The 1970s: More Hits, More ChangesWhile Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young attracted the attention of the press and public seemingly without effort, The Hollies soldiered on selling records but, curiously, unable to achieve any lasting respect from the press. Part of the problem for the group was that its business was mostly about playing music, not spouting politics, or any other extra-musical activities. When Clarke, Hicks, Sylvester, Calvert and Elliott weren't performing or recording together, they were engaged in genuinely private lives, with families and personal responsibilities, and they didn't do anything worth writing about. Coupled with the fact that their records didn't really have an underlying philosophy, other than that they were well crafted, superbly played and often very popular, it made The Hollies almost an anachronism in the 1970s: no drug busts, car or motorcycle accidents, messy lawsuits, affairs with movie stars or politics. And to top it off, they still did their best work on 45 RPM singles, a format that was diminishing in importance, at least as far as the rock press was concerned, on an almost daily basis. "He Ain't Heavy" was as serious as The Hollies ever got, and it even received the begrudging blessing of Rolling Stone in a review (in those days, singles still got reviewed). It put a lie to the perceived lightness of the band--it wasn't exactly "Ohio," but it helped The Hollies maintain a credibility beyond the singles charts. Musically, they were probably better than Paul McCartney's Wings, which would be filling arenas all over the world by the mid-1970s, but in terms of image, The Hollies were lumped by the press alongside acts like Bread, or, ironically enough (given the comment of that Imperial Records executive back in 1967), the Association: human jukeboxes, playing pop hits that were great ambient music. "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" had been a gift from heaven, especially as the albums that the group was working on were ignored by the public on either side of the Atlantic. Otherwise, however, the critics--and, more importantly, the all-powerful editors who controlled what got into print--thought of The Hollies as not much more relevant than, say, Gerry and the Pacemakers would have seemed in 1971, except that The Hollies happened to still be making music, and happened to have grown. There were changes during this period. In the wake of Graham Nash's departure, the official Clarke-Hicks-Nash songwriting team was dissolved. After playing out a few of the old trio's copyrights and some attempts at continuing to work together, Hicks began writing songs in collaboration with his singer friend Kenny Lynch, while Clarke began working with a couple of friends of his, Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, and Terry Sylvester also began writing songs on his own. The band also began to play longer sets onstage, which meant that Sylvester began playing more.
The group had finally seemed to stabilize when the biggest crisis of its history loomed early in 1971. In March of that year, The Hollies released a new single, "Hey Willie," co-authored by Allan Clarke and his friends Cook and Greenaway. This record had a heavier sound than anything the group had ever released on a single before, opening with a loud, crunchy guitar sound closer in spirit to Status Quo, or even the Who, than to The Hollies. The B-side, "Row The Boat Together," written by Clarke alone, was closer in spirit to The Hollies' more usual sound. Though nobody would have guessed it at the time, the collaboration between Clarke, Cook and Greenaway pointed in new directions for all concerned: "Hey Willy's" driving guitar opening was the precursor to a song that would become one of the band's two signature tunes for the 1970s, and bring it more recognition, as well as more problems taking advantage of its success, than anything they'd done in two years. And it pointed in a direction that Allan Clarke was planning on taking his career. For nearly a decade, Clarke had been a professional musician, and had reached the point where he wanted to step out and begin a solo career. He had been locked into the group identity for nearly all of his adult life, and now felt the urge to step out on his own. The group was beginning a work on a new album, which Clarke would do with them, after which he would begin work on his own career and his own recordings, independent of the band. Ironically, the new album was to benefit from Clarke's plans for a solo career, but the group's ability to take advantage of its unexpected success was to be sorely tested. While recording the album, titled Distant Light, Clarke turned up with a song that was to be added to the record: a throwaway, co-authored by Clarke, Cook and Greenaway, titled "Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)." Recorded on a day when producer Ron Richards (who later mixed it) was absent, the album gave Clarke a rare chance to show off his guitar skills.
The problem was that Clarke had not intended it to be released on a Hollies album, but as a record of his own. A couple of members of the group did play on it, however, and he was forced to include it on Distant Light. This, in turn, led to an open breach between Clarke and the rest of the group, once they learned that he intended to do a solo recording. Clarke was issued an ultimatum, that he either remain with The Hollies or pursue a solo career, but not both. Clarke chose to leave.
