Who Here is from England?

[Bruce Tackett]

Stumbled across this video last night and found it fascinating. Ended up watching the whole thing. It's a documentary on the English group, The Shadows, 60 years later. Because they were the backup group for Cliff Richards, he is also featured in the video.

I remember the guitar instrumental "Apache", but I didn't recall who had recorded it. It came from England. I'll be darned. Cliff Richards was the Elvis Presley of England. He never caught on in the U.S.A., but I know at least one of his movies, Holiday something or other, did make it over here. I saw it as a teenager.

[macky]

The Shadows were my favorite instrumental group by themselves, of the day.  They were excellent backup for Cliff as well. 

Their clear sound influenced my piano playing at the time right through to around 1963. And they were easy to learn guitar chords off, as well. Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch, Jet Harris, and Tony Meehan were the best combination.

Jet Harris replaced the old slap bass with the bass guitar and Tony Meehan could do more with a basic kitset of drums than I ever heard anybody else do in the day. Examples of outstanding drumming were The Savage, Frightened City, for infills between music phrases, and solos such as in Diamonds, when Jet Harris and Tony teamed up by themselves later on.  

Quite a few notable guitarists such as Mark Knoffler of Dire Straits took their cue from Hank Marvin.   

[Bruce Tackett]

Watching the video, I learned that The Shadows (They had to change their name from "The Drifters", because of an existing group of that name in the u.S.A.), got the first Gibson Telecaster to ever arrive in England. They got one because it was the model Buddy Holly used. Cliff Richards sent away to California for it and it cost him 150 quid. That guitar is now worth a fortune.

When you have time, macky, you ought to watch the video. It is very enjoyable.

[mr potatohead]

Bruce, thanks so much for posting and to macky for the additional info. Good stuff!

[macky]

Yes I certainly will, once my grandsons turn their own volume down to about 'thunderous' i.e. get their little butts into bed. 

We were lucky here in NZ (besides our age group advantage, seeing in the dawn of Rock 'n' Roll and everything that came after it).  We were exposed to liberal doses of American rock and British as well.   
There was some good stuff coming over from Australia too, by the early sixties.  There was so much good stuff to listen to, it was hard to cover it all, so I more or less concentrated on guitar instrumental groups and notable guitar players with their band back-ups. 

The Ventures knocked out in my opinion the best guitar instrumental with that raunchy sound ever,  Walk Don't Run,  and they've followed up with more good stuff, but some of their covers were dreadful.  Even the Shadows did some lack-lustre numbers, better forgotten than remembered.  Both bands turned out that much excellent work that there's plenty to listen to for years.

The Chantays were another notable band, their version of Pipeline is unsurpassed. 

In Australia by the early sixties, a surf band called the Atlantics turned out a number called War Of The Worlds that hardly any DJ in Oz would play because it was "too advanced". 

 
I believe they were going well into the 21st century and here is another good one, with a more "mature" lead guitar.  Also one of my favs.  

   I think there's an American band called the Atlantics as well.  It's surprising at first light why a band should call themselves such, in the South Pacific, but it was actually because they saw the Atlantic sign on the petrol pumps of the day.   You know, like here in NZ, Big Tree, Plume, Mobilgas, Shell X100 motor oil, Europa ("it's clean burning Europa, for me....") as the  ad went on the radio.  

There's one instrumental that will always stick out in my mind, even though it's not really a guitar instrumental as such.  Duane Eddy's Peter Gunn. 

  I've never heard a better version, the driving beat, the bassy guts to the music, the insane off-his-face sax playing. 

[trog]

[macky]

Well I watched Bruce's video and although I was never in England, much of what was in the video, musically at least, was here in NZ too.  I learned six-string guitar, and what a bass guitar should sound like by listening to Shadow's music. Many of my peers at school learned their guitars the same way, listening to the clear sounds of the Shadows. 

When the Beatles hit the scene, everything changed almost overnight in NZ it seemed, at least in the teens and early twenty-year olds. Up until the Beatles we had had Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the wonderful British female singers etc, and interspersed with all that, the Shadows various hits as they brought them out.  American music had always been popular, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Ricky Nelson etc, but the first half of the 60's here in NZ was Shadows and those bands I've just mentioned to begin with, followed very quickly by the Beatles who came into prominence in amongst it all, and a whole new era of bands like the Rolling Stones and the Animals, the first songs from the Moody Blues, The Who, Yardbirds covered the Rock scene with hit after hit.

The Shadows were still popular with "older teens" who were muso's, but the general teenage public were enthralled with the new sounds coming out almost by the day it seemed. Much of it was aided by technology in the different ways the electric guitar could be made to sound, and new techniques of playing it were being developed all the time. 

