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The Hollies "Write On" (1976)
Star/Write On/Sweet Country Calling/Love Is The Thing/I Won't
Move Over//Narida/Stranger/Crocodile Woman (She Bites!)/My Island/There's
Always Goodbye
'You're
not the first and won't be the last to feel the frustration of a musical fast'
Back in 1966 'Bus Stop' had finally become The
Hollies' breakthrough hit stateside and suddenly they were 'stars' but didn't
know it, taking a while to capitalise on their success over there (it's not
until 1971's 'Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress' that Americans really know who
The Hollies are, Graham Nash's adventures in CSN aside). Ten years on, though
and it's all gone wrong. For the first time in the band's career EMI's American
subsidiary Epic has decided to pass on a Hollies album, rejecting everything
after 'Another Night' on the grounds that nobody is that interested in The
Hollies anymore. Given the amount of money, ideas and indeed talent thrown at
that LP and this is a cruel blow, just two years after international hit 'The
Air That I Breathe' and one The Hollies never quite recover from even though
EMI continues to release their albums at home in the UK (Epic will instead
compile a random assortment of tracks from this album and the next two as the
not-at-all Crosby-Stills-Nash cash-in 'Clarke-Sylvester-Hicks-Calvert-Elliott',
which is still how most American fans know these songs: actually it's pretty
good as desperate marketing compilation techniques go even if it doesn't choose
the songs most British fans would assume it does). The Hollies' response? Well,
they mope around a bit and feel sorry for themselves a lot to be honest,
turning in their moodiest, grumpiest, biggest self-pitying album since 'Would
You Believe?' in 1966.
The band are stars anywaaaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay, though,
and while half of this album sighs 'what's the point?' the other half is
already trying to knock their listeners socks off so much that they have to
turn this album into a 'hit'. The fact that it wasn't says more about EMI's
sleepy marketing team and the sudden arrival of punk in the UK in 1976 than it
does about The Hollies. Even so, the band's response to commercial annihilation
isn't what most bands would do and again and again throughout this album the
band try to discover a new sound rather than simply consolidate their old one.
You would expect The Hollies to simply re-record 'Air That I Breathe' clones
across 'Another Night' and 'Write On' and indeed that's a good part of what The
Hollies do, with gorgeous period outtakes 'Here In My Dreams' and 'Sanctuary'
very much in the same mould (and ever so nearly every bit as good). The band
first 'lost' their eleven year commercial momentum by releasing the gamble that
was 'Son Of A Rotten Gambler' - a single that most definitely didn't play it since
- and ever since have been refusing to play the obvious cards. It speaks
volumes that these two exquisite ballads ended up in the vaults but the
Hollies' first country-rock song ('Sweet County Calling'), retro rock
('Crocodile Woman'), calypso ('My Island') and their biggest prog rock
statements by far ('Love Is The Thing' and 'Stranger') all end up on this album
instead. Change is often good and exactly what a band with a then-thirteen
year, fourteen-album pedigree the way The Hollies had should have been doing,
but you have to be careful with commercial decline - and moaning in the title
track about what a great set of songs you have but that your fans are all
complete idiots for not buying it is a dangerous move. So, too, is this album's
attempt at a hit single in the self-deprecating 'Star' where the band strut
around thinking they are still every bit as big as The Beatles and yet the girl
the narrator tries to chat up admits she's never heard of them.
Humour, grumps and a sudden unexpected reversion to
1950s rockabilly is not the usual solution to commercial decline, but in
context this record makes a lot of sense given that the high profile big budget
'Another Night' hadn't broken the marketplace the way the band wanted either.
The 'in' sound of the year in Britain, ironically enough, is Mud who end up
sounding not unlike a slightly tongue-in-cheek version of the 1960s Hollies -
which is why it makes more sense to me than most fans that the band's bassist
Ray Stiles should become a Hollie himself in the 1980s. Much of the album is
trying to do the same slightly silly, carefree pop with which the band made
their name the first time around. Unfortunately, though, the band never quite
managed to hone that style on their own songs, preferring to write the more
experimental and usually much more serious B-sides instead. Humour doesn't
quite suit The Hollies as songwriters, however great they sound when performing
it on 'Bus Stop' et al and the humour is what doesn't quite work on this album:
'Stranger' rhymes with danger, because this is an album that's meant to be
slightly silly, 'Crocodile Woman' starts off as a song about a cougar before
ending up being about a snappy bitter spouse instead and 'Narida' comes with
more 'na na nas' than 'Hey Jude'. Only on 'Star' do The Hollies finally nail
their comedy vein and it's for pretty much the last time on record sadly, Allan
Clarke's smug lead getting his comeuppance the perfect response to The Hollies'
dip in sales figures.
