturity. I say 'appears' because the results don't really bear it out. The risque nature of doing a song about a mythical exhibitionist transported in time to the swingin' sixties is rather undercut by the vaudeville send up. And they weren't really able to pull off passable music hall anyway. Asher and buddy Gordon Waller sound uncertain as to whether they're supposed to come across like either a pair of horned up losers out on the prowl or a cheeky comedy duo winking to the audience as they fire off innuendos. While I might wish for them to have chosen a lane, neither approach was going to lead to anything worthwhile. Ultimately, "Lady Godiva" offers proof that the music business was about to leave them behind — the same music business that Asher became an intrinsic part of.

While it might seem like Peter and Gordon were either incapable or unwilling to write their own songs, they were able to contribute some of their own material for their albums, even if the cover versions always outnumbered the originals. Their singles releases, however, were made up entirely of either covers or numbers written especially for them by others. (On the other hand, some of their own songs ended up as B sides, including the Byrdsian "Morning's Calling", the flip side of "Lady Godiva") While a hit-making machine for a period, it's difficult to see just what they contributed overall. Waller would go on to record a solo album, do some acting and then run various businesses in both his native Britain and in the US while Asher did everything I mentioned above. It's good to know they were both able to be much more than mediocre recording artists.

Score: 4

The New Vaudeville Band: "Winchester Cathedral" / Dana Rollin: "Winchester Cathedral"

November 28, 1966 (2 weeks)

"Thus, for the first and only time, Canada's number one single happened to be occupied by the same song done by two different acts".

Yeah, about that...

The confident claim above from my review of previous co-number one "Concrete and Clay" by Unit 4 + 2 and Eddie Rambeau respectively is directly attributable to Wikipedia and my reliance on it. I had been aware of the former due to its use in the classic Wes Anderson film Rushmore but I had been unaware of the latter. Wikipedia's List of Number One Singles in Canada proved edifying and it lead me to believe that this unique practice of placing competing versions of the same song in the same chart position had been a one off. I hadn't seen anything to make me think otherwise and that, apparently, was good enough for me. Nevertheless, the Free Encyclopedia once again proves that it's only as reliable as its contributors allow it to be. Under the list of chart toppers for 1966, "Winchester Cathedral" is credited simply to The New Vaudeville Band. (Or it was: I just changed it)

The last time we had co-chart toppers — speaking of which, from this point forward I'm simply going to claim that it remains to be seen if it will happen again — it was a case of two reasonably even competitors who were duking it out south of the border while enjoying a unified sense of purpose up north. This time, however, there is no such similar balance in terms of prominence. The New Vaudeville Band had already had a Top 5 UK hit with "Winchester Cathedral" and they would reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 during the first week of December. The version by Dana Rollin, however, came out at about the same time but only got as high as number seventy-one in the States. Of course, that's no guarantee the Rollin version would have performed similarly even though it's worth pointing out that it failed to appear on CHUM's Top 50 from the same time. (The New Vaudeville Band managed to make it all the way to number one on Toronto's chart with little-to-no support from its rival)

All that said, there's some evidence that Rollin managed to do a bit of the heavy lifting in her own right. According to one YouTube comment, her "Winchester Cathedral" managed to be a local chart topper in some North American markets, including Denver, Detroit, Houston, Pittsburgh and Vancouver. Another mentions that it was the more popular version in New Orleans. On a separate YouTube video — yes, there are multiple uploads of this forgotten recording — someone claims that legendary New York DJ (and noted 'fifth Beatle') Murray the K actually played this one on his radio show before ever getting hold of the New Vaudeville original. (Finally, another poster claims that "Pops had both versions of this he liked Dana's better!"; he's probably just referring to his old man but wouldn't it be something if Louis Armstrong had been a fan? Talk about a feather in your bowler's cap)

But let's get to the quality of the music. (Oh, must we?) Like a lot of the music hall that "Winchester Cathedral" harks back to, it is charming but the novelty doesn't last. The more well known recording by The New Vaudeville Band manages to wear out its welcome by the time John Carter's 'small-man-in-a-box' vocals make their belated appearance. As for Dana Rollin, it's harder to say. (Her version has the advantage of being something I'd never heard prior to the day before yesterday) I will say that her rendition does a better job merging the twenties with the sixties: while Carter's voice sounds like a parlour trick, her vocal has a graininess that makes me think I'm listening to an ancient Kate Smith record. Meanwhile, the backing combines jokey cornet solos with a surprisingly sturdy beat, as if a rock 'n' roll session band found themselves trying to do hot jazz from forty years earlier and not succeeding. Every bloody second of the Vaudeville original is spent doing an affectionate send up of a genre few cared about; the Rollin edition is more like a very flawed facsimile and that's precisely why it works better — though not by much.

Is it its quirkiness that, to quote the lyrics, brings it down or are The New Vaudeville Band and/or Dana Rollin to blame? A clue may be found in Nancy Wilson's much more straightforward big band jazz version from her 1967 album Just for Now. This is the sort of thing I'd much rather listen to: as ever, Wilson is a pleasure to the ears and the band backing her are disciplined if lacking in flash. (Only Mike Melvoin on organ really stands out) Yet as a result, it's more forgettable, a song about how an ancient place of worship isn't bringing a couple together or something. Everything that made it unique was stripped away. Thus, we're left with a work that is memorable but grating. The Vaudevilles and Rollin had to play up to its music hall roots lest it be just another pop song that few would ever bother paying attention to.

Still, modern music fans and critics are obsessed with everything being 'influential' nowadays and in that regard you've got to hand it to The New Vaudeville Band. While Paul McCartney's dad had been the leader of a jazz band and would've been all too familiar with the genre and George Harrison had been a fan of the legendary George Formby and John Lennon appreciated anything absurd, the presence of groups like the NVB would've affirmed in The Beatles a commitment to start playing around with music hall for much of the year ahead (and, to some extent, beyond). I know they aren't regarded as deeply influential the way Frank Zappa and Ravi Shankar are but I think they played a part in Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For that matter, the scant number of British acts who've dabbled in music hall since — Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Madness, Blur — have a similar (minor) dept to the Vaudevilles. This doesn't make "Winchester Cathedral" any easier to listen to listen to but I feel I ought to say something positive at this point. I may not hate it but that's about as encouraging as I can be.

