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Not Friday on my Mind 82: A Simple Game. RIP Mike Pinder

No sooner had I heard the news on the radio that Duane Eddy had died (and Richard Tandy of ELO too) than I opened the Guardian’s obituary page to find that Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues has made his final voyage.

Pinder was the last of the original five members of the Moody Blues still standing. Now only Justin Hayward and John Lodge remain of the later classic line-up.

Pinder’s contribution to that classic line-up was immense. It is fair to say that without his ability on the mellotron (an instrument he personally brought to the attention of The Beatles) The Moody Blues would not have sounded as they did, nor had the same success.

His piano solo on the original group’s biggest hit Go Now was no small part of its effectiveness.

This song written by Pinder was the B-side to Ride My See-saw but later appeared on the odd album Caught Live + Five. It was later a hit for The Four Tops but as usual Levi Stubbs shouted his way through it.

The Moody Blues: A Simple Game

This is another of my favourite Pinder songs:-

The Moody Blues: The Best Way to Travel (from In Search of the Lost Chord)

I always loved the piano ending to this track which was sandwiched between Have You Heard Part 1 and Have You Heard Part 2 on the LP On the Threshold of a Dream.

The Moody Blues: The Voyage

Michael Thomas (Mike) Pinder: 27/12/1941 – 24/4/2024. So it goes.

 

Reelin’ in the Years 214: Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today) – RIP Barrett Strong and Reelin’ in the Years 215: Marquee Moon. RIP Tom Verlaine

So this week both Barrett Strong, cowriter of many Tamla Motown hits especially for the Temptations, and Tom Verlaine of proto punk band Television and have left us.

Strong had a 1950s hit with Money (That’s What I Want), later recorded by The Beatles. His writing credit for the song has been withdrawn twice.
Apart from that his most enduring work is probably the run of songs he wrote with Norman Whitfield for The Temptations. Including this one.

The Temptations: Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today)

Barrett Strong: 5/2/1941 – 28/1/2023. So it goes.

Verlaine’s music has been an influence of many of those who came after him.

Television: Marquee Moon

Thomas Miller (Tom Verlaine) 13/12/1949 – 28/1/2023. So it goes.

Friday on my Mind 211: I’ll Keep Holding On – RIP Wanda Young

I heard on the radio at the weekend of the death of Wanda Young, latterly lead singer of the Motown female vocal group The Marvelettes.

The Marvelettes were Motown’s first successful female group with a US no 1 in 1961 with Please Mr Postman (a song which was in the UK mainly associated with The Beatles – they covered it on their second album – until The Carpenters had a no 2 hit with it in 1974.)

Young became the group’s lead singer in 1965. This was th efisrt single she sang lead on

The Marvelettes: I’ll Keep Holding On

Wanda LaFaye Young (Wanda Rogers;) 9/8/1943 – 15/12/21. So it goes.

Friday on my Mind 208: That’s the Way God Planned It

Billy Preston holds the singular distinction of being the only other artist to feature as a named collaborator on a Beatles single. That was with Get Back and its B-side Don’t Let Me Down, both credited to The Beatles with Billy Preston.

In the wake of that he had a top ten hit of his own in 1969 with this song though.

Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It

Friday on my Mind 207: The Price of Love. RIP Don Everly

Don Everly, half of pioneering rock music duo the Everly Brothers, who had an undeniable impact and influence on musical acts who succeeded them, including The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, died earlier this week. (I noted his brother Phil’s passing in 2014.)

Don was 81. (Astonishingly, the obituary in the printed edition of the Guardian said he was survived by his mother, who has therefore reached a very good age)

By the time I got to listening to music in the mid-60s the Everlys star had waned somewhat but their harmonies still had a distinctive edge.

This song, written by the brothers, was the Everlys last big hit in the UK.

The Everly Brothers: The Price of Love

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Isaac Donald (Don) Everly: February 1/2/1937 –21/8/2021. So it goes.

Friday on my Mind 198: Ferry Cross the Mersey. RIP Gerry Marsden

2021 is carrying on from where 2020 left off. Last Sunday Gerry Marsden died.

He is of course best known as lead singer and guitarist of Gerry and the Pacemakers, a group which had the distinction of their first three hits reaching no 1 in the UK charts, something his contemporaries The Beatles did not achieve. (To be fair they had many more hits in total.)

