THE WALKER BROTHERS - “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”
(#211, 19th March 1966)
“Make It Easy On Yourself” was a selfish sulk from a big little boy, but this gloom is regal, a woe so deep and indulgent that it stops time and blacks the heavens out. Scott’s producers learn how to do Spector properly and their vast velvet bass and piano sounds turn the Wall of Sound into an opulent, tear-soaked pillow. Scott himself gets lyrics which speak to his inner fatalist - “nothing to lose and no more to win” - and sings them with a great quiet tenderness as the storm breaks. The only bum note - redeemed anyhow by the way the chorus thunders in after - is the “Lonely, without you baby” bridge. Too personal, too specific, too small - to admit an object in this song is to lessen its soothing, solipsist power. 8
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Marcello on June 7th, 2005
I’m not sure that John Franz and Ivor Raymonde knew how to do the Wall of Sound properly. Scott’s vocal is buried far too deeply in the mix, and the melody topline is actually lost (cf. Brian Wilson’s misproduction of Glen Campbell’s “Guess I’m Dumb” a few months earlier) - so while it’s tempting to view it as the lament of a vanished ghost (that cloak of loneliness belongs so easily in Bergman’s Seventh Seal), the record is neither close nor far enough to feel. Compared to the contained rage/grief/deathwish of “It’s Over” it comes across as slightly jejeune.
Perhaps I’m still lamenting over the alternative universe which might have opened up had “The Electrician” gone to number one in 1978…
Andrew Hickey on June 7th, 2005
“Brian Wilson’s misproduction”?!
Kill the heretic!
Guess I’m Dumb is one of *the* great singles of all time.
Marcello on June 7th, 2005
It would have been if BW hadn’t buried GC’s vocal beneath the strings and more or less forgot to put a microphone where the trumpet section were sitting!
Andrew Hickey on June 8th, 2005
Maybe you should try the Wondermints’ version - essentially the same arrangement, but cleaner, more separated production.
There’s one of those ‘bootleg’ things the young people of today do floating round the net, where the vocal from Campbell’s version is overlayed on the Wondermints’ backing track, as well…
Alan Connor on June 8th, 2005
Time to tip our hats to songwriter Bob Gaudio! If only for “Short Shorts” and Little Shop Of Horrors. And then Bob Crewe had done some work on “Daddy Cool” and “Tallahassee Lassie”. They’ll be reappearing in due course with “Silence Is Golden”, so it’s by no means all good.
Anyone know if this was originally for the WBs or for Frankie Valli?
Cover versions include Cher (as produced by Trevor Horn, featured on The X-Files, and subsequently rejigged by Junior Vasquez), Robson & Jerome, Neil Diamond, Los Mustang, Johnny Ventura, Frankie Valli, David Essex, Clarence Clemons & the Red Bank Rockers, Royal Philarmonic Orchestra, Junior Vasquez, Tight Fit, Klaus Wunderlich and all-round entertainer Freddie Starr.
Marcello on June 9th, 2005
The Four Seasons one was the original.
Andrew Hickey on June 11th, 2005
Actually just listening now to a stereo fanmix of Guess I’m Dumb which fixes pretty much everything you’re complaining about there - trumpets and lead vocal are way above everything else.
Mark Gamon on June 23rd, 2005
10.5 (from a Nancy Sinatra base)
bramble on September 8th, 2006
Can anyone tell me what the point of Gary Leeds was? He didnt play on record and rumour has it that on live dates another drummer was sat behind the stage curtains drumming.Maybe it was they appeared like a real group rather than a duo a la Righteous Brothers
clarisse spader on January 2nd, 2007
i disagree. i loved ivor raymonde’s arrangements for this, for dusty and helen shapiro..
Marcello Carlin on January 3rd, 2007
his son has also done pretty well for himself, it has to be said.
(before you ask: simon raymonde out of the cocteau twins, this mortal coil etc.)
FT's Pete Baran on January 3rd, 2007
So contrary to the song: his son still shines then!
Lena on January 5th, 2007
Oh, it’s a killer!
“The Electrician” is a great song (I am amazed to know it was a single) and the idea of it even getting into the top ten, let alone #1, is blowing my mind.
Is the Four Seasons version good? I’ve never heard it.
Lee Lenox on January 23rd, 2007
Hey, didn’t a band called The Fuzzy Bunnies do a long guitar ladened version of The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore? It was probably about a year after the Walker Brothers had their hit with it. I remember it when into a key change at the end of the vocal portion of the song, then played out as a lead guitar / orchestral romp. I think the Fuzzy Bunnies were from upstate New York, so it may have only have been a regional thing, but if you heard that version of the song you wouldn’t have forgotten it.
Caledonianne on July 14th, 2007
Not to mention the leads hamming it up with aplomb in the movie “Truly, Madly, Deeply”.