(Note: Criteria, Scoring and Rationale for this series may be found here.)
The Hollies
(80.3 pts):
- 6 Top 10 hits
- 1 Top 20
- 5 Top 40
- 12 Top 100 hits
- “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” peaked at #2 in 1972.
The Hollies:
An English band that began in the late 50s and made it into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame by chasing trends for a quarter century…
…Mimicked the most American band of all in the early 70s to come up with the biggest Billboard hit of their career
And it’s a banger.
Which is a shame: because I really wanted to troll this band:
Allan Clarke and Graham Nash met when they sat together in school at age six, and discovered a common love of music.
By the time they were teenagers, they were playing a few skiffle hits on stage and vocalizing harmonies like their idols, The Everly Brothers, whom the two met late at night outside the stars’ hotel after a concert.
Six years later most of the Everly Brothers’ album Two Yanks in England would be written by Clarke, Nash and lead guitarist Tony Hicks, while a very young Reginald Dwight played piano.
That’s a bit ironic, since early on The Hollies weren’t allowed to record their own songs. After the band signed with Parlaphone in 1963, they released a few covers of The Coasters.
Their drummer left, and Hicks brought in the drummer from his former band, Bobby Elliott.
These five (along with bassist Eric Heydock, then Bernie Calvert) hit it big in England in 1964. American record companies came calling, hoping to catch the sequel to the Beatles (Hell, even Freddy and the Dreamers hit #1 with “I’m Telling You Now.” Tom gave it a 4).
The Hollies early singles were packaged into albums for American audiences, and by September of 1966, they had their first top 10 hit in the States:
“Bus Stop” hit #5, and it’s a fastball down the middle – nothing adventurous, a good representation of their music (it’s a 5).
Their next Top 10 hit took some chances:
Inspired by the band’s visit to a Turkish club in New York City (and ran into, of all people, Tom Jones), it included a banjo with slap echo played by Hicks, the only time a banjo is used in one of their songs.
Written by Hicks, Graham and Nash under their actual names (instead of L. Ransford, Nash’s grandfather), it hit #7 (it’s a 6.)
“On a Carousel” just missed the Top 10.:
But the embedded video has footage of them laying down their typical three-part harmonies. It reached the top 10 in seven other countries and only #11 in the States, and Clarke lamented the rampant success in Europe and Australia preventing them from touring the United States more.
Not that this stopped Graham Nash from falling in love with the West Coast music scene.
The Hollies toured the United States in 1966 where Nash initially met David Crosby and Stephen Stills. The following year the band enjoyed another Top 10 success with “Carrie Anne”, and six more songs hit the Billboard 100, which led to the band touring the United States again.
(The steelpan solo in “Carrie Anne” boosts it up to a 6.)
The 1968 tour led to Graham Nash getting to know the California scene, Stills, and Crosby a little better. It gave him ideas for The Hollies’ updated sound, which he attempted on the single “King Midas in Reverse,” and their next album, Butterfly: both of which failed commercially.
Nash decided it was time to spread his wings and fly away. You may have heard of his next band.
The Hollies replaced Nash with Terry Sylvester, and immediately had an English hit in “Sorry Suzanne.”
Next was an album of Dylan covers. None of them impacted the American charts.
But then Tony Hicks found a song on a publisher’s desk that he thought might work well for The Hollies:
Written by Bobby Scott (who had written “A Taste of Honey”) and Bob Russell (noted mostly for musical scores and two Grammy nominations for Best Original Song with Quincy Jones,) “He Ain’t Heavy” was based on the Boys’ Town slogan (which itself has 19th century origins).
Turned down by Joe Cocker, it hit #7 in the States and #3 in the U.K, then #1 there in 1988 after it was included in a Miller Lite commercial.
But their biggest American hit was still to come:
They just had to look to America as Nash had done to find it.
Creedence Clearwater Revival never got their due write-up from Tom Briehan because they never scored a #1 hit: 13 Top 10 hits, including 5 which hit #2. Tom rated a number of them:
- “Proud Mary” is an 8.
