1966 Tom Jones: Green Green Grass Of Home

And to round off the year, I'm going to complete a trilogy of childhood reminisces by saying that as a boy, I'd always taken Tom's Welsh background and my knowledge of the film 'How Green Was My Valley' to mean that 'Green Green Grass Of Home' was somehow autobiographical, or at least written to order. It's not of course, it's a much covered Curly Putman country song that comes complete with Putman's trademark schlock emotional overkill that Tom grabs with both hands.

Opening in a mode of warm nostalgia, Tom leads us around the sights of his hometown after a period of absence with the pride and self satisfaction of one who's come home for Christmas. But by verse three the rug is pulled - this has all been a dream and Tom is in fact sitting on death row waiting to be executed when the sun comes up; the only green grass of home he's going to see again is from the other side when they bury him under it.

It's a dubious premise to generate sympathy from and the cheap trick is made cheaper by Tom's bombastic diction that deep fries the song in ham. To get the listener onside in all of this it's wise to mine a little sympathy from the lyric, but Jones' wounded bull bellow shatters any fragility into china shop shards so that when the spoken revelation comes, we feel cheated by his cocksure bluster ("Then ah AWAKE and look around me, at FOUR GRAY WALLS that surround me, and ah realise, that ah, was, only, dreaming")

I'm probably being a tad harsh here though - Tom does what Tom does and to expect anything less is like asking an angry dog to bark quietly. But 'Green Green Grass Of Home' is country mawk at its most mawkish, no matter who's on vocal duties. It's an ace of hearts cynical slice of surface deep exploitation with no regard to subtext morality (just what unspecified crime is he being executed for?) and the whole package makes for a very curious Christmas number one.

1966 The Beach Boys: Good Vibrations

One of my favourite pastimes as a boy was going into our local sweet shop with a fistful of small change and picking out a selection of penny chews. There was always jar after jar to choose from - blackjacks, fruit salads, flying saucers etc, each costing a single penny. Yet though the mix and match possibilities were endless, I was always able to home in on exactly what I wanted without too much dithering and then I was on my way. Not so my mate though who, although generally having half as much money as me, tended to always take twice as long in picking out what he wanted. He'd send the poor shopkeeper mad with his constant chopping and changing until the man would snap and decide for him, usually throwing him out of the shop the same time. There's a fine line between knowing what you want and being overwhelmed into paralysis by unlimited choice (or how far you can push a shopkeeper).

Whenever I hear 'Good Vibrations' I hear the sound of a man walking the wire that divides those two young boys lost in time. Previous releases from the Beach Boys had been glass sharp shards of sunshine on vinyl with head boy Brian Wilson in control of the beach buggy, knowing exactly what went where and which jar to open next to unlock the music in his head. Post 'Good Vibrations', Wilson inhabited the crazed world of the laboured 'SMiLE' project, a that presented so many possibilities of how its undefined scope could be presented that he wasn't able to throw a mental lasso around them all and bring them to heel. And so the shopkeeper in the form of Capitol and the rest of the band did it for him by throwing him out of the studio and releasing the lesser 'Smiley Smile' album instead. It's fair to say that Wilson was never the same man again.

'Good Vibrations' is one of those 'classic' songs I talked about earlier, a monolith of inherent self importance born of fame and familiarity that, from the title in has passed into the national consciousness and which both dares and invites criticism. Not content with defining an idealised image of California with a success that their own official tourist board could only dream of, the Beach Boys were now laying down their own code as to how its inhabitants should behave in a song that bursts with more shapes and colour than a row of jarred sweets on a shelf. So where to start?

Well for me the key to the song is the scene setting, dream-like opening of the girl who catches the eye as she walks by - "I love the colourful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair". This unnamed girl is an impressionist painting made flesh; the focus is not her eyes or her legs or her (gulp!) tits and ass so beloved of latter day rap from that same West coast, but a serendipitous arrangement of colour, shape, sound and scent ("I hear the sound of a gentle word, on the wind that lifts her perfume through the air") that come together at one fleeting yet precise point in time.

It's the same love preceding sensory overload that XTC went for in 'Senses Working Overtime' and which left Andy Partridge gobsmacked - "I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste, I've got one, two, three, four, five senses working overtime". And like Partridge's struggle "to take this all in", the observer in 'Good Vibrations' changes perception into a personal physical reality as the song grows a backbone with the "I'm pickin' up good vibrations, she's giving me excitations" chorus that builds to an orgasm of excitement ("Good good good good vibrations") until it all gets too much and has to be blotted out ("Close my eyes, she's somehow closer now") before the cycle begins again.

Nothing on 'Good Vibrations' sounds forced, overcooked or clever for the sake of being clever - despite the sum of it's innumerable parts, everything has its place the end result is a self contained work that floats on air in the same way that a theremin floats over the song's conclusion to express joy when mere words run out. For a single of it's length and complexity, 'Good Vibrations' is also as delicate and inconsequential as the wings of a butterfly. The lyrics and tune couldn't stand up by themselves - without the music (and more importantly, the moods it generates), 'Good Vibrations' would crumble like a vampire in sunlight (if you don't believe me, check out the 'rock' version cut by The Troggs in 1975; the aural equivalent of recalling a recent dream to a mate only to find it loses all its charm, logic or personality in the telling and instead becomes something faintly ludicrous and downright embarrassing).