However all that laughing on the surface covers up
where this album's heart really lies and that 'Write On' ends up being perhaps
the most serious and heartfelt Hollies album out there. The title track takes
you by surprise not because it's so grumpy (The Hollies, a candidate for the
1960s if not the 1970s' most emotionally resonant singles band, have been
masters of the genre since 'We're Through') but because it's so
autobiographical. This isn't a life experience turned into being about a girl
or a character or a story or a crocodile woman or Pegasus the Flying Horse,
it's about a musician whose songs aren't being played on the radio anymore
wondering whether it's worth bothering carrying on. Two other songs on the
album continue the belligerent mood and are only very slightly turned into 'love'
songs. 'I Won't Move Over' has the narrator refusing to let go of something
that once felt so good and admitting to us that they don't feel as if it's
'over' yet whatever they've been told - that the ring they once gave hasn't
been handed back yet so they're going to pretend as if nothing's wrong and hope
it goes away (is the ring an EMI contract with four albums left on it in the
UK?!) Then there's the closer 'There's Always Goodbye' which rivals even 'Lucy'
for the sheer amount of tears you feel like crying while listening to it. The
narrator has been duped into feeling happy and contented, that the latest love
of his life was 'the one' and now it's all gone wrong, again. Did we mention
this was an album that felt a bit sorry for itself? Elsewhere 'My Island'
demonstrates just how badly the band need this escapism, with a song born of
imagination and fiction somehow sounding as 'real' as any track in The Hollies'
catalogue, if only for the lines where the narrator admits it's all
make-believe. Finally, many Hollies love songs are heartfelt and you can tell
that they're written with someone in mind (sometimes three people given that
this is the era of the Clarke-Sylvester-Hicks writing credits) but 'Love Is The
Thing' is perhaps the ultimate Hollies love song, dispensing with the need for
hooks, riffs and commercial appeal for a rising-falling swell of emotion so
strong it will knock you off your feet. With every track on this album written
by the band themselves - one of the few times this actually happens in the
1970s - this feels like more of the 'real' Hollies lurking underneath the
occasional bit of finger-snapping filler and it's a far more honest and
heartfelt album than, say, the 1974 Hollies one (which was all
character-driven).
Unfortunately it's also in many ways the slowest -
which isn't going to help The Hollies' commercial standings at all. One of the
things that made the Hollies stand out during the 1960s was their energy: with
Bobby Elliott's jazz thrusts driving the band along, no one could touch them
for sheer enthusiasm and effort. Compared to the 'pretty' Beatles and
'laidback' Rolling Stones, it was The Hollies' calling card. From this album
on, though, 'Write On' is the close of one of the greatest 180 degree turns in
popular music: the ballads are that bit slower, the rockers that bit sparser
and the productions that bit more lush. Only the mid-paced strut of 'Star' and
the manicness of 'Crocodile Woman' buck that trend on this album, which as well
as a near-enough five-minute title track and a Ron Richards production best
described as 'epic', makes 'Write On' the single most prog rock Hollies album
(a nose ahead of 'A Distant Light' courtesy of that suite-loving album's more
lo-fi production values). Sadly for The Hollies that was a sound that had
suddenly never sounded more unfashionable in the new world the punks were busy
trying to shape. The irony is that had punk come with half the energy The
Hollies displayed in 1963 then the movement might have lasted for longer; it's
a surprise that the Merseybeat era Mancunian music wasn't embraced by them more
being a mixture of rebellion, frustration and sheer joy at being alive - what
every good punk in 1976 was trying to follow. By 1976 The Hollies are too
gentlemanly to rebel, too set in their ways ('Star' aside) to feel frustration
and too fed-up at the way their career was going to make a 'punk' album.
Missing this bus, too, The Hollies will instead combine punk and disco for
their next record 'Russian Roulette', which as the name suggests is something
of a hit-and-miss affair.
For now, though, 'Write On' is close to what The
Hollies should have been doing in this period given the circumstances. If
'Another Night' couldn't win over a new audience with its bigger production,
catchy mature songs and exotic packaging then by comparison the
made-on-the-cheap plain-white-sleeved 'Write On' had no hope. But still the
band gamely try, perfecting their branch of homespun thoughtful orchestral
ballads, throwing in a retro rock song, a catchy comedy number and a handful of
songs that go to places we've never seen The Hollies go to before. Of these new
unexplored avenues 'Stranger' nearly works - it's an edgy paranoid number in a
contemporary Pink Floyd style that adds layers of mystery and mayhem that could
have worked well for The Hollies had they tidied up the clichéd lyrics in the
chorus a bit more. 'Sweet Country Calling' also makes a better fist of
country-rock than anything The Eagles ever did, even if you can tell that the
band's hearts are still closer to the banking town of Manchester than the banks
of the Mississippi. 'Crocodile Woman' wears its rockabilly crocodile shoes with
pride, even if the backing is oddly sloppy for 1970s Hollies standards and Tony
Hicks' guitar solo doesn't so much go into full throttle as sound as if it's
being throttled. 'Narida' adds a touch of exoticness to go alongside 'My
Island', suggesting that at least part of The Hollies' recent mega world tour
ended up somewhere bear the Caribbean and compared to what other AAA bands do
in this period (why 10cc why?!?) the attempt to go native isn't as excruciating
as you might expect. The trouble is, though, that's four songs on which The
Hollies really really really don't sound much like The Hollies and as good as
these songs are to visit and as pleasing as it is to hear The Hollies break out
of their signature sound for something new, you're also kind of glad the band
don't choose to live here.
