Review: Cliff Richard - Cliff (1959)

Tracks: 1) Apron Strings; 2) My Babe; 3) Down The Line; 4) I Got A Feeling; 5) Jet Black; 6) Baby I Don’t Care; 7) Donna; 8) Move It; 9) Ready Teddy; 10) Too Much; 11) Don’t Bug Me Baby; 12) Driftin’; 13) That’ll Be The Day; 14) Be-Bop-A-Lula; 15) Danny; 16) Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.

REVIEW

It is quite notable that Cliff Richard and the Shadows’ (actually, at that time, still the Drifters’) first LP was recorded live at Abbey Road Studios — in front of an actual audience of several hundred fans, politely screaming their heads off at certain culmination points but far from all over the place, so that each instrument and every overtone of Cliff’s young voice could be heard crystal clear. In 1959, live albums from rock’n’roll artists were a relative rarity even in the US, and I certainly do not know of any major rock stars from that time who would start out live. In a way, this is quite a symbolic gesture — hinting at the overwhelming power of spontaneity and on-the-spot energy associated with rock’n’roll, and, more importantly, at the magic power that a 19-year old’s presence could hold over the audience. In 1959, Cliff Richard was Britain’s first major teenage idol — and it was important, nay, essential to market him right from the start as the UK’s authentic and respectable answer to Elvis Presley.

The principal attraction of the show is stuck in the middle — ‘Move It’, the song that, in the eyes of everybody including the Beatles themselves, started rock’n’roll in Britain. Musically credited to the Drifters’ original guitarist Ian Samwell, there is not much «writing» involved in the actual melody, which simply exploits a well-established fast rockabilly pattern, but at least the lyrics are moderately original, not to mention prophetic — "They say it’s gonna die but please let’s face it / They just don’t know what’s a-goin’ to replace it" — and both the original echo-laden single and this far more in-yer-face live version are loaded with genuine enthusiasm: finally, we are taking something invented by the Yankees and running away with it! just go, Hank, go! (Though, honestly, I am not quite sure why Hank seems to have gotten offkey and offtempo at the end of his solo in the middle of the song — a pretty mood-killing moment, that one).

That said, Cliff is anything but a great record, and right from the start, it succeeds in showing all the limitations of both Cliff Richard, the artist, and the Drifters / Shadows as his backing band. The 19-year old kid was clearly passionate about the devil’s music, but neither did he have a particularly great set of pipes, nor was he allowed to cultivate a wild enough stage presence to pass for anything other than a decent local substitute for the real thing — be that real thing Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, or Jerry Lee Lewis, to name some of the people whose material gets covered on this release. At best, he could probably serve in the league of Ricky Nelson (whose ‘I Got A Feeling’ is also here and is actually a bit tougher than the original), which isn’t too bad but pretty much excludes you from the Bad Boy category. His is merely an ordinary vocal, and I cannot imagine a single reason on Earth why anybody could ever prefer any of these versions to the originals.

Musically, one could point to the Shadows as Britain’s first instrumental rock band of any importance — here, they already get two instrumental numbers completely to themselves — but for all the legendary synergy between the band’s rhythm section and Hank Marvin, the lead guitarist, the Shadows have a compensating flaw: too much discipline and restraint in their ranks, making their performances into pleasant and respectable musical exercises rather than the exciting ritual of exorcism that prime rock’n’roll is supposed to be. This is where the idea of the live recording really falls flat — it feels weird hearing those teenage screams while the band is presenting their near-mathematically calculated take on rock’n’roll on ‘Jet Black’ and ‘Driftin’, two numbers with dreamy surf overtones whose atmosphere is almost closer to «artsy» than «headbanging». On a technical and perhaps even compositional level, the musicianship here arguably surpasses the early Beatles — but on a visceral level, the Shadows might just as well be the Icebergs, in which case the screaming audience would rather bring on associations with the passengers of the Titanic...

Of course, this is precisely why Cliff and the Shadows were perfect for each other — he the embodiment of polite, watered-down rock’n’roll, they the embodiment of «discipline over passion». But this perfect matching only makes sense when it is accompanied by original material — heck, even ‘Move It’, derivative as it is, is a perfectly suitable vehicle as long as your mind has nothing direct to compare it to. On the other hand, this version of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ with which they end the show, once you fall into the hands of the inevitable association with Jerry Lee Lewis and the Nashville Teens at the Star Club, is an official glass of warm milk, even if there also happen to be acknowledged lovers of warm milk in this world.

The best that could be said about Cliff is that for a live recording from 1959, even one recorded live in the studio, the LP is a marvel of engineering — each cymbal crash, each bass pluck, every shaky inflection of Cliff’s voice is captured so perfectly that it puts many, if not most, of contemporary American rock’n’roll recordings to shame. This is, of course, more courtesy of Abbey Road’s experienced sound engineers and producer Norrie Paramor than Cliff or the band’s — but, in a way, it is also a handy precursor to the clarity of sound on the Beatles’ records, and a small hint that at least some of the popularity of the early British Invasion overseas just might have been due to the fact that, for the first time ever, the kids were able to hear some of those exciting rock’n’roll sounds without any accompanying sonic muck. But then again, the Beatles were all about original and inventive pop melodies — Cliff, on the other hand, pretends to be all about driving rock’n’roll, and where do you get driving rock’n’roll without a solid serving of sonic muck? In retrospect, this is all about «you had to be there», really — and, perhaps, all about showing thousands of hungry British kids the way to musical nirvana.

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