Shadows vocals ... and other aspects of their appeal

[GoldenStreet]

I do think the guy who posted on this thread earlier was far too derogative of The Shadows vocals in the earlier days

I LIKED their version of 'All My Sorrows' - it's well crafted and not dreary at all (that's just his view !) and 'Baby My Heart' was great

My thoughts, entirely. Perhaps it's the old folkie in me, but All My Sorrows, in particular, represents a refreshing acoustic departure from the album as a whole, with great harmonies into the bargain.

Bill

[Fenderman]

I preferred The Searchers version, not a great fan of the Shads version and usually hit the fast forward button on my CD player when it comes on.
Baby My Heart is a nice pleasant song as is Are they all like you? But i can't stand A little Bitty tear or Let it me be me but each to their own.

[Uncle Fiesta]

I just wish they'd done more of their own songs instead of a load of pointless boring covers. They were more than capable of writing good ones, as they demonstrated many times.

[Fenderman]

Do you mean in the later Polydor years or back in the 60's/70's. Some of their covers back then were quite good (for example The Letter is a good cover) but the Polydor covers were mostly rubbish. Hank said after around 1985 that the creativity had gone and original tracks were just 'knocked up' in the studio with little thought afterwards.
I too wish the later albums had more covers but the record company dictated otherwise.

[Uncle Fiesta]

1985?

Blimey, I'd have said 1965! (Apart from their brief 'comeback' in 1973-77 of course.)

[iefje]

Do you mean in the later Polydor years or back in the 60's/70's. Some of their covers back then were quite good (for example The Letter is a good cover) but the Polydor covers were mostly rubbish. Hank said after around 1985 that the creativity had gone and original tracks were just 'knocked up' in the studio with little thought afterwards.
I too wish the later albums had more covers but the record company dictated otherwise.

You probably mean more originals instead of covers. I think Hank's quote dates back to the late 1990's in which he refers to the Polydor period between 1980 and 1990 and to the creativity which had somewhat gone during the second half of the 1980's.

[iefje]

1985?

Blimey, I'd have said 1965! (Apart from their brief 'comeback' in 1973-77 of course.)

In my opinion, the tracks from the second half of the 1960's are pretty good too. Despite being made up of mainly derivative material, the "Jigsaw" album is of a high standard. The albums "Shadow Music" and "From Hank, Bruce, Brian And John" contain more originals than "Jigsaw". I think all of these are quite creative.

[Fenderman]

I'd pick Shadow Music as one of my favourite 60's albums but Jigsaw, despite having some great tracks and sounding a bit different wasn't as good. They didn't have the time to sit down and write much tracks for it as they were working 6 days a week in panto with on Sunday available to go into the studio which is why the LP has quite a lot of covers. The title track is pretty good though.

[Moderne]

It's all very well being creative but you need to have an outlet/demand for your creativity. If you're someone like Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney, there's always going to be a demand for new original material but with The Shads the demand increasingly over the years has been for 'that sound', rather than songwriting/creativity. They tried to create a demand for original material at several stages of their career - most notably in the early 70s with the MWF and then Rockin' With Curly Leads projects but were consistently disappointed by the public's response - particularly in their home market. By the mid-80s, after Hank's solo vocal LPs had stopped, the only outlet left for their creativity really was composing non-album B-sides for their singles. The record company didn't want them recording original material (although Pierre Teodori's compositions still made it onto two of their Polydor LPs) - Hank told me this. Bearing this in mind I think it's remarkable that they've been as original as they have over the years. It's a similar story with vocals - constantly trying to push against the public's demand for instrumentals, because we like to pigeonhole people in this country and say, "That's what we like you for/you're well-known for...keep doing more of that."

[iefje]

After the "Guardian Angel" album, the "Simply...Shadows" and "Steppin' To The Shadows" albums did contain group compositions: "Pulaski" on the former and "Mountains Of The Moon", "Stack-It" and "Shoba" on the latter. "At Their Very Best" of course also included original material, but those were new recordings of hits from the 1960's.