THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS – "Unchained Melody"

Ooh! in early.

Reserving space.

Or, I would if I had much to say this time around about it.

Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers version. Nope, done that one already.

OK, how about: Is there a video of the two RBros performing this, where Bobby Hatfield’s giving it plenty, and the other dude stands next to him and just nods appreciatively?

If we’re talking about fusion between music and film, then no one fused as firmly or as transcendently in 1990 as David Lynch. In the late darkness of that year Twin Peaks premiered on BBC2, and although it quickly became clear that the series would have done well to have stuck to Lynch’s original concept of a seven-part serial, its vision transfixed with such abundant and focused intensity that it was easy to excuse the multiple holes in the central plot. In particular, Ray Wise’s Leland Palmer demonstrated such a minutely detailed and acute depiction of post-bereavement trauma in extremis that you almost regretted his having to be the killer, or worse, bringing in a shaggy dog of a demon to represent the evil in him. The backwards dream sequences were sublime and the opening avalanche of communal grief was so painful that you were suitably confused as to whether this was genuine emotion or high-flown satire.

Floating Into The Night, the first album Julee Cruise made with Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, was one of 1990’s best; a Mondrian-meets-Rothko portrait of the haunted emptiness of pre-Beatles ’60s teenpop balladry (“Sealed With A Kiss” and, indeed, “Blue Velvet” – Bobby Vinton’s original recording of the latter was reissued in 1990 and, partly due to a Nivea cream commercial and partly due to momentary Twin Peaks-inspired Lynchmania, made number two that autumn), its bar lines and tear stains stretched out to form blurred horizons, coupled with post-4AD misty danger. Critically and commercially the record was cancelled out somewhat by Badalamenti’s own, huge-selling Music From Twin Peaks soundtrack album, on which several of the Cruise tracks reappear in subtly altered form, but the music’s microscopic weeping retained its quiet power – the serene gore of the first season’s closing episode would have been unbearable to watch had Cruise not been present to counterpart the violence with her knowing, ambient peace. It was hard to believe that her normal specialty was Janis Joplin-type bluesy shouts.

Similarly, while Wild At Heart veered perilously close to an Airplane!-style Lynch parody, its great moments owe themselves entirely to the skilful use of music – in particular, in one scene, where Sailor and Lula are driving down an open highway, surrounded by fields of corn, in the late afternoon, and Sailor is frantically turning his radio dial to find some music but can only receive news bulletins of death, murder, robbery, war, bloodshed and anguish. Eventually he finds the resonant post-metal tones of Rammstein, whoops a loud whoop of joy as he and Lula get out of the car, pogo around madly to the riff and finally embrace, passionately and close to tears. Music can both save and justify lives. Elsewhere, at night, on the run, they career in near-total darkness down an unlit, narrow strip of road as the placid ghostliness of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” – Edward Hopper sings the Shadows – peals out of the sky like remorseful leaves of lavender.

Both “Wicked Game” and Julee Cruise’s “Falling” were deserved top ten hits as 1990 crawled to its regretful close, Cruise’s TOTP performance in particular bringing new meaning to the term “stasis.” But the use of the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” in the film Ghost is more problematic, not to mention the film’s own cavalier attitude to death and afterlife. Ghost, as befits its title, is nothing really; a clumsy broth of yuppie romance, supernatural whodunnit and screwball comedy which would have been, in an entirely different sense from Twin Peaks, unwatchable without Whoopi Goldberg’s dynamo of a performance. Swayze quickly and wisely realises that the film is not worth taking seriously and pitches his acting accordingly (whether Dirty Dancing or Donnie Darko, he was always a dopey, amiable big lug and nobody’s idea of a yuppie) – but Demi Moore gives a harsh, unsmiling portrayal so unforgivingly and blankly resentful that it unbalances the fluffy concept of the film entirely; even at the potter’s wheel, she acts as though already bereaved.

“Unchained Melody,” of course, is used in that famous scene, and thereafter throughout the film as a leitmotif of – what? Everlasting love? The long and loveless life which Moore will be obliged to live before she sees Swayze again? Being “artistic” yuppies, of course, they have their own custom-built home jukebox (see also Pacino’s unlikely alphabetised library of 45s in Sea Of Love) with non-obvious golden oldies; although the Righteous Brothers recording was a reasonably big hit in both the States and Britain on its original 1966 release, it never really achieved oldies radio rotation status. On our way back from the cinema after seeing Ghost we stopped off at the old Tower Records in Piccadilly. Thumbing through their singles section – for yes, once upon a time there were sections for 45 rpm seven-inch singles in record shops – we found one copy of “Unchained Melody” on the Old Gold label, looked at each other and knew this was going to be number one forever.

