1964 The Beatles: I Feel Fine

They say that familiarity breeds contempt and that's true enough, but it's also true that it breeds over familiarity just as well. I've highlighted in previous entries how some of the songs now under consideration are as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror, and as far as that goes 'I Feel Fine' is a case in point - I can't say I've sat down with the purpose of listening to it for many a year, but equally, such is my familiarity with the song I'd have no problems at all in getting up to sing it karaoke without having any of the lyrics in front of me on the prompt screen.

To that end, I could have cheated and written this piece off the top of my head on the basis of memory by 'playing' the song through in my mind. In so doing, I'd have no doubt commented that The Beatles had already refined the verse/middle eight/chorus/verse structure to a fine art on 'A Hard Day's Night' and that 'I Feel Fine' was a spot jump in terms of progress and a step back in terms of excitement. In short, I'd have said it was the sound of a restless band marking time by probing for weaknesses in a wall of tradition they'd soon bulldoze through.

Thankfully, I don't resort to such lazy measures in producing these reviews and I dutifully dug out my copy of 'Ones' to listen to it afresh. And I'm grateful that I did because the process was akin to catching up with an old college friend who'd changed over the intervening years from a fondly remembered pissed up loon to a sharp suited professional with a fifty pounds haircut. In the case of 'I Feel Fine', (over) familiarity with the tune and chorus had reduced it in my memory to a knockabout singalong that had taken the edge off the fine detail The Beatles always excelled in. I'd forgotten the burst of feedback drone that opens the song and I'd forgotten (or perhaps never previously appreciated) the twin Rickenbacker sound that provide the skeleton of the song not with a jangle, but with a precision riff of warmth clipped out by what sounds like a softwood plectrum (Tom Verlaine doubtless paid more attention than me).

And the title too - something almost jokey and throwaway on paper, but when placed in the context of more overblown declarations of lifelong desire emotion from its sixties contemporaries (rather than in the context of a Beatles album, which is where I've always heard it), then it's a beautifully understated précis of an everyman experience of love - planets aren't colliding, stars aren't falling and fires aren't burning out of control; "She's in love with me and I feel fine" and that's all that needs to be said. Because it's enough

The earlier assumptions I made above, however' still stand and I can't let the song get away scot free - 'I Feel Fine' is still more of a step sideways than forwards and the harmonic twang of the vocals do generate a sense of deja vu, but it's a more deserving song than I've always given it credit for. Listening afresh, I'm happy to regard that sideways step as a necessary Knight's move stepping stone before the sudden jump two places forward into the future that was just around the corner.

1964 The Rolling Stones: Little Red Rooster

Ah now, trying on Bobby Womack for size was one thing, but it takes a different set of stones altogether for a bunch of skinny white boys to tackle a Willie Dixon song made famous by Howling Wolf. Of course, this 'red rooster' was an euphemism for what was swinging between the Wolf's legs, but while a leering Jagger obviously 'get's' the metaphor,* in comparison his would be laconic drawl is akin to the school bully calling out Mike Tyson for a ruck with a self confidence based on nothing more than cockiness (Jim Morrison fell into similar territory in 1971 when The Doors recorded John Lee Hooker's similarly penile 'Crawling King Snake'). The band behind him are rather more successful at summoning up the steamy atmosphere of predatory menace (with some fine bottleneck from Brian), but on the whole I give this the time of day more because it introduced a genuine blues sound to a wider audience ( fact - it's still the only blues song to have ever made number one in the UK) then for any inherent worth of its own.

* Funnily enough, I can remember writing a piece on King Kurt a few years back and struggling to come up with a way of discussing their 'Big Cock' album in a family newspaper. It was through my musing that I managed to 'get' the joke behind Supergrass's 'Mansize Rooster', albeit ten years after it was released.

1964 The Supremes: Baby Love

We've been here before - a repetitive cycle of one trick tune with lashings of 'oohs', 'baby's and 'ooh baby's cooing in the background; yes,'Baby Love' reads as a primer for every Pop Idol type girl/boy band or latter day R&B combo to pilfer from. And pilfer they did and pilfer they still do - the ubiquity of the tricks on display here is such that 'Baby Love' gives off the whiff of ho hum before Diana Ross has barely opened her mouth so it's easy to forget how fresh and original this formula was when the can was first opened; it's hardly fair to blame 'Baby Love' that this brand of once fizzy pop has now gone flat.

That's in its defence anyway. For the prosecution, we've been here before too in that it's apparent to anyone with ears that 'Baby Love' is simply the previous month's 'Where Did Our Love Go' given a quick stir on a high flame before being served up again. Both open with a footstamp beat that's leaked over by a sugary vocal from Ms Ross with off beat injections of those 'oohs' and 'baby's from Wells and Ballard behind her. Oh, and both are jollied along by an identical saxophone riff that kicks in at the halfway point.

