THE OVERLANDERS – “Michelle”
In an ideal universe the Beatles would be hugely generous to people wanting to sample their songs and deeply harsh on people wanting to cover them. The Overlanders obviously felt that this featherweight tale of chatting up an exchange student would be improved by a dose of folky sincerity: it isn’t. The flimsy charms of the original – The Beatles’ very own “Wooden Heart”, praise be – are exchanged for a different, less knowing, kind of smarm. Those pained final “I love yous” seem imported from a different, weightier song and they sink like lead shot in candyfloss.
3
I worked with Lawrie Marsh in the early 1960′s at Olivetti in London and when he left he was the lead singer for the Overlanders and had the agreement from the Beatles to take this version of Michelle to the UK no 1 spot. They decided not to release it other than on an LP. The reason that you heard no more about them is that he used his share of the money made (£35K alot in those days) to form his own pop agency in Soho. By the way he was a natural as we used to tour the south London pubs on a Friday night after work when he used to get up and sing on their stages (yes stages) in the days before Karioki.
Lance,
I worked with Laurie and Maggie on the cruise ship(Thompsons)Ithaca-
I was stunned to learn in these colunms of his passing-what has happened to Maggie-did they part.
I knew them both very well in the 70s-please let me know.
He was a stunnig singer.
Allen Warrender(organist)
warrender651@btinternet.com
L
when laurie was starting out he worked with me in clapham for John Pinches (medallists)he was a wages clerk and one day he had a photo shoot on clapham common and i covered for him saying he had gone to the doctors he was great fun that was roughly 1965 never saw after he left but always rembered him
I went to Worthing Boys High School with Laurie from 1952 – 1956. We also joined the Sea Cadets together. As a young boy, even before his voice broke,he was a very good singer. He entered and won a BBC radio talent programme hosted by Carol Levis and we were all very impressed. He and I were great friends and even though it is nearly 50 years ago I still remember how he was so full of life and ‘into everything’. I was very sorry to read that he died in 1994 of a heart attack but knowing him as I did all those years ago I reckon he had one helluva life. My guess is ‘Never a dull moment’. Laurie was great fun to be around
Laurie Mason was my grandfather by blood but nothing more to me than that!
Lance,
I worked with Laurie and Maggie on the cruise ship(Thompsons)Ithaca-
I was stunned to learn in these colunms of his passing-what has happened to Maggie-did they part?
I knew them both very well in the 70s-please let me know.
He was a superb singer.
Allen Warrender(organist)
warrender651@btinternet.com
I only met Lauri Mason once when dating his son Lance. Lance was a bit of a wild child and sang in pubs round Clapham and Lambeth North in the early eighties in a Rock n Rival. Lauri wasn’t really there for his kids Lance and Cheryl after he and Sandy split up.
I’m trying to track down Cheryl we were good friends and have lost contact Des would also like to know how you are
Eira
EiraJane@aol.com
Paul Arnold Friswell 3 Feb 2011
Discovered this site only recently as a newcomer to todays technology. Have read with interest the comments made about the Overlanders. Take it from me as one of the original trio comprising Laurie Mason Peter Bartholomew and myself Paul Arnold Friswell and the first to leave in summer 1966, we had no delusions of grandeur and we didn`t think we were the greatest thing since sliced bread as many do today.We made our first single late in 1962 produced by Mike Collier and Al Saxon. Typically early sixties pop it was shelved when the producer phoned to say that a new group called The Beatles had released their first single called Love Me Do and in his opinion would change the face of pop music. How right he was. We decided we would have to go down another avenue. I had written a number of folksy/country type songs and since we all enjoyed the music of Bob Dylan and Peter Paul And Mary, that was the avenue we decided to go down. Our first single for Pye Records “Summer Skies And Golden Sands” was released in July 1963. It didn`t chart but put us in front of the British public as an original sound. The song had seven covers in the States one charting in the Bilboard Country Charts. We worked as a trio until 1965 when we added bass and drums Terry Widlake and Dave Walsh.Michelle was our tenth single getting to No 1 Jan 1966.I don`t really give a monkeys what people think of it, its history, Getting to No 1 was my Mount Everest and I climbed it alongside some great people. Laurie had a wonderful sense of humour and I used to curl up hearing him ask for a pint of milk in a pub or club he never drank or smoked.Peter was a talented musician /singer/writer and you coudn`t wish to meet a nicer bloke,wonder where he is today.Terry was a mean bass and was a good vocalist.We shared some unbelievable moments of madness listening to Spike Jones And The City Slickers. Dave was a first class drummer, myopic as hell which was just as well in less favourable venues, he used to take his bioculars off before a gig so he didn`t spoil his image. After I left, musician singers came and went and the Overlanders disbanded in 1967. I made a couple of singles for Pye and reformed the group as The New Overlanders, there`s originality. We finally folded in 1972 and I formed a duo with my then wife. I left the business in 1981 and got a proper job. I`ve been singing as a semi pro ever since in and around my home county Warwickshire.We had great times and a lot of fun but it`s history. To Lance Mason, you can be proud of your Dad. We were writing to each other late eighties until we lost contact when I was made redundant and my life nose dived for a while.He kept asking me to come out to Florida,I wish I had.To Terry Widlake, our last contact was a phone call from Indian Wells from you. By that time I was a bit of a waste of space with no job and a failed marriage. Wish I could have kept in touch with you.So here we are in 2011 and I`m enetering my 49th year as a singer. I still go out as I have done for the last twenty years singing to my own backing tracks and I`m also a member of my local Male Voice choir.To all of you out there I was fortunate to work with,my thanks for some great and fun years and I wish you all the best for the future.
