Review: The Hollies - Hollies (1965)

Tracks: 1) Very Last Day; 2) You Must Believe Me; 3) Put Yourself In My Place; 4) Down The Line; 5) That’s My Desire; 6) Too Many People; 7) Lawdy Miss Clawdy; 8) When I Come Home To You; 9) Fortune Teller; 10) So Lonely; 11) I’ve Been Wrong; 12) Mickey’s Monkey; 13*) I’m Alive; 14*) You Know He Did; 15*) Look Through Any Window; 16*) Honey And Wine; 17*) If I Needed Someone; 18*) You In My Arms; 19*) I Can’t Get Nowhere With You; 20*) She Gives Me Everything I Want.

REVIEW

I think it would be madness to try and deny that the trilogy of LPs released by the Hollies in 1965–66 — Hollies, Would You Believe and For Certain Because — as well as the magnificent run of singles surrounding them represent the band at the absolute peak of their powers. These two years are all about the former teen pop music reaching substantial and formal maturity without, however, fully transitioning into technically and spiritually more sophisticated genres — psychedelia, art-rock, confessional singer-songwriter stuff, etc. — and that was precisely the threshold which the talents of Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, Tony Hicks and others would struggle to cross. Although the «Age of Aquarius» would not completely sweep away the Hollies, the way it made obsolete so many of their lesser brethren from the early British Invasion years, they still ended up buried under its waves, only occasionally rising to the surface to catch some air, rather than proudly riding them like the Beatles or the Stones would. But 1965 and 1966 — that’s a different matter: these years were just perfect for the Hollies’ level of pop sophistication, which went far beyond the likes of The Dave Clark 5 or, for instance, Gerry & The Pacemakers, while still never letting them truly catch up with the biggest leagues. Those who love their Sixties’ pop smart, but not too risky or ambitious; melodic, but not too challenging; masterfully arranged and produced, but not too experimental — these three albums are already well on the way to becoming your new addiction.

As usual, let us start with the singles; The Hollies had four of those out in 1965, with the earliest one (‘Yes I Will’) today included as a bonus track on the CD edition of In The Hollies Style and the other three attached to the CD edition of Hollies. ‘Yes I Will’ was a nice and catchy sentimental pop ballad, but somewhat old-fashionedly Please Please Me-like for January ’65, and although it did barely crack the UK Top 10, it was not as successful as their previous singles — possibly because people did catch on to that old-fashionedness, expecting a great pop single to point a way to the future rather than drag them back into the past (for that matter, I think that 1965 was probably the single most artistically awesome year for the pop single market in recorded history — far more so than 1967, by which time major artistry was rather expected on the LP level than that of the 7-inch little guy).

This relative mistake («relative», because ‘Yes I Will’ is still very nice all by itself) would be corrected five months later with ‘I’m Alive’, the first Hollies recording to be surrounded with elements of scandal — the song, written for the band by Clint Ballard Jr. (the same guy who had also written ‘You’re No Good’ for Dee Dee Warwick, later made famous by Linda Ronstadt), was initially passed on to their Manchester colleagues The Toggery Five, but then, allegedly, the Hollies heard their recording, got jealous, decided to record the song themselves and then managed to stop The Toggery Five from putting out their version. In subsequent interviews, members of The Toggery Five complained about injustice, insisting that their recording was superior and that The Hollies intentionally smothered their artistic and commercial success in the cradle — unfortunately, we’ll never know because The Toggery Five’s recording remains unavailable. Considering that their other records, from what I have personally heard, are not particularly outstanding or imaginative, I have reasons to suggest that they might be exaggerating the superiority of their version — but that The Hollies themselves were capable of pulling the rug from under their possible competitors, I could never doubt. It’s always been a dog-eat-dog world, after all.

Anyway, what remains certain is that ‘I’m Alive’ is a perfect song for Allan Clarke to sing, and for the rest of the band to assemble around his singing. It actually does something that no Beatles song up to that point ever did — when the Beatles did an exuberant pop song, they usually made sure to smash you over the head right from the very start, be it a SHE LOVES YOU YEAH YEAH YEAH or a CAN’T BUY ME LOVE, OH!... or a HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY, but ‘I’m Alive’, totally true to the song’s lyrical message of gradually finding the meaning of life in love, builds that exuberance up gradually, from the almost somber, melancholic verse through the ascension in the "now I can breathe... I can see... I can touch... I can feel..." bridge (was that an inspiration for Tommy or what?) to the all-out ecstatic chorus where Allan’s triumphant declaration of the song’s title does sound like a natural reaction from somebody who’s just been unfrozen from a 100-year rest in the freezing chamber. Other than Hicks’ rather perfunctory jangly solo in the middle, the song is perfect in how it tells a dynamic story even if you don’t understand a single word. How many three-minute pop singles at the time told that kind of dynamic story? Apart from ‘Remember (Walking In The Sand)’, very little springs to mind.