It was the third of these number 1 songs, a cover of You’ll Never Walk Alone from the musical Carousel, which will be Gerry’s lasting legacy, a song adopted as a theme tune by the supporters of both Liverpool FC and Celtic FC, but because of Marsden’s Liverpudlian upbringing will now forever be associated with the city.

It was the following song though that was the first single I ever bought. The clip is from Top of the Pops but is either mimed or the record has been dubbed over the video.

Gerry and the Pacemakers: Ferry Cross the Mersey

Ferry Cross the Mersey was also the title song from the film the group made in 1965, a film I went to see but of which I can only remember this one scene, shot on one of the eponymous ferries with the group on its deck – complete with drum kit! – and an exchange with some woman saying, “Hello, Gerry.”

Gerard (Gerry) Marsden: 24/12/1942 – 3/1/2021. So it goes.

Some Good News (and Reelin’ in the Years 183: Here Comes the Sun)

Something cheerful this week. In celebration.

One day last week we were woken up by a phone call where my and the good lady’s very happy eldest son told us of the birth, a little earlier than expected, of his baby daughter, our first grandchild, Isobel Skye, 6 lb, 6 oz. (All those years, over 50, of nothing but the metric system being taught in Scottish schools and we still announce birth weights in Imperial units!) Mother and child are both doing well.

A welcome good thing arriving in what has been a dismal year. Sadly due to Covid restrictions we have not met Isobel in person. Soon, we hope.

This song was a hit for Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel in 1976 (Richie Havens had also recorded it in 1971) but it was first heard on The Beatles album Abbey Road in 1969.

Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel: Here Comes the Sun

https://youtu.be/mTetprCP2b8?feature=shared

And the original:-

The Beatles: Here Comes the Sun

Friday on my Mind 194: A Whiter Shade of Pale

I suppose this track really ought to have been much higher up this list. However, I didn’t want the category to contain any obvious songs from the 60s (hence no Beatles, no Rolling Stones) nor – certainly after a few weeks – repeats of the same artist. When I posted the band’s Shine on Brightly I thought I had already featured Homburg here. (I had, but before I started the Friday on my Mind category.)

A Whiter Shade of Pale is so quintessentially 60s that it’s a bit clichéd as an exemplar from the decade.

But this still sounds so fresh, possibly because of its source material, Bach’s Air on the G String.

The original video/film was surely in black and white. That’s certainly how I remember it. This one must have been colourised.

Anyway here’s where Prog Rock might be said to have begun – at least in the public’s mind.

Procol Harum: A Whiter Shade of Pale

Friday on my Mind 186: Let’s Be Natural – RIP Neil Innes

2019 kept taking away till the very end. Not content with removing Alasdair Gray from us it managed to take Neil Innes on the same day.

It was only four months ago I featured his big hit with The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, I’m the Urban Spaceman.

That was the least of the band’s eccentricities. Innes contributed the most bizarre guitar solo to the utterly indescribable Canyons of Your Mind. Try out this video from the BBC’s Colour Me Pop for size.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Canyons of Your Mind

Innes’s Beatles parodies for Rutland Weekend Television and subsequent recordings as The Rutles were sublime. The haunting Let’s Be Natural is the perfect example.

The Rutles: Let’s Be Natural

Neil James Innes: 9/12/1944 – 29/12/2019. So it goes.

Friday on my Mind 185: You Can Never Stop Me Loving You – RIP Kenny Lynch

One of the few black British entertainers – one of the few black faces – to appear on British television in the early 1960s, belonged to Kenny Lynch, who has died this week.

There were US acts of course, such as Sammy Davis Jr, Nat King Cole and Harry Belafonte and Blues and Motown artistes would feature on shows such as Ready, Steady Go! and Top of the Pops but as for British performers Lynch was just about it.

There were quite a few strings to Lynch’s bow, singing on variety shows, popping up on game shows – always with a cheerful demeanour – and he also had a career as an actor but among other songs Lynch wrote Sha La La La La Lee which became a hit for the Small Faces. He was also the first singer to cover a Beatles song (Misery.)

This is his joint biggest UK hit. On it Lynch sounds a bit like Sam Cooke. No small praise.

Kenny Lynch: You Can Never Stop Me Loving You

Kenneth Lynch: 18/3/1938 – 18/12/2019. So it goes.

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