Annoying as it is, the average person probably has no idea how infuriating it must be to be a verger at the actual Winchester Cathedral in the county of Hampshire. Not a day must pass in which obnoxious American tourists are heard whistling, humming or even singing the lyrics as they tour one of Britain's most historic places of worship. It's bad enough that early Anglo-Saxon kings such as Edmund Ironside and Cnut are overlooked in favour of the post-Norman rulers but to have their main resting place be the stuff of music hall farce robs them of whatever dignity they had left. Did they spend their lives pillaging and plundering for this? (The Cathedral's administrators seem to have decided to steer into the skid by having their choir sing on a re-recorded version. If you can't beat 'em, etc., etc.)

Finally, a word on Dana Rollin, who I had no idea about until two days ago. Come to that, I still don't know much about her. There's a suggestion - again, from one of the YouTube clips - that she was just sixteen at the time she recorded this which means she'd still only be around seventy-five years old now. Her discography is pretty minimal but her "Winchester Cathedral" did end up on a 2007 on a randomly compiled pop-rock CD from France. Otherwise, she is a ghost. Thus, for the first and only time, Canada's number one single happened to be occupied by an individual who doesn't have their own Wikipedia page. (I'll be eating those words before long, won't I?)

The New Vaudeville Band Score: 4

Dana Rollin Score: 5

~~~~~

Hey! Where's...

This feature hasn't been used much of late but I felt it worth while on this occasion since "Winchester Cathedral" wasn't just sort-of-catchy-but-also-mildly-irritating but it also blocked The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" from its rightful place at number one. (At least on the Hot  100 it had the good graces down south to get out of the way of Brian Wilson's masterpiece for a week before returning right back to the top) This isn't anywhere near as big of a pop injustice as it was back in 1960 when the ghastly Anita Bryant and her shitty single "Paper Roses" took the top spot from The Everly Brothers' masterful "Cathy's Clown" but it's worth bringing up all the same. We're now on the dawn of 1967 when the rock album as an artistic statement was reaching its apogee and, consequently, when the singles charts began to appear more as a refuge for bubblegum pop and novelty songs that weren't cut out for the LP market. Some of the finest singles of the year wouldn't come close to the top of the hit parade but at least the albums they were associated with garnered plenty of critical acclaim and were feted by generations of similarly unsuccessful power pop bands. Sorry, I just found myself in the middle of a rant...what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, where The Beach Boys! "Good Vibrations" is great, right? I mean, I prefer "Sail on, Sailor" myself but it's hard to argue with just about the only decent song off of the Smiley Smile album. Damn, I feel another rant coming on...I'd better just close out here. See you next time!

Johnny Rivers: "Poor Side of Town"

November 21, 1966 (1 week)

Gram Parsons may have dubbed it 'Cosmic American Music' but he didn't invent this blend of country, folk, gospel, pop, rock and, soul. Being "cosmic" and all, it couldn't have had an inventor as such. Rather, it was the kind of thing that was always in the air in one form or another. For example, there's the famous story of the musicologist John Lomax travelling the American south in search of supposedly "authentic" music for him to record. While he did get plenty of it, singers like Lead Belly and Blind Willie McTell made it clear to him that they were just as into singing the Broadway hits as they were the lamentations of the poor cotton pickers. Cosmic American Music.

1968 was the year in which country-rock really took off but there were rumblings of the coming revolution two years' earlier. Gone from The Byrds, songwriter Gene Clark pulled himself together to record Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, a country-folk-rock melange that delighted critics but failed commercially. Meanwhile, The Byrds themselves were without their most talented composer and had to make due with the contributions of others in the group to flesh out what would be their fourth album the sublime Younger Than Yesterday. While leaders Roger McGuinn and David Crosby were tripping on psychedelic rock and baroque pop, bassist Chris Hillman quietly emerged with some fine works of his own, including the country-influenced "Time Between". While by no means quite ready to embrace the country at this stage, Bob Dylan had decided to record his seminal double album Blonde on Blonde in Nashville which likely opened him up to the possibilities in the genre as well as the skill and discipline of Music City's finest session cats.

In the case of Johnny Rivers, 1966 was the year he made the transition from swampy blues-rock to slushy love songs. What a total sellout, eh readers? Well, no. He had already been doing pretty well for himself so more of the barroom rock covers could've kept him in steady employ for the foreseeable future but, much like Lead Belly and Blind Willie McTell before him, he had more to be singing about than what his loyal audience expected of him. At around the same time, he was busy forming Soul City Records which became the home of future stars The 5th Dimension.

I hear some 'Cosmic American Music' in "Poor Side of Town", Rivers' third and final (and best) Canadian number one. No doubt purists disapproved of his shift from the Bayou to balladeering accompanied by a lush orchestra but those people are idiots. Rivers' voice has never sounded so rich and the backing provided by the great jazz and pop arranger Marty Paich complements it beautifully. But while the easy listening sucks the listener in, there's touches of country and soul that clearly never left Rivers. Merging several strands of Americana into his sound must have been easy since they were all second nature for him.

For all of his success, Johnny Rivers is largely a footnote in the history of American popular music. I have previously been critical of his inability to truly stand out from the pack. It's also possible that he wasn't especially influential compared to others (although his earlier work sounds like it must have made an impact on John Fogarty as he was putting Credence Clearwater Revival together). Yet, he had a respectable career based around the music he loved to sing and perform. It was Cosmic American Music and it didn't much matter whether he used that name for it or not.

Score: 7

~~~~~

Can Con

Voyons donc! According to Discogs, Quebec quintet Les Sultans released twenty-seven singles in their day. So, how is this the first I'm hearing about them? Oh right, because they chose to sing in French which just isn't on if you're to become a big deal in the US and Britain. "La poupee quit fait non" was the group's biggest hit and I suppose the closest thing they would have had to a signature song. It would've been better had the shuffling acoustic guitars been plugged in for a rockier edge but it's a spirited little number all the same. Les Sultans would go on to record in English but they sound far more at home in their native tongue. Quite why they chose not to credit Ray Davies and Them's Tommy Scott for their French interpretations of their songs for their self-titled debut album is anyone's guess. Perhaps they figured no one would notice. Newsflash: we did! (Their first single from back in 1964 was a re-write of The Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" called "Toujours devant moi", which was credited to Lennon-McCartney-Descheneaux-Ward, one of Ye-Ye pop's all-time great songwriting teams)

Herman's Hermits: "Dandy"

November 14, 1966 (1 week)

With the rise of The Monkees in the latter part of 1966, how much did the landscape of the British Invasion was altered? Beatlemania was done, the Merseybeat groups had faded and the harder rock combos from the south of England had shifted to darker and/or more cynical content. Peter and Gordon and Herman's Hermits still remained but even they must have known they were on borrowed time.

