Review: The Searchers - Meet The Searchers (1963)
Tracks: 1) Sweets For My Sweet; 2) Alright; 3) Love Potion No. 9; 4) Farmer John; 5) Stand By Me; 6) Money; 7) Da Doo Ron Ron; 8) Ain’t Gonna Kiss Ya; 9) Since You Broke My Heart; 10) Tricky Dicky; 11) Where Have All The Flowers Gone; 12) Twist And Shout.
REVIEW
There’s your big difference between the Beatles and the Searchers right from the start. The Beatles’ first single — and their second, and their third, and so on... — was a completely original song written by the band members themselves; not a great song, but a decent foundation upon which they could and would quickly improve. The Searchers’ first single was a Drifters cover — and even if ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ was unquestionably a better song than ‘Love Me Do’, ensuring a formal victory (‘Love Me Do’ peaked at #17, whereas ‘Sweets’ went straight to the top of the charts), it also predetermined the band’s career: never would they properly make it as independent songwriters, and that meant that as of 1963, the band was doomed to, at best, 2-3 years of fame and success.
Of course, this should not detract from the fact that of the many groups to emerge from the Liverpool scene along with the Beatles, the Searchers were the very best (no offense to such nice lads as the Merseybeats and Gerry and the Pacemakers). Even a brief listen to what they did with ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ should be convincing. Replacing the quiet piano backing of the Drifters’ song with arpeggiated electric rhythm guitar and laying on a thick bassline, they turned the tune into a Merseybeat anthem that preserved the sweetness and tenderness of the original (the band faithfully reproduces the honey-like falsetto harmonies of the Drifters) while endowing it with extra toughness and power provided by the energetic onslaught of the rhythm section — drummer Chris Curtis, in particular, gets busy filling up most of the empty space, possibly inspired by Ringo and probably foreshadowing the arisal of Keith Moon next year.
That said, as of late 1963 the Searchers were still searching. Most of the material covered here is the same American R&B and rock’n’roll that the Beatles were doing, and the band just cannot provide the same level of passion and energy. They did put their own ‘Money’ on record before the Beatles, it’s true, and Tony Jackson delivers the lyrics with quite a bit of nasal arrogance and defiance, but when you bring on John Lennon with his primal vibe, Tony is immediately dethroned — not to mention that the Beatles’ arrangement, with parallel guitar and piano tracks, is juicier and mightier than the Searchers’ competent, but amateurish guitar-only performance. The decision to end the record with ‘Twist And Shout’, the exact same track that also bookmarked Please Please Me, is even harder to comprehend — again, Jackson is thin and insecure next to John, and the entire performance must have felt like a simple fan tribute even back then, let alone now.
The band fares slightly better on lighter, jokier pop-rock numbers like Don and Dewey’s ‘Farmer John’ (which they also end up «merseyfying» with extra whoah-yeah uh-uh-uh’s) and Richie Barrett’s ‘Tricky Dicky’; the latter was actually penned by Leiber and Stoller, and they also do their ‘Love Potion No. 9’, originally recorded by the Clovers. Ironically, when that song was released upon the American market a year later, it became the Searchers’ one and only Top Ten hit on the US charts — God works in mysterious ways indeed. Admittedly, it is true that into this bit of comic vaudeville about a voodoo spell gone horribly wrong the Searchers somehow managed to mix a bit of melancholic sadness, making better use of its Am and Dm chords than the Clovers — in their hands, it became more of an ‘I’m A Loser’-type personal anthem — but why this approach struck such a particular chord with American audiences is anybody’s guess.
Anyway, even if these novelty tunes suit the Searchers’ vibe better than the brawny braggardly rock’n’roll stuff, it is still amusing that only one of the songs on here really nails the style for which the band would soon become famous — Pete Seeger’s ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’. Forget Pete, forget Peter, Paul and Mary, forget Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio — the intertwined guitar playing of Mike Pender and John McNally de-solemnifies and colorizes the somber nostalgic folk anthem, presaging the soon-to-come sound of the Byrds, though, in the absence of 12-string guitar jangle, the sound is still much closer to the generic Merseybeat of 1963. This, however, is the type of music that the Beatles had not claimed for their own, and it is a good thing for us that the Searchers quickly realized it, too.
A bit of that sound can also be heard on the B-side to ‘Sweets For My Sweet’, not included on the original album but added as a bonus track on subsequent CD releases: ‘It’s All Been A Dream’ is the band’s only self-penned tune from that era (credited to Chris Curtis, the drummer), and although in its form and essence it seems to be just a regular dreamy romantic Merseybeat pop ballad, the guitar jangle and the tender harmonies are somewhat close in execution to the style of ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’. It is actually strange that they did not attempt to put any more original material on this LP or, for that matter, the next two LPs as well — the song is, at the very least, on the level with whatever most of their Liverpool contemporaries, Beatles excluded, were producing at the time.
Still, despite the lack of confidence, Meet The Searchers is at least fully competent from a technical standpoint. Produced in true stereo by Pye’s resident producer Tony Hatch, played and sung by good musicians and singers who were not nearly as tame as most of the crowds around them, very few of these tracks leave you with a feeling of misery and pity (except for ‘Money’ and ‘Twist And Shout’ if you already know your Beatles, and whoever even in 1963 would know his Searchers before knowing his Beatles?). And in retrospect, knowing that the Searchers would never go to truly great heights, Meet The Searchers does not disappoint nearly as much as, say, the Kinks’ debut — when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose, and when you actually got a little, who’s gonna roast you for the times when you got nothing?
Only Solitaire: Searchers review page