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That'll be the Way
My musical education started better than I could realise at the time.My Mum had a collection of LPs from before suburban ennui, kids and all that changed taste into something more stolen and pragmatic than it should be. There was a lot in it, and it created a legacy that lives with me now in a way that I hope at least partially heals the horror that the first LP I bought with my "own monies" was the obscene shower of coke powered highs and valium tones lows fascistic obscenity that is the Top Gun Soundtrack. Took me many years to forgive Georgio Moroder.Amongst this stash of wax was one of the weaker, later entries in The Everly Brothers ouvre, "Rock 'N Soul".A collection of post British Invasion flavoured "oldie" retreads of classic but mainstream early rock They were on the jacket with hair helmets in full gear, gripping on to the side of a freight train boxcar (that looked damn cool, maybe they were outlaws without hats) and I had no idea what was going on, being an idiotic larvae ape.I did know that for some reason that unlike so many of the other brilliant slabs of genius in the Danish Rosewood HiFi cabinet that on the dubious Panasonic combined turntable receiver amp thing this record with the same logo as Bugs Bunny cartoons assaulted me with drums demanded to be played FUCKING LOUD LOUD LOUD."That'll be the Day" crashed through the model home late Modernist hell container of a size and quality that would be more familiar today to a third rate commodities trader in the Stockbroker Belt than to Civil Servant. Many, many many times.It was clean, fast, crisp, and didn't overstay its welcome. There was no agenda, no Baby Booma Fuckdaman that gave us Uni for free and good wages unwashed faux politics or any attempt to pretend to be Eastern. Just loud, jangly, cut loose bounce round the room ROCK. The Everlys recorded The Beastie Boy's Sabotage four decades early and I felt the benefit.Phil Everly just left the building, and of course Billboard reports sales of the Everly back catalogue have just gone off like a teenage boner by 66%. And I am part of this. I'd not thought about what the Brothers meant until Philippe told us all Phil had kicked it as we all will and pretend we wont.And then it hit me."That'll be the Day" bubbled up from my decimated, foggy subconcious. LOUD LOUD LOUD again like an old unpaid debt and an electric root of magic.And this made me Look again at these fraternal funkateers. And I hope it made me Understand.Who were this geezers with an an odd genius mix of Ozark Kentucky twang and Midwestern repressed Modness? Stealth Ambassadors from the Black side of town, and scrubbed up not scary samplers of the often forgotten, harder bluesy best of Country. My Mum would have not heard Hank Ballard and the Midnighters or had frequent contact with Johnny Cash or Marty Robbins. The Everlys were clean cut, you'd not come back interfered with on a Date with them,Like the Beach Boys, whom without the Everlys the peerless, overdubbed and magisterial harmonies can make no sense, they started as a family act. Discovered by Country impresario Chet Atkins, who pimped them to Columbia in 1956. Their sound was too fast and sharp for repressed, blushing bobbysoxers and Main Street jukeboxes, so the first single tanked and Columbia dropped them like golden turds. Uncle Chet wouldn't let them just die, and so signed them up as songwriters until another label, Cadence, gave them a whirl. A song rejected by at least 30 throwaway half hit blunders, "Bye Bye Love" was electrified by the Everlys.Touring brought them into contact with another titan of my Mum's LP motherlode - Buddy Holly - whom they toured with for years, cross pollinating styles, writing and playing uncredited for each other in way alien to the lawyered up mainstream of today. Years of magic and memorable records resulted until the haircuts of the kids changed, leaving so many behind.As the Sixties started to suck and sag, the UK was one of the last places where the Everlys were still celebrated. By the time Gimme Shelter called time on the decade, they had fallen out and gone solo. During these Wilderness Years Phil Everly provoked Warren Zevon to spawn Werewolves of London, but otherwise its only right to examine them in the kind light of their prime and wonder at all the rivers of influence, from Buddy Holly to the Beatles, Beach Boys and Beyond that began to flow in an ever Everly direction.
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