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I mentioned back on 'How Do You Do It' how the Merseysound was not something that appealed to me in any great measure. There's always something about the shift away from direct rock and roll rebellion to an English holiday camp type of presentation that irritated, that in many ways seemed a step back to an almost pre-war past in tone instead of building towards the future. Of course, a lot of the bands did use the era as a springboard to better things - none more than The Beatles - but on the whole it's a Liverpool-centric era that I'll not be too sorry to see the back of.
Very much a product of this movement, 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' dances precariously on the head of a pin for my affections, bringing out as it does the worst traits of the genre yet also the best of The Beatles to counter it. Taking the negatives first, the very title is a good place to start; 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' smacks of a polite tweeness, an English reserve that's keen to pander to an audience a world apart from the worldly wise twentysomethings singing it (it's interesting to compare it with the American slang of the 'I Wanna Be Your Man' single they wrote for the Rolling Stones that same year) and sexual shenanigans inherent in the very phrase 'rock and roll'. Hitched up to a main theme that skips out with the cutesy familiarity of a nursery rhyme then you have a recipe for an oversugared dish that even Freddy Garrity would have passed up as being too childish.
But then The Beatles, being The Beatles, pull a rabbit out of the hat in the form of the bridge "And when I touch you I feel happy inside" diversion that takes the song out of the nursery and into more grown up territory where the mere touch of a body sparks an electrical thrill that gives life to the would be hand holder like Michelangelo's God reaching out to jump start Adam with his finger on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It makes the hand holding a selfish, quasi sexual one (of course, it would have helped my thesis enormously if Lennon had actually been singing "I get high" instead of "I can't hide", but you can't have everything) and it's a diversion off the road more travelled that gives 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' its colour - you couldn't imagine Freddy Garrity pulling that off without making it sound cornball.
And even that simpleton tune has its own secrets; behind the soft gooey caramel of the basic melody is a hard nut centre of a rumbling garage guitar riff that provides a firm spine for Lennon and McCartney to implore "Oh please, say to me you'll let me be your man. And please, say to me you'll let me hold your hand" over. Trite yes, but delivered with a shrill shot of energy ("I want to hold your haaaAAaaAAnd") that's positively orgasmic, making the final score Merseysound 1, The Beatles 4.
Hitting number one with your first three singles is no mean feat - The Beatles didn't manage it and it wouldn't happen again until Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 1984 trio - so kudos to Gerry and his Pacemakers for pulling it off, but I've always harboured doubts whether the head that wore this particular crown was a worthy one. 'How Do You Do It' and 'I Like It' were amiably enough jollies that typified their era, but 'You'll Never Walk Alone' shifts sideways from Lime Street to Broadway with questionable results.
A Rogers and Hammerstein showtune from 'Carousel', 'You'll Never Walk Alone' is secular in lyric though its inherent message of self belief invites religious connotations and application in any context where hope and faith are lacking. Of course, its come to have particular relevance in the band's Liverpool hometown in that its become an unofficial anthem for Liverpool football club and part of my main beef with this is precisely because Marsden sings it with all the charm and eloquence of a thug on the terraces. Not that 'You'll Never Walk Alone' needs some celestial choir and backing to get its point across, but Marsden rides the goodwill train without a ticket, relying on the tune and lyric to carry it - Gerry does jovial well enough, but this crack at sincerity screams 'amateur hour' while behind him those Pacemakers creak like a rusty hinge in a stiff breeze. A brave stab at something different perhaps, but it's not the version I'd ever reach for first.
A Berry Gordy Jr song original recorded by The Contours in 1962 for Motown, 'Do You Love Me', there's a Beatles link here this too in that The Tremeloes were the band that Decca signed rather than the fab four. Time has shown who had the longest legs, but for a while they were equals with Brian Poole and the Tremeloes tapping into the same Merseybeat vein of the era, albeit giving it more American slant in their output (they also covered the Isley Brothers, Roy Orbison and The Crickets in this era).
Their version of 'Do You Love Me' is a fair and faithful approximation of The Contours in form, but though he's game enough, the polite edge of English in Poole's vocal is no match for Billy Gordon's original rasping plea to his woman to take him back now that he's learned some dance moves. Yes it's a trite concept for a song, but Gibbon's comical desperation makes it work - I can picture him busting some moves to illustrate as he sings while Poole just sounds pissed off in a way that at a stroke shaves a layer of charm off what is essentially a ludicrous proposition. Not 'bad', just eversoslightly redundant.
