Review: Tages - Tages (1965)

Tracks: 1) Bloodhound; 2) Everybody Loves A Lover; 3) Dimples; 4) I Got My Mojo Working; 5) Naggin’; 6) Sleep Little Girl; 7) The One For You; 8) Seventh Son; 9) I’ll Go Crazy; 10) Cathy’s Clown; 11) Doctor Feel-Good; 12) Stand By Me.

REVIEW

I suppose it’s some unwritten law of parallel structures that every country, at one time or another (as long as that time falls in somewhere between 1964 and 1966), is bound to have its own Beatles / Rolling Stones rivalry, and in Sweden that rivalry was accordingly represented by the dichotomy of the «lighter and brighter» Hep Stars vs. the «darker and sleazier» Tages. Both bands formed around the same time, with the Hep Stars having just the tiniest bit of chronological advantage over their chief competitors (like the Beatles) and appealing overall to those with a sunnier disposition, what with their penchant for Beatles-style and Searchers-style material, as well as the Ronettes and Elvis ballads. Meanwhile, Tages looked mildly more threatening, and tended to look far more often across the Atlantic, in the direction of the realm of electric blues and R&B, as well as keeping an eye on the slummier regions of UK music, ruled by the likes of the Stones, the early Kinks, and the Pretty Things. In short, it kinda looked like the Hep Stars wanted to provide full-on family entertainment, keeping your parents in the picture — Tages were their yin opposite, proudly brandishing NO PARENTS ALLOWED on their checkered sleeves. Guess who sold more records?

Of course, no analogy like that can be ever 100% accurate; in this particular case, while the great fame of the Stones would never manage to eclipse the monumentality of the Beatles, the Hep Stars have largely gone down in history as a curious footnote to ABBA, while Tages have steadily worked their way up to the status of the most revered «cult» rock group from 1960s’ Sweden (then again, if we do merge the Hep Stars with ABBA, it’s still Benny Andersson who got the final laugh). Even in those early days, the «Hep» Stars would occasionally be chided by Tages for their lack of «hepness» for refusing to write original songs — certainly not a proper feature for any Beatles-like band — and as the decade moved into its psyche­delic and art-rock phase, Tages would gradually become more and more Beatlesque in their approach to music-making themselves, while the Hep Stars would slowly fade away. But in the short term of 1965, when comparing the respective debut albums from both bands (We And Our Cadillac vs. Tages), the Beatles – Stones comparison is highly apt. In fact, the songwriting quip is irrelevant: the Hep Stars had one original number (‘No Response’), as compared to merely two by Tages. The main difference lies in the sort of material both bands were covering, and in all honesty, I am somewhat at a loss trying to determine who did a better job... frankly speaking, it’s all terrible, though it’s all different flavors of terrible.

However, let us start from the beginning. Apparently, Tages were named not for the mythical grandson of Jupiter who founded the Etruscan practice of divining on the entrails of sacrificed animals (wouldn’t it be cool, though, if they were?), but for the middle name of Danne Tage Larsson, their rhythm guitarist and occasional lead vocalist, who lent it to the band in 1963 when they called themselves Tages Skifflegrupp (imagine The Quarrymen calling themselves Winston’s Skiffle Band and later transitioning to The Winstons... does «Winstonmania» have a nice ring to it? not really). Once skiffle became an old-fashioned term in the wake of the British Invasion, they simply dropped it and became Tages, consisting of Larsson, Tommy Blom on vocals and occasional guitar, Anders Töpel on lead guitar, Göran Lagerberg on bass, and Freddie Skantze on drums — a lineup that would largely remain stable throughout their peak years.

Ironically, the band got its first chance to make a studio recording by winning a Beatles-look-alike contest held by Göteborgs-Posten (with five members, they’d be far better set to win a Stones-look-alike one, but apparently that was out of the question, so they had to send Tommy off to England and pretend to be a four-piece band for the occasion). The result was ‘Sleep Little Girl’, a Tommy Blom composition that the band recorded in a homebrewn basement studio and released on the indie label Platina Records, only recently founded by aspiring songwriter and producer Evert Jakobsson (they would forever remain its single biggest star). Amusingly, the song sounds neither like the Beatles nor like the Stones; it is an acoustic folk-pop ballad that feels far more influenced by the likes of the Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul & Mary.

The only thing about ‘Sleep Little Girl’ that tries to be outstanding are the lyrics — instead of romance, they try to focus on humor, but in a very juvenile fashion (maybe it was just one of those stories Tommy had to write for his English classes in London). I actually like the B-side a tiny bit more: ‘Tell Me You’re Mine’, written by Töpel and Lagerberg, is cast more in the pop-rock vein, with crispy electric rhythm chords and stronger vocal lines, though ultimately it feels like a limper shadow of a certain type of Hollies material (‘Yes I Will’, for instance). In any case, both tracks are simply beginners’ exercises, but the Swedes still sent it into the Top 5 of their national charts, probably out of a sense of patriotic duty — a good thing in retro­spect, as it gave the band a boost of confidence, to last them long enough to develop into something more interesting.

