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The Herald Scotland
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
When a teenage Lulu became the toast of Swinging London
Eventually, she and the band – rhythm guitarist James Dewar, lead guitarist Ross Nelson, drummer Dave Mullen, bassist Tommy Tierney and singer Alec Bell – drove down to London to audition for record companies. The first label, Columbia/EMI, declined, but the next one, Decca, offered them a record contract on the strength of two songs: Shout, a raucous number written by the Isley Brothers (Lulu had been blown away when she heard Alex Harvey singing it), and Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa, a Bacharach and David hit for Gene Pitney. After the band had recorded Shout, Marie's manager, Marian Massey, hit upon 'Lulu' as a new name for the 14-year-old, and Lulu and the Luvvers as the band's new name. The single was released by Decca in April 1964, by which time Lulu's name was everywhere. Fabulous magazine interviewed her, together with Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Cathy McGowan (host of TV's Ready, Steady, Go!), for a piece about pop's new female stars. Maureen Cleave interviewed her for the London Evening Standard; "When I sing I tingle all over and I can see the people's faces lighting up', Lulu told her. 'I'm so thrilled at it all; life's so thrilling." Shout spent 13 weeks on the charts, peaking at number seven. John Lennon, guesting with Paul McCartney on Ready Steady Go!, discussed the latest singles and declared that his favourite was Shout!, 'by a girl called Lulu'. That same year, after a gig in Glasgow in June 1964, Lulu invited The High Numbers – The Who, as they would shortly become – back to her old family home. She met the Rolling Stones, too. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote a song for her, called Surprise Surprise. It was released as a single early the following year, with a prolific session musician named Jimmy Page on guitar. Things were beginning to pick up speed. As Lulu recalls in her book I Don't Want to Fight, 'there were radio and TV appearances, magazine interviews, photo shoots and concerts … We appeared on TV shows like Thank Your Lucky Stars, Juke Box Jury and Ready, Steady, Go!, as well as performing on local radio and TV shows in England, Ireland and Wales'. The hit record saw the band increasing its fee for gigs from £30 to £100. And in a posh Knightsbridge restaurant, Bobby Darin, the American singer and actor, made her blush when he told her that she had been 'fabulous' on Ready, Steady, Go! The money began rolling in and Lulu's schedule had barely any gaps for rest and relaxation. She moved into a flat in St John's Wood owned by Marian's parents. And she certainly picked the right time to find herself in London. Even ahead of its coronation in April 1966 as 'The Swinging City', courtesy of Time magazine, it was a vibrant, adventurous place. Lulu and Rod Stewart at Glastonbury (Image: Yui Mok) "London was the centre of the world', Lulu writes in her book. 'Whether it was music, fashion, art, film, photography or design, the rest of the world was taking its lead from London. The streets were full of bright colours, short skirts, jackets without lapels, tight trousers, psychedelic swirls, platform shoes, Cuban-heeled boots and big hair. Pop music and rock'n'roll dominated the airwaves'. This is certainly a line echoed by Graham Nash in his memoir, Wild Tales. Describing the London of 1965, when he was still with the Hollies, he writes: "A full-scale cultural revolution was in progress, with youth and music dominating the scene, top to bottom. The boutiques on Carnaby Street catered to our lifestyle. Mary Quant was introducing miniskirts and Biba was around and Cecil Gee.... Darling and The Knack spoke to us from the screen, cynical and sexy and angry, and Radio Caroline was broadcasting off the coast". Read more: Lulu and her band were still in demand but their chart performance was sagging, causing her to worry that they might just be one-hit wonders. Two singles, Can't Hear You No More and Here Comes the Night (with Page again on guitar) made little impact, though Van Morrison's Them would have a number two hit with the latter song. It wasn't until Leave a Little Love reached number eight in June 1965 that Lulu felt that she had finally arrived. That September she gave a candid interview to Rave magazine, during which she admitted that she felt older than when she first came to London, and that the friends she used to know "suddenly seem worlds away from me. When we meet I am at a strange disadvantage". "My career is important to me," she added. "The first thing I think of when I wake up is, 'What is on today?' It may be TV or radio, or a live show somewhere. Whichever, I decide what to wear and whether to get my hair set. Sometimes my hairdresser, Vidal Sassoon, thinks I'm mad getting it re-set, because it looks O.K. But I feel awful if my hair isn't just right. I suppose when you are the instrument of your business you get self-centred in some ways. Anyhow, once I've sifted through the day, I relax, and things run smoothly enough." However, as Scots music historian Brian Hogg has noted, moves had long been afoot to prise Lulu from her 'backing' musicians, the Luvvers. TV slots for the singer alone, added Hogg, "already outnumbered those for the group as a whole. Although useful live, they were deemed superfluous in the studio where subsequent appearances were strictly limited'. This was illustrated by the line-up of musicians on Lulu's 1965 debut album, Something to Shout About; the Luvvers appeared on just three tracks, one of which was Shout. 