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håkan strandberg Post subject: If I needed someone
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Joined: 10 Oct 2005
Posts: 172

I wonder what"s wrong with If I needed someone. I think it"s a great song much better than the beatles. Yes I like the voice of Allan Clarke.

Have a nice evning.

Håkan.
PostPosted:Thu Dec 04, 2008 20:41 pm
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christocello Post subject: Re: If I needed someone



Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Posts: 12
Location: Germany

håkan strandberg wrote:
I wonder what"s wrong with If I needed someone. I think it"s a great song much better than the beatles. Yes I like the voice of Allan Clarke.

Have a nice evning.

Håkan.


Well, I suppose, it's not difficult to explain, why "If I needed" was a commercial failure:

At first, look at the great hits the Hollies had before: "I'm alive" and "Look through any window" are fantastic songs, written by great composers and performed in a superb manner by the Hollies. The same goes for the follow up to "If I needed" - "I Can't let go".
"If I needed" was (and is) a George Harrison - song that owes much to the Byrds "Bells of Rhymney". So you can't compare the songs (medium) quality to the average Lennon-McCartney production. Harrison himself needed far more time to mature as a composer. Not before 1967, more in 68 he had found a very own distinctive musical language.

Secondly, when the Hollies decided to take over a "Beatles"-Song, they obviously thought, the Beatles would not record it themselves. That was the case with lot of Lennon-McCartney songs that Peter&Gordon, Cilla Black, Fourmost, Billy J.Kramer or the Applejacks recorded. Even "I wanna be your man", written for the Rolling Stones, appeared at least 3 weeks after the Stones' single on "With the Beatles" and as it was sung by Ringo, it didn't mean a real challenge to the Stones' version.
So only 2 days after the Hollies presented "If I needed" to the public (December 1st 1965) the Beatles released "Rubber Soul" with their version of "If I needed". The Hollies might have not been happy about this?

Third (as many Hollies and Beatles-fans might know), an interview with George Harrison short after the release of both groups' records had a devastating effect on the sales of the Hollies' version. Harrison did some remarks about the Hollies' version being uninspired and somehow boring. In a reply to this interview Graham Nash told the press, that Harrisons remarks seemed rather unfair and not very senseful - regarding his income from song-royalties.

A last point - if you listen carefully to the Hollies' version, it is not that absurd to agree to Harrisons opinion, even partially. It's true, we cannot listen to this record without comparing it to the Beatles' version - but the guitar playing of Tony Hicks is not so convincing, you can even find an audible playing mistake at the end of the song. All in all you (I) get the impression, that some more recording takes could have made the piece more convincing.

May it have been, that the producer Ron Richards and the group themselves thought that a Beatles-cover would go straight to the top without too much effort?
I think, the Hollies learned a lot from this "accident". Because their follow-up "I can't explain" is - in my humble opinion miles ahead - cleverly produced and suberbly performed (as already mentioned above). Paul McCartney himself (as an act of rehabilitation?) was high in praise of this song.

Have a nice evening

christocello
PostPosted:Sun Dec 07, 2008 20:52 pm
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