- “Bad Moon Rising” is an 8.
- “Green River” is an 8.
- “Travelin’ Band” is an 8.
- “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” is an 8.
Notice a theme?
CCR was a four-man band made up of Stu Cook, Doug Clifford, and brothers John and Tom Fogerty.
They met in junior high school, and after a few name changes arrived at the amalgamation ‘Creedence Clearwater Revival’ in 1968.
Success followed immediately.
Over the next five years, CCR recorded seven albums (the first five in 24 months!) before falling apart due to John Fogerty’s control over the band’s output. His brother Tom left before their final album Mardi Gras, which included songs from the other two. It wasn’t as successful as the other albums, and Fogerty felt vindicated for not allowing other band members’ contributions.
The band broke up, and Fogerty went to war with everyone – label owner Saul Zaenetz over the conditions of his contract, former band members, and even his brother whom he refused to see while Tom lay dying of AIDS in the hospital.
And he sued The Hollies.
Distant Light was supposed to be Allan Clarke’s last with the group: he was ready to move on to a solo career. “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” was written by Clarke and two Rogers: Greenaway and Cook, who are probably most famous for writing the song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, which once reworked became the Coca-Cola jingle for a generation.
Clarke and Cook put together the basics for a song that was expected to be a deep track over a bottle of brandy and a piano. The band produced the song rather than long-time Hollies producer Ron Richards who was home sick that day.
Clarke played lead guitar, a Telecaster strung with heavy strings and double-tracked for a chunky, fizzy sound.
Hicks overdubbed rhythm guitar and a slap echo on Clarke’s vocals (no three-part harmonies here) while he mimicked Elvis’ early efforts (he claims, though it definitely could be a take on Fogerty’s vocals) – all pointing towards swamp rock.
“Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” opens with an FBI agent about to raid a bootlegger’s setup, but freezes when he sees the subject of the song – he doesn’t want her to get caught up in the sting. She’s 5’9” with a pair of 45s (it’s not a gun reference, so HOLY CRAP). Clarke is warned by Charlie:
The name: an homage to Rod Steiger’s character in On the Waterfront) who sees him eyeing the girl.
But all’s well that ends well – our hero gets his raid, and the girl.
John Fogerty’s solo work notwithstanding: it’s the best CCR song not performed by Creedence. Fogerty sued Clarke and The Hollies, and they settled out of court.
About a year after the album’s release, radio stations began picking it up, and it eventually peaked at #2. But Clarke wasn’t around to tour with The Hollies and promote it – he’d left the band to write more songs with Roger Cook and begin a solo career.
The Hollies brought in Swedish singer Mikael Rikfors to take over lead vocals.
But Terry Sylvester sang lead for “Long Cool Woman…” on tour.
Neither Clarke nor The Hollies were successful without each other, so after an album they reunited and hit the Billboard one last time:
“The Air That I Breathe” brought back the three-part harmonies, combined with the sound of Bread. It’s a 4.
And that was it for chart relevance, though not for the lack of trying: In 1981 they recorded their own medley “Holliedaze” following the Stars on 45 lead.
As far as I can tell, it’s the only medley that was done by an actual band themselves, and in 1983 they recorded a VERY 1980s version of The Supremes’ “Stop In The Name of Love”, which peaked at number 29.
In 2010, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and here, I can do some trolling:
They decided to have the lead singer of Train, Pat Monahan perform “Long Cool Woman…” with them.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
GRADE: 9/10
TRIVIA:
- Dave Edmunds was a one-hit wonder, peaking at #4 with 1970s “I Hear You Knocking.” Tom mentioned Edmunds one time for recording what song that hit #2 with another artist? It peaked under a duet’s song that Tom gave a 3.
