On
Track...THE HOLLIES: Every Album, Every Song
February 2022 Paperback
by
ANDREW DARLINGTON
I've enjoyed the Led Zeppelin, Electric Light
Orchestra and Status Quo books in this on-going "On Track..." series
from Sonicbond Publishing of the UK precisely because they've been written by
people who love and know their chosen poison and can relay that with good
writing. These books also dig in where it matters – the actual songs, the
albums, the music – even if that critique is not all milk and cookies.
Andrew Darlington is the same when it comes to
England's best-kept harmony-laden songwriting-excellence secret – THE HOLLIES.
Always seen primarily as a 45-singles hit machine, their albums have been
consistent, but never up there in any must-own list. And yet this is a group
that called Graham Nash, Allan Clarke and Tony Hicks founders and song-contributors
par excellence – so Darlington is determined to change that point of view by
going song-by-song through the LPs. And it really works.
Across the 160 A5-pages of this 14 February
2022 UK-issued paperback (published 25 February 2022 in the USA) - "On
Track... THE HOLLIES: Every Album, Every Song" by ANDREW DARLINGTON also
supplies 16-pages of colour photos. A black and white snap of the original
toothsome-five opens proceedings abutted by a colour shot of the 21st Century
survivors – grinning and proud of their achievements.
The artwork for the Parlophone LPs is given
pride of place – the Stay With The Hollies debut, In The Hollies Style
(second), Would You Believe, For Certain Because, Butterfly, Hollies Sing
Hollies – the Seventies with Confessions Of The Mind, Distant Light, Mikael
Rikfors joining for the Romany album of 1972 and 1973's Out On The Road (on
Hansa), Allan Clarke returning for 1974's game-changing 'Hollies', Another
Night, Write On, Russian Roulette, A Crazy Steal and so for the Polydor years.
There are lovely colour shots of rare foreign artwork that differs from the UK
variants, like the American "Bus Stop" album highlighting the hit single. The various
line-ups too are pictured in period live shots from each of their decades
(including reunions) and so on
A nice touch is that at the end of each album
assessment, Darlington rounds up stragglers – so at the tail-end of the 1974 "Hollies"
LP which produced the monster hit "The Air That I Breathe" he goes into
related releases – the different US configuration of tracks, the "Day That
Curly Billy Shot Down Crazy Sam McGhee" single, the excellent Terry Sylvester
B-side to "The Air That I Breathe" – "No More Riders". We also get touches on Graham Nash's famous stay with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in 1969 and 1970 for the self-titled LP and 1970's "Deja vu" - the 1971 debut solo LP "Songs For Beginners" on Atlantic and more. It's
all very comprehensive and will sooth detail-hungry fans.
Across the years I have reviewed in detail all
three of the huge Hollies CD Anthologies put out by EMI in those rather (if
we're honest) nondescript fat jewel cases with functional inlays - beginning
with "The Clarke, Hicks & Nash Years: The Complete Hollies April 1963
to October 1968" in May 2011 - on to "Changin' Times: The Complete
Hollies January 1969 - March 1973" in July 2015 and finally rounding off
their career to the Eighties - "Head Out Of Dreams: The Complete Hollies
August 1973 to May 1988" in March 2017 (see reviews for all three).
You could say with confidence that "On
Track... THE HOLLIES: Every Album, Every Song" is the paperback sweetie
that should always have accompanied each of them. A real fan-pleaser and a
great read taboot...well done...
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