Bye Bye Love
Harmonising sibling Don Everly left us on August 21.
“WHEN JOHN and I started to write songs, I was Phil and he was Don.” The Everly brothers may not have been among rock’n’roll’s first wave of hillbilly cats, nor did they outrage morality, but in that short tribute, Paul McCartney underlined their significance, what they inspired, and what was lost with the death at 84 of elder brother Don. No one could replicate Elvis, but you could aspire to be an Everly.
Born in Kentucky on February 1, 1937, as a pre-teen Don had been a crucial part of The Everly Family, a touring country and gospel quartet selling whatever they could on the side. When they foundered in 1953, Don befriended Nashville guitarist Chet Atkins, presenting himself initially as a writer, then as a duo with his younger brother Phil. After a flop self-penned debut single, their label, Cadence, paired them with songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, immediately hitting gold in 1957 with Bye Bye Love and Wake Up Little Susie.
While their universal teenage angst made the songs hit material, it was the Everlys’ impeccable harmonies that set them apart – the elder brother usually took the lead, but trying to separate the two voices and identify Don or Phil would beguile all the wannabes. Don was more melodic but, in his own assessment, inclined to wander; Phil held it together; the harmonies creating an extra layer, the dissonance highlighting the melancholy. Looking back on hearing them for the first time, future collaborator Graham Nash said: “I decided that whatever music I was going to make in the future, I wanted it to affect people in the same way.”
Quickly, however, the Everlys proved themselves to have ambitions beyond being mere teen idols. Lennon and McCartney would have noticed a competitive frisson: when Phil penned When Will I Be Loved, Don responded with (’Til) I Kissed You. Their 1958 LP Songs
Our Daddy Taught Us was a concept album of country covers too far ahead even of the folk revival to find an audience, however. “I wanted the last [Cadence] album to be something that I loved,” said Don, “but I didn’t want it to have any possible singles.” It bombed, yet sowed the seeds of Americana.
A switch to Warner Bros raised the game with Number 1s Cathy’s Clown and Temptation, but trouble was brewing. Don struggled with amphetamine addiction, while conflict with their publishers denied the Everlys access to decent material (including songs they themselves wrote). The next five years would find them unsure of how to progress, yet in the confusion they produced much of their strongest work. Singles
such as Love Is Strange, album cuts like Bowling Green, the LPs Sing
Great Country Hits and Two Yanks In England (recorded with The Hollies) – all are as mesmerising as anything from their Cadence years, yet darkened with experience and wisdom. One more commercial failure, Roots, left them adrift at the start of the 1970s, a situation a new contract with RCA couldn’t reverse, and tensions between the brothers spilled over, the fracture coming – violently – on-stage in 1973. They wouldn’t speak for 10 years.
The next decade saw Don have moderate country success, yet offers to reunite with a brother with whom he had little in common – professionally, personally or politically; Don was a committed Democrat, his sibling a Republican – eventually led to a triumphant reunion at Wembley Arena in 1983, three more albums and a final British tour in 2005. Phil passed in 2014. They may have pioneered rock’n’roll’s fraternal feuds, but to the end they were, in Paul Simon’s words, “the most beautiful sounding duo I have ever heard”.
“Songs Our Daddy Taught
Us sowed the seeds of Americana.”