And it's success is all down to Brian; those Impressionist artists were wont to throw paint around with abandon to capture a mood or moment, but Wilson's 'teenage symphony' was spliced together from hours of session tapes with a razor blade, cutting block and the single minded vision of a genius. Bootleg label 'Sea Of Tunes' have released hours of music from the sessions which offers a glimpse of the sheer volume of material that was recorded, sifted and discarded in the pursuit of perfection.

Brian would have doubtless reduced my shopkeeper to tears, but at this point in time and left to his own devices then he would have got there in the end and selected the perfect mix of sweets for his money. The tragedy is that this crystal clarity of vision would soon cloud, the choices would become less easy to make, work on his masterpiece 'SMiLE' would be abandoned and the shopkeepers in their various guises would keep him out of the store for pretty much the rest of his career, save for the occasional glimpse of the counter. Which is why I always hear an element of tragedy amongst the sheer joy of 'Good Vibrations' - a last perfect slam out of the park before the ball became too hard to see and an incongruous mix of emotions that always stops me in dead my tracks in the same way a pretty girl once stopped Brian in his.

1966 The Four Tops: Reach Out, I'll Be There

Growing up, I didn't get to hear a lot of Motown. Glam rock yes, prog rock yes, but not much Motown. Yes, I was familiar with the bigger hits of Stevie Wonder and The Supremes etc via a process of casual osmosis, but to me it was all just so much black pop for black kids the way the Bay City Rollers and The Osmonds were white pop for white kids. Moving on through the years when my tastes diverged and my appreciation grew keener, I still regarded Motown's output as a box of soft centres dripping with an 'ooh baby baby' goo that were fine as a rare treat but weren't designed for a binge and it wasn't until 1986 that my eyes were opened fully.

Why 1986? Well two things; firstly, and on the back of a television advert for Levi jeans that wallowed in shameless nostalgia, Marvin Gaye's 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' became ubiquitous for a few months. I'd heard the song before of course via that same process of osmosis, and I also knew The Slits' punky reggae deconstruction, but this was the first time I genuinely 'heard' Gaye's song and I was knocked flat at how he made betrayal and suspicion sound so goddamn sexy.

Secondly, and a few months later, Billy Bragg released his 'Levi Stubbs Tears' single which, being as obsessed with all things indie as I was at that point meant it couldn't fail to blip my radar even if I had no idea who or what Levi Stubbs was (to my eternal shame I'm happy to confess that I thought he had something to do with those jeans Marvin's ghost was flogging). Curiosity then led me to buy a cheap Four Tops compilation and, if 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' weakened my jaw, song one side one's 'Reach Out, I'll Be There' sent it crashing through the floor.

It begins deceptively enough with a sweet flute motif and a galloping horse refrain that could have soundtracked any B movie Western, but a drumcrack announces the immediate arrival of Mr Levi Stubbs to supply one of the most astonishing lead vocals you're ever likely to hear and with one sweep all bets are off - forget the sugary goo, Stubbs goes at the lyric the way a chainsaw goes at a tree with a performance that Greil Marcus once memorably compared to the sound of a soldier calling out to his wounded buddy in a firefight. It's a good image, but I see Stubbs' bark as an administering of some tough love - lest we forget, Stubbs isn't reaching to help, he's demanding somebody reaches out.

And to encourage co-operation he attacks like a drill sergeant - "Now if you FEEL that you CAN'T go on, Because ALL of your hope is GONE", bawling out a litany of failings (there are some backing singers in there somewhere too but Stubbs pays them no mind) before falling silent to allow four crucial heartbeats to pass until a tension busting 'HAH!' provides the 'eureka' moment to usher in the life affirming resolution of the chorus. "'I'll be there with a love that will shelter you, I'll be there with a love that will see you through", it's a statement of such love and delivered with such generosity it can, depending on your mood, elicit smiles or tears.

'Reach Out, I'll Be There' is a gut punch of a song, as sandpaper raw as the emotion it carries. Stubbs may be addressing a "girl" in the lyric but in truth he could be speaking to anybody - wife, father, lover, brother, potential suicide jumper - it doesn't matter; the message is there for anybody looking for a totem of stability or a rock to lean on when everything else has gone to seed. Which is a summary of events in that Billy Bragg song, the story of a woman physically crippled by a violent lover and the strength and joy she derives from listening to Stubbs' secular message of hope and support.* Which is why 'Reach Out, I'll Be There' isn't just one of the jewels in Motown's crown, it's an iconic masterpiece that just keeps on giving.


* "When the world falls apart some things stay in place
She takes off the Four Tops tape and puts it back in its case"

1966 Jim Reeves: Distant Drums

There's a delicious irony at work here; it's 1965 and three number ones from the end of the year when Ken Dodd's 'Tears' pulls a handbrake turn on the relentless forward momentum of the music in the charts to send listeners back in time to an almost pre-war era of slow dances and Brylcreem. Fast forward twelve months and three number ones from the end of a year of quite startling number ones and we find Jim Reeves pulling hard on that same brake to once more send the space/time continuum 180 degrees until we're facing the other way.

Like Doddy, 'Distant Drums' pitches up from nowhere - country star Jim Reeves was no stranger to the UK charts, but he'd been in his grave two years already (meaning this wasn't carried on the wave of grief and goodwill that took 'Three Steps To Heaven' or 'Voodoo Chile' to the top). And though the song's war theme had a certain contemporary relevance with the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, that was largely an American concern and no British were being sent aboard. A mystery then as to why this was taken to our national hearts so readily.

