THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
An impossibly gorgeous British beat ballad written and recorded by a later incarnation of the Tornados (yes, the “Telstar” Tornados) with a little help from Joe Meek, rerecorded a few years later with equally impressive results by Israel’s Churchills, then including co-writer and ex-Tornado Robb Huxley. Talk about an exodus! Mattgee3734 writes:
The singer here, who also happened to have co-written the song, presented as “Robb Gayle”… is Robb Huxley. He would re-surface . . . as a member of Israeli band The Churchills, with whom he re-recorded the song. The new version appeared as the A side of the Churchills 1st 45… they then switched to psych and recorded a magnificent album . . . .
1,573) The Tornados — “Too Much in Love to Hear”
Robb Huxley recalls that:
Joe [Meek] asked us if we had anything for the B side. We had a song that I had started to write on my Dad’s old, out of tune piano . . . and Pete Holder helped me finish it off. . . . We played it to Joe and he liked it but he said that it should be done in three four and not in four four as we were playing it. My immediate reaction was that Joe had no idea what he was talking about until Dave Watts said “Yeah man! That’s it” and started to play the chords with what turned out to be a six eight feel. It seemed that like magic the song took on a completely different feel and appeal and all this had basically come from Joe. I have read over the years many articles portraying Joe as some one who could not sing in tune and was tone deaf but I do not agree entirely with that.
He had a vivid imagination and heard things in his mind that he could only bring to the surface with the help of others. If any one was singing off key he would know immediately and anyone who was tone deaf would never have known this. Joe could sing but he was not a very good singer as he would often waver and go off key. . . . “Too Much in Love to Hear” actually came out very well. Dave Watts put a very nice jazzy almost old world feel to his piano parts, Pete Holder put in a nice typical Shadows style solo and together with jazzy style drumming and a good bass line, I put down the vocal and played rhythm guitar.
Heather Phares tells us of the Tornados:
One of the U.K.’s most distinctive instrumental bands in the early-to-mid 1960s, the Tornados scored a worldwide hit with 1962’s soaring space age ode “Telstar.” The first song by a U.K. group to top the U.S. charts, its uniquely driven, clavioline-led sound was the perfect combination of the band’s musicianship and Joe Meek’s innovative production and recording techniques. As one of the house bands at Meek’s studio and as the backing group for Billy Fury, the Tornados juggled those obligations with releasing their own music, earning Top Five EPs in the U.K. with 1962’s The Sound of the Tornados and Telstar and Top 20 U.K. singles in 1963’s “Globetrotter,” “Robot,” and “Ice Cream Man.” By that time, shifting pop music trends and multiple lineup changes — more than two dozen members played in the group overall — contributed to the Tornados ‘ waning popularity. However, they remained creative to the end . . . .The group returned to backing Fury and issued a pair of 1966 singles that ranked among their most creative work: “Pop-Art Goes Mozart” arranged sections of The Marriage of Figaro [“Too Much in Love to Hear” was the B-side] . . . . The Tornados soldiered on for a time following Meek’s 1967 death . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-tornados-mn0000920165#biography
Huxley quipped that:
We had the famous writer of “Telstar” consumed with the hope that he might create another “Telstar” with another of the groups that he had formed to be the Tornados. On the other hand we have the virgin pure recently “Turned Pro” Saxons, together with Dave Watts, a seasoned professional musician, all with their individual desires to be part of what was “IN”, while masquerading as the Tornados.