'Lulu, with the Luvvers on some tracks, and a positively glittering showcase for her voice…', began an approving review in Record Mirror that October. The album's 16 tracks combined to show Lulu's sheer versatility as a vocalist beyond her gutsy performance on Shout. Try to Understand, Not in This Whole World, Tell Me Like It Is, and Holland-Dozier-Holland's Can I Get a Witness, previously a hit for Marvin Gaye, were among the highlights. As a calling card for a young woman in her teens, still relatively new to the recording business, it was pretty good. 'One of the most versatile voices on the scene', Record Mirror's review continued. 'Big bash for 'You Touch Me Baby', but the mood switches all the way. Main thing is the clarity of the punchiness Lulu injects all the way. A variety of backings, choral and instrumental, behind her. 'Can I Get a Witness' gets a brisk new reading. 'Shout' is in, of course, and Lulu's new single, 'Tell Me Like It Is'. 'Chocolate Ice' is a gas …. 'Leave A Little Love' is another stand-out. But then the overall standard is very high'. As Lulu notes in her book, the album had been successful, 'but session musicians had been used on some of the latest recordings. Although nothing had been said, I knew the boys were unhappy'. And there was also the undeniable fact that media attention had alighted on her, not on the boys in the band. Read more On the Record: James Dewar was first to leave the Luvvers, in 1965 – he went on to play with Stone the Crows and with the brilliant guitarist, Robin Trower. The other band members soon followed, retreating to Glasgow. 'I tried to hold us all together', Lulu recalls, 'but Decca had wanted this all along and did nothing to help me'. Her profile continued to rise. Magazine and newspaper writers sought her out. There was a groundbreaking package tour of Poland with the Hollies, and there were gigs in support of the Beach Boys in 1966. 'Lulu proved conclusively to me that she should be allowed to close the first half by virtue of the fact she is so beautifully professional', Keith Altham wrote in the NME after a Beach Boys/Lulu concert at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London. 'Five numbers from her were not enough — 'Blowing In The Wind', 'Wonderful Feeling' and 'Leave A Little Love' which Spencer Davis — who joined me to see the second house — was still raving about half an hour after the show, were her best numbers!' Lulu had also bought a car, and a townhouse in St John's Wood. At seventeen, she was 'hanging with the coolest, hippest crowd. Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Starkey and Pattie Boyd were my girlfriends'. In 1966 she had a role in a Sidney Poitier film, To Sir With Love, and the title song, sung by her, became a huge hit in the States in 1967, selling two million copies and sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks. Her sudden fame in the US led to an appearance on the top-rated Ed Sullivan Show. Media attention in Lulu was proving to be relentless. In November 1968 Disc and Music Echo caught up with her at her plush St John's Wood home, and the journalist was most taken with it all - the four-poster brass bed from Heal's, the pined kitchen, the huge pine chest housing a gigantic collection of albums, the small room that combined Lulu's office, [[TV]] room and general "flop out" space. "My house is my little refuge', Lulu told her. 'Whenever I get a moment I fly straight down to London and collapse inside its four walls!' * Lulu's latest book, If Only You Knew, is published on September 25. Dates for her series of 'intimate conversations with songs and stories' can be found on her website, lulu
The Herald Scotland
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Masterpiece' - Scot blew the door of psychedelic revolution wide open
The Glasgow-born troubadour, whose mission was, in his own words, 'to bring poetic vision to popular music', began to make his name when, as yet unsigned, he appeared on the television show Ready Steady Go! in January 1965. On March 12 he sang his debut single, Catch the Wind, on TV, impressing a certain Little Steve Wonder, who was in the audience. The song zipped into the charts at number four, and continuing exposure on television and radio helped ensure that 'my name, my face and my music were in every home in Britain'. America beckoned, and he found himself on the Ed Sullivan Show – the same show that had broken the Beatles in the USA, less than a year earlier. His refusal not to join the rest of the performers for a final bow at the end brought him to the attention of industry heavyweight Allen Klein, who rang the renowned record producer, Mickie Most, and recommended Donovan to him. Donovan also toured Britain, where he was linked in the public mind with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, the rising stars of folk music. A second single, Colours, reached the same chart position as Catch the