'Distant Drums' can be read as an unofficial prequel to 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon'; Jim is hearing the distant drums and bugle calls of a war he may have to fight in and so he urges his Mary to marry him now "for now is all the time there may be". As a song, 'Distant Drums' is cynical in it's emotional manipulation and almost blind acceptance of war ("And if they call for me to come, then I must go and you must stay"). Reeves treats the lyric with respect, but it's the surface reading of a bored parent reading his child a bedtime story but investing no depth or involvement. True, 'Distant Drums' doesn't allow much room for interpretation, but its blandness has the appeal and functionality of an army recruitment poster - that "If you love me Mary, Mary marry me" is too pat to be truly involving, it grates in its neatness and the cartoon parps of bugle calls are a cartoonish romanticism of conflict that's borderline offensive.

Try as I might, I cannot - will not - accept that the same public who bought 'Paint It, Black', 'Out Of Time' et al also handed over their cash at the tills for this. There are battle lines that would have been drawn then once drawn not crossed and I think if 'Distant Drums' is to serve any purpose now it's to illustrate the sheer numbers of the public who were willing to buy a song they liked. But whatever stream of common consciousness that this managed to dip its toes into in 1966 has long dried up and it's a song that, once it starts to play, I can't wait to be over.

1966 Small Faces: All Or Nothing

There's a great generosity about these mid sixties number ones listings. Away from the dominant axis of The Beatles and The Stones, there's a sense of fair play in that most of the major British names that made the decade swing all have at least one entry recorded for posterity. The Hollies, The Kinks, The Troggs, Dusty Springfield, The Tremoloes, Procul Harum, Manfred Mann, The Searchers, The Dave Clark Five et al all have (or will) pop up on these lists to help define the era that's collectively known as 'The Sixties'. Fair, but it has to be said that the tracks that did make the top were not always the artist's best or most representative work, an observation that's highly applicable to uber mods The Small Faces.

'All Or Nothing' is a song of promise that ultimately fails to deliver. "I thought you'd listen to my reason, but now I see you don't hear a thing. Got to make you see how it's got to be" lead Small Face Steve Mariott lays down the law to an errant girlfriend over an opening guitar motif that dwindles like a coda but builds into something more raucous as soon as he runs out of things to say. Which unfortunately comes at around the 1:40 mark where a "ba ba ba" middle eight gives way repetitions of the title that veer from threatening ("I ain't telling you no lie girl, so don't just sit there and cry girl") to something bordering on self pity ("All or nothing ...... For me, for me, for me....we're not children"). A drunkard ranting at his girlfriend outside the pub for flirting with the barman, it's neither pleasant nor sympathetic and it wears itself out long before the song limps to a close. 'All Or Nothing' sounds half finished, an initial idea that went nowhere but was stitched up into a single anyway. It gave them their sole number one, and by definition their 'Greatest Hit', but even so it's always a bit part player on any 'Best Of'.

1966 The Beatles: Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine

“We live as we dream, alone”

Yet another double A side from The Beatles and a 'taster' for the then forthcoming 'Revolver' album (and it only seems like yesterday I was talking about 'Rubber Soul'). This time, both songs would appear on that album, though in a perverse twist they'd turn out to be the two least representative examples of the music on that album.

Which isn't to say that that was the sole reason for the pairing - it's passed into common knowledge that we won't be meeting the 'Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane' twofer on this road, but if we did then I'd be pointing out that the disparate mix of experimental psychedelia ('Strawberry Fields Forever') and almost vaudeville nostalgia ('Penny Lane') were united by a chord of childhood memory that ran through the hole at the centre of the single to join the both sides. There's a symmetry there that belied the actual sounds in those grooves. Similarly, both 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'Yellow Submarine' compliment the other with one a song of friendship and camaraderie while the other is a sorry tale of loneliness and social alienation.

Unique at the time in The Beatles' canon, 'Eleanor Rigby' does not actually have any of the band playing on it; the spare string backing is provided by an octet of studio musicians and arranged by McCartney. George Martin scored it and in the sharp and brusque sweeps of violin I can hear more than a shade of Bernard Hermann's score for 'Psycho'; there's horror in 'Eleanor Rigby' too, but it doesn't come from a knife. Combined with her very name, its busy despair provides a vivid pen portrait of how Eleanor must have been in life - a key element of John Major's picture postcard vision Britain as a "land where warm beer is served to the distant echo of leather on willow and the tring-a-ling of bicycle bells rung by spinsters on their way to Holy Communion", an idealised, stereotypical image that McCartney flips to give a taste of the reality beneath.

A hymn to the 'lonely people', McCartney précis the Rigby's life in a series of beautifully underwritten images drawn with the black ink precision of a draughtsman's pen. To my mind, it shares bloodline with Ralph McTell's 'Streets Of London', but whilst McTell was showing the loneliness beneath the surface to provoke a reaction from the listener ("So how can you tell me you're lonely?"), McCartney's lyric is far more observational. Like the ghosts leading Scrooge through his present and future, McCartney offers up a series of interlinked scenes involving two characters for us to examine, but provides no comment on what he reveals. "Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been"- there are a lot of gaps there; why is Eleanor picking up the rice? To tidy the church before Communion? Or is it a symbolic of her longing for a possible life she never had? McCartney doesn't say, but he doesn't need to. We know.

Then there's Father McKenzie, alone with his God "writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near". Did he know Eleanor I wonder? Did he notice her at church at any time before she actually died there? And being the only mourner at her funeral - was he there as friend or because of his duty? McCartney doesn't say, but it leaves a nagging feeling of something wasted, of two with the potential to have found happiness had they been aware of the need in each other. But it's too late now, and McCartney presents a devastating 'well that's that' summation at the closing "Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved" that's heartbreaking. Their God has failed them both. The horror, the horror.

