Review: The Hollies - In The Hollies Style (1964)
Tracks: 1) Nitty Gritty / Something’s Got A Hold On Me; 2) Don’t You Know; 3) To You My Love; 4) It’s In Her Kiss; 5) Time For Love; 6) What Kind Of Boy; 7) Too Much Monkey Business; 8) I Thought Of You Last Night; 9) Please Don’t Feel Too Bad; 10) Come On Home; 11) You’ll Be Mine; 12) Set Me Free; 13*) Just One Look; 14*) Keep Off That Friend Of Mine; 15*) Here I Go Again; 16*) Baby That’s All; 17*) We’re Through; 18*) Come On Back; 19*) What Kind Of Love; 20*) When I’m Not There; 21*) Yes I Will; 22*) Nobody.
REVIEW
If you are listening to the expanded CD version of the Hollies’ second album, be sure to program it (at least once) so that most of the bonus tracks come first — this will give you a much better perspective on the band’s creative growth through 1964. More than ten months separate In The Hollies Style from Stay With The Hollies, which is actually quite a bit of time by the typical standards of the 1960s; however, this is perfectly excusable, considering that most bands at the time still measured their progress in singles, not LPs, and that the more often you put out an LP, the more probable it was that it would consist of little other than perfunctory covers of other people’s material. Admittedly, the Hollies themselves still largely relied on cover versions even for their singles — but, just as it was with the more R&B-oriented bands like the Stones and the Animals, this relative inconvenience did not prevent the band from steadily maturing as fully autonomous and innovative artists, if not necessarily expert songwriters in their own right.
Our story begins with Doris Troy’s ʽJust One Lookʼ, where the band’s classic three-part harmonies finally fall into place: Clarke, Hicks, and Nash together, then the first two jointly supporting Nash on the bridge section. Where Troy’s original on Atlantic Records was a tad slower and her vocals were soulful rather than playful, the Hollies sensed the song’s immense pure-pop potential, tightened up the rhythm section, and turned it into their first mini-explosion of infectiously celebratory teen sentiment. Next to the Beatles (and maybe, maybe, very occasionally the Dave Clark Five), nobody in Britain could quite match the ringing sharpness of that ascending "and I felt so I... I... I-I-I-I’m in love..." (despite the screaming ungrammaticality: actually, the original line goes "and I fell so hard, hard, hard in love...", but I guess nobody bothered to provide them with a lyrics sheet for the session. And no, they are not singing "I felt so high", by the way, which wasn’t even a running ambiguity back in 1964) — so there was no way the song could not carry them all the way to No. 2 on the UK charts, and even scrape the bottom of the US charts at that (though in the States.
Next step: ʽHere I Go Againʼ, provided by the famous Mort Shuman and representing the Hollies in the full swing of their youthful powers — you could, in fact, argue that whatever they would do in the future could often match the effect of this song, but could never properly outdo its combination of a loud, tight power beat with a «waiting-in-ambush» type of vocal hook: I do not mean the "watch me now, cause here I go again!" main chorus — no, the main hook of this song is actually nested in the middle of each verse, first lulling you a bit with gently back-and-forth rocking bits ("I’ve... been hurt... so much... before... I told myself... yes I did..."), then turning round and hitting you smack dab in the guts with the shrill, multi-tracked archway of "NO MORE NO MORE WON’T GET HURT ANY MORE!". This is the kind of suspenseful vocal Heaven that you might not even find on a Beatles song — you really need the Hollies for this sort of experience.
Next step: ʽWe’re Throughʼ, the first Hollies single credited to «L. Ransford» — that is, written by the Clarke/Hicks/Nash songwriting team rather than commissioned from an external source. Although it is not easily identifiable as a rip-off, the quirky, jazzy little acoustic riff which serves as its main musical hook bears an uncanny similarity to Dale Hawkins’ ‘Suzie Q’, except for being less syncopated and more «baroque» than «swampy» in execution. Pretty soon, however, the riff passes the baton on to the vocals — some of which seem to be attracted by the riff itself, following it closely in an almost scat-like manner. Compared to all of the band’s previous singles, it is notably darker in atmosphere and could be regarded as the band’s equivalent of the Beatles’ ʽThings We Said Todayʼ, even if the band is too busy reveling in all those subtle vocal and instrumental flourishes to attain a comparable depth of feeling. Still, the band has to be commended for making their first original single so stylistically different from its predecessors, including that wonderful melismatic slide down from falsetto all way down the scale in the chorus (a pretty good correlation with the general message of "we’re through"). The record-buying public, so it seems, did not fully appreciate the transition, making the single stall at #7 on the charts — apparently, the fans wanted their Hollies loud and swaggy rather than quiet and pensive, so it was not until the tellingly titled ‘I’m Alive’ next year that they would resume their triumphant journey to the top of the charts.
