Searching for the Jangle in the Jingle Jangle morning: Remembering the Searchers

The Searchers have  played their last gig and wound up as a working group. As their formation was 1960 that makes their longevity longer than the Stones at the time of writing, though to be fair  the Stones can still claim 50% of their original line-up of 6 compared to the Searchers’ 25% (John McNally) of 4. Like the rise and fall of mountain ranges, music trends have come and sometimes gone in those decades: the British beat boom, rhythm and blues, folk rock, psychedelia, the Blues revival, Glam rock, Prog rock, hard rock, reggae, ska, metal, punk,  power pop, electronica, indie music, grunge , hip hop, grime. The Searchers have played on through them all, though it is a bit salutary to think that, on a conservative estimate based on their gigging record, John McNally and Frank Allen must have struck the opening chords of Needles and Pins at least 50,000 times in the 55 years since it was released. Possibly much more.  I saw them play at Baileys in Watford in the early 1980s and they played it twice.

To some, they are perhaps  just a name that appears on one of the Sounds of the Sixties tours that have regularly played across the country for the last 30 years or more, alongside other half-forgotten outfits of that era like the Merseybeats or Fortunes. One week it’s the  Bedford Corn Exchange, the next week Evesham Art Centre, where audiences can experience a long-gone musical era without having to have been there themselves.  This, however, is to do them a great injustice. They should occupy a much bigger place in pop history as they are arguably the original exponents of the particular musical sound christened ‘Jingle Jangle’ that has been heard in a long lineage of bands from the Byrds through the Smiths, Bangles, and REM and into many of the indie bands of the 80’s and 90’s.

The sound is characterised by the jangly, chiming  tones of a 12 string (usually a Rickenbacker) electric guitar, harmonies and pop-oriented melodies, first identified with the folk-rock boom of the mid-60’s and seeing a major revival in the 1980’s. Pop histories generally credit the Byrds for inventing the sound and the onomatopoeic name of ‘jingle  jangle’  itself  comes from the Byrds’ break - through single from 1965, Dylan’s Tambourine Man and the line ‘in the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you’. The Searchers may get a quick reference in these contexts, usually with a nod to Needles and Pins, but their influence seems  more substantial than history has recognised. The reasons why they  lost out to the Byrds when the medals were being handed out  have more to do with  being in the right place at the right time and the changing nature of pop music in the mid-60s than the respective merits of the 2 bands.

The Searchers first came to pop fame in the now seemingly quaint era of Merseybeat, the tranche of Liverpool-based groups that hit the UK charts in the wake of the Beatles and made up part of the ‘British invasion’ of  the USA in 1964/5.  For a while, the Searchers were huge, ranked second only to the Beatles and with  John Lennon and George Harrison rating them as amongst their favourite groups in 1964.  They could have got lost amongst the crowd - the Fourmost,  Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Merseybeats et al – but what set them apart from their peers were their use of harmonies, a softer sound  and an interesting choice of melody-driven songs. In retrospect the first indication that the Searchers were breaking new ground came with their first album , Meet the Searchers, rushed out in August 1963 to capitalise on their first hit, Sweets for my Sweet. Like many pop albums of the time it contained their current hit with the rest filled up with covers taken from their stage act and, in truth, most of these had been done better by other artists. Who thought it a good idea to include Twist and Shout and Money when the Beatles had just done them or a rather weak version of Ben E King’s Stand By Me? The Searchers were always best - at least for their 60’s output – covering songs by female artists. There was  Needles and Pins and When You Walk In The Room (Jackie DeShannon); Don’t Throw Your Love Away (The Orlons); Some day We’re Going To Love Again (Barbara Lewis). Even on this first album, their version of the Crystals’ Da Doo Ron Ron worked better than the all-out rockers.

 Amongst the tracks, however, was their version of the Pete Seeger song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? It had been recorded before: both the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and May had released versions the previous year. They were folk acts, however, whereas the Searchers were a bona-fide pop group like the Beatles,  and they put electric guitars, bass and drums behind the song, with Chris Curtis and Mike Pender harmonising on lead vocals. The guitars even jangle a bit.

This, then, may well be both the first tentative steps on the Jingle Jangle road and the first example of folk-rock, two years ahead of time and two years before Johnny Rivers scored a USA hit with his own folk-rock version of Where Have All the Flowers Gone? It was a pattern of just missing the big wave that seemed to dog the Searchers throughout their career.