What would Eleanor have given to join the party on the flip side I wonder? A world away from the spare chamber piece of 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Yellow Submarine' is a smorgasbord of sound and colour that paints an arms linked portrait of friendship and togetherness as told by a man who left Eleanor's lonely town behind for a life on sea. Or under it. Bill Hicks did a memorable skit on how The Beatles were so strung out on drugs in 1966 that they not only wrote a sing about a yellow submarine, they even let Ringo sing it.* I've no doubt Bill's tongue was in his cheek, but even if it wasn't I'd suggest there's a far greater clarity and purpose behind this than an acid fuelled daydream.

Because what interests me most about 'Yellow Submarine' is the effort that went in to it; foe something that is essentially a children's sing song, this is nevertheless The Beatles with the lid off, pulling rabbit after rabbit out of the hat in a Heath Robinson style that Wikipedia sums up very well:

"On the second session the studio store cupboard was ransacked for special effects, which included chains, a ship's bell, tap dancing mats, whistles, hooters, waves, a tin bath filled with water, wind and thunderstorm machines, as well as a cash register,which was later used on Pink Floyd's song "Money". Lennon blew through a straw into a pan of water to create a bubbling effect, McCartney and Lennon talked through tin cans to create the sound of the captain's orders, at 1:38-40 in the song, Ringo stepped outside the doors of the recording room and yelled like a sailor acknowledging "Cut the cable! Drop the cable!", which was looped into the song afterwards, and Abbey Road employees John Skinner and Terry Condon twirled chains in a tin bath to create water sounds".

Put simply, it's something I doubt could have been recorded at any time prior to 1966. Drugs may have aided by loosening their minds, but with their star in such an ascendancy they were allowed free reign to create such mayhem in the studio just to furnish a pop song, something I very much doubt they or anybody else would have been allowed to do even a few years previously. But put even simpler, 'Yellow Submarine' is a song that never fails to make me smile. And that's good enough.

I opened this review with a quote from Joseph Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness' because I think it neatly sums up the dark heart of the world of 'Eleanor Rigby'; Eleanor lived 'in a dream' too, and then she died alone. But change the 'Of' of the source to 'And' to get 'Heart And Darkness' and you get a description of the duality at the core of this single. Would Eleanor have been saved had she'd been asked aboard that submarine, and would she have even gone? If I know Eleanor then probably not. On both counts. But away from Conrad's pessimism, that doesn't mean there's no joy to be had from companionship and friendship. And that's all I have to say on that. A magnificent pairing.


* And when Starr sings "and our friends are all aboard", he means it - Brian Jones, Donovan, Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithfull and Neil Aspinall are all there singing along in the background.

1966 The Troggs: With A Girl Like You

There was always something apt and neatly symmetrical about a band called The Troggs scoring a hit with a song called 'Wild Thing'. Just written down it kind of reviewed itself, and when it started playing how could anybody be surprised to hear it sounded like it did (i.e. caveman wild). The same band pitching up with 'With A Girl Like You' doesn't present anything so clear cut in terms of expectations - what sort of girl would a Trogg fall for I wonder and how would they express it? Clumsily as it turns out - 'With A Girl Like You' is a pastiche of American pop played with forced restraint by a band sounding like they're halfways through an anger management therapy program.

The Troggs try to moderate their usual clenched fist touch, but there's a definite heavy handedness about all this that clumps where it should float - take those 'Ba Ba Ba Ba Baaa's, usually a safe bet as background dimmer switch to lighten the mood of any pop but here they hit like errant slaps to the face. But that's ok really, I've always enjoyed the rough coyness of Reg Presley's vocal - "I tell by the way dress that you're so refined, and by the way you talk that you're just my kind" - it's the hard as nails docker sidling up to the pretty girl at the bar and forgetting how to speak for fear of looking soft. Love doesn't have to come dressed as a sonnet and 'With A Girl Like You' is no less genuine or charming for wearing hob nailed boots.

1966 Chris Farlowe: Out Of Time

A Jagger/Richards composition, 'Out Of Time' is a put down of a former lover who wants to get back together. In other words, a song tailor made for Jagger's sneer. "You're obsolete my baby, my poor old-fashioned baby" - Jagger's kiss off is a face to face dismissal, no doubt delivered from the cocksure vantage point of already having another girl on his arm (I can just picture her in thigh boots and miniskirt, smirking along at her would be rival's misery). Cruel yes, but no worse than the cruelty that goes on in broke down relationships every minute of the day.

Farlowe's version, however, locates the point where salt meets wound and grinds it in with a jackboot. There's a critique in his interpretation that's a far more devastating, structural demolition job on the hapless girl than Mick's "now go away" flippancy. Whereas Jagger's ex left it too late to pick up where they left off, Farlowe's angle is to brand her obsolete not just in time, but from life altogether and then to let the world know that he's doing it.

There's an almost jovial tone to his delivery, a sense that he can't wait to get back to that chorus (listen to his rolling "Wellllllll"s that usher it in) to begin another round of destruction of her looks, hair, dress sense, personality, even her very existence - Farlowe's mocking vocal weighs them all in the scales and finds them wanting, a verdict presented with ever increasing glee at delivering put downs dripping with spite whilst what sound like his drunken wingmen chip in on backing vocals with sarcastic jibes of their own ("clever girl"). The best she can do in Farlowe's eyes is find a dark cave to lie down and die in; yes, it sounds that nasty.

