Tune Tag #39 with Penny Kiley: Them, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Elvis Presley, Glasvegas, Camel, Petula Clark, Supremes
A Liverpudlian scribe joins the fun for this Tune Tag! A former correspondent for UK's leading rock tabloid, Penny's unique '80s Brit POV is unleashed today, and is welcomed, FRONT ROW & BACKSTAGE!
Hey, Penny! Air Tag…..You’re IT!
Tune Tag welcomes UK- based rock scribe, of Penny Kiley’s music writing!
Penny: “UK-based former music journo. In 1979, I became Liverpool correspondent (and token punk rocker) for Melody Maker. My first interview was The Cramps. My first interview with a Liverpool band was The Teardrop Explodes. It was their first interview, too. Now, I’m collecting my post-punk archive on Substack, with a new piece every week, plus a short commentary for historical context. Still getting used to being ‘historical’.”
[Brad’s 2¢: My record-biz career overlapped Penny’s by, literally, just a few weeks! In 1979, I was finishing up 3 years in retail at Houston’s (TX) Cactus Records, and would frequently visit a local newsstand to pick up one or all of the three weekly UK rock tabloids, including Penny’s Melody Maker (from my POV, and a handful of years reading them all, the best), Sounds, and New Musical Express (NME). In January 1980, I moved to a Los Angeles suburb, and didn’t want to venture downtown to look for a newsstand that might carry those tabs. I wish I could say that I had read Penny’s work!]
Last week, we happily welcomed in
of the BrittaRiffindots Substack!Next week, we welcome back to Tune Tag,
of Earnestness is Underrated!Penny’s song #1 sent to Brad: Gerry & The Pacemakers, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” 1964
Just a couple months after The Beatles led The British Invasion to the States via The Ed Sullivan Show, Gerry Marsden’s Pacemakers take that same CBS-TV stage (above) to present their group-written hit, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” which was produced for record by George Martin, with Brian Epstein as their manager. The song got to #4 in the U.S., and hit #6 in the UK.
Penny’s rationale: I chose this because I wanted something from Liverpool that wasn’t obvious. Gerry and the Pacemakers are underrated in pop history, but they were the first group to reach number one in the UK with their first three singles (the next to do so was another Liverpool group, Frankie Goes to Hollywood). This wasn’t one of the number ones, but I love the emotional vocal and melancholy feel.
Brad’s song #1 sent to Penny: Louise Cordet, “Two Lovers,” 1964
Penny’s response: New to me, which is good. I learnt something from this. I hadn’t heard of Louise Cordet before (she only had one UK hit, “I’m Just a Baby” in 1962, and it passed me by), but I really liked the way this puts a girl-group groove onto a Motown song. And I found out that Gerry Marsden co-wrote “Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” for her. Her version is good, too, but I still prefer Gerry’s (recorded two months after Cordet’s February 1964 recording).
Brad’s rationale: 1964, the same year as The Pacemakers’ “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” Cordet was the first to record the eventual Pacemakers hit, with Gerry and gang following. Her Decca recording of Smokey Robinson’s “Two Lovers” features session guitar player, Jimmy Page.
Penny’s song #2: Them, “Here Comes the Night” (feat. Van Morrison), 1965
Live 1965 footage, with a rare and interesting musical misstep at about the 0:28 mark, but Van and company regroup quickly enough:
Brad’s response: Written by Bert Berns, who also produced the track. Berns founded Bang Records that same year (with eventual Atlantic Records mainstays, Ahmet Ertegun, older brother, Nesuhi Ertegun, and Jerry Wexler). A guess might have Penny offering a song by a group that featured an eventual solo rock star (Morrison), tagging my song that featured noted Led Zep guitarist, Page, as a session player.
Penny’s rationale: So, Jimmy Page played on the Louise Cordet song, which opened up lots of possibilities, as he did so much session work in the early ‘60s. Wikipedia tells me he played on “Here Comes the Night,” so I hope it’s true. I chose this because it’s one of my favourite Van Morrison tracks. It has a great dynamic and Van’s voice is suitably moody. And I always sing along.
I first heard this on the radio some time in the 1970s, and earnt my own copy of the single in 1978 as part payment for working at a record fair for a friend.
[Brad: Vinyl as currency! We love that, plus there’s no exchange rate from one country to another! Wikipedia also allows that Andy White (who briefly replaced Ringo on drums for the recording of “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You”) and Tommy Scott performed backing vocals, with Phil Coulter on keyboards.]
Brad’s song #2: Camel, “Freefall,” 1974
Live “Freefall”: Camel? No, but an incredible simulation by a gaggle of grade-school dromedaries! In what has to be a bunch of 10- to 12-year-olds from the Paul Green School of Rock, they bring the house down at their annual Prog Rock Show:
Penny’s response: When I was an English student at Liverpool University, I smoked Camels for a while. Not because I liked them, but because I liked the packaging (as seen on this record sleeve), and thought they were cool (Kids: cigarettes are NOT cool)!