A charge frequently levelled against popular music is that its trite and meaningless, something vacuous and ephemeral designed to provide a quick fix but of no lasting value. In some cases it's guilty as charged, but I've always found such a view rather one eyed, missing the point and downright pompous - does a piece of music need to be some academically based Harry Partch type microtonal affair to have any inherent value? Nah, of course it doesn't. No brain simplicity can have its virtues too - take (for one example) the opening der der DER riff from 'Smoke On The Water'. Idiot proof simple, it's one of the first things any aspiring guitar player learns to play because it only takes ten minutes to master, even by someone playing wearing boxing gloves.
Does this lessen it's value? I think not - it takes a guitarist of no small talent and confidence to crank out a riff like that to power a six minute rock song. A lesser player would have filled in the gaps with all manner of widdly widdly business to show off their chops, but it would have ruined the effect. By hammering it out straight with no bullshit, Ritchie Blackmore laid down one of the most famous openings in rock music, no more and no less.
Which brings me to 'She Loves You'; "She loves you, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"; well how bonehead simple is that for a chorus? It's not hard to picture the po of faced pop haters of 1963 smirking "Tch, they don't even bother rhyming it with anything, and those 'yeah's' are not proper English either". And those critics did exist. But there's a yawning chasm between such a mindset and what the song sets out to do that could never be filled with a hundred years worth of "but that's the point" explanations. So why bother trying?
In its simplicity, 'She Loves You' presents itself as an explosive jetpack roar of energy that shreds The Beatles' coattail hanging rivals in its afterburn with a force that's embedded itself in the DNA of popular music to the point that the title can now barely be spoken in any context without following it up with those 'Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!'s'. And it's those cries that effectively peg 'She Loves You' as a young man's song - anybody under the age of....ooooh, 25......trying them on with the same level of enthusiasm would be like a dad in a disco wearing too tight jeans trying to replicate them, and that's before they even got to the 'wooos'. Which may be why, just like other famous, era defining songs (see also 'Like A Rolling Stone', 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Anarchy In The UK etc), cover versions have been few - what each of these songs possess is a hardwired ability to fix a time and place that has become just as much part of the song as the words and music so any attempt to replicate is always going to come up short.
Not that its never been covered, and at least one of these versions proved crucial to my appreciation of the song; for my own part, I grew up with 'She Loves You' and I'd always heard it as Lennon and McCartney screaming their joy to let the world know they were in love, but it took Ted Chippington's 1986 loungecore version for me to hear the lyrics properly for the first time and to understand the implications of them singing that she loves 'you', not she loves 'me'. Because it begs the question as to why should they care about this unnamed third party so much? Maybe John and Paul have got the hots for their mate's girlfriend too - it's obvious that they're close enough already for her to confide in them ("She said you hurt her so, she almost lost her mind. She said to let you know, you're not the hurting kind. She says she loves you").
Those conversational 'she said''s paint the breathless rush of emotion as clearly as lines from a John Osborne kitchen sink drama, conveying the message as the go-between between her and her ex to confirm that she still loves him and ending with the warning "And with a love like that. you know you should be glad." You can see the subtext of 'because if you don't shape up, treat her right and "apologise to her" then I'm going to make a move myself'. Which gives the urgency of the vocal a status quo maintaining subtext - if he doesn't sort himself out and get back with her then more than one friendship could be heading for the rocks.
But that's enough pseudo analysing - if you've never heard the song, go and listen to it now. If you have, listen to it again. It will only take you 2:17 minutes of simplistic yelling, but it comes with more excitement than a day out at a theme park and with more depth than all four sides of a double album by Yes. Remarkable. Quite remarkable.
When I was about eight years old, I was given a Thomas Salter Chemistry Set as a Christmas present. It came in a huge box stuffed with an array of coloured chemicals and compounds in glass test tubes and a meths powered Bunsen burner to mix them over. The idea was that you worked through the experiments in the instruction manual from start to finish to gain an understanding of how the various chemicals interacted with each other.
Being the impatient sort, the dull book was soon forgotten when I found that far more dramatic results could be had by mixing a dose of every chemical together in a tube with water then plugging it up; the gas generated was potent enough to blow the cork almost to the ceiling with a satisfying 'THUNK'. Mr Salter would no doubt frown at the less than educational use his product was being put to, but to me this was true experimentation, to not follow Tom's rules and to see where reckless abandon got me.
