I found an album called "Michelle" at my wife’s childhood home, in the suburbs of Poughkeepsie. I’d never heard of this "vocal group" (on the top of the album is written, in tiny print: "File under: David and Jonathan – Vocal Group") described as "England’s Newest Chart-Busting Team" elsewhere on the (largely white) cover. This was David & Jonathan’s first and only record (1966). Their expressions can only be described as "simpering" in the photo.
Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook named themselves after two essential Old Testament kings who were rumored (according to the second website that appears when you Google "David and Jonathan") to be gay. It’s a valid, subtle name, better than "The Jolly Rogers."
Listening to the first two songs, I thought: "These fellows don’t sound Liverpudlian — not impassioned enough, or silly — but neither are they cosmopolitan, like Londoners." Turns out they’re from Bristol.
This record contains the two worst Beatles songs — and I hate all Beatles songs*– "Michelle" and "Yesterday." Both are note-for-note re-creations of the treacly originals, produced by the same mastermind: George Martin. David & Jonathan impersonate a double-Paul McCartney, but with less intimacy. They’re polite, tentative, British.
But not bad songwriters. They write extremely short pieces ("Every Now and Then" is two minutes, 6 seconds) with generic titles and generic sentiments, but with a cocky, operatic lilt. From across the Atlantic Ocean, they fell in love with Roy Orbison, which is no crime. "I Know" is a teen-testament triumph:
But still I’m hap-py
With my dreams,
Because I know
They will come true…
Listening to records again, I am rediscovering the crucial difference between Side One and Side Two (to use the terminology of "Michelle"). For some mystic reason, one face of a platter may be fabulous, the other weak and diffuse. Such is the fate of "Michelle", which starts slow, gathers steam, then collapses in the second half. Its final whimper is the moribund "The End Is Beginning," a David & Jonathan original.
One of the virtues of Wikipedia is that it teaches you the fate of ephemeral pop heroes, but it is utterly mum on David & Jonathan. You don’t learn that Greenaway is a retired hairdresser while Cook worked in insurance. (Just a guess at their ultimate professions.)
*With the possible exception of "Within You Without You"
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