Review: The Searchers - It's The Searchers (1964)
Tracks: 1) It’s In Her Kiss; 2) Glad All Over; 3) Sea Of Heartbreak; 4) Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck; 5) Where Have You Been; 6) Shimmy Shimmy; 7) Needles And Pins; 8) This Empty Place; 9) Gonna Send You Back To Georgia; 10) I Count The Tears; 11) Hi-Heel Sneakers; 12) Can’t Help Forgiving You; 13) Sho’ Know A Lot About Love; 14) Don’t Throw Your Love Away.
REVIEW
If you feel like the Searchers are subtly mellowing out on their third LP, surreptitiously nudging out good old rock’n’roll in favor of their folk-pop side, then this is very likely to be related to the first big and unpleasant rift within the band, in which bass player — and, once upon a time, primary lead vocalist, too — Tony Jackson found himself pitted against drummer Chris Curtis and, to a lesser extent, lead guitarist Mike Pender. Details can be looked up in biographical sources, but there is a definite correlation between Tony and much, if not most, of the band’s harder-rocking material: from this point of view, I could not really argue with Chris that the Searchers excelled far better at the sensitive stuff than at trying to outplay the Beatles or the Stones when it came out to lean and mean rock muscle. It is unfortunate that Tony only got one lead vocal on the album (and far from the best one), or that he left the band soon afterwards... but it may have been for the best, after all.
In any case, It’s The Searchers is as good as it ever got for this band — which is still not that good, but there is no better collection of Searchers tunes to justify the band’s appearance on this planet. The most glaring crime is that nobody in the band could still take on any songwriting responsibilities: all the songs are covers, and usually not even obscure ones (or ones written specially for the band) — I suppose that by mid-’64, releasing an LP without a single original track was already known, or at least felt, to represent a soon-to-be-executed death sentence for any of that early generation of British Invasion bands. Yet the Searchers were still rooting for an identity, and while their hazy oscillation between raunchy rock’n’roll and pensive folksiness on the first two records kind of muddled the listeners’ senses, It’s The Searchers almost got it nailed for us. Where the Beatles would largely be about odes to joy and the Stones would be about salacious serenades to sex, the Searchers wanted to become Young Werther and the Sorrow Singers.
It all begins with one of their biggest hits and arguably the song that is still most commonly associated with the Searchers (or, more accurately, it is the Searchers who are most commonly associated with that song) — a cover of ‘Needles And Pins’, which was a fresh, but very minor hit for Jackie DeShannon, written for her (or with her, according to the lady herself) by Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche. Honestly speaking, both versions are quite comparable, and Jackie certainly sings the tune with more fire and energy than Mike Pender — the question, of course, being whether the song requires fire and energy, or whether it should be delivered with more sadness and melancholia, as befits a chorus that goes "because of all my pride, the tears I gotta hide". That the song became a much bigger hit for the Searchers even in the US is probably due to the fad of British Invasion — it was breaking through at about the same time as ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ — but there is also no denying that, vocals aside, the Searchers also have the upper musical hand: that droning opening electric jangle pretty much creates the blueprint for the Byrds, and from there, for all the folk-rock explosion to follow all the way up to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul and beyond. McNally and Pender’s guitars just walk all over the place, setting a drizzling-rain sound pattern so appropriate for the general atmosphere — and so totally not a concern in DeShannon’s version, where Nitzsche just seems worried about getting the basic chord pattern right.
Three months later, ‘Needles And Pins’ were followed by yet another mega-hit for the band: ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’, which once again steals the thunder from an American original, this time by the Orlons, a vocal group from Philly (written for them by professional songwriters). The Orlons’ version is actually quite cool, based on an unusual combination of African percussion and choppy jazzy piano chords; but with electric guitar being so much more in fashion at the time, the Searchers’ scratchy, in places almost proto-funky delivery, spiced up with a little reverb, probably gained more attention from the start — and placing Pender so close to the mike must have helped, too (the Orlons, as was so common with American vocal groups those days, always sound much too distant for any potential effect of intimacy). It is interesting that on the LP, both of these big hits close one of the album’s sides rather than open it — as if to stress, somehow, that the Searchers are the modern day poets of Farewell and Goodbye, rather than of Hello and Welcome.
