BEN E KING – "Stand By Me"

“Stand By Me” was a sprinter compared with “Reet Petite,” taking just under 26 years from its initial chart appearance to reach number one. Its revival was not occasioned by the Rob Reiner film, which wasn’t released in Britain until the summer of 1987, but by the Levi’s 501 TV ad campaign which commercially was one of the most successful ever. Beginning in late 1985 with an “authentic”-looking series of ’50s/pre-Beatles ’60s scenarios of vintage Americana (mostly filmed in Borehamwood), the soundtrack to Nick Kamen removing his clothing in the steamy launderette, or immersing his shrink-to-fit jeans in the bath, was similarly unimpeachable Authentic Soul Classics. The effects were immediate; in 1986 “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” returned to the top ten, swiftly followed by “Wonderful World,” a bigger British hit than Sam Cooke ever achieved in his lifetime.

The next brace of commercials were launched in early 1987; for “Stand By Me” there was a queue for a club, admission gained only by the Authentic red tag on the protagonist’s 501s, while for Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman” we had a “poignant” portrait of a departing GI and his lover at the bus terminal. The going-away present? Why, a pair of 501s.

This all tied in with the still ridiculous residue of the 1982 Hard Times/ripped jeans non-craze, with Robert Elms on The Tube cheerfully deriding “Northern scum” (forgetting that the programme was being recorded in Newcastle) for not wearing limited edition super-expensive 501s with original red stitches. Once again, everything had to be Real and Gritty. But the campaign worked better than ever before; a month after the adverts premiered on British TV, “Stand By Me” and “When A Man Loves A Woman” occupied the top two slots in the singles chart, the latter thereby doubling its original 1966 performance.

In view of the legion of cover versions and reissues prevalent in the lists of the time, it can hardly be viewed as a healthy situation where the two most popular records come from the previous generation, and there was a kneejerk anti-futurism at work here crying out for someone to come and blow it apart.

None of this, of course, is the fault of Ben E King nor of Leiber and Stoller, who (with some help from Carole King and the singer himself) wrote “Stand By Me.” It is indisputably one of the great pop singles, and there may have been an anxiety to right wrongs, since in 1961 it only peaked at #27 in Britain, and in the interim had become better known in the form of Lennon’s Spector-produced 1975 cover. As a record it is practically bipolar in nature, for despite the hopeful sunrise strings and backing vocals, which appear over the tenements like a welcome dash of early morning spring, the song appears to be about imminent apocalypse with its imagery of “the land is dark/And the moon is the only light we’ll see” and its dread-laden visions of the sky tumbling and falling and the mountains crumbling into the sea. This is a gesture of indivisible faith – maybe not that far away from the fear-filled bunker of Neon Bible – a shield against lament and fear in a world which is swiftly turning into blood. U2 caught something of that feeling when they cited the song in “The Unforgettable Fire” – also the closest they ever got to an Associates tribute – and thus the original sits uneasily as a signifier of reproduction antique America in another land, increasingly unhappy with itself. 8 for the record, 2 for the whys and wherefores.

*goes off and looks up ad on YouTube*

Good grief, yes. That’s not Barry Out Of EastEnders as the doorman, is it?

I must admit I had a pair of vintage 501s with the red stitching.

At the time I was suitably outraged at the use of these songs in adverts, selling them as lifestyle accessories to go with the black hi-fi and Next chinos for newly-minted yuppies who wanted to act grown up (a mate of mine bought an Al Green greatest hits CD to play at dinner parties and complained to me that all the songs sounded the same), now I just think Ben must have been happy for the royalty checks the way many lesser-known soul acts were probably grateful for the money they earned on the Northern Soul scene.

I’m a big fan of this type of uptown New York soul and, along with ‘On Broadway’ this is probably the prime example of it. I love the spare beauty of the intro (just bass and percussion) but it is a struggle to listen to with fresh ears. Still have to give it a 10 though.

