living doll

567. ‘Living Doll’, by Cliff Richard & The Young Ones ft. Hank Marvin

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

The newest addition to our chart-topping roster – the charity record – returns. But it has shapeshifted. Morphed into a form that will terrorise the charts from here until the end of time… The comedy charity record…

Living Doll, by Cliff Richard (his 11th of  fourteen #1s) & the Young Ones ft. Hank Marvin

3 weeks, from 23rd March – 13th April 1986

As with most charity records – which tend to be very rooted in their particular time and place – this needs a bit of explaining. ‘The Young Ones’ was a sitcom, about a group of flat-sharing undergraduate students of Scumbag College: Rick, an anarchist; Vyvyan, a psychopathic metalhead; Neil, a hippie; and Mike, the ‘cool’ one. The show’s theme tune was Cliff Richard & The Shadows’ 1962 #1 ‘The Young Ones’ and Rick, played by Rik Mayall, was a proud Cliff fan, despite his anarchist leanings. In-jokes on top of in-jokes…

This one isn’t on Spotify, which actually ends up being in the record’s favour – it works better as a video. As a song, it’s fairly unlistenable. Cliff does a straight, very soporific cover of his 1959 #1, while the four actors prat about over the top. Meanwhile, Hank Marvin emerges from behind a door to perform the solo.

It is undoubtedly hard to write a song that is as funny as it is catchy. And this is not how you do it… ‘The Young Ones’ is a funny programme, and Cliff is Cliff. But they’ve had to paint their anarchic humour in very broad strokes here. There are funny(ish) bits… At one point Vyvyan calls Cliff ‘Shaky’. And they call out the creepy ‘gonna lock her up in a trunk’ line: I still feel that locking girls in trunks is politically unsound… Well I feel sorry for the elephant… (groan)

It reminds me – and I’m not sure how I even remember this song – of ‘I See the Moon’, The Stargazers’ 1954 chart-topper. That also featured voice actors pratting about – in a very proper, pre-rock ‘n’ roll kind of way – over a well-known tune. It also reminds me of just about every other ‘comedy’ record to come: ‘Spirit in the Sky’, ‘Islands in the Stream’, ‘500 Miles’ will all be subjected to the same treatment in the years to come, and that’s just off the top of my head.

This was recorded for the very first Comic Relief (AKA Red Nose Day), a BBC charity telethon. Like Band Aid, it was set up in response to the famine in Ethiopia and has since gone on to raise 1.4 billion pounds for charity over the last thirty years. For all the musical chaos it has unleashed, it has undoubtedly done a lot of good for the world. Four minutes of Cliff, and Adrian Edmondson bashing everyone on the head with a mallet, is perhaps a small price to pay…

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88. ‘Living Doll’, by Cliff Richard & The Drifters

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

In which we meet the pre-eminent British popular singer of the day. And the next day. And the next. Next. Next. Basically, there will be no escaping Cliff for the following forty years…

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Living Doll, by Cliff Richard & The Drifters (Cliff’s 1st of fourteen #1s / The Drifters – AKA The Shadows – 1st of twelve #1s)

6 weeks, from 31st July – 11th September 1959

In the intro to my post on Shirley Bassey’s debut #1 I gave it the big fanfare about living legends and national treasures and so on. And let’s be honest, the same applies ten times over for Sir Clifford of Richard. He will go on to utterly dominate UK pop music, remaining a genuine chart presence well into the 2000s, even if he is probably more famous today for singing during the rain at Wimbledon and for suing the BBC over the way they covered allegations of… (REDACTED).

Let’s get to the music shall we? ‘Living Doll’ begins with a natty little bass intro, and then… Well it’s rock ‘n’ roll; but not as we know it. I’ve mentioned many a time the idea of ‘US’ Vs ‘UK’ rock ‘n’ roll: British singers taking on the Yanks at their own game and slowly getting better at it. Let’s be honest, the odds were stacked against the Brits with Elvis, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Johnnie Ray et al against Lonnie Donegan and, um, Tommy Steele. And with the arrival of ‘The British Elvis’ AKA Cool Cliff, you might think that this is the moment for Britain to really grab the rock ‘n’ roll flag for herself!

Except, no. ‘Living Doll’ is an extremely lightweight record. A couple of acoustic guitars. Cliff’s simpering vocals. And that’s about it. Got myself a cryin’, walkin’, sleepin’, talkin’, living doll… Got to do my best to please her, Just cos she’s a living doll… This is a song that I could have sung a few lines from – most Brits could, no? – without ever having listened to it properly. And it’s a song that doesn’t do well under more intense scrutiny.

Yes it sounds cheesy and flimsy with a whiff of George Formby in the background. But beyond all that there’s the problem of the lyrics… In the previous chart-topper, Bobby Darin was giving us a ‘girl as dream’ narrative. Here Cliff is giving us ‘girl as doll’, and taking it very literally: Well take a look at her hair, It’s real and if you don’t believe what I say just feel… Pretty creepy… Gonna lock her up in a trunk, So no big hunk, Can steal her away from me… Eww. That’s taking a metaphor way too far and then some. She’s either literally a doll with which Cliff is romancing… Or an extremely submissive young lady over whom Cliff is aggressively over-protective. Either way…

The best bit of the song, by far, is the dreamy guitar solo which by the standards of the time is pretty long, loose and groovy. That, of course, is provided courtesy of Cliff’s long time backing band The Sha… No, wait. The Drifters. It’s actually quite simple: The Drifters were The Shadows until the US Vocal group of the same name (Ben E. King and co.) threatened legal action. They appeared as The Drifters on Cliff’s first five or so hit singles; this was their sole chart-topper before the name change.

Rocker Cliff

It’s pretty easy, almost a cliché, to get stuck into Cliff as an uncool, God-bothering, 2nd rate Elvis impersonator. And I’d try to avoid doing so at all costs… If his debut #1 record didn’t kind of prove all the accusations correct. He was clearly trying to sound like Elvis. He was clearly trying to look like Elvis (just look at that quiff!). And this record is him selling out just like Elvis did. Except Elvis got a good few years of genuine rocking ‘n’ rolling in before the movie studios, the army and the burgers came a-calling. Cliff got one album. (Do give ‘Rock on With Cliff Richard’ a listen, though – it’s got some decent tracks on it.)

Anyway, that’s one down for Cliff; just thirteen more UK #1 Singles to go…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK3uFgjCTeY