- I dare anyone to say The Dream Academy is a one-hit wonder – after all, their follow up song “The Love Parade” made #36 (and clocked in at #16 on my Irrational Love chart). Tom mentioned them once under “Stars on 45”. “Life in a Northern Town” peaked at #7. Tom didn’t rate it, but it’s an 7)
BONUS BEATS: Mexico DJ Iker Azcué used the guitar riff from “Long Cool Woman…” for his electronic jam “Yes Papi Yes”
(Iker Azcué has never charted in the States)
BONUS BONUS BEATS: Brie Larson works in a dark room trying to uncover secrets in the 11th movie from the King Kong cinematic universe, Kong: Skull Island:
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Nicely done, thegue. I have a much more favorable view of most of the hits from this band. Their ability to write hooky, jangly songs that fit the zeitgeist of the time is pretty darn high. They may have often aped the sound of others, but for a good while there, they had a sound that was distinctly them. I would go higher on most of the songs you rated.
I’m going to guess “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by GnR for the trivia question.
Lawsuit thoughts-
Regarding Fogerty suing The Hollies for Long Cool Woman…, it’s ironic that he would be sued later for plagiarizing himself. His main argument as I recall was that there is only so much you can do with swamp rock, which would make an excellent defense for The Hollies in his beef with them.
“The Air That I Breathe” is a 7 in my book. I personally love it, but objectively, it had to have something going for it if one of the most iconic songs from the 90s. Radiohead’s “Creep” ripped off the chord changes and its bridge lifts the melody of the verses. Air’s songwriters filed suit and successfully got themselves songwriting credits. Oddly enough, Radiohead was in turn going to sue Lana Del Rey for ripping off of Creep in her song “Get Free”, but they eventually dropped the case.
You’re about 10 years too late.
I know this because a DJ talked about the song’s origins on the SiriusXM #2’s countdown.
It’s “Queen of Hearts,” originally recorded by Edmunds and taken all the way to the runner-up spot by Juice Newton. Given the timeframe, I’m going to guess “Endless Love” is the #1 duet it peaked behind.
Right on. I have a fuzzy memory of Edmunds originally recording Queen of Hearts, but would not have thought of it.
“Juice Newton is my life.”
-Sarah Silverman
I could EASILY be persuaded to bump all of their hits a point (except for “Long Cool Woman…”, but I decided not to because:
Hmm, I never really thought of other bands when I heard their 60s songs. They always felt uniquely them, but I first starting taking notice of them in high school, so I’ve been hearing them for a long time.
Another vote for the greatness of “The Air That I Breathe” here. Especially love the guitar lick at the end of the chorus each time. Then again, it hit me when I was 7 myself, so that may influence my vote for it.
Did not know this group had almost a 20-year long chart career!
I’m familiar with all of their top 10 hits, but only one other song of theirs, “I Can’t Tell the Bottom from the Top.”
I do know, though, that they came from Manchester, which you didn’t mention in the article. They produced an absurdly large number of prominent rock bands over the years for a metro area of only a couple million! Maybe if I was British I’d understand it better.
I’m sure JJ will have thoughts!
I’ll give it a go, thanks!
First though, it’s funny to me to see the reference to a metro area of only a couple of million. That’s the third biggest city in Britain so to me it’s not surprising how big an influence Manchester has had.
One theory is that it rains a lot so staying indoors and forming a band is a better prospect than engaging in outdoor activities.
More likely its connected to its industrial heritage and a strong civic identity that isn’t replicated in the same way elsewhere. Manchester had strong trade links so there were a lot of outside influences came in, including blues, soul and rock n roll records coming in from America. Same as happened in Liverpool.
By the 70s and 80s there was a lot of social deprivation, industry closing down which traditionally has inspired creativity. As Tony Wilson, the boss of Factory Records said, the label name came from continually seeing signs in the city saying Factory Closing so wanted to create something to counterract that and to say Factory Opening. Nothing else to do and not much in the way of prospects so best to make something happen yourself. Which is pretty much what happened with punk which in turn inspired the 80s bands like The Smiths and then Stone Roses who in turn inspired Oasis in the 90s. And with that infrastructure and sense of being different from everyone else it keeps on going even if the genres change.