No, it still comes down to 'love' in the end for the
album's greatest moments. The ballads about romance that have been slowly
building in power across the decade since the band's heart-throb Terry
Sylvester joined the band (you might need a lie-down at this point Roselyn!)
suddenly flower like never before here. 'Love Is The Thing' is perhaps the
greatest Hollies love song of them all - no small feat for a band who did so
many great romantic numbers - but that's because it's slow-burning sizzle and
coast is so unlike anything The Hollies have ever tried before, a dramatic
outpouring of emotion that still manages to sound serene and hypnotic. It's the
difference between what men in their thirties and men in their twenties would
write (with 'Carrie Anne' an example): this isn't a teenage crush, or something
light and fluffy to kid to the guys in the bar about the next day or even lust
- it's overpowering three-dimensional love and after seeing through these eyes
you sense the narrator is never ev-uh going to see life quite the same way
again. In a similar way 'There's Always Goodbye' challenges what we heard the
last time out, that you 'Gotta Give Me Time' because the band aren't ready to
settle down quite yet, with an idea that the biological clock is ticking and
ticking fast. 'I Won't Move Over' also suggests the band aren't quite ready to
give up love and what it means to them just yet, however strong the case is for
moving on. Of course this wouldn't be The Hollies if they weren't still playful
and both Narida and Crocodile Woman sound very much like 'cougars', one-off
flings the band are keen not to tell their wives about back home (there is a
book by groupie Pamela Des Barres from somewhere loosely round this period that
remembers a fivesome going on in a hotel room and taking place in a bath - Tony
being the goody-two-shoes who stayed watching TV although he wasn't above
joining in too, at least if the book is to be believed!) As with all things
Hollies these two 'naughty' songs are delivered with such a knowing twinkle
that somehow they get away with it - especially when songs like 'Love Is The
Thing' prove that they really did take their love lives seriously too.
There is, of course, a sixth Hollie that not many
people talk about, but his fingerprints are all over this album more than the
band's and more perhaps than any of their other LPs. Pete Wingfield had joined
the band as their tour keyboardist in
1975 and for a time his fame eclipsed the lot of them when his similarly
twinkly solo single 'Eighteen With A Bullet' shot into the American top twenty
(funnily enough peaking at number eighteen!) Today better known as part of Paul
McCartney's 'Run Devil Run' band in the late 1990s, Wingfield has a style
eclectic enough to match whatever The Hollies have to offer him - which on this
album means the synthesiser swirl of passion on 'Love Is The Thing' (the best
use of the instrument after The Who?), the honky-tonk solos on 'Crocodile
Woman', the bleeping noises of 'Star', the spooky faux-bass funk of 'Stranger'
and the country-honk of 'Sweet Country Calling'. Wingfield has his fingers in a
lot of pies across this record and does the band proud, as he will across the
next three record too. However, it's also a sign of sad things to come. Poor
Bernie Calvert, whose at least Pete's equal as a piano player, has been trying
to get more of his 'original' instrument onto a Hollies album since he joined
the group in 1966, which a brief flurry on 'Hollies Sing Hollies' in 1969 and
'Romany' in 1972 (when the rest of the band are distracted by line-up changes)
never quite materialises. What's worse is that, in the spirit of the day,
Wingfield often plays his bass parts for him on the keyboard too - and as all
good AAA fans know why play something on an artificial synth that works
perfectly well on a 'proper' instrument? (Especially one played by one of the
most under-valued bass players in pop history).