1,574) The Churchills* — “Too Much in Love to Hear”
If you are from Israel, read no further as the Churchills’ (see #975) take on the song “reached number one on the Israeli charts in 1968”. (Robb Huxley, http://www.silvertabbies.co.uk/huxley/newtornados.html) Huxley notes that “I have no idea how many records were released or sold. I never received a penny from any of the sales.” (http://www.silvertabbies.co.uk/huxley/churchills2.html)
Huxley further recalls — you need to read the whole thing, it is hilarious — that:
At a band meeting one Friday afternoon Yehuda [Talit] discussed with us the possibilities of making a record. He said that there was a good chance that CBS of Israel would be interested in releasing a single by the Churchills. I was rather surprised when it was suggested that we record “Too Much in Love to Hear”. . . . One time . . . [band member] Miki [Gavrielov] was sifting through my records when he came across the Tornados single and put it on the turntable. Miki asked me who wrote the song and I explained that I did, along with Pete Holder. So it was decided that we would record that song . . . . I showed the band the chords . . . . We were told that the record would be produced by Alex Weiss who was at that time a renowned musician, composer and conductor in Israel. [Band member] Stan [Solomon] and I had no idea who he was but we figured that he must have been pretty good judging by the excitement generated by the rest of the band and Yehuda. He would also arrange string accompaniment . . . . There would also be a brass section. . . . We were scheduled to arrive at the studio at 7.30 am. Stan said “What are they out of their f*ckin’ minds?” We didn’t usually go to sleep till around 6 am. Stan and I were forced to have an early night and crawled into bed at around 4 am. Three hours later we dragged ourselves out of bed, smoked a joint . . . and walked over to the taxi stand . . . . At the studio we met Yehuda and the rest of the band and were introduced to sound engineer Amnon Roberman and his assistant Dori. . . . I believe that this was one of the first recordings of its kind to be made in Israel. Most of the recordings prior to this were either classical, folk music and for the most part were recorded using acoustic instruments. . . . Stan and I discussed what type of solo we should put on “Too Much in Love to Hear”. Stan said that he thought we should put a Hendrix style solo which I would play and then we would reverse it and play it backwards and dub it on to the track. . . . Amnon was looking concerned and called Stan into the control room where they talked back and forth until Stan returned. “They think that we’re crazy, Robbie, they tried to tell me that they can’t record a guitar like that. I told ‘em that Hendrix records like that in England and that’s the sound we want”. I resumed my work on the solo and I realized that it could not be a melodic type of solo as it would not fit with the backing track when it was played backwards. I decided to keep it as simple as possible and basically slid my fingers up and down the strings from octave to octave. We could see Amnon peering through the window shaking his head with disapproval. I said to Stan, “Wait till we tell him that we want to reverse the tape and play it backwards he’ll sh*t his pants!” We got the solo down with Stan staying in the studio with me. He let out a scream at the beginning of my solo and also shouted “We are the t*t men of Tel-Aviv”. Yehuda was beside himself and complained profusely to Stan when we entered the control room to listen to the play back. “You can’t say that on a record”. Stan replied telling Yehuda not too worry as it would be backwards and that nobody would understand it. Amnon swiveled round on his chair with a look of amazement, asking what did we mean backwards? . . . [He] almost fell out of his chair and with his eyes popping out of his head said that it couldn’t be done. We explained that it could as we had heard it on the Jimi Hendrix album Are You Experienced. The result was that Amnon and Dori jabbered away in Hebrew with their hands waving in the air and with some input from the rest of the Churchills they eventually agreed to do as we asked. . . . Here we had a good melodic song, sung in a pop style voice combined with a group sound that was embellished with a typical almost 50’s sounding brass section, with classical style strings layered in; suddenly attacked in the solo by an imposing backward guitar, a scream and some unrecognizable utterance.
