THE TREMELOES – “Silence Is Golden”
A song about wimpiness and non-intervention, whose subject seems to infect its delivery: close harmony as a coccoon, a kind of pretty disengagement from the beastly world. It’s a cover version of a record that’s only three years old but it sounds further out of time than that. And ahead of time too – ear-squint and this is in the same bandstand as Westlife, maybe. A discussion flowered briefly on ILM yesterday about why male harmony singing fails to get the hip recognition the (generalised) ‘girl group sound’ does – perhaps this sense that the voices are covering up for one another is part of the reason?
4
Forgot the date.
Sorry for this squib of a piece being so delayed.
Whither the Bee Gees with harmony. I’d agree, not cool, but grebt anyway!
As a wildly generalized rule, I’d say the difference between the two, and the reason for the different levels of critical respect accorded each, is that boy groups are about simpering and girl groups are about sass. Not only does that make the latter much more enjoyable than the former, it also causes me to instinctively believe that the singers on even a middling girl group record are trying to get across something true about their lives, while the singers on all but the very best boy group records are probably lying.
wwolfe
Only white boy bands though, doo wop was cool, though largely forgotten now – everyone’s heard of the Shangri-las and the Ronnettes, fewer Dion and the Belmonts or, er…see what I mean.
‘Here comes my baby’ which I think preceeded ‘Silence…’ was quite fun in a lightweight way, if only for the goodtime jamboree feel of the fairly inconsequential break-up song – they’ve been dumped, but they couldn’t really give a shit.
Oh, and the Bee Gees are cool of course.
I’d say the Beach Boys, but they were so much more than a vocal harmony boy-band and basically made their name in the early years by being determinedly uncool.
It suddenly strikes me that a kind of Xenomania or Trevor Horn version of the Walker Bros would be a very good thing.
-ST
Odd thing about this:
A song everybody knows, but few have worked out what it actually is all about.
Yes, to my equally anonymous fellow poster above, I definitely view modern boy groups as very different from the great doo wop groups of the 1950s and early 1960s. The modern boy bands are to the original doo wop groups what the 1980s Hollywood hair metal bands were to, say, early Sabbath or Zeppelin.
I always like “Here Comes My Baby.” hard to believe Cat Stevens ever wrote anything so unassuming and tossed-off (both of which I mean as compliments).
The most interesting thing about the Tremeloes’ “Silence Is Golden” for me is that I think it marks the only appearance in this list, even tangentially, of the Four Seasons. A huge act in the States – four Number Ones and a virtually unbroken four or five years of Top Ten singles – they apparently never translated to the UK in any significant way. (The Seasons are still big, in fact: there’s been a hit musical based on their career running on Broadway for the better part of the past year.)
wwolfe
Actually one of three tangential and one actual appearance at number one by the Four Seasons. Ironically their only UK number one single was one which didn’t have Frankie Valli on it…
Oh yeah, I forgot Cat Stevens wrote Here Comes My Baby.
Hmm, I’d give it a somewhat higher score–not brilliant but better than that. I agree that “Here Comes My Baby” is a lot more fun, though.
I think the issue of “wimpiness” is a bit anachronistic here. There were a lot of male harmony groups in the 60s–dare I say the Beatles were incredible with their three-part harmonies?–that surely didn’t seem wimpy at the time. Granted, there were some truly uncool male vocal groups from the 50s that were still lingering around in the 60s (i.e., the Four Lads, the Sandpipers, etc.), but this has always seemed an American phenomenon to me. The Beach Boys managed to rise above this by being a “band” (i.e., they played their own instruments) and managed to seem cool to their followers by singing about things (cars, surfing) that now seem a bit dweeby. The Association bettered the Beach Boys (but only a bit) by singing about politics and marijuana (some of the time).
But I think our critical negativity about male harmony groups and their triteness (if not wimpiness) comes from later pre-fab models (e.g., NSync, Backstreet Boys, Take That, etc., etc., ad nauseam) whose wimpiness lies in their feigned sincerity and their lack of anything original in their material. (Ergo, they appeal to a wide audience who doesn’t want to be challenged by music they have to think about.)
In retrospect, though, the Tremeloes weren’t bad, and I think the recording is an interesting example of cultural exchange. A group of Brits took a song from one of the most generically American groups of the time (the Four Seasons) and improved on it–at least to my way of thinking. Personally, I never really found Frankie Valli et al. terribly convincing. Come to think of it, perhaps we should blame them for the “Boy Bands” we must endure to day.