The inclusion of a folk song like this was unusual  for a group filed under ‘Merseybeat’ and was likely the choice of drummer Chris Curtis. He was an interesting and eccentric character and was the only drummer I can think of who could stand up, play the drums and sing all  the same time. He was called Mad Henry by George Harrison, was prone to mercurial outbursts and eventually became a pop casualty in the manner of Syd Barrett or Peter Green. At times his wild eyes and twitchy behaviour  might lead an observer to conclude he might have ingested a large quantity of speed and  during a disastrous tour of Australia supporting the Rolling Stones in 1966, the other Searchers  flushed Chris Curtis’s gear down the toilet, an act that hastened  his exit from the group and into, reputedly, a dalliance with LSD that ended his musical career for good. Until his departure, however, he seemed to hold the greatest influence on song choice as the group’s career progressed.  It was likely him who had picked out the fairly obscure soul tracks by the Orlons and Barbara Lewis to cover  but he was also attracted by folk music. A 2003 interview with Curtis mentioned he had an autographed copy – ‘To Chris, Best Wishes, Judy Collins’ -  of an early Judy Collins’ album, Golden Apples of the Sun, which came out in 1962 when her name was little known in the USA, let alone the UK. It was also another little example  of the circular links that cropped up  between the Searchers and the Byrds. Golden Apples of the Sun was Judy Collins’ second album. When she recorded her third, imaginatively titled Judy Collins 3, in 1963 Jim (Roger) McGuinn played guitar and banjo on it, later taking two of the songs on the album – Turn, Turn, Turn and Bells of Rhymney – for the Byrds to  record.

The next landmark along the Jingle Jangle way was the recording of Needles and Pins, a UK No 1 in January /February 1964.The song is credited to Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche but Jackie DeShannon, who first recorded it, has claimed she played a close part in the composition but wasn’t credited. Given her history as a songwriter and the structure of the song, plus the fact that Sonny Bono never wrote another song with lyrics like this, this seems more than likely. Jackie DeShannon’s recording had reached the lower reaches of the Billboard Top 100 but she was an unknown name in the UK and the Searchers first heard the song during a performance by Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers in Hamburg. They must have then  listened to the original cut, however, as their arrangement follows Jackie DeShannon in 2 ways. The opening riff, played by Glen Campbell on the Jackie DeShannon track, is the same and Mike Pender sings ‘needles and pinsa’,as does DeShannon. What can be heard, however, is essentially the sound that later  typified ‘Jingle Jangle’.  It is  still to be refined but is basically there. Harmonies? Check. Melodic pop? Check? Jangly guitars? Check.

The record has sometimes been credited with early use of an electric 12-string but the sound, in fact, came from Mike Pender and John McNally both playing electric 6-strings in unison and slightly out of tune. Needles and Pins got to  13 in the USA charts in April 1964 and the Searchers performed the song on the Ed Sullivan Show the same month. This may be where the Byrds picked up on the song,  for a year or so later, in June 1965, the opening riff re-appeared on their release of  I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better, written by Gene Clark.  They obviously liked it as they used it again on their 1966 version of Hey Joe, as did the Leaves and Love in their own versions of that song.

In October 1964, with new bassist Frank Allen now on board from Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, a further milestone was reached with a No 3 UK hit (35 or so in the USA)  and  another Jackie DeShannon song, When You Walk In the Room.  It was similar to the Needles and Pins sound – jangly guitars, vocal harmonies, soaring melody, and lyrics that get the word ‘nonchalant’ in – but went one step further with the use of an electric 12 string guitar  for the first time on their recordings. Mike Pender has said he used a Rickenbacker on When You Walk in the Room but Frank Allen is convinced it was a Burns double six as Rickenbackers were still too expensive for the group to afford and that one wasn’t acquired until 1966. Either way, it was undoubtedly an electric 12 string that characterised the sound of When You Walk in the Room, making the key components of ‘jingle jangle’ all in place  a year before its supposed birth.

The Searchers had one more musical landmark in November  1964, their recording of What Have They Done to the Rain?, reaching 11 in the UK charts and the USA top 30. This was an anti-nuclear testing folk song penned by American singer-songwriter and political activist Malvina Reynolds and, as with the jingle jangle sound, anticipated in advance the folk-rock protest boom of 1965/66. The track was also marked by not just one but two electric 12 string guitars played by Mike Pender and John McNally, as can be seen in this clip, with Chris Curtis in uncharacteristically restrained mode on bongos. It was a style that the Searchers might have developed further but their next few releases reverted to standard pop and the momentum passed. The right sound at the wrong time again.

