THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,535) The Sea-Ders — “I Don’t Know Why”
’68 British Invasion gold from the land of the Cedars. Lebanon’s mixed Christian/Muslim Sea-Ders (see #951) made it as far as Swinging London. Anything was possible in the 60’s!
Linda Abi Assi and Bernard Batrouni bring us the Sea-Ders:
[T]he Sea-Ders’ drummer, Zouhair Tourmoche, better known by his stage name, Zad Tarmush. . . . met the other band members in 1961. “Back then, in the late 1950s, early 1960s, there were no radio stations playing rock & roll in Lebanon.” Instead, he eagerly waited to listen to Radio Cairo on Friday nights, hoping to catch . . . Cliff Richard and the Shadows. “I was hanging in a music store one afternoon and in came these two short guys, Raymond Azouri and Joe Shehade. Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” was playing and I started drumming along to it on a wooden bench. Ray and Joe were impressed that I could keep up with the rhythm, and they asked me to join their band. . . . I knew these guys, they were talented. . . . [T]hey used to sing songs by the Everly Brothers with perfect pitch and harmony. They sounded exactly like the original artists. So at the age of 16, I stopped going to the mosque to pray to Allah and rock & roll entered my head in a very big way.”
By 1962, the guys went by the name “Top 5” . . . became the first ever rock band to appear on stage in Lebanon. . . . [and] developed a following, performing in hotels and universities in Beirut and, on weekends, in special clubs where there were no drugs and alcohol allowed . . . . “While people were talking about politics and religion, we didn’t get involved. All we wanted to do was play music . . . . If you were born Christian, you’d tend to suffer little or no hassle if you followed a musical career inspired by European influences. However, as I was the only Muslim in the band, I had to endure a great deal of insults, verbal abuse, and all other forms of stupid prejudices, all of which were hinged on one idea: that a decent Muslim boy would never abandon his culture and follow decadent Western behaviour.” . . .
[A]s Beatlemania swept across the world . . . . [“l]uckily, I had a nose like Ringo Starr . . . . We decided to grow our hair long and we looked just like them[“]. . . . [T]hey made a name for themselves in Lebanon . . . capable of replicating the Fab Four’s sound (and looks) down to a T. “They even called us ‘the Beatles of Lebanon,’” Zad recalls.
In 1966, the band started to write their own stuff. . . . [Their] first [single], “Thanks a Lot,” went on to sell well in the country. . . . [and] ended up on the desk of . . . Dick Rowe at London’s Decca Records, who promptly offered to sign them. . . . Raoul Hajj and Joe Samaha left before the big move and in came lead guitarist Albert Haddad to replace them, with Ray taking up the bass. Albert Haddad also happened to be a good buzuq player, an instrument that soon became ubiquitous to the band’s sound. “It wasn’t intentional[] . . . . We wanted to be a true rock band and never once thought of adding an Oriental twist to our music. . . . We were young, we were hippies and we felt like we belonged to the entire world culture. . . . [The producers at Decca] told us: look, you’re Lebanese so play Oriental music. . . . One of the Decca producers suggested we use the buzuq in our songs, so we did[.]” . . . During a 3-month gig at the PickWick . . . in Leicester Square, actors Victor Spinetti and John Hurt . . . came down to hear them . . . . Paul McCartney and George Harrison stopped by to see the band playing “this weird instrument.” The Sea-Ders released “For Your Information,” their first single in the UK, in 1967. But the record never made it to the charts. Still, Decca followed it up with the release of an EP, which included 8 original songs. “It was a complete and utter failure[“] . . . . In 1969, with their visa coming to an end, Ray, Joe and Albert returned to Lebanon but Zad decided to stay in the UK. . . . He became a British citizen in 1974, and made a living working as a schoolteacher.
https://projectrevolver.org/features/interviews/searching-for-lebanons-sea-ders/
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