You did not disappoint!
Finally one that I know a decent amount about – thanks for the even handed approach thegue. Though I do have one major disagreement on The Air That I Breathe; a 4?!?!? Bread?!?!?
On one hand it surprised me that amongst all the British Invasion chart toppers Tom never gave The Hollies a mention but then, they’re overlooked here as well.
They were a good, of the time, pop band with a whole host of catchy songs but without the creative dynamism of others so never achieved the same critical adulation. Towards the end of the 60s they pivoted to a more mature less pop driven sound.
For a contrast of how successful they were at home:
#1 = 2 (23 years apart)
Top 10 = 16 (including four #2s)
Top 40 = 11
I didn’t know about being sued for Long Cool Woman…. Though there was a kind of payback as the chord progression of The Air That I Breathe was ‘borrowed’ by Radiohead for Creep. Unfortunately for The Hollies they didn’t write TATIB, that was Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood who are the ones thst now get writing credits on Creep.
I’d go with He Ain’t Heavy, Long Cool Woman, Gasoline Alley Bred and The Air That I Breathe as my standout tracks.
Though none of them quite match up to Wiggle That Wotsit from 1976 as The Hollies go in a disco funk direction. I can’t decide if it’s genius or gruesome. Think I’m leaning towards so dumb it’s great.
https://youtu.be/AepdUN9KfRg?feature=shared
Tom’s writeups were a lot shorter when he was discussing the British Invasion period, so there’s no way he was going to come around to all of them at the time.
Because I was curious, from a cursory search, it also seems the Zombies were never mentioned by Tom either in The Number Ones. (I’m not a subscriber to the Alternative Number Ones, so I have no idea if he mentioned the idea that the psych-leaning British groups were probably influenced by Odessey and Oracle.) They went to #2 with “She’s Not There,” but I doubt they reached anywhere near the amount of points for thegue’s top 10.
I am a massive fan of the Zombies and plan to do a write up of them at some point if someone doesn’t beat me to it. I do believe that Tom mentioned Time of the Season at some point, but it could be my own fever dream.
Roller, I’m looking forward to it.
The Zombies scored 22 points, barely scraping the top 100 (I think they’re around 95).
After this series has run, I’m going to submit the spreadsheet to MT and let him play around with it to see if he can imbed it into an article for everyone to play around with.
I considered for a brief moment (to allow later artists to score higher; this list is still dominated by the 1960s) to offer a point for each year after “Poor Little Fool” a band had it’s peak song.
But I reconsidered when I realized some early 2000s bands would’ve scored about 200 points. I mean, The Hollies/Jay and the Americans/Grass Roots deserve their moment in the sun more than a band with 3 hits.
I thought Tom mentioned them, but I guess not. Wishful thinking. With only 3 hits, no, I didn’t think they’d be anywhere near your top 10. My dream is that the masses will someday hear their immense catalog of singles that didn’t make it but very well could have, as they are brilliant. And do not get me started on their swan song LP. I’ll save it for the article, if I ever write it.
I like the reference to “Care of Cell 44”. The first time I heard the line that gives it away, I couldn’t believe it. That album had me right then and there and never let go.
“Sandy” was actually issued as a Hollies (not Clarke) single in 1975 and charted in the US, not the UK. Although it only reached #85, that was Bruce Springsteen’s first appearance on the Hot 100 as a writer. “Born to Run” followed later in the year, and “Blinded by the Light” became his only #1 the next year.
As for Argent, I am partial to their other UK top 20 hit, “God Gave Rock and Roll to You.” Also, if you want to hear what the Zombies would have sounded like in 1973, listened to Argent’s song “Pleasure,” composed by Rod Argent and Chris White. Or, given the time of year, “Christmas for the Free,” the B-side of “God Gave Rock and Roll to You.”
