I really enjoyed this documentary about the Shads. While they have a bit of reputation for being somewhat safe and predictable, the programme captures a sense of how thrilling it must have been when they burst onto the scene with Apache – kicking off an astonishing run of hits.
Where do we stand on the Shads?
Usually fairly central between the speakers, but after five minutes or so, I get tired so I sit down.
I really enjoyed the doc too – and also showed my 18 year old guitar playing son the clip of Hank doing Apache, which he then went off and started to learn (especially after seeing Gilmour, May and Townshend sing their praises)
It’s amazing how they were barely out of school when they started backing Cliff, and were putting together their influential, innovative sound when they were teenagers.
Proud to say I went to see the Shads at the RAH about 25/30 yrs ago. As far as I can recall most of the original line-up and they were excellent.
I enjoyed it. Their influence can’t be underestimated. I’m surprised Jeff Beck wasn’t on, as he’s always spoken highly of Hank, and it could be said he’s become more and more like him over the years.
I hope there are no unseemly squabbles about the ownership of That Strat when people start dying off. Although Bruce appears to be the current custodian, Hank was pretty unequivical when he said that Cliff paid for it.
And another thing. It was never mentioned that the Strat was ordered in error. They wanted a sound like James Burton and wrongly assumed he would have played Fender’s flagship model, rather than a Tele.
I was looking forward to seeing this and, when I did watch it, wasn’t disappointed.
In many respects the ‘Shads’ were my introduction to music. Foot Tapper, Dance On, Wonderful Land and Atlantis were great singles. Funnily enough my first purchase was Scarlet O’Hara by ex-Shadows Jet Harris and Tony Meehan but I suspect that song has been all bu forgotten unlike many of the Shadows songs.
Shads were great if of their time. Instrumental guitar music was huge 1960 – 65, arguably as there was little else to enjoy. Think all those surf records.
(Imagine if the Afterword and all on board were transported back to 1960 and doing our 100 best albums ever?!)
There is an interesting tribute LP called Twang, wherein the great and the good repay their debt: Blackmore, Iommi, Knopfler. Even ol’Shakey, who has always rated Hank highly.
I always like it when the Shadows are referred to as “The Shads”.
(Cliff and) The Shadows are hugely important to The Beatles.
I’d say every bit as important as Buddy Holly. Probably more so, because they showed an English act could “do it.”
The “Love Me Do” Beatles look, on Brian Epstein’s insistence, like The Shadows.
But it’s what The Beatles left out – they did “vocals,” they dropped the “and the” from the group’s name, they didn’t move on stage, on stage the singer was alongside the instrumentalists, they beefed up the drums, they wrote their own songs.
And, when Lennon lost the glasses, they looked cooler.
Vital.
I’ve got the doc on Sky Plus, so I’ll watch it soon.
I think it was Mark Lewisohn who posited an interesting theory that the Shadows were important to the Beatles as an ABSENCE of influence. They were just going mega at the point the Beatles left for Hamburg for the first time, so they actually missed out on the craze for instrumental guitar music and choreographed foot tapping that swept the UK in those months, and it made the Beatles more powerful and unique as a result when they returned to Liverpool.
It might be overstated as a theory, but it seems to make some kind of sense to me.
I Hank Marvinned
We all did
With cricket bats
In front of a mirror
In our bedrooms
After school
I Hank Marvinned
Quite regularly
My mother nearly caught me:
What were you doing?
Nothing Mum
Cricket bat still warm
I Hank Marvinned
Unashamedly
On the bed sometimes
Standing up
I knew the dance steps
I thought I’d grow out of it
When I got married
But the other day
When she was out
They played Apache
On the radio
And I Hank Marvinned
In the living room
I straightened the place out
Afterwards
But somehow she found out
I’d been seen
You Hank Marvinned?
At your age?
She made me burn the cricket bat
And see a psychiatrist
I go to a special group now
Once a week
They give us all cricket bats
And dark framed spectacles
And we have to do it
Hank Marvin
In front of everybody
It’s pathetic
Half a dozen men
In their late thirties
Cricket bats in hand
Spectacles on
Doing the dance steps
Grinning Inanely
Shadows
Of our former selves.
Martin Newell
Can’t beat a good Hank.
