THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,777) The Easybeats — “Do You Have a Soul”
This Australia-only B-side features “abrupt tempo changes, cascading choruses, chiming guitars, and hooks that seem to flow into each other effortless[ly]”. (Gripsweat, https://gripsweat.com/item/115031559457/the-easybeats-friday-on-my-mind-lp-united-artists-1967-us-origstereo-uas-6588 “WoW. And I thought I knew the Easybeats! This is an absolute corker. Why this hasn’t been covered by rockers, punk or even metal …? Classic riffing, tone and attitude. Just wow.” (stevebrickshitta870, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO41Ie2a1gY) Indeed. They even sound like monkeys, not the Monkees, but monkeys!
The definitive MILESAGO: Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975 states the importance of the Easybeats:
To describe The Easybeats as “Australia’s Beatles” is not to damn them with faint praise. They were without question the best and most important Australian rock band of the 1960s, and their string of classic hit singles set the benchmarks for Australian popular music. They established a unique musical identity, and they became our first homegrown rock superstars, and for quality, inventiveness and originality their work is arguably unmatched by any other Australian band of the period. The Easybeats scored fifteen Top 40 Singles in Australia between 1965 and 1970, including three No.1 hits. Chief among their many achievements, the Easybeats hold the unique honour of being our first bona-fide rock group to have an major overseas hit record – the legendary “Friday On My Mind”. They were also one of the few major Australian bands of their day to perform and record original material almost exclusively.
Milesago gives “Soul” some context:
After the Xmas euphoria of a Top 10 hit [“Fridday on My Mind”] came the New Year headache: finding a suitable follow-up. This was a crucial moment in their career, and it’s arguable that here is where it began to unravel. Although there was an obvious, gold-plated contender in the superb “Pretty Girl” . . . inexplicably, it was passed over, and relegated to the b-side of a later single. Instead, they opted for a new Vanda-Young track, “Who’ll Be The One You Love”, which was probably written in haste, under pressure, and was clearly not in the same league as “Friday” (George later dismissed it as “crap”). It was released in March in the UK, and flopped. Ominously, UA didn’t even bother to release it in America. Meanwhile the preceding months had been used to record tracks for their new album with Shel Talmy. By all reports it was not a happy working relationship and the track “Do You Have a Soul?” was supposedly written about him, (as was the Who’s “Waltz for a Pig”) and this would be the last time they worked together. In April “Who’ll Be The One You Love” [with “Soul” the B-side] was released in Australia, and went top 20, and the disappointment of the new single was relieved by news that “Friday” was now Top 20 in America. They also began their first, hugely successful tour of Europe this month, supporting The Rolling Stones. Their superb showmanship won many fans there, especially in Germany and Holland (where Harry was feted like royalty) and over the next few years Europe became their most loyal market outside Australia. In May the Talmy-produced Good Friday LP was released in the UK, but was not released in Australia until some time later, and then in an altered form.
Bruce Eder tells us of the Easybeats:
The Easybeats . . . met in Sydney . . . [but] lead singer Stevie Wright originally came from England . . . and bassist Dick Diamonde hailed from the Netherlands, as did guitarist Harry Vanda, while the others, guitarists George Young and drummer Gordon “Snowy” Fleet, were recent arrivals from Scotland and England . . . . [They were] a piece of authentic Brit-beat right in the heart of Sydney. . . . After honing their sound and building a name locally . . . in late 1964, the group was signed to [Ted] Albert Productions who, in turn, licensed their releases to Australian EMI’s Parlophone label. . . . Working from originals primarily written by Stevie Wright, by himself or in collaboration with George Young, the group’s early records . . . were highly derivative of the Liverpool sound . . . . [but] they were highly animated in the studio and on stage, they looked cool and rebellious, and they sang and played superbly. . . . [T]heir debut single [was] issued in March of 1965 . . . . “She’s So Fine,” their second . . . two months later, shot to number one in Australia and was one of the great records of its era . . . . Their debut album Easy, issued the following September . . . . [Their] attack on their instruments . . . coupled with Wright’s searing, powerful lead vocals, made them one of the best British rock & roll acts of the period and Easy one of the best of all British Invasion albums . . . . In Australia, they were the reigning kings of rock & roll . . . assembling a string of eight Top Ten chart hits in a year and a half . . . . Their second album, It’s 2 Easy, was a match for their first . . . whose only fault . . . was that it seemed a year out-of-date in style when it was released in 1966. . . . [They] could do no wrong by keeping their sound the same . . . . [but] George Young . . . had ideas for more complex and daring music. By mid-1966, the Wright/ Young songwriting team had become history, but in its place Vanda and Young began writing songs together. . . . In the fall of 1966, the Easybeats were ready to make the jump that no Australian rock & roll act had yet done successfully, and headed for England. In November of 1966 . . . the group scored its first U.K. hit with “Friday on My Mind[“, which] embodied all of the fierce kinetic energy of their Australian hits but . . . at a new level of sophistication . . . . It rose to the Top Ten . . . across Europe and much of the rest of the world, and reached the Top 20 in the United States . . . . The group spent seven months in England, writing new, more ambitious songs[, ] performing before new audiences, most notably in Germany . . . . [and] mov[ing] their base of operations to London . . . . Some of the songs were superb, but the[ir] . . . charmed existence . . . seemed to desert them in 1967-1968 — their single “Heaven and Hell” was banned from the radio in England for one suggestive line, and a six-month lag for a follow-up cost them momentum . . . . [But] the songs . . . were as good as anything being written in rock at the time. . . . By mid-1969, the band had receded to a mere shadow of itself, and their music had regressed to a form of good-time singalong music . . . . The band decided to call it quits following a return to Australia for one final tour . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-easybeats-mn0000145086#biography
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