The ShadowMusic Web Community

Hi all,

The recent 20 Golden Greats thread seems to have turned into a "why didn't The Shadows do more to promote x, y and z?," thread - so I thought I'd state my feelings about the Guardian Angel LP, in case anyone else agrees/disagrees! Here goes...

I remember being really excited before Guardian Angel came out! I’d read in the music press that the next Shadows’ album was to contain all original material – three instrumentals and eight vocals (I think they got this the wrong way round!). Finally, I thought, my self-appointed role of ‘Shadows’ ambassador to the young’ was about to be fulfilled. After years of cover versions and ‘quantity over quality’ LPs…
Bearing in mind this was the last occasion when the record company presumably said, “You can do what you like on this one,” it came as a bit of a disappointment! Two of the tracks – I Will Return and How Do I Love Thee? – are IMHO unlistenable: turgid, drum-machine laden, dreary mush! I know a lot of people like the title track, but – to me – it sounds like a third-rate Dire Straits song. Again, plodding and dreary. Look Back on Love – presumably a Brian Bennett library piece – begins with an appealing melody, but then suddenly there is crashing, discordant synth-led noise. Not what I want from The Shads! Allowing for the fact that it’s a mid-‘80s album with associated production stylings (which I’ve always found difficult to listen to, I’m afraid!), I quite like the rest of the songs. Turning Point is a masterpiece, and the other vocals are good, I think. Hank’s playing is, as always, superb! But the album as a whole, I don’t find anywhere near as enjoyable as Rockin’ With Curly Leads, Tasty, or any number of earlier Shads LPs. Maybe there was internal disagreement over the song selection…
Just my two penn’orth!

I Will Return was actually a cover version of the 1971 record of this tune by a group called Springwater.

The Shadows' version of the piece was at least as close to that Springwater record as their version of Albatross had been to Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac's hit. Hear Springwater at

if that doesn't work, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01zHBnSTrh8

I remember first hearing the album around Christmas 1991. Some months before that, I had heard two tracks from the album through the 1989 compilation CD "The Shadows Collection" (on the Pickwick label), namely "Turning Point" and the shortened version of "Johnny Staccato". I didn't know it was shortened at that moment, so when my father played the whole "Guardian Angel" album, I was surprised that "Johnny Staccato" continued after 2:31!
Anyway, like every album I hear for the first time, I had to get used to this one too. As I heard it around Christmas time, quite a cold and dark period (in terms of daylight) of the year of course and the album cover is mainly black, I found it quite a mysterious sounding album, especially the tracks "How Do I Love Thee", "Hammerhead", "Look Back On Love" and the title track. There are some 'lighter' tracks too. When I first heard "Look Back On Love" (which incidentally is not a library music composition by Brian, but written by him for the film score commission for the horror film "Terminal Choice"), I found it an almost scary track, especially the avant-garde sounding synthesizer outbursts.
Having listened to the whole album many times since then, it has become one of my favourite Shadows albums, just because it is somewhat out of the ordinary, just like "Shades Of Rock" and "Rockin' With Curly Leads".

It's my view that 'music' in the 80s was massively over-produced.

They couldn't hear a vocal line without having to double track it, or triple or worse. Or a guitar part without soaking it in effects.

And any space, which should have allowed the music to breathe, was strangled by filling it with endless brassy analog synths, thus making everything sound like Duran bloody Duran.

The result being that 80's pop now sounds almost as dated as that from the 70s.

Agreed, except for the last paragraph. 70s music often sounds fresher to me than anything that came after.

Well it does of course depend how one defines '70s music'!

Thinking of punk, funk, disco, Showaddybloodysillywaddy, and the soporific Dire Straits, I couldn't imagine anything less fresh.

Language, dear boy!

I just listened to Guardian Angel. It's a CD I don't listen to as often as I listen to The Shadows' early sixties music, but that doesn't mean I don't like Guardian Angel. In fact, I enjoy every track on it, most of all How Do I Love Thee, The Saturday Western and Guardian Angel. To me it's totally unimportant whether a piece of music is The Shadows' original composition or a cover version of a well-known hit. All the tunes are molodic and the arrangements very musical and imaginative. I even like the vocal numbers even though for me The Shadows' singing never contained the inexplicable magic I find in The Everly Brothers, for instance.

There are Shadows albums I never listento, or rarely listen to, but Guardian Angel isn't one of them.

As always, it's a case of one man's meat etc. Personally, I'm not keen on Look Back On Love and I Can't Play Your Game but there are some cracking melodies and arrangements among the rest including How Do I Love Thee, Our Albert and Johnny Staccato.

I also think that the album demonstrated that The Shads could move with the times but still retain their distinctive identity.

'Can't Play Your Game' ranks with me as one of their worst ever tracks, indeed i don't think many compete with it for the bottom position, probably held tightly by Mrs Bell though.

Rest of the album good to excellent I think.