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Once so ubiquitous, Cliff (and his Shadows) have become strangers to these shores, rare visitors overtaken by trends and styles in both popular culture and popular music that they either could not or would not adapt to. Telling then that it took the everyman appeal of a Eurovision Song Contest entry to generate interest enough to take him back to the top; if there's one thing 'Congratulations' has in spades, it's broad appeal.
After a brief introduction build up with a hint of drama to come, 'Congratulations' soon and permanently settles into a gentle Johnny Cash in carpet slippers boom chicka boom rhythm that exerts just enough force to buoy the main melody with a twinkling eye wink. Cliff himself makes no concessions to his roots in his performance - this is Cliff as light entertainer pure and simple, content to let the song play him with its own faceless anonymity; there's no stamp of personality here, virtually any Brit singer from the class of 1959 could have sung it to no greater or lesser effect.
No harm in that - 'Congratulations' isn't something that lends itself to individualistic interpretation. Like hospital food, it's purely functional and serves its purpose by getting multi-cultural hands clapping at its predictability to the point that its own language is superfluous; does nobody think to question just what is being congratulated here and why? Is Cliff congratulating himself on finding such a lover, or are his mates slapping him on the back in a more polite version of a Sid James 'Phwoaar!!'? And aren't both just a teeny bit patronising? Ah who cares; just like hospital food, 'Congratulations' is too bland and tasteless to be worth the worry. Collect the points and move along.
By 1968, the main instigators of the psychedelic movement had turned their backs on the genre to return home to some more basic roots. Dylan had already released the folk influenced 'John Wesley Harding' (and would shortly go all out country on 'Nashville Skyline'), The Byrds pioneered country rock on 'Sweetheart Of The Rodeo'. The Rolling Stones, never comfortable with psychedelia in the first place, produced the raw blues of 'Beggars Banquet' before heading into darker waters still while The Beatles decamped to India to follow the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before releasing the stripped down double 'The Beatles/The White Album'.
Before that though came 'Lady Madonna', which in itself was a conscious move toward the style of music that inspired the band to pick up guitars in the first place. McCartney is on record as saying he was aiming for a Fats Domino, deep south rolling rhythm in writing it and on that level at least it succeeds. But that's part of the problem I think - 'Lady Madonna' sounds more a studious exercise in songcraft than the sound of a band with anything on its mind. McCartney knew the sound he wanted, but then having nailed it had no set plan on what to do with it. So rather than let it coast on a boogie woogie groove, 'Lady Madonna' gets embellished with the usual fattening studio trickery including the band mimicking a brass section by blowing through their cupped hands (really).
And that's fine as an exercise with something with the throwaway nature of 'Hello, Goodbye', but 'Lady Madonna' comes with a central narrative that presents a curious mix of sympathy and meanness - is McCartney expressing admiration for the put upon the mother juggling life's problems, or is there a snide, Daily Mail put down ("Who finds the money when you pay the rent, did you think that money was heaven sent?") of such feckless lifestyles? In fairness it's probably neither; McCartney is celebrating motherhood in the round and like 'Eleanor Rigby' before it, 'Lady Madonna' is purely song as observation, albeit not observation drawn with sufficient clarity that we know exactly what it is we are looking at. Which, taking on board it's already aping tone, makes it a lazy release with only McCartney's still functioning ear for melody keeping it afloat.
Xanadu, of course, was the capital of Kubla Khan's China, but on this evidence writers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley locate it somewhere near the Mexican border. There's a definite Western air about 'The Legend Of Xanadu' that tips its hat to Elmer Bernstein's theme to 'The Magnificent Seven' while adding some mariachi trumpet blasts, flamenco guitar runs and gunshot whipcracks that are all its own. At heart, it's more death song nonsense about some guy killed in a duel over some gal - but whatever, 'The Legend of Xanadu' is three and a half minutes of lightning in a bottle, a thrill ride of tightly wrapped bundle of hooks, riffs and cod drama that gallops along like a horse on the prairie. Or like the finest pop song. Which is what this is. Fantastic.
