mostly david ephgrave

I was very sad to hear of the passing of Phil Everly this morning. The Everly Brothers pretty much originated close harmony singing in popular music; without them, there would have been no Beatles, no Beach Boys and no Simon & Garfunkel. Their music was beautifully constructed, with voices that blended so perfectly that if it wasn’t for the musical interval between them, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were one. They were contemporaries of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison, touring extensively with them both. Their influence on each other was huge: just listen to Buddy’s ‘Listen to Me’ and ‘Words of Love’, for example; you could easily mistake it for the Everlys. It was a time of cross-promoting between artists, with both Buddy and Roy actively writing for the duo. Phil and Don also supplied the distinctive “Dum, dum, dum, dum-me-doo-wah” that helped make Orbison’s ‘Only The Lonely’ such a big hit.  The two brothers and Buddy were exceptionally close. Phil was eve...

Yesterday, I had my own personal ‘Yesterday Moment’. (The second yesterday above refers to the Beatles song, Yesterday; the first to when the moment took place. Have I made my meaning any clearer? Probably not.) It’s fairly well known that the song came to Paul McCartney in a dream. He awoke in the bedroom of his girlfriend Jane Asher’s house with the melody fully-formed in his head. He crept over to the piano (carefully negotiating his way past all of the cake-baking equipment) and worked out the chords to accompany it. Yesterday, the same thing happened to me (minus the house-proud redhead). While I was sleeping, a brand new song began forming itself in my mind. My only problem was that when I woke up I couldn’t remember how the bloody thing went. This isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s very frustrating: why can’t my brain have some sort of tape recorder incorporated into it. What if Macca had had a similar probl...