DAVID ESSEX – "Hold Me Close"

Hardly “deliberated roughness” – Essex was and is an East End boy and good on him (though I still note the pronounced transition to “every cloud HAS A silver lining” in the final chorus). “Bogus bonhomie”? Well, he’s an actor.

That having been said this tune works far better in the context of its parent album All The Fun Of The Fair whence it emerges from the freeform pile-ups and proto-Lydon hisses of the title track. But as a number one it was, much like the man himself, lovely and cuddly and utterly harmless. Oi’ll give it a six.

The real righting of wrongs, of course, would have happened if “Rock On” had got to the top, but it was held at #3 for one week by Donny’s “Young Love” and Wizzard’s “Angel Fingers” and then for another week by “Angel Fingers” and another SHAME ON YOU BRITISH PUBLIC non-chart topper, “Ballroom Blitz” by the Sweet.

Not a lot to say about this. As with Donny before him, Essex could have churned out “Baa Baa Black Sheep” at this stage and been guaranteed a chart topper; and this principle resonates through the years. HMC was far from a penny dreadful but it was pretty lame and the weakest of his singles up until then by some distance in my opinion. It’s a shame he couldn’t have replicated something like “Lamplight”, knowing he would in any case bag a number one. The reality, of course, was that such a progressive track would have been out of synch with his new teenybopper status, which HMC locked into so cosily. David Essex is a curiosity, actually. A rocker, a teen idol, a major player in Theatreland and a regular bloke. Quite a trick really.

Not only a ‘great’ glo’aw stop (I loathe and detest the things, I have to confess) but a liquid ‘L’ (“siwvah”) as soggy as the Rainham Marshes! A portent of demotic hits to come in the not too distant future!

And back we go to Liverpool once again (“Yer wha’, la’? David Essex? Dat suddin ponce cuddn’t fight ‘is way outerra paper bag!”), a postgraduate now doing my teaching certificate and with the need to get a proper job and grow up looming distressingly large. But part of the upcoming term will include some of the most fun I’ve ever had in an educational establishment – learning about television production. In a few weeks we’ll be having a great time with an oddball theatrical experience in keeping with the spirit of the times. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, but this number one begins a mini-phase of theatricality leading ultimately to its own complete antithesis, I fancy.

Another of these acts which weren’t as successful as you would imagine them to have been – this was David Essex’s second, and last, number one, and really the end for him as a teeny-bop heart-throb.

After this, he only ever made the top 10 with songs from movies or musicals, and one Christmas single.

I believe this was really his own fault. Choosing HMC for a single did give him a guaranteed smash, but it was a creative lowpoint.

All his hits before this had been superbly crafted, and were markedly different from everything else around at the time – “Rock On”, “Lamplight” and, particularly “Stardust” showed he was not just another pretty boy; he had substance.

However, HMC was a paint-by-numbers cockney wide boy pastiche, fine for the end of “Crackerjack”, but not really holding much merit in itself.

I must confess though, I (involuntarily) always think of this song when I hear Metallica’s “More Than Words” – you know the bit “Hold me close – don’t – ever – let – me go”

Sorry!

Put it this way – D Essex mockney >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> L Allen mockney…

What a shame Chas and Dave never had a number one…

Billy: “an earnest urchin cockney bus-travelling love song”

I’m trying to write something about “If I Could” for my blog at the mo, I may have to steal this line.

He does overplay the Cockney chappie a little at times but as has been said he was an actor and no one has a pop at Bowie for his early Anthony Newley impersonations do they?

I think it’s a charming song, obviously light and fluffy compared to his other Jeff Wayne oddities that hit the charts but I can cut him some slack for that. Especially, as Marcello said, when you hear it in the context of the album where it sounds like someone changing the channel on the telly from Psycho to Seaside Special.

Yes but it changes all the time. People are always coming up with new ones.

Well, this is weird timing; I had the chance to interview David Essex this very lunchtime, but turned him down in favour of a Duran Duran interview which was then postponed until next week anyway chiz chiz chiz.

Anyhow. I’ve seen DE perform on a couple of occasions in recent years, and came away mightily impressed on both of them. His post-hitmaking career has been an object lesson in how to keep steadily working in the public eye while retaining your dignity. About once a year, and this has been happening for decades, he embarks upon marathon 30-40 date tours of decent sized theatres and concert halls, pretty much selling them out every time. And that’s in addition to his stage work, which is all much too Musical Theatre for me, but each to his own. (Oh, and he is the very essence of Silver Foxiness, to boot.)

As for the hits, I had a theory at the time that he alternated his releases thusly: weird/normal, weird/normal. Looking at everyhit, I find that I’m almost right: Weird/normal, weird/normal, weird/weird, normal/normal, weird. (Then I get a little lost, as “Coming Home” doesn’t ring any bells in the memory.)

This was one of the more normal “normals”, but after the Double Weird Whammy of “Stardust” and the fantastic (and long forgotten, seemingly also by Essex himself) “Rolling Stone”, perhaps it needed to be. No, not one of his best, but then a little bandana-and-waistcoat winkety-wink brace-twanging goes a long way with me.

Another vote also for “City Lights”, and I agree with Erithian’s categorisation.

Weird timing, Mike? You of all people should have known this was coming up! You could have combined the interview with a plug for Popular and got him on here to comment himself.

I don’t think anyone says apples (and pears) or frog (and toad) anymore though, at least not un-ironically. Probably a good way to spot a Mockney actually is if they use those old chestnuts.

I think whistle (and flute) has survived though.