And away from the vocal, there's a certain perversion in the sombre string arrangement (in place of the spare, marimba led version the Stones cut for their 'Aftermath' album) that casts 'Out Of Time' as a heavyweight pseudo soul number, a touch that puts a horseshoe into the boxing glove to bring added pain. For me, whenever 'Out Of Time' starts up, I always remember Dusty's pleading on 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' and I hear this as a savage response to her open vulnerability. And it always makes me feel guilty for liking Farlowe's song half as much as I do.*


*And yet it could have been worse still - the version of 'Out Of Time' that features on the 'Tonite Let's All Make Love In London' soundtrack has bleed over from an interview with a young girl on a swing. Her actual piece in the film ends with her extolling the virtues of sixties London - "You're free to do whatever you want and no one cares", yet as the introduction to 'Out Of Time' begins in its own right, the "no one cares" is repeated three times, each quieter than the last until Farlowe opens his mouth to bury it. For me, it adds a level of poignancy to the song that ramps up the prosecution's evidence as to just what a bastard Farlowe is being.

1966 Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames: Get Away

Apparently written to order for a National IIRC petrol advert, 'Getaway' is a groovier update of 'Summer Holiday' for a hipper crowd ("Take a look at that deep blue sea, don't you think it looks great? Not a cloud to be seen in the sky and the sun won't wait"). Or at least Fame tries to give it a hepcat polish, but the song's roots are perhaps betrayed by an octave splitting horn motif that sounds like he's hitting the road in a clown's car with offset wheels.

If it's aim was to be memorable then it succeeds admirably, but it also succeeds in being admirably irritating; a brass horn blast of misplaced jokey humour to soundtrack the recurring punchline to a joke that Fame's too cool for school vocal never tells. It raises a smile on first appearance but thereafter follows an exercise in teeth grinding anticipation as we await the next time it barges in. Which is why I've always preferred Sandie Shaw's 1969 version to Fame's; the honk is there too, but it's tamed and toned down to form a neat bridge between the liyrics instead of a dominating in your face honk that completely overshadows the good work Fame and his band put in.

1966 The Kinks: Sunny Afternoon

Of all the songwriters to emerge from the sixties, none I think were more quintessentially English than Ray Davies. As Albion's unofficial biographer, Davies had a keen eye and wry turn of phrase that could capture the foibles of Little England in a way a lesser writer would fail to document across an entire novel. With the abrasion of 'You Really Got Me' a distant memory, 'Sunny Afternoon' is a languid music hall tumble through Davies' woes - his girlfriend's left him and taxman's at the door but he doesn't let it get him down. Ray's upper lip remains stiff as he enjoys a Hamlet cigar moment*- it's summer, the sun is shining and so the rest of the world can go to hell. How very Stoic, how very English.

There's a good humoured, vaudeville shuffle about 'Sunny Afternoon' that's as inviting as a warm bath with a "Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze" middle eight that screams out for an audience participation sing song. We can smile along with Ray and his self deprecation, even if 'Sunny Afternoon' is very much a rich man's pleasure; the tax man may have his yacht, but he's still got his "stately home" and there's more than a suggestion of a safety net that allows Ray to be laissez-faire about his maladies.

As far as that goes it's interesting to compare it with The Kinks' very next single, the savage social commentary of 'Dead End Street'. The folks who live here don't have any money either, but there's no lazing around with cold beers for them - "What are we living for? Two-roomed apartment on the second floor. No chance to emigrate, I'm deep in debt and now it's much too late." A calculated rejoinder to 'Sunny Afternoon's particular breed of English reserve, or a sign that Davies saw too much smugness in 'Sunny Afternoon' and was keen to polish his 'man of the people' credentials? Or perhaps a bit of both? Whatever, either way it doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the song and I'm happy enough to leave Ray in his luxury of sunshine. I only wish I could join him.


* Hamlet cigars ran a highly successful series of adverts on British television that, to a soundtrack of Bach's 'Air On A G String' showed that even the most calamitous set of circumstances could be redeemed by lighting up a cigar. Which got me wondering if there was any cross-pollination between 'Sunny Afternoon' and the campaign. Lo and behold, I've discovered that the entire campaign was created by the Collett Dickenson Pearce agency.........in 1966. Interesting.

1966 The Beatles: Paperback Writer/Rain

"I saw her at the zoo today, what can I say? She's off the drugs now, said to say 'hey'. And did you still play bass in that Paperback Writer-style? She's looking good, she's got Marianne Faithfull's smile" - so goes Songdog's 'Lazarus In Flames', and I've quoted it because that reference to McCartney's Rickenbacker sound is spot on. It defines the song, it's the first thing you notice as it jabs it's way through 'Paperback Writer' like a middle-weight boxer working the body of a lesser opponent in a flurry of excitement that masks the tartness of the lyrics.

Presented as an open letter ("Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?"), McCartney's lyric takes their previous 'A Hard Day's Night' moan at stardom stance and sharpens the satire razor to compare the feverish demand for their product to the hack work expected of a pulp fiction novelist. Though just who is the intended recipient? The record label? ("If you really like it you can have the rights, it could make a million for you overnight") or is it a sly dig at the fans more interested in quantity than quality? ("It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two.I can make it longer if you like the style, I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer").