Of the two, 'Where Did Our Love Go' is the better song - not just because it was first off the block but because it has more to say for itself. Both tracks bemoan a lost love, but 'Baby Love' simpers and submits where 'Where Did Our Love Go' questions and, having a voice I could always take or leave anyway, it drags the worst kind of syrup out of Ross' mouth to cloy any sharpness out of the tune, making it more of a struggle to properly enjoy as it chases it's own tail with ever diminishing returns. The first number one from Motown and the only one from The Supremes, 'Baby Love' is competent rather than dazzling; both the label and the artists that created this would go on to produce far, far better.

1964 Sandie Shaw: (There's) Always Something There To Remind Me

If Helen Shapiro and Cilla Black were something of a pair of false starts in terms of 'swinging sixties' icons, then from her head to her bare feet, Dagenham's Sandie Shaw was always poster girl for the real thing. Doubly so when given a song to sing from fellow decade icons Bacharach and David.

Shaw wasn't the first to record this, but hers is the definitive interpretation. And it's definitive because like Cilla Black managed on 'Anyone Who Had A Heart', Shaw brings something fresh and unexpected to the table with a that vocal imputes an ambiguity to shift the implicit theme of Hal David's lyric from the sentimentality of lingering love to something rather less fond. Shaw's gambit on the opening warm horn led shuffle "I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me, and every step I take reminds me of just how we used to be" is indicative of fond remembrance of times past shared with her lover that bear the imprint of their passing (in the way Massenet's 'Manon' wept sentimental tears over a simple table laden with memories).

But the mood changes on the bridging "Oh, how can I forget you" that runs into the shrill yell of the title "When there is always something there to remind me" that borders on anger. Shaw's force of tone suggests she sees no virtue in being chained to her past ("I was born to love you, and I will never be free. You'll always be a part of me") and would rather be done with him totally, with the anger aimed partly at herself too for not being able to let go ("If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share, just go back to the places where we used to go and I'll be there").

Maybe I'm reading too much into it (something I'm prone to I'm afraid) but regardless, there's something delightfully fresh about Shaw's clean and naturalistic delivery. She may have had that barefoot gimmick going, but her vocal is all honesty and plays to its own strengths. There's none of the mock posturing of Cilla Black or prim faux classicism of a Petula Clark; Shaw's high notes shrill, the low ones boom and I kind of think this is exactly how she sounds when she sings in the shower too. Yet it's because of it's flaws that it carries an all too human, girl next door vulnerability that breaths life into the song the way Lou Johnson's original soul version doesn't. Or maybe those high notes are through Helen Shapiro sticking pins into a Sandie voodoo doll, a way of expressing her own anger at never been given something as fine to sing.

1964 Roy Orbison: Oh Pretty Woman

A change of pace from the Big O's previous number ones; instead of the strings of a languid ballad, 'Pretty Woman' marches out with purpose on a tattoo drum beat and chunky guitar riff that suggests Roy means business. It's only when the lyrics kick in is it business as usual. For the most part anyway.

Starting off as a stalker's anthem, there's something naive, childlike and eversoslightly creepy about Roy's behaviour in spying on an unsuspecting female, his cries of 'mercy' and then growling to himself as he watches (to add to the worry there's a contemporary 'video' that accompanies the song that sees Roy lurking in shop doorways with a less than wholesome grin on his face). And when was the last time that a grown woman was described as 'pretty'? No, on face value it's behaviour that suggests immaturity and a complete inability to relate to the opposite sex - staple fodder for teen angst ('Pretty Woman' is in reality a grown up version of Wheatus' 'Teenage Dirtbag') but slightly less excusable when coming from a man of twenty eight who should know better.

If it were anybody else it would be sinister, but it's Roy Orbison and the yearning in his voice, coupled with the naked vulnerability he displays by hanging around day after day in the hope that she notices him is more cause for pity or sympathy (empathy even -yes dear reader, I too have been there) than anything else. And it's his ability to sell pathos that sells the song too - Roy rarely piles on the sunshine after all; that's not why we listen. But wait, what's this.....just when you think things are winding to a close and Roy is heading off home alone, the beat picks up and in a twist ending worthy of The Usual Suspects, Roy gets the girl. And what's more, it's her who makes the first move because she knew he was there all along.

Yes corny maybe, and in truth this dalliance is unlikely to lead anywhere (after all, what can such a confident woman and an emotional cripple have in common to base a relationship on), but it's hard to begrudge Roy his day in the sun and not leave the song without a grin. By winning at least one battle, 'Pretty Woman' provides a strangely satisfying ending that offers a ray of light for anyone who's learned the meaning of 'unrequited' the hard way - angst isn't just for the kids you know.

