Cliff Richard and the Drifters: Move It

John Lennon once said: "I think the first English record that was anywhere near anything was Move It by Cliff Richard, and before that there'd been nothing."

It takes an American podcast to take Cliff and the Shadows (as they soon became) seriously: We Say Yeah!

The rise and fall and (slight) rise of Lionel Bart

By my calculation, this edition of The South Bank Show dates from 1994. As much of my politics come from reading Oliver Twist too young, and as Oliver! is the great British musical. I had to watch it.

And there is much to enjoy, beginning with Lionel Bart's adventures in the new world of pop music with Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard.

Then there's Oliver!, whose first night was just as triumphant as Bart makes it sound. On to the film, where I note that Mark Lester was still giving the impression that he sang in it. He didn't.

The disaster of Twang!! caused the crash of Bart's career, but maybe the warning signs were there with his musical Blitz!, which Noel Coward claimed was "twice as loud and twice as long as the real thing".

Note the presence of Mark Steyn, who had yet to reinvent himself as a commentator on geopolitics. As I wrote of him in 2008:

Steyn is a good film critic, able to write intelligently about unintelligent films. But the fact that for several years his was the predominant voice on foreign affairs in the British Conservative press was simply bizarre.

If you enjoy this, it gives me the excuse to give another plug for the superlative South Bank Show on the London production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. 

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"By restricting jury trials, removing protest rights and expanding surveillance, Labour is entrenching an authoritarian legal infrastructure that a far-right government will not hesitate to exploit." Karl Hansen says Labour is building Farage's state for him.

Phoebe Weston reports on the French ski resorts that are closing as the snow line in the Alps edges higher: "In France, there are today 113 ski lifts totalling nearly 40 miles (63km) in length that have been abandoned, nearly three-quarters of them in protected areas."

Catherine Rampell says Trump is misusing Norman Rockwell's art to promote Gestapo tactics and nativist ideas: "The works have been endlessly parodied since their introduction in 1943. In the internet age, they’ve become ubiquitously memed. (Freedom of Speech, for example, is nowadays widely known as the 'unpopular opinion' meme.) But originally, they served as wartime propaganda, meant to help rally support for America and its cause during the years of war against the Nazis."

"Take Me High's unexpected legacy is to act as a kind of Brummie Rorschach test: what do you see in its depiction of the angular 'new' Birmingham of 1973? An ugly, car-worshipping mess that, like Cliff's career, needed desperate reinvention? An ambitious feat of post-war planning? Or a nostalgic vision of your childhood? It’s a question that becomes more poignant with each landmark razed and every area redeveloped beyond recognition." Shaun Patrick Hand has discovered the Cliff Richard film from 1973.

"Raynor’s efforts simply render the magnificent landscapes of Devon and Cornwall as joyless, grey backdrops to her own ceaseless complaining. The South West Coast Path should sue for defamation of character." Finlay McLaren takes aim at The Salt Path.

Andy Marshall chooses and photographs his all-time best pubs.

One Pair of Eyes: Birmingham - The Venice of England? (1970)

This is part of a film shown in the BBC's documentary series One Pair of Eyes in 1970. We see the last days of commercial carrying and the early days of leisure boating existing side by side, while around them the new Birmingham has arisen.

Soon Cliff Richard will arrive to make Take Me High.

If you like this, you may enjoy my posts on Bill Grundy's children's series Flower of Gloster.

The Shadows: Apache

Has there every been anything cooler, more bad ass, in British pop than Jet Harris smoking that cigarette?

Maybe Hank Marvin is too good natured to be cool or bad ass, but he manages to look as though he's just been got out of bed and is playing in his dressing gown.

And this is from 1960.

As well as recording hugely popular instrumentals like this  and Wonderful Land as a group, the Shadows also backed Cliff Richard - a much-traduced artist. Time to tell the story of how Marvin became the first guitarist in Britain to own a Stratocaster:

By 1959, Cliff, The English answer to Elvis, was a star. Hank was playing a Japanese-made Antoria guitar that he says had "a horribly bent neck," so Cliff decided to buy Hank a new and better instrument.

Unfortunately, an English musician could not easily buy an American guitar at this time because the British Board of Trade controlled imports from America, and no American guitars were available in the British shops. Cliff, however, was able to have a guitar privately imported, a consequence, no doubt, of having a top-selling single.

After spending the princely sum of one hundred and forty guineas, a 1959 Fiesta Red Stratocaster with gold fittings and maple neck duly arrived from the States in a plush red velvet lined case. That may sound cheap, but it is the equivalent of over three thousand pounds sterling today. This was reputedly the first Fender Stratocaster guitar in the United Kingdom, and with its clean Fender tones and fitted tremolo arm, it became the basis of the quintessential Hank Marvin sound.

