Before and After The Shadows
The first recorded Beatles composition Cry For A Shadow reveals that Bert Kampfert, the Beatles first producer, took the band far more seriously in 1961 than George Martin would a year later. It’s prime sheen and fully realised sound make it sound like a track worthy of a Shadows B-side (instead of their own producer Norrie Paramour’s usual copyrighted rubbish)
The Shadows were Britain’s premier guitar group being the first to transition from Soho’s legendary skiffle coffee bar, the 2 i’s in Old Compton Street, into a fully electrified guitar 🎸 group playing live and touring the country.
The 2 i’s was a belated member of the emerging folk club scene, moving beyond Ewan MacColl’s rigorously traditional Singers Club, and which would later equip both Bob Dylan (for his “London” album) and Paul Simon with tunes to hit the pop charts with. However it was The Vipers (George Martin’s first group signing for Parlophone in 1957) who accidentally made the 2 i’s the focus of public attention. Whereas most folk clubs were for beatnik cognoscenti who knew the provenance of all these curious songs that weren’t played on the radio. Music was still experienced mostly live in the mid-fifties, which worked for the benefit of a good little rocknroll band later on.
The Shadows were the first band with, let alone featuring, a Fender Stratocaster guitar, which President Harry S Truman had banned from sale in the U.K. in 1945 to punish us for voting our war P.M. Churchill out of power immediately after VE Day. Fortunately our prime Elvis tribute act, Cliff Richard had illegally smuggled a banned American guitar into London after briefly touring the States in early 1960 on the back of the Stateside success of the insipid Living Doll, taken from the soundtrack of the interesting British “kitchen-sink” movie Serious Charge. Ed Sullivan invited him to New York.
The sudden emergence of the guitar in the hit parade after The Shadows featured Hank’s distinctive vocals liquid silver tone as their lead singer, whether hand-made like impoverished Jeff Beck, or glued together from abandoned instruments – which was fine as skiffle relied on strumming, humming, rubbing and singing – prompted the BBC to commission musical film director Ken Russell to make a documentary to explain the guitar to our banjo-loving nation; long described by Germans as being “without music”.
National Service, two years in the Army, ended in 1960, all four Beatles just missing out, and so free to rethink leisure time and hobbies whilst helping Mona Best and her son Pete, create their own music-making club the Casbah.
As Colin Hanton reveals, as he documents his time as The Quarrymen’s drummer (Pre-Fab Four), Liverpool, like everywhere in the U.K., had many small places, youth clubs (alcohol-free) and pint-sized social clubs providing live music where virtually any aspiring musician could play. Not forgetting open air fetes such as the Wootton Garden Fete where Lennon (playing with his skiffle group) first met McCartney in 1957.
I first heard The Shadows wonderful Apache at a British Army (BAOR) summer fete in Germany in Herford shortly after its release (in those days I had to ask what it was) where it’s ringing chords, floating over the fields, caught my attention quickly making it my favourite record of that year and making me, like The Beatles, a Shadows fan. They even did the soundtrack for Sean Connery’s last earmuff free movie before he became James Bond in 1962; Frightened City
Fred Garnett February 2024
Reframing The Beatles 