FRANKIE LAINE – “I Believe”
This was No.1 for some stupefying number of weeks – every time a record knocked Frankie off the top he would climb back up and give the hapless contender a battering. I got the impression it was considered some kind of statistical freak for a long time, a quirk of the fifties’ record buying habits (whatever they might have been). Listening to it though you can hear exactly why it sold so many copies: it has that domineering “I AM A HIT” presence that massive sellers often do. You might think it’s rubbish – and in a sense it is rubbish – but you know from the first listen that your opinion, or anyone’s, is perfectly irrelevant.
Frankie Laine delivers his heart-warming homilies with a clenched-teeth conviction that time has made somewhat laughable: when the drums come in for the last set of “I believe”s I think of purple Tango man tearing off his shirt and striding towards the Dover cliffs. Dispassionately, I admire “I Believe” and the way it presses all the buttons then available, but I can’t take it seriously, which is perhaps a shame – on the other hand I take Andrew WK entirely seriously and the principle is surely the same, so what am I really missing?
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Frankie Laine’s totally committed, almost hysterical vocal is what elevates this above the ordinary. The song relies heavily on his delivery as there is very little in the way of backing – a subdued orchestra and restrained (for the time) choral backing vocals. It’s not the version I remember from my youth (that was probably The Bachelors) and it’s quite surprising to hear it sung with this much conviction but it’s strangely compelling hymn-like qualities (a song about faith that doesn’t mention either God or love) still have power (although apparently not, in the hands of more recent artists, of which more – much later).
What makes it work is the very strong impression of a man crawling out of the wreckage, convincing himself with every ounce of power he can muster that it’s worth carrying on, that things will get better/turn the corner, that salvation is out there somewhere in the dark, no matter how long it takes him to struggle to reach the faint light; Laine puts in a performance here almost worthy of Paul Robeson. Again, the war, everyone pulling together to pull things back together – in that context the record would have been entirely understandable. In my context I hardly have to spell it out.
The Bachelors’ 1964 number two cover was I suspect substantially more of an influence on the second version of the song to top the charts…
Light entertainment Watch; Frankie Laine was too big a star to often appear on British television. These two appearances are lost;
SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM (VAL PARNELL’S …..): with Bruce Forsyth, Frankie Laine (1957)
SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM (VAL PARNELL’S …..): with Dickie Henderson, Frankie Laine, Juliette Greco (1957)
Later appearances survive, however;
CANNON AND BALL: with Frankie Laine, Suzanne Danielle (1982)
FRANKIE LAINE: with Frankie Laine (1976)
LOOKS FAMILIAR: with Lionel Blair, Frankie Laine, Anne Shelton (1982)
Very much a song of the Korean War – although I don’t think that had much to do with us Brits at all…
Agree completely with the “I AM A HIT” presence; rather like the 50s equivalent of a Celine Dion megahit (have power ballads disappeared from our charts altogether now?). When I first heard this a few years ago, I didn’t think it was anything special. When I listened to it a few weeks ago I felt like a listener in 1953, and was won over by the song’s charms.
But record sales were still superceded by those of sheet music – so this ‘only’ sold about 500,000 copies in all. Not what you’d expect from an 18-week #1.
DESERT ISLAND DISC WATCH (Up to 11/04/11)
Eva Bartok, Actor(1963)
Stanley McMurty, Artist(2008)