I can hear the same spirit of adventure in 'Bad To Me'. I commented in a previous post how The Beatles did things differently right from the start and so it goes here; for one - how many other up and coming bands would give away a number one hit song to a rival? Generosity indeed, because 'Bad To Me' is a good song. Billy J Kramer knew as much too, and evidently not keen to mess with the pedigree both he and The Dakotas serve it up it exactly as you'd imagine The Beatles would have, almost to the point that this could be the work of a Beatles tribute act. Which in all honesty is how I regard this single.
But even so, 'Bad To Me' positively revels in its display of John Lennon's (it's essentially a solo composition) flair for tune and melody; after an innocuous enough start and a main theme you think you've got a handle on, it breaks off to seamlessly chase a different tail before dipping into bridges and middle eights where you least expect them. A busy tune for sure, and one which almost makes 'Bad To Me' a dry run (albeit in microcosm) for side two of 'Abbey Road', a butterfly net that captures all their stray tunes and weaves them into one solid quilt.
True, 'Bad To Me' doesn't have the rounded neatness or apparent simplicity of other Beatles early hits, and true the lyrics may read as embarrassing juvenilia when taken cold ("The birds in the sky would be sad and lonely, if they knew that I lost my one and only"), but the mix of chemicals in this song provides substance enough to pop the pop cork delightfully and doubtless gave the band confidence to stretch their wings that bit further in the future (its experimental nature may also provide a clue as to why they were happy to give it away). 'Bad To Me' is the sound of writers gleefully ripping up the instruction manual titled 'How To Write A Popular Hit Song' and mixing up their own chemicals in the grooves of a seven inch vinyl test tube. And if they aren't yet throwing everything in to make a fizzy bomb, they've long gone by the page one instructions to always wear safety goggles.
Another Pomus/Shuman song, this time originally recorded by The Drifters in 1961 and one that The Searchers don't take too far from the tree. Whilst The Drifters played it with a vaguely ethnic, almost bossa nova vibe, The Searchers plug the gaps in the rhythm with acoustic guitar fills and a lead vocal from Tony Jackson that goes for the throat of the chorus at the expense of the verses.
Such an approach emphasises the almost bubblegum engine at the heart of the song, but unless you're prepared to get caught up by that hook of a chorus then it also makes for a less interesting listen. Those acoustic licks provide a dry run for the folk rock (e.g. The Byrds) to come, but truthfully 'Sweets For My Sweet' is an inauspicious debut at the top from a band seen as the closest rivals to The Beatles in their Merseysound heyday and at this remove it's curiously uninspiring.
Balladeer Elvis meets rocker Elvis head on in the same song? Well consolidating his appeal to ensure as broad an audience as possible is a nice idea on paper, but in practice the Janus-like mix isn't as appetising as it seemed on the menu; the balladic opening isn't that smooth and the rocking chorus doesn't rock all that hard. What's left is gimmicky hokum that satisfies nobody, least of all Elvis himself who on the 'slow' sections sounds like he's revving the engine at a red light and can't wait for the chorus so he can speed off. The extra geared handclapping outro tries to give it one last kick in the pants, but by then the damage has been long done and '(You're The) Devil In Disguise' is about as engaging as discussing advanced Calculus with a split personality, with neither of them knowing much about maths.
We've had four number ones now from Mr Ifield, and given the title of this latest (and last) offering, it seems an apt time for me to confess that I don't get it, I really don't. Ifield's party trick has been to vamp up older country tunes with a contemporary pop arrangement with some good time yodelling over the top. One big hit could have been regarded as a novelty, but to score four chart toppers strikes me as a trifle bizarre, and try as I might I simply cannot find the key that unlocks that particular Sphinx riddle - the appeal is a closed book to me.
'Confessin'' doesn't bring me any closer either; a 1930 song and one already much covered (by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Perry Como, Doris Day, Guy Lombardo and Ella Fitzgerald no less), Ifield's own take gives it a polish with a cod dramatic arrangement and (another) Frankie Laine Jr vocal that makes for a song that's as playful as a mousetrap. Perhaps sensing the shift in tastes, the yodelling is strictly rationed to a walk on role - just enough to ensure continuity of trademark but not enough to dominate yet that by itself only serves to adds to its ordinariness. 'Confessin'' is a workaday enough recording, but then so were his three previous hits and it's sameness meant that Ifield was about to get slung out of the last chance saloon once the new kids on the block took over.
