Review: The Searchers - Take Me For What I'm Worth (1965)

Tracks: 1) I’m Ready; 2) I’ll Be Doggone; 3) Does She Really Care For Me; 4) It’s Time; 5) Too Many Miles; 6) You Can’t Lie To A Liar; 7) Don’t You Know Why; 8) I’m Your Loving Man; 9) Each Time; 10) Be My Baby; 11) Four Strong Winds; 12) Take Me For What I’m Worth.

REVIEW

Apparently the bulk of the songs that constitute the Searchers’ fifth and final (before the reunion) LP was recorded as early as May 1965, but for unspecified reasons the album stayed in the vaults until November — a delay that, arguably, could not be more criminal for any other year than 1965, which pop music entered as a horny teenager and left as an enlightened bodhi­sattva. That said, while the album probably would have sold a little better in the summer of 1965 than during the Christmas season (when most people would probably rather buy an extra copy of Rubber Soul than another Searchers LP), there is no reason to think that a timely release would have seriously influenced the band’s overall fortune. On a song-by-song basis, it is a modest improvement on Sounds Like Searchers, but it does not really show the Searchers adapting to the changing times. They still aren’t writing a lot of original material, they still keep falling back on old covers, they don’t do much to expand their sound... well, you know the drill.

The farthest they got was with the title track, which they nicked from the American songwriter P. F. Sloan — who, at the time, was a heavily Dylan-influenced aspiring folkie, occasionally recording his own material but mostly peddling it to outside artists, ranging from Jan & Dean to Barry McGuire (‘Eve Of Destruction’), the Turtles, and Herman’s Hermits. He did not have much of an imagination, but the songs were good enough to serve as passable second-rate Dylan: ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’, which Sloan originally released himself as an acoustic ballad, basically rips its message off of an uncanny hybridization of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ and ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, but the melody is poppier than either of those two, so the original version does indeed sound like a preliminary demo compared to the full-scale folk-pop arrangement that the Searchers came up with for it. Sloan’s voice is stronger and more «epic» than Mike Pender’s, but they get a sharp, jangly guitar sound going on here that certainly trumps his own guitar strumming.

Most importantly, by taking out the Dylanish harmonica of the original and by adding group harmonies to beef up the "if you want me you’ll take me for what I’m worth!" chorus) they succeed in brewing up a bit of garage-flavored punkish nastiness — though it might not have mattered all that much by the tail end of 1965, when Bob Dylan had already established a reputation for being able to add in as much garage-flavored punkish nastiness to his output on his own, without the need for any copycats to do that for him. Still, as a somewhat more melodic and a tiny bit more sentimental (rather than purely cynical) alternative to the don’t-mess-with-my-life-woman message of that particular Dylan incarnation ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’ is a song that deserves to be remembered. And as an unintentional metaphor, it also works as a pretty telling swan song for the Searchers as a band: "And if you think about me in your lonesome hours / And on your lips there’s a sweet word and not a curse / Then I’ll be comin’ back one day when my wandering is over / If you want me you’ll take me for what I’m worth". Egotistic and humble at the same time. I like it.

This certainly does not imply that the rest of the album is unworthy of your attention. If anything, it is even more polished and disciplined and tighter-classier-sounding than anything they’d done up to that point — there is not a single song on here I’d be embarrassed about being caught listening to, regardless of whether it’s a cover or an original. The album’s only flaw is that it is hopelessly stuck in the summer of 1964, rather than in the fall of 1965, in between which lies a distance of "two thousand light years from home". But since we are now almost equidistant from both, why can’t we just pretend that it’s a 1964 record and get away with it? Especially since it’s not trying to «emulate» 1964, it just lives and breathes 1964.

Or maybe make it 1959, as the LP opens with quite a fabulous cover of Fats Domino’s ‘I’m Ready’ — a song that, for some reason, had never been picked up by anybody since its original single release. It’s one of my favorite Fats tunes, and the Searchers do it almost perfect British Invasion justice, apart from a somewhat clumsy guitar solo by Pender, starting out strong with Berry-style trills and everything but then kind of coming apart at the seams. Tony Hatch (their producer) is at the piano himself, banging out a good Fats imitation, and Chris Curtis puts together enough breath control to make us believe that he is indeed "ready", "willin’", and "able". None of this suffices to make you forget Fats’ original, but it does lend credence to the idea that of all the different types of rock’n’roll music, New Orleanian rock’n’roll was the one that somehow came most naturally to this particular band.

Right after that, the Searchers come out with another note-perfect cover — of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I’ll Be Doggone’, and before you start wondering how on earth would they succeed in challenging the magic of Motown, I’d like to remark that the song, written by Smokey Robinson and several other Miracles, was actually founded on a riff nicked directly from the Searchers’ own ‘Needles And Pins’ (well, more correctly, Jackie DeShannon’s ‘Needles And Pins’, but it’s more likely that Smokey himself heard it from the Searchers’ hit version); so, in a way, they were paying Motown back here for stealing what was theirs in the first place. In essence, ‘I’ll Be Doggone’ is a folk-pop song, and the Searchers’ version exploits that essence a bit better — although, of course, outsinging Marvin is a far more challenging matter than outplaying his backing band. They do have the added benefit of group harmonies, rounding out the elegant effect of this semi-romantic, semi-threatening little mood-swingin’ serenade. (I refuse to fight over which of the two versions is better, but taken together, they definitely beat the stuffing over the popular Tages cover from 1966 — kudos to the Swedish lads for trying to turn the song over on its head and transform it into an angry blues-rock rant, but it was never intended to be that and they can’t tame it).