Paul Arnold (Friswell)
Welcome, Paul – as far as I can tell you’re the 13th of the Overlanders’ extended family to contribute to this thread, and it’s great to read your memories. I just wonder if there’s a friends-and-family reunion on the cards as a result of this discussion! All the best to you and everyone connected with the band.
Am trying to trace lance mason and sister without going into to much detail on here its regarding Eunice Mason my mother who is ok.
please contact me on face book under nick spooner, littlehampton. west sussex.
# 34 – Paul. I’ve just read this. Thanks ever so much for your wonderful contribution, which was as interesting as it was poignant. As you suggest, nobody can take away from you the fact that you had a number one record at the very epicentre of the 1960′s, besting for three glorious weeks some of the most important artists in the history of the industry. As I mentioned all of four years ago now, I was at primary school with Laurie’s son Lance from September 1966 some six months or so after “Michelle” left the charts. Like yourself, I had discovered this site quite by chance when I “googled” The Overlanders and up popped the Popular link. I have been a contributor ever since in a variety of irritating guises and have enjoyed myself enormously. As Erithian says, greetings to yourself and everyone else conected with the band, overland and sea.
When I was 16 years old back in the 60′s my Mum was in hospital, Lauries wife was in the next bed to my Mum, they became friends and I remember my sister and myself along with Mum and Dad visiting Laurie and family in the address at Larkhill Rise you speak of. Those were the days!!
I remember collecting ‘most’ of the records the Overlanders made and I still have them to this day.
I am so sorry to hear that Laurie is no longer with us but I have to admit that he left a lasting reminder with the records he made with the Overlanders, God bless Laurie, proud to have known you and the rest of the group xx
Hello Paul
Good to have grown up with the songs of the Overlanders, they will never be forgotten.
Wishing you well. x
Well, hello Paul!
I was the drummer with Terry, Paul, Peter and Laurie and well remembering joining the Overlanders (in late November 1965) My first gig was a test/audition recording at the BBC where we did ‘Freight Train” and a couple of others that I don’t recall. After a few days rehearsal we went to Bradford for a week at the ALHAMBRA Theatre and on the last but one day (Friday) Harry Hammond the manager called to say Tony Hatch had procured a Beatles number (Michelle) from Rubber Soul and he wanted us to record it ASAP. Harry rushed the acetate recording up to Bradford and we rehearsed it the next day (Saturday) and had a Pye studio session booked the following day (Sunday).
Time was of the essence as we were to leave the UK on the same Sunday night Dover to Ostend ferry and drive to Germany for a two week stint in the Storyville club, Frankfurt.
When we returned to England (I think, New Years day 1966.) all the music papers were giving the release of Michelle, rave reviews and none of us imagined that how our lives would change in the course of the next few weeks. Fantastic times: touring, radio, TV and meeting an unbelievable galaxy of stars.
It was very disappointing not to have a follow up hit and it all started to come unglued from the middle of 1966.
I left on New Years Eve 1966 and joined a Birmingham group called Second City Sound with whom I remained until the mid-seventies. I joined British Airways as Cabin Crew in 1978. I then became an Instructor at BA’s training school at Heathrow. In the mid 80′s I had my myopic vision fixed by a wonderful eye surgeon in Harley Street ( Paul is right about my appalling short-sightedness.) and I obtained my commercial flying licences and went on to fly. In 1990 I made contact with Laurie – (it may have been through contact with Terry Widlake ?) and me and my wife Jan visited him several times in St Petersburg Florida where he and his wife had a restaurant in one of the shopping malls.
He didn’t have a Green card and was deported a couple of times but made his way back to Florida quite easily This was very pre 9/11 and immigration procedures were a lot less stingent. We wanted to emigrate to the States and were incredibly lucky to win green cards in the US government lottery. This coincided with BA offering early retirement and as Jan and I were both BA crew, we took the offer and opened our own restaurant in Florida too!
Once we were up and running I well remember phoning Laurie to tell him we were in the USA but the phone was on voice mail so I left a message for him. I was absolutely dumbstruck when, an hour later, I received a call from Lance (who I’d last seen as a child) telling me his father had died a couple of days before !!
Jan and I had a very successful restaurant for 4 years but I desperately wanted to return to flying and in 1997 I joined Alaska Airlines in Seattle as a flight crew instructor and subsequently US Airways in Pittsburgh and Charlotte NC. as a Flight Crew Instructor and training developer in the International Section for pilots on the A330 Airbus and the Boeing 767.
Fast forward to January this year and we retired to our home in Spain where we are incredibly content to remember the fantastic sixties and occasionally get a phone call from friends far and wide to say they just heard Michelle on the radio!
