Review: Billy Fury - Halfway To Paradise (1961)
Tracks: 1) Halfway To Paradise; 2) Don’t Worry; 3) You’re Having The Last Dance With Me; 4) Push Push; 5) Fury’s Tune; 6) Talkin’ In My Sleep; 7) Stick Around; 8) A Thousand Stars; 9) Cross My Heart; 10) Comin’ Up In The World; 11) He Will Break Your Heart; 12) Would You Stand By Me.
REVIEW
This record completes Billy’s transition from wannabe-rocker into the «lite entertainment» category: the cover of Goffin & King’s ʽHalfway To Paradiseʼ, originally recorded in the States by Tony Orlando, sent him to the top of the UK charts, (probably) lost him a small squadron of devoted hardcore rock fans, and gained an army of newly evolved softcore ones. But can we blame this rechristening on the young artist himself, without taking a general look at the changing times? As Cliff Richard’s main competition for the title of «British Elvis», he too had to follow in the footsteps of the American role model; and now that the real Elvis, back from the army, was showing the world how softening up his act is doing nothing but boosting the sales, the UK shadows had to follow suit, with no serious marketable alternatives. After all, «guitar bands are on their way out», as they said in Decca, and not entirely without reason.
What is significantly worse than just «softening up», though, is that Billy was no longer willing to (or allowed to) write his own songs. Apart from ʽFury’s Tuneʼ, a short semi-nostalgic, semi-comic folk-pop ditty in which he amuses himself by quoting as many titles of his own past hits as possible, everything else is just stuff by contemporary US and UK professional songwriters, writing for the lite-pop scene: for the most part, I do not recognize the titles, other than ʽYou’re Having The Last Dance With Meʼ, which, probably for copyright reasons, invents new lyrics for the recent contemporary Ben E. King classic ʽSave The Last Dance For Meʼ, otherwise leaving the melody intact.
Still, if you have nothing against early 1960s soft-rock per se, Halfway To Paradise is as nice and elegant as an overall musical sketch of that epoch could hope to be. Pure pathos syrup is largely confined to just one orchestral ballad (ʽA Thousand Starsʼ), floating along at a somnambulant waltz tempo and quickly forgotten; most of the rest is lively, upbeat, often catchy pop with occasional echoes of blues and R’n’B, and if only the arrangements were relying a little less on keyboards, strings, and girly harmonies and a bit more on tastefully recorded guitar patterns, the whole thing could have been extolled as a cool, worthwhile example of pre-Beatles pop-rock.
For starters, ʽHalfway To Paradiseʼ, want it or not, is a Carole King classic about being friendzoned, perfect melodic resolution and all, and Billy, with his Elvis-like style, actually does a grittier, less manneristic job with it than Tony Orlando. Then there is some piano-led country-pop stuff like ʽDon’t Worryʼ and ʽTalkin’ In My Sleepʼ (imagine Elvis guest singing lead on a Jerry Lee Lewis album from his country period, but do remember to dim the lights a little — this is Billy, after all, not Elvis or Jerry); some bossa nova influences (ʽHe Will Break Your Heartʼ); some further cuddlifying of the sentimental approach of Buddy Holly (ʽStick Aroundʼ)... nothing jaw-dropping, that is, but still a respectably diverse bag of styles, created with a modicum of intelligence, arranged with a big nod to catchiness, and, for the most part, delivered without any signs of overt sweetening or theatrical exaggeration.
Of course, the extra smoothness begs for at least a few licks of salt — the addition of even a single track that would have a faint hint at going a little deeper (such as ʽWondrous Placeʼ) would have helped a lot. From a historic perspective, Halfway To Paradise helped make Billy a national star while at the same time forever burying his hopes of future artistic growth — but the exact same thing applies to Elvis, and apparently what was good for Elvis was also good for all his imitators across the ocean. At the very least, there is still much more integrity in this kind of record than there was in contemporary albums by Cliff Richard, who chose to bury himself up to his neck in old standards and sentimental journeys home; the core of Billy’s intended audience still consists of kids rather than their parents, and I would take this album over something like Listen To Cliff! any time.