(Of course, The Hollies wouldn’t be The Hollies if they didn’t have to demonstrate us just how second-rate they were after all, by putting an «original» composition, ‘You Know He Did’, by the perennial «L. Ransford» on the B-side — which happens to be ‘Louie Louie’ with a new vocal pop melody on top that tries to mimick the classic guitar riff. Taken all by itself, it’s a silly, but funny variation on this cornerstone of rock’n’roll; taken in the context of ‘I’m Alive’, it merely reminds us of how hard it is to be a good songwriter.)

As if the emotional dynamics of ‘I’m Alive’ was insufficient cause for self-elation, with their next single the Hollies allowed themselves yet another mini-artistic triumph over their Liverpool competitors: ‘Look Through Any Window’, the first of two big hits that the band scored from Graham Gouldman, the golden boy of UK pop songwriting circa 1965–66, was their first single not to focus on the ubiquitous issues of boy-girl relationships — while just about every Beatles song up to that time, except for a handful of covers, still focused on precisely that. Instead, ‘Look Through Any Window’ was just a playful, joyful celebration of the life-goes-on-around-you variety — it did not make a particularly big point, and lyrically it was even sort of old-fashioned ("you can see the little ladies in their gowns" has a bit of a Charles Dickens ring to it), but it sure as hell was different, and so was the music, too: that guitar jangle driving the song is decidedly 12-string, and in 1965 that meant a Byrds influence, and a Byrds influence meant merging rock, pop, and folk, pushing your music out of the sphere of teen entertainment and onto the Serious Artistic Plane.

That was something that the Beatles, too, had started to do on Help!, but for them it would not reach fruition until Rubber Soul, where, I’d think, you could probably even squeeze in a song like ‘Look Through Any Window’, except it might be just a tad too happy for the somewhat more cynical and world-weary vibe that the Fab Four were pushing at that stage in their life. Not that ‘Look Through Any Window’ is itself totally devoid of any signs of wistfulness; there is at least a tiny touch of pensiveness and doubt in the chanting of the "movin’ on their way..." chorus, or in the anxious backing vocal of "where do they go?", so that, with a bit of twisting and turning and shock-value-baiting, you could build a case for ‘Look Through Any Window’ as a reflection on life’s meaninglessness and vanity — not sure, though, that this is how either Gouldman or the Hollies themselves ever envisioned their creation. Still, they are definitely not going for a kind of ‘What A Wonderful World’ vibe — the same way neither the melody nor the lyrics of ‘Penny Lane’, the «descriptive» Beatles song that would probably be the closest that the Fab Four ever got to this kind of vibe on their own records, really warrant describing the song as a «happy blast of nostalgia».

This feeling that ‘Look Through Any Window’ is not nearly as jovial as it might seem upon first sight is further reinforced by the B-side — this time, «L. Ransford» actually bothered to write a good original song, because ‘So Lonely’ is one of their finest melancholic creations; I sense a possible Zombies influence here, what with all the minor chords and the sudden vulnerability in Clarke’s usually tough voice. There’s a great mood swing in the chorus, too, when the outwardly expressed despair ("I get so lonely, I get so lonely without you!...") smoothly switches back into inward, shut-off gloom ("I get lonely for you"), with the guitar trading its romantic arpeggiated chords for a bit of dark, «ominous» bluesy phrasing. A trifle, perhaps, but clearly showing that the band’s melodic instincts were nothing to laugh about, at least not when they actually gave themselves the chance to sit down and properly develop them.

At this point, we should probably switch to the album, released within a month of the single, but just so as to close the subject of the Hollies’ singles run in 1965, it probably makes sense to mention here their fourth and least auspicious cut of the year — a cover of George Harrison’s ‘If I Needed Someone’, which, as fate would have it, Parlophone actually released on the very same day as Rubber Soul itself, for all the world to compare. Alas, the comparison never worked in favor of The Hollies; in fact, people still wonder as to why Clarke and Nash decided to make use of the demo, given to them by George Martin — especially considering the ongoing and well-publicized rivalry between the two bands at the time. Perhaps they were secretly hoping that, since it was a frickin’ George Harrison song, rather than the mighty Lennon-McCartney, they’d end up singing it better than George and thus, get a good chance for a TAKE THIS, YOU LIVERPUDLIAN SCUM!!! moment of their own. If so, such hidden aspirations could only turn around and smack them in their faces themselves.