In what seems like a surprisingly cagey move to remain relevant, Peter Noone's Hermits chose to follow the tougher crowd from down south. Ray Davies had already become a respected songwriter in the midst of The Kinks' golden age but few recognized his potential as a hit maker for others. Having a Top 40 hit with a Lennon-McCartney castoff was easy but what about someone doing some sharp and witty social commentary from one of The Beatles' chief competitors? That took guts. (Say what you will about Noone's weak singing voice but he was able to spot talent in others; his one real solo hit was with "Oh You Pretty Thing" written by David Bowie, who in 1971 was still known primarily as a one-hit wonder)

Plundering The Kinks' back catalog for material proved to be fruitful for those few who've bothered having a go. Covers by the likes of The Pretenders ("Stop Your Sobbing") The Jam ("David Watts") and Kristy McColl ("Days") are at the very least tasteful. Even Herman's Hermits managed not to completely mess up "Dandy". That said, improving upon a Ray Davies original is damn-near impossible and if superior talents like Chrissy Hynde and Paul Weller weren't able to do so then there would have been little hope for Noone and his chums (who, lest we forget, may or may not have played on this).

I recently wrote a little on "Dandy" in my review of The Kinks' magnificent "Sunny Afternoon", feeling that the two songs go together as a commentary on members of the aristocracy who idle their lives away on leisure and various indulgences. In the case of "Dandy", it's all about getting in as much illicit sex as his dick can handle (the character in "Sunny Afternoon", meanwhile, is reaping what he sowed by becoming a shell of his former self). Noone was a popular pinup back in his day and it's quite possible he may have indulged in what was being made available to him. As such, I hear his version of "Dandy" as slightly more of a celebration of his lifestyle. (Take note of his perked up vocal as he repeats the title of the song at the start of each verse: "Dandy, DANDY!")

Barring the odd superfluous string section, the two versions are more or less musically identical so all that is left is to further knock Noone's flawed reading. Flawed? I could stand to be a little more generous, couldn't I? Okay, let's say that Noone took to the song in his naive manner for better or worse. On the one hand, he has considerably more spirit than the dry Davies; on the other, he strips away any depth to the character. Even when Noone tries to sing it properly, he still misses the mark: Davies' garbled attempt to do everything possible to get a rhyme out of the lines "pouring out your charm / to meet you own demarnds" is corrected by the lead Hermit but at the cost of its humour.

With scores of 4, 4, 3, and 4 you certainly can't accuse Herman's Hermits of being inconsistent. They manage to pull their average up just slightly with what is their finest RPM chart topper to date. Despite my misgivings above, "Dandy" is Ray Davis at the top of his game and that's reason enough to put it above the poor offerings that came before it. We're just about done with Peter Noone on this blog and I can't say I'm going to miss the cheeky bugger.

Score: 5

The Monkees: "Last Train to Clarksville"

November 7, 1966 (1 week)

Judging by the number of one-week wonders that had been topping Canada's RPM chart of late, you might be forgiven for assuming that they were all in and out of the hit parade in rapid succession. And, indeed, many of them were. But the debut number one smash from The Monkees was not one of them. With a little luck, the meager seven days "Last Train to Clarksville" spent on top could have easily been over a month — no mean feat when you consider what a rarity even a fortnight on top had become.

Debuting at number seventy-seven on September 12, 1966 (the same day the group's sitcom of the same name premiered on NBC), "Last Train to Clarksville" gradually rose up the RPM chart, eventually settling in a number two just over a month later. Observant followers of this blog will note that Eric Burdon and the Animals' "See See Rider" hit the top spot the same week. After spending another week on top, it was then deposed by ? and the Mysterians' "96 Tears". Meanwhile, The Monkees sat patiently in the runner-up spot before finally hitting the top in November. Following its belated seven day spell at summit, it would go on to spend yet another week back at number two before continuing its downward slide.

TV shows used to operate on a word-of-mouth basis. (I remember as a seventeen-year-old tuning into the season premiere of Seinfeld while ignoring everything else that was on that night. The next day, a handful of people at school were raving about this new show on just before it that they claimed was just as good. The following Thursday I tuned into it to see what all the fuss was about. The word of mouth on Friends spread so quickly that it was the biggest show on TV within a month of its debut) The Monkees may have operated with both their music and their accompanying show under a similar circumstances. (The buzz was such that "Last Train to Clarksville" managed to chart in the UK despite the fact that the show wouldn't air until the early part of 1967)

Though it may seem now like they were slow to do an American equivalent to The Beatles, it turns out that their timing couldn't have been better. Not only were the Fabs finished with touring by the autumn of '66 but they had already been moving away from the rush of Beatlemania and, in any case, they were set to embark on six months of relative inactivity, their longest spell away from the spotlight since becoming recording artists. Had The Monkees been rushed a year or so earlier, there may not have been the same appetite for them while the masters were still hot. Whatsmore, the wan side of the British Invasion was beginning to fade (sadly, with a couple of notable exceptions) so they were there to fill that void as well.

"Last Train to Clarksville" was the first of six Canadian number ones by The Monkees (double their total on the Hot 100). These half-dozen songs represent all the contradictions of the prefab four: some are very good, others are okay and at least one is just dreadful; the first batch come from when they were under the thumb of their management, record label and TV executives while the latter half are from when they began to wrest control; while they were all very obviously big hits only the first three or four come from peak 'Monkee-mania', by the time of their final RPM chart topper they were just about done. So much activity for what amounts to just a year-and-a-half at the top.

