Review: Chad & Jeremy - Yesterday's Gone (1964)
Tracks: 1) A Summer Song; 2) Now And Forever; 3) Dirty Old Town; 4) Like I Love You Today; 5) September In The Rain; 6) Yesterday’s Gone; 7) If She Was Mine; 8) Willow Weep For Me; 9) Only For The Young; 10) Too Soon My Love; 11) The Truth Often Hurts The Heart; 12) No Tears For Johnnie.
REVIEW
With a little extra push, David Stuart Chadwick from Windermere, Westmorland and Michael Thomas Jeremy Clyde from Dorney, Buckinghamshire just might have become the British equivalent of Paul Frederic Simon from Newark, New Jersey and Arthur Ira Garfunkel from Forest Hills, Queens — especially given how much in common there was between the two duos. Both met in school, both started out as a folk duo, both made a transition to the pop scene, both had one reliable songwriting member (Chad / Paul) and one pretty boy (Art / Jeremy), both broke up due to exhaustion and internal strife, both would occasionally reunite, and both would have one member pursue a semi-successful acting career in the aftermath (Art and Jeremy). This, however, is where the similarities largely end, and the differences begin — differences which more or less transparently explain why everybody remembers and loves Simon & Garfunkel, while Chad & Jeremy have largely passed into oblivion, their memory kept alive mainly in the heads of their still surviving contemporaries. (It may have been briefly refreshed by the recent passing of Chad on December 20, 2020 — at least the New York Times published a long and detailed obituary, which may have been more than poor Chad could ever have hoped for).
For starters, there is something unbearably corny about the duo’s name itself — as a musical act, they may have been a bit more interesting than their chief UK competition in that niche at the time, Peter & Gordon, but it feels as if there’s just one tiny half-step from «Chad & Jeremy» to «Tom & Jerry» (which, ironically, was precisely what Simon & Garfunkel used to call themselves before realizing they would never have a serious career with such a name). Why they couldn’t have gone with the so much more royal-sounding «Stuart & Clyde» totally beats me, but then again one should never underestimate the childlike innocence spirit of the early Sixties; and indeed, the problem of Chad & Jeremy is that, just like quite a few of their contemporaries from the same years, they never really managed to grow out of it.
For a brief while — that special time window of 1964, the golden era of pop-rock’s disarming innocence — they were really good at it. I don’t know how it would be possible to dislike ‘Yesterday’s Gone’, the duo’s first single, written by Chad in alleged collaboration with pop manager Wendy Kidd (alleged, because he claimed that he had to give her songwriting credit for permission to use her piano) and produced by none other than James Bond’s court composer John Barry. For September of ’63, when it was quite aptly released ("I loved you all the summer through..."), it had quite a fresh sound — being, in fact, one of the first fully authentic «folk-pop» compositions / recordings on the market. The fast, bouncy tempo and the hummable catchiness agreed well with the Merseybeat attitude, but the chord changes, the wistful lyrics, and the soft, half-whispered vocals suggested something quite different — and even the quirky acoustic guitar break combined elements of pop, rock, and folk attitudes. Like most of the things Chad & Jeremy ever did, the song is a bit phoney — it feels as if it is supposed to have some subtle depth, when in reality it most probably has none. But unlike, say, ‘Dust In The Wind’ or any such similar ballad, it never actually demands you to accept it as a spiritual beacon: totally and utterly unpretentious, it just breezes along, telling a simple-as-heck story of a finite summer romance which you remember fondly for a minute, brush off, and go your own way. It’s cute, catchy, good-timey, and unforgettably forgettable.
For their second single, the boys decided to move even closer to pure pop: ‘Like I Love You Today’ basically sounds like a heavily (is «heavily» even the right word here?) folksified arrangement of a potential hit by the early Hollies or the Dave Clark Five — simply replace the loud and boisterous vocals by the same high-pitched semi-whisper, the electric guitars with acoustic ones, and the saxophone lead with a recorder and some strings. The result is another nice and catchy tune, but this time without even the faintest hint at «depth»; in terms of any potential intrigue, it is as if the duo had taken an explicit step backwards, and the single flopped. This was essentially the end of Chad & Jeremy’s good fortunes in their homeland — but an end that came at exactly the same time when ‘Yesterday’s Gone’, unexpectedly, began to climb up the charts in the US.
