Peter & Gordon
Peter & Gordon - Columbia 1964
Tracks: 1. Lucille / 2. Five Hundred Miles / 3. If I Were You / 4. Pretty Mary / 5. Trouble in Mind / 6. A World Without Love / 7. Tell Me How / 8. You Don't Have to Tell Me / 9. Leave My Woman / 10. Alone / 11. Last Night I Woke / 12. Long Time Gone / 13. Soft as the Dawn* / 14. Lonely Avenue* / 15. Roving Rambler* / 16. Nobody I Know* / 17. I Go to Pieces* / 18. A World Without Love
Comments:
Released in 1964 with Lennon / McCartney's "A World Without Love" as the great feature, Peter and Gordon's first album is a good mixture of Merseybeat and folk music with a good deal inspiration from The Everly Brothers.
The Merseybeat sound is first and foremost as you know it from The Searchers, whose soft vocal harmonies and sounding guitars later influenced groups like The Byrds.
This first album is probably the overall most successful from the duo. In addition to the fine vocal harmonies, the album stands out with a fine song selection that Peter & Gordon complements with three of their own songs, including "If I Were You" and "You Don't Have to Tell Me"; both very much "Merseybeat".
Three songs, "Lucille", "Leave My Woman Alone" and "Long Time Gone", which The Everly Brothers also recorded, are quite upbeat but not very different from their American model versions.
The songs that especially make me think of The Searchers are "Five Hundred Miles", "All My Trials" and "You Have to Tell Me". Like many other groups, The Searchers were very much inspired by folk music.
A pretty nice version of Peter, Paul and Mary's "Pretty Mary" fits nicely into the whole, while their version of the bluesy "Trouble in Mind" falls through - Peter & Gordon are simply too "nice" and not very bluesy.
The absolute highlight of the record is, of course, Lennon / McCartney's "A World Without Love" which is a pop classic from the period.
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