Appropriately for such a flash-in-the-pan, The Monkees hit the ground running with "Last Train to Clarksville". While borrowing heavily from The Beatles (others seem to hear a lot of "Paperback Writer" in it but I get "Run for Your Life" vibes, aside from, of course, all the problematic shit), the songwriting/production team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart smartly tapped into the American garage rock scene to give it a slightly tougher edge. Many of the stronger Monkees' numbers from their early period — "She", "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" — sound like Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork actually might have been playing on them and these lean more in the direction of the suburban bungalows and their car lots, which, as we'll be seeing in a future entry, they would one day even make fun of. (It was only with their lighter, more moronic material that the studio assembly line began to reveal itself, also something we'll be getting to in yet another review in this space)

Though it has the energy of the garage rockers of the era, there's much more professionalism to it than on fellow number ones by Tommy James and the Shondells or ? and the Mysterians. Dolenz's enunciation ("...you can be here by 4:30") puts his background in acting to good use. Meanwhile, the brief chorus of guitars at around the 1:40 mark sounds like the sort of thing that The Beatles or Byrds would have painstakingly worked out in a swanky studio (the fact that it happens to have been played by people who weren't actually in The Monkees is neither here nor there). In effect, it was garage rock which managed to escape the garage.

Much has been made over how "Clarksville" is actually about Vietnam. Indeed, I recall first reading about the connection in a Q Magazine review of The Monkees' studio albums and I thought it was brilliant but now I've got to say that perhaps too much has been made over what is just one line: "And I don't if I'm ever coming home". Sure, it could be about 'Nam but in a song about meeting a girl one last time, it sure seems more about, well, seeing her one last time. Never coming home? Yeah, many young people leaving their go-nowhere hometowns for the big city have said that kind of thing before. Either that or he's really just trying to cajole is best girl into one more night together.

There's so much to unpack surrounding The Monkees that appreciating their music can lose out but I will attempt to rectify this in future pieces about them. I feel like a measured approach is due: while their critics despise them far more for what they stood for rather than their body of work, their fans and post-poptimism retrospectives tend to treat them too favourably. To the extent that anyone needs a Monkees album in their collection, I'm comfortable saying that a well-compiled greatest hits is enough for the vast majority of us. The Monkees don't deserve my love nor do they deserve my derision; what they deserve and what they're going to get is some of my attention.