It is at this point, with the Hollies firmly established as a major force on the contemporary pop stage, that they finally return to Abbey Road to complete their second LP — hugely different from the first, if only for the fact that 7 out of its 12 tunes are self-written and generally match the quality level of the cover versions. Oh, and the three-part harmonies, of course. Mind you, this is not superb songwriting à la Fab Four: most of the songs stick too close to each other in terms of atmosphere and feel too derivative of the major ideas of the singles to be as individually memorable as I would like them to be — for instance, something like ʽDon’t You Knowʼ feels way too much like a retread of the up-winding «vocal stairs» of ʽJust One Lookʼ, even if it is diluted with a Beatlesque beat and bridge. Similarly, ʽPlease Don’t Feel Too Badʼ is impressively upbeat (adding handclaps to your percussion always helps, just in case), but feels a bit too mechanically artificial, like all those catchy, but still lifeless pop constructions from the Dave Clark Five — no signs of the exuberant spark of life that lights up the stylistically similar ‘Here I Go Again’.
On the other hand, repeated listens expose the band’s honest hunt for marginally unconventional pop tricks to try out in their own songwriting. For instance, ʽYou’ll Be Mineʼ features a smooth, but relatively uncommon transition between the fast, ascending, pop-rocking verse ("it’s been too long since I kissed you...") and the drawled out, descending, soulful ballad-style resolution ("...tonight, yes tonight, you’ll be mine..."), both of them following the exact same tempo of the rhythm section. We also get faint hints of the emergence of the band members’ individual styles — ʽTo You My Loveʼ is essentially a Nash solo performance, sentimentally chivalrous in tone, while still supported by a steady and determined guitar melody and backbeat, a nice combination of introspective vulnerability and pop-rock crunch for which only Graham’s lead vocals could be suitable, given how 100% extraverted is Clarke’s artistic persona.
With so much songwriting on the line, it’s like they hardly need those covers any more (at least, for their LPs), but the adrenaline-crazed run through Etta James’ ʽSomething’s Got A Hold On Meʼ, with Eric Haydock stepping on the bass gas like there was no tomorrow and Clarke putting on his best pair of rock’n’roll shoes (watch out for those never-failing glottal strains on his ʽI-I, I-I, I-Iʼs!), is still first-rate. And it’s fun how they have all three singers swap lead vocals on the verses of ʽToo Much Monkey Businessʼ (it is also the only place on the album where you can hear what Tony Hicks’ regular singing voice sounds like on its own — just for information’s sake). Still, arguably the best rock and roll number on the album is their own: compositionally, ʽSet Me Freeʼ is little more than a sped-up version of ʽConfessin’ The Bluesʼ, but performance-wise, it is an excellent showcase for drummer Bobby Elliott (watch out for those briefly slowed down three cracks on "...if you DON’T! WANT! MY! LOVE... set me free!..."), and Clarke’s harmonica solo (occasionally double-tracked?) is quite invigorating as well. There is a brief part there, from about 1:20 to 1:40, when Clarke and Elliott are left alone to their devices, both going crazy on a solo of their own, and I would say that it is a fine competitor with the Yardbirds in terms of rave-up rhythm’n’blues intensity.
In the end, they got that title just right: In The Hollies Style truly establishes an individual style for the Hollies, and while they would still go on to write and record many more classic tunes, as well as expand that style to incorporate many new influences, it could also be argued that never again would they make such an extraordinarily gigantic quality leap as they pulled off from early to late 1964. This is both a compliment and a putdown, since it reminds us of how the band would ultimately be unable to make a proper transition to the next step of musical maturity, and remain lagging behind while their peers such as the Beatles, the Stones, and the Kinks would be scaling new artistic heights — but for those of us who are able to taste juicy morsels of spiritual delight in perfectly composed and performed «simplistic» pop à la 1964, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Besides, this is certainly not the end of the story of the Hollies’ creative evolution: In The Hollies Style merely deserves a big pat on the shoulder as that one LP on which the Hollies became the Hollies — on a purely song-by-song quality basis, they would continue on an upward trajectory for at least two more years, before the psychedelic revolution trapped them in a corner and messed them up pretty bad, that is.
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