Iain Purdon wrote:Would critics of the “watered down” sound put The Boys into that category?
No.
The Boys was often described as an
FBI clone. In fact, it was a fair bit more aggressive than
FBI (and better for that reason, in my opinion).
I remember
FBI being played on the radio and (sometimes on) TV at the time of its currency as a single, and I heard The Shadows close their live show with it in April 1962 (with Licorice and Peter Carter). I clearly recall regarding
FBI as a pretty wild track. But your memory plays tricks on you, because, in mid-1963, when I bought a copy at NEMS in Liverpool (Whitechapel branch), and complying with the purchasing ritual, I asked for it to be played in one of those very kiosks so often seen on newsreel footage. I was 12 years old and knew nothing about music, but I remember being stunned by how
tame FBI sounded by comparison with
The Frightened City,
Kon-Tiki and
The Savage - or even
Apache. Yes, Hank cut loose on the improvised solo, but the rest of the track wasn't like that. It wasn't how I'd remembered it in my imagination.
The Boys, on the other hand, was played by the whole group with more gusto and bravura and it shows. As well as that, and whilst I can take or leave
The Girls, the Bill McGuffie composition
Sweet Dreams is the best thing the group recorded in 1962 - bar none.
At this stage though (late summer / early autumn 1962), neither
Dance On! nor
Foot Tapper had been released. In the months after they were released, and then in the autumn of 1963 when
Shindig was released, letters started appearing in the weekly musical press bemoaning the dropping of the early Shadows sound. It was undeniable. There were a few tracks here and there which retained and reflected it (the solo from
South Of The Border, the whole arrangement of
The Rumble and the
Wonderful Land-like memento of
Spring Is Nearly Here), but by and large, it had gone and it wasn't coming back.
There was no doubt good commercial justification for that. But it still happened.