Score: 7

~~~~~

Can Con?

While The Monkees were busy pretending to be The Beatles, there were others who attempted to fabricate their own backstories. The Five Canadians sound like your typical hard drinking, hard partying garage rock group from Etobicoke, Ontario except for the fact that they hailed from San Antonio, Texas. (Still, at least there were five of them because a four-piece Five Canadians would've been even more of a mindfuck) Garage rockers overdoing it on the organ has been really getting to me of late but I'm into it here on "Writing on the Wall". Nothing that will blow you away but their excitement is palpable and their playing is tight. Good stuff. As for their name, it may have worked as a way of getting attention in the Lone Star State's clubs but there's no way Canadians were falling for it. We have a sixth sense when it comes to Americans sticking Canadian flags on their backpacks, you know.

? and the Mysterians: "96 Tears"

October 31, 1966 (1 week)

One of the most fascinating albums in my collection is The Third Reich 'n Roll by oddball deconstructionists The Residents. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's something I like listening to a whole lot but I'm occasionally in the mood for it. (I'm much more of an Eskimo man myself) The Third Reich 'n Roll consists of a pair of medleys full of hits primarily from the sixties. It opens with Adolf Hitler impersonating Chubby Checker and it only gets weirder from there. Grotesque versions of "Land of a Thousand Dances", "A Horse with No Name" and "Light My Fire" are among many classics that are included. (There are also quite a few more that I can't even recognize)

Improving upon the originals is beyond the point but I think The Residents managed to pull it off with their admittedly brief snippet of "96 Tears". It comes early on the album's second side (titled "Hitler Was a Vegetarian"; the first side is known as "Swastikas on Parade") between a very impressionistic take on John Fred's "Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)" before folding into Lesely Gore's "It's My Party" presented in a manner as if sung by a bunch of drunken frat boys. (FYI, the two medleys include quite a few Canadian number ones) In a slurred, Louisiana drawl the vocalist sounds desperate and pleading and sickeningly so. But there's also room for some humour, something that the original lacks. Still, The Residents' "96 Tears" amounts to all of about forty-five seconds and it's quite likely that its charms would have worn off had a couple minutes been added to it. (Another, more substantial, cover was recorded in 1990 by British band The Stranglers but it doesn't measure up to some of their classic hits like "No More Heroes" or "Golden Brown"; it's a shame they didn't inject a little more menace into it)

"96 Tears" has been by described by some fans and critics as the first punk song. I'm always somewhat skeptical of such claims, just as I am about the way people like John Lennon and Keith Richards were labelled as "punks" in around 1977. (Hmm, I wonder why no one thought to describe them as such back in the sixties?) While there is some truth in this — garage rock is every bit as D.I.Y. as punk — I don't really see the point in anointing an after-the-fact genre upon it when there's already one that will suffice. I suspect that use of the term 'punk' is also meant to give extra weight: punk, as we all supposedly learn when we're around fifteen, means something. It has a message. All that crap.

Whatever you call it, "96 Tears" is surprisingly slow and plodding. Repetitive too. (Another thing it has in common with an awful lot of punk) Not very engaging either. (Jesus, this is just a laundry list of complaints, isn't it?)  And, once again, it tests my patience when it comes to those acid rock-style organs. That said, there's really not much to it beyond Frank Rodriguez's Vox Continental playing - and I don't mean that in terms of highlights of the song since you'd hardly notice a guitar playing throughout the damn thing.

? and the Mysterians — I'm still undecided whether it is one of the all-time greatest names for a band or an exercise in lameness, though it could very well be both — are often thought of as a one-hit wonder (and they certainly fit the criteria in Canada) and they won't be popping up in this blog again. The garage rock boom certainly produced its flashes of inspiration but just as often there were groups like this who probably shouldn't have left the suburbs from whence they came. You can be a hard-working, ceaselessly touring band but if your songs can't hold my attention at least up to and including the first run through of the chorus then what do I care about them? We can knock manufactured pop all we want but at least they typically have the tunes to back them up. Speaking of which...

Score: 3

Eric Burdon and the Animals: "See See Rider"

October 17, 1966 (2 weeks)

For all the innovating that The Beatles were doing at the time, they couldn't do it all. For example, both Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention had put out rock double albums prior to the Fab Four's 1968 two disc set The Beatles (aka The White Album) — with a select number of jazz artists predating them as well. John, Paul, George, and Ringo pioneered such practices as the use of feedback, doubeltracking, the use of tape loops, recording backwards, and made being compositionally self-sufficient a standard (among other things), so it really isn't necessary to credit them with innovations that they had nothing to do with. (Seriously, they did not invent the concept album) They were ahead of the game yet there weren't always there first — and occasionally they could even miss the bus on certain fads in the world of pop. One trend that the Fabs ended up being surprisingly late in adopting was releasing songs that clocked in at well over the three minute mark.

This is something that I've been noticing more and more as I've been covering the Canadian number ones from 1966. Up to this point, seven singles I've reviewed have sailed past three minutes (Lou Christie's "Lightnin' Strikes", The Vogues' "Magic Town", The Mamas and the Papas' "Monday, Monday" and "I Saw Her Again", The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black", The Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" and The Association's "Cherish") with another five (David and Jonathan's "Michelle", "Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman", Tommy James and the Shondells' "Hanky Panky", The Hollies' "Bus Stop" and Los Bravos' "Black Is Black") coming just a few seconds short. The days of the trim two minute 45's going to the top appear to be coming to a close. (The Dave Clark Five's "At the Scene" has been the shortest of the lot with an economical one minute and fifty-two seconds).

Songs being three-or-so minutes may not seem like much of a change now but it represented a significant shift in pop. The release of both The Beatles' Rubber Soul and Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited in 1965 began to shift pop and rock recording artists away from singles and towards albums. With more running time to play with, there was less of a need to keep songs on the shorter side. With more substances being taken by musicians, time became more elastic. The old worry that DJ's weren't about to play singles for any more than three minutes could easily be shrugged off: if they were going to cut it off at the halfway mark so they could yammer on then so be it.

Clocking at just over four minutes is "See See Ride" by Eric Burdon and the Animals. (They had simply been The Animals previously but departures and a retooling of the group led to a renaming; like most acts who are altered to an "...and the..." they were never the same afterwards) Extending a 7" past conventional times is not always a mistake — Bob Dylan's extraordinary "Like a Rolling Stones" famously went on for a remarkably fat-free six minutes— but it should only be done if there's no going any shorter. Being that this is an intense 12-bar blues without any frills beyond a trippy organ, Burdon and co. could have easily shaved it down to two-and-a-half minutes and no one listening would've been the wiser. But would I like it more had it been cut down? Possibly but I can't say for sure. Had it been, say, two minutes and twenty seconds, I wouldn't have grown as tired of it but perhaps I wouldn't have noticed it as easily had it not outstayed its welcome. What got me to pay attention was that it was getting on my nerves.

Eric Burdon was always a blues singer, he had the voice for it and he was such humourless individual that he couldn't have done well in any other genre. (That said, there is wit to be found in the blues but not when it came to the leader of The Animals; to be fair to him, many British blues singers tended to be overly earnest) "See See Rider" is an old time blues number by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and one thing it never needed prior to this version was acid rock organ slithering through the entire thing. (Come to think of it, it still doesn't need one) I've long been a sucker for the likes of Booker T. Jones and Joe Zwainul but spotting a superfluous organ solo can be painfully obvious. Remove it and we're left with yet another competent but rather pointless Animals' blues tune; added on, it just comes across as lazily pandering to the trends of the emerging psychedelic rock movement. The pressure was surely on to compete with The Beatles and Stones but if any group wasn't going to be up for the challenge it was — with all due respect — The Animals.

The Beatles, fresh from being done as a lucrative but creatively stifled live act, would quickly adapt to the move away from the two minute pop song. The four minute running time of 1967's "Strawberry Fields Forever" would soon become the rule. Not coincidentally, this was also around the time that the golden age of the pop single came to an end. The Animals were never the most natural of stars and only ever put out a respectable if unremarkable batch of 45's so it wasn't the biggest loss for them. As a blues act, they may have been looking to stretch out. Which is great but only if you happen to like that sort of thing.

Score: 4

Los Bravos: "Black Is Black"

October 10, 1966 (1 week)

It was at the end of 1994 that a struggling boy band from Orlando, Florida made the bold decision to fly to Stockholm to work with a young producer and songwriter named Max Martin. Mind you, this may not have been the decision of AJ, Nick and the other three so much as it had been their record label and management calling the shots. (Needless to say, autonomy is not typically something boy bands and girl groups are given much of) Though by no means an overnight success, the Backstreet Boys eventually became huge and with their chart dominance came Max Martin as a hitmaker to the stars,

Americans are very precious when it comes to pop and rock. The invented it, they made it insanely commercial and they spread it around the world, so I guess it isn't any wonder why they tend to resent others trying to bring it back to them. Executives at Capitol Records in the States may not have even given The Beatles' "She Loves You" a single listen for all we know; just the fact that they were a British rock and roll group was evidently reason enough to turn them down. Then, when the British Invastion promptly hit, they set about trying to recreate it using their own songwriters, producers, engineers and studios. While The Beatles gave serious consideration to heading to Memphis to work with guitar ace Steve Cropper, do you think The Beach Boys or Byrds ever gave any thought to crossing the Atlantic in order to make an album at Abbey Road studios? (I am aware that there are exceptions but for the most part international musicians seek the United States rather than where the truly exciting music is coming from - which, to be fair, often is somewhere in the US)

Unburdened due to their country's lack of rock 'n' roll background, the Spanish quintet known as Los Bravos sought out the UK in order to make it with English language recordings. And, amazingly, they pulled it off (at least for a little while). While George Martin may not have been available or, if he had been, his services would have been prohibitively expensive, the band managed to link themselves up with Ivor Raymonde, a gentleman who had already made a name for himself as producer of many of Dusty Springfield's hits, including the sublime "I Only Want to Be with You".

Raymonde's stock in trade had been those lush but booming Dusty records, usually accompanied by a string section. Just as a good coach or manager in sport tailors his or her skills around the team rather than the other way around, Raymonde must have recognized that Los Bravos were a rock group who didn't need any superfluous backing. That said, there are credible reports that indicate that session musicians participated with minimal involvement from most of the band themselves. What can I say? If I producer isn't able to get much from the act their working with then they'll be more than happy to utilize others to fill in for them. The only concession made to orchestral beat music was German-born Mike Kogel's intonation that was not unlike Gene Pitney's.

Regardless of who appears on it, "Black Is Black" is an impressive breakthrough hit. True, it may sound a little formulaic (the intro eases the listener in with a simply rhythm section part, followed by a guitar, then an organ, by which point we are very much in sixties' garage rock territory) but the power and passion is hard to deny. While often lumped in with some of the darker songs from the era, it is melancholic but not wrist-slashingly so. It doesn't pretend to be a harbinger of doom in the era of flower power, it is merely a straightforward rocker to have on and enjoy and then forget all about until the next time you happen to encounter it.

Joe Meek was a mad experimental sonic genius and George Martin guided the biggest band in the world through the better part of a decade's worth of astonishing creativity. Yet, Swinging London failed to become a place where pop and rock stars flocked. Judging by the respectable results Los Bravos enjoyed, it's amazing more didn't go there to try something similar. A sixties version of Max Martin might not have materialized either way but it's tempting to ponder this particular — yet rarely discussed — pop music what if.

Score: 6

