Chart entered : 18 March 1965
Chart peak : 40
No happy endings here as we come to Del's exit from the story.
"Stranger In Town " followed closely on the heels of one of his biggest hits "Keep Searchin'" which appeared to have arrested the decline in his fortunes since the beat boom. And to be honest it sounds like it could have done with a bit longer in the oven. The lyrical concept is typically Del, a man and his lover on the run trying to keep one step ahead of a bounty hunter , but musically it's a mess of half formed or recycled ideas that don't hang together. Del sounds like he's making up the melody as he goes along and there's no real hook at all. A poor effort with which to sign off.
His next single "Break Up" in June is a better, more coherent song with Del reading the signs that his lover is going to abandon him. It rests on a loud guitar riff that shows he was taking note of the British Invasion although the Musitron makes a welcome re-appearance on the instrumental break. It's not got one of his strongest melodies which is probably why it couldn't extend his hit tally. "Move It On Over" from September 1965 was co-written with Dennis Coffey of the Royaltones and sees Del moving right over to raucous R & B with surprising ease; you'd hardly guess it was the same artist. Both these songs were very minor hits in the US; Del was so disappointed with the failure of the latter he is said to have thrown boxes of the single into a lake in frustration.
Del was also having problems with his label boss Irving Micahnik who was skimming his royalties to pay off gambling debts. He was desperate to quit the label but owed one more single so he did a cover "I Can't Believe My Ears" in his classic style and then quit. To say it's a throwaway effort it isn't that bad. Melodically it's very similar to "Little Town Flirt" but there's some great work on the Musitron.
Del signed for Liberty and started working with Snuff Garrett. Del himself was getting more interested in production and less so in writing new songs and so his output from this point is dominated by covers. His next single was a version of Miss ( the track's writer Wayne Shanklin was actually her husband ! ) Toni Fisher's 1959 US hit "The Big Hurt" which relied on continuous phasing effects for its impact. Garrett and Leon Russell weren't quite as heavy handed on Del's version which uses the Musitron for other worldliness but it's still a bit disappointing. It scraped to 94 in the US charts and that's as good as it got for Del on Liberty.
His next single was "For A Little While", a self-penned number advising a young starlet that her time in the spotlight will be short, which is absolutely terrific. Del wraps the poisonous lyrics , some of them growled out like Barry McGuire, in a lush pop setting with an irresistible ( except it obviously wasn't ) melody and great drumming . It's hard not to think Del was addressing his own situation with lines like "They'll use you to have a ball , yeah they'll build you up then they'll let you fall".
"Show Me" was a step back to the classic sound , a bit too close to "Keep Searchin'" for comfort although Del sings most of it in a higher voice in the usual. Liberty didn't bother releasing it in the UK nor the cover of "Under My Thumb" that followed it which is good but redundant.
"She" was released in both territories at the beginning of 1967 , a song about a treacherous woman written by Boyce and Hart who produced Del's version ( not particularly well - the organ is too loud and the whole sound is murky ) and then gave the song to The Monkees whose cleaner version killed off any interest in Del's.
Andrew "Loog" Oldham liked Del's version of "Under My Thumb" and invited him over to London for a recording session in February 1967 which produced Led Along written by Oldham's protégé , Billy Nicholls. It's an attractive psychedelic pop song and could that be Mick Jagger doing the "ba ba ba's" towards the end ?
In the summer he released a re-orchestrated version of "Runaway" which ditches the Musitron for strings and Spanish guitar. The Australians liked it enough to put it at number 15 on their charts. Needless to say it's not a patch on the original.
The next two singles were from his 1968 album "The Further Adventures Of Charles Westover ". "Thinkin It Over", co-written with Beau James sounds like The Turtles with Del adopting a breathy Colin Blunstone tone for the verses. It's a brassy break-up song , not bad but the chorus lacks subtlety. "Gemini" goes further down the late Zombies route with its restless strings , soft focus vocals , elliptical lyric and unusual hi-hat heavy drumming. It's an interesting period piece but not really single material.
