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Cliff Richard • »Cliff With Strings«

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What does it sound like?:

Leaving the attention-grabbing headline behind – this is of course not about the record industry’s latest installment of the annual Xmas favourite, the »orchestral« hits album. They used to wait with such endeavours until the artist’s corpse was buried, but times are hard, obviously.

So: those crazy people at Bear Family have dedicated the latest volume in their »The Brits Are Rocking« series to Sir Cliff Richard, ignoring the image most people seem to have of him being a target of mockery and sniggering, especially among the elderly »rockers« in their extra-large black T-shirts. »Dynamite – The Brits Are Rocking Vol. 10« is a compilation of 34 uptempo tracks from 1959 to December 1961 – and it’s exciting, illuminating and a pure pleasure to listen to.

There’s the myth of the »grey area«, the time when Elvis was in the Army and apparently nothing much was going on in the music world until the sudden arrival of the Beatles. Well, here we have a guitar band with a focused singer, a brillant guitar player and an endlessly inventive rhythm section, who play snappy, energetic pop songs, mostly written by band members and associates. The biggest surprise for me was the authority and drive in Cliff’s singing: there’s nothing of the youthful enthusiasm you would expect from someone barely twenty, he’s not a cuddly boy like Ricky Nelson or the young McCartney: this guy is mean and ready to rock! Listen to »Dynamite«, »Move It« or »Livin’ Lovin’ Doll« and marvel at the sheer determination of this combo. There are of course the constantly fresh licks and riffs from Hank Marvin, but special mention should be made of Tony Meehan’s drumming – he always comes up with a new fill and drum roll and he’s really driving and pushing the band. And when they tackle the rock’n’roll standards from the US, they display their mastery even more. There’s none of the bluesy swagger of Elvis, Chuck Berry or Carl Perkins here – their »Blue Suede Shoes« thunders along at breakneck speed, and »Do You Wanna Dance« is even faster than the Ramones’ version – and way more muscular too, somehow.

Bear Family’s 36-page liner notes (the length of the text perfectly timed for the disc’s 75 min. duration as usual) close with a special mention of the engineer who recorded all these sessions at Abbey Road Studio 2, the »brilliant Malcolm Addey«, and the sound is indeed stunning. Compare this with the Beatles’ crude instrument separation and overdubs on their first five albums, and you wonder what was going on at the same studio only a few years earlier: here we have magnificently recorded drums and a booming, melodic bass in a warm, punchy sound, with a nice room ambience and cleverly placed instruments framing the vocals (most of the tracks here are in stereo). It all sounds more like the Beach Boys circa 1965 than yer proverbial pre-Beatles stuff. (And no, you don’t have to invent artificial intelligence to make it sound good).

What does it all *mean*?

My advive: lock up your children with their Sonos, draw the curtains, and play this through some real speakers, and have a boppin’ fine evening with these tunes.
And to all those who think this is important: Yes, Cliff Richard (along with The Shadows) really belongs in the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame.

Goes well with…

The other volumes in this series – Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Vince Taylor, Tommy Steele…

Release Date:

Available now from the record shop up your street

Might suit people who like…

…good journalism – here’s what the New Musical Express had to say about Cliff’s TV appearance: »Cliff Richard & The Shadows must be held responsible for the most crude exhibitionism ever seen on British TV. His violent hip-swinging is hardly the kind of performance any parent could wish their children to witness. TV has an obligation to viewers and its first duty is to forbid any repeat of last Saturday’s disgraceful antics.«

11

Comments

    • You say that, but the reason I’ve always refused to attend an AW mingle is cos I’m waiting until everyone slims down a bit.

      Actually, tbh, I suspect Cliff wasn’t being quite the knob he came across as. He just expressed himself really stupidly. But I think what he meant was, he’d rather have met the cool and gorgeous Elvis of Houndog fame, rather than the Las Vegas, bloated with hamburgers and drugs Elvis. I think most people would. And it wouldn’t surprise me if his refusal to meet the latter was a bit of a fib, made up on the spot. (But I could be totes wrong – he might have just been being a knob.)

      • Yeah, I felt a bit sorry for him as well after the online rage following his comment. It was poorly expressed and a clumsy thing to say, but no worse than many of the clangers I’m sure us mere mortals make on a daily basis (I know I’m up to about my third today already), and certainly no indication of nastiness or prejudice on his part.

        Yes, give me a time machine and send me back to meet the Elvis I want to meet. I’m sure my choice would be similar to most people’s choice, and it certainly wouldn’t be the ’77 version.

        • I think what happened was this. The meeting was arranged and Cliff was keen as hell for it to happen. Due to how Elvis was in his later years, it was perhaps deferred a couple of times, leaving Cliff in the lurch. Cliff – a busy man – said “Hey fellas! Just come back to me when you can secure a definite date, yeah?”. And then he thinks to himself that it probably wasn’t meant to be – and he would have been all druggy and slurry anyway. Perhaps try again when he’s in better shape. This kind of makes the situation more of. a 50/50 thing. I am sure Cliff doesn’t like being pissed about, even if it is Elvis.