~~~~~

Can Con

I haven't been too impressed with Gordon Lightfoot's sixties' material thus far. It sounds more and more like he spent the bulk of the decade attempting to find his way. Good on him that he eventually did but that doesn't save some pretty grim recordings from prior to him finding it. Yet, "Spin, Spin" indicates that he was getting there. His voice is beginning to take on his familiar, oak-aged combination of weariness and optimism. It may not seem like Gord was in his element with a straight up pop song but he pulls it off rather well. It is said that he resented The Beatles for their omnipresence and the fact that their rise to prominence coincided with a decline in folk music but I wonder if the Fab Four had a subtle impact on his work at around this time. Not, mind you, by Gord moving towards the mainstream but by allowing their breeziness to infiltrate his sound. In any case, much better things were coming: "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" for one.

The Association: "Cherish"

October 3, 1966 (1 week)

Depending on your age you may associate (pun intended) the title "Cherish" with one of at least three different songs. Baby Boomers will no doubt think of the present single, early Generation Xers will mention the Kool and the Gang number and those of us who edge ever so closely to Millennials would pick Madonna's. I am very much the latter. (There doesn't seem to be many credible subsequent Cherishes; looking the title up on Wikipedia, there are individual pages for the above but not much else, though it does appear to have been a popular title for East Asian singers) Fun fact: all three topped the charts in Canada - don't ever say we aren't a country of sentimental old drips.

It isn't the most commonplace of titles but it's hard to argue with how songs called "Cherish" have resonated over the years. (By comparison, "Stay" is far more common, especially back in the early nineties, but there have been fewer chart toppers by that name) In part, there's how beautiful and delicate the word is. If you were to tell a loved one that you "can recall so many fond memories" or that you "cherish these precious memories", you'll likely get a more positive response to the latter. The sentiments are the same but the poetry of "cherish" is something else. (It speaks to its potency that both The Association and Madonna sing of how "cherish is the word...")

As a Generation Xer, I'm going to come right out and say it: The Association's "Cherish" is nowhere close to as good as the other two. Is it because I grew up on them and only associate (there's that word again) the original with K-Tel ads for sixties' compilation albums? It could be, even if I don't really have much of an attachment to Kool and the Gang's contribution either (joyful dance bands do not need to bother with well-made if overly syrupy love songs if you ask me). Ultra-smooth soft rock isn't something I'm against per se but it needs to have more biting lyrics or Karen Carpenter on vocals to really keep my attention. A song called "Cherish" is already at a disadvantage when it comes to matters being too soft so it's almost a no-win situation. Still, Madonna managed to pull it off okay but, then again, with all due respect to The Association, they weren't Madonna.

Veteran folkies had some decisions to make with the arrival of the British Invasion. Those who acted as if they didn't give the matter much thought were probably better off because the rest chose to go pop. A lot of folk music in the fifties hadn't been as cutting edge or as politically charged or as threatening so it might not have been as radical a leap as we might assume. Still, John Phillips maintained at least an appearance of his folk background, the pure-bred, milk-fed Associates looked like a pack of vocal harmony dorks who seemed far more comfortable in pop. Had The Association sold out or had they simply found their true calling in an easy listening genre that better suited them?

Jon Savage has pointed out that some of the success of "Cherish" may have been down to the "sense that things had gone too far" and that the "mainstream audience was turning away from pop art explosions". The Rolling Stones' highly accomplished, hugely thrashy single "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" was one of those extremist records that was turning people away from the fringes and back to the centre. As someone who likes the Stones quite a bit and doesn't really think much of The Association in general, I've got to agree. I might admire "Have You Seen Your Mother..." but I'd sooner listen to "Cherish".

Score: 4

The Kinks: "Sunny Afternoon"

September 26, 1966 (1 week)

The Beatles' "Taxman" has a great deal going for it. For one thing, it's an eye-popping opener to what is probably their finest album, the much-loved Revolver. Not only does it sound incredible but the topic of having to pay too much tax isn't something fans of the Fab Four would've been expecting — even from the same group who had recently sung of pitching a crappy novel to a publisher. Whatsmore, it's funny, even down to its spoofing of the "Batman" theme song. It is also a remarkable effort from George Harrison who had only recently been little more than a songwriting novice dwarfed by the Lennon-McCartney behemoth/cash cow.