And that guitar now lives with Marvin's schoolfriend and bandmate Bruce Welch in Australia.

One final point: Jet Harris died of a smoking-related disease, so don't try this at home kids.

Cliff Richard and the Drifters: High Class Baby

This new generation of Beatles fans is entitled to its enthusiasms, but it does seem to lack a sense of history. Any music that came before the Fab Four was laughable, and any groups who were around at the same time as the Beatles were trying to copy them.

So here's a rockabilly Cliff Richard from 1958 to prove there was life before Love Me Do, even if Cliff is rocking more than anyone else on this record.

The Drifters was the original name for the Shadows, who were Cliff's backing band and then became one of the most successful ever British acts in their own right.

None of the famous Shadows are playing on High Class Baby, but the guitarist is an interesting figure. Not only did Ian Samwell write this song, he also wrote Move It for Cliff and the Drifters.

That is the track of which John Lennon said:

"I think the first English record that was anywhere near anything was Move It by Cliff Richard, and before that there'd been nothing."

It also appeared on Led Zeppelin: The Music that Rocked Us - a compilation put together by the band in 2010.

Samwell later became more of a producer and manager, but he did co-write Whatcha Gonna Do About It, the single that launched the Small Faces.

Six of the Best 955

"Whereas Thatcher offered young people hope - not least the hope of owning their own home - today’s Tories do not. Yes Thatcher wanted to achieve cultural change, but she saw economics as the means of achieving that." Boris Johnson's Conservative's Party has diverged from Thatcherism and not for the better, argues Chris Dillow.

David Boyle reports from the front line of his war with tickbox culture, which is currently to be found in the NHS.

"The form of public accountability we’ve settled on is one that relies on a robust, independent-minded, largely private-sector media to do the job of scrutiny. It hasn’t always done this job well, but no other body is equipped to do it. Now it’s falling away, and as we’ve already seen at the local level, this is not a vacuum that there is any rush to fill." Sarah Ditum mourns the state of journalism.

Enslavement continues in the US and it is called prison, says Ashish Prashar.

Friends of Islington Museum has a history of Islington and Gainsborough Studios - 'Hollywood by the canal.'

Catherine O'Flynn on Cliff Richard's 1973 film musical set in Brutalist Birmingham, which was shown by Talking Pictures TV today: "Take Me High is a mind-bogglingly strange film. A critique of rapacious capitalism. A hymn to a second city. A vehicle for a flagging pop star. A film about a hamburger. It’s a musical without hits and a comedy without jokes."

Johnny Kidd and The Pirates: Shakin' All Over

I am given to nominating Move It by Cliff Richard and the Shadows as the great British rock and roll record, but last time I did so someone suggested this one as a rival.

You can see his point.

Johnny Kidd died young in a car crash, but The Pirates had a big come back in the late Seventies and sounded very much at home on the pub rock scene.

Eurovision: Blame Simon Cowell not Brexit

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It's tempting to blame our last place in this year's Eurovision on Brexit. But as Chris Dillow pointed out, our slump in the contest dates back some years.

If you are going to link it with any geopolitical event, it makes more sense to choose Tony Blair's enthusiasm for the US attack on Iraq.

As the late great Terry Wogan said, only half jokingly, not long after that war:

"We've invaded too many countries and everyone hates us."

But I think the real reasons are musical - and not just that we consistently enter songs in the wrong key.

I had not heard of this year's UK entrant Michael Rice, which is fine because I have reached an age when I am not meant to have heard of music stars.

So I looked him up - and found that he is not a music star at all.

Rice appeared on The X Factor in 2014, being eliminated before the finals, and then won the BBC's All Together Now in 2018.

As far as I can see, despite this television exposure he has not had a hit single. Which means, unless All Together Now is a bigger deal than I think, he is unknown outside the UK.

Contrast this with Eurovision from when I first remember it. Though they were often given silly songs, our entrants were internationally known recording artists: Lulu, Cliff Richard, Sandie Shaw.

These reality shows trade on the idea that there are lots of undiscovered singers out there with the ability to become stars, but the truth is rather different.

The two most realistic shows in this genre were those that were looking for someone to star in a West End production of a musical: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria and Any Dream Will Do.

Both were won by actors who were already in the business but had not yet received their big break. Neither was exactly an unknown.

But surely Simon Cowell's programmes do feature unknowns?

Only up to a point. A fair number of the acts who appear on Britain's Got Talent are established professionals but are presented as amateurs - Musical Ruth is a good example.

For this reason I suspect that some of the singers in The X Factor are known to the producers before they turn up for their audition. Those producers would be running a huge risk if this were not the case.

Whatever the truth of this, the overall standard in the finals is not that strong.

If you watch from the start you get caught up in the drama of the series and root for your favourites. But if you don't watch it and happen to catch an episode later on, what you here is very ordinary singers being told that they have made astandard their own.