Of the cover songs that everybody usually knows, really the only blatant misfire is the band’s take on the Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ — just because it is so utterly, perfectly pointless. They try as hard as possible to preserve the oceanic production depth of Phil Spector, but it’s clear as day that the best they can offer is an approximation, and who the heck needs an approximation of perfection? Besides, the bombastic production requires vocals that will cut through it like broken glass — something that Ronnie Spector was able to provide, unlike poor Frank Allen, whose lead vocal here sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. Perhaps if they’d rearranged the song as a cozy, intimate folk-pop recording, the results might at least be interesting, but instead it’s just a tentative answer to the question, «can a band of four guitar-totin’ British kids replace Phil Spector, Ronnie Spector, the entire Wrecking Crew, and a full-blown orchestra to the exact same effect?» And I’m not even sure I want to wait for an answer to that question, provided that I respect The Searchers as one of the best bands of the early British Invasion era and not as a bunch of before-their-time contestants for Britain’s Got Talent.

Of the lesser known covers, though, one might single out the band’s comparatively more interesting take on ‘You Can’t Lie To A Liar’, a song that certain broken Internet algorithms, amusingly, ascribe to the pens of Disney songsmith Frank Churchill and jazz vibraphone genius Lionel Hampton (!!) — don’t put your trust in Wikipedia, because the song was actually written by Bacharach-David disciple Paul Hampton, sometimes (but not on the original record) co-credited with Texan singer Cinthy Churchill. (On the Searchers’ LP, the credits just go «Hampton, Churchill» and then digital idiocy takes over from there). This one was originally recorded by Ketty Lester, the one-hit wonder of ‘Love Letters’ fame, as a sharp-edged country-western number with prominent fiddle, which contrasted intriguingly with her typically African-American R&B voice, and although it was later covered by the likes of Bobby Vee and others, the Searchers model their version after the original, but replace the fiddle with fuzz guitar, throw in more of those booming ‘Be My Baby’-like drums and borrow the New Orleanian rhythm of Fats Domino’s ‘I’m In Love Again’ (it was not so prominent on the original). If only they could get Ketty Lester to actually sing on the song... everything is good, but the soul just so happens to be missing. It’s a song that needs a passionate solo delivery, not timid double-tracked vocalizing.

An unquestionable win for the Searchers in all respects is Jackie DeShannon’s ‘Each Time’ — this song of hers was first released by the minor U.S. girl group The Bon Bons in 1964 as, well, a typical girl group song with a corny-syrupy approach to the vocals. The Searchers turned it into a sparkling guitar-fest instead (the arpeggiated trills of the rhythm guitar and the harpsichord-style overlays of the lead guitar are a complete reinvention of the original), and the vocals melted down all the syrup and turned the song into deep-reaching dream-pop, finishing each chorus with a head-spinning falsetto twist. Just compare the way the Bon Bons sing "...EACH TAAA-IIIM!" with the heights to which the Searchers take that resolution, and then I dare anybody insist that Pender, Curtis, and co. had but a mediocre ear for melody and harmony. It is just surprising to me that with such a beautiful gift for taking a C-level song and elevating it to at least a B+, if not higher, they kept smashing their heads against songs like ‘Be My Baby’, trying to out-perfect perfection. Surely there must have been dozens more of those tunes like ‘You Can’t Lie’ or ‘Each Time’ that they could have successfully made their own.

Or, perhaps, they could have simply written more on their own, because the four originals included on Take Me For What I’m Worth are quite sympathetic as well. John McNally contributes ‘It’s Time’, which shows he must have been listening to the Byrds’ debut — same kind of catchy, fast-paced folk-rock, and there’s not even any shame in ripping them off given how much the Byrds must have been influenced by the Searchers themselves. His ‘Don’t You Know Why’ is a bit more traditional, echoing the classic Merseybeat sound, but I think the song might have fared better if they donated it to the Hollies, who would have polished and sharpened both the guitar sound and the relatively limp vocals. Meanwhile, Pender and Curtis make a dubious, but not senseless stab at marrying pop harmonies to the Bo Diddley beat on ‘I’m Your Loving Man’ (not a highlight) — and then come up with one of their very best folk-pop originals with ‘Too Many Miles’, a graceful and super-catchy pastoral ballad with a quasi-baroque woodwind lead part. I have no idea why the song has been so completely forgotten (it was actually the B-side to the ‘Take Me For What I’m Worth’ single, so it had a real chance of getting some airwaves), but I think it belongs on any solid compilation of early Sixties’ stately ’n’ sentimental folk-pop à la Peter, Paul & Mary or Ian & Sylvia (whose own ‘Four Strong Winds’, by the way, is also here).

The fact remains that Take Me For What I’m Worth by no means sounds like a genuine swan song — despite their commercial struggles and lineup perturbances, the Searchers remained an inspired and creative outfit all through 1965. But they were unwilling to move forward at the same pace as everybody else, preferring to take it slow and sensible instead. We see faint glimmers of baroque-pop, we hear occasional outbursts of fuzz guitar, we sense that they were not stubbornly committed to forever adhering to the standards of 1963–64, but, unfortunately, this kind of pussyfooting was not enough for such a vibrant era as 1965–66. Personally, I would be interested in hearing a Searchers’ LP from the psychedelic era but, judging from the small bunch of singles they would put out in those years, they would probably not be too interested in recording anything too psychedelic or too «artsy» — and it wasn’t even so much about the departure of their informal band leader, Chris Curtis, in April ’66, as it was about the overall group spirit and its refusal to adapt at the required insane tempo of change. If you want me, you’ll take me for what I’m worth — this kind of bluff may have worked out fine for Bob Dylan, but the Searchers really overestimated their chances with this one. But make no mistake about it, on my lips there’s definitely a sweet word and not a curse when I listen to all these nice songs sixty years later.

• Only Solitaire reviews: The Searchers