Brian Bennett's sound on the new album

[Peter K]

Dear all,

I checked the website which has all the informations about Cliff Richard's recordings and there's the remark that
the song has been recorded on December 19th 1961 at Abbey Road Studio 2, the Shadows line up was Hank Marvin,
Bruce Welch, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan.
I doubt that this is correct as Brian Bennett had joined already in October, so why should Tony Meehan have been on drums ?
Maybe the source for this info is the same as the one for the book " The Shadows at EMI " ?
When listening to the old record again I'm under the impression that Brian was on drums.

Regards Peter K

[Didier]

Dear all,

I checked the website which has all the informations about Cliff Richard's recordings and there's the remark that
the song has been recorded on December 19th 1961 at Abbey Road Studio 2, the Shadows line up was Hank Marvin,
Bruce Welch, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan.
I doubt that this is correct as Brian Bennett had joined already in October, so why should Tony Meehan have been on drums ?
Maybe the source for this info is the same as the one for the book " The Shadows at EMI " ?
When listening to the old record again I'm under the impression that Brian was on drums.

Regards Peter K

According to the book "The Story of the Shadows" Tony left the group in september 1961, and was almost immediatly replaced by Brian. So it's very unlikely that Tony recorded with the Shadows in December 1961.

Didier

[Didier]

I also have Roberto Pistolesi's recording date list which he made from the Abbey Road files, and it also states that "Do You Wanna Dance" was recorded on December 19th 1961.
So it was certainly Brian on drums. If Tony is credited, it can only be an error.

Didier

[EJK]

As the person who thought that Tony Meehan was the drummer on Do you wanna dance I now agree that Brian Bennett must have been "the man" just by the date of the recording.

Back in 1962 there was always a bit of confusion as to who was playing drums and bass on certain Shadows releases (eg Wonderful Land) then bearing in mind that in those less informative times information on any aspect of recording detail was practically non existent. I still find it odd though that with it being BB on drums the Reunited recording does not feature his driving intro as it one Cliff Richard's/Shadows best rocking tracks.

Perhaps it is because Jet Harris is on bass that BBs performance on it is very similar to Tony Meehan's style. In the 1975 book by George Tremlett - The Cliff Richard Story - on page 51 Hank is credited with saying that "he always thought that Tony was the original Keith Moon because he really used to belt the drums" and on the track in question they are really belted!

As an aside, when I was playing in groups in these far off times it was a great disappointment to many of us musos when both Tony and soon after, Jet left the group. There was so much more to come from the classic original line-up, in fact to capture what could have been check out the atmosphere in the photo on page 24 of Jet and Tony in the Daily Mirror book -Me and my Shadows - price five bob in 1961! It creates the sense of a cutting edge set-up which was lost for a while until John Rostill joined and got things beatier again.

[bgohara]

[quote="EJK"]As the person who thought that Tony Meehan was the drummer on Do you wanna dance I now agree that Brian Bennett must have been "the man" just by the date of the recording.

I still find it odd though that with it being BB on drums the Reunited recording does not feature his driving intro as it one Cliff Richard's/Shadows best rocking tracks.
quote]

Eric - I must admit that I was a little disappointed that the new version of Do You Wanna Dance didn't feature Brian's intro as, to me, it was one of his finest moments. However, I did like the new version of DYWD (this was the track that probably featured the most radical reworking on the 'Reunited' album). The driving drum intro on C'Mon everybody though made up for it, for me!

Bernie