Even so, the original single had been severely lambasted by the musical press (quite justifiedly), causing the band to try to tighten up and do better with the follow-up: ‘I Should Be Glad’, released in February 1965, is arguably the first Tages song that may be listened to not purely out of historical interest, but with a little bit of an emotional reaction. It continues to owe a naïve debt to the Beatles, both lyrically ("I’d love to hold your hand / I wanna be your man" — how more obvious can one get?) and musically, with the introspective-melancholic chords bringing to mind echoes of ‘Things We Said Today’; but at least this time around, the band is able to bottle a bit of that "I’d love to get me a girl, but I’m too much of a shy sentimental wuss to get one" feeling for which there was no better time than the early years of the British Invasion. The weakest point is still the vocal harmonies, weak and limp next to either the Beatles or the Hollies; again, at this point the group did not yet have enough flair and experience to go all-out on the listener. Still, proportion-wise the leap from ‘Sleep Little Girl’ to ‘I Should Be Glad’ is quite comparable with the one from ‘Love Me Do’ to ‘Please Please Me’. (Also, on the B-side ‘I Cry’ they try fast tempo-ing it for the first time — nothing too memorable, but at least they dare to rock out on record).

‘I Should Be Glad’ solidified Tages’ Swedish chart presence even further, and the next two self-penned singles were also successful, even if the first one was still a pastiche: with ‘Don’t Turn Your Back’, they went even deeper in time, trying for an Everly Brothers / Buddy Holly approach with all-too familiar chords and hopeless lyrical plunges like "I know my sorrow / Will be tomorrow", and the result is barely worth discussing.

Not so with ‘The One For You’, which represented another step forward — perhaps the single most important step forward in Tages’ entire history, when they finally progressed from sheepishly imitating other artists to giving their songwriting process an original-innovative flair. The first five seconds hint very strongly at the band now being seriously influenced by The Who — who, at that point, were already making the rounds with ‘I Can’t Explain’ and ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’, though not yet with ‘My Generation’: an opening machine-gun round of distorted arpeggiated fire from the lead guitar, followed by the song laying down a swinging rhythm section groove with just drums and bass (and in a weird influence-the-influencer manner, sort of presaging the groove The Who would get themselves eight years later with ‘The Real Me’). This already announces a shocking change of allegiances — nothing in the band’s studio sound prior to this moment had hinted at such hard-rocking attitudes, surprisingly modern for a bunch of pretty-looking Swedish kids with a seemingly permanent member­ship in the International Merseybeat Fan Club.

Not that the revolution is in any way complete or total, as the intro quickly gives way to a much more conventional pop-rock melody with the usual limp harmonies and a conventional 4/4 beat — but the song still strives to do something, as it accelerates and reaches Yardbirds-style rhythm’n’blues rave-up territory in the bridge section, then follows it up with a chaotic, reverberating guitar solo. None of the elements can be said to be invented by Tages themselves, but the synthesis of Who, Yardbirds, and Zombies influences is arguably one of the most daring ventures in Scandinavian, or maybe even European rock’n’roll up to that time, and while I’m not entirely sure that the song really «works», even admitting that it doesn’t suck is already admitting an achievement. My biggest complaint is not the lack of originality, but the vocals, which could really use some tightening to match the steady intensity of the instrumental groove.

With several local hit singles in their pockets, and steadily increasing levels of confidence in themselves as both players and songwriters — on the homeland front at least, they had few rivals by the end of 1965 — Tages finally earned the chance to prove themselves in the LP department... and wasted it. Even though their band members could write songs, and even though by the fall of 1965, when they started recording the album, it was well understood that artistic respect could only be gained through original songwriting (for rock’n’roll bands, at least), the only two self-penned compositions on the self-titled debut are ‘The One For You’ and ‘Sleep Little Girl’ (a new re-recording of the initial single). Everything else is covers, and you cannot even defend that bizarre decision by saying that the album was rushed — the recording dates indicate they had at least two months to complete the product, which, in 1965, would be more than enough to come up with a whole bunch of pop songwriting. I don’t know the motivation, but whatever it was, it was crap.

One could at least theoretically defend the artistic credibility by pointing out the impressive diversity of the material. They have some dark American electric blues on here (John Lee Hooker’s ‘Dimples’, Muddy Waters’ ‘Got My Mojo Working’), some soulful-sentimental R&B (Ben E. King’s ‘Stand By Me’), some James Brown (‘I’ll Go Crazy’), some Everly Brothers (‘Cathy’s Clown’ — a song very rarely covered by any notable artist, despite its tremendous popularity), some Mose Allison (‘Seventh Son’ — written by Willie Dixon, but mostly popularized by Mose), some girl-group stuff (‘Everybody Loves A Lover’, resplendently inherited by The Shirelles from Doris Day), and some lesser known performers like Larry Bright (‘Bloodhound’) or Piano Red / Dr. Feelgood (‘Doctor Feel-Good’).

