The Unoriginal Beatles

The more time I spend on youtube and Facebook, the harder it becomes to get the wise words of Peter Allen out of my head; 'everything old is new again'. I first heard Allen's live version of his 1974 song of that title, which is played as backing for a dance scene in All That Jazz. Clearly it's supposed to sound like an old show tune, maybe from an MGM musical of the 1950s. There was a lot of that about in the '70s—Kander and Ebb's majestic 'New York, New York' for instance, was written in 1977 and recorded in 1979 by Frank Sinatra, in the same studio that parts of London Calling were being produced, by the Clash.

It shouldn't surprise anyone, though, when you consider that going way back to the 1950s, old songs or songs that were written and recorded to sound as if they were old, were the staple fare for emerging rock n rollers, lounge singers and Broadway musicals alike. The Clash's inclusion of Vince Taylor's Brand New Cadillac on London Calling was an admission by the former punk nihilists that the history of rock n roll had some good stuff in it—both musically and visually.

The thing is, Elvis made it singing songs of the 1940s by Wynonie Harris, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, and Bill Monroe. He dressed like all the sharp-dressed men he'd been in awe of growing up, the men who he'd see at the roadhouse on a Saturday night—pimps and gangsters of Tupelo during WWII, dripping with women, jewellery and hair grease to keep the Marcel wave in place. The roadhouse bands playing jump and jive got everyone shaking, rattling and rolling and, as one of the few poor white boys in the area, it was all supposed to be out of bounds to Elvis. So naturally he dug it.

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra wanted to be like Bing Crosby, and loved Jimmy Durante, The Count and Duke, Mabel, Billie and Billy (Eckstine, below), the musicians who made it big in pre- and during WWII America. Sinatra's second wave of success came in the mid-1950s when he recorded old songs such as I Get A Kick Out Of You (1934), Just One Of Those Things (1935), My Funny Valentine (1937) and Taking A Chance on Love (1940). Like Elvis though, it was how Frank dressed, his attitude and how he sang the old songs and made them new again, which made them so successful.

In 1957, John Lennon and Paul McCartney formed a skiffle group together, called The Quarrymen, and the only surviving recording of them includes a live performance of a song that they might have thought was an Elvis tune; 'Baby, Let's Play House'. In fact the first and original recording of the song was by it's author, Arthur Gunter (in 1954). Elvis made a lot of old songs into new hits in his time, and to begin with The Beatles also performed lots of old, mostly American, material as they learned their trade.

I wrote about their love of US girl groups in an earlier blog, but the Liverpudlian beat combo also loved Little Richard, Buddy Holly and some rare—to Brits, anyway—other songs, too. 'Slow Down', which the Beatles played at the BBC in 1963 has since regularly been misattributed as a Lennon/McCartney original. Alexis Korner and Steve Marriott slowed it way down in 1975, but The Jam increased the same song's beat on their debut album, in 1977. The Replacements covered the song in 1981 (it's not clear whose version they're taking as their start point, probably all of them). In fact, the song was written and originally recorded by Larry Williams, in 1958. Perhaps best known as the author (and original singer) of 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy'—another Beatles' fave cover tune, done in the manner of Little Richard who had the big hit with it—WIlliams also wrote Bony Moronie. He and Little Richard were drug buddies in the 1960s and '70s, and despite attempts at resurrecting his recording career (with Richard and Johnny Guitar Watson both, at one time), Williams never got to be a big recording star. He shot himself in the head at age 44, in 1980.

The Beatles' version of Matchbox, which they'd been playing since 1962, was credited to Carl Perkins (1957) when they got around to recording it. But he seems to have been 'inspired'; by the much older Blind Lemon Jefferson-recorded Matchbox Blues (1927). Since the Perkins hit version the song's been recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis (1958), Ronnie Hawkins (1970), Bob Dylan and countless others. There's even a Derek & The Dominoes version in which Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins join in. That 1970 TV show footage is great for many reasons, not least of which is the other, major influence that the original, old rockers, bluesmen and country pickers had on the impressionable, austerity-beaten Brits. Eric Clapton stands at mic flanked by two very cool looking old dudes: Perkins (left) and Cash (right) make Clapton look like the stage sweeper in his bell-bottom jeans.

It's impossible to overstate the impression that the American stars made on British dress sense in the late 1950s and early '60s. While Bill Haley and Gene Vincent were dressed in British-inspired outfits (Vincent's was borrowed from Vince Taylor; it was re-designed for Elvis' 1968 TV Special), the suits, jackets, instruments and hair styles were all taken and adapted by Brits. The cyclical nature of pop culture means that the same looks—and the same sounds—have been coming around ever since the first commercial release of a 45rpm record (1951, Columbia). In the 1980s the pudding-basin hair cut, cowboy boots and fancy shirts, vests and fringed jackets favoured by the bands like Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds in the late 1960s were worn by The Long Ryders and similarly-influenced country/rock/psych bands (Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate etc). Today Morrisey's version of the Elvis quiff is to be spotted atop a new generation of Buddy Holly-style spectacles-wearing young people.

In the 1990s of course, Oasis (sorry, no links; can't stand them) slavishly copied the Beatles music and faxed over a thin version of Lennon's attitude for a generation yet to have youtube. Liam's daft hairdo could only have been improved by an original Beatles wig. If their fans could see how bad the Oasis facsimile was, perhaps not so many young people for whom the Gallaghers' rewrites were new, would have paid money for their music. Still, it couldn't happen again. Could it?