Review: The Honeycombs - All Systems Go! (1965)

Tracks: 1) I Can’t Stop; 2) I Don’t Love Her No More; 3) All Systems Go; 4) Totem Pole; 5) Emptiness; 6) Ooee Train; 7) She Ain’t Coming Back; 8) Something I Got To Tell You; 9) Our Day Will Come; 10) Nobody But Me; 11) There’s Always Me; 12) Love In Tokyo; 13) If You Should; 14) My Prayer; 15*) Can’t Get Through To You; 16*) This Year Next Year; 17*) Not Sleeping Too Well Lately; 18*) Who Is Sylvia?; 19*) How Will I Know; 20*) It’s So Hard; 21*) I Fell In Love.

REVIEW

The Honeycombs released a whoppin’ nine singles in 1965, but at least half of those were not distributed in the UK at all — only in Scandinavia and in Japan, where the band was enjoying far more recognition than in their native country. Their only chart successes back home were a rather ho-hum cover of the Kinks’ ‘Something Better Beginning’ (#39) and a single release of ‘That’s The Way’ from their debut LP, which managed to climb to a reasonably respectable #12 in the summer of 1965. After this, the Honeycombs were pretty much cooked; none of their singles or albums made any difference any more. And frankly, I have no idea why; I am tempted to suggest mismanagement, insufficient publi­city, and an unruly focus on performances in the Far East and Australia rather than the UK (and the USA) which eroded their home base. Or perhaps the band themselves are to blame, rather than their management, if this quotation from Johnny Rogan’s Starmakers and Svengalis: The History Of British Pop Management (found it on Richie Unterberger’s website) is to be believed: "...the group seemed relatively unconcerned about their status in the pop world. According to Howard, they preferred singing in pubs to appearing on television and reacted to their chart-topping achievement with humble satisfaction rather than awe-inspiring egomania. Their lack of ambition was also reflected in lackluster live performances which often ended in jeers from over-expectant members of the audience. In desperation, their managers temporarily sent them abroad where pop-starved fans were less discriminating."

Regardless of the band’s alleged humility and lack of showmanship, though, the actual music on their second LP and the surrounding non-album singles simply cannot be blamed: track after track after track of excellent, energetic, catchy, and quite decidedly idiosyncratic mid-Sixties’ pop-rock. Even if an argument can be made that they did not advance all that much beyond their initial Joe Meek-perfected formula, the formula itself continued to work like a charm. Well, it works on me, at least, in this day and age; all in all, I am prepared to claim that All Systems Go is the single best pop-rock album of 1965 not to have accumulated even a single user review on RateYourMusic — in fact, I think that Richie Unterberger is pretty much the only person to have ever offered an authoritative comment on the LP altogether.

The only thing that makes the record slightly weaker than its predecessor is that the band starts to lean more on covers of outside artists, rather than on the original songwriting by Howard Blaikley, Joe Meek, and the band’s own members — there are at least three or four «classic hits» here, like ‘There’s Always Me’ and ‘My Prayer’, which are decently done but whose presence is disappointing next to the fact that the team was still very much capable of exciting, inventive, original composing and lyrical ideas. Typically, this is a prime indication of «running out of steam», though I guess neither Blaikley nor Meek could be seriously blamed: after all, they weren’t official members of the band, and had no obligations to keep on feeding their formula forever.

But ooh, that formula. The record kicks off with ‘I Can’t Stop’ — a re-recorded, slower version of their follow-up single to ‘Have I The Right’, which, for some utterly inexplicable reason, never got a UK release (but did become their only other entry into the US Top 50 after ‘Have I The Right’). The original version was every bit as good, if not better than, its fondly remembered predecessor — danceable, catchy, gurgling with dizzy excitement, seasoned with Joe Meek’s tinkling sprinkles of guitar-keyboard proto-psychedelia, and with a martial bridge on top concentrating on Honey Lantree’s braggadocio drum fills; precisely the kind of music that goes best with lines like "I know it’s crazy but I can’t stop!". The new version is slowed down, replaces the original guitar solo with a sax break, and drops the rapid drum fills in favor of a slower, steadier pumping rhythm, which makes it feel a bit like a parody on the original, but it’s still fun even in this lumbering incarnation (though I have no idea why they preferred to use this take).

