Goldmine Article - The Hollies Records

The Hollies' Records

For all of the beauty of The Hollies' records, collecting their music, especially on CD, can be frustrating--no other 1960s band with anything resembling their level of achievement has been denied a comprehensive collection of their work during the 1990s.

But the group's albums were also a study in frustration for much of its history. For much of the mid-1960s, The Hollies' music was available in America on either the Imperial or Epic labels, but was largely unappreciated, apart from the hits. Part of the problem lay in the sheer diversity of their sound--they were neither a pop group nor an R&B-based band, though their music embraced both of those areas.

Their first Imperial album, Here I Go Again, released in 1965, included their single "Stay" as well as covers of "Memphis," "Rockin' Robin" and "You Better Move On," alongside "Here I Go Again" and "Just One Look." This was a year's worth of repertory all lumped together, and was a lot for innocent record buyers, in what was still a singles market, to absorb.

Their next American LP, Hear, Here, in addition to having a title similar to its predecessor, was not much better, juxtaposing the hits "I'm Alive" and "Look Through Any Window" with their cover of "Lawdy Miss Clawdy." The group's singles were relentlessly upbeat, pop-type numbers, while their album tracks rocked harder in the beginning, and were more experimental than the singles in the later years.

Of course, what made the American albums superior to their British equivalents was the fact that they had hits on them at all--in England, the group's singles were not included on their albums; this was in keeping with a marketing philosophy adopted by the record companies at the beginning of the 1960s, which recognized that keeping the hit singles off of albums would make the eventual greatest hits or best-of collections even more desirable (ironically enough, even some acts such as the Beatles arrived at this same policy, but for different reasons: the Beatles felt that fans who had bought their singles shouldn't buy the same two songs over on the accompanying album).

Elliott admitted, "We might've done better with our albums if we could've put the singles on."

In any case, American record companies were more mercenary, realizing that nothing sold an album like the guarantee of at least one well-liked hit already on it. The problem for The Hollies was that their album tracks were so unlike their single tracks to begin with, and that Imperial also had a habit of piling tracks together that had little to do with one another. What other "logic," if the word could be used at all, could explain the pairing of "Pay You Back With Interest," one of numerous superb tracks off of their 1966 progressive pop masterpiece For Certain Because ... on a single backed by the rudimentary rocker "Whatcha Gonna Do About It" off of their very first long-player, recorded two years earlier?

Of course, this strategy, if it can be called that, could have worked out in spite of itself, had The Hollies been more of an established group with a large audience eager to hear as much as possible of their work. Few people on this side of the Atlantic knew very much about The Hollies, however, beyond the hit song that they were buying, and it probably wasn't a good idea for them to take in albums such as Bus Stop (essentially Imperial's recompiling material off of the British EMI albums Hollies and Would You Believe), juxtaposing Graham Gouldman's sophisticated hit title song with the group's cover of Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen." Indeed, the Bus Stop album was especially problematic, since it even managed to repeat tracks from the same label's Beat Group! compilation released five months earlier, thus undoubtedly annoying anyone who'd had the presence of mind to buy the earlier album.

At the same time, the group's image in America was hamstrung by the limited playing opportunities available. Their early tours of England had paired them up with likes of the Rolling Stones, and performing in England, The Hollies played theaters, dance halls and cabaret with equal facility. But in America, they were booked on package shows, playing 15-to-20 minute sets of the same hits five times a day to audiences that were too young and frenzied to comprehend the talent in front of them, booked alongside whatever other British and American hit-making acts were picked for the shows.

Later on, the group got to play venues such as Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall), but this gig took place during Michael Rickfors' tenure with the band. The band's history was a string of partially missed opportunities of this type, broken by glowing moments captured on record.

Today, there is more of The Hollies' music available that at any prior point in their history. These include several hits collections that overlap to some degree, including the fair-sounding The Hollies' Greatest Hits (Epic), the better-fidelity The 20 Song Anthology--From The Original Master Tapes (Epic) and EMI's 30th Anniversary Collection (EMI), none of which is comprehensive. Additionally, Sony Music/Epic Records in America offers good-sounding CDs of two of the band's original 1970s albums, Distant Light and Hollies.

But the real treasure trove of Hollies material comes from overseas. In addition to EMI's 20 Golden Greats compilation, the label has begin reissuing the group's 1970s album releases, including Another Night and Write On, in four-disc boxed sets. Even more important, Beat Goes On Records has reissued Stay With The Hollies, In The Hollies' Style, For Certain Because, Evolution, Butterfly, Hollies Sing Dylan and Confessions Of A Mind, all under license from EMI. And Germany's BR Music has reissued Hollies Live on CD, and put out a compilation of album tracks, later A- and B-sides, and Clarke and Nash solo tracks, called All The World Is Love. And, in 1996, Holland's Disky Communications released a 20 song-collection titled The Air That I Breathe, which includes such otherwise unanthologized tracks as "Hey Willy," "The Baby" and "Oh! Granny," among other songs.

Collecting The Hollies' material can mean ending up with lots of copies of "He Ain't Heavy" and "The Air That I Breathe." But there is no comprehensive collection, and little prospect of one, owing to the sheer number of songs that would be involved, and the relative lack of interest in the group's album tracks, in relation to those 20 or so hits.

Most daunting of all is the prospect of re-mastering the group's pre-1968 songs into what would be considered acceptable stereo. The Hollies had the misfortune, up until 1967, of recording in an era when stereo was not considered very important for rock records. Most of their pre-1967 material, and all of the singles, were recorded duophonically--in essence, with the voices on one channel and the instruments on the other.

Elliott remarked, "The problem was that nobody thought that stereo was very important. Our singles were conceived in mono, because that was how they were going to be heard--stereo singles didn't start to happen until 1968. So when it came time to put the single on the album, it was done that way, with the instruments and the voices divided. The albums fared better after 1966, but that's why all of our stereo mixes sound so strange today."

Re-mastering and remixing the group's singles into modern stereo for the EMI triple-disc anthology was a massive project, and the problem with going beyond this material seems to be a lack of impetus, the same difficulty with doing a truly comprehensive collection of the group's music. The vast majority of the public, whose purchases make projects like this financially worthwhile, are perfectly content with the 15 to 20 hits represented on the most common single-disc compilations from Epic and EMI.

Amid all of this confusion, and the profusion of CD reissues--and Allan Clarke reports that EMI in England will shortly be reissuing its own versions of albums like Evolution and Butterfly--the band has gone on playing. The group (with Ian Parker now on keyboards and clarinet, in addition to Coates and Stiles) tours regularly, and it remains among the most beloved of 1960s bands that is still working with the core of its original membership.

Explaining their longevity, and their boundless enthusiasm for music, even after a frustrating project or two in recent years, Elliott said, "We were just five lads from the north, who were just grateful to be able to make a living playing music."

Acknowledgments: The writer would like to thank Al Stefanowicz, Allan Clarke, Bobby Elliott and Tony Hicks for their assistance in preparing this article.