Well where to start? 'Cinderella Rockefella' is a song I seem to have been familiar with forever. To my young years, having no idea what these people looked like, I'd always pictured Esther's disembodied ghostly shrill as coming from an aged Bianca Castofiore lookalike (yes, I was a big TinTin fan as a lad) while Abi was a suave, middle aged Dean Martin type in tuxedo and spats. It didn't make the song any more enjoyable, but it did give it an 'adult' context that made sense of why I found it so strange and unyielding. And with that in mind it came as some surprise when I eventually found out they were actually a young couple with film star good looks. Not that this made the song any more enjoyable either - three minutes of yodelled sweet nothings over a variation on the theme from Steptoe and Son is going to need more of a boost than a good looking front end to salvage it. Yes I know it's meant to be humorous and all that, but compared to the genuine warmth emanating from that 'other' couple singing sweet nothings to each other, 'Cinderella Rockefella' is cold and charmless. Esther sings with intensity yet still sounds like a flake while Abi is too smug and self satisfied for anyone's good, creating a mismatch car crash sound of a couple on a blind date going off the rails.
It took a keen ear to hear any pop promise in the rambling bagatelle of Bob Dylan's decidedly lo-fi "Quinn the Eskimo (Mighty Quinn)" - it should be next to impossible to say that title without smiling, but Dylan seems to manage it just fine and his throwaway song with its throwaway subject matter seemed destined to never leave the cutting room floor. Enter Manfred Mann to provide an unexpected payday with a version akin to The Beatle's own 'Yellow Submarine' - i.e. a larger than life schoolyard sing song. But while former at least had a message of togetherness at it's heart, 'The Mighty Quinn' has nothing beyond a chunky chorus heralding the imminent arrival of Quinn.
What he's coming to deliver we're not told, and the verses don't shine too much light either, being little more than a nonsense stream tapped from Dylan's consciousness ("Everybody's building ships and boats. Some are building monuments, others jotting down notes"). Thankfully it's given a thick protective padding by the band that might be out of proportion to the strength of the song, but it serves to hide its weakness with a rolling swagger that emphasises that satisfying chorus with a neat tease of a pause before it's launched. And an added airy flute motif highlights the playful fact that we're not meant to be taking this too seriously. And I never do, which is why I find it so enjoyable.
The 'key' to 'Everlasting Love' lies in its second line; though to all intents and purposes a celebration of eternal love, it's the half buried "I went away just when you needed me so" that gives the game away, making the song actually a grovelling 'please don't spoil a good thing and take me back' plea to a lover wronged. And that's how it's played out in Robert Knight's Northern Soul favourite original - the celebration is there, but it's couched in a suitably sheepish manner of a misbehaving dog trying to worm its way out of the doghouse after shitting on the floor by wagging its tail hard.
In contrast, The Love Affair cut the song to it's pop bone and flog the chorus hard on a spruced up horn backing and 'gee up' plucked bassline click . But as for that key line, well vocalist Steve Ellis fumbles the ball, converting it into a "I went away, just when you, you need me so" that takes the sting out of the tail to render it more emotionally neutral. That the whole works well enough as power pop is testament to the fact that 'Everlasting Love' has melody hooks to burn, but it's all surface gloss, a one dimensional take on a three dimensional song that can stand by itself, but not in its own company. If you see what I mean.
It doesn't feature in the soundtrack, but 'The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde' was inspired not so much by actual events, but actual events as depicted in Arthur Penn's Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway 1967 movie 'Bonnie And Clyde'. Peter Callander and Mich Murray had already written a sizeable number of early Merseysound hits, but where songs like 'How Do You Do It?' were direct and to the point, the psuedo tough guy lyrics to this meander on a lazy river of cliché, ("Reach for the sky" sweet-talking Clyde would holler"), forced rhyme ("Bonnie and Clyde began their evil doin', one lazy afternoon") and uneven metre ("Now one brave man-he tried to take 'em alone, they left him lyin' in a pool of blood, and laughed about it all the way home"). The non-ballad, faux speakeasy piano rolls paste on a thirties patina, but Fame's homeboy Yankee drawl makes for a trad in a basket result that's more Barron Knights than robber barons, particularly with a 'wah wah waaaaaaaah' ending more suited to soundtracking a slapstick pratfall than the violent deaths of two murderers. Humorous you say? Well I'd be more inclined to accept the tongue in cheek good humour of it all if there was in fact any humour there to be accepted. All very unappealing.
Once so ubiquitous, Cliff (and his Shadows) have become strangers to these shores, rare visitors overtaken by trends and styles in both popular culture and popular music that they either could not or would not adapt to. Telling then that it took the everyman appeal of a Eurovision Song Contest entry to generate interest enough to take him back to the top; if there's one thing 'Congratulations' has in spades, it's broad appeal.