Other than ‘I Can’t Stop’, Howard-Blaikley contribute three more original songs to the LP, and they’re all perfectly fine. The title track, lyrically capitalizing on Joe Meek’s favorite subject — the space race — is an exuberant pop-rocker with doo-wop backing vocals and an absolutely crazy instrumental break where Meek distorts the guitar solo to the point where you can no longer understand if it is a guitar or a saxophone; meanwhile, Denis is throwing out hilarious space-themed double entendres to the right and to the left ("got a load of fuel inside", "gonna gain a little altitude", even "can’t you see my friendship’s high" a year or so before high became a dirty word in the public sphere) with as much verve as the old urban queens had for the kitchen table imagery of hot dogs and sugar bowls decades earlier. It could all be deemed just a silly novelty, though — if not for the flamboyant production. If there were a musical video for the song, it should have been something à la Cantina scene from the original Star Wars: goofy aliens totally getting off on adapting traditional human musical entertainment.

Then there is ‘Something I Got To Tell You’, which takes things slower and offers Honey Lantree a shot at lead vocals. An anthemic ballad, written and recorded in the style of American girl groups but with the usual «extra Meek flavor», it is actually quite lyrically provocative for its time — "something’s giving me Hell, baby", Honey declares, "though I said I would be true, there's someone new each time you go"; rather a bold twist on the typical female-sung ballad of misery and loneliness. The effect is somewhat neutralized by the atoning refrain "I’m sorry, sorry I’m not worthy of you" and the overall tragic feel (rather than, say, bold sex-positive vigor) of the vocal delivery, but still this is very much a standout against the usual backdrop motives of "girl cries over guy leaving" or "girl kicks guy out for infidelity". More importantly, Lantree sings it with a wonderful mix of power and vulnerability: her "when I’m near you I’m strong" is as «empowering» as anything sung by any great Motown vocalist, and her "but then you’re gone and I’m alone" is as tenderly apologetic as anything done by any great pre-war crooner. Over all of this psychological complexity rules a supreme clavioline riff, melodically predating the Beach Boys’ ‘You Still Believe In Me’ and somehow managing to make an extra jump into the stratosphere during the instrumental section. This combination of Blaikley’s risqué lyrics, Lantree’s soulful earnestness, and Meek’s sonic wizardry makes the song completely unique for 1965.

However, my personal favorite of all the Blaikley songs on here is undoubtedly the last one: ‘Love In Tokyo’, written as a special «gift» for all of the band’s Japanese fans and conveniently issued as a Japan-only single, though, fortunately, they had the good sense to at least include it on the LP. Released eight years before Deep Purple’s similarly-themed ‘Woman From Tokyo’ — a much less melodically interesting song, but, of course, far better known — it uses the metaphor of an exotic romance story to express general admiration for the band’s overseas fans, and, much to the writers’ honor, it does not even try to mimic anything «natively Japanese», but instead, simply invokes the name of Japan within the context of an adorably cute twee-pop creation. The Meek-enhanced guitar riff (or, rather, «guitar-that-identifies-as-a-xylophone» riff) feels like Searchers-style folk rock in a Harry Potter universe, with magic sparks bursting off each note, but the primary attraction of the song is, of course, the chorus — this is Denis at his most proto-Russell-Mael-like, reveling in his «bleating» vibrato that is so unlike any other singing done by anybody else at the time. Is it «corny», as we say? well, can something be truly «corny» if there is nothing else like it in the whole wide world? it is such a grotesque mix of the sincere and the bizarre that somehow, I find this «LOOOVE!... in Tokyo-0-0-0-o! it won’t LET me go-o-o-o-o... » chorus stuck in my head all day long. It feels like it’s got the same kind of intoxicating, head-spinning exuberance as an "I want to hold your ha-a-a-and!", the only difference being is that the Beatles worked this kind of magic with joint harmonies, laying down a basis for big collective delirium, whereas Denis D’Ell, even with all of Meek’s reverb wizardry behind his back, still gives the impression of a solitary lovestruck fool, waltzing with his own shadow somewhere in the depths of Joe’s apartment. Not everybody can appreciate this vibe, let alone transpose it to an arena-type environment. But those few who can will surely agree with me, I hope, that ‘Love In Tokyo’ is simply awesome.

