The Shadows in the Eighties...

[Monty]

If a 'downward spiral' is a number ONE hit instrumental record for eight or nine weeks....most bands would LOVE to 'go down' that way...!!!

[Moderne]

Where have you been all these years, Monty? Have you been stranded at an airport somewhere with only a laptop for company for the past 48 hours?!
I think the association with Cliff alone would have undermined The Shadows' credibilty with the 'cool' beat boom/r&b etc. audiences of the mid-sixties...and you could argue endlessly about errors of judgment over choice of material. I think The Shadows just wanted to hang onto their success in an industry where very few acts were able to maintain their initial fame for more than a couple of years. That's basically what they did up until their gradual retirement 5-10 years ago. They have always done this by a combination of taking advice/instruction from people around them and being as creative as they could within that framework. Around the late seventies they were faced with a choice of realising that they were a 'nostalgia' act (or neuralgia, as Hank would say!) and that their future lay in recording instrumental versions of already well-known songs (which on the evidence of Argentina and Deerhunter was likely to be very lucrative) or continuing to be creative with a mixture of vocals and instrumentals (the latter course probably not being supported by their record company). Ploughing a more creative and artistically satisfying furrow would probably have meant turning their back on hundreds and thousands of pounds, sell-out tours, top 5 LPs, TV appearances, etc. As a 17-year old at the time, I found this very frustrating (String of Hits was NOT a cool album amongst teenagers at the time!) but now it makes perfect sense and I'd probably have done the same thing if I'd been them.

There aren't many artists who can maintain a career for 50-plus years; you have to take the path of least resistance. This probably goes right back to deciding on the follow-up to Apache. The Shadows became an instrumental group by accident because instrumentals were popular at the time, they had a guitar genius in their ranks (Hank!) and had a monster hit with Jerry Lordan's amazing composition. If they'd wanted to record an Everlys-style vocal instead of Man of Mystery, EMI would have told them it would be commercial suicide. It's a sobering thought that it's taken Hank 50+ years to be able to do what he truly wants to do, and even now he gets a fair amount of flack from people who still want him to keep going with the single coil Strat sound even though he's in his seventies! I just hope he brings his Gypsy Jazz to the UK so we can enjoy his talents for a bit longer, although i quite understand if it's all too much effort!!

[neil2726]

No matter what you think of the material they recorded, or the changes in style - they actually didnt do too badly did they? They made a few bob along the way and here we are over 50 years later still discussing them, playing and buying the gear to play their music!

[Iain Purdon]

Quite so

[Hank2k]

A lot of people criticise cliff and the shadows for their move away from being a rock and roll act to a more mainstream family entertainment acts almost however you cannot deny look at Marty Wilde, Vince Eager etc all with very small fan bases these days, the shads and cliff still have incredible fan bases and sell out tours whenever they perform, they have probably made a lot more money and are a lot well known because their appeal is wider and that I think is the key.

[Monty]

Well I was a member of Tony Hoffman's Shadows mag years ago and have 'looked in' on this forum for a few years but only recently bothered to join it, hence a few intro postings !

'String of Hits' WAS a chart topper in 1979....following hot on the heels of '20 Golden Greats' doing likewise and THAT - as with Beach Boys, Hollies, Kinks, Dave Clark Five etc ALL having big 'nostalgic' success - slicing right through Punk as if it wasn't there ! - which turned The Shadows firmly into both a more nostalgia based act (in truth they already were as M W & F had discovered back in the early seventies with calls of 'er' Play Apache Hank !' & 'Do F.B.I. Hank !' etc.... )

'String of Hits' was o.k. - not a bad album at all in retrospect - I think it was the later Polydor covers albums like 'Simply', 'Steppin to...' etc that really saw them getting rather bland copyists with a very formularised feel to alot of the covers

Yes we can say it made them a bob or two - as self publishers of 'Shadows Music' and penning a good few of their own big hits, 'B' sides of other big hits, having original songs on their big selling albums...plus all the contribution they made on Cliff's hits, penning 'A' side hits plus even getting their songs on a good number of the 'B' sides of Cliff's other hits minus them....