In fact the band performances are Write On's
Achilles Heel all the way through. Though one of Ron Richards' final
productions with the band coats everything with the same glossy sheen, whether
it needs it or not, too often underneath the sound is a band who have forgotten
what it's like to play together and are in overdub city. Unusually Bobby
Elliott's drumming is all over the place and nowhere more than on 'Crocodile
Woman', the one track on this album that tries to 'cut loose' but remembers too
late that the band haven't tried this in so long they probably should have had
a few rehearsals first. As well as Bernie being sidelined there's barely any
Terry acoustic guitar here either, while Bobby too only plays on about half the
album and Terry's guitar solos aren't as plentiful as on most other albums. As
good as Pete Wingfield is, he should be complementing the Hollies sound, not
replacing it. Thankfully the Hollies spend more time on their harmonies than
they do on the backing tracks and these are as sumptuous as ever, especially
'Love Is The Thing' which may well be the definitive vocal performance by the
Sylvester-era line-up. Clarkey too is in good voice, typically nailing this
album's pot pourri (russian roulette?) of styles without even breaking sweat,
although as on 'Another Night' it's rather a shame that since he returned to
the band Terry and Tony don't seem to be getting their album dose of lead
vocals anymore.
Overall, then, there's much to love about 'Write
On'. From the self-laughing fun of 'Star' to the drama of 'Love Is The Thing'
to the poignancy of 'There's Always Goodbye' this album packs an emotional
whallop as heavy as any of their 1970s albums and there are some impressive
stabs at something new. The downside to this is that 'Write On' lacks the
cohesion and general air of brilliance heard on 'Another Night' and is perhaps
a little ballad-heavy (if not quite as continually slow as '5317704' in three
albums' time). 'Star' should have been the hit single the band needed and
'Write On' is more than good enough to be a hit on the back of it, but sadly
musical success isn't always about worthy winners and lousy losers (if it was
The Spice Girls would still be washing dishes in a club somewhere and Belle and
Sebastian would have more gold discs than they know what to do with!) EMI
really goofed with the packaging, which is boring on the front and ugly on the
back (five caricatures of the band's faces, complete with more wrinkles than
they had in real life!) and with the promotion, assuming this record wouldn't
sell so they wouldn't bother to push it instead of giving the third most
successful band in their history (behind The Beatles and Pink Floyd) the
benefit of the doubt. Ultimately 'Write On' is a step down from the sheer
genius Hollies records that ended with 'Another Night' and the start of a
downward trend where the band lose their fanbase, their confidence and much of
their originality. But it's not over yet by any means and this should have been
a great new beginning with 'Write On' getting a lot more things 'right' than it
does 'wrong'.
'Star' is the funniest song in The Hollies' canon. A
knowing parody of the band's recent fall from fame it has Allan Clarke camping
it up like the long lost love child of The Pinball Wizard and The Acid Queen,
picking up a hitch-hiker with the unlikely name of 'Beverly Drive', actually a
posh road-name in Sunset Boulevard) in his Cadillac and expecting the girl to
be impressed. She doesn't know who he is, so Clarke's rockstar resorts to
chatting (admitting he usually doesn't have to), tells he about the 'giant size
neons' that display his name and in the end gets his personal archivist out to
show her tapes. Nothing works and his increasingly irritation throughout the
song is the perfect under-cut to the usual traditional Hollies build-up of
emotions, replacing feelings of love and obsession (as heard in everything from
'I Can't Let Go' through to 'The Air That I Breathe') with indignation and
frustration. The clever twist to the song is that she is herself a much bigger
star than he is and he didn't recognise her either (suggesting that she's from
a 'current' generation the ageing rocker still thinks he's part of). Though
nobody ever explains why a fellow multi-millionaire rockstar needs to
hitch-hike in the first place (did her Rolls Royce have a flat tyre?) it's the
perfect response to a band who have been told in no uncertain terms that
they're 'past it' and aren't as famous or as big as they used to be, delivered
with just the right amount of strutting, sarcasm and teeth-nashing. As well as
being inventive it's also catchy enough for listeners not patient enough to
wait until the pay-off, with its period synthesiser riff (the first sound on
the album is all Pete Wingfield's creation), a nicely jolly riff and some
particularly noisy hi-hat drumming from Bobby Elliott. It's another one of
those undeserving Hollies mid 1970s flop singles in other words, even though
it's ten times catchier than most other things out there and a hundred times
more inventive. Along with 'Another Night' and 'I'm Down' it's proof that The
Hollies couldn't get a hit with anything, despite trying their hardest to
update their sound without losing the Hollies aspects (the long drawn out
harmonies on the word 'sta-a-a-a-a-a-ar' are particularly impressive). All this
song needs is a Tony Hicks guitar solo to finish things off - good as Pete
Wingfield's synthwork is, his jazzy middle section can't quite compete.
'Sweet Country Calling' is an example of the band
trying to jump onto another bandwagon in their quest to stay afloat and save
the good ship Hollies. On its own terms the song is a success, easily the
better of anything The Eagles did and equal with Poco, while Clarkey thankfully
rejects the temptation to go all American and makes this local countryside
lover purely English instead. The lyrics are basically all the usual clichés:
the narrator wants to 'breathe the mountain air' and 'drink some moonshine' (ie
whiskey - for some reason there's a lot of it on Clarke's solo records!) but
they're cleverer than most similar lyrics. For instance at the end of a run of
bits of nature to be enjoyed there's a clever pun as Clarke hears the
'bluegrass', listed as if it's a bird or a crop rather than a style of music!