You changed my life, a little AdmanPhilly. I did not know Bruce Springsteen wrote this for The Hollies. Air Supply recorded “Sandy”, but stripped it of any New Jersey signifiers.
To clarify, he didn’t write it for the Hollies. His own version was on his second album in 1973. Didn’t know about the Air Supply version. It really sounds like the Hollies, actually.
My God this is bad…but I kinda like it!
That was my reaction a minute in; what the hell is this??? Another minute later and I’m thinking along the lines of some of the Elvis movie discussion yesterday; its so wrong it’s good.
The LMFAO comparison crossed my
mind as well.
It is something else! They did a good job of combining bubble-gum with the disco feel of the day. It isn’t terrible!
Is this the 70’s incarnation of LMFAO?
“They were a good, of the time, pop band with a whole host of catchy songs but without the creative dynamism of others so never achieved the same critical adulation.”
Yeah, I’m going to need to steal this line, because it says everything I thought about them as I wrote it.
In the spirit of today’s act, feel free to steal but I will sue for rightful co-writing credit down the line!
Thom Yorke has joined the chat room.
Followed by Lana
Let me also add- two Hollies’ songs I really like, not mentioned in the article are “I Can’t Let Go” and “Look Through Any Window.”
There’s a fun coincidence:
Last night I was doing article layouts and listening to randomly shuffled obscurities, as I often do.
Linda Ronstadt‘s cover of “I Can’t Let Go“ popped up, and earwormed me all night.
Nice. Never heard it. Listening now. It’s great.
TLeo loves Linda’s “I Can’t Let Go”. And I do to. It is totally an earworm.
That’s a great song in either version.
Yay, I know one of the artists.
I mainly know them because of a project I did once where I attempted a chronologically accurate playlist of British Invasion bands’ singles based on their release dates. It was an ordeal, but I learned a lot!
I think my favorite Hollies song is “King Midas in Reverse.” Really sounds like they were listening to some mid-period XTC.
But, you know, in reverse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWh0DOAfc7A
I know I already posted this Bonus Beat for today’s song in one of my previous columns, but for those who didn’t see it, here is the absolutely perfect Jimmy John’s commercial for Super Bowl LV, where Brad Garrett plays a mob boss to the background sounds of the Hollies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwbdrhZRVs
I get very tired of artists suing other artists. My favorite John Fogerty output is his solo single “The Old Man Down the Road”. I used to laugh at him being sued for plagiarizing himself, but I’m starting to think it’s his just desserts. There is no universe where royalties from “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” should be paid to CCR or John Fogerty. That is just dumb.
As for the Hollies, yeah! I like them. They always seem like The Kinks-light to me. (But I haven’t yet really been able to completely absorb the Kinks, so I prefer the Hollies.) “Bus Stop” is quality, “Stop, Stop, Stop” is a blast, “He Ain’t Heavy…” could come across sappy, but I find it sincere, “The Air that I Breathe” is fantastic, and “Long Cool Woman…” rocks. I always loved LCWIABD as a kid, and it took a lot of years before I figured out it was the Hollies. I was surprised.
Amazing that the Hollies never got mentioned on the mothership, but I guess bands they were adjacent with (CCR, CSN&Y) also didn’t go to #1, so there you go.
I never noticed the CCR resemblance, although I do now. But since when can you sue someone from copping your style? I can imagine about a zillion other lawsuits if this were the law. I endorse your entire post.
I once said this about the Dave Clark Five to a friend on Facebook, but it fits well enough here that I’m just going to copy/paste my comments. I used to slag off the [Hollies] as half-talent lightweights that grabbed a piece of the pie when America when nutso over anything English in 1964-1966. But even second-tier British Invasion bands were pretty good, and the [Hollies] had quite a number of good-to-great tunes. They don’t belong in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, but neither do Cheap Trick, and I love Cheap Trick.