That is why in my opinion that the electric guitar and its amplifiers and "extras" is above any other instrument in the world for sheer variety and overall contribution to Rock, ever, and always will be. There is no other instrument that comes near it, except maybe the electronic keyboards of sorts (Rick Wakeman).    But even they cannot bend notes, instantly damp other notes then play full clear again with great speed, vibrato at will, and "distort" vibrating strings on a fretboard the way the electric guitar can be made to play, with a single instrument in the hands of an expert, using extra gadgets for a certain sound.  

And as Rock went on in the 60's, it was no longer sufficient to have what amounted to good basic skills re the Shadows and their playing.  Rock began to require more and more virtuosity, hence bands like The Who, and American super-guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton etc all raised the bar for getting a hit tune out into the public arena. 

And it was most notable here in NZ that those bands that had Fender or Burns guitars had a huge advantage right from the start. I had joined a band by the time I was 17, bought a Kawaii bass guitar on a Thursday afternoon, attended practice that night, and was playing in my first gig the following Saturday with a hall full of dancing and clapping to a selection of Rolling Stones, a few Beatles, one or two Animals, and one or two other bands' numbers.  My band members were mystified as to why I could play a bass guitar straight off, but when I told them I had played the piano for ten years up to then, they realized why. I had already gotten used to the feel of playing a guitar as well.  No brag, just fact :-)   

With the Shadows music, there were many of us who could play as well as them.  I heard other local schoolboy bands who were turning out music that was only lacking as competent a drummer as Tony Meehan or Bennett, (who were both great drummers and hard to match).  But I had Jet Harris's techniques and all his tunes down pat, as many others did too, and joining a band that played mainly Rolling Stones was a piece of cake, because most of their hits at that time followed the three-chord 12-bar blues (R & R) format.  
Other pieces like the Who's My Generation required a bit of practice until I got it, but that came right pretty quickly.

Re the Fenders, I couldn't afford to buy one at 15 weeks of my income, but I had a borrow of a beautiful pink Fender bass one night, and the difference to my usual guitar was enormous. The Fender was so easy to play and beautiful to listen to.  Swoon !!

But getting back to The Shadows, watching Bruce Welch for much of that video, it was matter of being in the right place and the right time in those days. His rhythm guitar could be matched by any number of guitar players in the street I live in.  It's basic strumming over a few chords, that's it.  Of course, he more than anyone else knew what he was doing, but musically, given the same equipment as The Shadows had, I could round up dozens of guitar players, even without being in the scene these days, and have them playing the same as a band in two weeks. 

I heard an old Maori a couple of months ago walking around playing Apache. He was playing the lead (melody) and filling in the strumming at the same time.  

Bruce also talked about how instrumentals sort of faded around 1966, which was pretty much true, but twenty years later they came back with the likes of Jeff Beck and that "other magician" Joe Satriani.  Full albums of guitar music once again for the listeners. But technique way above anything the older rock bands ever did, and The Shadows too. 

Still, The Shadows will always be the group that gave a great boost to British Rock, and got so many guitarists off the ground and into bands of their own, with that smooth beautiful Fender-driven clear sound they were so noted for. I notice in the video they were playing Burns guitars at one stage, but it looks like they went firmly back in the Fender camp. 

Sometimes, playing relatively simple music very well, is much better than complicated stuff only a select group may appreciate.  At the last, you have to play what the audience wants, and The Shadows certainly did that well.   Their music was fairly simple, but tightly controlled and competently played with feeling.  And that is what makes music good for everyone.

  

[Dave Reslo]

Not sure Bruce, there used to be a guy here from Eng1undUK though?

[Bruce Tackett]

Not exactly rock, but a guitar instrumental I've always really liked:

[Bruce Tackett]

May 29, 2020 13:34:50 GMT Dave Reslo said:

Not sure Bruce, there used to be a guy here from Eng1undUK though?

Right. Some short guy named Big something or other. He used to keep us safe.

[BigBruvOfEnglandUK]

Cliff Richard, not Richards.

[macky]

May 30, 2020 0:14:18 GMT Bruce Tackett said:

Not exactly rock, but a guitar instrumental I've always really liked:

Very nice. Maria Elena via Los Indios Tabajaras was very popular here around the mid-60s, even with all the rock.  These two made a nice job of it, and a nice touch swapping lead and rhythm. 

[macky]

  

A beautiful number that illustrates the contrast, styles and sounds of the guitar.  Both popular in their day (and still), twenty-something years apart.     

[Bruce Tackett]

May 30, 2020 1:04:31 GMT BigBruvOfEnglandUK said:

Cliff Richard, not Richards.

He's keeping us safe!

[macky]

We should all know by now that Big Bruv is always on duty.