Not that it matters really - it's a clever metaphor made cleverer by it's obtuseness that like as not went straight over the heads of 1966 record buyers. And the genius of the song is that it can be taken equally well on the face value of a writer pummelling away at a typewriter because though there's a tongue in cheek whinge at it's heart, it's not a cheap knock-off designed to mark time. The bass outlined above was a move forward all by itself and there's some fine harmonising on the breakdown's that show the boys had been playing close attention to The Beach Boy's version of 'Sloop John B' released a few weeks previously. It gives 'Paperback Writer' an air of familiar comfortability with a veneer of humour that makes it a delight.

Flip side 'Rain' is probably the most famous least known song in The Beatles whole canon. A world away from the clipped precision of 'Paperback Writer', 'Rain' comes acid drenched (sorry) in enough back masking, psychedelic wooze and references to death to present a far more accurate indicator of where the band were heading on 'Revolver' (there's more than a shade of 'She Said, She Said' and 'Tomorrow Never Knows' on this) than the actual 'taster' single would be.

"If the rain comes they run and hide their heads. They might as well be dead" - Lennon draws his 'them and us' line in the sand with a drawling, baiting ("Can you hear me, can you hear me?") vocal over an aural LSD trip of sound that throbs and shifts like a liquid kaleidoscope, but unlike 'Paperback Writer' it never settles into the familiar sound of the 'old' Beatles. The star is 'Rain' is very much the newly acquired 'fifth' member of the band - the recording studio itself and all the possibilities therein. Things were about to get very interesting.....

1966 Frank Sinatra: Strangers In The Night

'I Hate Rock & Roll', so sang The Jesus And Mary Chain in 1996, but Frank Sinatra had already beaten them to it; "The most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear"; that was his take on it. And on that note I wonder if he ever heard 'Paint It, Black' or what he felt when he found out his old school croon had knocked it off number one? Gloating? Vindication? Perhaps, though to be honest I doubt he'd have cared all that much - "a piece of shit" was his own review of 'Strangers In The Night' and it's one that's both harsh and fair in equal measure.

"Strangers in the night exchanging glances, wond'ring in the night what were the chances we'd be sharing love before the night was through." - 'Strangers In The Night' is another spin on the love born out of chance meeting scenario and Ernie Freeman's arrangement fair drips with the romantic promise of a shared and happy future. So far, so unthreatening, but like a raincloud arriving to spoil a picnic, Sinatra's voice sounds like he's been gargling with starch, bringing a stiffness to the proceedings that smothers the pretty melody like a strangler's hands round a young girl's throat. It doesn't ruin the song, but neither does it do much to save it - Frank simply does not sound in a particularly romantic frame of mind with his top heavy, overstated boom, and even the famed "Do be dooby do" scat on the outro sounds less a vocalist bouncing off the tune as one forcing out the sounds through gritted teeth. It might have won him a Grammy, but it kind of makes me wish the lucky girl had stayed in to wash her hair that night.

1966 The Rolling Stones: Paint It, Black

"The sun to me is dark, and silent as the moon", so wrote John Milton in "Samson Agonistes", a line that Nick Cave co-opted into his 'Song Of Joy" to describe his emotions at the murder of his wife and three daughters. What's any of this got to do with 'Paint It, Black'? Well if you'd asked me the same some ten years ago then I'd have said '"nothing". As far as I was concerned, the song completed the pissed of trilogy (after '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' and 'Get Off Of My Cloud') of Jagger retreating into his own brand of nihilism of black clad misery for the sake of misery. But I was wrong.

A more recent familiarity with the lyrics (thank you Mr Internet) reveals that Jagger is upset, but the misery he's defining is the grief of personal loss at the death of a loved one, where their absence draws a desire to paint the whole world the mourning colour of his mood. In fact, it's not too far a stretch to actually place him at the funeral, or at least en-route to it ("I see a line of cars and they are painted black. With flowers and my love both never to come back"), a situation where Jagger refuses to look at anything that reminds him of what he's lost ("I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes. I have to turn my head until my darkness goes").

For most of 'Paint It, Black', Jagger is resigned to his grief, but by the close he's raging against the light that died; "I wanna see it painted, painted black, oh black as night, black as coal. I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky. Painted, painted, painted black oh baby" - see the Milton/Cave reference now? Jagger is almost babbling at the realisation that the world's not listening, that no matter what torments the day is bringing him, to those passer's by it's just another Thursday; life and death go on ("Like a newborn baby, it just happens every day") no matter how unfair it seems ("I could not foresee this thing happening to you") but there's nothing to be done but just get on with it.

In terms of their craft of songwriting, 'Paint It, Black' is a giant step for the band, a sharp précis of bereavement. I've gone on a fair bit about the lyrics because I think they're worth the time, but musically too the song sees the Stones stretch their wings to break free of their R&B straitjacket, with Brian Jones' main riff picked out on a sitar adding a hint of the quasi mystical religions 'that know about this sort of thing' throughout while the rest of the band follow Jagger's lead with a migraine thump of tension that only rocks out whenever he loses the plot within the context of the song. As far as the 'swinging sixties' go, 'Paint It, Black' stands out like a shadow on the x-ray of a young man's lungs, a savage, dark night before the summer of love and a curiously prescient prediction of the band's own short term fate.

1966 Manfred Mann: Pretty Flamingo

Growing up in the seventies, 'Pretty Flamingo' was a particular favourite of mine and a song whose title and imagery always seemed to encapsulate an ideal of the sixties that appealed. Around the same timeframe I was a huge fan of The Banana Splits too, and though I didn't know it at the time, the theme to that show ('The Tra La La Song') and 'Pretty Flamingo' were both written by American Mark Barkan. Two different songs maybe, but looking at them through my 'grown up' eyes not that different; there's a childlike quality about 'Pretty Flamingo' that wouldn't have been out of place on that show (perhaps sung by the Sour Grapes messenger girls) that would explain its appeal to me 'then' but which leaves it looking threadbare 'now'.