#24: Actually Erithian, I make a point of not sneak-peeking ahead on everyhit, so I usually don’t know what’s about to come up next. I like surprises, I do.

We called it the Gary (Glitter) ’round my manor.

Re: “More than Words” (#14)- Er, do you mean the track by the rather different Extreme, vinylscot?

Re: new ‘cockney’ryhming slang(#27)-Is “Scooby Doo” really a new innovation? I remember people using that regularly when i was at primary school in Edinburgh over 20 years ago! Maybe its another example, like “Minger” or “chav, of an English appropriation of a well-worn Scottish slang term?

Re; Hold Me Close(finally)- frankly i’m at a loss for words! 2 out of 10?! IMHO I don’t think Ive so disagreed with a score since i started reading Popular!Admittedly, I’m not sure why i love this song so much. Unlike “Rock On”it’s in no way cutting edge or innovative,the cheeky cockney delivery really should grate, especially since it looks forward to the awful Kate Nash and her fellow Brit School alumni and the sub ‘Pebble Mill’ arrangement would be considered too soft for Val Doonican.

And yet the sheer joyfulness of Essex’s vocal(genuine or not? In this case it doesnt matter since its so infectious) and the magic of the song’s melody mean that this track can’t fail to put me in a good mood and put a spring in my step. The moment when Essex jumps an octave on ‘hold’ in the final chorus is a truly great pure pop moment.Why something so catchy hasnt became a standard and subsequently been butchered by yr Pop Idols is a mystery to me(not that i’m complaining). This has to be at least an 8 for me.

There wasn’t a number 2, just the predecessor and successor number ones on their way down or up to the summit. Five consecutive weeks at number 3 for ‘There Goes My First Love’ by The Drifters, though.

This is at least a seven for me – probably an eight. I think this is one of those rare singles where the studied delivery of the performer, the actor in Essex actually helps the song. It has always felt to me like a song that is the culmination of a well planned evening with his beau. He’s made dinner, some excellent wine, profiteroles and then – when she least expects it – the lights dim and Essex springs out with his twinkly eyes singing “Hold Me Close”. This is a song with a smile written all over it, winking in a completely sincere manner. The arrangement is wimpy, though as I’ve said elsewhere I am a sucker for flute in songs, but that helps its charms.

I think its heartning that Tom can get something so wrong every now and then! Its getting played at the next Popular, if not Poptimism.

Believe it or not, p^nk s lord sukråt, before i read ur last line there i actually believed you!
Gullible or what?

This is one of my most hated songs of all time, along with “Hotel California” which thankfully shan’t be mentioned so no spoiler bunny for me. Now I know why I hate “HC” so much – it goes back to a specific incident in secondary school where a bunch of boys decided to sing it – including closing guitar solos – in the library, air guitars in hand. For some reason, that put me off the song which I was never really that fond of anyway, and whenever I hear it now I’m back in that library with these boys… anyway, we’re not talking about that.

Hold Me Close then. Why do I hate it so? Sure, I don’t like the jaunty intro and the charming wideboy act. It irritates me, but that’s not enough to hate it so much. So I’ve been considering this over the past few weeks, knowing it was coming up, and I think I know what it is.

During the song’s rise up the charts, my family went on holiday to a caravan in Tenby for a week. I think something changed in me during that week because it’s the first time I can remember feeling dreadfully unhappy and depressed, and not in a childish way but in a proper suicidal i-don’t-want-to-live-anymore way, a feeling I would become familiar with as I got older, and one I feel uncomfortably close to today. But at 6 years old? Well, yes. I can remember running away from the caravan and hoping never to come back, just like I’ve done many times since. And all the time these strange new feelings were brewing in me, this song was playing everywhere I went – the jollity being at odds with my emotions, and making me hate it more and more. As far as I know, this is probably the first time a piece of music has become entwined with my personal memories and circumstances – another feeling I would become familiar with as I immersed myself deeper into music as I got into my teens.

Sorry for getting personal and honest, but this song hits a painful nerve I wasn’t aware was there until I found it, and I wish I hadn’t.

On a lighter note regarding the accent, wasn’t David Essex supposed to come into EastEnders last year – possibly in the role now played by Bobby Davro – but his stage commitments meant it didn’t happen.

I am glad Pete has stepped in to salvage geezaesthetix from its fun-hating grave!

“Innocence lost to pop” though? Maybe of Adam Faith in 1960 but not this.

I’m happy the controversy is centering around the mark for once 🙂

He comes from Plaistow and his dad was a docker – how on earth can he be faux?
As a reference for his speaking voice (looking oddly like Peter Gabriel):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7iFHIlUyXQk

Yeah, it wasn’t you, Tom, that I was reacting on that one…

re #44 No I was disagreeing with the opinion that it was an example of early mockney.

intothefire and marcello both quite correct here — tho i would add that who was (generally) allowed to be considered to be being inventive and daring within the rock press in 1975 was (somewhat) constrained*, and that innocence was an ambiguous virtue: it sometimes merely meant “silly kids who didn’t understand the importance of the 60s counterculture”

*perhaps a fairer word is “contested” — i after all have a big dog in this fight, as an nme reader passionate to have become an nme writer by 1983: i felt and feel that the orthodox rock discourse of the mid-70s was grumpily missing an important dimension (one which could acknowledge the imagination and haha “embedded radical theory” of the sillier reaches of teen-pop then also); but i have also strongly come to feel that the seeming triumph of “my team” in the mid-80s has enormously contributed to the corrosive cynicism of the present