The Shadows - The Polydor Years

[Squier Ken]

Must be just me then - "Steppin' To The Shadows" is one of my favourite albums....

Ken

[Monty]

No problem there

[howarddobson]

I love all of the Polydor albums - some great arrangements. Some of the tracks I never liked that much as songs but as instrumentals I love them.

Interesting Hank went for themed albums from the past in the 90s - the charts were full of dance music by that stage.

[Iain Purdon]

Thanks Rob for giving the Shadows side of this story. It's helpful to know how they went about it, and why they went about it. You've given us the facts. Not bad for a bunch of guys who in 1968 thought they'd done it all!

[MikeAB]

The Moody Blues comments lead to some interesting conclusions. Their mostly awful Christmas album has the feeling of them fulfilling a recording contract - and if they didn't have enough of their own compositions which they had always depended on then there was little choice for them. At least they supplied a 'free' greatest hits CD along with the Xmas album so it wasn't a terrible rip-off for purchasers. Also Hayward's original 'December Snow' was a great song which was worthy of the band at its best and worth the price on its own.

Hayward's solo album last year rather confirms the shortage of new songs - although it has 9 new and all very good songs on it, it is his first in 16 years and to make up the album time it has two (quite good) bluegrass versions of old songs and some truly embarrassingly awful disco 'things' purporting to be remixes of an old hit i.e. he did not have enough original songs to fill the album.

The Moodies' career continues strongly with terrific sell out concerts (seemingly all the time), and they remain huge in the States, but in truth their output of original music has in truth rather dried up - but what a legacy!

The point of all this is that as an instrumental band the Shads were not restricted to original material and therefore had a (very successful) way of continuing to put out albums without the necessity to find enough good originals to fill them. The Moodies and others simply did not have that facility.

So whilst we would all have loved more great originals it seems to me that without the 'covers' there would likely have been nothing from the Shads or Hank at all in the later years (eg the difficulties in getting Gypsy Jazz onto CD) - so we should be grateful for them and enjoy what we like and don't play what we don't like. My selective 'Best of 80's' iPod playlist is terrific and played just as much the 'classics' list.

[Monty]

Graeme Edge's song 'Coconut Christmas' was LEFT OFF 'December' (much to his annoyance !) and it seems that Polygram INSISTED they cover Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas'....which Edge detested doing...so it's not quite just a case of them not having enough original songs for that album etc...
IF they had to do an Xmas themed cover or two...why not say Greg Lake's 'I Believe in Father Christmas' which would have suited Hayward's voice well...and SURELY been a better choice than the Bing Crosby cover ?

I suspect it was due to record company pressure...

[MikeAB]

All true but whatever the reason the point is if the Moodies and others could not produce strong enough original music to get it published then why do we assume the Shads could have - or even really wanted to. And no one's arguing about the golden era being their best - surely also true of all pop acts that have created originality.

[drakula63]

I remember way back in 1984 buying the Moodies live album 'Caught Live plus five' whilst paralytic on a friend's birthday! Despite this, I enjoyed it. I saw them live in 84 as well, in Nottingham, although I believe I was sober at the time...

First Moodies album I bought was 'The Present' in 1983. Personally I liked the Patrick Moraz stuff.