Being concerned with that age old issue of the desirable but unobtainable female, the central 'flamingo' metaphor is a shaky one. "On our block all of the guys call her flamingo. Cause her hair glows like the sun, and her eyes can light the sky"; there's an element of 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds' psychedelia in its imagery (certainly when compared to Roy Orbison's similarly themed but far more direct "Pretty woman, walking down the street. Pretty woman, the kind I'd like to meet") but it's tethered to a dusty busker beat that's an earthbound plod and suggests the Manfred's were taking nothing stronger than tea at the time. Singer Paul Jones puts as much yearning into the song as the lyric allows ("Crimson dress that clings so tight, she's out of reach and out of sight") but he can't turn lead into gold and it leaves 'Pretty Flamingo' walking a precarious line between the heartfelt and the childlike that, while never falling squarely into the latter, never does quite enough to convince of the former. As of its time as The Banana Splits were.

1966 Dusty Springfield: You Don't Have To Say You Love Me

In terms of a pecking order of sixties female British vocalists, I think Dusty Springfield would always take top tier on my own personal podium. Her very name is the stuff of icon and legend that's endured within her chosen field far better than any of her contemporaries with nary a hint of the baggage of tacky nostalgia. Dusty's talent lay in her astonishing voice and the interpretative skills she put it to from Marble Arch to Muscle Shoals so it's with a sharp intake of breath that realisation dawns that despite a back catalogue of absolute gems, 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' was her sole number one. It's also one of my least favourite of her songs.

The flip side to the kiss off of 'These Boots Are Made For Walkin'', 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' is an English language version (with lyrics by Simon Napier-Bell) of the Italian "Io che non vivo (senza te)". It's Italiana pedigree remains resplendent in the wash of aria drama provided by the swell of the orchestrated build up laying the foundation for Dusty's introduction, but when it comes it's only for Napier Bell's lyrics to paint her as a woman shameless in her need, an automaton unable to function without her lover (and no, I'm not going into any gay subtext here, mainly because it's irrelevant).

"Don't you see that now you've gone and I'm left here on my own, that I have to follow you and beg you to come home?" - Dusty emotes for all her worth and sounds all too believable in her distress - "You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand. You don't have to stay forever, I will understand. Believe me, believe meeeeee" she cries and believe her we do, but there's something downright unappetising about such a strong and soulful voice prostrating itself as a helpless doormat to be walked over, particularly when the lush swirl of Ivor Raymonde's orchestration wraps it up in a bow that gives it the sheen of virtue.

Dusty had already portrayed the lost without love angle in previous (and superior) singles like 'I Only Want To Be With You' and 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself', but here the need goes beyond love, beyond loving to something unhealthy and, quite frankly, unenjoyable. Compare and contrast with her version of Goffin and King's 'I Can't Make It Alone' (from 1969's 'Dusty In Memphis') which essays a similar theme albeit in a more sympathetic way - "I've tried and I know I can't make it alone, it's such a hard way to go. I just can't make it alone, there's something in my soul that will always lead me back to you" Dusty sounds like she's crying to herself in the dark in a voice we are not meant to be overhearing. It's a superior song all round.

By contrast, 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' has any sympathy or sensitivity beaten out of it by the bombast of the music and a rather ugly, rather clumsy lyric of self humiliation that makes it an exercise in salt rubbing, of a deliberate public airing of the dirtiest washing that inappropriately reminds me of those pictures of Viennese Jews being forced to scrub the streets with a toothbrush in the 1930's - Dusty makes the song sound something magnificent, but such a voice and presence shouldn't be robbed of its dignity in this way.

1966 The Spencer Davis Group: Somebody Help Me

Proof indeed that lightning does strike twice, The Spencer Davis group score again by 'beating up' another Jackie Edwards track into an R&B mould, though this time they fail to trump it. Edwards' original rides a sunny Northern Soul groove bled over with lashings of sunshine brass and female backing vocals that cook up a can't sit still floorfiller. The Spencer Davis Group break it down to just a bass driven beat with a bumble bee guitar droning just behind it all, making it more of an exercise in conversion rather than interpretation. Winwood's vocal again provides a focal point, but it can't replace what's been removed from the original and the song's remaining skeleton is far less enjoyable without some flesh on its bones.

1966 The Walker Brothers: The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore

In 2010, 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' was used to soundtrack a trailer for AMC Television's adaptation of Image Comics' long running saga of a zombie apocalypse 'The Walking Dead'.* Which in its own way kind of tells you most of what you need to know - with a doom laden sweep of a broad brush from a palette of black, 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' presents a Book of Revelation end of the world scenario born solely from the break-up of a love affair; "The sun ain't gonna shine anymore, the moon ain't gonna rise in the sky" - not literally, but because "the tears are always clouding your eyes", so it might as well be; how bad can things get? And what could have become high camp is massaged into believability by Scott Walker's deep and world weary baritone, suggestive of a dead man walking who can think of no good reason to get out of bed in the mornings.