This became most apparent the following year. 1965 was the year both  ‘jingle jangle’ and folk rock came of age and the Searchers should have been able to capitalise on the sound they had developed in the previous 2 years. Instead, they discovered that they had already peaked commercially and that it was the Byrds who rode the wave. The key record was Mr Tambourine Man, released in April 1965 and a No 1 in both the USA and the UK, showcasing the jangly guitars and  harmonies that became the hallmark of the Byrds sound.  Only Roger McGuinn played on the debut single, using a 12 string Rickenbacker, with Gene Clark and David Crosby adding harmonies and members of the Wrecking Crew providing the other music.  However, the group  took forward and refined their characteristic sound through a string of follow-up singles and albums  and with an ever changing line-up until  finally disbanding in 1973.

McGuinn has always said that the biggest influence on the Byrds were the Beatles, with a Road to Damascus moment when McGuinn, Crosby and Clark, all with a folk music background, went to see  the Hard Days Night film, saw George Harrison playing a 12 string Rickenbacker and came out inspired to be a pop group.  There is little doubt, however, that the Byrds also listened to the Searchers, who were one of the leading lights of the ‘British Invasion’ with  6 Top 40 hits in the USA in 1964,plus a couple of album releases. Apart from the big hits there were other tracks that showcased the distinctive sound of harmonies and ringing 12-string.  Take this little-heard  flipside of When You Walk in the Room, a group composition I’ll Be Missing You. It could be an indie band from the early 90’s, early Teenage Fanclub perhaps.

 Chris Hillman has acknowledged the Searchers’ influence on a number of occasions: "We were quite a bit into The Searchers, beginning with their two- and three-part harmonies….The Searchers were a bit smoother than we were and less adventurous. But I think we identified more with The Searchers than with The Beatles........".  (From the liner notes to "The Searchers - The Collection (1963-1966)"  Or “We borrowed this song (When You Walk in the Room) from the British group, The Searchers. We borrowed a lot from The Searchers back then." (Liner notes on Like a Hurricane CD ).Roger McGuinn has belatedly made similar comments and David Crosby has cited the Pender/Curtis harmonies as an influence on his own vocal role in the Byrds.

The question, therefore, is why the Searchers found themselves left behind in the year that saw Jingle Jangle come of age. They continued to score smaller hits in the UK for a couple of years, including a bona-fide folk-rock protest song in 1965, Take Me For What I’m Worth, again chosen by Chris Curtis.  This was written by P F Sloan, then riding high with the success of his apocalyptic Eve of Destruction smash hit and had similar lyrics to his Let Me Be song, a hit for the Turtles. Both tracks had lyrics ambiguous enough to be taken either as a general call for the right of personal expression or as an affirmation of gay identity, which Chris Curtis confirmed in an interview given in 1998.  Like What Have They Done to the Rain, the song itself indicated a folk-rock direction the Searchers might have profitably gone in but , as before, the moment passed. The group continued to make good records but with little effect. A 1968  release, Shoot ‘em up Baby, sounds like it might have been a hit by Marmalade or the Tremeloes but it passed by totally unnoticed. How on earth had  a group that had pioneered a sound that continued to echo down the decades been left behind as time travellers trapped in 1963-4 whilst the credit went to those who came after?

The simple answer was one of timing. In coming a year after the Searchers, the Byrds had 2 big advantages. The first  was being able to capitalise on the Beatles’ success in the USA in 1964.Just as Andrew Loog Oldham had realised that he could initially  market the Rolling Stones with the ridiculous but effective notion of ‘the  bad boy anti-Establishment Beatles’ so  the Byrds manager, Jim Dickson, saw an opening for an ‘American Beatles’. What’s more, he also realised there was a golden opportunity for a group to provide the link between the big thing of 1964 (the Beatles) with the big thing of 1965 (Bob Dylan).  The folk/country background of the Byrds was perfect, hence Mr Tambourine Man and the subsequent slew of Dylan covers that launched them with their jangly guitars and high harmonies that were the hallmark of the Searchers rather than the Beatles.

The second advantage was that 1965 was the year that the split between pop and rock started, a strict league table started and groups that stayed labelled as pop lost out in the credibility stakes. Rock came to mean albums rather than 3 minute singles,  meaningful lyrics, musical virtuosity/aka showing off, critical acclaim, a place in books called The 100 Best Records Ever and interviews in Rolling Stone and NME. Pop meant the vagaries of the Top 20,  photo shoots in Jackie , screaming girls and critical dismissal as not really being very important.  Simply, the Searchers stayed labelled as pop. They lacked some of the necessary attributes to make the move over. They stayed a singles band, with albums -at least till the late 70s – a collection of singles, ‘b’ sides, fillers and the occasional gem , often a folk-based item like Four Strong Winds. Certainly no Sixties ‘concept album’ for the Searchers. They relied heavily on outside material and  the group lacked the crucial Ray Davies or Pete Townsend or Brian Wilson. Mike Pender and Chris Curtis did write a few good songs but their  lyrics were Tin Pan Alley stuff  about love and  and diamond rings and saying good-bye and a world away from the Dylan songs the Byrds hit gold with. How could “Sometimes a man feels oh so sad/Sometimes a man is hurt so bad/He wonders why he's feelin' sad and cries/It's 'cause he's got no love to dry his eyes” compete with  “Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach, Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow”.

