THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
2,054) The Rattles — “Mr . . . Keep Your Hands Off My Sister”
Well before “Bohemian Rhapsody” and two months after Barry Ryan’s “Eloise” [see #264] came one of the GOAT operatic, bombastic, kitchen sink epic rock songs . . . out of Hamburg, Germany. “One of the[ Rattles’] very best . . . with a kitchen sink production on a par with what was going on in the UK!” (Wurzelsepp, https://www.45cat.com/record/269392tf) The message is simple and direct and oft-repeated: Mr., keep your hands off my sister! The music, straight-ahead rock (nicking Keith’s “Satisfaction” riff) to discotheque beats to classical (from choral to Mozart-era) is exhilarating. I would so like to hear Wayne and Garth belt this one out!
Of course, there are haters: “Annoying wannabe-epic track with satisfaction-ripoff riff”. (SwedxSimon, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/the-rattles/mr-keep-your-hands-off-my-sister/) Drop the “annoying” and the “wannabe” and he nailed it!
Richie Unterberger tells us of the Rattles:
One of the most successful, and certainly one of the most prolific, German rock groups of the ’60s, the Rattles enjoyed reasonable success in their native land without making much of an impression elsewhere (though some of their material was released in other countries). Starting out in the same Star Club-based Hamburg scene as the Liverpool groups of the early ’60s, their early repertoire was built upon a similar base of ’50s rock and soul/R&B. They released about 30 singles during the ’60s . . . as well as almost ten albums, eventually making the transition to original material, and marching on well into the 1970s.
Wikipedia adds (courtesy of Google Translate):
The Rattles were founded in Hamburg in December 1960 by Achim Reichel and Herbert Hildebrandt. [In] 1963, the band won a competition at Hamburg’s Star-Club and subsequently became the first German band to perform there. In the autumn of that year, they recorded their first single. Afterwards, the group embarked on a six-week tour of England with Bo Diddley, Little Richard, the Everly Brothers, and the then relatively unknown Rolling Stones [see #382, 298, 537, 579, 1,098, 1,403, 1,911]. Following the release of the film Hurra, die Rattles kommen (Hooray, the Rattles are Coming) in early 1966, they shared the stage with the Beatles in June of that year, opening for the Bravo Beatles Blitz Tour in Munich, Essen, and Hamburg – to great acclaim. Rattles records were released, achieving regional success in England, and for a time they were celebrated in Liverpool as the “German Beatles”. In total, the group had a dozen hits . . . . The band achieved nationwide media fame in Germany through their appearances on the ARD music show Beat-Club. . . . In 1970, the Rattles had an international hit with “The Witch”. The song had initially appeared as the B-side of the 1969 single “Geraldine”. In June 1970, “The Witch” reached number 79 in the US as the A-side, and in October it climbed to number eight in the UK. . . . Due to its success, the Rattles recorded a new version of “The Witch” with Edna Bejarano on vocals, which reached number four in the West German charts in October 1970. The song was composed by Herbert Hildebrandt. . . . By this time, Achim Reichel had long since left the group. After his time in the German Federal Armed Forces, he founded the group Wonderland in 1967 . . . . The “new” 1970s Rattles . . . only had some connection to the original lineup insofar as Herbert Hildebrandt continued as the group’s composer and producer. Further singles . . . were only minor hits in West Germany. In 1977, after several lineup changes, the Rattles disbanded.
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