The day the Fab Four got the Hump ...
F ifty years ago this week, the Beatles’ double A-side of Penny Lane and Strawberry fields forever dropped to number 10 in the charts. the week before, it had been number 5, and the week before that, number 2. But it was the first Beatles single in five years never to reach Number 1. there was one reason for this, and one reason alone: Engelbert Humperdinck.
At the beginning of March 1967, the popular entertainer Dickie Valentine had been taken ill and was forced to pull out of tV’s Sunday Night At the London Palladium. His last- minute replacement was a penniless singer called Gerry Dorsey, who had recently been persuaded by his manager to change his name to the more eye-catching and tongue- twisting Engelbert Humperdinck.
He sang an old ballad, written in 1949, called Release Me. in those few minutes, his life was changed. the song was soon selling 125,000 a day; it finally sold 1.38 million and stayed in the charts for a record 56 consecutive weeks.
‘it was pretty bad, wasn’t it, that Engelbert Humperdinck stopped Strawberry fields forever from getting to Number One?’ George Harrison reflected, many years later.
Before long, another Beatle had cause for resentment. With his new- found fortune, Engelbert moved out of his unfurnished onebedroom flat in London’s Shepherd’s Bush to a swanky new mansion in Surrey, just round the corner from John Lennon.
Unfortunately, Engelbert’s dog started stealing food from Lennon’s house.
‘tell that Humperdinck to keep his bloody dog away from me!’ said Lennon. thirty-seven years later, with perhaps a touch of triumphalism, Engelbert Humperdinck chose Penny Lane as one of his Desert island Discs.
What made Release Me — or Please Release Me (Let Me Go), to give it its longer title — quite so successful? the obvious answer is that it was a throwback to earlier, cosier days, and was bought by an older generation nonplussed by the looming invasion of hippies, druggies, drop-outs and long-hairs in the Summer of Love.
yet in the same top 10 there were many songs that were every bit as traditional, perhaps even more so: Nos 2 and 3 were respectively Edelweiss by Vince Hill and Georgy Girl by the Seekers, while No 4 was Petula Clark’s this is My Song, written by, of all people, the 78-year- old Charlie Chaplin.
So the clue to the overwhelming success of Release Me must lie beyond nostalgia. the tune is reassuring, but the lyrics are something else entirely.
‘Please release me, let me go,’ it begins. ‘for i don’t love you anymore. to waste our lives would be a sin. Release me, and let me love again.’
the singer then reveals that he has found a new love, whose ‘lips are warm while yours are cold’. Charming!
So he has already cheated on the woman to whom he is singing and is now basically telling her to get lost. yet throughout the song, he goes on as if he were the victim. in the final verse, his monstrous self-pity combines with a vague undertow of threat. ‘ Please release me, can’t you see, you’d be a fool to cling to me. to live our lives would bring us pain. So release me and let me love again.’
this might well as be the creepy villain in a Hitchcock film talking.
Contrast this with the chummy, nostalgic lyrics of Penny Lane: the fireman with his hourglass, the pretty nurse selling poppies and the friendly barber ‘ showing photographs/Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know./And all the people that come and go,/Stop and say hello’.
StRAWBERRy
fields forever may be more way-out and dreamy, but at its heart lies an oldfashioned celebration of the garden in which John Lennon played as a child.
While the Beatles’ single is innocent and backwards-looking, Humperdinck’s is dark and devious, and points towards a more grabby, self-centred future.
Clearly, it would be wrong to confuse the singer with the song: Engelbert Humperdinck remains married to Patricia, his wife of 53 years.
Nevertheless, his most lucrative song gave him access to a sinister possession. After he made his first million, one of the items he bought was the Rolls-Royce that had once been owned by Albert Pierrepoint, famous for being Britain’s last hangman.