Second single and second number one for Gerry and the Pacemakers, 'I Like It' is a better song than 'How Do You Do It?', but both obviously fell from the same mould to the extent that the former tune could almost be a loose anagram of the latter (both were written by Mitch Ryder so that may explain a lot). 'I Like It' benefits from a busier musical backing that's there to compliment the vocal rather than skulk in the background like its predecessor. Marsden too clips his vowels to give voice to a more precise reading than before that neatly dovetails with the silent pauses within the tune that act as a springboard to a nifty key change to sets up the next round of each chorus.
There's progression here, no doubt about that but the weakest link remains Marsden vocal that again smothers on the grinning bonhomie that makes each line sound like it's being sung with a knowing wink and playful shoulder punch at the audience. Such a device doubtless broadened its appeal in 1963, but it does nothing to preserve it in amber and 'I Like It' now plays like a quaint end of the pier period piece rather than something possessing any intrinsic historical importance.
"Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP".
So wrote Phillip Larkin in 'Annus Mirabilis'. Yes, 1963 was a key year - I can't comment on 'sexual intercourse', but there's no doubt that, for me at least, this first appearance by The Beatles marks a watershed in UK number ones; a sloughing off the curates egg mish mash of what has come before (as far as our fair country is concerned anyway) and a two fingers up to America, a country that had previously provided the soundtrack to the modern phenomena of the teenager. This was the sound of Britain finally standing up for itself and walking proudly into the future on two legs - from here on in things would be different.
Different? Dammit The Beatles were different right from the start; 'From Me To You' doesn't actually appear on their first LP. In fact, compilations aside, it doesn't appear on any of their LPs, a bold move in an era when LP's were the hit single bolstered by whatever filler was knocking around in the cupboard. The times they were a' changing and for the better.
From the off, 'From Me To You' is the Mersey Sound writ large - the energy of skiffle, the melody of pop and that accented grit of the teenage working class creating a movement by themselves for themselves. This time, instead of a lone Gerry Marsden carrying the burden of the tune by himself, there's the complimentary duet of Lennon's abrasive scream tempered by McCartney's more melodic vocal with both delving into an unexpected falsetto on "if there's anything I can dOOOOOOO' (which allegedly caused Kenny Lynch to claim they sounded like a "bunch of fairies"). At a stroke it fills out what could have been a slight song, but more importantly there's a proper band feel this time, of four mates having a blast which makes it a far fuller and gutsier proposition than 'How Do You Do It?'
Yes there's a level of repetition, but there's alchemy at work here that disguises it - 'From Me To You' passes in a rush, never sitting still for all its five verses yet still managing to turn twice on a sixpence to shift key into two bridges in its less than two minutes running time. That it's catchy as a birdsong didn't hurt either and this is the first number one we've come across where I kind of wish I'd been born at an earlier date than I was (in 1945 say) so as to enjoy its impact all the more. I'm not suggesting that The Beatles left a scorched earth trail in their wake; time will show that the charts will still always have room for a big stringed ballad or a tin pan alley croon at the top, and good luck to them. But 'From Me To You' is the start of a highering of the bar and a re-writing of the rules so that such guests will be regarded more as gatecrashers to a party where the hosts have revoked their invitations and are patiently looking at the clock until they get the message and leave.
As purveyors of the home-grown 'Mersey Sound', Gerry and the Pacemakers managed the rare feat of beating The Beatles to the punch by scoring the first genre number one. First maybe, but that's not to say fab four had no influence over this at all - 'How Do You Do It?' was originally recorded by John, Paul George and Ringo in September 1962 with a view to releasing it as the follow up to 'Love Me Do', but being no fans of the song they managed to persuade George Martin to nix the release in favour of their own 'Please Please Me' instead.
Listening to their aborted take, the lethargic disinterest of the boys is palpable and their lack of joi de vivre renders the song a stillborn dud. Gerry and the Pacemakers no doubt capitalised on this illustration of how not to play the song by booting it the opposite direction to rev up the engine and shove it's high kicking, showtune qualities upfront. The Pacemakers provide a chunky enough backing, but it's Marsden who assumes tune carrying duties with a rough and ready vocal that makes up for with enthusiasm what it lacks in finesse.
