Comments on: PETER AND GORDON – “A World Without Love”

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 10:43:36 +0000

Jeremy’s wife was a big hit with me – she sang a VERY proto indie duet with him on Hullabaloo or Shindig (not on youtube, bah) and they were BEYOND cute.

Chad & Jeremy and Julie Newmar in the same episode of Batman. I think… I…. need to see it.

Here are C&J doing a ten out of ten version of Van McCoy’s Before And After – and it’s a re-edit, would you believe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po_iNc-gRmw

By: Mark G

Mark G — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:59:32 +0000

Chad and Jeremy, their biggest hit in the UK was their “Batman” appearance.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:45:34 +0000

Shame that they went all Boyzone on our asses in ’65 with gloopy hit versions of True Love Ways (no.2) and To Know You Is To Love You (no.5). Their 67 (or 68?) album Hot Cold And Custard is a pretty solid pop psych collection, though.

On the whole I prefer their twinnies, Chad & Jeremy, who oddly never made it in Britain. Their swoony Summer Song (a US no.7) is prominent in the Rushmore soundtrack and their ’69 album The Ark is a quite beautiful example of how to grow up in pop without getting hairy or wearing shades.

Plummy voiced English boys. Not really a problem for me. Quite proto indie isn’t it?

By: punctum

punctum — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 08:02:33 +0000

It’s New Pop as well in that the chirpy melody hides a lyric which would not have disgraced Ian Curtis.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:20:11 +0000

Peter Asher is talking at the South Bank – QEH, I think – this saturday, and by all accounts he is a raconteur not to be missed.

Here’s a rarity – an obscure Lennon/McCartney giveaway . I Don’t Want To See You Again was their third single after World Without Love and Nobody I Know (no.10), but didn’t even make the Top 50.

Oh, and I’ve always been very fond of World Without Love, a Family Favourites regular when I was a kid. I can hear Del Shannon in there too, but also the Macca stylings of I’ll Follow The Sun. The Beatles were always keen to nod to the pre-Beatles era (if that makes sense), with originals like I’m Down, as much as they looked to the future. Proper modernists, they could take the best bits of the immediate past and craft something clearly of their own making.

By: wichitalineman

wichitalineman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:56:22 +0000

Thanks, Rosie. Gordon Waller features a couple of times in the forthcoming John & Gary Walker autobiog, always glass in hand, clearly the bon viveur of the duo. Peter and Gordon have always seemed peculiarly enigmatic as post-Mersey UK pop stars – can anyone recall either of them as talking heads?

I’d urge anyone with a slight orchestrated pop inclination to search out his Seventh Hour, a Parlophone 45 (b-side) from 68/69, written by Gordon, richly produced, and properly gorgeous.

By: rosie

rosie — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:56:10 +0000

So it’s farewell, then, to Gordon Waller who died last Friday.

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:21:25 +0000

TOTPWatch: Peter & Gordon performed ‘A World Without Love’ on Top of the Pops for six consecutive weeks!;

25 March 1964. Also in the studio that week were; The Applejacks and The Bachelors, plus two specially prerecorded studio performances from The Beatles. Jimmy Saville was the host.

1 April 1964. Also in the studio that week were; Millie, The Swinging Blue Jeans, The Applejacks and The Bachelors. Alan Freeman was the host.

8 April 1964. Also in the studio that week were; Millie, The Swinging Blue Jeans and The Four Pennies. Pete Murray was the host.

15 April 1964. Also in the studio that week were; Gerry & The Pacemakers, Millie and The Migil Five. David Jacobs was the host.

22 April 1964. Also in the studio that week were; Millie, The Four Pennies, The Mojos and The Searchers. Jimmy saville was the host.

29 April 1964. Also in the studio that week were; Gerry & The Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, The Migil Five, The Fourmost, The Merseybeats, The Rolling Stones and The Searchers. Alan Freeman was the host.

None of these programmes survive.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:55:48 +0000

I don’t think this song is any worse a song than Can’t Buy Me Love. Whether or not you like the performance is another matter. Personally I think it takes all sorts of approaches to make the early Sixties interesting – if every #1 was Beatles-fronted, compelling performers though they were, I’d be finding this exercise pretty grim.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:22:00 +0000

Doctor Mod says:

This is an early example of a Lennon-McCartney song without Lennon. We all know that a lot of the songs were written by one or the other and not as a joint effort.

Tom observes that "Peter and Gordon . . . sing [it] as if Merseybeat never happened. Pop drifts back to its early 60s status quo." Perhaps for Brits it did, but in the US we'd never heard anything like it before, and it was actually exciting--organ and all. (Hammond? Sounds more like a Farfisa to me. I could be wrong.)

Still, in retrospect, the suggestion that it might be a throwback (in the overall scheme of things) seems conceivable. But perhaps it's really a matter of "back to the future." By 1970, McCartney would be showing just what he could do without Lennon--only the results were rarely up to the standard of "World Without Love."