Originally written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio as 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)' for Frankie Valli in 1965, it's this Walker Brothers version that has become definitive, casting a long shadow that effectively eclipses any of the many other versions that abound. Most of the song's familiar tricks and motifs were already in place in Valli's cut, but there's a low calorie thinness about the recording that damps down the majesty and serves it up as just another doo wop weepy. The Walker's actually speed up the main tune and
match the far more definitive statement the removal of the brackets around 'Anymore' engenders by shifting everything to a minor key wall of sound on which producer Johnny Franz nails the Phil Spector homage by mixing Scott's vocal as part of the wall instead of having him constantly trying to scramble over it.

If there's a weakness here, then it's inherent in the song itself; for the most part Scott is a sympathetic observer ("Loneliness is a coat you wear"), but by the close, the cat's let out of the bag when the "Lonely without you baby, so lonely. I can't go on without her" reveals the third party "you" is actually a first person 'me'. It's a shift of focus that skirts a self pity that would hobble the song like a flat tyre, but the minor wobble is soon rectified by fade out where Scott is left howling at the moon on his own while his fellow Walkers clarify exactly why we're here by a repeating the title to burn out. By luck or judgment, 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' presents itself as a natural sequel to 'Make It Easy On Yourself', but there's no luck at all in the fact that it lands as close to perfection as any song gets.


* Prior to this, I've tended to use the example of Ronnie Kray's shooting of George Cornell in The Blind Beggar pub and a stray bullet hitting the juke box that was playing this song at the time, causing the record to repeat the line "The sun ain't gonna shine, anymore, anymore, anymore." as Cornell lay dying. It's a 'nice' story, even if it is apocryphal, but that 'Walking Dead' example is a better one, not least because it's true.

1966 Nancy Sinatra: These Boots Are Made For Walkin'

A good way to get moving up any corporate ladder is to have your father on the board of directors, but in fairness to Nancy she always was her own woman and hitching herself to professional maverick Lee Hazlewood was never going to grease the wheels of commerciality; there are some strings even Frank couldn't pull. 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin'' is undoubtedly Hazlewood's best known song and something of a standard, but there's a degree of weirdness bubbling just below that catchy surface that makes the song a more interesting proposition than first listen might suggest.

For a start, there's a curious incongruity between the musicians and Nancy's vocal. As played by The Wrecking Crew, 'Boots' is a lithe twist of a tune kicked off by Chuck Berghofer's snaking down to the gutter bassline that rams right angles against the later ladder scaling horns that punctuate the song's aura of sleaze. But despite all this mischief, Ms Sinatra sounds like she's following a different drum altogether with her flat intonation of the lyric exuding a pure indifference to whatever her would be lover is trying to convince her of.

"You keep saying you've got something for me, something you call love but confess" - Nancy acknowledges his presence, but that's as far as it's going to go. She's not going to be suckered in to his bullshit and there's a deliciously savage aural knee in the groin in her "HA!" that follows the knowing "you keep thinkin' that you´ll never get burnt"; Nancy is nobody's fool, mess her around and her boots are going to walk right out the door.*

Proto feminism wrapped up in a fist that can tickle as well as it can punch, 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin'' has attitude in spades and a keen edge that cuts a path for Patti Smith, Debbie Harry et al to follow, right through to Bikini Kill and Riot Grrl but with none of the soap box anger or the novelty spectacle of an uppity woman on her high horse - just power derived from her sex (rather than in spite of it) mixed with strength through personality, something Sinatra has in abundance. And oh yes, it's sexy as hell.

* I can hear exactly the same dismissiveness in Tanya Donnelly's derogatory sneer of "boy" on Belly's 'Feed The Tree', a term used in a way that makes it sound like the ultimate put-down.

1966 The Overlanders: Michelle

From the point of view of their contemporaries, one of the benefits to be gained from the prolificacy of The Beatles at this time was their policy of releasing stand-alone singles meant that their albums weren't ruthlessly strip mined for the same, even where they were full of potential hits just ripe for the plucking. This may have preserved the purity of their output, but it also allowed other artists to cherry pick those same album tracks and serve them up under their own name, with 'Michelle' being a case in point.

As it appears on 'Rubber Soul', McCartney's Francophile homage charms in its brevity, a 'White Album' cut two years early that works well as the side one closer but lacks sufficient substance to stand by itself as a single. Which is fine because it was never meant to, but in order to thicken the pot folkies The Overlanders stir in a generous helping of chunky stodge and sickly sincerity that makes their 'Michelle' flow with all the warmth of thin blood around a fat lined artery. It's another 'beefing up' approach that although worked so well on 'Keep On Running', makes 'Michelle' a house of cards stuck together with gooey flour and water paste - the overall structure remains broadly the same, but all delicacy and fragility is gone. Which was kind of the main selling point in the first place.

1966 The Spencer Davis Group: Keep On Running

As a song, there's not a lot to 'Keep On Running', but as originally written and recorded by Jackie Edwards for the fledgling Island label in 1965, there was even less than that. The booming drum beat still dominates, but the cavernous spaces that house it are not filled by Edwards playing catch up with a no rush to run anywhere vocal, causing the song to run out of steam before it crosses the finish line. The Spencer Davies Group embellish the paucity with a thick rope of bass filler and Kinks-like bursts of fuzzy guitar - a lazy 'Brit Beat' makeover cash-in maybe, but they unquestionably add a presence of their own that plugs 'Keep On Running' into the mains to make it the more 'complete' song. And yes, although it's Spencer's name on the tin, the true star and focal point here is that soulful tenor from the seventeen year old Steve Winwood, a full blooded yet restrained performance that gives Edward's slight lyric a keen yearning whilst avoiding any showboating 'look at me' posturing of the solo artist in waiting. Fine stuff.