The one thing that nags at me about "Taxman" is that it isn't all that likable. At the end of the day, it's a rich man's whinge over not being able to horde more of their cash. (Oh, must I have to pay for those damn nurses?!?) The same ought to be true of The Kinks' lone Canadian chart topper "Sunny Afternoon" but pop's original wise ass, Mr. Slappable Face himself Ray Davies actually wrote something which sends up the leisured class while also displaying the slightest bit of empathy for them.

While the Merseybeat boom took off and then promptly faded, the London-area groups were quietly improving. Few would've guessed that the same band who did rough and tough hits like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" would be the same quartet who would eventually become synonymous with kitchen-sink dramas, wit and Englishness while assembling one of the sturdiest back catalogs in all of pop. The turning point had been "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" which practically defined sixties' Swinging London while at the same time taking the piss out of it. This would become a Kinks hallmark.

Ray Davies' brand of cheeky cynicism reached its zenith on The Kinks' first album masterpiece Face to Face. A fourteen-track affair loaded with zany character studies — only on the rather mean-spirited "Session Man" does Davies' shtick begin to grate — it isn't as fondly remembered as some of their subsequent albums (especially their 1968 flop-disguised-as-a-classic The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, a work that "Sunny Afternoon" anticipates) but it is probably their finest work in terms of quality tunes all packed in. (Well, it's either that or follow-up Something Else...or maybe the cockney country music of Muswell Hillbillies. The point is, they made a lot of great albums; the idea that The Kinks were mainly a singles band is absurd)

While "Sunny Afternoon" is the centrepiece of Face to Face (even if they chose to bury it on the album's second side as its penultimate track), one of its other more commercial-sounding tracks is "Dandy", a character sketch of a wealthy young man with little going on in his life beyond scoring as many women as his member can handle. His conquests are detailed but there's this growing fear that others are moving on with their lives while he's stuck in his rut. Though things aren't going especially well for him, this Dandy is sent off with a reassured "you're all right". Listeners ought to despise him but one of Davies' skills as a songwriter is to bring out the charm and humanity in losers and arseholes so as to become far more than mere caricatures. ("Dandy" wasn't released as a single in the UK or North America but it performed well in parts of Europe, even hitting number one in Germany. It ended up being gifted to a British Invasion act I'm not very fond of; more on that in the next week or so)

The character in "Dandy" could easily be the same miserable chap in "Sunny Afternoon", only with several years of bad decisions separating the two. He's no longer happy-go-lucky, just a sad old miser from the moneyed aristocracy languishing from the taxman having "taken all [his] dough". No doubt born independently wealthy, he's never had to work a day in his life and he's not about to start now. Look up the word 'entitlement' in one of those picture dictionaries that everyone seems to think are commonplace and you might find his photo (though there's little doubt in my mind that he would happily rail against others for being far too 'entitled').

Yet there's more to it than shitting on rich people. While he sits there in abject misery, he's in the sunshine, "sipping on an ice-cold beer": this dandy isn't aware that there's a world around him for him to appreciate. To be able to lounge around in the summer air with a drink sounds pretty good to a lot of us. What Davies is presenting us with is the old adage that 'money cannot buy happiness' but put in a way that isn't cliched nor heavy-handed. Wallowing yet unaware that he is in the middle of a very pleasant day: the rich just don't appreciate what they've got, do they folks?

The descending piano chords imply a certain dread on the part of his nibs but at the same time, Davies' delivery is so relaxed that it sounds like it's just another day for him. It's as if the dandy wakes up every morning in his admittedly crumbling estate and figures that this going to be the day when it finally collapses all around him. He gets up at eleven in the morning, has a simple breakfast of tea, toast, marmalade and bloody marys and then just kind of lays back and waits for the inevitable - an inevitable that never comes. Had this character been around in 2025, he'd be perpetually online, ranting on social media and/or his sad little YouTube channel about how "you can't say anything anymore" and "how political correctness has gone mad" (he'd be so out of touch that he would assume that these are still hot takes rather than hackneyed and tired); stuck in the sixties, however, all he can do is lick his wounds and enjoy his life - even if he's taking no pleasure in it himself.

Though not as immediate as "You Really Got Me", doesn't pull at the heartstrings like "Waterloo Sunset" and isn't nearly as endearing as "Lola", "Sunny Afternoon" has become a Kinks signature, arguably surpassing those three songs, along with many more exceptional Ray Davies compositions. When it came to giving a name to The Kinks' jukebox musical, any number of their songs could've been picked including two I just mentioned (it's difficult to imagine they would've gone with Lola). But "Sunny Afternoon" is about the duality of success and failure, about having it all yet knowing there's far more to life, about fretting over what one doesn't have while failing to appreciate what is right under their nose. How can you get more Kinks than taking the mickey out of the wealthy? By acknowledging that we're all that way. Great as "Taxman" is, "Sunny Afternoon" is everything it is and more. Davies may not have been Lennon or McCartney but he could more than hold his own against George Harrison.

Score: 10

The Beatles: "Yellow Submarine" / "Eleanor Rigby"

September 19, 1966 (1 week)

One of the most noticeable changes when the Canadian pop charts switched from CHUM to RPM was that double A-sides were no more. Beginning with Elvis Presley's "I Beg of You" / "Don't" back in the start of 1958, there had been eighteen number ones whose sides were given dual credit, the majority by The King himself. (The Beatles had the last two with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" / "I Saw Her Standing There" and "All My Loving" / "This Boy" respectively) Along with all of the many, many one-week wonders that have been coming up, RPM brought about a strict adherence to single title entries — with one exception.

(While no longer a national chart, CHUM continued publishing what deep down they always had always been: the Metro Toronto hit parade. Chart toppers by the Fab Four continued to be recognized as doubles with the exception of "Nowhere Man" in the spring of 1966. From that point forward, some were listed as one title while others were doubles. Thus, relatively innocuous Beatles releases like "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", "Act Naturally" and "For You Blue" are all technically CHUM number ones)

For whatever reason, "Yellow Submarine" ended up getting propped up by "Eleanor Rigby" for their twelfth Canadian number one smash. I say "propped up" because the lettering of the former is clearly bigger than the latter on the single's cover, indicating that a hierarchy had initially been involved. Was there the worry that the public wasn't going to take a Ringo Starr-sung piece seriously? Were those stately Paul McCartney vocals considered a safer bet? Or were they afraid that the fans, who had been growing up with The Beatles, were going to reject the more childlike "Yellow Submarine"? It's also possible that their concerns could have been going in both directions: had "Eleanor Rigby" been the A-side, would the group's younger following have accepted it?