...plus Olivia Newton John having success in the USA and UK with their compositions...

they were surely already a good bit wealthier royalties wise than alot of their fellow artists by 1979 - yes ?

The success of the '20 Golden Greats' in 1977 and then 'String of Hits' in 1979 plus their three UK chart hits did firmly re-establish the band in the public eye - remember after the 'Live in Paris' 1975 set and the 'one off' 1976 single 'It'll Be Me Babe' they had intended folding the band once and for all (hence John Farrar had left with 'Livvy' for the USA etc), but the EMI compilation had caused them to be 'pulled back together' quickly to follow up the '20 Golden Dates' tour

Hence 'Tasty' which Brian Bennett was not happy about - tho' many fans liked it alot - and it was a mix of leftover 'Farrar era' instrumentals (that were dropped from 'Specs Appeal' for the six vocal Eurovision songs I believe) plus 'Cricket Bat Boogie' etc (inspired by the TV commercial)

it does seem odd EMI let them go just as they were back in the public eye, even if largely as a nostalgia act (probably as the new deal proposed would see EMI get alot LESS cash off of them - look how The Beatles got 'ripped off' !)

I think they could have successfully avoided just being a 'covers' band and kept a strong public profile as - Like The Hollies, Beach Boys, Kinks etc - after the success of '20 Golden Greats' they were firmly back as a much loved 'British institution' (& in Europe & 'down under' etc if not in the USA)

Alot of music buyers who preferred the sixties & seventies music to what was being offered by the 80's would have stuck with them - as their concert attendances proved - and while it's true they might not have sold as many albums in the 80's as they did, perhaps the content of the albums they did make might have been all the MORE artistic and critically far stronger ?

bashing out 'modern' sounding covers (that date so fast) might make a few quid but ultimately is creative suicide and really does a band's reputation no favours in the long run...would they if going now be doing albums of 'Shadows Play Lady Gaga' or 'One Direction' covers...?

much as I hate to say it, I found a good bit of the 80's covers and choice of material pretty embarressing at the time and sounded to me like a group of OLDER guys who thought they were still all so very mega hip and 'modern'

- something like a musical equivalent of when you see a old 'Grandad' up doing a 'Michael Jackson' dance routine at a wedding reception...and he's thinking how 'modern' and 'with it' he looks (while the rest of us are cringing with embarressment !!)

SORRY lads but that was how I felt when I heard some of those now hideously dated sounding 80's covers plus 'Shadowmix' etc ...from a CLASSIC influential band that I KNEW were so much STRONGER than merely resorting to doing that kind of thing for the sake of sales...

[hankb56]

I don't think London's Not Too Far was done with Tahlia in mind as she certainly wouldn't be around at that time unless it was one hellova long pregnancy!!

Ian

[ecca]

The Shadows 'At their very best' in 1989 should have been titled 'At their very worst'.It was a waste of money whatever their commercial reasons for doing it.
A rip-off.

[drakula63]

I haven't read every message in this thread yet, so forgive me if I am repeating a comment already made, but in my view they seemed to have more or less total control over what they recorded in the 1970s (RWCL would seem to indicate this), but the 1980s were another matter and, for a group that had long since gone out of fashion (as had their musical style) I feel that they were really at the 'mercy' of whichever 'major' label gave them a deal.

I my view, 'Life in the Jungle' was the last truly great album that the Shads recorded, easily better than those released (immediately) either side of it. Having said that, the later albums did throw up some gems such as Turning Point, Mountains of the Moon, Shoba, Stack It and Pulaski. I'm also very keen on their version of Moonlight Shadow.

Other than that, much of their 1980s output does very little for me I'm afraid.

[mojolomjl]

According to my Guinness book of hit singles for the year 2000 number 1 is Elvis Presley number 2 is Cliff Richard
And number 3 is The Shadows, which I think speaks for itself.