1960 The Everly Brothers: Cathy's Clown

The aesthete in me would like to see 'Cathy's Clown' as the neat end to a continuous thread that started back in 1958 on 'All I Have To Do Is Dream', a move from innocence to experience with the start song detailing the lovesick longing for the unobtainable Cathy of this single who was then wooed and won. And why not - dreams do sometimes come true don't they? But then again, some dreams turn into nightmares too and 'Cathy's Clown' covers both; in my mind Cathy, was the dream that turned sour when her promise of heaven turned into a hell of a handful with a swinging brick where a heart should be. Exactly what she did to cause such grief we are never told, but the rest of the world is in the know to the extent that the former dreamer is now identified purely in terms of his 'relationship' with Cathy - not as her boyfriend or lover, but as her 'clown'.

I've been referring to the protagonist here so far in the singular when in fact 'he' is voiced by the twin vocals of the brothers plural. But that's always been the beauty of the Everly Brothers - twin harmonies that although very different, manage to interplay, interlock and fuse as one. On this, their duality provides an emotional mix of anger at their treatment run through with the self loathing of knowing they're being played for a chump but are too weak in the presence of beauty to do anything about it.

The descending cries of "Don't want your lo-o-o-o-ove anymore. Don't want your ki-i-i-i-isses, that's for sure" are loud and defiantly in Cathy's face in a 'take that you bitch' snarl. But the aggression doesn't last and by the time the verses come round, tails disappear between legs with the "Dontcha think it's kinda sad, that you're treating me so bad, or don't you even care?" appeal (sung by Don in the hangdog mumble of a man who can no longer look at himself in the mirror) to a better nature that you know, just know, is falling on deaf ears. It's a duality that's reflected in the music too; a harsh scrape of guitar and drum-major beats (courtesy of Buddy Harman) colliding with a crash that's way too downbeat for rock & roll but too loud to be anything else.

Of course, the Blakean scenario I posit in the first paragraph above is only correct in terms of the song's subject matter; the Everly Brothers had had six further hits in between 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' and this to make the space between them not as easy to bridge as my theory would like and certainly nothing that would form any kind of 'thread'. And perhaps that's fitting enough - 'Cathy's Clown' is a big step forward from the more simplistic country tinge of their earlier songs of love to an altogether more mature, more confident plain where the teenage dream promise of cars and girls had to grow up in the face of broke down engines and broken relationships. Sad, but that's life and on 'Cathy's Clown' the Everly's showed they were man enough to grow up along with them.