I do, though, thoroughly agree with wwolfe about the difference between boy groups and girl groups as a general rule.
While I don’t think the wimpiness – or disengagement, to be more precise – works here, I certainly don’t think “wimpiness” as a value is always (or often!) a negative: my teenage idol was Morrissey, after all!
Awwwwwww. Poo. I have fond memories of this one.
Mind you, I was adolescent at the time. You’re probably right.
The Hollies had plenty of harmonies and such….they weren’t that wimpy, were they?
There is a great version of ” Here Comes My Baby ” by The Mavericks.
About the 4 Seasons. More than being about a Boy Band , The 4 Seasons are more from an age that had The Temptations & The Miracles and that’s where they were coming from musically, but without the Motown connection ( not sure waht label they were on , maybe Capitol in Canada ).
They seem to be a bit of white stuff ( or Olive in FRankie Vali’s case ) for a mass audience , who didn’t get the soul side of things. But they still had many hits of likeable, falsetto driven, middle of the road stuff like ” Walk Like A Man “, “Sherry”,
” Big Girls Don’t Cry ” and ” Silence is Golden “.
Not sure how these fared in UK but all top 10′s in Canada.
Brian
I agree that the Four Seasons influences are more likely to have been 50s doo-wop and soul groups as later evidenced by their appearance on Motown in the late 60s/early 70s (The Night etc). Also their later foray into disco (Who Loves You, December 63). BTW Valli does provide the lead vocal on the bridges on the latter. If I remember correctly the Four Seasons also played their own instruments – at least in the 70s they did.
The Tremelos lined up with The Fab Four, The Hollies, The Searchers, Hermans Hermits as part of the 60s Brit pop phenomenom. They were, in fact with Brian Poole an r ‘n’ b flavoured band. He left in 1965/66 and they adopted closer harmonies and had bigger hits such as this one.
ITF
Four Seasons and Dion etc. weren’t considered wimpy in their time (any more than Sinatra was to the older brothers and sisters of the Four Seasons’ fans). But there’s a class difference between those who revived the girl groups (NY Dolls et al.) in the ’70s and those who revived the Boy Harmony Groups (Billy Joel, for instance), and the class that’s writing the history likes to pretend to toughness and daring. Interesting that genuine street punks – the Italo-American harmony boys – never became part of the def’n of “punk.” I’m sure that in a street fight, Dion and Valli and crew could have cut the Seeds and Shadows of Knight and Remains and Leaves to shreds. (Not that this is necessarily anything to be proud of, mind you.)
Also, rhythmically the Backstreet Boys make Beatles and Hollies and Byrds seem like total dinkboy wimps in comparison – though by “Backstreet Boys” I mean their rhythm section too, i.e., Martin and Rami, and it’s not a fair comparison, of course, since technology has changed the game. But still…
I don’t think Dion et al do sound wimpy, mainly because doo wop groups could generally really belt it, unlike their ‘whiter’-sounding counterparts, despite the sweet nature of their music, there’s a rawness and a strength there. ‘Street-corner harmonies’ is the phrase journos always use…
I’m always surprised at how wimpy much of The Beatles’ records sound in retrospect. Take Day Tripper for instance. I always remember it as one of the ‘Stonesiest’ Beatles’ songs, with the riff being thrashed out at a rate of knots through some sort of primitive 60s fuzztone. In fact it’s picked (all down strokes, no sliding notes) at a sedate pace on a jangly (possibly even a 12 string) guitar.
“In fact it’s picked (all down strokes, no sliding notes) at a sedate pace on a jangly (possibly even a 12 string) guitar. “
Somewhere on a Todd Rundgren album is a spoken observation before a song that says something like ” make it sound like the Beatles. It sounds fast but they play it slow”.
For the earlier Beatles being wimpy, you have to remember, too, that there was no heavy metal ( or even powerful amps – see the stage set up to play at Shea – 4 tiny amps & 50,00 people) at the time and really as far as the music sounding tough , ” The Stones” sounded a bit wimpy, too. Although they compensated by pissing on service stations, not washing, and lyrically emulating the blues musicians they loved.
I don’t think the Beatles achieved the sonic umph until , say, Revolver.
The Kingsmen still sounded hard-ass though!
Somewhere on a Todd Rundgren album is a spoken observation before a song that says something like ” make it sound like the Beatles. It sounds fast but they play it slow”.
…which helps explain why folk say the Oasis are Beatles-y, which I can’t normally hear. Oasis are certainly a verrrrry sloooooooow band.