He also shyly admits that he wants to spend time with a 'friend of mine', in
contrast to the sexual shenanigans of 'Star'! However throughout there's still a feeling that The Hollies
don't quite fit this style and that at best they're outsiders looking in rather
than embracing country-rock with the gusto of The Byrds or their spin-off group
The Flying Burrito Brothers. The clunky chorus, which slows the tempo right
down whenever it re-appears (which is a lot!) is also perhaps a cliché too far.
However the song isn't as wretched as a band who've been together thirteen
years and never even felt the urge to dabble their feet in the toes of country
music should be and it's a sign, again, that The Hollies may well have been the
best interpreters in the business.
That's despite the fact that The Hollies already had
a pretty magnificent trademark sound all of their own making. 'Love Is The
Thing' is perhaps the ultimate expression of harmony-drenched blissful romance
- the band played around with this style many times but in their catalogue only
'The Air That I Breathe' comes close. Even this song is, well, weird by Hollie
standards though. The chorus consists of just one word (luuuuuuurve!') sung in
unison three times over as the song reaches a swell and climax that's quite
over-powering (it's also perhaps your best chance to hear just how tight the
Clarke-Sylvester-Hicks harmonies are, so well suited to each other that it's
hard to hear where one voice ends and another begins). The backing too is
oddball for The Hollies, featuring no one else except three Pete Wingfields
(who surely deserves a co-credit for his work on this track), his three very
different keyboards sounding like the past (harpsichord), present (piano) and
future (a very modern sounding synthesiser). The only other colour except these
three parts and the harmonies all song is a heartbeat from Bobby Elliott on his
bass drum every so often that makes this song sound more than ever like an
intimate night between the sheets. The lyrics, too, are surreal and haiku-like
(not a very Hollies style at all) but amongst the best the Sylvester-era band
ever wrote, saying everything that needed to be said in just a few fleshed out
lines. Here love isn't a crush at a bus-stop or 'just one look' that leaves the
narrator 'hooked' but closer to the vibe of 'I Can't Let Go', a
multi-dimensional obsession that encompasses every one of the narrator's
senses. This goes for past, present and future love too, indiscriminately:
'They say you can't forget your first taste of love...memories' Clarke
wistfully reflects, note-perfect as always. In the present he feels himself
drawn to someone whose been a friend but 'love' is what has changed their
friendship to something more. And then there's the future, in which the
narrator knows well whatever happens in this relationship, whoever else he
meets, he's going to spend his life searching for exactly what he's found here.
All three verses end in that chorus of 'love', swelling and opening up from
nothing into the loudest, most powerful sound on the album. The result is an
extraordinary song, romantic and sensual, easily accessible yet very very
daring and different and beautifully performed by a band still at the peak of
their powers. fame and fortune should indeed have followed on strong after
career highpoints like this one.
Sadly the rest of the album can't quite match 'Love
Is The Thing', but that's not for lack of effort. 'I Won't Move Over', for
instance, is a full-band glossy-performance ballad more in the Hollies
tradition. Clarke again excels on a quality lyric as he acts out a heartbroken
character who knows that his intuition and all his friends have assumed his
romance is 'over', but he refuses to accept it and 'move over'. Later verses
fill in the gaps, that another love tried to make a pass and his beloved has
been two-timing him - no wonder his friends want him to break off and run away,
but he's too besotted and too stubborn to admit defeat. He hasn't heard from
her how she feels and tells us in a repeated, desperate middle eight that they
once exchanged rings and 'I still got mine and I ain't got hers - that's how I
know for sure' that the marriage is rescuable, telling his good-natured
concerned friends 'I don't need to say no more' before breaking down on the
line 'I don't wanna hear no more!' It's a kind of 'She Loves You' a generation
on this track, but with the narrator the party coming out badly rather than the
friend passing on happy advice. You can tell, though, that even the narrator is
in his heart knows it's 'over', emphasising that word every time it appears at
the end of the chorus while Hicks lets fly on another excellent (but far too
short) guitar solo that's full of the drama and passion he's kidding himself he
doesn't really feel. Together with the spoken-word patter and feel of this
song, always lurching from one verse to another in a tumble of words, it goes a
long way to explaining just how the narrator feels. However what lets this song
down slightly is that it all gets a bit stuck in the same place - there's no
pause for reflection in this song, no neat twist at the end and far too many
repeats. It would be nice to hear a bare-bones take on this gut-raw mod song
than the usual Hollies slick production values too - there's a great 'solo demo
with acoustic guitar' demo of this song out there in somebody's loft, I'm sure
of it!