They haven't.

Back in the day, the international stars who did Eurovision for the UK had their own shows on Saturday evening television.

Today those slots are filled by reality shows, so it is their competitors and winners who are known to the British public and who get chosen for the contest.

As they are unknown across the rest of Europe and often not great singers, it is little surprise that they do so badly.

My conclusion is that you should not blame Brexit for our Eurovision malaise but Simon Cowell.

The Beatles: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

I saw a comment on Twitter about Richard Curtis's new film Yesterday, which imagines a world in which the Beatles have not existed.

The comment said something to the effect that this world would be terrible, because all the music would be like Cliff Richard.

That, of course, nonsense. There were plenty of other British bands influenced by Black American rhythm and blues in the early 1960s, and plenty of them made the same move to psychedelic music later in the decade.

I have a problem with The Beatles - and not just that their name is a lame pun. I can see they are good, but as with Mozart in classical music, I can't see why they are better than other people who were around at the time. That reaction to the film was somehow typical of the reverence with which The Beatles are treated.

Maybe it is Brian Epstein's styling, which is part of what made them pre-eminent by giving them family appeal, that puts me off them now. But whatever the reason, I have only chosen cover versions of their songs - by The Jam and Laibach - on this blog.

But here is a Beatles song, but one with a difference. It is written by George Harrison, not Lennon and McCartney, and Eric Clapton plays the guitar solo.

Harrison later explained how this came about:

We tried to record it, but John and Paul were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine. It wasn't happening. They weren't taking it seriously and I don't think they were even all playing on it, and so I went home that night thinking, 'Well, that's a shame,' because I knew the song was pretty good. 

The next day I was driving into London with Eric Clapton, and I said, "What are you doing today? Why don't you come to the studio and play on this song for me?" He said, "Oh, no – I can't do that. Nobody's ever played on a Beatles record and the others wouldn't like it." I said, "Look, it's my song and I'd like you to play on it."

So he came in. I said, "Eric's going to play on this one," and it was good because that then made everyone act better. Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seriously.

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Stephen Bush says it was not Theresa May who killed Brexit but her adviser Nick Timothy:

Stephen Fry’s Brexit video repeats Remain’s 2016 mistakes, says Bobby Duffy.

"After painstakingly scrutinising the evidence, and crunching the numbers, Christophers arrives at this extraordinary estimate: since 1979, no less than 10% of the land area of Britain has been sold by the state - in all its various guises and incarnations - to the private sector." Will Self reviews The New Enclosure by Brett Christophers

"The system of institutions that functioned for two and a half centuries has rusted through, and we have to figure out how it’s all going to work in the twenty-first century." Mahsa Gessen interviews Garry Kasparov, the political activist and former world chess champion.

Sabrina Rau explains that those pop-up ‘I agree’ boxes aren’t just annoying: they’re potentially dangerous.

"Move It was going to be the B-side. This is where the luck comes in. Norrie found us a song called Schoolboy Crush and that was presented in adverts as the A-side for about a week. They played it to Jack Good who was just about to embark on [TV show] Oh Boy!, and he played both sides – the luck! He played both sides! Then he said, 'If your boy is going to be on my show it’s not going to be with Schoolboy Crush, it has to be with Move It.'" Cliff Richard talks to Record Collector.

Freddie & the Dreamers: I'm Telling You Now

Why isn't Mitch Murray better known? In the Sixties he wrote or co-wrote hits for Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, Manfred Mann, Georgie Fame and Cliff Richard.

He also wrote for Tony Christie - including Avenues and Alleyways - and in the Seventies helped the Nottingham band paper Paper Lace to twice top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

I'm Telling You Now was one of his too. Co-written with the band's leader Freddie Garrity, it reached number 2 in the UK and number 1 in the US. (Freddie and the Dreamers were from Manchester, but somehow got lumped in with the Merseybeat craze.)

The song itself is rather sweet and could pass for an early piece of McCartney whimsy. And it's all done in two minutes.

How to explain the silly dance? Garrity did not have the looks of a pop star and even shaved a few years off his age to heighten his appeal.

But he was a natural comedian and was latter to have his own show for children, Little Big Time, on ITV.

In the US there was even an attempt to launch a dance craze. Hence the band's release of a record called Dance the 'Freddie'.

Robin Sarstedt: My Resistance is Low

There was a hashtag popular on Twitter earlier this week (#songsofsummer1976) that people used to boast about having been at famous early punk gigs.

To those of us outside London and reliant upon Radio One for our music, 1976 was very different. It was a year of disco and novelty hits.

The song that reminds me of taking my O levels early that summer is If You Leave Me Now by Chicago. I had thought of choosing that today, but listening to it now it is pretty awful. Silly voice, silly hair.

