EDISON LIGHTHOUSE - “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes”
(#281, 31st January 1970)
American bubblegum pop was often like garage rock’s bouncy little brother: lacking the moodiness and sex appeal, but you could see the shared DNA. British bubblegum was born out of the same talent glut of session musicians and songwriters and shared a sweet tooth, but it was quite different in approach, owing rock almost nothing and rarely placing much of a premium on kid energy. Not all Britgum hits were as lushly arranged as “Love Goes”, with its post-Beatles trumpets and strings, but most of them share its total emphasis on the chief hook. Whereas the chorus in “Sugar, Sugar” acts as a bedrock for lots of other stuff that’s going on, the chorus in “Love Goes”, built up to and bashed out again and again, is the song. Luckily it’s a pretty great chorus but the song still ends up rather unfilling. 6
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Marcello Carlin on September 27th, 2006
I do like it but it kept “I Want You Back” off the top boo.
FT's Tom on September 27th, 2006
I will leave it to someone else to mention the Tony Burrows Fact.
Robin Carmody’s essay on British Bubblegum is a must here:
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/essays/2002/01/cottage/
FT's Admin on September 27th, 2006
If it’s not too winsome, regular commenters may want to use
<img src="/pictures/stork-boy.gif">
<img src="/pictures/stork-girl.gif">
at some point to mark their birth.
NOTE only registered and logged in users can use HTML (or IMG tags at least) in comments. It’s easy to register tho!
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
have you got one for my tenth birthday? >:(
FT's Admin on September 27th, 2006
you can go back in time on popular and comment there! Jump back to the start of the 60s!
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
didn’t work :(
picture doesn’t read either as you marked it up or with the first bit written in
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
oh did you korrekt it? perhaps i miswrote the freakytrigger bit when i tried :o
FT's Tom on September 27th, 2006
If you copy the text as adminalan put it then it doesn’t work for some reason. I went into the HTML of Alan’s comment though and got the propah stork.
FT's Tom on September 27th, 2006
Edison Lighthouse seems a poor comments draw, meanwhile…
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
yes let’s talk more about html
FT's Admin on September 27th, 2006
sorry folx - i think Wordpress’s typographical niceties got in the way there, correcting my ordinary quotes to curly quotes, which HTML doesn’t care for.
anyway i fixed the above sample code to copy as straight quotes – so it should now work.
jeff w on September 27th, 2006
I have just fuXXored up my stork attempt in Ticket To Ride comments. Grateful if someone cd sort.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
best comments thread evah!
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
you can follow it on the rss feed!
Marcello Carlin on September 27th, 2006
Poor old Tory Burrows, unduly neglected on his sole Popular entry…
FT's wwolfe on September 27th, 2006
What is an Edison Lighthouse, anyway? A cousin of Jefferson Airplane?
The opening of this always makes me think the record was mistakenly played at 33 RPM, instead of 45 RPM, for some reason - it sounds oddly slow, somehow. It picks up as soon as the vocal comes in, though.
I own a dog-eared collection of “Rolling Stone” magazine reviews bought for a dime at a garage sale, circa 1970. The review of this song says something to the effect that one way you can tell a bad record is that no matter how many times you hear it, you can only remember the opening line and the hook. I quoted that to my best friend, who immediately sang the whole song. An eloquent rebuttal, I thought. The irony being that I’ve always liked this record, too. I guess I was feeling smugly superior that day.
This is kind of a “Vini, vidi, vici” record: it had one goal - Hitsville! - it achieved it, there’s not much else to say. Except it managed to be pleasant in the bargain. The only two moments that stand out above the generul thrum of pleasantry are the one couplet: “I’m a lucky fella/And I wanna tell her,” for its cheeky non’rhyming rhyme, and the counter-vocal at the fade, with Burrows singing, “Love keeps growing every place that she’s going” against the repeated hook.
I wonder what Rosemary is doing these days. I hope the years have been kind.
FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on September 27th, 2006
i think it’s a pun on edison (=inventor of the phonograph, lightbulb, modern world) and the eddystone lighthouse, which is what you think it is
scott on September 27th, 2006
Someone (somewhere, can’t remember where) wrote a good review of this record once, interpreting it as a damn fine song about a handjob. (Me, I’d give it an 8 or a 9–the song, I mean.)
Marcello Carlin on September 28th, 2006
There was also the insinuation at the time that “Rosemary” wasn’t referring to a woman, as per “Along Comes Mary” etc.
markgamon on September 28th, 2006
‘rather’ unfulfilling?
I can’t believe the late 60s got as bad as this. One piece of irrelevant dim-witted cheesy braindead dross after another.
Marcello Carlin on September 28th, 2006
Do you hate fun, or are you just trolling?
Erithian on September 28th, 2006
There’s a reference to “the Tony Burrows Fact” in the Robin Carmody essay that Tom linked to above, but to save you looking for it I’ll do it for you (since nobody else has!)
Tony Burrows, “lead singer” of Edison Lighthouse, was a session singer who had appeared on the Flowerpot Men’s “Let’s Go to San Francisco” in 1967, and in early 1970, while “Love Grows” was number one, he also sang lead on the Pipkins’ “Gimme Dat Ding”, White Plains’ “My Baby Loves Loving” and Brotherhood of Man’s “United We Stand”. Then one week three of the four records were on Top of the Pops in the same week, and he became notorious for fronting three different bands in the same edition of TOTP. As the “Glitter Suits and Platform Boots” website relates, at the end of the show he was approached by a staff member and told that he’d been unofficially blacklisted. He didn’t have another major hit until he sang on “Beach Baby” by First Class some four years later.