The dual "Yellow Submarine" / "Eleanor Rigby" single was released in conjunction with The Beatles' monumental seventh album Revolver. (A reminder that they did sometimes bend their unwritten rule of not releasing singles from their LPs)  Quite why they chose these two songs over about eight or nine other perfectly good options is a mystery. Presumably, George Harrison's trio of excellent contributions — the startling album opener "Taxman", the lovely "Love You To" and the rather overlooked "I Want to Tell You" — were ruled out in a Lennon-McCartney power play (assuming any of them had even been up for consideration at all). McCartney's more overly commercial efforts — "Good Day Sunshine", "Got to Get You Into My Life" — would've made for smashing singles while some of John Lennon's varied contributions — "She Said She Said", "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Doctor Robert" — could've come in handy as B-sides. While it's true that the child-friendly catchiness of "Yellow Submarine" makes sense as a single release, the stark "Eleanor Rigby" is just about the last Revolver track I'd place on a 45. (That said, I don't wish to take swipes at it: along with some of the album's other standouts — "I'm Only Sleeping", "Here, There and Everywhere", "Tomorrow Never Knows" — "Eleanor Rigby" is almost too good for the pop charts)

Listening to it today, the pairing smacks of being a Revolver sampler instead of a single that is able to stand on its own merits. Perhaps this is somewhat due to tracks on other Beatles albums bring embargoed from the Top 40. Had there been a precedent of one single per album then it might not stick out so much. What if there had been "All My Loving" / "It Won't Be Long" from With The Beatles? "Eight Days a Week" / "I'm a Loser" from Beatles for Sale? "Norwegian Wood" / "I'm Looking Through You" from Rubber Soul? Maybe I'd hear this one differently but these fantasy singles also undermine it. The most commercially viable singles are the easiest to imagine which doesn't do "Eleanor Rigby" any favours. Or maybe it's just down to the album having simply too much quality on offer to have to pick just two.

But let's put all that aside in order to continue to look upon the development of The Beatles with customary awe. George Harrison would later observe that Rubber Soul and Revolver were like two sides of the same coin but it's hard to completely agree when the latter happened to be such a huge step forward from its predecessor (which, needless to say, had been a major advance in its own right). Even without the context of their parent album, both "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby" are astonishing. While a childhood singalong and the tale of lonely people may seem like an odd pairing, there are elusive links. Lennon's early work tape on the 2022 Revolver box set added a whole new depth to what had once been regarded as something of a throwaway: "In the place where I was born," John sings glumly, "no one cared, no one cared", which is as poignant as Eleanor picking up rice at a wedding that she can only fantasize of. It was only after working with McCartney that the Yellow Submarine fable began to form. Even then, it's of no little significance that the new line "in the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed the sea" came from a tune composed by Lennon, whose wayward father had been a merchant seaman.

The two songs are a counterpoint to the other. In "Yellow Submarine" there is a group of friends who've found this idyllic life living in their vessel. (The idea that "many more of them live next door" is one that has always fascinated me: do these subs park on the bottom of the sea, creating whole neighbourhoods or do they float in unison?) In "Eleanor Rigby" there are two people who haven't been so lucky. Chums living a life of ease and all the lonely people: are these stories of two separate groups of people or are they both about The Beatles themselves? The parties would have been something else when you're in the biggest group of all time with a sizable entourage and all kinds of hangers-on but the endless touring and isolation had taken their toll. With the kind of alienation they had already experienced (let alone what they would go through in Japan, The Philippines and the United States during their final tour in the summer of '66), is it any wonder they were in the mood for some fun in the middle of the ocean — or, failing that, on a Greek island, or in an Indian ashram...?

As I already stated, giving "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby" equal treatment ended up being a one off on the RPM hit parade. This is a shame since it ensured that its long-awaited follow-up — "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane", released the following February  — would end up split. Being that it is arguably The Beatles' at the peak of their powers, the two deserved to share a place at the top of the charts. It didn't happen but 1966 and '67 marked a turning point when albums began to take precedence anyway. The Beatles were just about done as the greatest singles band in music history but their story is still far from over.

Score: 9

Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames: "Get Away"

September 12, 1966 (1 week)

So what was I saying before? Georgie Fame is a genius? Someone who is long overdue a critical re-appraisal? Criminally underrated? No, none of those.

Well, how about rubbish then? Someone who didn't deserve even the tiniest fraction of their success? Tunes that have aged about as well as an English sitcom about a racist old grouch who lives next door to some darkies? No, those don't ring a bell either.

Oh, I know! The jury is out on Georgie Fame! Turns out, it still is.

The last time he came up, I wondered if the singer with the most made-up sounding name in showbusiness would gradually ditch jazzy lounge pop in favour of something more commercial. The opening bars of "Get Away" seem to confirm my suspicions though as the song progresses the horns and a very mid-sixties organ creep in to maybe give his jazz bona fides a boost. The result probably ought to be a hybrid but somehow ends up as competent but unremarkable British R&B.

As opposed to "Yeh, Yeh", "Get Away" was an original composition(though it was credited to one 'Clive Powell' who was not in fact a gentlemanly banker from Surrey but was Fame's real name). Yet, it sounds far less fluid than its predecessor. Fame hadn't been entirely convincing as a suave vocalist but he gave it his all on his first major hit. The same cannot be said for this one though. As Tom Ewing notes in his brief review, Fame "sounds awfully bored" — and who can blame him? I'm pretty bored listening to it.

There is still one more Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames (shouldn't leave them out!) number one to go but my impressions aren't favourable and I'm confident in saying he was already on the decline - and he hadn't really got off to the hottest start to begin with. Whether they were up to the challenge of pulling themselves up is something I can get to in the months ahead but I'm not terribly confident. Maybe "rubbish", "didn't deserve [their] success" and "aged badly" aren't quite so far off after-all.

Score: 4