Silly was putting it mildly. Suicidal was closer to the mark, and unbelievably awkward as well, when "Long Cool Woman" came out as a single and suddenly became the group's new signature tune, saturating the airwaves in the United States. Ironically, the record had never been intended as a single, possibly because it was not representative of the album as a whole or the group's sound at the time. But when EMI's German subsidiary spun it off as a 45--German audiences finding this piece of quintessential American-style rock 'n' roll absolutely irresistible--the American and British divisions decided not to hold back. Distant Light was released in England by EMI in June 1971, and in December of the same year by Epic Records in America. By that time, Clarke was long out of the group, a fact scarcely recognized by most Americans, given the group's relatively low profile in the rock press. And as was usually the case with Hollies' albums, especially in America, the record languished until the spring of 1972, when "Long Cool Woman" broke, pulled from the record as a single. It shot up the charts, entering in June 1972 and peaking at #2 in July, the group's best performance since "He Ain't Heavy," and the hardest rock 'n' roll single it had cut since the days of the earliest records and the covers of the Coasters' songs. The song was a far cry from "He Ain't Heavy," a high-energy piece of rock 'n' roll with an infectious beat and a memorable hooks, a perfect 3:15 running time and a Clarke vocal that, coupled with his lead guitar riff, outdid John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival at their own game. The record was a natural for AM radio, which devoured it, and the song became one of those records that defined the format and the period for anyone who was there. (It got further exposure a year or so later as part of one of those television-marketed hits anthologies, used over the close-and fade-out of the ad). The Hollies had delivered a rock 'n' roll standard akin to "Proud Mary," although, for reasons best understood by pop sociologists, "Long Cool Woman" never got higher than #32 on the British charts. The British single of "Long Cool Woman" was backed by Terry Sylvester's languid, romantic "Cable Car," a good song that outstays its welcome by perhaps 60 seconds, while the American 45 was backed by the soulful Tony Hicks/Kenny Lynch-authored "Look What We've Got." The same month that "Long Cool Woman" reached its highest position on the U.S. charts, Distant Light entered the American charts for the first time, and eventually peaked at a healthy #21. A follow-up single, the Hicks-co-authored "Long Dark Road," reached #26 on the American charts in the late fall of 1972. Things were going very well for the band, except for the fact that the person who sang lead on both songs had left. The exit of Graham Nash had thrown The Hollies off balance for part of 1969, but the band had been able to carry on, mostly by virtue of the fact that Nash's writing and sensibilities had ceased being central to the group's sound for some time before his exit. In many respects, however, Allan Clarke was The Hollies. "Long Cool Woman" made it even worse, because it was the first Hollies single ever released without any other voice on it. "The record was a throwaway," he remembered, "and we never put on a harmony vocal." Moreover, Clarke had one of the most distinctive voices in rock 'n' roll, one of the very reasons that he was eager to try his luck at a solo career after 10 years with the group. And his songwriting was a significant part of the band's sound as well. Eventually, a replacement was found in the person of Mikael Rickfors, a Swedish vocalist with considerable power and range. Clarke himself describes Rickfors as "a great singer, who should've taken off from Scott Walker [of The Walker Brothers]." But in The Hollies, Rickfors was in an impossible situation, having to compete with Clarke's nine years of established work, and his tenure with the group was less than happy for all concerned. His arrival also coincided with the group's exit from EMI, after eight years with the label, in favor of a new contract with Polydor, although its contract with Epic Records in America continued until the mid-1970s. Ron Richards, who had left the employ of EMI several years earlier to become a partner in AIR, the first major independent production company in England, continued on as the band's producer. The bind that The Hollies were in was demonstrated in February 1972 with the release in England of their first Polydor single, and their only single to derive from Rickfors' tenure with the group, "The Baby"/"Oh Granny." "The Baby" was a very dramatic song authored by Chip Taylor, elaborately produced and featuring a very emotional performance by Rickfors. There were powerful backing vocals all around, knockout drumming by Elliott, and even a twangy, electric dobro that lent an unusual timbre to the instrumental break. And when Rickfors and company sang the line to the chorus "It was the passion of the spring," it was impossible not to be hooked. Possibly the song was too intense for a youth market more comfortable with pure pop music or solid rock 'n' roll. In retrospect, "The Baby" as a song might've been better suited to Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdinck's audience than to The Hollies'. In any case, "The Baby" did moderately well in England, reaching #26 there, better than "Long Cool Woman." But it never even charted in America, blown off the airwaves by "Long Cool Woman's" driving beat and guitar riffs, and, still later, by "Long Dark Road." The B-side to "The Baby," "Oh Granny," co-authored by the "Long Dark Road" team