Surely male vocal groups like the Temptations and the Four Tops had kick-arse harmonies without being thought of as sappy and anodyne?
Like I said, it’s only white vocal harmony groups that are perceived as being wimpy (until RnB and BoyzIIMen et al). Usually because they are.
The Four Seasons were a bit of an anachronism , even at this time. I lump ‘em with Frankie Avalon, Ricky Nelson , Paul Anka . Bobby GOldsboro et al.
All artists that had a career before the Beatles and did all they could to make that translate to the 60′s sound.
The attempt to create a sound didn’t always go as expected . Similar ” Black” artists in singing combo’s or solo had the huge advantage of having a ” new” sound of Motown on which to hang their abilities. The ” FUnk Brothers ” 9 see Standing in Shadows of Motown ) gives a new sound that others could not copy, teach, or even, insome cases, emulate.
I also lump Engelbert & TOm Jones in here , too. But reckin they got more respect just because they were Brits..\
Brian in Canada
RE ,HARMONIES,,(SEASONS,,TREMELOES,BEE GEES,ECT,,WHAT ABOUT ,, HARMONY GRASS,,, THE ASSOCIATION,, SPANKY AND OUR GANG .,,, FOUR FRESHMEN ,,,THE LETTERMEN.,,,,MANHATTON TRANSFER,,,FRIENDS OF DISTINCTION ,,,,,,NEED I GO ON ???
please don’t, you are messing up the sidebar a bit with your lack of spaces there!
leave ronnie alone mannion, he is GLITCHCORE TO THE MAX
“anonymous”,, mentioned t jones and hump.. A friend of mine worked with hump and told me he was crap and flat without the mixer working overtime,,t j used to go to danny williams gigs and over sing him,,FROM THE BACK OF THE CLUB, danny was a much better singer than t.j.
I like both the Four Seasons’ and The Tremeloes’ versions of “Silence Is Golden.”
It is incorrect to say that Frankie Valli was not on December, 1963 (Oh What A Night). He actually has two 20 second long solos in the single, comprising 20% of the length of the song. Gerry Polci had the lead on the rest of vocals on the song, though there is a substantial part that is instrumental also.
As has been mentioned, this was a song about nothing, which had the cheek to keep a song about everything off the top. “Waterloo Sunset” was Ray Davies’ masterpiece and should have been number one all day long. It is true to say that “Silence Is Golden” is a strong record in its own right but it will always be remembered, by me at least, as a blocker rather than the well deserved chart topper it otherwise was.
The record is about something; it’s about a guy who doesn’t know whether to tell a girl that her guy is cheating on her.
Ok, it ain’t very deep, but still…
As for girl v guy groups; in the last ten to fifteen years all the decent guy groups have pretty much vanished, they all have one demographic group they appeal to; young girls. Which pretty much means they have no nuts. Yes, they can do some heavy sounding dance, but it’s all producer built and lame. Ever since the New Kids on the Block guy groups have been either dance / ballad combos, or just ballad groups (Westlife). The girls groups’ ‘sass’ is just symptomatic of modern culture appealing to a sense of girlie injustice. But even then; they are usually performed by the kind of girls who cry when their nails get broken, and all the music is written and made by the producers anyway. Can anyone in the Sugababes actually play a guitar… or a piano? And that’s the real problem; at both ends of the spectrum, neither the girls or the boys are responsible for the music ‘they’ make – they just front it (a few lyrics don’t count as songwriting). Take The Spice Girls – “Girl Power” – they were auditioned to form the group and selected by a guy – they were nothing more than ‘The Monkees’ – only they couldn’t even play!
That is love, that it is: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/10/mamas-and-papas-dedicated-to-one-i-love.html Thanks for reading, everyone!
Much as I love the Four Seasons, I’m intrigued by the lack of any debate on the odd career of the Tremeloes here.
They weren’t really a harmony act; Silence Is Golden was just a faithful cover of the flip of Rag Doll (and thus close to being a cover of a Popular b-side which would surely have been a first). It was atypical of the “Trems” sound. Here Comes My Baby was more their style – goodtime singalong stuff which (Cat aside) was frequently European in origin. In this way they are groundbreakers, anticipating the Sylvia/Shag/Demis R package holiday hits of the seventies. Also, it was a lot more fun than the cod-serious, E-numbered 60s Europe of This Is My Song or Where Do You Go To My Lovely – which admittedly ain’t saying much.