Marcello Carlin on September 28th, 2006
Also he has never entertained at a Tory Party Conference; it was the two girls out of Brotherhood of Man Mk II (of which latter, sadly, much more later)…
FT's rosie on September 29th, 2006
Um, I seem to have made rather a hash of trying to put my little stork thingy under David Whitfield’s Cara Mia. (I know, I know, I’m sorry, a record given a rather generous 2…)
Could somebody sort it out for me please? Thanks!
FT's Alan on September 29th, 2006
sorted - and i’ve worked out what’s going on. unregistered users that aren’t logged in can’t use html, so it’s being stripped out. i might add in a shortcut for all users, something like typing “:stork-girl:” gets automagically changed :-)
FT's rosie on September 29th, 2006
But I am registered and I am logged on!
FT's Doctor Mod on September 30th, 2006
Well, how shall I put this? This record has long had a place in my “closet collection”–records I just love but don’t want my friends to know about. It’s probably one of the very last singles I bought, as by this time I was more interested in album-oriented rock. But AM radio was inescapable, playing in the background in a lot of offices, so I was still pretty much aware of what was going on in the charts–and anyway, my car radio couldn’t pick up FM stations.
I admit there were some songs that I really enjoyed, but this sort of stuff was really so “uncool” by 1970 that I wouldn’t admit it. Still, “Rosemary” is an example of incredibly well-crafted pop. Much better, I think, than, “Sugar Sugar” inasmuch as it has a clever rhyme scheme and a great hook, and it actually articulates a sentiment beyond songs with which eight-year-olds can identify (i.e., repeated invocations of sweet confections that, when consumed in excess, can give you a rush in the short term and make you fat in the long).
As to Scott’s suggestion–Could it be “There’s something about her had holding mine . . . . (???). But–and this is the English professor speaking–the possessive pronoun “mine” modify a noun within the phrase or sentence, and “hand” is the only one possible. Of course, sleazy thoughts know no syntax……
BTW, no stork for me. I’m sorry to admit that I’m a year older than the charts. What a drag it is getting old!
Chris Brown on September 30th, 2006
I don’t actually remember much about this tune, but in my annoying determination to comment on every entry I’ll make a point that crossed my mind re: Rolf - I always quite enjoy the fact that if you try to impose some sort of arbitrary landmark on the charts like the first chart-topper of a decade, the fiftieth anniversary, the Thousandth Number One or whatever, it tends to rebel and come up with something not obviously pivotal.
Doctor Casino on November 14th, 2006
Agree 100% with the text of Tom’s review, and hence feel it deserves something along the lines of a 2 or a 4. To the extent that I heaped hate on “Sugar, Sugar,” this deserves all the same bashing, and “Sugar, Sugar” was at least a more interesting composition. This really is just the hook, OVER and OVER and OVER. It’s a nice little bit, but I would rather have my dessert overpowered by sugar than by rosemary…
Lena on January 5th, 2007
Tony Burrows totally makes this song - imagine Tom Jones (or rather, don’t) bellowing it - it sounds to me as if he is smiling while he’s singing, even good-naturedly winking at points - he’s a lucky fella and he knows it.
No idea about Eddystone Lighthouse, but this isn’t braindead or cheesy or dross…
Stuart Edwards on January 8th, 2007
In reply to Tom. Sep 2006
It’s actually “Love grows” not “Love goes” and I think it’s great. So did 15 Million others!
Stuart Edwards (original guitarist)
FT's punctum on January 9th, 2007
Agreed! I’d have given it an eight!
Tony Macaulay wrote some good ‘uns in his time, it has to be said.
Becky on August 3rd, 2007
I’ve just bought a CD for 99p - and this track is the opener.
No matter what any fancy analysis says about it and no matter how disparaging people get about it, it’s a song that can bring back amazing memories and it needs to be recognised for being one of those tracks that makes you feel good - which is what great music is all about. Nothing else matters!
wichita lineman on May 25th, 2008
OK… starts with an instantly identifiable guitar hook, rising strings, chugging bass, intriguing lyric (”clothes are kinda funny, hair is kinda wild and free” - can’t you jus picture this beat angel?), repeated chorus with the odd middle eight (”hand holding mine…” which could be a chorus in the hands of lesser mortals). This is a be-a-utifully made record. Think it’s simple? Heck, what’s not to like?
I once had a friend who couldn’t get into soul because he thought it sounded too put on. His fav singer was Tony Burrows. Obviously this opened him up to insane amounts of abuse from my trendy mates, but from Love Grows alone you can see he had a point (his name was/is Jak Knowles in case anyone knows him, and he had a Glitter Band haircut in 1991 which is heroic as well as a little bit scary). The vocal is entirely believable.
Weirdly, in the UK Love Grows wasn’t followed up at all, with the next Edison Lighthouse 45 (It’s Up To You Petula) not appearing for over a year. Anyone got a clue how or why this happened? Or of any other (living) act who didn’t bother releasing a follow-up to a number one?
I think that in America, the EL brand continued as Love Grows was followed by Melanie Makes Me Smile (released over here as a Tony Burrows solo 45), almost as good as Love Grows - upbeat bubblegum with a similarly unexpected, eyebrow-twisting (with heartstrings following) downwards tug on the chorus.
This is pop pop popular, as well-crafted and joyous as it gets. It took the combined mights of Macaulay, Cook and Greenaway to make it so irresistible - shame they didn’t try more often. A 9 plus for me.
wichita lineman on May 25th, 2008
Except of course it was Tony Macaulay and Barry Mason… well, BM had to make up for The Last Waltz and I Pretend somehow.
Barry Mason was once an understudy to Albert Finney at the Royal Court. And that’s probably how he ended up with a cameo in Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, singing What Do You Want in a pub while Arthur Seaton wins the drinking contest. “You get thirsty working that machine all week”.