Dave, great to hear from you, and what a great career path! So we’ve got email addresses above for Eira Jane Featley and Allen Warrender, and contributions from Terry Widlake (albeit from four years ago), Paul Friswell and yourself, as well as many others connected with the band. If Waldo, who himself has a connection (see #4 above) and I can somehow organise a reunion it’d be one of Popular’s more notable achievements. How about it?!
BTW, Terry Widlake was featured in BBC4’s profile of Roy Orbison a few weeks back, talking about how much of an Anglophile the Big O was – well worth looking out for if you missed it.
Hi Erithian,
What a quick response !
Bugger ! forgot to watch the BBC 4 prog – I had an idea Terry might be in it as well, so… double bugger!
Terry was actually responsible for me joining the Overlanders……he used to come into an insurance brokers I worked for in Birmingham and through him I was put in touch with Harry Hammond and got a job working in Germany.
I was incredibly touched to see Paul’s complimentary remarks about my drumming (although it’s not very apparent on Michelle !!)
Dave, can I also echo Erithian’s words of greetings to you and thank you ever so much for your career notes post “Michelle”. I wonder if Macca knew how his innocent little song, supposedly about an exchange student or some such like, would alter so many people’s lives when he was writing what many people thought was a stocking filler for “Rubber Soul”?
Canada calling: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-guard-for-thee-crispian-st-peters.html
Seen this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overlanders_(band)
How come nobody has yet to mention the legendary Rick Wild (still performing, see….http://www.mrbenidorm.com/Rick_Wild/)??
Was he ever in the band or what?
Thanks to Dave Walsh, my old friend and colleague, Terry Widlake and Lance for filling in some gaps in my story! I was with Terry in The Sherwoods – managed by The Overlanders manager, Harry Hammond. I hadn’t realised that the Overlanders did The Storyville Club in Cologne, too! I visited the site just a few weeks ago and that part of the city is now a tip; the club long since gone. I was shocked, too, when Terry told me of Laurie’s death. I really loved the Overlanders and they gave me a real zing to be more professional in what I do. I now tour with either a solo rock ‘n’ roll show or else with Dave Morgan from ELO… Spain seems to be the place we’re most wanted although, for me, I’m grateful that Sweden and Japan want in as well. Would love to hear from Lance and DW…. Terry often mails me and keeps in touch. Very bestests to all of you. Alan George Smith – keyboards, The Sherwoods
Thanks for your contribution, Alan. Let’s hope that those contacts are made. The Overlanders touched me too (see #4 and ->).
To Nick Spooner,
Have tried to find you on fb to no avail. Do you have an e-mail address I can write to you on? Glad to hear you’re okay. How’s Beverley?
Best wishes from Cherry Carter (nee Mason)
TOTPWatch: The Overlanders thrice performed Michelle on Top Of The Pops;
13 January 1966. Also in the studio that week were; Hermans Hermits and The Nashville Teens. Alan Freeman was the host.
27 January 1966. Also in the studio that week were; Crispian St Peters, Dusty Springfield, Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours, Sandie Shaw and The Mindbenders, plus The Go Jo’s interpretation of ‘Spanish Flea’. Pete Murray was the host.
3 February 1966. Also in the studio that week were; Petula Clark, Eddy Arnold, Crispian St Peters, The Rolling Stones and St Louis Union, plus The Go Jo’s interpretation of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin”. Jimmy Savile was the host.
None of these editions survive.
Hi! I just thought I’d say hi to everyone. I still have good memories and my three Guitars, Guild Manhatten, Echo 12 string (now unplayable) and the Hawk accoustic.
It was very sad about Laurie, he did visit my wife and I as did Terry Widlake, and we exchanged Chrismas cards. I still have the tapes of our rehearsals. Laurie sang using Tremolo in his voice, (like Dolly Parton) whereas some singers use Vibrato (like Tom Jones in his latest recordings) and this is difficult to harmonise with as the notes can vary up and down too much, depending on how controlled the Vibrato is.
Paul and I both lack natural tremolo which made us good harmony singers as we could sing a tuneless harmony hitting every note dead on key, while Laurie added the rich colour to the vocal sound.
We lost it a bit after Michelle. If you have the CD, listen to the Mason Friswell song “Girl from Indiana” and then to “Boy from New York City” by the Manhatten Transfer.
Though I miss those days, for personal reasons I could not go back on stage and only in the last two decades have I played and sung in local folk clubs.
I hope the other Overlanders and all friends and contributers are fit and well.
PS That Wikipedia entry for The Overlanders Band has me baffled! That is why I wrote this.
Thanks for this contribution, Peter. Great to hear from you. It’s always a buzz getting a communication from the actually folk whose number one we are actually discussing. Good luck to you!
In reply to Tony Hadders (45)Rick Wild has fronted the band since 1969 to present day (and a brilliant frontman with a great voice)that`s 43 years and still gigging.
43 years touring and gigging keeping the name going, some feat and surely must deserve recognition.I gigged with him for a number of years and he always brought the house down a very competent professional, we were always well rehearsed and smart he wouldn`t have it any other way.
A wonderful contribution, Greg. Cheers.