I must say, however, that my personal favorites on the record are not the big hits, but two stylistically close, yet, in a way, substantially deeper covers. On Side A, this is ‘Sea Of Heartbreak’, originally performed by Don Gibson in a relatively extraverted manner, with a primarily acoustic guitar melody lightly ornamented with quiet, sprinkly piano rolls. In the Searchers’ interpretation, the piano (played by their producer Tony Hatch) becomes the dominant instrument and engages in serene, wavy dialog with Pender’s lead vocals, while Pender himself delivers the vocal melody in a slightly dazed, shell-shocked state (as probably befits somebody wading through a "sea of heartbreak, lost love and loneliness"). If you listen very closely, you will even notice that voice following the piano’s octaves — going to bass levels right after the keys, as if imitating the ocean’s inescapable pull. The resulting atmosphere, if you give in to it, is haunting and mesmerizing, in a kind of intimately moody manner that nobody in the UK could pull off at the time, not even the Zombies (when it comes to masters of the dark brooding melancholic approach).
On Side B, it gets even better with ‘This Empty Place’, a Bacharach creation that they probably took away from Dionne Warwick’s version. Melodically, I think this is one of the finest songs that Burt ever composed — multiple unpredictable turns and twists in the vocal melody which all make perfect emotional sense. But if anything, the Searchers help the song realize its potential so much fuller than the Warwick version: again, they bring in heavy emphasis on the piano (instead of horns, which actually detract from the deep despair of the song), but the most important thing are these vocal zoops from Curtis (who now takes the lead): "there’s an empty (down) PLACE (up) beside me... when I’m walkin’ (down) DOWN (up) the street...". A minor detail? Perhaps; but with this tiny touch, they add a heavy, depressing aura which was really only hinted at in the original version. Amusingly, the mood and style of the song remind me so much of ‘Things We Said Today’ that I would not at all be surprised to learn about Paul being subconsciously influenced by this performance — and, interestingly, ‘Things We Said Today’ is said to have been written by him on vacation sometime in May 1964, precisely the month that It’s The Searchers was officially released. Anybody know, incidentally, what sorts of records Paul might have taken with him to the Virgin Islands?
As you can already see, all of these songs — the big hits and inventive sleeper gems alike — are united by one major theme: "sadness and tears, they’re such bad souvenirs". This is not an exhaustive list (there is also Pomus and Shuman’s ‘I Count The Tears’, for instance), but still, even with this decisive strategy of forever being associated with seas of heartbreak, the Searchers leave plenty of space open for more optimistic and heart-warming performances — such as their cover of the big Betty Everett hit ‘It’s In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)’. The band boldly discards all the shoop shoops, replacing them with a few intro bars of ‘Twist And Shout’ that weren’t there before — you know, just to let you remember that this is still a true beat band you have here, not just a bunch of world-weary depressed romantic losers. However, most of the rocking stuff that follows is no more impressive than it was on the previous records: Timmy Shaw’s ‘Gonna Send You Back To Georgia’ which is absolutely useless next to the Animals version; Carl Perkins’ ‘Glad All Over’ which the Beatles did better on their BBC sessions; and a particularly low point with the cover of the Hollywood Argyles’ novelty number ‘Sho’ Know A Lot About Love’ — because this is the kind of song that needs to be weird and humorous, and the Searchers are not that good when it comes to weird and humorous. Too bad it was Tony Jackson’s only vocal performance here.
That said, when it comes to judgement, I am willing to forgive a few missteps. An LP consisting of nothing but songs about heartbreak and loss might be tolerable from some big visionary like Neil Young or Lou Reed (then again, even then maybe not...) — the Searchers do the right thing by interspersing the first-rate sad stuff with the fillerish livelier stuff, making it more difficult to bore yourself to death and making the sad songs particularly distinctive against the more common background. Whatever be your or my verdict, it is difficult to argue that the album represents a truly high point for the band: never again would they be this inventive or consistent — and besides, Father Time himself would soon ban them from even the lowest of high ranks for failing to pass the basic songwriter’s test.
Only Solitaire: The Searchers reviews