An early master feels pop is misusing technology, writes Michael Dwyer.
One good song, that's all a poor boy needs. In Gene Pitney's case, it was Hello Mary Lou, a B-side sleeper for Ricky Nelson in 1961 that helped define the bittersweet teen ballad of the pre-Beatles era. Initially overlooked in the US market, it spawned million-selling singles in numerous languages worldwide, and was reinterpreted by artists as diverse as Johnny Halliday, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Queen.
"I've always looked at that song and wondered why," Pitney, one of the early masters of pop melodrama, reflects. "It was a fantastic copyright for me and it still goes on and on and on. I could live off that one song today with the income it keeps generating."
Add his other monumental hits such as He's A Rebel, Rubber Ball, Town Without Pity, Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart and his definitive version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's 24 Hours From Tulsa, and Pitney has some portfolio.
As a student of electronic engineering in the '50s, and an early studio colleague of both Phil Spector and the Rolling Stones, Pitney has come as close as anyone to the original essence of the classic pop single. "When I began recording, the technology was not anywhere near what we have today," he says. "Preparation was of supreme importance; that meant the producer, arranger, musicians and artist all had to peak in the three-hour session."
Pitney had already played and sung every part on (I Wanna) Love My Life Away, when he hooked up with Spector to record Every Breath I Take in '61. The control room at Bell Sound studio was crammed with Broadway's pop-biz elite - Bacharach and David, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann - all eager to watch the boy geniuses at work.
Although a big fan of digital recording, Pitney says there is often a shortfall between production and songcraft. "I feel that technology is used to the point of overkill . . . it covers a multitude of sins on inferior songs."
His Australian tour has been almost an annual event for half of the 40 years he's been on the road, and he's got enough indestructible nuggets up his sleeve to ensure he varies his shows on each tour.
Hello Mary Lou, meanwhile, clocked up its two-millionth play on US radio in 1997, just a few years before Pitney was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whatever the set list on this outing, the tune is unlikely to escape selection, if only on his accountant's advice.
March 17, 2005
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