'Narida' is the start of Write On's more ordinary
secondary side. It's not so much that this song and the ones that follow are
bad, just a tad unmemorable. Clarke puts on his best 'Long Cool Woman' swagger
on this one about a girl with a 'hoochie coochie' sway and Wingfield tries some
Latin American rhythms that make this song come over like an outtake from 'West
Side Story'. Bernie sounds right at home with the walking bass, as does Hicks'
snarl of a solo which is two parts his usual electric sound to one part
flamenco flourish. However the rest of the band seem to struggle here and
there's a bit too much over-dubbing in the room you sense. It's also hard to
forgive the slightly dodgy lyrics, which go downhill from the chorus line of
'Na Na Na Na Rida' into a world where the title girl lives in the 'back
street-ah'. There's a hint, too, that Narida might be a bit naughtier than most
Hollie girls, as the band revert to the twinkle of their late-period Nash days
(see 'The Games We Play' and 'Step Inside') and hint again that the narrator is
after sex, not love. Narida may in fact run a brothel, a 'shepherdess to her
flock' but in the 'pay' of some guy named Joe Minnesota (not another street name
sadly, but St Joseph is a city in Minnesota as it happens - did The Hollies do
a lot of sight-seeing on their 1975 American tour?!) This leads to the best
part of the song, a melancholic single line (repeated) middle eight where the
song stops strutting and starts living, Clarke and Sylvester sobbing 'I can't
blame her, for turning out the way she did!' Alas this song is all 'front' and
quickly goes back to being about her streetwise character and the act she puts
on so that you never really get to know 'Narita Pastrita, Queen of the Avenue
Girls'.
'Stranger' is a valiant attempt at something
different that's let down only at the seemingly last-minute decision to make it
sound like a more accessible Hollie tune complete with catchy chorus. For the
most part this is Moody Blues-Pink Floyd prog rock territory about a hit man
who 'might be from the CIA' and whose hired to kill strangers and all the
thoughts that rush through his head. Very un-Hollies, even if the narrator of
'Long Cool Woman' spent his day job 'working for the FBI', but this song
switches from third person to second to first in quick succession so that the
mysterious 'stranger' starts off as 'cool' then 'mysterious' then 'sinister'.
This is matched by another excellent turn from Pete Wingfield who provides both
the funky, thoughtful bass and the high twinkling notes that make this song
sound like a cross between a gospel chorus and the doorbell on the Pearly Gates
of Heaven. The main lyric is unusually brusque and dark by Hollie standards, reflecting
on poverty in an even darker way than 'Gasoline Alley Bred' and 'Too Young To
Be Married' and depicting a very American world of New York's 'bowery boys' and
slums, where people have no way out except to live in gangs and take revenge on
each other - out of boredom, the song implies, as much as anything else. This
is a world where the sun never shines and the tight claustrophobic backing
track does a good job at showing a world, perhaps round the corner from
'Gasoline Alley Bred', where everybody born there is doomed to die there,
probably violently or from malnutrition, through no fault of their own. So far
so great - but then in comes a typically Hollies wide-awake chorus that runs
'Danger! There's a stranger!' as if this song is a Government commercial for
primary school children. The characters become less and less lifelike and more
cartoonish too: witness 'Sneaky Peate' who knows how to 'use his feet' (decades
before the 2015 crime drama 'sneaky pete' might refer to Flying Burrito pedal
steel player Sneaky Pete Knlienow, who played the sort of things Tony does on
'Sweet Country Calling' - or is it a
tribute to Pete Wingfield? Or just gibberish?!?) A real shame because for the
elongated whispered fade-in opening and the first verse there (about a minute's
worth) this is a great song that again on this album proves that The Hollies
can do much more than just play their signature sounds. If only this song had
stayed a prog rock anthem, instead of a cutesy pop song! I'd love to know which
Hollie wrote the basics of it (Clarkey at a guess?) but this piece sounds like
the others got hold of it and missed the point. The album track that got away.
Which is pretty much what I feel about 'Crocodile
Woman (She Bites) too. The album desperately needs some raw rock and roll on it
by now after so many slow, sleepy ballads and this demented rocker ought to fit
the biscuit. It's a very retro (and thus in 1976 rather unfashionable) 1950s
style rocker, complete with bar-room piano twinkling from Wingfield (who rather
hogs the instrumental break!) and rat-a-tat Elliott drumming. The lyrics too
are fine in a one-dimensional sense, spelling out yet another wild and
dangerous Hollie woman who has keen seductive skills ('Sly girl, good timer,
she's just a social climber, but you have to pay the price - she bites!')