“Unchained Melody,” with its panorama of quivering yet noble expectation of long-distance spiritual reunion (and subtle carnal reunion – “Lonely rivers flow to the sea” etc.), is a song which more than most depends on the performance that it is given. The 1955 spring charts were crammed to bursting with different recordings of the song – Jimmy Young, who had the number one, sings it stoutly from a Two-Way Family Favourites perspective; the soldier serving abroad, the war memories still bitingly fresh. Al Hibbler’s reading (USA #1, UK #2) was the pick, his baritone’s tingling sensuality immediately picking up on the song’s real subtext. The Goons’ recording was perhaps far more indicative of war damage than the staunch Jimmy Young; here Milligan and Sellers are ageing buskers, a two-man band atonally bashing out what they think is the song, somewhere in the forlorn pavements of pre-hip Shoreditch High Street, trying and miserably failing to keep up with the times (“Swing them traps!”) but always falling back into the past (they end up singing the 1928 music hall ditty “I Played Me Ukulele As The Ship Went Down”) with resolutely out-of-tune jangling piano, Last Post trumpet and drumming angular enough to give Tony Oxley a headache.

The greatest straight recording, however, was that of Roy Hamilton, a black singer with an immense technical and emotional vocal range to whom even Elvis looked up but who failed to see his fortieth birthday, and his “Unchained Melody” was the template for the Righteous Brothers’ recording. It was one of many standards which the Brothers and Spector revisited and interpreted in their peak period (see also “Ebb Tide,” “White Cliffs Of Dover,” “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons” etc.) and although their “Unchained” doesn’t quite equal the near-unholy climactic power of “Ebb Tide” in particular, it is nevertheless a fine record due to Jack Nitzsche’s typically regal arrangement, Spector’s gulley-vaulting production and an uncanny vocal from Bobby Hatfield – although credited to the duo, “Unchained” (as with “Ebb Tide”) is a solo Hatfield performance; but then again, at least for its first two verses, Bill Medley has “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” pretty much to himself – with its apparent Aaron Neville influence (his first “I” in “I need your love” spinning out to eight short syllables followed by one, yearning long syllable), his low bow to God on the “God” of the first “God speed your love,” and his towering falsetto of “need” following a more frantic, four-syllable “I” in the final verse. It is as though without imminent spiritual and physical contact, he will crumble.

Fittingly the reissued “Unchained” featured on its B-side the Righteous Brothers’ greatest recording, “(You’re My) Soul And Inspiration,” produced by Medley rather than Spector and a performance of unfeasibly, near-inhuman candid and volcanic intensity which makes “Lovin’ Feelin'” (which it actually outsold in America) seem like “Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat” in comparison. But this naked soul far outdoes its misuse in a polite, yea-saying piece of family entertainment like Ghost. The latter promises eventual resolution and eternal life, as tawdry and transient as Swayze’s ghastly grin at the end, whereas records like “Unchained Melody” and “Soul And Inspiration” take titanic hammers to the wall of death and try to demolish it forever. “Unchained Melody” became 1990’s best-selling single, but perhaps for the wrong reasons – and the two “interpretations” of the song which Popular has yet to consider would seem to confirm this. I await Lynch’s use of the Righteous Brothers with no small degree of awe.

#4, ouch! If she was such a fantasist and liar, she’d have told you it was *her* that produced it!

#8 – OK, so what you are saying is that she maybe didnt play bass on this either, so wouldn’t know who produced it? Or that she’s got a lousy memory?

#9 Hey, I can answer things backwards! Cool.

Assertions such as “(Carol) Kaye is notorious as a fantasist and liar” should either be backed up with tangible evidence or left to the dark world of deprived conspiracy theorists or internet messageboard inadequates (which a quick Google search confirms to be the case).

punctum – without wanting to derail this, here#s tangible evidence http://www.bassland.net/bh1.htm . An affidavit signed by Brian Holland (writer/producer of the tracks) that James Jamerson played on ten songs, for which he has *always* been credited, and about which nobody other than Kaye has ever said anyone else played the bass part. Kaye to this day insists, despite all documentary evidence (and despite it not even sounding like her playing – Jamerson played with his fingers, she plays with a pick) that she played on those records. Nobody else has *ever* backed her up on this, she has provided *no* evidence at all, and all the evidence (tape boxes with recording sessions listed at the time, musicians union contracts for the dates in question) goes against her.
If anyone’s a conspiracy theorist, it’s Kaye, because she’s alleging that the Funk Brothers, all Motown historians, several of her LA session colleagues, Stevie Wonder, Holland, Dozier and Holland, Smokey Robinson and more are all deliberately lying about her involvement in a lot of hit records and giving credit to someone else.