And what strikes most about Marsden's vocal is his complete lack of any attempt to disguise his regional dialect. With British acts usually keen to ape their American inspirations, his Mersey grit makes Marsden sound like an alien in his own country's chart. Of course, Anthony Newley voiced his tunes in his own cockney twang, but in so doing it still carried the 'proper' respectability of the sort of 'typical' English accent the rest of the world believes the whole country speaks with. When Marsden opens his mouth, pure scouse drops out and it's the first example of a British vocalist revelling in his own locality and playing a brand of rock music that's not hell bent on recycling Chuck Berry riffs.
But in saying that, in all honesty the 'Mersey Sound' is not a sound I've ever cared for much (with some honourable exceptions excepted), and 'How Do You Do It' is a good enough example of the fixed grin simpleton, cabaret sound of many of the early hits that I find so irritating. Despite Marsden's noisy squawk, there's a complete lack of backbone to the song, an absence of purpose or drive that the vocal can't paper over and it sees the "How do you do what you do to me? I wish I knew. If I knew how you do it to me I'd do it to you" theme played more for nudge nudge George Formby-esque winks than anything more lasting. The Beatles failed to exploit the song's innate good humour, but in deep mining it, Gerry and the band only succeed in priming the song as ideal fodder for the chicken in the basket oldies circuit some thirty years in the future. But still, it gives the sixties a strong enough push to get them swinging.
Over the previous months I've noticed a definite split in quality between the tunes The Shadows had written for them and those they wrote themselves; 'Foot Tapper' is a Hank Marvin/Bruce Welch composition that shoots its bolt early then recycles endlessly to the point that the title almost reviews the tune - a foot tapping melody is literally all there is to it. As a tune it's a harmless diversion, but it comes flat packed and brittle, lacking a third dimension of depth to fire the imagination the way their best work does; 'Foot Tapper' comes and goes and I feel no different from having heard it than before the needle hit the groove.
"In winter 1963, it felt like the world would freeze, with John F Kennedy and The Beatles" - not a line from 'Summer Holiday' but from The Dream Academy's 1985 tribute to Nick Drake 'Life In A Northern Town'. And I quote it because I think it provides a convenient context for this present number one; Kennedy's death was still some months in the future and The Beatles were only just making the ripples that would cause the tidal wave on the shore, but Winter 1963 was cold. Bloody cold. To précis a relevant Wikipedia entry:
"In January 1963 the country started to freeze solid with temperatures as low as −16 °C (3.2 °F) in places. Frozen fog was a hazard for most of the country. The sea froze for 1 mile (1.6 km) out from shore at Herne Bay, Kent; BBC television news expressed a fear that the Strait of Dover would freeze across. The upper reaches of the River Thames also froze over. The ice was thick enough in some places that people were skating on it. Icicles hung from many roof gutterings; some of these were as long as a metre (3 feet, 3 inches)."
With all that going on, summer holidays must have seemed a long, long way off even in March, but Cliff's bags are packed and he's on his way, all the while sending us postcards from places "where the sun shines brightly" and "where the sea is blue". Just where he's going is left a suitably vague blank canvas because in truth it doesn't matter; just as long as it's sunny and not freezing Britain then that's fine. We can use our own imaginations as to where the best place to holiday would be.
Light and laid back to the point of simplistic brevity, 'Summer Holiday' breathlessly conjures up a vision and ambience of an idealised summer that everyman aspires to. It's a slight song with a light touch almost to the point of there barely being a song at all, just a lingering echo of nostalgic memory of the 'fun and laughter' Cliff leaves behind him as he drives along in his bus.
"We've seen it in the movies, now let's see if it's true" - the rest of a country white with snow could only look on with envy, but there's no bragging or one-upmanship in the song - Cliff has grasped the nettle to look for the sun and it's up to us to follow if we want. As an aspiration for a future of endless possibilities, 'Summer Holiday' is a carefree delight that's endured far better than anything that has Cliff expressing his undying love, and as such it adds a very welcome plank of credibility to what can charitably be called a mixed bag of a discography to date.