1964 Herman's Hermits: I'm Into Something Good

A Goffin/King song, 'I'm Into Something Good' was originally recorded by Earl Jean (of The Cookies) and has a neat opening line subversion of blues cliché ("Woke up this morning feeling fine") that always makes me smile. Innocent with world away from heartbreak optimism, the song continues in the mood of the side of bed it got out of, and it's a mood that befits a tune that was always a bastard sibling of the Beach Boys' 'Fun Fun Fun'. Herman's Hermits stress the family resemblance further by adding a sunshine handclap click track and harmony interjections straight out of the Wilson brothers songbook (it helps too that Peter Noone does a passable Northern Carl Wilson). Hand on heart, the end result is something I like a whole lot better than the overly girly confection that was Jean's version, but with fellow Brits busy knocking down walls and building new structures from the rubble there's a definite aura of water treading here. Take it in isolation though and 'I'm Into Something Good' deserves the good pop, 'golden oldie' status that posterity has bestowed.

1964 The Kinks: You Really Got Me

'The Kinks Invent Heavy Metal!!!!', or so the usual headlines surrounding 'You Really Got Me' would have us believe, but I'm not buying it. "You got me so I don't know what I'm doing, now. Oh yeah, you really got me now, you got me so I can't sleep at night"; metal is too macho and testosterone laced for such weakness over - pffft - a girl. A one night stand or quick fumble in the back of the car maybe, but luv and romance? Nah, it's not going to happen.*

That's not to say that 'You Really Got Me' is not the first of....something. One thing that can't be denied is that it's loud. Bloody loud. Dave Davies' guitar was overload loud before he slit his amplifier speaker cone to add a rasp that makes the strings sound less like they're being strummed by hand and more like they're being scrubbed with a dirty wire broom head. Uncommercial and uncompromising, this was a brave move for a band on the verge of being dropped by their label after their first two singles flopped, and this would have doubtless sunk too had there not been a song behind it all.

Because what I love most about 'You Really Got Me' is not that fuzzy riff but the way brother Ray winds himself up into a frenzy as his confusion and irritation grows from a coy opening to an ever tightening coil ("Girl, you really got me going, you got me so I don't know what I'm doing") over the pile up of guitars until he's left with no room to turn and is forced into a repetitive, anti-orgasm snarl of anger/self disgust ("You really got me. You REALLY got me. YOU REALLY GOT ME") to release the tension. And then it all starts again from scratch.

Sexy and violent, hard and filthy - what 'You Really Got Me' actually does is bring garage rock and some good old fashioned carnal lust to the masses with no concession to niceties. This isn't the pop craft of The Beatles - Ray doesn't want to just hold this girl's hand (and we don't know if she'd ever let him anyway - the girl's view on all this is not noted. Ray probably doesn't see it as relevant), his intentions are rather more base and the brutal onslaught of the music provides a setting worthy of such one sided statements of frustration. There's a sexually raw element of danger here not seen since the early days of Elvis and the gang and it's a ball The Rolling Stones (and countless others) would shortly be booting into the net on a regular basis, making 'You Really Got Me' the double clunk sound of one bar being raised while simultaneously another is lowered.


* Eighties poodle rock maybe, and it's no co-incidence that uber pretty boys Van Halen recorded a version of this where the guitars sound like they've been through a car wash and Dave Lee Roth hams the lyric as a tool of seduction. I don't like.

1964 The Honeycombs: Have I The Right

Third and final number one from Joe Meek's studio at 304 Holloway Road, 'Have I The Right' plays out as a song of two halves that manages to come together into something as unique as it's plagiarised. As a band, The Honeycombs came with the hardwired gimmick of female drummer Honey Lantree, though to the credit of all this was never pushed as a selling point. Even so, her drumming takes precedence throughout this and provides a stiff backbone for a set of verses criss crossed with streaks of scratchy guitar that whine like overhead power lines on a hot day before falling into a chorus cribbed straight from the Everly's 'Walk Right Back', albeit fresh from a hard session pumping iron down the gym.

"Come right back I just can't bear it, I've got this love and I long to share it" - Dennis D'Ell barks out his commands in a voice that brooks no dissent while behind him Lantree punctuates each word with a booming drum thump to emphasise his intent. Past and future, 'Have I The Right' provides a pivotal point for 1964; it's the pin holding a Catherine wheel that dizzily alternates its direction of spin but with the self confidence to not tear itself apart with the conflict. That's down to the sure hand of Joe - in may ways, 'Have I The Right' was a more modern recording than 'Telstar'; it certainly sounds more 'modern' (and packs more oomph) than The Dead End Kids would be punk version in 1977 anyway. In short, a terrific shot of energy from an unjustifiably forgotten band.

1964 Manfred Mann: Do Wah Diddy Diddy

"There's a great big mystery, and it sure is worryin' me.

This diddie wa diddie, this diddie wa diddie.
I wish somebody would tell me what
diddie wa diddie means".