Wind. His debut album, What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, was released in May, a few days after his 19th birthday; it peaked at number three in the charts. Such sudden fame did not come without its critics, however. Some in the music press had sniped that Donovan was but a pale imitation of Dylan, but after Donovan had met Dylan in his room at London's Savoy Hotel, the American told Melody Maker: 'He played some songs to me. I like him. He's a nice guy'. So ended, the magazine reported, 'one of the biggest controversies that has ever split the British music scene'. One Savoy encounter, incidentally, was immortalised by D.A. Pennebaker for Dont Look Back, his documentary about Dylan's 1965 British tour; Donovan borrowed Dylan's guitar to play a song, To Sing for You; Dylan responded with It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Little could impede Donovan's rise. He played the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (the one in which Dylan famously 'went electric') and was feted in the States. He was friends with the Beatles (below), the Byrds and PJ Proby, was introduced to Paul Simon, had chart success with an EP featuring Buffy Saint-Marie's Universal Soldier, and took his first LSD trip. He had fallen in love, too, with a woman, Linda Lawrence, the former girlfriend of the Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones, and mother to his son Julian. The Beatles appeared on the same showA second Donovan album, Fairytale, was released in October 1965. It contained some of his finest songs: Colours, Sunny Goodge Street and Ballad of a Crystal Man, and a cover of Oh Deed I Do, the work of his fellow Scot, the brilliant pioneering guitarist, Bert Jansch. In his memoir Donovan refers to the 'new way of seeing' that he was industriously developing at that time. He cites the lyrics to the jazz-fusion track, Sunny Goodge Street: 'I was describing the sub-culture emerging from the underground and the elusive search for the self. Two years before the beginning of 'Flower Power' and before the Beatles used the same refrain' he was singing … 'I tell you his name is/ Love, love, love''. He also records that he 'felt the need to introduce key spiritual ideas' . [The album] set the scene for my performance as a 'Bard' who would present a way of seeing the wonder of the natural world. I was mocked as a simpleton, when I sang of birds and bees and flowers like a child. Indeed, I was keeping the 'wonder eye' open - just like a child'. Among the many budding musicians who bought and loved Fairytale, here or in the States, was a young man in Indiana named John Mellencamp. The year 1965 had not quite finished with Donovan: in December, at Abbey Road studios, he began work on his 'experimental' third album, Sunshine Superman, with producer Mickie Most and the noted arranger John Cameron. Most, Donovan writes, 'realised I was hearing sounds which came from many sources: classical, jazz, ethnic, medieval minstrelsy, and he saw the potential for a veritable new fusion of music, a 'world music' sound, before this term was thought of'. Read more The album itself was a clever blend of folk music and some of the first psychedelia to ever be committed to vinyl. Musicians such as the double bass player Danny Thompson guested on the album. Shawn Phillips, a Texan musician, contributed sitar. By this time, Donovan's relationship with Linda, who was living thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, was looking uncertain. The title track (on which Jimmy Page, then a session guitarist, played) was the first song to emerge from his oppressive fog of sorrow. When Most heard it in the studio, he instinctively knew that it would be a hit single. He was right: it went to number two in the charts towards the end of 1966. The second track, Legend of a Girl Child Linda, saw Donovan finger-picking his acoustic guitar in front of an orchestra. 'We certainly broke the mould of pop music – and folk music, for that matter', he recalls in Hurdy Gurdy Man. '…There were no songs like mine to compare with. It was all new directions, uncharted seas'. Donovan continued to write songs for the new album in the new year of 1966. Linda appeared in most of the songs on one guise or another, including the gorgeous track, Celeste. Its aching lyric, Donovan notes, said he was disillusioned with everything. One striking line – 'I intend to come right through them all with you' – was in one respect about the changes his generation was encountering but at a deeper level was a song to Linda. In February he enjoyed another turning-point in his career when he headlined at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall, accompanied by Phillips on sitar and 12-string guitar. It was the first time that a Western pop audience had witnessed the former instrument on a stage. Donovan writes entertainingly of his adventures in the States that year as he finished work on the new album in LA. 'This much I knew then: I was making the music and writing the songs which reflected the emerging consciousness of my generation. I was here to do this … I felt the spirit move within me. I knew that this album would be my masterpiece'. When the album was released in the States in September, the LA Times's Pete Johnson said: 'Donovan, a very talented, if unearthly, writer and singer of folk songs, croons 10 songs to form an album follow-up to his very popular single record, 'Sunshine Superman'. The LP does not fulfill the promise of his single, but it supplies a good measure of his soft understated singing of the medieval-modern, dream-reality mystical imagery. 