CLIFF RICHARD ‘ ‘Living Doll’
(31st July 1959)
The production on ‘Living Doll’ is pretty special ‘ impeccably polite but amazingly intimate, Cliff sings like his lips are almost brushing your ear but Cliff being Cliff he wouldn’t so much as ruffle your hair without a chaperone’s permission. In fact the remarkable thing about ‘Living Doll’ is how fully-formed Cliff’s Cliff-ness is on his fifth ever single. It’s hackneyed because it’s true: cuts don’t come much cleaner than Cliff, the thoughtful delivery and spick-and-span production the perfected essence of ‘good English boy’. The persona is so solid it’s survived almost fifty years ‘ the occasional changes of style barely impact, though the moralising has gradually become more overt. Cliff Richard has made much better and much worse records than ‘Living Doll’ but this is his Rosetta Stone.
For all that I can’t say it works well today. It sounds marvellous but Lionel Bart’s queasy lyric has aged badly ‘ Cliff smirking over his doll, showing her off before locking her away; it’s not offensive so much as just tiresome. It reminds me of some religious couples I’ve met ‘ terribly well-turned-out, him telling everyone how marvellous she is and her never so much as speaking. 3
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wichita lineman on May 14th, 2008
I’m reminded of a Simon Reynolds comment on Julian Cope’s Charlotte Anne which suggests the singer is literally inside your ear and it’s really not a nice feeling. Note the added reverb on the greatly superior sequel, also a number one.
The version of Living Doll in the film Serious Charge has a backbeat to match his earlier 45s and is much more fun, the lyric coming across as playful rather than sinister. It’s never come out anywhere.
Love Cliff or not, he’s ill-served on cd. A good dozen great 60s b-sides (invariably sparkier than the hits) have yet to surface. EMI take note.
Billy Smart on May 14th, 2008
I’ve always thought that a properly annotated box set of all of Cliff’s A-sides in sequence would be a fascinating exercise in tracking 50 years of the development of mainstream pop.
FT's DJ Punctum on May 15th, 2008
But could you listen to it all the way through?
He’s a curious fellow, is Sir Clifford of Richard. I recall that bizarre History of Pop As Cliff Sees It spectacular he put on at Wembley at the end of the eighties which seemed specifically to emphasise how well preserved he was and how youthful he looked in comparison with the rather alarmingly ageing (in comparison) Dallas Boys, Vernons Girls etc. he brought on stage with him, viz. hahah I have the SECRET and you are all CRINGING SUBJECTS of my SHADOWY KINGDOM!
FT's DJ Punctum on May 15th, 2008
Also his very skilful selective retelling of history in terms of the people he invited onstage, i.e. Pacemakers, Searchers, Pete Waterman, viz. “hehee is it any wonder I am so STRONG if this was the COMPETITION?”
FT's and everybody elses Mark G on May 15th, 2008
Guys! A properly annotated box of all his single A sides (and b-sides) does indeed exist! Including HonkTonkAng! No revisionism (for once)…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Singles-Collection-Cliff-Richard/dp/B000069HG5
FT's DJ Punctum on May 15th, 2008
A lot of B-sides appear to be missing.
Also it fails to pass the DJ Punctum Complete Cliff Test by omitting “This Was My Special Day” from 1965 which was his first flop single, though admittedly this was largely due to its only being available in the foyer of the theatre where he was appearing in pantomime.
Billy Smart on May 15th, 2008
“Only 3 left in stock”… Oh God, I’m going to have to get this now. It’ll be like the exhaustive 8 disc Jonathan King box set, with about 20 good songs on it - but a painstaking exercise finding them.
Re 3: There’s a funny line Robert Smith said in about 1983 “People are always saying that Cliff Richard looks 25, but if I was 25 and I looked like that, I’d kill myself”
FT's DJ Punctum on May 15th, 2008
Quite a lot in stock in HMV but going for about forty quid a throw.
Billy Smart on May 15th, 2008
No, even for someone with my voracious curiosity for old and neglected pop music, £18 for the collected works of Sir Cliff is as high as I’m prepared to go.
Oh, and that Billie Davis song, ‘The Last One To Be Loved’ turned out to be every bit as breathtaking as you made it sound, Marcello. Great!
FT's rosie on May 26th, 2008
Does anybody listen to box sets of anybody all the way through? A comprehensive box set of Cliff would seem a bit trying to me, especially given the prolificness of his output over an extended period, and the way that output became progressively more and more dire.
Cliff is a bit of a thorny subject for me anyway because my big sister idolised him when she was about ten, and is alleged never to have grown out of it (I wouldn’t know, my sister and I have never been exactly close) It was in my nature even at five years old to take the opposite stance. Although sneakily I rather enjoyed some of the early Cliff.
wichita lineman on May 26th, 2008
The Singles Collection doesn’t include any b-sides unless they were hits (Dynamite, the flip of Travellin’ Light which is an even better rocker than Move It). It misses out DJ Punctum’s theatre 45, and Angel (export only), but more startlingly there’s no Throw Down A Line (downer chugging rock with great swell-pedal work from Hank) or Joy Of Living (Cliff’s anti- road expansion song).
No number 1s to trouble us (precious few Top 10s even), but 1969-73 was a most intriguing period for Cliff: Silvery Rain was about the evil of pesticides; Jesus, in spite of the title, has fabulous phased drums, a guitar line that sounds like Joe Meek producing Brian May, and a lyric about “the destruction of happiness, the destruction of the world”. Good album cuts on Tracks And Grooves and Sincerely, too, while 31st Of February Street was a concept album of sorts. This flop era climaxed with the Take Me High movie, starring Cliff as a businessman transferred to Birmingham who finds salvation in the ‘Brumburger’.
FT's rosie on May 26th, 2008
It was, of course, this and not Apache that was number one when I started school.
Caledonianne on May 26th, 2008
Oh, God.
Just noticed this became #1 the day I was born. You’d have thought my dear deceased papa would have bought one to keep for his very own little first-born.
He did, however, spend (too) much of his life trying to do his best to please me, so I suppose that’s what counts.