Well it's a fair question I suppose, and it's heartening to know that Blind Blake was asking it back in the 1920's, many years before I first puzzled over 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy' - what on EARTH was it all about? According to some reports, 'Diddy Wa' is another euphemism for that age old pastime of sex, just the way the term 'rock & roll' is often claimed to be. Another spin locates 'Diddy Wa' in a mythical shangri la or 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' where life is lazy, food is free and "there ain't no fields to plough".* You can hear this longing in Bo Diddley's own 'Diddy Wah Diddy' (from 1955, memorably covered by Captain Beefheart in 1966): "Ain't no town, ain't no city, Lord, how they love in Diddy Wah Diddy)".** Well there's some background to it anyway.

Written in 1963, 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy' post dates all this of course, but writers Barry and Greenwich must have been savvy enough to at least be aware of the origins and connotations of the phrase (it's not something they were likely to have made up on the spot). "There she was just a walkin' down the street singing 'Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do'" - their take suggest sex on legs interpretation, but there's a nonsense innocence to the piece that's a world apart from the raw sexuality of Blind Blake.

Of course, Manfred Mann's single is (yet another) cover version - 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy' was originally recorded the previous year by the (mostly) female American r&b band The Exciters, and this earlier version whips up a frothy concoction of juke box jive that's infectious in its joyous celebration of teenage love topped with a lead vocal from Brenda Reid that can barely contain its excitement. Manfred Mann's own approach (after switching all the 'he's to 'she's) is to straitjacket the tune in an organ led arrangement and stitch it up with a plodding drum beat that sucks the life out of the song like a vampire sucking a vein but with none of the implied sexiness.

Paul Jones is without doubt an r&b singer of note, but his mouthy lead on this is far too respectful and serious to let any joy in - Reid and her sisters augmented the lyrics with pin sharp whoops and yeahs that spark as spontaneous even if they weren't, but Jones walks the line of the song with the care of a stranger in unfamiliar territory anxious not to put a foot wrong. And that's its downfall - by nobody here stepping off piste by a single foot, all that's left is a basic tune and lyrics reduced to the call and response plod of an army march song and with all the associated emotion. 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy' was never presented as a major statement of art, but neither is it meant to be as boring as this. By any interpretation of the phrase.


* With a nod to Walter Shenson's 'Old Rivers', itself a riff on the diddy wa as rock candy mountain idea:

"He'd say, one of these days I'm gonna climb that mountain
Walk up there among the clouds
Where the cotton's high, and the corn's a-growin'
And there ain't no fields to plough".

** B. A. Botkin, in A Treasury of Southern Folklore. Under the heading, Mythical Places of the Florida Negro, the following definition is presented for the phrase Diddie Wa Diddie (Diddy-Wah-Diddy).

"This is the largest and best known of the Negro mythical places. Its geography is that it is "way off somewhere." It is reached by a road that curves so much that a mule pulling a wagon-load of fodder can eat off the back of the wagon as he goes. It is a place of no work and no worry for man and beast. A very restful place where even the curbstones are good sitting-chairs. The food is even already cooked. If a traveller is hungry all he needs do is to sit down on the curbstone and wait and soon he will hear something hollering "Eat me! Eat me! Eat me!" and a big baked chicken will come along with a knife and a fork stuck in its sides. He can eat all he wants and let the chicken go on to the next on that needs something to eat. By that time a big deep sweet potato pie is pushing and shoving to get in front of the traveller with a knife all stuck up in the middle of it so he just cuts a piece off of that and so on until he finishes his snack. Nobody can ever eat it all up. No matter how much you eat it grows that much faster. It is said "Everybody would live in Diddy-Wah-Diddy if it wasn't so hard to find and so hard to get to after you even know the way." Everything is on a large scale there. Even the dogs can stand flat-footed and lick the crumbs off heaven's table. The biggest man there is known as the Moon-Regulator because he reaches up and starts and stops it at his convenience. That is why there are some dark nights when the moon does not shine at all. He did not feel like putting it out that night".

1964 The Beatles: A Hard Day's Night

Whenever our junior school teacher felt she didn't have the full attention of the class, she used to slap her hand down on the top of her desk with a resounding smack that sharpened up our minds no end. The opening chord of 'A Hard Day's Night' has a similar effect; after the dropped catch of 'Can't Buy Me Love', it's an attention grabbing statement of intent that announced eyes were now back on the ball.*

Though a thinly veiled whinge at how tough it was to be a star (and as custom written to order to soundtrack the already titled film the band were working on), 'A Hard Day's Night' glistens with the pristine sheen of the finest power pop. Lennon's bluesy wail and Starr's frenetic drumming stoke the fire in its engine room until it roars with a force; there's nothing flash or clever about any of this (just check out Ringo's dumb as they come cowbell on the bridge), but it does what it does well, shifting in a seamless weave from verse to bridge to verse to makes not very much sound consistently brand new. Or maybe The Beatles just made it look easy.