'The best tracks', Johnson added, 'are 'Sunshine Superman', 'The Trip', 'Season of the Witch', 'Legend of a Girl Child Linda' and 'The Fat Angel'. Like many other singers, Donovan has fallen under the spell of Indian music, which provides structure for most of his non-rock songs'. For business-related reasons the album did not go on sale in the UK until June 1967. It reached 25 in the album charts, someway short of the exalted number-one status it enjoyed in many countries across the world. Melody Maker wrote that "every number has a mood, an atmosphere, a current along which the perceptive listener can float. Donovan glides playing beautiful guitar and singing his songs like they should be sung - with love'. Much lay ahead of Donovan, including a sold-out January 1967 headline appearance at at the Royal Albert Hall, his continuing involvement with the Beatles, his lasting popularity in the States and elsewhere, his 1968 masterwork – the double album box-set, Gift From a Flower to a Garden – and bestselling singles such as Mellow Yellow, Jennifer Juniper and Hurdy Gurdy Man. In a recent interview with Mojo magazine, John Cameron, Donovan's arranger and collaborator, reflected: 'The amount of work we did between '66 and '70 was phenomenal, we had a string section that rode motorbikes. They'd be on Yamahas with their Strads [violins] strapped to their backs, going from studio to studio. It was the only way they'd get from one to the other on time'. Donovan himself reconnected with Linda, and they were married in October 1970. Having done everything he had wanted to do, he then took a decisive step back from the industry. New records followed, but his time in the cultural spotlight was over. Read more On the Record Interviewed by Mojo magazine's Sylvie Simmons in 1996, to promote his 'comeback' album, Sutras, which was produced by Rick Rubin, Donovan explained: "If I can do a thumbnail sketch of 20 years, around about 1970 I had achieved everything I could have possibly dreamed of and much more. "Having been at the top of the ladder, there was nowhere else to go. So I walked onto a British Airways jet in Tokyo and out of a tax plan called a drop-out year where I was going to earn more millions of dollars than any young solo artist of his time. It had ended. I didn't burn out, I wasn't a drug addict, but I was wounded in some way, and I came home to my cottage in England.... I married Linda, my great love and teenage muse — four years of '60s madness had kept us apart — and I walked away from fame, the Rolls Royce, the yacht, the mansion. "We went to Joshua Tree in the California desert for much of the '70s and brought up the children up as an alternative family... But something was happening while I wasn't watching. In the '80s, things were getting very dark, the earth was wounded, and I felt dispirited. In '83 I stopped making records completely, I had a personal crisis, musical crisis, and Linda saw me through it. I came out around 1990. "A new impulse got me... I'd gone into the studio and started recording these song ideas... Rick Rubin had been in the studio with Tom Petty, who was playing one of my songs. Rick says, 'I love Donovan, I've always wanted to record him'. Tom says, 'Why don't you phone him up?'. So he did. We met and we found similarities extraordinarily alike." Speaking to Record Collector magazine in January 2024, he said: 'When I started singing, the message was in the song. The revolution was on. The important part was giving young people a shock in that there were different things to talk about in songs, other than, 'I love you, why'd you make me blue?' This was important' In the same interview he noted: 'I think my songwriting was very influential. Breaking all the rules and experimenting in the studio was encouraging to others'. Things came full circle in a way in 2102, when Donovan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by none other than John Mellencamp. Donovan was introduced as the man who "blew the door of the psychedelic revolution wide open". Recalling the first time he had bought a Donovan album, in 1965, Mellencamp told the audience: 'I was in the seventh grade, and back then we waited for every record and I waited for every album to come out so that I could learn to play those songs. I wasn't just listening to Donovan, I was living Donovan. I was stealing all the s— from Donovan'. A few moments later, to applause and cheers, he held up his original, much-played copy of Donovan's second album, Fairytale. The word 'Mellencamp' was etched in ink along the top of the cover. 'See how it says Mellencamp?' he said. 'In Indiana, we used to use these things like money. If you didn't have any money, you would sell this for a dollar and a half or trade it for two Led Zeppelin records and then they'd trade it back. You always wanted to keep track of your stuff. That's why I have my name all over it'. * Donovan is marking his 60th year as a recording artist with a week of events in Paris between June 1 and 7. Website:
