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The Searchers "Take Me For What I'm Worth" (1965)
I’m
Ready/I’ll Be Doggone/Does She Really Care For Me?/It’s Time/Too Many Miles/You
Can’t Lie To A Liar//Don’t You Know Why?/I’m Your Loving Man/Each Time/Be My
Baby/Four Strong Winds/Take Me For What It’s Worth
The
Album:
‘Now
you’ve gone just as far as I’m going to let you go…’
The Searchers' fall from grace between the middle of
1964 and the middle of 1965 was sudden and a little unexpected. Admittedly most
young people had moved on from Merseybeat long ago, but there were exceptions
made for bands who'd proved themselves to be particularly interesting or
relevant. The Searchers, surely, proved themselves to be both of these things
having already invented the single most 'in' sound of 1965 (Byrdsian folk-rock
with jangly Rickenbackers) a full year earlier with [54] 'Needles and Pins' never mind competing with
the big boys with the riff-heavy [68] ‘When You Walk In The Room’. If anything
The Searchers had been too far ahead of their time, not behind, and the
'period' single released from the same time as these album sessions from around
Easter 1965 ([99] 'He's Got No Love') was as forward-looking a psychedelic
single as anything released in the whole of that year. Moreover that song was a
band original, a breakthrough in the one department where The Searchers (for so
long just a covers band) had once lagged behind their peers. So why did things
suddenly go so wrong, to the point where The Searchers' first album to never go
top ten missed the charts entirely?
Well, for once in these reviews I'm not entirely
sure, but it is probably fair to say that the band had a fair better idea of
what they were doing than record label Pye ever did for poor 'Take Me For What
I'm Worth' might well be the most mis-marketed album of the AAA pile of records
(or at any rate the 1960s pile). Though bands were now taking longer and longer
to make records and The Searchers, especially, were creating more and more
exotic creations, Pye asked for album five to be delivered to them even quicker
this time, mere months after the release of album four 'Sounds Like Searchers'.
After a strained and tired band complied, Pye then decided to change their
minds and stick the album on a shelf for a bit, gathering dust until the
lucrative Christmas market when fans traditionally had a bit more 'money'.
This, though, is patently stupid: the whole point of working bands so hard in
the 1960s was because record-buyers had competition like never before and if
you weren't in the public eye every few minutes your career had had it (The
Spice Girls seemed to have the same idea thirty years later when the record
industry was so comparatively poor they had no excuse). Not to mention the fact
that, the closer we get to the 'epicentre' of the 1960s, the more fashions and
trends changed by the day in some cases - delaying a record by six months or so
was career suicide. As a result, the few people who still remembered who The
Searchers were by yuletide 1965 probably opened this record alongside The
Beatles' forward-reaching 'Rubber Soul', with its all-original song selection,
hip soul and melancholic autobiography or the rule-breaking sneer of ‘The Who
Sings My Generation’. Putting the retro 50s rocker 'I'm Ready' on as the first
track of ‘Worth’ was never going to compare against 'Drive My Car' or ‘The
Good’s Gone’. Had the two leading Liverpudlian bands of the day found their
careers switched round though (with The Searchers on EMI and the fab four on
their own spin-off label 'Apple-Pye') and it had been 'Help!' up against
'Worth' (or something even more forward-looking) the future of popular music
might have been quite, quite different. ‘Worth’ is, you see, amongst the
deepest, most daring, most forward thinking records of its era and is actually
way ahead of what the Stones or Hollies were doing (which was largely the same
as in 1964, but softer). A Searchers version of the 'Help!' film would have
been fun too, with Chris Curtis even more manic than John Lennon and 'Black Jake'
Tony Jackson eventually quitting after being chased around with black paint and
hit by too many snowballs.
You see, considering that it has a six month
disadvantage to its peers, 'Worth' really isn't that far behind even then. In
fact, it's way ahead in other ways and taking into account when it 'should'
have come out (in the Spring of 1965, perhaps with 'It's No Love' as an album track)
it's one hell of an LP, with the new line-up of The Searchers having settled
down from their slightly hesitant start on 'Sounds Like...' and they've finally
found a way to do multiple version of [54] 'Needles and Pins' without sounding
as if they're repeating themselves. Indeed repeated playings have revealed that
this album is basically twelve very different variations on that old Searchers
standard: being lonely and yearning for more. Moving on like the stages of
denial across side one we get the excitement of ‘I’m Ready’, move through to
the well-you-hurt-me reluctance of ‘I’ll Be Doggone’, the doubt of ‘Does She
Really Care For Me?’ where the narrator doubts her interest too much to move
forward, ‘It’s Time’ seeks cold bitter revenge so his ex is lonely too, ‘Too
Many Miles’ is a long distance relationship lacking closeness in all senses,
while ‘You Can’t Lie To A Liar’ suffers from definite trust issues. On side two
things get warmer as time goes on by: ‘Don’t You Know Why?’ balances a harsh
verse about all the things that went wrong against the sheer magic of trying
again and getting lucky, ‘I’m Your Loving Man’ pledges faith and commitment
given a second chance, ‘Each Time’ has the narrator acknowledging that his
sweetheart will betray him because that’s what she does but loving her anyway,
‘Be My Baby’ takes a pledge of devotion to new heights, ‘Four Strong Winds’ has
the narrator offering an invite to a lady to share the narrator’s simple
existence and finally – after learning all these lessons the band pledge ‘Take
Me For What I’m Worth’. He’s through with acting, with pretending, of trying to
be moulded into something he’s not – for a relationship to work out it has to
be truthful and based on unconditional love for who the other person is. Though
this album was never publicised as a ‘concept’ album (and might well have been
laughed out the room if it was) this feels like quite a journey and the songs
hang together one hell of a lot better than ‘Rubber Soul’ I have to say, with
the feeling by the end that we’ve learnt something.
This also
allows the band to take their usual sound and really shake it up from track to
track, with several firsts and – alas given the circumstances – one-offs in
their catalogue. The older rough edges haven't just been smoothed away into
nothing like before; they've been exaggerated or softened, respectively, by the
new sonically darker deeper production sound which reveals just how much The
Searchers have learnt across the past year. Though the back cover contains no
production credit whatsoever, it’s fair to say the band produced this one
themselves, escaping entirely from the clutches of Tony Hatch now that their
sales were dipping and people were losing interest having milked them dry.
Chris Curtis, especially, loves his time in this new exotic world and plays
around with all sorts of vocal and drum ticks. Thankfully, unlike the last two
albums, the band don’t mess around too much though: the Rickenbackers are still
very much central to the sound as are the harmonies. New boy Frank Allen'
soulful, natural mournful voice has given the band a whole new style to play
with, on its own or in combination with the other three and this more elaborate
LP features many more multiple combinations of voices, the singers taking
different parts and generally switching the formula of the 'lead singer'
around. Curtis has even nailed how to include John McNally, the band's most
reluctant vocalist, into the blend and 'It's Time' is by far the most suitable
song he got to sing on record in the 1960s, the blare of his voice now softened
with Frank's harmony part.
Best of all, Motown fan Chris has discovered how to
correct perhaps the only real criticism of some of their earlier records: a
slight thin-ness of sound (it's a Pye thing, with their original recordings
containing only only 3.14159etc % of the power of period EMI - The Kinks never
quite work out how to 'fill' out their sound until leaving for RCA in 1971).
Despite working to a far lower budget a million miles away ('too many
miles...'), Curtis has learnt how to re-create the 'epic' Phil Spector sound
with banks of echo and layers of sound (chances are the band learnt the
'secret' first hand from the Ronettes who performed with The Searchers on tour
- Frank was particularly close to Phil's wife Ronnie; maybe they traded music
secrets, spy ring style, during their nights out on the town?) This
ear-catching timbre really suits the melancholy that’s always been a part of
The Searchers’ sound and the menace which has gradually been arriving on more
and more recent songs. Only this isn't just a straight copy like inferior
Spector copy bands: Chris has kept The Searchers' trademarks, those ringing
Rickenbackers, up loud in the sound and they offer a sharp contrast on most
tracks, cutting through the murk and doubt of the ballads as if reality is
knocking on a daydream and trying to break in. It's a sound that wouldn't work
for many bands of the period but really suits The Searchers: from the very
beginning their slower, quieter ballads were regarded as something that made
them 'stand out' from the competition and the sadder and more reflective their
songs get ([54] 'Needles and Pins' being arguably a turning point), the better
their music sounds. It’s worth, I think, re-iterating how unusual this was for
the period: until psychedelia really started going in 1967 most recordings
tended to be dry; the few that weren’t were muddy. Like the decade everything
tends to be direct. This would have struck listeners on release as being a very
unusual sound indeed, but it’s not used the same way as their elder brother or
sisters’ records would have been either. The Searchers even improve on the
near-perfect Spector production 'Be My Baby' on this album (to my ears at
least). In between though are the last gasp moments of rock and roll in the
Searchers canon, with their last rockabilly covers that fly and swoop like
never before against this bigger backing of the rest of the album. To my ears no
other record has come close to this album's unusual mix of sounds, of clarity
and fire mixing with cool murky water) making 'Worth' a unique sounding album
that works on its own terms: a record that manages to be both melodramatic and
punchy, claustrophobic and precise.
Band accomplishment that it is, 'Worth' is arguably
Curtis' greatest achievement: a full twelve songs of ambition that sound like a
lot of money had been thrown at them (even though it really, really hadn't),
with Chris effectively de facto producer now, choosing the songs to cover from
his vast music collection, arranging most of them (though he sensibly leaves
'Be My Baby' alone) and writing a majority of the band originals. He also
shines on his two very different main vocals, for full-on rocker 'I'm Ready'
and 'Does She Really Care For Me?', where he switches styles from the raucous
rocker of [22] 'What'd I Say?' to a Scott Walker style knee-trembling
balladeer. Curtis will be out of the band around a year after recording this
album (a few months if you're going by the release date), the others having
rebelled to some extent once Curtis' choice of singles start flopping in the
charts and after an ill-advised and tiring Australian tour where Chris seemed to
go a 'bit mad' (whether it was the strain or the pills he was taking to cope
with the strain is a moot point - all we do know is that he quit the band after
the others staged an intervention and flushed his pills down the hotel loo; the
others thought they were doing Chris a service and probably were as Chris'
intake got badly out of hand after he leaves the group, but at the opposite end
of the world, without a doctor to get more - they were, after all, on
prescription - and facing more disinterested audiences and the same old hits it
all became a bit much for the drummer who left the band many thought he would
never be able to quit). The pressure simply got too much for the drummer it
seems and he really didn’t cope with pressure very well, it being likely his
undiagnosed manic depressiveness started or at least developed here with so
much resting on his shoulders with the two Tonys associated with the band’s hit
days both gone. Curtis' powers are at their peak here, though, in mid 1965 with
a whole studio to play with and no one else to get in the way: it's no surprise
that after he leaves The Searchers Chris becomes a full-time producer for a
time and his productions get more and more epic. He learnt a lot on this album
despite the always-quick recording time, combining unusual instruments and
voices and slathering them in echo to create a record that has a unique sound -
not just in the Searchers canon but in mid-60s pop as a whole. A terrific
talent who could turn his hand at most things and much under-rated in his day
(when all the press attention focussed first on Tony then on Mike - nobody
really expected much from drummers back then and even on this album cover he's
rather hidden at the back, peering out from his drums behind Mike, standing,
and Frank and John, left to right, sitting on his drum riser; though simple
it's an iconic picture that's become one of the most recognised and re-used
Searchers images), it's one of the great tragedies of the day that Chris ends
the decade not as the huge success or recognised talent he should have been but
making ends meet as a Liverpool tax inspector in a badly ventilated building
that eventually made him ill and lead to his all-too early death at the age of
sixty-three, singing rock and roll in pubs on the side (hardly a fitting
epitaph to one of the unsung heroes of rock and roll). Sadly Chris only got one
real shot at proving what he could do, without distractions from bandmates and
producers - who knows what Searchers album six might have sounded like?
Which is not to say that The Searchers are a one-man
band by any means. In fact not since the Iron Door Club and Hamburg days have
The Searchers been more of a group, with Frank now a fully paid-up member and
all four Searchers getting both lead vocals and songwriting credits (even if
they sheepishly admitted later to throwing in a few words to a nearly fully
finished Curtis song). Frank shines on Marvin Gaye's 'I'll Be Doggone' (a track
originally cut with Chris on lead, before he realised that the extra 'weight'
of the bass player's voice suited the drummer’s choice of song better) and
Allen also turns 'Be My Baby' into what's effectively a love song to Ronnie
Spector using her husband's favourite production methods (a brave thing to do
knowing Phil Spector's infamous temper tantrums!) John's cameo on his own song
'It's Time' is one of the most overlooked Searchers songs of all, his now much
more confident voice combining nicely with Frank's harmonies and based around a
typically dense guitar part. As for Mike, he's been blossoming more and more with
every album as he becomes more and more comfortable with the idea of being a
band 'focal point' and shows off far more styles than he used to get too - or
sadly will get to do. Instead of the straightforward slowies and fasties Mike
tackles 'Too Many Miles' adding some sour sounding country and western; 'Don't
You Know?' veering from singalong pop to crumpled sorrow with nearly every note
on a song that’s a tough one to sing; 'I'm Your Loving Man' goes all Bo Diddley
and demands intense rhythm and power; 'Four Strong Winds' (with Chris on
alternating verses) goes for earnest folk rock (interestingly almost every
version, including Mickey and Sylvia's original, goes for an epic production
but this is one of three songs The Searchers keep simple here); then the title
track invents punk fifteen years early with a snarling spitting Pender vocal about
honesty and best of all, 'Each Time' pushes Pender's voice to its limit,
growing in scale and vocal range with nearly every line on the single most
ambitious and 'widescreen' production The Searchers ever came up with. Though
'Worth' didn’t exactly take long to make, compared to the last four LPs you can
tell that the band had much more time to revise arrangements and work out how
best to do things (as a lesser alternate take of 'I'll Be Doggone' on the CD
re-issue proves) and it shows; how much better still might their other
recorded-in-a-day-or-else albums have been with such attention to detail?
The Searchers never lasted long enough or were left
alone enough to create one truly exceptional consistent and creative LP (to be
fair nor had The Beatles by mid-1965 and again their period 'Help!' comes
closest), but out of the five the band made in the sixties 'Worth' is by far
and away the closest they ever came. This is one of those great 'assortment'
records that has a bit of everything: high energy rockers, simple ballads,
built up production masterpieces, moments that look back and remember the
frenetic pop past The Searchers have just escaped and moments that look forward
to the future, with psychedelia only a sitar and a world-peace lyric away from
happening. Almost all of it is done better than any previous Searchers go at
the same style – the few that aren’t inventing new styles all the time. Maddeningly,
thanks to that decision by Pye to delay the record and some oddly negative
reviews since (even the usually reliable all.music website got this one wrong)
few fans really know this record, which is the one of the original five that
tends to get cut to ribbons on compilations and which has always sold the
poorest, both back in the 1960s and in the 1990s and 2000s when these CDs got
re-released all over again. Admittedly it's not perfect and not even close:
'I'm Ready' is a lousy opener, an unwanted blast from the past that's treated
to the production of the future when it should be a one-take wonder all brash
energy and madcap macho-boasting, while 'Too Many Miles' and 'You Can't Lie To
A Liar' proves that The Searchers' songwriting was never as consistently
prolific as their peers (although I've never bought the theory that The
Searchers were poor writers and should have stuck with covers: the other album
originals 'I'm Your Loving Man' and 'It's Time' are more than up to standard
and amongst the best songs here).
The rest of the album, though, is the single best
non-compilation half hour The Searchers ever made. Most of these tracks are
filled with those sort of great little details that make a good album a great
album. The song choices, the performances, but especially the arrangements –
everything just works and after two treading-water LPs trying to find a new
sound post-Merseybeat The Searchers need search no more. It's a tragedy that
the band's career gets effectively killed off here, just when they were getting
exceptionally good 9as opposed to really good) and had finally established a
new sound away from their Merseybeat beginnings after a year or so of trying
out different identities. There are more singles on Pye to come, including some
really great ones that owe an obvious debt to the new darker side of this album
([107] 'Popcorn Double Feature' is a return to this album's denser orchestral
feel, [109] 'Western Union' a last great
attempt to combine simple pop with epic productions and [111] 'Secondhand
Dealer' takes the depression of 'I'm Your Loving Man' a stage further) but in a
major way The Searchers are over as a creative force here and now, blown
forever on the breeze of make-or-break singles that have to sound contemporary
and yet all fail to sell but do sometimes create just enough of a ripple to
allow the band to have another go time and time again. Had Pye got their act
together, had Curtis not lost his temper along with his pills, had the band come up with just a couple more original
hits, had The Searchers just been a little bit luckier (the dynamic
take-no-prisoners title track, for instance, was exactly the sort of thing the
band should have been doing to get their street cred back and deserved to be
more than just another middling-seller) The Searchers might yet have grown and
grown into the best of the period bands, keeping pace with The Beatles and
giving them competition for so many years to come. Over-shadowed and
over-whelmed by contemporaneous releases for 40 years, ‘Take Me For What I’m
Worth’ is exactly the sort of album we love on this site: a forgotten gem that
got everything right except the timing (which of course matters nothing half a
century on), ripe to be re-discovered by all adventurous collectors. It is now
surely time that was taken for what it is – a last glorious burst of pure Merseybeat
but with several signs that The Searchers had learnt to both build and widen
the scope of what to do within that genre. A whole style died out with The Searchers
here, the 'other' surviving Liverpudlian band of 1965 disappearing too (The
Beatles having long ago dropped their Merseybeat identity) and music was never
quite the same again. Today's listeners should always judge an album by its
'worth' more than its record sales though and if production epics, carefully
crafted pop and the chance to hear an album quite unlike any other appeal to
you then 'Worth' is worth its weight in gold discs, one of the most unfairly over-looked
records of the entire 1960s.
The
Songs:
A cover of Fat Domino’s [85] I’m Ready demonstrates
just how much has changed since The Searchers made their last LP and why, at
last, I speculate that they might have just found their new direction at last.
Had this simple rocker been recorded as part of ‘Meet The Searchers’ or ‘Sugar
and Spice’ it would have been high octane Merseybeat, all violence and
adrenalin and power. Had it been recorded as part of ‘It’s The Searchers’ or
‘Sounds Like Searchers’ it would have been detached and light, froth to enjoy
in between the earnest folk. On this
album its somewhere in between the two: the sound is loose, funky and
raw and yet somehow it’s still tidy and polished. Chris probably didn’t have to
look too far through his dense record collection to find this one, a song
popular enough to be have been covered by just about everyone (including The
Monkees on TV) and it’s a tip of the hat back to the more obvious song choices
of old. The song really isn’t an obvious Searchers one: it’s aggressive rather
than passive or yearning, with Chris right in the face of a stranger asking her
out, telling her that he’s willing and that he can rock and roll ‘all night’.
The song tells us that he can’t wait for another interaction because he’s
impatient now: that talking on the phone is ‘not my speed’ and there’s no point
in letters because ‘I can’t read!’ The Searchers do, though, read this song
well even if it isn’t an obvious choice to perform and they pull together well
for two minutes of mayhem. Those familiar purring Rickenbackers don’t purr so
much as stab, there’s a very 1950s boogie-woogie bass riff sadly ducked very
low in the mix and most oddly of all the ‘lead role’ until Pender’s messy
guitar solo is an uncredited Jerry Lee Lewis piano part that somehow keeps the
song a reeling and a rocking. The Searchers really find their groove on this
track, which would have been a riot back in the days of the Iron Door Club and
it’s good to have The Searchers’ dipping another toe back in to their origins.
You have to say though, great as this song is, it sounds like the past in a way
all the other songs on here point towards the future – maybe the others had a
point when they told Tony they had to move away from his desire to play pure
rock and roll? Perhaps the main problem is that the albums market has by now
moved on to three minute recordings at least as a matter of course – this song
doesn’t quite make two!
[86a] I’ll Be Doggone is
much more in keeping with the album sound, being dense emotional and complex.
Indeed so much so that The Searchers spent probably longer on this than any
other song, Curtis calling on the others to scrap a planned version with
himself on lead and try it out with Frank instead, while developing more of a
Spector wall of sound to go behind the band, shifting it from rock and roll
into melodrama (this second version can be heard as a bonus track on the
‘Worth’ CD and is reviewed here as [86b]). The end result was worth all that
effort and is one of The Searchers’ most sumptuous cover songs. The band’s
Rickenbackers sound superb and menacing drenched in layers of echo that make
everything feel slightly out of synch with each other, while Frank’s
double-tracking is his best vocal work by far with the band, his deeper
slightly sour voice much more suited than Chris’ sweeter falsetto. This was a
track written by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles but one of a series of songs
they never recorded themselves as such but backed Marvin Gaye on, scoring a #8
hit in the process (one of the first big hits Gaye had). Released in February
1965, it must have been an absolute last minute choice by The Searchers to
record for this album (with most sessions held in March) and had this LP not
been delayed till Xmas would again have surprised people I think, one of the whitest
of white bands really doing a good job of recording Tamla Motown. This
recording would also surely have proved The Searchers’ arranging genius: the
original is chirpy and upbeat, turning into flashes of anger, with the
distinctive sounding riff sounding much happier played sped-up on piano and
surrounded by handclaps. The Searchers’ version is moody as hell, full of
barely concealed loathing. This narrator isn’t having a lover’s tiff – he’s at
the very end of his tether, daring his lover to put just one foot over the line
of fairness and she won’t ever see him again for dust. While modern ears may
blanch at the middle eight (‘Every woman should try to be whatever her man
wants her to be’) The Searchers get out of trouble by emphasising not that line
but the one that follows (‘…And I don’t want much, all I want is for you to be
true to me!’) Together with some groovy backing vocals, some of Curtis’ best
drumming (at half-speed compared to average) and a guitar that sounds as if
it’s about to give you whiplash backing Frank at his emotive best, this is
surely one of the best things The Searchers ever did, proof of just how good
The Searchers were getting by 1965. No other bands were doing anything remotely
like this – even the original didn’t risk being quite so dark and brooding.
Chris Curtis then gets the chance to do his best
Scott Walker impression on [87] Does She Really Care For Me?, a very recent single by
Ruby and the Romantics that sadly flopped (chances are Chris was one of the few
people to ever own a copy!) Another recording quite unlike anything else The
Searchers ever did, this is Chris using his voice not as a sweet falsetto or as
primal rock and roll but as an instrument of tenderness and love. He’s totally
believable as the balladeer with the big range, nailing the tricky
double-tracking as he worries pensively if his lover really loves him or is
‘just whispering words in my ear’. The single best use of orchestra on a
Searchers song rushes in from stage left to gather the song up and scoop Curtis
up in a fairytale of perfection – but behind him The Searchers play one of
their thickest, heaviest backing tracks, especially Pender’s stinging nagging
guitar and Curtis’ own drum hiccups. There’s even a gorgeous moment in the
instrumental solo where the orchestra swells up reaching to Heaven – only for
the guitar to stomp on its dreams, nailing it to hell. It’s the production,
though, that makes this song: having finally free himself from the clutches of
Tony Hatch Chris has one last chance to make this recording big, bold and
beautiful and he gets it by aping the Spector wall of sound so that everything
is swirling in a great big fog, perfect for the sentiments of the song. Though
it only lasts for barely two minutes, this song feels like an epic and
everything is big and huge. The Searchers have really changed their sound and
have rarely sounded better – again no other bands were doing this sort of thing
in the first half of 1965. Curtis’ last big chance to show off and he excels in
every single department, with this song improving in every way on the scrappy,
tinny, insincere original. How the hell did this genius of music end up working
in a tax branch of Liverpool just three years down the line from this?
[88] Its Time is the first
Searchers original on the album but unusually it’s not Chris’. To date all
Searchers compositions have either been by the drummer or by the group in
tandem based on an idea by the drummer, but this song starts the life-long if
compacted list of works by The Searchers’ talented guitarist John. He and Frank
already had something of a double-act going fifty years before their current
shows and sound ridiculously good singing together on this country-rock number,
which again takes The Searchers in a whole new exciting sound. Lyrically this
is the latest in several Searchers songs to have someone being dumped, but its
unique in that the narrator is doing the dumping. Instead of crying in his room
feeling [54] ‘Needles and Pinza’ he’s letting his girl really have it: ‘it’s time’
she realised how nasty she’s been not to just to him but to all her exes, how
many tears he’s cried over her, that someone else makes her cry with their
lies, that she was made ‘the fool with the blues’. There’s a hint, too, that
this isn’t just pure revenge but shock therapy: ‘You know my love will never
die’ John sighs in a mournful middle eight that darts to the minor key, asking
himself why it came to this and figuring, well, ‘it’s time’ she felt the way he
does because then she might realise just how much it hurts. Finding stuff about
Searcher marriages is tough going, but I did see reports that John married in
1968; was this song inspired by an ex flame or did it have a happy ending or is
it pure fiction? A suggestion that it’s the latter comes from the idea,
oft-repeated in the band’s early press, that John was ‘the quiet one’ of the
group often compared to George Harrison (in both cases, with bandmates like
those, who wouldn’t be?!?) Urged and supported to try out writing John may have
been looking out at George’s first songs for inspiration and there’s a
definitely flavour of Harrison’s grumpy first song ‘Don’t Bother Me’ in both
the sentiments and the free-falling tune, which in different circumstances
would be jolly but here screams ‘leave me alone!’ A big success for all
concerned, especially John’s guitarwork and Frank’s harmony, It’s Time this
classic track got the recognition it deserved from fans as yet another example
of a band who had so much more to give in so many more directions across 1965.
[89] Too Many Miles
is
a return to the sweet ballads that served the Searchers so well in the pas and
a song that I confess I’ve only just connected with (after twenty odd years of
constant playing). You see it sounds almost a parody, with its flute overdubs
being overly pretty and Mike’s vocal being unusually sour and tongue-in-cheek,
as if (at best) The Searchers are laughing at folk conventions or (at worst)
trying to be American. This is perhaps the one recording on the album where the
playing isn’t top-notch and spoils what could have been quite a lovely song –
those flutes for instance play such a gorgeous tune it’s almost a shame when
the solo stops flowering up from nowhere and we go back to The Searchers again
at their plodding worst. The fact that
album, on LP or CD, don’t include the lyrics, no lyric websites have considered
this song important enough to update yet and you can’t hear the lyrics also
means that this is one of those songs that only really connects when you sit
down and joins the dots, even if it takes several re-writes of a website and
books to do it. Lyrically, this is one of the best things The Searchers ever
wrote: it’s profound and complicated, with an AABA rhyming scheme throughout
that really stretches the band’s word knowledge and yet also tells a very
believable and heartfelt story. With too many miles between a long distance
couple everything gets accelerated and exaggerated by the time apart: all it
takes is one tear from his baby’s eyes and the narrator feels that he has to
end a long distance relationship because it’s not working, feeling she’s unable
to see just how upset he is. In the second verse a tiny problem that would
normally be a ‘grain of sand’ becomes a desert that obscures his love from view
and in the third verse one angry word is enough to break them up forever, the
pair ‘too far to hear’ what the other one is truly saying to each other. If any
of you have ever been in a long distance relationship as I have, you’ll know it
really isn’t easy and this song is as spot-on as any I’ve come across regarding
the mixed signals, crossed wires and general frustration that being apart from
your sweetiepie entails. I just wish these clever lyrics had been attached to a
different tune (this should be sweet and jolly and doesn’t sound right being
played sourly) and that The Searchers had played it better. Even for this
album, though, it’s something of a hidden treasure.