* This chord has been the source of much musicological musing over the years. Indeed a certain Professor Brown at Dalhousie University in Canada spent six months researching/analysing it, deducing that it wasn't just the sound of a single guitar. Apparently, "Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar". Well just fancy that.

1964 The Rolling Stones: It's All Over Now

Lacking the confidence of The Beatles as songwriters, the early output of the Stones was characterised by cover versions of American blues/R&B recordings. Like this one; 'It's All Over Now' was original recorded by The Valentinos mere months previous and as played by them the tune stresses the rhythm over the blues. Its boneless body flexes and bounces with a frog hopping bassline and a percussive rhythm played from the wrist that gives the tune a seriously organic groove. The Stones' version is a far stiffer affair with Jones and Richards trading snappy licks that keep the track moving, albeit a motion akin to running on the spot through the endless recycling of a single theme and a one note tambourine beat.

It falls to Jagger to raise this above the standard of pub cover band by providing a vocal that doesn't try to emulate Bobby Womack's original swagger but instead rings out with a sneering, south London 'couldn't give a fuck that she's gone'-ness that seethes with a pure indifference. The arrogance of youth maybe, but it works, both in the context of the song and through providing the bad cop to the mop tops' good cop. Acts like The Rolling Stones are frequently accused of hijacking the music of the black man and sanitising it for the white man's palate. There's truth in this, but at the same time a good tune is a good tune and the fact that the Stones serve this one up with the sheen of a freshly stropped razor is all to the good.

1964 The Animals: The House Of The Rising Sun

I've been ever more conscious that for at least the last couple of years here, the land I'm starting to wander through is growing ever familiar. The fifties were by and large a wilderness for me, a desert through which I had to pick my way with only the most basic of maps, but toward the end of that decade, dirt tracks started to turn into paths and those paths are now started to be paved with clear signposts marking the way so that I am now walking through almost totally familiar terra firma; The Beatles, The Searchers, Roy Orbison - I know most of this stuff as well as I know the sound of my own voice.

With welcome familiarity though comes a danger all of its own - such music now hangs framed in galleries with the title 'classic' hung over their heads which makes any attempt at re-appraisal difficult - just what is there left to be said about some of this? And if you do find something to say, then any comment will come laced with the double edged peril of praise it and you're dismissed as a predictable old fart bowing to convention, slag it and you're tarred and feathered as a pseudo whatever deliberately courting controversy for the sake of it. You can't win, you can only try.

Hardly contemporary in origin, 'The House Of The Rising Sun' dates from antiquity with author unknown, yet there are few who couldn't tell you that this particular house was a brothel staffed by fallen women who had taken a wrong turning in life. And that bon mot of general knowledge is largely down to The Animals bringing the song to a mass audience (and in so doing recorded a song to which the 'classic' label can now be applied as well as it can to any 'classic' song), though in truth their own version can be dated somewhat later than time unrecorded. From Bob Dylan's 1961 version in fact.

Because Hilton Valentine's now famous guitar arpeggios, the first port of call for any budding player, were an arrangement of Dylan's which The Animals lifted wholesale. Which makes that much a bit of a cheat, but though Dylan kept the female narrator viewpoint of the lyric ("And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl"), The Animals spin it round to tell it from a male stance. Different then, but with the story not now coming from a woman broken by whoring but by a bloke who's broke from spending all his shillings on such a fallen woman then the impact is somewhat lessened and it's difficult to feel too much sympathy with him. Or any even.

Eric Burdon's lead vocal doesn't help much either, telling his tale with all the bellow and bluster of a Sunday night barroom drunk but in a way that ensures we're never less than fully aware that he's role playing here; this isn't Burdon the Geordie R&B singer but Burdon as a hobo from the deep South ruing the bum hand life has dealt him ("My father was a gamblin' man, down in New Orleans" etc etc). It's a performance more akin to pantomime than theatre proper and though he's always entertaining, Burdon is just too shlocky to convince.

What adds the ticks to lift this out of some rocky horror hell is Alan Price and his magnificent organ (yes, yes - a Vox Continental actually). Price starts off by playing ball with some woozy, happy drunk harmonious interjections over Burdon's growls, but by the finale four minutes later he's blasting through with pissed as a rat slabs of oscillating noise that play a tennis game of power with Burdon's increasingly deranged yelling, an effect that's as wild and unpredictable as befits a song recorded in a single take. Distinctive and novel, Dylan himself is reported to have "jumped out of his car seat" when he heard it. And to keep/reverse the Dylan link in a 'giving something back' quid pro quo arrangement, it's no giant leap of faith to get from Price's contributions here to Al Kooper's organ backing that provided a vital piece in Dylan's own 'thin wild mercury sound' circa 1965/66.