Come 1969 they decided to switch tack, and came up with the belting Anglo country rocker (Call Me) Number One – which stalled at number two – then provided the soundtrack to an Oxford-set sex-murder-mystery movie called May Morning a year later. They were also very rude about their own run of Euro-poppy hits which seems to have killed their career stone dead after four straight years of Top 10 hits.
Silence Is Golden meantime is VERY odd subject matter for a number one, and I’ve never been quite sure why it got so big.
See opening section of the TV adaptation The History Man where young Howard Kirk is moaning at the DJ about not playing Jefferson Airplane or the Doors. He puts on “Silence Is Golden” and the floor fills up with girl students, slow dances &c.
The Tremeloes are shurely the missing link between Trini Lopez and the Sweet. And don’t get me started about their completely ignored (at least in the UK) 1972-5 glam era.
No, DO start, Punctum! I’d like to hear about that.
Glam Trems – no idea about this! Tell us more.
Smoochy SIG is, and the harmonies are sweet, but such a cowardly lyric: are we meant to sympathise with the singer? Beggars Parade was another Four Seasons b-side with an unusual lyric – a right wing apologist protest song. Stop moaning and get to work!
“Close harmony as a coccoon, a kind of pretty disengagement from the beastly world” is one of my favourite pop strands: The Free Design, Mamas & Papas et al. Usually there’s a humanist message in there rather than speak-no-evil non-intervention.
“Here comes my baby” is an oddity inasmuch as the version I had as a kid had a fairly ranshackle intro with clapping, whooping, and a big “1-2-3-4″ start. It was a promotional single for Pepsi, with Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th street bridge song feeling groovy” on the other side.
I eventually got a copy of the normal CBS single, and found it started immediately after the “1-2-3-4″ intro, which seemed a shame.
A bit like when playing “Eloise” Barry Ryan around a mates house and finding that his copy didn’t fade at the ‘screaming’ bit but carried on for another minute or so.
The nice thing about having the album version of “Eloise” is that it starts with an extra orchestral flourish and Barry cackling madly away for no good reason (happy birthday by the way Barry – turned 63 two days ago. Amazing how you go to his website and it’s all about his photography; you’d never know he’d been a musician).
Some of the “glam” Trems was OK, although even in their “glam” period they drifted between light pop, 50s updates, Mungo Jerry-type party music, and Blackfoot-Sue-lite “rockers”.
I quite enjoyed “Right Wheel, Left Hammer, Sham”, without even trying to understand what it was about, but I could happily do without hearing “One Of The Boys” or “Blue Suede Tie” again. From memory, they kept cropping up on “Lift Off!” way after the hits stopped.
“Mmmmm, Blackfoot Sue-lite…” Think I need to investigate. Tentatively.
Anyone else here fond of Call Me Number One? I’m not sure what they were trying to do – presumably cram every recent pop noise (from Canned Heat to Don Partridge via CSN) into 3 mins. Never worked out what the lyric is all about either. It shouldn’t work, but I love it. Always group it alongside Fleetwood Mac’s Oh Well in my head, a similarly weirdly structured late ’69 hit.
Plus thee’s Instant Whip, a pretty decent, if rambling, instrumental groover, on the b-side.
And what should have been #1, according to the Tremeloes: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/10/across-bridge-kinks-waterloo-sunset.html
Thanks for reading everyone!
#33- So poor old Peter Sarstedt takes yet another undeserved toeing, does he? Well, I still say it’s a brilliant record, even if he does sound like the cartoon Inspector mooning over some impossible target of a bird, whilst fingering himself tragically, as he sits by himself in a tiny bistro in Dieppe with only a ever-filling jug of Ricard for company, apart from the bistro-keeper, who looks like a fat aging Peter Bowles and a flatulent, flea-ridden, crippled old cat and the smell of fish wafting in from the harbour. Fuck me, can’t you fools understand that you just can’t buy quality like that?!
I liked “Call Me Number One” and “Oh Well” too, though.
TOTPWatch: The Tremeloes performed Silence Is Golden on Top Of The Pops on four occasions;
20 April 1967. Also in the studio that week were; David & Jonathan, Manfred Mann, PP Arnold, Sandie Shaw and The Move. Pete Murray was the host.
18 May 1967. Also in the studio that week were; Englebert Humperdink, Jeff Beck, The Troggs and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Jimmy Savile was the host.
25 May 1967. Also in the studio that week were; Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, Dusty Springfield and Procul Harum. Alan Freeman was the host.
25 December 1967. Also in the studio that Christmas were; Petula Clark, Sandie Shaw, The Foundations, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Tom Jones. Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman and Pete Murray were the hosts.
None of these editions survive.