However The Hollies had spent so long overdubbing and adding polish to their
songs that they've all but forgotten how to play songs like these - the kind of
energetic rock and roll track that would have been most recognisable to a fan
of the 1960s Hollie sound had you stuck them in a 'time machine jive' and
dropped them off in 1976. This take is badly sloppy, Clarke's bark leaving him
hoarse by the end, while Elliott soon looses control, Wingfield gets carried
away busking a jazz improv and Hicks plays what must be the most gonzo guitar
he ever put on record, sounding somewhere between strangling a snake and
attacking a cougar! The band also mess up the ending, not quite coming in
altogether (something half-covered up by the echo-drenched pay-off line 'she
bites!') By my reckoning The Hollies have got this raw since 'Transatlantic
Westbound Jet' in their Mickael Rickfors days of 1973 and with Clarke in the
band not since about 1964 (when most of the 'In The Hollies Style' LP has the
'feeling' it was cut in one take, even when it probably wasn't). This track
though still carries a sense of the usual Hollies production polish and
couldn't they have gone for at least one more take when they actually, you
know, knew how the song went? In a parallel universe, though, both this song
and the last one make for a perfect contrasting double 'A' sided single that
was done 'properly' and restored The Hollies to #1.
'My Island' is very much a Clarke song, one which
coats the album with a soothing balm and revels in its warmth and Hollie
harmonies for the first time in five tracks. Clarkey gets escapist here, dreaming
of a new home on an island in his head where 'life that will be mine once
again'. His imagination must be pretty big, what with the neat tip of the hat
to 'the air that I breathe' along with 'warm sand under my feet' and the 'sun
on my face'. However there's a hint at something darker even in this idyll: the
narrator tells us that he's nearly 'done my time once again' and other lyrics
point at him being a re-offender. This time around he didn't 'even get a chance
to say goodbye to my loved ones', the hint being that this song is taking place
in Clarke's head behind bars (is this the same character heard in '48 Hour
Parole' from the next album maybe?) However the song doesn't linger there: this
is a song more about where he's escaping to than escaping from, as in his head
he's 'sailed the seven seas' and experienced more of the world than he would
have done leading a 'normal' life, even if its all just fiction. There's
certainly no hint at the darker side in the backing track. The Hollies are
convincing playing calypso (a style not that far removed from their old
favoured 1960s style of the bossa nova as heard on tracks like 'We're Through',
I guess) and Tony fits in another guitar solo that sounds like sun coming out
all by itself. A popular fan favourite and the only track from this album to be
performed in concert for any length of time (as heard on the 'Hollies Live
Hits' album out the following year), this is another worthy attempt at
something new but needs a little extra something to 'shake it up', like a middle
eight or something. There's a great song in here somewhere, with just an extra
insight into why the narrator needs to escape so badly, but alas it never quite
comes.
Album closer 'There's Always Goodbye' is a really
traditional Hollies moment to end on and one of the best things on the album,
as everyone knows exactly what they're doing on a track like this. Clarke's
latest hapless narrator is ruing another relationship gone wrong and he doesn't
quite know why. It all seemed so good and she was perfect from the first night
they met, 'my sunlight shining thro-o-o-o-o-o-o-ugh' a life that once seemed to
be dead miserable. Only now it's gone wrong for unstated reasons, Clarke
sobbing in another excellent album middle eight that 'you are too kind and I am
too shy to say what we really mean'. If this song had been released in the last
decade or so you'd say Clarke has been 'friendzoned', the lovers that seemed
meant to be never quite getting it together. The couple feel that they're meant
apart so sadly leave each other, her goodbye kiss on his forehead 'saying all
that could be said'. It's kind of like 'I'm Alive' in reverse this song, the
narrator coming to terms with the fact that the one thing that made them
experience life in more detail and scope than ever before is disappearing and
leaving them heartbroken. On Hollies albums past you'd expect the narrator to
get his act together and propose - but no, it's not that kind of a song and The
Hollies aren't that kind of a band anymore so he sadly slinks away brooding
over the fact that love's gone wrong again and he really thought she was the
one that time. Which has always made me wonder: is this song really 'Write On'
part two written not to a lover but to the band's audience? The Hollies had a
particularly rough rollercoaster ride in their career. While The Beatles
started big and kept getting bigger and The Rolling Stones started off small
and then grew in following by leaps and bounds, The Hollies kept going in and
out of fashion like a yo-yo depending what current single they had out. Their
core fans are as loyal as any other 1960s following (and I know that for a
fact, having met many of you down the years!) but we're smaller in number than
the Beatles and Stones fans; instead The Hollies tended to appeal to a more
general public who bought a song if they liked it and got to hear about it and
left it in the shops if they didn't. The loss of the band's American market two
years on from their last hit single is clearly a killer blow for The Hollies
and this song sounds like them grieving over the fact that this is going to be
harder to come back from than ever before. No matter what The Hollies do,
changing styles from Merseybeat to psychedelia to orchestral ballads to 'Long
Cool Woman' style rockers, they never ever managed to get two really big hits
in a row from the same 'source'. No matter how hard they tried to find a new
successful formula, there's always 'goodbye' soon afterwards and the band have
to start all over again.