Growing up, 'The House Of The Rising Sun' = The Animals the same way that 'Stairway To Heaven' = Led Zeppelin. Each defined the other in my (and not just my) eyes and it wasn't until a good few years later I realised they weren't a.n.other bunch of one hit wonders. So does this deserve its 'classic' status in rock's great canon? Despite some of my above misgivings I have to say yes - 'The House Of The Rising Sun' is an unstructured, undisciplined, impolite force of nature that sucks in the listener like quicksand and keeps them in its swirl till the end. It's not pretty, but it's not meant to be, and the New Orleans re-located to Newcastle sound is a part spiritual, part aggression blues that's uniquely the effect of two separate cultures meeting in a head on collision rather than one seeking to emulate the other.

1964 Roy Orbison: It's Over

It starts out almost like a creative writing exam question - "Your baby doesn't love you anymore": Discuss. Orbison knew a thing or two about loss and he nails the 'good times then, bad times now' theme squarely in first verse alone: "Golden days before they end, whisper secrets to the wind. Your baby won't be near you anymore" - almost haiku-like, it wouldn't need anything further to score an A+ in this exercise, but Roy doesn't stop there. Not by a long chalk.

"But, oh what will you do? When she says to you there's someone new" - Orbison piles on the pain until he's almost majestically revelling in the negativity he's dishing out ("You won't be seeing rainbows anymore"), building within the funeral drum bolero with the intensity of a Puccini aria before mere descriptive statements can no longer do justice to the misery so he implodes with a primal, self realising "It's over, it's over, it's over" howl that reveals that he wasn't indulging in a little salt rubbing schadenfreude in those earlier lines - they were directed as much to himself as any third party listening and they serve to usher in the realisation inherent in one last scream of that title to bring the song, and presumably Roy's life as he once knew it to a close with the finality of a stool being kicked away.

'It's Over' is as serious a statement of adult emotion in the context of it's relatively lightweight contemporaries to date in this 1964 chart as a serial killer mingling in with a bunch of trick or treaters. One of the most nihilistically bleak songs to have hit number one to date; there's no hope in 'It's Over', none at all. No promise of a better tomorrow, no hint of bridges to be rebuilt or fresh starts to pursue; this girl has knocked Roy on his arse and we leave him face down in the gutter, defiantly not staring at any stars. In one sense it's an uncomfortable, voyeuristic listen, like getting a crossed line with The Samaritans - you don't want to eavesdrop but you can't help getting carried along with it. In another, played loud enough and in the right frame of mind, listening to 'It's Over' can feel like an exorcism.

1964 Cilla Black: You're My World

In a word, shrill: I'm afraid Cilla used up all my goodwill back on 'Anyone Who Had A Heart' and this English language version of "Il Mio Mondo" fails for the very reason the previous song succeeded; the common touch does not suit this time and Black doesn't have the chops to deliver a heartfelt ballad the way it should be sung. Her full stretch grasps at the high notes are brave, but they fail to reach any of the good fruit and the overly piecing orchestra stabs do nothing to compensate. Booming and blustering - surprise surprise, Dionne Warwick would have done this so much better.

1964 The Four Pennies: Juliet

As if to show that 1964 wasn't all about the Mersey folk, up pop The Four Pennies with a tune that's a throwback to more formal times. As a song, 'Juliet' is more in keeping with faux grown up Peter and Gordon in tone, but this is a more complete package of sta-prest formality; this girl is put on a sophisticated pedestal that suggests it would take more than a night out at The Cavern to push her buttons. Lionel Morton's repetition of that eponymous name strikes the right balance between wonder and longing, but the heavy handed arrangement clogs any attempt at a ballad and for such a short song it repeats itself to distraction, digging itself into a rut too quickly until the fade out close comes as more of a relief than a cue to ask for more. Harsh, but I probably shouldn't blame the group for any of this - 'Juliet' was originally intended as the B side (with 'Tell Me Girl' as the lead song), but the British public spoke (this didn't chart at all in America) and the disc was duly flipped. As I've said before, there's no accounting for taste.

1964 The Searchers: Don't Throw Your Love Away

Originally a B side for the three female/one male American R&B group The Orlons, 'Don't Throw Your Love Away' is a strange choice for The Searchers to cover. What do I mean? Well for one the original is a far spikier, harder edged affair than the warm pop of The Searchers, with an icy piano motif replacing the guitars. You can see why - in The Orlon's female hands the song had a purpose at the heart that becomes more ambiguous in this setting, something The Searchers try to hide by stressing the melody with a (by now trademark) jangle of guitar that softens the 'message' from one of self liberation to something akin to a pro virginity stance.

You can see it best in the subtle switch of words from the more gutsy 'go out and have a ball' of the original to the tamer 'go out and have some fun' - The Orlons were encouraging their own sex to be their own person and not to get befuddled with the new fangled liberalism of the times or to waste time fretting whether the bloke's usual 'of course I'll still love you tomorrow' is truth or bulldust. The girls were warning of consequences rather than deeds, but in the hands of The Searchers its intended audience is less clear and it gives it a far more reserved, almost patronising 'we know best' air that doesn't appeal; The Orlons were party girls, but The Searchers are saying that parties are fine as long as you were a long skirt and stick to soft drinks. Ultimately, the song itself was always just a co-star rather being than strong enough to take a lead role and this is a bit of a misfire really with all the appeal of a public information film.

1964 Peter & Gordon: A World Without Love

Barely twelve months from their first number one, it's fascinating to note just how quickly and deeply The Beatles managed to entrench themselves in the world of popular music. Even when not releasing songs under their own name, the tentacles of Lennon and McCartney's influence are everywhere, not least in this piece of rampant nepotism - 'A World Without Love' was written by Paul McCartney with the 'Peter' of the duo being the brother of his then girlfriend Jane Asher. With that pedigree behind it then this was never going to struggle, but I can't say that 'A World Without Love' has ever been something I've cared for.

McCartney's lyric ("Please lock me away, and don't allow the day here inside, where I hide with my loneliness") was stiff enough from birth, but Peter and Gordon apply yet more splints by delivering it with all the over earnest, faux worldly wise tone of the barely 20, ex-public schoolboys they were. The tune throws it a rubber ring with some sparkling guitar lines and constant 'boom, boom boom' 'Be My Baby' drum beating in the background which try to coax the song out to play despite Pete and Gord's strict parent attempts to keep it locked indoors to do its homework. That they don't quite succeed means that 'A World Without Love' remains functional at best - as I've said, the Beatles connection helped enormously to keep superior offerings from The Hollies and the Dave Clark Five stalled at number two, but it's precisely this connection that invites comparison to the songs they kept for themselves, songs in whose long shadow this pales.

1964 The Beatles: Can't Buy Me Love

A more direct attack than previous, 'Can't Buy Me Love' walks the wire of Merseysound and rock & roll without managing to pull off a convincing take on either. The verses are pure Mersey with a joshing McCartney disdaining the materialistic before the harder edge chorus sweeps in to blow it no frills to the next round; 'Can't Buy Me Love' might have the immediacy of a live, one take recording with no overdubs or harmonies, but the motor turns without firing. McCartney tries to scream the song into life and Harrison drops in with a stinging rockabilly guitar solo, but despite it all 'Can't Buy Me Love' remains defiantly flat and earthbound. a protesteth too much response to a question nobody asked in the first place. A backwards step.

1964 Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas: Little Children

There was always a thick gloop of innocent sentimentality clogging up the Merseysound arteries - there's been evidence enough of this to date, but nothing to quite prepare the unwary for the full on atrophy of 'Little Children'. And that goes twofold, because even if its broken musical box rattle was tweeness personified in 1964, the intervening years have only served to add an edge that's too sinister for its own good. To whit; Billy J wants to have a good snog with his girlfriend but he's worried that her father wouldn't approve. The problem is that the girl has younger siblings with loose tongues so Bill tries to bribe them with "candy and a quarter" to keep them from grassing.

Well ok I guess, and if you take it at absolute face value then there's a cutesyness at work ("I wish they would take a nap, little children. Now why don't you go bye-bye, go anywhere at all") that might appeal to some. But to pick at any of the loose threads flapping around here leads to very dubious territory that casts Billy J as some paedophilic predator up to no good at all with the innocence smothered under a ton of readymix sleaze and innuendo:

"Little children, you better not tell what you see
And if you're good I'll give you candy and a quarter
If you're quiet like you oughta be
And keep a secret with me"

Of course, Kramer is simply singing lyrics that somebody else wrote (Mort Shuman no less), but even in that, a twenty one year old's (Kramer's age in 1964) 'little children' plea sounds unlikeably patronising, especially from a bloke too scared to front up to his girl's old man. Which begs the question just how old was she anyway? "With little children like you around, I wonder what can I do around little children like you" - oh forget it...this is horrible whichever way you cut it.

1964 Cilla Black: Anyone Who Had A Heart

I've always noticed that whenever some of the young Hitler's watercolours are discovered or come up for auction there are no end of art critics lining up to tell us exactly how rubbish they are. 'Amateur', 'bad composition', 'poor perspective', 'childish use of colour' - they can't wait to stick the boot into the one time Chancellor, just to make sure there's never a virtue identified or a good word written about him anywhere in polite society (ironically, I think Adolf would have been more upset at this legacy of being branded a crap artist than he would about the one that labels him a Dictatorial architect of world war and racist genocide).