I didn’t know much about Camel, but I associated the name with prog rock, so when I saw this, I assumed I would hate it. I was right. My initial response was “Aaargh”! My second response was “Do I have to listen to over 5 minutes of this?” I did, though, but it didn’t change my mind.
Sorry Brad, but it’s everything I dislike in music. Why punk had to happen!
Brad’s rationale: Somebody in the studio during the recording of Camel’s Mirage (for list of credits, click here) seems to agree with you, Penny! Just three years after serving as the overdub engineer on the Camel album, Bill Price went on to co-produce (with Chris Thomas) the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks! I saw them at a club in Texas in 1978. That story’s here:
As for the connection: On the Mirage album, Peter Bardens, the keyboardist in Them, played all the keyboards in Camel (and on Mirage, including organ, piano, synth, and mellotron), and wrote and sang this “Freefall” lead-off track.
Penny’s song #3: Glasvegas, “A Snowflake Fell (And it Felt Like a Kiss),” 2008
Brad’s response: I was really quite taken with this song….first, the really thick Scottish accent with which James Allan sings was striking at first (I don’t think I’ve heard one this pronounced on a song before).
Secondly, I enjoyed the instrumentation, which does a lot to reinforce its presence on a Christmas release, as this was. Third, as intentional a word selection as it may have been on the title, the parenthetical “(And It Felt Like a Kiss)” was just too blatant a reference to counter with any song other than the one I sent Penny! I’m curious to discover if she was familiar with that parenthetical title appendage and its previous ‘60s appearance!
Penny’s rationale: Camel’s “Freefall” mentions the word “snowflake.” I first came across Glasvegas when I saw them doing “Daddy’s Gone” on Jools Holland’s BBC-TV show. Loved it straight away. A bit punk, but with bits of lots of other stuff too, all the things that I love, but so well integrated that it doesn’t feel retro.
Not from the Holland show, but here’s a behind-the-scenes video with Glasvegas, and the making of their “Daddy’s Gone” music video:
Obviously (the title of this tells you, too), they know their pop history. [Brad: That answers my question about Glasvegas and the song!] The singer, James Allan, at the time (2008), looked like a young Joe Strummer.
I like alternative Christmas records that are beautiful and dark (check out “So Much Wine” by The Handsome Family):
I’m a sucker for a vocal with hurt in it, and the Scottish accent is a bonus. “A Snowflake Fell” is altogether gorgeous.
Brad’s song #3: The Crystals, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” 1962
Penny’s response: You don’t hear this one very often, for obvious reasons. In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve heard it before at all. Perhaps in recognition of the dark subject matter, the production is more downbeat than Spector’s usual “Wall of Sound” stuff, which I’m generally a fan of.
You can’t hear this now without thinking of Phil Spector’s history of domestic abuse and femicide. It’s a perennial question (which I revisited most recently when Jerry Lee Lewis died): how we react when bad people make great art. Some celebrate the art without acknowledging the bad stuff, while others make the bad stuff a reason to ignore the art. It’s difficult, especially for women who are often more affected by the “bad stuff.” But, I still listen to Spector’s work.
Brad’s rationale: Carole King’s melody with a Gerry Goffin lyric on a Phil Spector production. Clearly, both Penny and Glasvegas were well aware of this 1962 record which, understandably, got limited AM-radio play at the time. In fact, Spector pulled his Philles Records single from distribution, after public outcry and radio backlash begat a PR nightmare.
AllMusic’s Dave Thompson on the record: “Goffin and King wrote the song after their live-in babysitter Eva Boyd (19-year-old singer, Little Eva, who had recorded the songwriting duo’s ‘The Loco-Motion’ that same year) returned from a weekend away with her boyfriend, covered in bruises. When questioned about it, the girl didn’t bat an eyelid. He hit her because he loved her.
“It was a brutal song, as any attempt to justify such violence must be, and Spector’s arrangement only amplified its savagery, framing Barbara Alston’s lone vocal amid a sea of caustic strings and funereal drums, while the backing vocals almost trilled their own belief that the boy had done nothing wrong.
“In more ironic hands (and a more understanding age), ‘He Hit Me’ might have passed at least as satire. But, Spector showed no sign of appreciating that, nor did he feel any need to. No less than the song’s writers, he was not preaching, he was merely documenting.”
In a 2012 interview with NPR, King stated that Little Eva, their babysitter who inspired the song, had used that exact phrase to them (“It didn’t hurt; it felt like a kiss”). Essentially the same line that appeared in the 1956 film musical, Carousel.
Whether Goffin, King herself, or Eva had seen the film, or knew of the phrase beforehand, Carole, in that same radio interview, said that she was sorry she had ever had anything to do with the song. She was a survivor of repeated domestic abuse—not from Goffin, who had been her husband from 1959 to 1969—but, from her third husband, Rick Evers, according to IMDb (and her 2012 autobiography).