It’s not a «bad» cover as such — they play and sing the song well enough, for sure — but the difference is that the song actually meant something to George (presumably, he wrote it as a sort of goodbye for all his female fans in light of his upcoming engagement with Pattie) and hardly meant anything to the Hollies, who, therefore, sing it in a typically brash and boisterous Allan Clarke way, when in reality it requires a cautious and moody George Harrison approach. The crucial difference is to be found in the bridge: George sings "but you see now I’m too much in love" almost apologetically, as if he were a little shy and embarrassed about how things turned out to be, whereas Clarke changes that to "can’t you see how I’m too much in love?" in a visibly pissed-off tone that implies a "get out of here, all you nasty clingin’ bitches!". It’s not so much that it’s rude as that it simply does not go too well with the overall melody and mood of the song. Both George and John publicly dismissed the Hollies’ version at the time (which was then used by the Hollies as a convenient reason to explain the single’s commercial failure), and although this may all have been largely the side effect of overall competitive jealousy, clearly ‘If I Needed Someone’ is not going to be remembered as two and a half minutes out of the band’s finest hour — not even out of its finest hour when confined to the year 1965.

But now let us, after all, get back to the self-titled album, which came out in September, a good three months before the cute-in-retrospect conflict over ‘If I Needed Someone’, and overall constituted a very solid effort, even if covers of other artists still prevailed over «L. Ransford» originals. Some of those covers, too, were quite ancient — it is questionable, for instance, whether there was any serious need to profess the band’s love for Fifties’ rock’n’roll with performances of Roy Orbison’s ‘Down The Line’ or Lloyd Price’s ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, both of which are fun but feel like filler whose only possible purpose is to continue proving that the Hollies are a rock’n’roll band at heart. Unfortunately, the fact that the guitar solo on ‘Down The Line’ is almost identical to Harrison’s solo on ‘Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby’, and also the odd «coincidence» that ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ ended up released within a month of the Beatles’ ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzie’, still implies that they only wanted to go on proving that because the Beatles were still proving that on each of their LPs — and even if wild wild rock’n’roll is not the most natural breeding ground for either of the bands, the Beatles could still rock much harder than the Hollies, whose only true «rock’n’roll asset» was Clarke’s voice, and even that one with certain reservations.

Still, they try their best, and within the context of a pop LP it always makes sense to interrupt the smooth’n’liltin’ melodic flow with a few «rough cuts», even if you couldn’t make them genuinely «rough» to save your life. And they work a little better than ‘Fortune Teller’ (nobody in the UK did that song better than the Rolling Stones anyway, with their stone-cold deadpan approach to the humorous original) or the maudlin oldie ‘That’s My Desire’ (because any Hollies album should have at least one tune for grandmas to cherish).

Yet there are some absolutely brilliant choices in covers here, too, and the best of the lot is saved for first. In its original incarnation, Peter, Paul & Mary’s ‘Very Last Day’ was a well-written, catchy pop song, clumsily disguised as ominous gospel-folk and rather meekly delivered by means of rudimentary acoustic guitars and wobbly vocal harmonies. What the Hollies did with it was string it up and tighten the ropes so harshly that in their version, the song speeds along as a tight, disciplined harpoon, skewering the listener in passing — Allan Clarke was simply born to bring this material to life, and though, of course, it still remains a catchy pop song rather than a slice of authentic gospel fury, I cannot help but clench my own fist every time the man lashes out with his "everybody’s gonna pray to the heavens on the Judgment Day!" Again, how many UK bands in 1964–65 actually tried adding aggressive gospel-pop to their setlist? Verily we have not seen this since at least the days of good old Lonnie Donegan, whose vibe the band also seems to be channelling here.