Most important of all, however, they lost out in image, critical now  for deciding which camp groups fell into. The Byrds and their management  were quick to realise where things were going, so they grew their hair, McGuinn acquired his blue rectangular granny glasses that gave him a slightly sinister appearance, David Crosby wore a cape  and later a Cossack style fur hat and Michael Clarke sported the Brian Jones hair style that had supposedly landed him the drumming role rather than any particular drumming skill. The effect was detached California cool, a studied air of  stoned insouciance taking you for a trip on their magic whirling ship. The odd man out was the band’s best song writer, Gene Clark,  with his raw-boned mid - west farmer’s boy face  and by 1966 he was gone,  first demoted from front-line rhythm guitar to banging a tambourine towards the back and then edged out altogether by the McGuinn/Crosby axis.

Up against this the Searchers, with their suits and short hair, stood no chance and suddenly looked as anachronistic as  a boy in knickerbockers bowling a hoop down the road .Most damming of all, they looked -well, there’s no other way of putting it – nice. Even with Chris Curtis and his manic stare on board. Not ‘nice’ in the bland, anodyne way of many pre- Beatles acts, the Mark Wynters and Brian Hylands, but nice in the way one might describe the chap going out with your older sister or the young drama teacher at school, straight out of college and eager to make a good impression. The problem with nice is that it makes it  nigh impossible to mythologise or create the smoke and mirrors necessary for an image more complex than four guys playing guitars and drums and singing catchy songs. Nice makes it difficult to sing about magic swirling ships or the smoke rings of my mind and be taken seriously. The Searchers did actually have a short wander into the marmalade skies landscape  of late 60’s British psychedelia with a 1969 double-sided single, Someone Shot the Lollipop Man/Pussy Dragon Dream but felt it wise to put it out under a different name, Pasha, possibly as they considered it a Bad Idea.

By this time, most of the Searchers’ original peers from Merseybeat or the ‘British invasion’ had  either gone back to their day jobs or settled for life on the nostalgia circuit, endlessly recycling what hits they had acquired when they were hot.  The Searchers, however, soldiered on. They also  updated their visual look, rather late in the day. This photo from 1972 shows them at last in sartorial tune with the times. True, Mike Pender hadn’t made much of an effort but  new drummer Billy Adamson more than compensated with his afro. However, whilst in 1965 people wanted a band that sounded like the Searchers but didn't look like the Searchers, in 1972 the opposite was true. Out of time again.

This could well have been the end of the story but the end of the Seventies saw another moment when  the Searchers could have been launched back into the big time as punk gave way to the power pop and new wave music that drew heavily on mid-60’s pop  and Sire records signed them up alongside acts like the Pretenders, Undertones and Ramones. The result were 2 albums that were the best of their career and stand up well today. Tracks like Love’s Melody, Hearts in her Eyes and Its Too Late could have been hits at a time when  acts like Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and the Records were in the charts.  Having reverted back to suits and shorter hair, they even fitted in with the look of the new power pop groups with their modish suits and skinny ties. Stick Debbie Harry in front and they could have been Blondie.

It  seemed like all the stars were finally aligned and that  people wanted groups that sounded like the Searchers AND looked like the Searchers.  Apparently, however, they didn’t actually want the Searchers themselves. Yet again the moment passed, the albums mysteriously failed to produce a hit and the band reverted back to the club circuit where audiences were more likely to request Sweets for My Sweet  than Love’s Melody.   That is where they largely stayed for the next 35 years, kept afloat by a larger and more impressive back catalogue of hits than most acts on the nostalgia roundabout. In 1985 there was an acrimonious  split when Mike Pender jumped ship to launch  Mike Pender’s Searchers whilst the others played on as the Searchers with new members from time to time. Possibly some audiences weren’t too fussy which outfit was in front of them as long as they played Needles and Pins.

The distinctive sound developed in 1964, however, continued down the years, spreading out as ripples in a pond. Listen to 90’s  tracks like Here I Stand by the Milltown Brothers or  Ain't that Enough by Teenage Fanclub and you can hear the Searchers’ legacy. They always were more than just the Sounds of the Sixties.