Penny’s song #4: Elvis Presley, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” 1968
Brad’s response: On first blush, Penny’s tag seems to be the message of general violence this song from the 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, Carousel, projects. According to the song’s Wiki page: “In the second act of the musical, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the protagonist Julie Jordan, sings ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the male lead, stabs himself with a knife whilst trying to run away after attempting a robbery with his mate, Jigger, and dies in her arms.”
From a 2013 Independent/UK article, could the Liverpudlian Penny be making a localized soccer reference with this info? “After becoming a chart hit [with Gerry & The Pacemakers’ 1963 cover], the song gained popularity among Liverpool F.C. fans, and quickly became the football anthem of the club, which adopted ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ as its official motto on its coat of arms. The song is sung by its supporters before the start of each home game at Anfield, with the Gerry & The Pacemakers’ version being played over the public address system.”
Penny’s rationale: I was brought up on classic musicals, especially Rodgers and Hammerstein, and you don’t get more classic than Carousel. The play it was based on includes the line, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss,” and the theme is echoed, controversially, in the musical, too.
But, of course its best known song is “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I was very tempted to choose the Gerry and the Pacemakers version – now, of course, a Liverpool anthem -– which would have brought this full circle. But, I’ve gone instead, with Elvis’s version. I love him as a rock’n’roller, but his mature, big ballad voice is wonderful too; it gives me the shivers.
FR&B’s exclusive contributor, singer/songwriter/guitarist, Stephen Michael Schwartz, saw Elvis, live at the Vegas Hilton, in 1974. That story, in his own words, is here:
Brad’s song #4: The Supremes, Petula Clark, Bobby Darin, “Mountain Greenery,” 1967
Penny’s response: Wow, those 1960s light-entertainment shows look so camp now! I like Rodgers and Hart, but this song is new to me. I suspect it didn’t cross the pond. This production doesn’t really do justice to the lyrics so I’ve been down a YouTube rabbit hole checking out different versions. I particularly liked the one by Kat Edmondson from the Woody Allen film, Café Society (below), as well as the classic versions by Mel Tormé (below) and Ella Fitzgerald (hear her song video here).
Brad’s rationale: My link is Richard Rodgers. From the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic to this Rodgers & Hart chestnut, “Mountain Greenery,” with the Count Basie Orchestra! Originally written for the musical, The Garrick Gaieties in 1926, this unique “trio” performance (with The Supremes, Pet Clark, and Bobby Darin) is from the 1967 TV special, Rodgers & Hart Today.
My first exposure to this song was finding it in the library at the University of Houston radio station, KUHF in 1975. I was 20, and played Mel Tormé’s cover during my daily afternoon “easy-listening” shift from 3-6pm!
From the YouTube content creator’s page: “This Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart standard became a surprise Top 10 chart entry in the UK in 1956 thanks to Mel Tormé’s recording - a ‘live’ performance from The Crescendo, a West Hollywood night club at 8572 Sunset Boulevard. This TV appearance was a year or so later, when Mel was accompanied by Nelson Riddle’s Orchestra.”
Lorenz Hart’s lyrics are a thing of beauty, consternation, and curiosity! From the song’s Wiki page: “The lyrics display Hart’s characteristic use of enjambement and witty and unexpected internal rhymes e.g. ‘lover let’ and ‘coverlet’ and ‘keener re...’ rhymed with ‘beanery’!”:
Mel’s son, Steve, recorded a rock album in 1977 on United Artists Records. That story:
Thank you so much for joining us, Penny! We loved having you!
Penny signs off: Actually, I think all 4 of your choices were new to me, so thank you!
Whenever someone brings up Gerry and the Pacemakers, which isn't often, I always think of Wayne's World.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/409042dd-f7c5-41fb-877a-9eb23d748d50
The Liverpool Football Club video with Steven Gerrard running and stretching as the fans sing their hearts out -- what popular music is all about, joining in song to celebrate and support something we care about. Great video.
I did not know/remember that Gerry had such a great voice. There's something about Liverpudlian singers having a similar unique quality to their voices (like Gerry and the Beatles), wonder if that's been studied, but I remember having trouble understanding some Liverpudlians when I visited if they had a thick accent (and I lived in the UK at the time!). Lovely performance on Ed Sullivan, so glad you chose that.
The Mountain Greenery video is quite a find -- agree that it was camp, but it seemed so normal to us at the time, lots of these variety shows back then and we took the appearance of icons and high performance values for granted. The power of the networks and a huge mass audience, but then the BBC has its equivalent -- I'm thinking Strictly Come Dancing with all the pop stars performing on there (Take That, Rod Stewart when his wife was a contestant!, etc.) -- with ballroom dancers doing impossible feats for the ordinary human in front of them.
Anyway, great tune tag, guys! Lots of interesting choices here.