THE EVERLY BROTHERS – “All I Have To Do Is Dream”/”Claudette”
The version of “‘Dream” I know best is Glen Campbell’s. It always seemed a sad song to me; lonesome and woozy. The Everlys’ recording is bittersweet at worst. The key line in the song is the ‘gee whiz’ one – “I’m dreaming my life away”. Campbell sings it like a man closing the door on the real world; the Everlys sing it like boys choosing to play somewhere else for a while. Their sweet, twined harmonies tell us that life is wonderful and endless, why not waste some of it?
“All I Have To Do Is Dream” feels like a big step forward for pop. From the first ringing guitar chord it sounds crisp, clean and gentle but still totally informed by rock and roll (if you couldn’t hear it in the way the drums twitch on the fourth beat you could flip over and learn it from “Claudette”). The lullaby harmonies are something fresh too, a new seduction technology that cracks teenage music right open. Compare it to Tab Hunter’s “Young Love”, the last big teen love ballad to reach the top, and Tab sounds grotesquely smarmy as well as ham-footed. When you add the harmonies to the echoing guitars “All I Have To Do Is Dream” becomes something more remarkable still: a song about a feeling whose sonics inhabit that feeling entirely.
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Was this the first hit record with a volume-pedal lead guitar part? Chet Atkins played it on both versions (the Cadence original and the re-recording for RCA), but it’s the first that’s so absolutely swooningly blissful. The Everlys are much under-rated, in the sense that everyone likes them but no one loves them madly, yet their 10 years of hits included very few clunkers, and they modernised their sound far more effectively than most of the Old Testament rockers left behind by the Beat Boom. Maybe it’s because the melodramatic arrangements of so many of their best songs, eg Crying In The Rain and Ferris Wheel, sound a shade corny to ironic, post-modern ears.
Light Entertainment Watch: The Everly Brothers were often on UK TV. Firstly, here’s a list of the shows that didn’t survive;
GADZOOKS! IT’S ALL HAPPENING: with The Everly Brothers, Doug Gibbons, Judi Smith (1965)
THE HIPPODROME SHOW: with Bill Dana, Dusty Springfield, The Everly Brothers, Les Volants, El Gran Tominsko, The Molidor Trio, Rupperb Bears, Les Barios, Tony Hawes and the Central Band Of The Royal Air Force (1966)
READY STEADY GO!: with The Everly Brothers, The Supremes (1965)
READY STEADY GO!: with The Everly Brothers, Unit Four Plus Two, Sandie Shaw (1965)
READY STEADY GO!: with The Scaffold, The Everly Brothers, The Mindbenders (1966)
THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS: with Brian Matthew, Frankie Vaughan, The Dave Clark Five, The Everly Brothers, Scott Hamilton (1965)
THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS: with Brian Matthew, The Dave Clark Five, The Everly Brothers, Danny Williams (1965)
And here’s what does still exist;
THE (NOEL EDMONDS) LATE LATE BREAKFAST SHOW: with Mike Smith (Reporter), The Everly Brothers, John Inman, Nicholas Lyndhurst (1984)
THE ALMA COGAN SHOW: with The Everly Brothers, Gary Miller, Morecambe and Wise, Margo Henderson, Graham Stark, Peter Noble, The Tommy Linden Dancers, The Barney Galbraith Singers, Jack Parnell and his Orchestra (1960)
THE EVERLY BROTHERS REUNION CONCERT: with The Everly Brothers (1983)
LIVE FROM HER MAJESTY’S: with The Everly Brothers, Sacha Distel, Michael Barrymore (1985)
LULU’S BACK IN TOWN: with The Everly Brothers, Les Dawson, Peter Knight And His Orchestra (1968)
THE OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST: with The Everly Brothers, Billy Joel (1972)