A much covered country standard, Ifield's 'The Wayward Wind' is confused to the point of schizophrenia, as if he knew the tide was turning to leave his own brand of yodel based entertainment high and dry but didn't know which shore to swim to for the best. The basic tune is retained and Frank reins in the yodelling but it's re-cast with a uptempo arrangement that hits the ground running and comes laced with lashings of rolling harmonica blasts that sound a little bit Merseysound, a little bit folk but absolutely like nothing country. Ifield too manages to sing in a high key that drives a coach and horses through the wistful lyric yet with a deep tone of a poor man's Frankie Laine that adds an unwelcome layer of mock drama to what started off as a party (Laine would record it himself in 1968 but in a suitably sombre arrangement). The result is a mess of a recording that doesn't sound so much like Ifield's last roll of the dice, but of him rolling several dice at once and hoping at least some of them land snake eyes up. But none do I'm afraid and this particular wind blows straight over me.
After the ho hum plod of 'Dance On', ironic then that it should take two ex-members of The Shadows to show how it should be done. Or, rather, how it used to be done - 'Diamonds' is another tune from Jerry Lordan with America at its heart and this one creeps with a pulp fiction B movie menace (these stones definitely have blood on them), that reveals a tune chocfull of plot twist after plot twist as it wrongfoots with abandon from hard plucked guitar runs to brass flourishes, though Meehan's machine gun drum fills forever keep it on point so as to keep it from collapsing in on itself. Like the best films, 'Diamonds' repays repeated listening, and with a young Jimmy Page on acoustic guitar too - I'm sold! Great stuff.
I can't help thinking that much of this later success enjoyed by The Shadows comes from the goodwill bleed over of Cliff's fans looking for the next best thing when their boy didn't have a single out. 'Dance On' is a lively enough instrumental, but it lacks all the memorability and inventiveness of 'Apache' or 'Wonderful Land' and their releases are starting to sound very samey; there's nothing here that Duane Eddy or The Ventures weren't doing just as well but with only a fraction of the success.
In following the chronological progression of Cliff Richard's output, what strikes me to date is just how little progression or change there actually is. Cliff, it seems, found the golden ticket early in his career and made little attempt to break free from its self imposed parameters. His American 'counterpart' Elvis shapeshifted from A to B to C over the same period, but Cliff doggedly ploughs the furrow he carved out for himself; taken from the 'Summer Holiday' film soundtrack, 'The Next Time' and 'Bachelor Boy' is a double A side that's dated 1963 but could just as well be from ten years earlier.
Another thing I've noticed too is that Cliff likes to plough that furrow all by himself. No matter what The Shadows are up to behind him, Cliff prefers to wander all over the melody like a drunk following the white lines home. 'The Next Time' is a case in point - the backing music is a hazy evocation of an empty 1930's ballroom haunted by the ghosts of memories slowdancing to a phantom orchestra (which suits a song that lifts chunks from 'Pennies From Heaven' for it's structure), but Cliff's textbook deep breath, sugar dipped skip remains positively earthbound and detached from the atmosphere about it, and that's despite producer Norrie Paramor dunking it in echo. It's not a bad song, and Cliff always seems more comfortable on the slower stuff than the rockers, but the slightly half finished, slightly half baked feel of the end product is not something I'd ever rush to listen to again.
'Bachelor Boy' is more old school still; despite a jauntier tune (borrowed this time from 'Que Sera Sera'), 22 year old Cliff declaring himself a bachelor boy couldn't sound more Victorian if it pitched up on a penny farthing wearing a top hat and walrus moustache. Which is presumably what his father was wearing when he doled out the advice "Son you are a bachelor boy and that's the way to stay. Son, you be a bachelor boy until your dying day." Why being a 'Bachelor Boy' and ditching girlfriends on the basis of this advice is considered such a virtue or recipe for happiness is never revealed, though the accompanying film sequence of him and The Shadows skipping around in what looks like a clichéd representation of male homosexuality adds several layers of not-inconsiderable sub-text to the plot. But whatever, there's a reserved politeness underneath 'Bachelor Boy's homespun wisdom that grates like a temporary tattoo or non pierced nose ring on some goody goody pretending that they're bad when they're clearly not - even Elvis at his cheesiest would have thought twice about recording this.
I mentioned back on 'How Do You Do It' how the Merseysound was not something that appealed to me in any great measure. There's always something about the shift away from direct rock and roll rebellion to an English holiday camp type of presentation that irritated, that in many ways seemed a step back to an almost pre-war past in tone instead of building towards the future. Of course, a lot of the bands did use the era as a springboard to better things - none more than The Beatles - but on the whole it's a Liverpool-centric era that I'll not be too sorry to see the back of.