How exactly it was that this dis-dynamic duo managed to establish a firm chart presence in the US, which already had its much superior Everly Brothers and which would very soon get its own Simon & Garfunkel, is unclear — but it’s not as if there was anything horribly wrong with this turn of events, since it did lead to the revitalization of the Chad & Jeremy formula and the creation of a few more nice hits which the world could easily live without, but it still feels cozy to have them in their right place. Case in point — ‘A Summer Song’, which works kind of like a prequel to ‘Yesterday’s Gone’, except the melody and arrangement are even more fragile and dainty, augmented this time by soundtrack-style strings and moving forward with the sentimental delicacy of a Peter, Paul & Mary number. I honestly want to hate it for all sorts of aesthetic reasons, but the only thing that truly evokes a negative gut reaction are the cheesy, predictable strings — as long as it’s just the hushed vocals and the lovingly played acoustic guitars, it’s cuddly as a fluffy little doggie. I don’t want to own a fluffy little doggie, but if I am near one, I can’t help but pet it, you know.
After the boys scored yet another US hit with a cover of ‘Willow Weep For Me’ (nice if you like the song in general, but not exactly necessary), the World Artists Records label invited them to put out a full-fledged LP (only in the US and Canada), which collected all the hit singles as well as gave the boys a chance to show their incredible stylistic versatility... not. But the album does hold a few surprises for those who think of Chad & Jeremy as nothing but simplistic troubadours of courteous teenage romance.
First, it’s got one of the best covers of Ewan MacColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’ in existence. If you know the song, you probably have heard it performed by Ewan himself, or, more likely, the Pogues, in a rough and grizzled fashion, and that’s a good thing. But it works surprisingly well in this «tepid» version just as well, with a melancholic old Western-style harmonica part thrown in for good measure; Chad and Jeremy’s hushed vocals are well-trained for songs that say goodbye, no matter if it is to a summer crush or to an old life, and their "we’ll chop you down like an old dead tree" even takes on a slightly more sinister attitude than you could imagine. Unfortunately, their second attempt at sounding socially relevant does not work the same way — Tom Springfield’s early anti-war anthem ‘No Tears For Johnnie’ is much less suitable for the hush-hush approach, and the final climactic lines ("so Johnnie, keep on marching till we forget what you’re marching for!") are chanted in a trembling near-falsetto that might be okay to conclude a psychedelic song, but not a protest one.
To remind us that they are actually musicians, the boys also include the instrumental composition ‘Only For The Young’ (credited to Jimmy Seals, later of Seals and Crofts fame) — cut the strings, maybe, but the acoustic guitar pattern is pretty, poppy, and catchy, perhaps even with a slight baroque tinge in the middle. And then there are two or three songs written with clear Beatles influences — the funniest is probably ‘The Truth Often Hurts The Heart’, which manages to incorporate at least one move from ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ (the way they sing the opening line "can’t give you love...") and an older hook from ‘Hold Me Tight’; the «stuttering» segment of the bridge, the one that goes "your eyes... I see... begin... to smart...", is almost certainly nicked from "hold, me tight, tonight, tonight", though the final resolution is slightly better — in fact, the irony is that I always had a nagging feeling about a certain «incompleteness» of this less-than-ideal early McCartney number, and here it is almost as if the boys are coming up with their own way of bringing that melody to a satisfactory conclusion. Of course, by late ’64 it no longer really mattered.
To enjoy the album in all of its twee-folk glory, you have to seriously lower your expectations — but other than a lack of rock energy, there is hardly anything here that would make it worse than the average Dave Clark Five or Hollies record from the same year. The «hushy» twin harmonies of Chad and Jeremy can get monotonous, and it is not a good thing that they pretty much always sing in unison (at least Simon and Garfunkel could have plenty of fun weaving their voices in intricate patterns), but at least they are never openly annoying. The acoustic arrangements are generally tasteful, and they — or whoever is actually playing, since I am not sure about the degree of involvement of session players — have a generally solid guitar technique on display. Strings could have been used more sparsely, but at least they never drown out the guitars or vocals. Pop hooks — check, semi-decent lyrics suitable for 1964 — check. And hey, unlike Peter & Gordon they did not have to have the Beatles writing their best songs for them!
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