I come to anything bearing the name 'Cilla Black' with much the same ideology. The date may be 1964 on the label, but I find it hard to divorce anything Ms Black did 'then' with the shrill, everybody's annoying Auntie harpy she went on to become and who managed to make my eighties weekend television unwatchable via a series of programmed diarrhea like 'Blind Date' or 'Surprise Surprise'. Brrrrrr. What doesn't help is the fact that even in her sixties prime, Black was always the runt of the litter when compared to other female vocalists carving out a pop career. Never a great interpreter of songs, and never that great a singer (even less so after the nose job), Black always rode the 'poor girl made good' tide of goodwill to the max with her subsequent career tarnishing any credibility she may have once possessed.

A Bacharach and David song originally written for Dionne Warwick (and covered relentlessly since), I'm man enough to grit my teeth and declare, despite my misgivings above, that I've always regarded Black's version as definitive. There's no denying that Warwick can sing rings around 'ar Cilla, but her version is too smooth and too sophisticated with the heartbroken longing sounding more like an inconvenience for Dionne than anything to cause a sleepless night. "Anyone who had a heart would simply take me in his arms and always love me. Why won't you?" - Black's rough and ready vocal adds the necessary touch of common vulnerability to bring to life the lyric of a hard case brought to their knees by someone who doesn't care. While Warwick's classiness hints at a 'plenty more fish in the sea' scenario, Black's vocal creaks with the misery of a girl seeing her one shot at the title slipping away with no Plan B to fill the void.

Warwick apparently hated Black for this, accusing her of plagiarising her own version, but that could just be sour grapes at hearing an inferior singer getting greater success (Warwick's version stalled at number 42). Legitimate grounds for upset maybe, but in this case at least Black's hardwired personality and talent gave the song a far more honest and earthy interpretation that cuts Dionne in two and beats the soul singer at her own game. Few people managed that and, by god, it's the last time Cilla ever would.

1964 The Bachelors: Diane

One of the main strikes against 'Diane' is that it has the misfortune to follow the fresh racing bike of 'Needles And Pins with a song that pitches up on a penny farthing and sounds as starchy as their name - for a bunch of early twentysomethings (younger than The Saturdays, Spice Girls, Pussycat Dolls et al were in their own pomp), that moniker suggests a harking back to more formal days and does nothing to unwind this; would The Sugarbabes have had the same impact if they'd called themselves The Spinsters I wonder?

True, a song from 1927 is not going to sound inherently 'modern', but The Bachelors don't do anything to give it a contemporary spin either and they take the humourless "You have lighted the road leading home, pray for me when you can" lyric at a face value that stands as rigidly against the tide of change around them as Cnut. 'Diane' is serviceable enough, but it's ten years out of time and I see no virtue in its stubborn obstinacy, though that might be a long winded way of saying that this is not my cup of tea. At all.

1964 The Searchers: Needles And Pins

Written by Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono, 'Needles And Pins' gives definitive voice to The Searcher's Byrds influencing twelve string jangle which in turn adds a sunlight touch of melody that makes the song's bitterness all the more troubling; Tony Jackson's girl has done him wrong to the point he can't bear to look at her anymore without crying and is reduced to grasping at the 'hope' that one day she'll get treated like shit too and know how he feels.

Well that's how the song 'goes' anyway, and with such a display of misanthropy it would be easy to play it up as an angsty rant (for an example of a 'method actor' interpretation look no further than Jackie DeShannon's original version), but both Jackson and The Searchers keep a measured tone to let the verse chorus verse structure topple into themselves like a loop of falling dominoes. Jackson starts out hesitant and descriptive "I saw her today, I saw her face, it was a face I love" and keeps his emotions in check until shifting key at 1:24 by answering his own "Why can't I stand up and tell myself I'm strong?" question with the self analysing "Because I saw her today" that shifts the opening observation to the realisation that 'she' is both the cause of his distress, the source of a weakness and that he hates himself for both.

There's a smart subtlety and confident pop sensibility about 'Needles And Pins' that I adore, a sound encapsulated by Mike Pender's jingle jangle of guitar chords that sets it apart from most everything else in the charts around it and one that makes heartbreak an attractive proposition in the way that 'Don't Fear The Reaper' made suicide sound like a positive life choice. And while as a cover version it doesn't smash the mould of the original the way The Byrds version of Dylan's 'Mr Tambourine Man' would shortly come to do, the influence of The Searchers and 'Needles And Pins' is all over the latter to the point that I doubt it would have existed without it.

1964 The Dave Clark Five: Glad All Over

An early entry from the London scene that would tag wrestle with Liverpool for dominance of the zeitgeist before taking over in the music and fashion stakes by the mid sixties, 'Glad All Over' is a drum heavy clumpathon that's short on subtlety but big on tapping into a primitive beat, the kind you hear on recordings by blues players accompanying themselves by stamping their feet. Or would have heard in the dead tone kettle drum beats that galley slaves pulled their oars in time too. Or any other situation where dread or drive takes precedence over melody; there's always room in the charts for a good solid stomper (as Slade, Gary Glitter and Oasis would come to testify), and when the beat is as 'up' as this then it's hard to listen without a grin.