So let's embrace the novelty hit vibe with Robin Sarstedt.

He was the youngest of the Sarstedt brothers. His two elder brothers - Eden Kane and Peter Sarstedt - both had number one singles in the UK in the Sixties.

Robin did not quite match that - My Resistance is Low made number three - but by 1976 he had already enjoyed an interesting musical career He recorded with Joe Meek and was part of a successful Swedish band called The Deejays.

Looking back on that era, it is remarkable that so little was made of the Indian heritage of popular performers like Cliff Richard, Engelbert and the Sarstedt brothers.

I wouldn't claim My Resistance is Low is a great record, but Danny Baker continually maintains that the world would be a better place if there were a radio channel devoted to play just the few seconds of it.

And it does give a chance to the single the three Sarstedts released together in 1973: Chinese Restaurant.

Take Me High: Cliff Richard in Brutalist Birmingham

Cliff Richard's last film as the star was Take Me High, in which he took on Brutalist Birmingham and won.

I once posted a scene of him at Gas Street Basin, but that has disappeared from YouTube. Some nonsense about "copyright" no doubt.

But here is a Midlands Today report from last year about the making of the film.

Six of the Best 677

"This lack of engagement with any actual evidence permeates the entire piece. The widely understood phenomenon of induced demand (building roads creates more traffic) is dismissed as ‘anti-car environmentalism’, while any attempts to point out that issues might be linked are dismissed as ‘holistic (i.e. woolly) thinking’." Nick Barlow is not impressed by a new publication on the environment from Liberal Reform.

"Edinburgh City Council has employed a social return on investment model which concluded that for every £1 of investment in parks, around £12 of benefits are delivered, with a higher return when money is invested in premier central parks." Janet Sillett says we should celebrate the full value of parks.

Jennifer Brown, Jeannie Mackie and Yvonne Shell offer psychological, legal and clinical commentary on the Helen Archer (Titchener) attempted murder trial in Radio 4’s The Archers.

"If Take Me High failed to anticipate how briefly concrete would reign, it was prescient in foreseeing which direction the city would turn next. When Birmingham wanted to shake off its concrete-and-cars reputation it looked to its canal network to provide a new narrative. The redevelopment of Brindley Place took place in the early 1990s but Cliff had started the whole process off almost two decades earlier." Catherine O’Flynn on a prescient Cliff Richard film.
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Jane Dismore on Pocahontas and the search for her bones.

Crown Court was always on television if you were off school in the 1970s. Ivan Kirby examines a case in depth.

Cliff Richard discovers Gas Street Basin in 1974

An extract from the film Take Me High.

Reel Streets, which has lots of photographs of the film's locations then and now, describes it thus:

Tim (Cliff Richard) is a successful ambitious young financier working for a London Merchant bank, but even his happy-go-lucky attitude is severely jolted when he is sent to Birmingham instead of the promised New York for his posting! 

But comedy reigns when the enterprising bank manager helps an unsuccessful Birmingham restaurant compete with its rivals by introducing a new fast food - the Brumburger!

Man rings police after neighbour posts "creepy" picture of Cliff Richard in his window

Our Headline of the Day contest sees a win for Brighton's The Argus.

The BBC, Jimmy Savile and Cliff Richard

In view of the BBC's enthusiasm for live broadcasting the police search of Cliff Richard's flat, it is worth reminding ourselves of how they reacted when allegations were made against someone closer to home.

Here is the statement it originally thought was an adequate response to the case of Jimmy Savile:

The BBC has conducted extensive searches of its files to establish whether there is any record of misconduct or allegations of misconduct by Sir Jimmy Savile during his time at the BBC. No such evidence has been found. 

Whilst the BBC condemns any behaviour of the type alleged in the strongest terms, in the absence of evidence of any kind found at the BBC that corroborates the allegations that have been made, it is simply not possible for the corporation to take any further action.

Cliff Richard in Serious Charge

Our Ironic Film of the Day.

This was Cliff Richard's first film appearance. He has only a small role, but he and Andrew Ray are about the only interesting things in the film.

For the most part Serious Charge shows the inability of a certain kind of 1950s Britishness to cope with the emergence of the teenager.

The Shadows: Wonderful Land

I have had this tune in mind as a possible Sunday video for some time. The recent death of Jet Harris, the Shadows' original bass player, has prompted me to choose it this week.

Wonderful Land, which was composed by Jerry Lordan, stayed at number one for eight weeks in 1962, longer than any other single in the 1960s. But then, according to Wikipedia, The Shadows are the third most successful act, in terms of British chart singles, after Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. (Jet Harris's wife, you may be surprised to learn, had an affair with Cliff Richard.)

What strikes you today is the innocent optimism of the tune, even if the wonderful land in question must surely be the USA. You can detect the same quality in other tunes of the early sixties - notably Telstar.