by Moderne » 02 Feb 2018, 08:29
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."