In September 1968 Liberty released one more single ( not in the UK ) , a cover of Dee Clark's "Raindrops" which has a good vocal and some nice string work. They then called it a day.
Without a regular recording contract Del had to turn more towards producing. He had started as far back as 1964 when he helped a young Bob Seger to make up his demo tape. In 1966 he got a young country singer Johnny Carver signed to Liberty's subsidiary Imperial and wrote and produced his first single ( not a hit ) "Thinking About Her All The Time". Carver started hitting the country chart regularly from 1968 and I'm wondering if that extended Del's sojourn with the company.
In 1969 Del scored a triumph when he discovered the band Smith at an LA nightclub , got them a deal with ABC-Dunhill and produced their single "Baby It's You" an organ-heavy cover of Burt Bacharach's "Baby It's You" which went Top 5. As a result Del got a short term deal for himself and released "Comin Back To Me " and "Sister Isabelle" , both co-writes with Brian Hyland. I don't know the first song but the second is a terrific CCR-like rocker about a girl leaving her lover to become a nun. It was later covered by Frank Black.
In 1970 he produced the million-selling "Gypsy Woman" for Hyland and its follow-up "Lonely Teardrops".
Del's subsequent career was often interrupted by his battle with alcoholism. For a time the prospects looked better over here. He signed up with United Artists and released a mellow version of Timi Yuro's "What's A Matter Baby" in 1972 . He then released "Live In England" an LP recorded during a successful tour in the winter of 1972-3. and his next single "Kelly" was a live recording from the Princess Club in Manchester. In 1974 he recorded "And The Music Plays On" with Dave Edmunds producing and appeared on Top Pop, looking a bit overweight in a dodgy brown suit and sporting an even dodgier moustache. He's in good voice but the lazy mid-70s country rock vibe doesn't do it for me. It seems to have been his last UK single of the 70s
In 1975 he switched to Island who released his version of The Zombies' "Tell Her No" in the US which is an interesting stab at a difficult song but doesn't quite work, the chorus defying Del's attempt to squeeze it into his current Eagles vibe. His only other single for the label was a co-write with Jeff Lynne ( when ELO were at their lowest point ) and if Del wrote the melody he was definitely due some royalties from Confusion. It even sounds like Lynne singing.
After two lost years Del managed to get on the wagon and started working with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The result was the LP "Drop Down And Get Me" with Petty producing and the Heartbreakers backing Del. The first single in 1981 " To Love Someone" was one of seven new Del songs and a sleek modern rock number about abandonment. The follow -up, a competent cover of "Sea Of Love" took off after he appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand and gave him his first US Top 40 hit since "Stranger In Town".
For some reason Del wasn't able to capitalise on it. There were to be no more singles from the LP despite some suitable candidates : "Life Without You" is particularly good. and "Cheap Love" ( actually released in the UK instead of "To Love Someone" ) would be a big country hit for Juice Newton a few years later. Instead it was three years before the next single "In My Arms Again" on Warner Brothers which is a straight country re-recording of the B side to "Cry Baby Cry". It's competent but uninteresting. And "Stranger On The Run" is more of the same despite the evocative title. It was to be his last new single in the US.
In 1988 he guested on a track "The World We Know " by The Smithereens on their LP Green Thoughts. The following year he toured Australia. Returning , he started work on an LP with Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty sparking rumours that he would be joining The Travelling Wilburys to replace the recently-deceased Roy Orbison. On 3rd February 1990 he played his last gig in Fargo suffering from flu and asking for the lights to be turned down. Five days later he shot himself in the head. He was on Prozac at the time so it's assumed he was suffering from depression at the time but no one's really sure.
Lynne managed to finish the album with what he'd got and it was released in 1991 as "Rock On". No singles were released in the States but two came out here. "Are You Loving Me Too" is unmistakably a Lynne production but it's pleasant enough. "Walk Away" which the three of them wrote together is great , a confessional song which builds up nicely to a killer chorus. Del's falsetto isn't quite what it was but that vulnerability and the lyrics about saying goodbye give it an extra bite. The whole album's worth checking out actually.
No comments:
Post a Comment