This song and the swathe of revivalist songs that came with it, summed up the rotten core of Thatcher’s Britain. It has often been a criticism levelled at the Nouveaux Riche, that they knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. The yuppie conspicuously consuming “authentic” branded goods as a form of aesthetic insulation, from the equal scorn and praise (dependant on whose viewpoint you listened to) heaped upon them by the media. You had to have your Le Corbusier as much as you had to have you Le Creuset! Much has been dicussed already in the JYB thread concerning “Rare Groove”. SBM was not rare, but considered by many soul afficionados as “classic”. A born in the ’60s lad like me will have been aware of Ben E King, more so than Jackie Wilson, from listening to their folks record collection or even the radio, where I recall it being played as a “standard”. The grainy, scratchy recording of SBM I heard belonged to a soulboy mate of mine, who got 1st dibs on a departed relative’s record collection. This was about 4 years before I had left school, and although I appreciated this cachet of soul for what it was. I was no more convinced to be as enthralled by Ben E King as he was, when he played it. I found it didn’t grab me as much as more rockier stuff from my folks’ record collection.

Of course, much later when the Levi’s ad hit our screens I mentioned to the same friend “See what they’ve done to your old soul music now! They’re using it to flog Levi’s!”
Naturally, he was horrified.

Levis shift from classic soul to modern dance didn’t occur until the early-mid 90s, and it’s interesting that this shift didn’t really affect their ability to generate massive hits (altho the success rate did drop). Of the post-soul revival crop my favourite is the unusual choice of Biosphere’s ‘Novelty Waves’. Unfortunately it’s ultra-dark techno throb failed to trouble the top 40.

As for ‘Stand By Me’ fine song (love the string-led instrumental middle eight, no disrespect intended to King but I’m not so keen on his voice here) but I can’t help but associate it with the general retro obsession pervading pop culture at the expense of the likes of MALE STRIPPER.

#4, the other ad that utterly sums up this era (and is discussed, I think, by Simon Reynolds in Blissed Out) is the Red Stripe one where whizened old black guy teaches young white guy to play the sax. The reek of ‘soul’ and ‘authenticity’ is overpowering.

#1 I acknowledge Punctim’s already touched on this but it’s worth looking at the entire Top 10 in this one’s final week at the top

2. Percy Sledge “When A Man Loves A Woman”
3. Mental As Anything “Live It Up” (my favourite here)
4. Man 2 Man etc “Male Stripper”
5. The Jets “Crush On You”
6. Level 42 “Running In The Family”
7. Bunnied cover version we’ll be discussing next
8. Curiosity Killed The Cat “Down To Earth”
9. Freddie Mercury “The Great Pretender”
10. Jackie Wilson “I Get The Sweetest Feeling”

So that’s three re-releases of 60s hits, two less than radical cover versions of big hits and two re-releases (3 and 4)of recent vintage which hadn’t charted big before. So the sounds of 1987 were a pisspoor 5 Star impersonation, a pisspoor Level 42 impersonation and the 42 themselves (actually a decent song despite Phil Gould’s usual clunky lyrics).

I am a bit doubtful about a kneejerk antifuturism.I think it was more a perfect storm of a CD-led shift to albums – I recall a 30 year old new colleague being amazed I was still interested in singles, the computer games boom, the national radio station losing its grip and perhaps most of all a dearth of new British talent (1988 will be a bumper year for American no 1’s).

#6 Pink Champale. Someone To Watch Over Me, Sea Of Love…er now I’m stuck.

Re 4: that ad, possibly with James Brown replaced by Nitro Deluxe or Dickie Valentine, represents my dream existence. Am I alone here? It isn’t exclusive to the Mojo/Hornby axis. An old record shop! By the sea! Probably in Ramsgate… Crab rolls for tea!