I have a postcard somewhere that shows a lad playing a guitar. The bubbles say, “Hank Marvin?” “No thanks, I’m playing my guitar.”
My Seebakroscope tells me that I saw Cliff and the Shads (as we didn’t call them) at the Odeon Southend on February 23 1962. As luck would have it that tour was recorded the following month at Kingston. Was fab before anything was fab.
https://youtu.be/8hDAOc3Bh9w
And here, amazingly, is the programme.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bradford_timeline/sets/72157630449512072/with/7514546786/
The Shads – sounds like an Aussie truncation.
Yep love em HANK lives in Western Australia. Mojo who lives in Perth regularly reports seeing him at gigs and , I think, players like Jeff Beck and Johnny McVishnu make a point of acknowledging him.
“The Shads – sounds like an Aussie truncation.”
Actually, with the Aussie habit of ending everything with an “oh” I think they may be their own Aussie version with their full name.
Mojo said one time that if he saw Hank witnessing in the street, he’d be tempted to say something along the lines of “Bugger Jesus, tell me about the Strat”….’twas amusing to see a couple of people in the doco doing pretty much that 🙂
Seems to me now that I did nothing at school except draw Strats on my exercise books. There were literally no other guitars.
I have a dim memory of Shads actually being a Cliffism.
It was a great doc, and the snippets of Marvin, Welch and Farrar piqued my interest too. Has anyone heard much by them?
I have their first album. If you are into CSN I’m sure that you will like it.
I met Hank Marvin once at, of all places, Lakeside Country Club.
He was every bit as nice a guy as you would imagine.
Jehovah’s Witness though I think.
I saw the doc on YouTube the other day. Very enjoyable. I like nothing better than getting my Strat and my Dan-echo pedal out and giving my whammy bar a good going over while I do a bit of Hank Marvining of my own. Sometimes I twang my G string, too.
Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed that & would have otherwise missed it.
Bruce Welch’s autobiography “Rock & Roll I gave you the best years of my life” is a good read & fleshes out that documentary.
Coincidentally Youtube offered me this earlier today.
With all this talk of the Shadows and bass guitars (see Slotbadger’s post), I think it’s time for this:
I’ll see your Stingray and raise you a Thunderbirds.
For which they also recorded their version of the theme tune.
A most enjoyable documentary.
They were remarkably candid about how they failed to keep up once the Beatles arrived. Cliff was his usual sniffy self about them …seemingly they had to go off to Hamburg because of Cliff and the Shads or some such tosh.
They were really important and were the template for pretty well all bands since….drums, bass, two guitars. Their failing was the lack of decent material after about 1963 and, lets be honest, the rather sameyness of twangy guitar tunes, great though the best of them are.
Hank Marvin’s first post-Shadows album reveals itself to be a solid outing (although it’s not exactly a major departure from the tried and tested Shadows formula).
I’ve been enjoying this slightly bonkers tune a lot, along with the nice pics of Hank from throughout his career.
I was personally offended when he abandoned the Strat for that frankly rather over-the-top Burns.
…and not mentioned in the documentary even though a lot of the footage has them playing the Burns..!
Listened to them intently when I was a teenager learning the guitar. I learned a few of the classics – my band used to do a heavy rock version of “Apache” as an encore which I assure you was brilliant. The early singles still sound great now.
I remember John Peel saying that Cliff and the Shads were the first British rock ‘n’ rollers you didn’t have to watch from behind the sofa. I presume he was referring to Larry Parnes’ execrable ‘stable’. Apart from Georgie Fame and Joe Brown, of course.
And Duffy Power.
Our first LP that was bought to match the brand new Stereo – with speakers that were far apart – was a Best Of The Shads. And we marvelled at how this sound was over here and that sound was over there.
The stereo mixes – which I bet we all have – are honkin’. Try and locate the Mono mixes. That goes for every 45 issued between 1959 and 1969. The stereo is shite. These were made for mono and it is the biggest digital/musical crime (Neil Young is wrong) is that almost every single for the 60s can’t be heard the way it was made.
And Bruce Welsh is my favourite rhythm guitarist ever.
I just remember being surprised seeing Hank Marvin backstage with ‘Japan’. 😮