SMIP #4: The Day I Met Marie by Cliff Richard
Marie with the laughing eyes,
She tossed her hair and tantalised.
She came, she touched me, then she’d gone
Just like a summer breeze.
Chorus and brass band break
(0:54-1:11)
The SMIP project is proving illuminating in ways I hadn’t expected. Much of the (painstaking, time consuming) work is, of course, going on behind the Ministry’s doors and will come to light in good time or under the 30 year rule (whichever is the sooner).
But, by way of example, re-listening to things I haven’t heard for a while has demonstrated that one’s memory can all too easily play tricks on you. A decade ago, I’d have given you a Chinese burn had you dared to suggest that Good Enough by Dodgy or The Bluetones’ Slight Return were anything other than SMIPfests from start to finish.
They are not.
By Christ, they are not.
Oh, no. (And just trust me on this one: you really don’t want to go there…)
The most unexpected SMIP to date arose from a throwaway remark a few weeks ago by the Minister’s Wife about the trombone being one of the most under-appreciated instruments in rock music.
The Minister’s Wife was - as always - absolutely right. And it set me on a journey through the darker recesses of my iTunes Library to dig out some examples.
The first that sprang to mind was Neil Diamond’s first hit, Solitary Man. I am, unashamedly, a loud and proud Diamond fan. I don’t care what jibes are thrown at the Vegas kitsch cabaret act he has become - although I refer critics of said Diamond incarnation to his last album, 12 Songs (his best in 30 years), to learn precisely what songwriting is all about - but between 1966 and 1973 Neil Diamond wrote some of the best pop and rock songs ever and his range of work (eg his African Trilogy from 1970’s Tap Root Manuscript album) was as diverse as anything lauded to the skies when Paul Simon did it 16 years later.
Some of those songs will feature as SMIPs in due course. Solitary Man has proven versatile and durable enough to have been interpreted by acts as diverse as Chris Isaak, Johnny Cash, pseudo-metalheads HIM and bluegrass revivalists Crooked Fingers in just the past seven years. The original version remains the best, however, with a pair of trombones adding light and shade through the chorus and bridge of one of the darkest lyrics of Diamond’s career.
Then I recalled Together Alone by Crowded House, taken from the 1993 album of the same name. The SMIP in this particular track lies elsewhere (patience, children) but the simple sound of the brass ensemble - particularly in the context of underpinning the rest of this song’s arrangement - is particularly affecting.
Then the Minister’s Wife, in an act of wanton cruelty, forced him to sit through the “third season finale” of the execrable Grey’s Anatomy the other day. Featuring prominently on the show’s soundtrack was Within You from Ray LaMontagne’s second album, Till The Sun Turns Black.
While LaMontagne luckily falls within that sacred category of People Who Could Sing The Phone Book And Make It Sound Gorgeous, a small brass ensemble - alongside a string arrangement Sir George Martin would admire - in this instance enhances an audaciously simple song and trite lyric (”War is not the answer: the answer is within you. Love, love, love.” Repeat to fade.) to create an aural experience that is far from unpleasant.
Finally, however, the trombone/brass band SMIP emerged from no lesser figure than Sir Clifford of Richard (© Smash Hits, 1984) himself.
In 1967 Hank Marvin wrote a simple little song called The Day I Met Marie. Being unable to hold a tune himself, Hank handed it to his mate Cliff, whose producer arranged it to incorporate a prominent brass band.
From an initially inauspicious opening of acoustic guitar, bass and Cliff’s ever-fragile vocal on the first verse (0:08-0.35), first trombone (at 0:28) and then trumpet (from 0:33) gently lift the second verse above the mundane until, at 0:46, a tuba begins to propel singer, musicians and listener inexorably towards the first chorus (at 0:54) and our SMIP.
And yes, the churlish could legitimately claim that a brass ensemble’s presence on a Cliff Richard record three years after he became born again raises too many Salvation Army marching band connotations for comfort, but the bottom line is that the chorus of this song is effortlessly infectious.
The sustained tuba bass notes that end the bridge (1:18-1:29) add a further little frisson of melodrama while Cliff tries to sing convincingly about being kissed by a woman.
It also helps that songs only lasted two minutes back in the Sixties. Because, after a quick third verse (1:31-1:53) and a second, less pulsating and slightly anticlimactic chorus (1:53-2:02), it’s all over.
And we smile.
And we move on.
The very essence - if you will permit me my Paul Morley moment - of simply great pop music.
The record briefly made number ten in September 1967, the great British public once more spectacularly fucking it up by choosing to put Engelbert Humperdinck’s noxious The Last Waltz at number one for about eight months.
Cliff formally split from The Shadows in 1968 before leading the United Kingdom to Eurovision failure with the heinous Congratulations. He would barely make another listenable record until he stumbled upon Miss You Nights and Devil Woman in quick succession in 1976.
Before directing you to YouTube, I would urge you to remember to listen to the song and not, er, watch the “dancing” in this clip of Cliff lip synching The Day I Met Marie in 1967:
To discover what the song sounds like when The Shadows themselves perform it (with Hank gamely singing lead, bless him) and how SMIP status genuinely necessitates a coming together of the right musicians, producer, arranger and performer at the right time and in the right manner, check out this surreal little clip from 1968 Australian TV:
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