1977 - 20 Golden Greats - 40 Golden Years!

[drakula63]

Can't quite believe that it is now FORTY YEARS since the release of The Shadows 20 Golden Greats - February 1977. Seems like yesterday!!! Just found these interviews with Hank and Bruce to tie-in with the LP hitting the Number 1 spot!!!

[David Martin]

Magic...sheer magic.

[cockroach]

Good interesting stuff! Thanks for posting!

I often find these days that artists' past contemporary interviews and comments are more of interest (and accuracy) than current ones...

[Gary Allen]

Good Post Chris, A No.1 album back in the punk/rock era. What an achievement ! !

[drakula63]

Good Post Chris, A No.1 album back in the punk/rock era. What an achievement ! !

Ta.

Yeah, I clearly remember that, strangely, almost everyone I knew seemed to either get the album or get me to tape it for them! Strange in a way because I was only 13 at the time and the Shadows weren't really of my generation (so to speak). And I'm talking here about people either of my age or younger! I even remember on one occasion ringing someone up and in the background I could actually hear The Shadows 20 Golden Greats playing! I knew this was what it was because of the track order. What were the chances?

The truth often gets lost in the mists of time but I can confirm, as someone who was there (as indeed can most people on this forum) that for a short while at least, The Shadows 20 Golden Greats was the sound of '77.

If only I had a working TARDIS !!!!

[Moderne]

Ah, I enjoyed reading those interviews, Chris - thank you. I was 13, too, when 20GG came out and I remember spending nearly all of my weekly paper round wage on my copy from WH Smith in Edgware - it cost me £3.89. A couple of weeks earlier I bought Duane Eddy - Legend of Rock...a double album on the London label (Duane was - at the time - one of the few American artists whose recordings were still issued in the UK on London). This cost £3.79 for 24 tracks - which I remember thinking at the time was better value! I formed the impression at the time that everyone liked The Shadows but quickly came to realise that this was not the case! I still think the sleeve is a design classic and remember desperately wanting all the Shadows' LPs advertised on the inner sleeve. I never saw the telly advert because Dad didn't allow us to watch ITV! Later that year, Cliff's 40 Golden Greats double album came out and in 1979 I got to see The Shads for the first time at the Hammersmith Odeon. The ticket cost me £2.50; that was the relative value of albums and live concerts at the time. Obviously I wasn't born when The Shads had their heyday in the early 60s - but 1977 was a pretty good time to start being a Shadows fan. Happy days!

BTW - the film of The Shads performing Love Deluxe seems to have disappeared from YouTube...

[Paul Childs]

When this album came out, and also the singles like Riders in the Sky, Deer Hunter & Argentina which was around the same period, you no longer had to secretly hide your Shadows records concealed between Led Zeppelin 2 & Deep Purple In Rock. During the late 60s/early 70s it was uncool to be a Shadows fan with a lot of people including guitarists who would make you feel humiliated if you was a Shadows fan. They wouldn't admit that it was The Shadows that got them interested in playing in the first place when they were just kids. Some even pretended they were first influenced by the old American blues players but I don't ever remember that stuff ever being played on the radio or TV in Britain back then, so where did they hear it? Obviously bragging and exagerating. We Shadows fans won in the end.

[iefje]

I think it would be great if one of the "20 Golden Dates" was released on a double CD. I know that the Coventry show from May the 17th, 1977 was professionally recorded on multitrack or at least on 2-track stereo tape. This would mark the first officially released Shadows recordings with Francis Monkman in the line-up.

[GoldenStreet]

During the late 60s/early 70s it was uncool to be a Shadows fan with a lot of people including guitarists who would make you feel humiliated if you was a Shadows fan. They wouldn't admit that it was The Shadows that got them interested in playing in the first place when they were just kids.

This quote is from the recent Daily Telegraph obituary for Overend Watts, founder member of Mott The Hoople...

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Bill

[drakula63]

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

In my opinion, the Musical Landscape of today (or certainly the 60s, 70s and 80s) would be very, very different if it hadn't been for The Shadows. Obviously it's safe to say that their influence was felt the heaviest in the early/mid Sixties, but given that 20 Golden Greats was so widely bought and listened to in 1977, the importance of this album in influencing youngsters of that era cannot be overlooked.

As to the Coventry gig; I am aware that it was probably recorded through the desk, as were many Shads gigs, but whether or not it is quite up to being released is another matter. It is distorted here and there (although very minimally so) and would probably require a fair bit of work to bring it up to a releasable standard - certainly I can't see it passing the Shadows Quality Control tests as it is. But I agree that these recordings would make a great live album.