          I have done this a few times when someone gets all enigmatic on me ass. Part of my job has been to convince people to set up life insurance for their employees as a benefit. Particularly for a small business, you need to get to the decision maker to make it happen.

          Most people are fine, they either want to do it or they don’t, but every now and then there’s an egotistical David Brent type who acts unreliably as if they are a maverick genius in order to test your resolve – like you’re passing some kind of test before you can get into his circle of trust. These people are time-wasters and awful to deal with long-term so I have “done a Cliff” in the past.

          .

        • Cliff made the same comments about ‘not wanting to meet a fat Elvis’ to Tom Hibbert in an old Q ‘Who The Hell..’ back in the late 80s, no one seemed to mind then.

  5. Fascinating review, Fatima – great points about the production / recording quality vis a vis the Fabs. Design-wise, though, it’s a dreadful cover, isn’t it?

  6. Thanks for the review Fatima. I just listened to Andrew Hickey’s 500 songs episode on the Shadows Apache. He gave some remarkable stat, as he does, about their combined run of hits maybe even #1 hits. Was it 25 for him and something like 12 for them and continuous too save for a Frank Ifield interruption ? I need to re listen as that sounds implausible.

  8. Lovely review. I was considering this and it is now firmly on my Christmas list. I listened to sone 50s Cliff in preparation for the With The Beatles 60th anniversary review and I think some of it holds up incredibly well against The Beatles. I also believe that Cliff and especially The Shadows were an influence on them. As I’ve said recently it’s not all gold, he can be a knob but the derision is unfair. The fact he’s managed a 65 year career and still performing at 83 can all be traced back to this period when he was genuinely thrilling and cutting edge. I think he’s earned the occasional foot in mouth moment and should be appreciated for his place in popular music even if it means you discard everything after 1961….

  9. I nail my colours to about ten Cliff songs recorded between 1958 and 1960, and conveniently an early CD, bought for £1, plays them pretty much in order 1-10.

    He was the first Brit to do Rock ‘n’ Roll properly, so properly that a fervent Rock ‘n’ Roll mate thought nothing of compiling CDs for me with Livin’ Lovin’ Doll, Apron Strings, and Dynamite side by side with Slow Down, Tutti Frutti and Hound Dog.

    The easiest way to spot a dodger is to ask him – it’s always a ‘him’ – about Cliff. The look Joe Brown gave Stuart Maconie when he went premium dodger a few years ago was priceless. I thought he was going to headbutt him!

  11. I always thought the production on the Shadows records was terrific, but they rarely had vocals, so possibly easier to record..? Anyhow, they records sound great. I haven’t listened to much Cliff as I really don’t like him, but I will bow to those that have. The main difference between Cliff and the Shads (individually and together) and the Beatles is the quality of the output – I bought a bargain 6CD set of the Shadows, and it’s a tough slog after a while (as well as the large amounts of filler between the hits, there is a drastic drop off in quality after about 1963). Truly, a Best of is all you need. As I have said, I am no Cliff expert, but from what I do know from the well known stuff I am thinking his are very variable too. The Beatles quality control, and their sheer originality and lightning progress from record to record, is what sets them apart.

      • I think you may have been replying to another comment @dai..? Certainly Buddy Holly (both within and without the Crickets) was a big inspiration on the Fabs…their first recording was a Buddy song and even their name is reminiscent, not to mention the self-contained writing and performing model.

        • Lennon’s hiccuppy vocal style on some of the early Fabs tunes was modelled on Buddy (and Elvis, of course).

          Words of Love wasn’t that well known a song when they covered it, quite a deep cut at the time. Buddy’s stuff had a long tail (as, allegedly, he did)

    • It seems to me that the main influences on Cliff were predominantly white artists such as Elvis, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, even Pat Boone. In contrast, The Beatles were fundamentally influenced not just by Buddy Holly, Elvis and The Everly Brothers but also by black artists such as Little Richards, Chuck Berry, Arthur Alexander, Fats Domino and the early Motown groups.

      • Lennon was an R’n’B tragic, and of course George had his Carl Perkins fixation. The big artist they seemed to have in common was Chuck Berry – who of course was a great “bunch” of artists who drew on all kinds of American music prevalent in the South.

        Later on Macca became got heavily into Stax because he dug the chunky bass-drums on those records.

        • The astuteness of the Beatles is they knew what to leave out.

          In Cliff’s case, the “… & the Beatles” tag is dropped, and the Beatles are a united front. And the group in the background having a show business, crowd pleasing, little dance. Nope, not doing that.

          But never underestimate that Cliff laid down Rock ‘n’ Roll in London… years and years and years before there was a roadmap and even yer Aunt Elsie was doing it.
          Not remotely true in 1958, and the Beatles would have thought “… if he can do it, we can do it”. That’s far more of a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment than punk.

  13. I’m reading David Kynaston’s book about 1963-65. Seems that Cliff and the Beatles weren’t big pals in 1963.

    Here’s John:
    “We’ve always hated him. He was everything we hated in pop”

    And here’s Cliff:
    “All they’ve done is revert to Rock n roll. We’ve played the whole thing down, the screaming and the raving. The Beatles have stoked the whole thing up again…Their stuff is real homemade music “

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