I came into possession of a Hollies retrospective DVD a few years back, and it tried manfully to argue that they were one of the more inventive bands of the mid-’60s through the mid-’70s, which honestly, hogwash; Graham Nash wasn’t even one of the more inventive members of CSN. But invention isn’t everything (heck, sometimes it’s not anything), and the Hollies seemed like a talented and curious enough bunch, without QUITE the songwriting chops to break out of the rest of the British Invasion pack. And they didn’t have enough of a distinct sound or personality to make them as well-regarded as the Dave Clark Five or the Zombies, for instance. Fun stuff, but light and a hair too anonymous overall for my taste.
Graham Nash does appear to have been the most bearable member of the whole CSNY franchise on a personal level, though. (As long as you weren’t romantically involved, anyway.) That’s something.
Oh man, I love the ’60s Hollies (not so much the ’70s) and think that both Tony Hicks and Bobby Elliot are top shelf. If I had a bar band (never gonna happen) we would definitely have a couple of Hollies tunes on the set list.
That said, it’s really interesting to consider the Hollies vis-a-vis the Beatles. In some ways, their stories are not dissimilar: WWII kids who grew up outside of London, loved rock-n-roll, played in skiffle bands, and were part of the British invasion. The differences? I guess the song writing and sense of musical inventiveness. The Beatles went from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Tomorrow Never Knows” at something like light speed (and took us along) while the Hollies made really, really good rock-n-roll songs. Not that they weren’t great at what they did, but they just weren’t in a league with the Beatles (nor the Kinks, for that matter). Love those ’60s songs, though.
Wait, ‘a pair of 45s’ wasn’t a gun reference or a descriptive phrase of a woman carrying a couple of singles she’d just purchased at the local Record Factory? Perhaps the pair part should have tipped me off.
I always conflate ‘Long Cool Woman…’ and Stewart’s ‘Year of the Cat’ because of their movie references. ‘LCWIABD’ has a plot that could have been lifted from any Spade or Marlowe film, while ‘…Cat’ is more specifically connected to Casablanca. It could be the Bogie thing, too. Of course, Bertie Higgins’ ‘Key Largo,’ while also superficially adjacent, belongs in another, hackier universe.
And… Bread vis-á-vis ‘The Air That I Breathe’? Here, we must part ways. Bread was great, but they never reached this kind of cinematic (or bombastic, depending) sweep.
I’m still trying to imagine Mary Astor with a pair of, well, you know.
Before The Posies decided they wanted to move some units and recorded a collection of power-pop bangers, Frosting on the Beater, they released a Hollies-like album called Dear 23. I played “Apology” obsessively. God, I love that song so much. I was all-in with the Seattle sound. But it’s a shame that a lot of bands sacrificed their eclectic-ness in order to remain relevant. I liked Frosting on the Beater, but not as much as its predecessor. The analogy I’ve used for years during this cultural shift, when punk broke, is Camper Van Beethoven’s Key Lime Pie and David Lowery’s first Cracker album, s/t. Both great, but I missed the quirky instrumentation. Beirut’s debut reminded me of CVB.
Unfortunately, the frontman, to my utter shock, turned out to be sketchy. I was floored by the news. When I want to hear “Golden Blunders”, I play the Ringo Starr version, which is, arguably, better.
“Long Cool Woman(In a Black Dress)” is a 10.
I love Brie Larson. A Maui-born filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton gave Larson her first starring role; she played a counselor in Short Term 12. It was the calling card that moved Larson to the A-list. The fame didn’t get to her head. Larson starred in Cretton’s next two films, despite having zero commercial potential, and predictably, nobody supported them.
The underperforming films didn’t bother Larson. Using her box office credibility, she brought Cretton along with her to Hollywood. He directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I’m not really being objective here. It’s my favorite Marvel Universe film.
I can take or leave the Hollies’ version but I have to point out that the K.D. Lang cover of “The Air That I Breathe” is a 10 for me. (Vivid memory: flying just above the fog on the way into SFO late at night listening to this song. Am I in a dream?)
I do think the comparison to Bread is a bit unfair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBGqOXuM-ME