I don’t hesitate to call “Stand By Me” a perfect song, and I don’t use that word lightly. I certainly hope Tom’s resistance to re-releases isn’t influencing his scores overly, but I can’t see how anyone could rate this song below a 9.

Everyone here needs to hear the bootmix together of the vocal track of this with the music track of “Every breath you take”, it’s basically the exact same chords, pretty much…

#22 Rory my choice for best Mentals song would be the un-pc (yes I know it’s really about alcoholism) classic “The Nips Are Getting Bigger”. What position did that get to in Oz?

#23 MikeMCSG: The Nips are Getting Bigger – entry 23-July-79, highest position 16, weeks in chart 26.

I also liked their 1990s comeback (via Triple J) “Mr Natural”.

@21, Mark G. Many many songs use that exact chord sequence, often notated simply: I, VI, IV, V. Enola Gay was a big one from my youth. Whinier versions of the same thing (e.g., Chasing Cars), just drop the IV (because it can sound too ’50s). Lots of musicians in fact just refer to these as the ‘SBM changes’.

#25 Thanks Rory. Six months in the chart but it only got to 16. Is that usual in Oz? Time lag between popularity in Sydney and Perth perhaps ?

@30…not sure about slide rules, but I was using digital vernier calipers to measure stainless steel tube filters within .01mm tolerance, around this time.

Re Crush On You and Intro, if you haven’t already seen it here’s a nice video where Alan Braxe explains how he dunnit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccI4X7VjaC0

Take my pro forma pro-Levs rant as read. THEY ARE NEVER NOT TEH AWESOEM.

d) you *can* go back up the slidey bit, instead of the ladder, but only if nobody else is queuing up to slide down and you do not have mud on your shoes

Urban (myth?) slide rule:

Check for razor blades on slide before sliding

Pete, I have no memory of that post whatsoever. Weird. And disgusting!

Apocalyptic lyric aside, Stand By Me has always felt slightly empty and even a little rushed to me – so I’ll join the small band whispering that they admire it but don’t LOVE it.

Sat against The Drifters’ There Goes My Baby (also wr. Leiber/Stoller, voc. Ben E King) I’d go for the latter. Recorded in 1959, it was the first R&B record to incorporate strings. It genuinely sounds like two different records playing at the same time. Ben E King’s lead vocal is wayward, piercingly lonely. A booming baion drum alone guides him through this uncharted landscape.

Compelling, and one step from chaos, it nevertheless opened a new world of pop possibilities – one that Stand By Me capitalised on – by blending Latin rhythms, orchestral sweetness and raw teenage passions. Cosmopolitan, very New York, it filled the void between classic r’n’r’s demise and ‘Soul’ as a defined genre. A lot of my all-time favourite records fall into this area.

#29 – possibly a combination of that and being pre-internet, when spreading the word was in the hands of record companies and radio stations rather than punters themselves.

Re 46: seconded. I always use soul boy in the latter sense; I think the former group probably best referred to as the Real Soul faction.

I’d rather have the Levi’s advert in my head when I listen to the song than that awful John Lennon version.

These campaigns clearly worked for me as I wore Levis for the next 15 years or so, ceasing to wear jeans or trainers anymore when I became 30, though I switched from blue to black as I got older, and then a Richey Manic-style white for most of the 1990s. I once managed to find a red pair in 1995 – How cool was I? I was never cool enough to look for red stitching, though.

Did anyone else ever buy vintage imported Americana jeans, etc in Flip in Covent Garden at this time. I wonder when that closed.

I look at the jeans that the undergraduates I teach wear – either flapping square things or comedy leggings skinny, and I do miss the cut of the old model and feel that this was one thing when my generation had the best of it, I must say.

I saw the Rob Reiner film at the time, disliked it as sentimental, and reflected that life was nothing like that for me when I was 12. Not a popular position with my peers, who felt that I should get over myself.

The only Levis single I ever bought was the 12″ of ‘C’mon Everybody’ in 1988 though – very well chosen b-sides.