It’s a bit more difficult for the band to assert their superiority over Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions, but they still do a fine job of turning the American soul groove of ‘You Must Believe Me’, armed with brass leads and sweet head voices, into a British pop-rock groove, staking its claim with electric guitars and sharper, shriller, teen-angstier vocal harmonies. Curtis Mayfield is intimately apologizing with his heart on his sleeve when singing "you must believe me, darling, it just didn’t happen that way"; Allan Clarke is declaring his innocence to the whole world from the top of the bell tower in the church square. Both approaches are efficient in their own way, though they are so different that, most likely, everybody will have their own favorite. In a similar manner, they redo the Miracles’ ‘Mickey Monkey’, turning it from a brass-led dance groove into a guitar-driven rave-up à la Yardbirds; I’m not the biggest fan of either version (a little too silly for my tastes), but this is surely the kind of Smokey Robinson material that the young and energetic Hollies could hardly fail to do justice to.

Of the remaining four original compositions (in addition to the already discussed ‘So Lonely’), I find two to be okay and two more to be little precious gems. The «okay» ones are on the second side of the LP. ‘When I Come Home To You’ is rather flat and outdated for 1965 — the one great thing about it is the trilly little lead line that Tony Hicks keeps playing as a counterpart to Clarke’s harmonica, a technically masterful and proto-psychedelically beautiful flourish that, unfortunately, is rather wasted on a song whose harmonies belong in the Please Please Me era and whose lyrics are so inept, I really wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was some ancient outtake they’d dug out at the last moment to fill up space. ‘I’ve Been Wrong’ is a little better, but feels to me like a conscious attempt to write a «hard-rockin’ ballad» in the style of the Kinks’ ‘I Need You’ or ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’ (plus, Nash’s "stand by me my love..." middle-eight sounds very corny).

So I’m easily trading off both of these in exchange for ‘Put Yourself In My Place’, which, although its groove is dangerously close to the Merseybeat of ‘Hold Me Tight’, is just so impossibly exuberant and has the band firing on so many cylinders at once that any criticism flies right out the door. They wind themselves up so fiercely, in fact, that during the instrumental break they end up floating right out of the world of the Beatles and into the world of the Stones, with the rhythm section of Haydock and Elliott, amplified by more of Clarke’s hystrionic harmonica and equally excited guest piano runs from Alan Hawkshaw, kicking up such a mighty ruckus, I’m almost disappointed that they then re-emerge from it back into the safe haven of disciplined pop-rock. In any case, despite being one of their oldest tracks on the LP (dating back to a session in November 1964), it’s definitely one of their best.

However, the finest example of «L. Ransford»’s original songwriting on the album is probably ‘Too Many People’, a song that shares its title, but not its message or its influences, with a future Paul McCartney masterpiece. Perhaps its creation is somehow connected with the idea of covering ‘Very Last Day’ — at the very least, it clearly reflects the band’s active interest in the folk and newly-nascent folk-rock scene, and, albeit the lyrics are certainly nowhere near the level of a Bob Dylan, is clearly more «serious» in tone than, once again, any Beatles song up to that date. Melodically, it’s stuck somewhere between the Fab Four and the Searchers, and the overall sound, though it’s got a tinge of melancholy, is still light and friendly enough to make you pay little attention to the lyrics — which are worth paying attention to, though, because it’s basically a song about how God periodically purges the planet from excessive human presence by means of wars and epidemics: "that’s how he planned it, you can’t do naught about it — too many people!". (Too bad those vinyl days are behind us — I’d love to see somebody release a single with Billy Preston’s ‘That’s The Way God Planned It’ on Side A and ‘Too Many People’ on Side B; now that would be a truly kick-ass artistic statement!). The cheerful tone in which they deliver the punchline, "There ain’t no fooling death / So you just gotta sit and wait", is alone worth its weight in fool’s gold.

The conclusion is obvious: Hollies is a must-have album for any fan of the classic British Invasion era, and ample proof that the band was able to deliver a solid LP experience. In fact, the reason why the Hollies are still remembered as a primarily «singles band» is that, unlike the Beatles, they rarely ever incorporated their singles into LPs (which the Beatles did plenty — ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘Ticket To Ride’, etc.). Chip away a few weak cuts off Hollies, replace them with ‘I’m Alive’ and ‘Look Through Any Window’, and you get yourself a record that can easily rank up there with all the giants of 1965, or at least come really close. Admittedly, the band’s formally impressive stab at «social relevance», with ‘Very Last Day’ and ‘Too Many People’ sending out explicit messages that neither the Beatles nor the Stones had on their own agendas at the time, looks a bit too cutesy, and foreshadows their failure at successfully transitioning into a «serious» band in the second half of the decade — but for the young-and-fragile standards of 1965, this was still more than enough.

• Only Solitaire reviews: Hollies