Not that these four excellent tunes by any means exhaust the goodness of the LP, even if they are the cream of the crop. From the songwriting pockets of Joe Meek comes ‘She Ain’t Coming Back’, a galloping take on the country-western style with the expected embellishments to turn our heroes into space cowboys from ordinary ones, and the instrumental ‘Totem Pole’ that tries to justify its title with seven seconds of «tribal beats» in the opening, then simply turns into another of Joe’s ‘Telstar’-like surfin’-on-a-rocket entertainment articles. Both tracks are difficult to write about in detail, but work like very pleasant pieces of quirky sonic filler around the more «important» songs by Blaikley. Then there’s ‘I Don’t Love Her No More’, a cuddly ditty that feels like it may have been written for Herman’s Hermits — a pretty sound suggestion since the credits go to John Carter and Ken Lewis, the British songwriting duo that did write songs for Herman’s Hermits — but Meek’s manipulation of the guitar and drum sound still end up elevating the tune to another plane, whatever esoteric term might exist for labeling it.

Kinks’ fans will also be delighted to find out that ‘Emptiness’ is a melancholic rockin’ ballad credited to Ray Davies — indeed, the chord sequences and some of the quirky vocal moves sound exactly like Ray circa 1965, and the song could have very well fitted in with the bonus tracks on Kinda Kinks, though I also see why Ray left the song for others: it lacks a strong, distinctive vocal hook, getting by mainly on the strength of the atmosphere. But if you ever wondered how the Kinks would be sounded with Joe Meek’s production — well, here’s your answer. Reverberating vocals, treated piano, muffled drums... hmm, perhaps not a very hot proposition for the Davies brothers. They might have had their disagreements over musical directions, but neither of them would probably have accepted Joe Meek’s invitation to fire off into space without a safety net. Still, curiosity did kill the cat.

And now this is where I more or less run out of compliments, because the rest of the record, as I already said, is seriously ruined by the presence of too many antiquated covers. ‘Our Day Will Come’ by Ruby & The Romantics, ‘Nobody But Me’ by the Isley Brothers, ‘There’s Always Me’ (Dennis D’Ell as an Elvis impersonator? count me out), the ubiquitous ‘My Prayer’ — not to say that these covers do not have their redeemable aspects, because Meek’s arrangements and production are always interesting, and Dennis’ singing is always suitably soulful, but they simply feel unnecessary and superfluous in the presence of all that original material. The only one of these covers that totally destroys the original is ‘Oo-Ee Train’, which they heat up to about a hundred degrees over Bobby Darin’s tepid recording: ditch the kiddie backing vocals, get a playful, sped-up rhythm section, use your electric guitar to imitate train sounds — you’ll never want to go back to the old version after this one, believe me. But that is largely because a lot, and I mean a lot, of thought went into the reinvention of the song; I cannot quite say the same about the rest of the covers.

Even with all these reservations about filler, approximately 3/4 of All Systems Go! represent mid-Sixties’ pop creativity at its quirkiest, and the fact that the album immediately sank like a stone and is still sitting comfortably at the bottom of the pool of public conscience after all these years is just one more small stain on the collective anti-reputation of humanity. And things get even more painful if you throw on the rest of the singles that the Honeycombs had enough time to record before the demise of the original band — I shall just list a few major highlights here: ‘Can’t Get Through To You’ is a breakneck speed schizoid-paranoid pop-rocker with the sickly-greenest guitar tone imaginable (Sparks would have loved this one!); ‘Not Sleeping Too Well Lately’ is a sloppy dance-blues which cannot decide for itself if it wants to be about broken hearts or general insomnia problems; ‘How Will I Know?’ features a cool key change from intro to main verse to illustrate transition from determination to anguish in a simple, but unique manner; and as good as Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich’s classic bubblegum anthem ‘Hard To Love You’ may be, its goofy kazoo-based instrumental break is no match for the distorted-in-flame guitar solo on the Honeycombs’ cover (retitled ‘It’s So Hard’). Had all these tracks and more replaced the passable covers on the LP (admittedly, most of them were recorded already after the album had shipped), All Systems Go! would have been an absolute pop-rock classic.

Even as it stands, though, together with its predecessor this batch of song cements the Honeycombs’ status as one of the most unjustly forgotten and misunderstood bands of the early British Invasion era. Original songwriting? Check. Unique singing style? Check. Creative arrangements and whacky production? Check. Catchiness and emotionality? In spades. So perhaps they did not strive for proper «rock’n’roll credibility», but first of all, that credibility matters not an ounce in the present day and age, and second, neither did Herman’s Hermits and for some reason those guys are still making the rounds in the public conscience, while the Honeycombs are, at best, branded as «one-hit wonders» just because, when you get to the bottom of it, they didn’t have the luck to get the right publicity guy for themselves. Just one more of those acts of historical injustice that can only be rectified within the confines of the small club that gives a damn — well, that or until somebody honors them with another of those viral TikTok videos.

• Only Solitaire reviews: The Honeycombs