[90] You Can’t Lie To A Liar so believe me when I
tell you that with this track you have reached the ‘middle’ song of the book,
as well as the end of side one. Congratulations! This song by Bobby Vee is
perhaps the most puzzling moment of the record in that it changes everything
about The Searchers style – even the Rickenbackers. A stomping rocker that feels
as if it’s had its wings clipped being treated to the same production echo as
most of the rest of the album, this is the one song here that would have been
better performed straight for power. Mike is in a grumpy mood as he tells a
girl off for lying and cheating to him when he’s the one who always does that
in a relationship. Far from getting his comeuppance as other bands would have
put it though, he fails to see the irony of the fact that she’s only doing to
him what he was going to do to her. The opening peal of electric guitar sounds
oddly Hendrix-like considering that at this point in time Jimi is best known
for being the prim and proper guitarist in Little Richard’s band and it’s an
odd introduction for a song where the fuzz guitar then boxes a piano
throughout in what’s less of a sparring
match than a stranglehold stalemate. A sprightly middle eight (‘Well I’ve lied
and I’ve cheated’…) is the most ear-catching part of the song, upping the ante
by pushing the song up a key, but alas this too peters out and leaves us back
where we were, feeling sorry for ourselves on what must be one of the weirdest
backing tracks The Searchers ever came up with. Also, whoever is singing the
harmony line behind Pender (Chris I think) obviously haven’t learnt the words
yet and gets into a right old muddle on the song’s last verse, a fact that’s
buried in the mix to save the band re-recording them. Overall, an untypical
Searchers misfire – in this period anyway – but the one recording on this album
that arguably gets the prediction for the 1966 craze of ‘freakbeat’ (sad muscly
songs of power) spot on. Oddly this is the one song, apart from the title
track, that regularly makes its ways to Searcher compilations and no doubt
responsible for putting more than a few people off buying this fine and often
expensive LP down the years.
[91] Don’t You Know Why? starts side two off in
classic form with a swirl of energy and adrenalin like the days of old. Instead
of confidence and power chords, though, this second group composition is given
another echoey production that really helps bring out its sense of drama and
confusion. The song sounds as if it is trying to do the decent thing, to burst
out into Merseybeat joy as a funny sunny pop song, but the central melody line
keeps being interrupted, delayed by all sorts of dark segues into lurking minor
keys that grab at the tune’s ankles and hauls it down. Somehow the song still
manages to fight its way out for the chorus but even that falls off a cliff
without us expecting it (‘Don’t you know you treated me so bad loooo-ve?’) and
ends up being absolutely demolished by a ringing guitar that’s stomped all over
by some crazy drumming. The lyrics too takes a new twist on The Searchers’
‘yearning for love’ template by instead yearning for a relationship to be over.
They’ve been tortured, made fun of, criticised, mocked, the narrator can’t take
anymore. He pleads ‘don’t you know why I act this way?’, listing all the ways
he tries to make her life better to a drum thwack and silence. Regaining his
composure Pender tries again: ‘it’s love and it’s here to stay’ he concludes,
putting the rift down to ‘love’s funny ways’ but he knows he has to make his
sulking girlfriend feel better about the whole thing too, the song peeling off
in what used to be a cry of ‘yeah yeah yeah’ with the line ‘I hope you’ll see
some day’.The band’s three-part harmonies get a great chance to show off just
what they can do on this track, Chris and Frank swooping up and down the melody,
sometimes in tandem with Mike and sometimes in competition, sweeping along come what may despite the pit-falls and
pratt-falls of the stop-starting backing track beneath them. Like many of the
Searchers’ early originals, the band don’t quite know where to go after the
song’s opening two verses and middle eight, so they simply repeat the whole
thing again twice, losing impact each time they do so. Until the second half of
the song lets itself down, though, you can hear all the thrill and power of
Merseybeat bottled into a song, full of so much excitement despite the sad
words that it recaptures the listener’s imagination again single-handedly. A
very cleverly constructed song.
[92] I’m Your Loving Man is Curtis solo and it’s
equally impressive but in a quite different way. Admitting to Record Collector
Magazine in 1998 that he ‘stole’ the tune from Aretha Franklin single ‘Can You
Just See Me?’, actually he would have been closer if he stole the style: it’s
that sort of soulful one-note nervous jangly track that was common in 1965
rather than a specific steal (‘Loving Man’ only uses about four notes for its
melody but that’s still three more than the song he stole it from; both are
great songs though). Moody and slightly discordant, this song has a very
uncomfortable air with all three Searchers singers taking parts they’re not
usually suited to (Pender’s deep baritone is now in falsetto and Curtis’ high
tenor is singing bass for a second time, with Allen somewhere in between the
two). The claustrophobic melody, which is simply two riffs stuck together,
perfectly suits the song’s lyrics that again seem to find life falling apart
for the narrator, as does the closely miked recording which leaves all of the
singer’s nuances open for analysis. It’s the ultimate Searchers song in many
ways: this narrator is the unluckiest in their catalogue: after his girl walks
out on him his car won’t start and ‘the world don’t turn’. In despair he looks
to the sky and the sea but neither give him answers, but the sky is dry and the
seas are empty. Even his dog has stopped barking fondly causing him to ‘cry and
cry’ and admit how ‘I made a mess of my life’ by letting his girl leave. The
chorus tries to right things, switching to the major key, as he pleads ‘you
know I lo-o-ove you, try to understa-a-a-and’ and offering his services anyway
as a one-night stand, which is an interesting variation on the typical breakup
song (together with the title and lustful feeling of the music it’s very risqué
for its days – the narrator is clearly offering sex without strings to placate
her here). The song’s unusual sound is nothing like any other Searchers track:
almost all of them are driven by melody and some by rhythm and melody equally
but this one is all about the rhythm baby. A sea of percussion is thrown into
The Searchers’ echo chamber and layered on top of a tricky quick-stepping riff
that keeps up the manic edge of the early Searchers recordings. It sounds
utterly lost until a brief guitar solo from Pender which sounds like someone
shouting, hands on hips. The result is, however much Curtis may have dismissed
this song for being ‘stolen by naughty boys’, one of the most thrilling
Searcher recordings there is.