of Hicks and Kenny Lynch, ended up consigned to similar obscurity. No other single featuring Rickfors would ever be released, although the group would have some minor success with "Magic Woman Touch," a single lifted from Romany, the full album that they released with his vocals. It was clear, however, that there were problems with the group--Rickfors could sing in English but not speak it fluently, which created problems that were never fully resolved. In concert, when it was time to do "Long Cool Woman," Terry Sylvester handled the lead vocals during this period. Otherwise, Rickfors fronted the band, or purported to; reviews of the era describe the lead singer's voice in glowing terms, but also his seeming reticence to take center stage. Where Clarke and Nash had been so comfortable onstage even in their early days, when Nash's guitar was nothing more than an unplugged prop allowing him the freedom to tease the audience, Rickfors was criticized for virtually hiding among the amplifiers. Rickfors' tenure with the group ended in 1973, in a situation that everybody called unfortunate. He had a good voice, though with perhaps a slightly more serious, downbeat persona than Clarke had ever shown. But replacing Allan Clarke in The Hollies, as everybody discovered, wasn't very much easier than, say, replacing John Fogerty in Creedence Clearwater Revival; Hicks's and, to a lesser degree, Sylvester's contributions to the group's sound couldn't be overestimated, but Clarke made the combination work for most fans in ways that Nash (his fans' protests to the contrary notwithstanding) never did and Rickfors never could. Clarke later realized that recording his first solo album under the circumstances that he did was a mistake. The situation in connection with "Long Cool Woman" was as awkward for him as it had been for the band. "I remember the record company calling me up to tell me we had a hit, and I thought, 'Great!' until I found out they were talking about 'Long Cool Woman,' not one of my own records!" By 1973, the year after lightning had struck, he and the band decided to do the obvious and get back together. In retrospect, a solo career was fraught with frustrations, particularly as Clarke, in the course of recording his first solo album, had availed himself of songs by a still little known singer/songwriter named Bruce Springsteen.
By the summer of 1973, Clarke was back with the group, under an agreement that allowed him to pursue a solo career as well with no flak from the other band members. He arrived back in the line-up with a new song, "The Day Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGee," which was released during the first week of September. Clarke called the new record "the logical step after 'Long Cool Woman,'" but in retrospect, it was too much like "Long Cool Woman" to do much more than remind people of the earlier hit. It did produce a side benefit, the band being so happy with the results that an entire album followed on naturally.
In November 1973, the group recorded what was to be its last major hit single to date, "The Air That I Breathe." As Ron Richards, their long-time producer recalled, the song, authored by Albert Hammond (who also recorded it) and Mike Hazelwood, had been discovered by his secretary and played for Hicks. The version that she'd played him had been recorded by Phil Everly, which made this the second time that The Hollies' history was to intersect with the brother act (or half of it) that Clarke had idolized as a boy. Everly's version had passed largely unnoticed, but Hicks was convinced that the song was a hit, in turn, and Richards agreed. The version cut by The Hollies featured a startlingly beautiful arrangement by Chris Gunning, and had the best of Hicks's many striking guitar introductions. One fellow axman who expressed his appreciation for that part of the song was Eric Clapton, who could only marvel at the audience response to those few bars of music. "The Air That I Breathe" was released in England in January 1974 on Polydor and in America in March of the same year by Epic Records, which quickly found itself with a #6 hit on its hands. The changes in the music business since the end of the 1960s, coupled with the group's and both record companies' wish to give the reformed Hollies every chance for success, resulted in "The Air that I Breathe" being included on their new album, Hollies, issued in early 1974. Although it didn't have a terribly imaginative title, the album was a superb long-player, featuring a more soulful, even funky sound than the group's earlier work had ever shown. Parts of Hollies featured a somewhat stripped down sound, compared with the records that had preceded it, but the impeccable harmonies for which the band was known were still present, and some of the original songwriting was gorgeous, "Don't Let Me Down" being one of the most gloriously passionate ballads in the band's history. Even Bobby Elliott put in a rare appearance as a composer, as co-author of "Transatlantic Westbound Jet." Strangely enough, the parts of Hollies that worked the least well, although they were still good listening, were their two attempts to recapture the sound of "Long Cool Woman," "Out On the Road," which offered a great Tony Hicks guitar workout, and "Curly Billy," which was too much like "Long Cool Woman" for its own good. Unfortunately, "The Air That I Breathe" was the group's final appearance in the Top 10--or, for that matter, the Top 40, in the United States. Their subsequent efforts at hit singles somehow fell short of the mark, although the case can be made that their record label was somewhat inattentive.
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