Review: The Shadows - Dance With The Shadows (1964)
Tracks: 1) Chattanooga Choo-Choo; 2) Blue Shadows; 3) Fandango; 4) Tonight; 5) That’s The Way It Goes; 6) Big ‘B’; 7) In The Mood; 8) The Lonely Bull; 9) Dakota; 10) French Dressing; 11) The High And The Mighty; 12) Don’t It Make You Feel Good; 13) Zambesi; 14) Temptation.
REVIEW
In the brief period separating the Shadows’ second and third LPs, Prometheus stole fire from the Olympian gods, Moses separated the waters, Newton created the laws of motion, and the Beatles conquered the musical world — which means that even within an artistic camp as stoically conservative as that of the Shadows, it would be ridiculous to expect no changes whatsoever. Of course, the most easily detectable changes were in their declining commercial fortunes: ‘Foot Tapper’ from early 1963, a catchy little twist number with melodic nods to the Rivingtons’ ‘Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow’, would be their last #1 single on the UK charts (although ‘Atlantis’, a moody instrumental with clever use of orchestration and futuristic guitar tones, done in their more conventional Western style, would come very close to replicating that success a few months later, still stalling at #2, though).
Even so, 1964 still saw them remaining quite steady in the public’s eye: a major legend does not just die overnight, and Dance With The Shadows managed to climb all the way to #2, though it still failed to displace the Rolling Stones’ debut (predictably, it took the Beatles to do that). And as both that album and its follow-ups clearly show to anybody willing to listen, the Shadows were anything but completely out of touch with the times. Where they truly refused to evolve, possibly more out of personal taste and feeling than due to a misguided judgement of changes in fashion, is in their public image: their live shows and TV appearances remained steadily rigid and ritualistic affairs, with the band absolutely refusing to loosen up and go wild on their audiences. The music, however, did evolve and reflect both technical and substantial progress in popular entertainment — not always for the better, perhaps, but neither could anybody in their right mind claim, upon listening to Dance With The Shadows, that the band was completely clueless to what was going on.
Granted, this line of defense may seem a bit thin when you intentionally begin your latest record with ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’, a track whose origins go all the way back to Glenn Miller and the year 1941. (Imagine the Beatles starting off any of their 1964 albums with a cover of ‘The Sheik Of Araby’!). But the Shadows’ arrangement of it is fully in step with the musical standards of the time, as they get louder, more bombastic, noisier on the hi-hat à la Ringo, and thicker, juicier, slightly more distorted on the lead guitar. Besides, already the second track, ‘Blue Shadows’, takes us into the completely modern playground of electric 12-bar blues, a direction which the Shadows did not tackle all that often in the past — here, though, they are finally ready to acknowledge the significance of the genre for contemporary audiences, with Hank delivering a fully competent blues solo and the entire band punching out a steady metronomic groove as if they wanted to adapt blues music to military needs. (That is actually a problem — it does sound more like they are rehearsing a new unfamiliar genre than having genuine fun with it).
Of particular interest are the two Marvin/Welch-written vocal numbers, ‘That’s The Way It Goes’ and ‘Don’t It Make You Feel Good’, both of them cast very strictly in the Merseybeat mold — tight, uplifting, slightly echoey group harmonies over the noisy, but super-rhythmic punch of acoustic strumming and hi-hat-heavy percussion. Both songs are catchy, both songs contain quirky individual moments of not-quite-predictable chord and harmony changes, both songs show that, had they truly wanted to, the Shadows could easily have blown out of the water all the likes of, say, Gerry and the Pacemakers — but, of course, neither of the two songs has that vital special something that would elevate them out of the common pop chorus and place them on a special individualistic pedestal. They do make you feel good, and that’s certainly the way it goes, but they lack the secret ingredient of the Beatles’ recipé, one that has to do with raising and lowering dynamic tension. Then again, that sort of seems to be the problem with the Shadows’ entire career, not just those few moments when they tried to forge for themselves a bunch of fake Liverpool passports.
Far more exciting, rather than simply curious, is ‘Big B’, an instrumental that almost reaches the 4-minute mark due to an extended drum solo by Brian Bennett (he is actually listed as the composer) — not only is this a first for the Shadows, but the solo itself is quite unusual for a pop album, with major emphasis on kicking the shit out of that bass drum, which gives the whole thing a strong «jungle» feel. Given that only guys like Gene Krupa could have been a primary influence for this approach, I could not call it particularly «fashionable» for the time, but as far as drum solos in pop music go, I’d say this is definitely one of the loudest and wildest ones in pre-John Bonham days.
Curiously, Bennett is also listed as sole composer for the fast-paced country-rock instrumental ‘French Dressing’, which has little to do with anything French and sounds more like Johnny Cash arranged for surf guitar, but that’s alright, it is still a lot of fun. However, this is largely where any attempts at original songwriting stop and problems begin — because, for all the attempts to modernize, at least half of the album is still given over to covers from West Side Story (‘Tonight’), Bing Crosby (‘Temptation’), and The High And The Mighty (title track, composed by Hollywood maestro Dimitri Tiomkin). This is all just standard professional Shadows fodder, listenable while it’s on, instantly forgettable when it’s off. The mix of urban, country, and spaghetti-western elements, to which they also add some Tijuana Brass (‘The Lonely Bull’) and South Africa (Nico Carstens’ ‘Zambesi’), is respectable, but nothing new for the band, whose interest in various popular styles from all over the world dated back to their very inception.
Ultimately, it all comes down to the title of the LP: the Shadows’ goal is very humble — they just ask you to dance with them, much like George Harrison in A Hard Day’s Night. While they are certainly ready to acknowledge the evolution of popular entertainment, they seem to have no clue about the substantial direction of that evolution. But in 1964, they could still hardly be blamed for that, as the world of «progressive pop music» would not really become philosophically self-conscious until at least a year or two later. Even A Hard Day’s Night, given a slightly less lucky turn of events, could have easily been slapped with a title like Dance With The Beatles (though it is also quite telling that it was not).
Only Solitaire: The Shadows reviews