Jesse Rifkin tells us of the Churchills:
[T]he Churchills – Israel’s own psych-rock pioneers . . . . story began in Israel in 1965, when Mickey Gavriellov noticed Haim Romano playing a mandolin for a small group of friends. Gavriellov, who wanted to be in a band, started following Romano around with his guitar, trying desperately to get noticed. Gavriellov soon started playing bass with guitarist Yitzchak Klepter, drummer Ami Treibich, and vocalist Selvin Lifshitz. . . . [T]he band soon added Romano on lead guitar. The group soon became known as Churchill’s Hermits (in tribute to Herman’s Hermits), and eventually just the Churchills. . . . Huxley had come to Israel from England in 1967 as a member of one of the various touring incarnations of the Tornadoes . . . . When the Tornadoes finished their tour in Israel, the bassist and drummer decided to return to England, but Huxley and the band’s keyboardist decided to stay. After playing in a few groups in Israel, Huxley came across the Churchills. “The band would play two sets . . . . one of pop covers and one of American soul music, on which they were joined by [Canadian singer] Stan Solomon.” At the time, Solomon was singing in a band called the Saints. Huxley and Solomon became friends very quickly, and soon moved in with each other. In 1968 Lifshitz and Klepter were drafted into the Israeli army. Solomon was almost immediately asked to become the band’s new lead singer, and he in turn recommended Huxley as Klepter’s replacement. The change was dramatic. “Stan and I had the other members of the band over to our apartment,” Huxley said, “where we smoked a bunch of hash, which there was a lot of in Israel at that time… We introduced them to the Doors, Vanilla Fudge, and Hendrix – that kind of music, and they just freaked out! They totally loved it!” . . . This unique mix of Eastern and Western music became very popular in Israel, no doubt helped by the fact that, thanks to Huxley and Solomon, the Churchills became the first Israeli rock band to play original material. . . . The band soon released its first single, “Too Much in Love to Hear,” a Huxley original, backed with Solomon’s “Talk to Me.” Not long after the single was released, the band ventured to Denmark, where they spent four months opening for Deep Purple. . . . When the band returned to Israel, they were asked to create a soundtrack for the film A Woman’s Case, a bizarre movie about an advertising executive who falls for and later plots to kill a lesbian fashion model. The songs Huxley, Solomon and Gavriellov wrote for the movie became the basis for the band’s 1968 self-titled debut album. . . . In 1969, Stan Solomon left the band and returned home. “Stan’s father was one of the richest men in Canada,” Huxley explained. “He wanted Stan to come back and join the family business, which was a clothing business. . . . “[Stan’s quitting] was a crisis,” said Gavriellov. . . . In early 1970, Huxley briefly went back to England to get married. When he returned, the other band members informed him that while he was gone, they had added a new lead singer – Danny Shoshan, formerly of the Lions of Judea. “In my opinion,” said Huxley, “Danny Shoshan became the other Stan Solomon. He and I started writing together like I had with Stan. But Danny sang with a very ballsy voice, so we started doing harder stuff because we could.”
Richard Klin adds:
The 1960s, for much of the world, were synonymous with social ferment and rebellion. Not so in Israel. Nineteen sixty-seven was the year of the Six-Day War, followed by the War of Attrition with Egypt, followed still by the Yom Kippur War in 1973. . . . [T]here was no Israeli equivalent of mass student uprisings, no Haight-Ashbury. . . . [But there] sprang a complete anomaly: The Churchills – a trippy, psychedelic band that emerged not from California, London, or other high temples of grooviness, but from the environs of Tel Aviv. The Churchills began as a standard Israeli cover band. At the same time, a revamped version of the Tornados, the British band that gave the world “Telstar,” toured Israel. The Tornados disbanded after that tour and one of its members, Robb Huxley, “decided to stay in Israel as I had met and become friends with Canadian Stan Solomon, who was the [Churchills] singer…and then began our arduous task to change the music of the band and hopefully turn the Israeli audience on to a different style of music.” . . . The Israeli audiences “took us as being a bunch of crazy musicians,” [Huxley] remembers, “who played ‘noise’ and were all ‘soaked’ in LSD.” . . . Yet the Churchills . . . doggedly plugged away. In 1968 came their eponymous album, Churchill’s—the errant apostrophe a forgivable offense in a Hebrew-speaking world. The album was a psychedelic, expressive classic, with songs ranging from the bombastic to the plaintive. The fact that Churchill’s . . . existed at all was odds-defying. . . . The album’s sonic palette is heavily inflected with strong doses of the jangly, drone-like tones of the Mediterranean and Middle East . . . . The band joined forces with Arik Einstein, one of the founding fathers of Israeli rock. They connected with other Israeli musicians who were forming a homegrown, nascent rock scene. . . . In Israel, the sort of music the Churchills championed was a marginalized, often scorned, form of expression. Yet it did find its way into public consciousness. The musicians and their fans coalesced. The Churchills are part of a wonderful, scattered lineage found in culture’s nooks and crannies.
Well, were they popular in Israel or were they not?
* The band’s name “was simply a reference to founding member Yitzhak Klepter’s schoolboy nickname, inspired by his round, plump appearance that apparently conjured up images of the British prime minister”. (Richard klin https://www.jewishviews.com/israeli-gears/)
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