'Write On' is clearly a more thoughtful album than
usual for The Hollies. Lacking the sparkle and colourful production colours of
the high budget 'Another Night' and lacking the disco swagger of 'Russian
Roulette' to come it's one of those albums doomed to be forgotten and
overlooked and to some extent you can see why: this is perhaps the most uneven
album of the band's 1970s run and only sparks to life on the three romantic
ballads at the album's core (plus the one self-deprecating joke at the start).
But even when this album messes up it never does so badly and usually does so
because the band are trying to either punch above their weight of visit a
destination far beyond their normal comfort zones. For this the band should be
applauded. The Hollies could easily have recorded a whole album of 'Air That I
Breathe' soundalikes in a desperate chance of getting another copycat of their
last big hit, but no - instead they branch out into country-rock, prog rock,
rockabilly and calypso. To do all that, even when there was 'no one listening
to their song' takes guts and it's 'Write On's courage that impresses the most
- even if it lags behind certain other period Hollies LPs for sheer
listenability or ideas.
A NOW
COMPLETE LIST OF HOLLIES ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'Stay With The Hollies' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-hollies-stay-with-hollies-1964.html
'Stay With The Hollies' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-hollies-stay-with-hollies-1964.html
'In The Hollies Style' (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-hollies-in-hollies-style-1964-album.html
'The Hollies' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/news-views-and-music-issue-83-hollies.html
'Would
You Believe?' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-hollies-would-you-believe-1966.html
'For Certain, Because' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-for-certain-because-1966.html
'Evolution' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-11-hollies-evolution-1967.html
'Butterfly' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-14-hollies-butterfly-1967.html
‘Hollies Sing Hollies’ (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-hollies-sing-hollies-1969.html
'Confessions Of The Mind' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-39-hollies-confessions-of-mind.html
'For Certain, Because' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-for-certain-because-1966.html
'Evolution' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-11-hollies-evolution-1967.html
'Butterfly' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-14-hollies-butterfly-1967.html
‘Hollies Sing Hollies’ (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-hollies-sing-hollies-1969.html
'Confessions Of The Mind' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-39-hollies-confessions-of-mind.html
'A
Distant Light' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-hollies-distant-light-1971-album.html
'Romany' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-52-hollies-romany-1972.html
'Out On The Road' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-62-hollies.html
'Headroom' (Allan Clarke solo) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-57-allan-clarke-headroom-1973.html
'Romany' (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-52-hollies-romany-1972.html
'Out On The Road' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-62-hollies.html
'Headroom' (Allan Clarke solo) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-57-allan-clarke-headroom-1973.html
'The
Hollies' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-hollies-hollies-1974-album-review.html
'Another
Night' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-hollies-another-night-1975.html
‘Write On’ (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-hollies-write-on-1976.html
‘Write On’ (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-hollies-write-on-1976.html
‘Russian
Roulette’ (1976) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-hollies-russian-roulette-1976.html
'A
Crazy Steal' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-hollies-crazy-steal-1978.html
'5317704' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-110-hollies.html
'5317704' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-110-hollies.html
'What
Goes Around..." (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-hollies-what-goes-around-1983.html
'Staying
Power' (2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-hollies-staying-power-2006.html
‘Then,
Now, Always’ (2009)
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/the-hollies-then-now-always-2009.html
'Radio Fun' (BBC Sessions) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-145-hollies.html
The Best Unreleased Hollies Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-hollies-rarities-ii-best-unreleased.html
'Radio Fun' (BBC Sessions) (2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-145-hollies.html
The Best Unreleased Hollies Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-hollies-rarities-ii-best-unreleased.html
Surviving
TV Footage 1964-2010 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-surviving-tv-footage-1964.html
Non-Album
Songs Part One: 1963-1970 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-hollies-non-album-songs-part-one.html
Non-Album
Songs Part Two: 1971-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-non-album-songs-part-two.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/US Editions/Covers Albums Part One 1964-1975 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-livesolocompilationouttakes.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/US Editions/Covers Albums Part One 1964-1975 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-livesolocompilationouttakes.html
Live/Solo/Compilation/US
Editions/Covers Albums Part Two 1976-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-hollies-livesolocompilationouttakes_21.html
Essay:
What Exactly Was The Hollies’ Style? https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-hollies-essay-what-excatly-was.html
Five
Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-hollies-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