Notably, every single cover stems from the US rather than the UK — as if to stress the Swedish entertainers’ going «straight to the source», defiantly ignoring the songwriting breakthroughs of the British Invasion in a wave of quasi-purist inspira­tion. But there is an ironic catch to this approach: while I cannot be 100% sure, it seems as if the absolute majority of these covers were actually heard by Tages themselves through covers of nearby UK artists, rather than in their pristine original forms. Which, I guess, officially and formally makes Tages one of those «third-rate» records by definition.

The very first song makes that clear: ‘Bloodhound’ certainly follows not the little-heard Larry Bright original from 1962, but rather the then-currently more popular version by Downliners Sect, recorded in 1964 with the classic early nasty garage vibe. Compared to the merry outlaw gang of Don Craine and his buddies, Tages play a passable, but limp imitation, lacking the proto-Stooges mean-’n’-lean lead guitar of the original, while Blom’s vocal performance is muffled and mumbling next to Craine’s devilish cockiness. It was good enough to be selected as the lead single from the album, and was even loyally endorsed by fans, but where Downliners Sect cranked up the power and elevated the Larry Bright rocker to the modern plane, Tages, alas, are dropping the quality down.

John Lee Hooker’s ‘Dimples’ may have been heard in its original version, but might just as well be copied by the band from more recent covers by The Animals or Long John Baldry; it starts out well enough, with a good steady bass groove and a faithful recreation of Hooker’s «dimple-pinch» notes, but there’s a bit of an embarrassing problem when it turns out that... well, for some reason, Lagerberg (on lead vocals) cannot bring himself to sing the central "you got dimples in your jaw" verse of the song. WHY? My best guess: whatever version they were copying, they were lifting those lyrics off by ear, and they couldn’t quite get the phrasing, nor were they particularly certain of the meaning of the word dimples. It would have made perfect sense to rename the song to ‘I Love The Way You Walk’, because they probably sent many a Swedish teenager into paroxysms of trying to crack open the mystery of the song title.

With ‘I Got My Mojo Working’, they at least try to do something: instead of directly copying Muddy’s classic fast-tempo dance groove, much the same way most UK artists were doing it, they take the lyrics and put them to two different grooves — one driven by a slow, twirling garage-blues-rock riff that I’d swear they adapted from The Pretty Things’ performance of ‘You’ll Never Do It Baby’ if I didn’t know that song actually came out later (they could have heard the earlier Cops ’N’ Robbers original, though), and then, midway through, shifting gears and setting it to the melody of Tommy Tucker / The Kinks’ ‘Long Tall Shorty’. Okay, so let’s give them some props for this experiment; unfortunately, this bit of mojo certainly don’t seem to work all that well on anything, because... WHY? What’s the bleeding point?

From there, it just drags on and on from one ridiculous choice to another. ‘Naggin’, believe it or not, is a cover of ‘Naggin’ Woman’ from Kinda Kinks — instead of at least covering a good Ray Davies song, they take one of the weakest tracks from the LP, becoming the Swedish champions of imitating the «Dave Davies approach to a Jimmy Reed-style slow draggy American blues». WHY? ‘I’ll Go Crazy’ is a transparent attempt to imitate not James Brown, but The Moody Blues imitating James Brown. WHY? ‘Cathy’s Clown’ — just a good reminder of why nobody else wanted to mess around with the Everly Brothers at their harmonic best (the vocals here are a predictable joke next to the original, but I presume they at least heard the original this time). ‘Stand By Me’... the less said about this one, the better (though the opening fifteen seconds of bass and cymbals are nifty), but it does confirm my suspicions about blind-guessing the lyrics by ear: Blom sings "if the sky that we look upon should tremble and fall" instead of "crumble", and "I won’t share a tear" instead of "shed". (Apparently, those two weeks in London mostly had him chasing the birds instead of paying good attention to his English lessons.)

Of course, I’m older now and more compassionate, and it’s more productive to look at this effort in condescending, but sympathetic amusement than wastefully treat it with indignant disdain. It’s hardly that much worse than The Hep Stars’ concurrent debut, and inclusion of ‘The One For You’ shows that already at that time, a track list like this one was pretty anachronistic for the group (much like the inclusion of ‘You Really Got Me’ on the debut album of The Kinks, one of Tages’ chief inspirations, showed how far advanced they were for the majority of the songs they were playing at the time). But on the other hand, Tages does little, if anything, to dissipate the stereotype that in the early-to-mid Sixties, only British bands had the guts and the gall to properly assimilate, digest, and re-transmit the American rock’n’roll bug — everybody else offered this kind of third-rate product that, at best, provided decent entertainment for European audiences during clubbin’ nights when no illustrious British guests were available. The good news is that, while 90% of such European bands never managed to outgrow this limp-dick phase in the first place, Tages would very quickly transform into something far more unique and respectable. The bad news is that with this album, you could never tell.

• Only Solitaire reviews: Tages