I first heard this song on a Phil Spector’s greatest hits comp around 1973. It didn’t entirely belong, perhaps for the reasons Andrew gives at number 4, but also because it felt like a much older song. I fell in love with it, though, ten years later, when Joni Mitchell released her cover as a medley with an original song ‘Chinese Cafe’, by far the stand-out track on the ‘Wild Things Run Fast’ album. It is one of Joni’s very best later period songs, the second (after ‘Little Green’ on ‘Blue’) to refer to the child she gave away for adoption(and was not reunited with until quite recently. Her use of ‘Unchained Melody’ to evoke the romanticism of youth is sublime, and this remains my favourite version.

somehow, given it’s intimations of eternity in both lyric and mood, it seems appropriate that this song should appear at number 1 in 1990 like Brigadoon. As Marcello has indicated it was a haunted year for popular culture.
It somehow seems an appropriate soundtrack for the political drama that was unfolding at the time with the Conservative party conspiring to dispatch Margaret Thatcher – although her departure coincided with the next number 1. I can imagine her listening to this on a scratchy gramophone shrouded in cobwebs like Miss Haversham. Another ghost that continues to haunt us.

#14, damn, I was going to put that in at #3, but then I thought “ach, they all know this”…

Well yes, Unchained was the film I was referring to at #2. I’m pretty sure I also mentioned it ages ago, in the entry for Jimmy Young’s version.

(Although now that I look I think that must have been in a Haloscan comment, or even the system in use before Haloscan.)

#21 “Loved the final episode, though”

Hmmm. I thought it was OK. I liked the idea that Bob’s evil trumped that of Wyndham Earle who I thought was a bit superfluous to proceedings but again the curtains sequence went on too long.

This must be a cue for DJP to compare and contrast wth the last episode of “The Prisoner” ?

Well, that had a definite ending.

The TP one was more an inconclusive conclusion…

Did it, though? There were a few subsequent series with the mannerisms of TP but no subversion beneath (Northern Exposure, anyone?).

# 32 Well as I said, that last series of Dallas was excrutiating; the cast were deserting in droves and yes it did seem well out of its time. BBC1 realised what a dog it was and put it into the Last Of The Summer Wine Sunday teatime slot.

#41 in 2004 there was no Hollyoaks character that was not a ghost! Then they paradoxically killed them all off…

This ones moved into interesting digressions very early on –
affadavits, David Lynch and the last days of Southfork.Unchained is the right word.
It took me a while to really appreciate the song. Punctum made a smart point about it’s reputation having really grown in the 20 years since rather than the 20 years before this. It’s one example of a number one which was unequivally not for kids. I’ve never seen Ghost and at the time it felt a bit like Unchained Melody was being foisted upon us.
Now I can hear the wonder of it. There is a touch of androgyny about Bobby Hatfields voice and the lyrics are ungendered so in that’s another way in.

Yes, Twin Peaks was excellent wasn’t it? It’s one of those TV shows/films that make you wish you could jump into the screen and cross some magical reality barrier and actually live there.

The 16-year old me knew of the Righteous Brothers through “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” which I loved the first time I heard it, despite going through an ignorant adolescent phase of hating anything more than a decade old. I had never heard of “Unchained Melody” until it’s re-release. It’s a fantastic song and Bobby Hatfield’s performance is superb, just a shame it’s been so brutally bunnyed….

lonepilgrim @ 15

Can I pick you up on something? If the dates in the No 1s list are correct then it is indeed during the reign of this song at the top. On 22 November to be precise, and I have good reason to remember that date because I was in the US at the time, at mom-in-law’s house in upstate NY, and it was, yes, Thanksgiving Day! Never was Thanksgiving Day more apt as far as I was concerned. I went to bed the night before with the words of Peter Jennings ringing in my ears: “Tonight, British premier Margaret Thatcher is fighting for her political life”. And in the morning I heard the news of her resignation on an AOR radio station that didn’t normally carry news. I burst into a rendering of “Oh What A Beautiful Morning”, quite spontaneously.

What were you doing when you heard?