Even better is [93] Each
Time, the fourth final and perhaps greatest Jackie
De Shannon cover the band performed. In an epic production that’s bigger even
than [67] ‘When You Walk In The Room’ The Searchers take a simple lover’s tiff
and make it into this huge out-of-control mess that drives a dagger into our
hearts. The echo production works wonders here, swirling around so that
everything seems taken out of proportion and so much bigger than it should. As
for the lyric, it’s a familiar one about arguments being taken out of context
and exaggerated. The narrator loves his girl so much he forgives her time and
time again, the verse-into-chorus structure sleepwalking its way through
another fight-breakup-reunion scenario because both parties are too invested to
walk out for good. Together with the music it sounds like they’re hypnotised by
love, each one refusing to give up and forgiving each other ‘each time’. The
song’s second most brilliant moment comes on the middle eight, which swaps over
two lines in from Mike to Chris, where the narrator laments his problems: he
wishes now that he’d walked out for good the first time and just kept going as
the song switches jarringly to a minor key and seems to be falling – only to be
revived on an unexpected resolution to the tune on the line ‘but now I know
it’s wrong – because good or bad It’s with you I belong!’ However the other moment
of genius happens right at the beginning, a ghostly piano (again uncredited)
haunting first Pender’s then McNally’s guitar as both try to run off in tandem (pianos
were suddenly big again in early 1965 for some reason, after being booted out
of 1950s rock and roll and skiffle groups to make room for more guitars). With the echo meaning instruments are flying
about the speakers all the time this is proof that The Searchers really ‘got’
stereo much quicker than their peers (of all their songs this is the one with
the biggest difference between mono and stereo) and this is perhaps the most
exciting record they ever made, taking a quite brilliant song and making it
even better. Why the hell wasn’t this released as a single? Even in 1965 with
fading sales it’s surely too good not to arrest the band’s slide downhill.
Perhaps the greatest moment of the greatest Searchers record.
After hearing the masters
of The Wall Of Sound at work it seems something of an anticlimax to go back to
a straight copy of Spector’s work. [94] Be My Baby is the
only Searcher cover on the album that sticks religiously to the original
(albeit Frank Allen sings the lead about three octaves lower than The Ronettes
did!) Amazing vocalist that he is, Frank isn’t right for this song, sounding
too frail and lost in this song that demands the narrator come to sweep his
lover off her feet. Even so, I sympathise with why it’s here: Frank reveals in
both his autobiographies that he used to have a huge crush on Ronnie Spector
(in many ways he still does!) and one of the reasons he became a Searcher was
when he realised the two bands were playing on the same tour. What better way
to ‘hint’ at your lover through the music business than to sing them a love
song using lines that they were themselves famous for? The rest of the band do
Frank proud too: Mike and Chris’ mock-angelic harmonies are sweet but not too
sugary, Chris nails the original song’s distinctive drum pattern and the band’s
Rickenbackers are put to good use. However Frank is floundering and there’s
perhaps just that little bit too much echo here, the band so unsure on quite
what to do with this song that instead of ending on the fun ‘false ending’ of
the original they simply tail off into the darkness on a wo-wo-woah’. Something
tells me this version of the song wouldn’t have been a hit the way the original
was or inspire as many people (Brian Wilson still talks about it as being the
most perfect song ever), but it fills in three minutes without too much pain.
You hope Frank got a peck on the cheek at least after going to such lengths to
make this recording – arguably though he tries a little bit too hard.
[95] Four Strong Winds is another of those lush, sweeping
ballads the Searchers used to specialise in.
Though not as powerful as [32] ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ or [2]
‘All My Sorrows’, this is nonetheless a strong reading of a song about
loneliness, restlessness and – in keeping with the album theme – the painful
breakup of a love affair. Ian Tyson’s early 1960s hit is much covered but
usually by straight country artists: it fits in better with their ‘and to top
it all my little ol’ dog just died’ scenarios than most rock and rollers. But
The Searchers always brought more to their main genre and do this song
impressively straight (compared to all the Rolling Stones country cover songs
anyway…) A couple are trying to make out their next move after they leave each
other, blown by four strong winds and seven seas whose tide is higher than
their love for each other. They promise to look one another up and wonder what
might happen to them in the future, in ‘Winter’. The narrator offers to take
his love with him one last time but knows the answer because ‘we’ve been
through that a hundred times or more’. Wistful rather than depressed, if out
theory about the twelve stages of grief is right then this song sounds like
acceptance: things can’t go on this way, this is the right thing to do, with no
tears or acrimony. You can really hear how well the second line up of the
band’s harmonies gel together on this gorgeous song, with a much more grown-up
reading of the song than most of their covers with Mike and Frank sounding
gorgeous on the harmonies and Chris’ solo in the middle stealing the show.
Melancholy without going over the top and bravely dropping the tempo of Ian
Tyson’s original to an even slower crawl, this is the Searchers at the top of
their arranging game.
[96a] 'Take Me For
What I'm Worth' wraps things up with a title song so good that even
in The Searchers’ swift year of decline it went top twenty, becoming their last
substantial hit. A classic outsider rebel anthem in The Kink’s mould, with
reflective verses and a yelled chorus, it sounds like the Searchers asking
their audiences not to write them off with the rest of the out-dated Merseybeat
scene but to celebrate them as they were in 1965. This PF Sloan cover defies
the band’s increasing image as mummy’s boys by being rebellious without being
stupid. Instead of nicking a car or stealing a motorbike or knocking a
policeman’s hat off they square up to their girl and by association society and
ask to be treated and accepted for what they are, flaws and all. Pender is at
his all-time best here, fully in charge of a song that’s unusually aggressive
for The Searchers, portraying himself partly as a 1950s rebel without a clue
(‘I’ve got too many problems that keep pounding on my brain!’) and partly as a
sensitive soul who doesn’t want to see his lover getting ‘hurt’ by finding out
they’ve only fallen in love with an idealised version of himself. The song then
rounds off by saying that if a couple has to part then he doesn’t want his girl
to be sad because one tear ‘is all I’m really worth’ before promising that
after time, when bygones have been bygones and they can start being affectionate
to each other again, he’ll be back to see if she’s ok. Best lyric: ‘Though you
think I’m weird don’t try to change me dear, for if you want me you’ll take me
for what I’m worth!’ Recorded at a time when The Searchers’ backs were really
up against the wall, this defensive song that’s so out of character could have
gone hopelessly wrong but instead it feels oh so right. After ten tracks of
playing with the echo production the crystal clear Rickenbacker line really
stares out at you with real menace, Pender’s lead brilliantly counterpointed by
McNally’s acoustic and the singalong powerpop chorus is great, Allen
sacrificing his usual accuracy for a wild shriek of joy. Great as this song is
as a single, giving the band back the street cred they so richly deserves, it
also works brilliantly as the song that ties up the themes of the album, asking
to be judged not as ‘saint’ or ‘sinner’ but as a flawed human being who tries
his best while hoping for a future reconciliation. Would that all albums from
1965 had been this adult, a superb cover of a great great song.
Well, The Searchers will be back on LP one day when
their wandering is over – but it’s with an aching breaking heart I tell you
that it won’t be for another fourteen years (barring a sort of half-hearted
low-release collection of re-recorded hits in 1972 and even that’s seven years
away). I feel so robbed, no doubt so do the band: they were right at their
peak, recording songs that were every bit the equal of the times in which they
were made and after two albums of struggling to find a new direction the band
finally find it with an album that sounds quite unlike any other LP that was
ever recorded. What an awful crying flaming terrible excruciating painful
rotten shame the Searchers lost their momentum when the rug was pulled out from
under their feet following this album – they were at an all time peak and
getting better and better and this record might well have arrested their sliding
fortunes had their record company been even half competent. It might not be
very well known and includes only one single even some fans don’t know, but ‘Take
Me For What It’s Worth’ really does represent the best of this band’s output and
wins on songs, performances and especially arrangements. The whole band worked
their socks off to make this record great and musically it paid off in spades
even if commercially the band were left in free-fall, reduced to recording
singles for a living and touring the British club circuit when they should have
been filling arenas (though good luck reproducing most of this album
live!)Forgotten and unloved for far too long, this album should be viewed not
through the sneer of a Rubber Soul-savvy audience but through the eyes of a
record collector who know buried treasure when they find it and can take this
album for what it is worth. In my eyes that’s a price tag very very high indeed
(which is just as well given that this poor-selling album does indeed go for a
pretty hefty price tag these days).
A NOW COMPLETE LIST OF SEARCHERS AND RELATED ARTICLES TO READ
AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'Meet The Searchers' (1963) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/news-views-and-music-issue-133.html
'Sugar and Spice' (1963) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/news-views-and-music-issue-57-searchers.html
'It's The Searchers'
(1964) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/its-searchers-1964.html
‘Sounds Like Searchers’ (1965)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-searchers-sounds-like-searchers-1965.html
'Take Me For What I'm Worth' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-5-searchers-take-me-for-what-im.html
'Take Me For What I'm Worth' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-5-searchers-take-me-for-what-im.html
'The Searchers'
(1979/1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-searchers-19791980.html
'Play For Today' aka 'Love's Melodies' (1981) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-searchers-play-for-today-aka-loves.html
'Play The System' (B sides and rarities) (1988) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-89-searchers-play-system-1988.html
‘Hungry Hearts’ (1988) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/the-searchers-hungry-hearts-1989.html
Surviving TV Clips and The Best Unreleased Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-searchers-surviving-tv-clips-1963.html
Surviving TV Clips and The Best Unreleased Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-searchers-surviving-tv-clips-1963.html
Solo Recordings 1964-1967
and 1984 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-searchers-solo-recordings-1964-1967.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
One 1963-1967 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-searchers-non-album-recordings-part.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
Two 1968-2012
Live/Solo/Compilation/US
LPs/'Re-Recordings In Stereo’ Part One: 1964-1987 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/the-searchers-livesolocompilationus.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/Rarities Albums Part Two: 1990-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/the-beach-boys-15-big-ones-1976.html
Searchers Essay: It’s All
Been A Dream http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-searchers-essay-its-all-been-dream.html
Landmark Concerts and Key
Cover Versions http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-searchers-five-landmark-concerts.html
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