Starry
Eyed And Laughing were either 15 years ahead of their time
or 10 years too late.
Either way, in 1974 they were voted the Rickenbacker twangers
most likely to succeed.
Even before they signed to CBS, one paper observed: "By the end
of '74 the group will be set fair. They'll emerge fully in '75
- how's that for crystal-gazing?"
The critic concerned echoed the hopes of most pop pundits.
Starry Eyed were well-respected, loved even.
They wrote their own songs - the sort you felt you'd known all your life
- and played as if they'd just emerged from the grooves of The Byrds' Fifth Dimension.
Named after the 1st line of the last verse of Dylan's Chimes Of Freedom
the quartet released a few singles and two exceptional albums: Starry
Eyed And Laughing and Thought Talk.
Fred Dellar
That Was Now And This Is Then
This
28 song Double CD contains both albums together with 2 singles produced
by Flo & Eddie and 4 previously unreleased tracks
including "Chimes Of Freedom".
Available now by Mail Order - click here for details
Check out the great Shindig! Magazine - thanks to them for this
Review
They could have been The Beatles or more precisely The Byrds. London's SE&L utilised the 12-string Rickenbacker at a time when jangle was out and loud was in. Calling them Byrds copyists would be very unfair but damn, these boys sure did get the sound. Even Mr McGuinn approved. Despite this, they were unfairly lumped in with the mid-70s pub rock movement and served their apprenticeship with the likes of Ducks Deluxe and Kilburn & The High Roads. Signed to CBS in '74, they cut two albums, Starry Eyed & Laughing (with its incredible opener Going Down) and the slightly less coherent Thought Talk which are both included here alongside pre-album recordings (including a spine-tinglingly Byrds-y The Chimes Of Freedom) and alternate takes from the band's own archive.
Ricky-toting '60s nuts The Flamin Groovies, Tom Petty, The Records, REM and The Rain Parade followed but SE&L were among the first revivalists and remain one of the best. Sublime West Coast harmonies, astounding twin guitar attacks and a typically English pre-punk snottiness define their work and whether this was then or that was now, its wonderful stuff.
Jon 'Mojo' Mills & Andy Morten
Thanks to - Terrascope Online - for this Review
1974 - the dog days of rock – where you really had to dig for the good things; but there was hope on the horizon – the buzz was out for a bright new British quartet who had taken their name from a line in the Dylan song ‘Chimes of Freedom’ and were blazing new smoke trails based on the classic electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar sound of the Byrds. They were called Starry Eyed and Laughing and for a while in 1974 and 1975 you’d have been hard put to find a better British band. Their two albums for CBS were joyous affairs full of youthful bounce, irresistible pop hooks, heavenly harmony vocals and the kind of smouldering psychedelic undercurrents that made LPs like 5D and Younger Than Yesterday so good.
Led by guitarists Tony Poole and Ross McGeeney, Starry Eyed were a one-off and it’s difficult now to see how they fitted into any of the scenes that were happening in mid-70s Britain – SEAL came too late for the pyschedelic country scene of Bronco, Greasy Bear and Formerly Fat Harry of a few years earlier. Pop back then was at best 10CC, at worst the Bay City Rollers (or vice versa according to your taste!) – and they were only peripherally part of the pub rock scene, often sharing the same bills and venues with the likes of Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers. Of course had they come from the greater Los Angeles basin and been signed to Asylum, they would probably have become as big as The Eagles Progressing from covers by the likes of Gene Clark, Jackie De Shannon, The Beatles and of course McGuinn & co, the group began to work up a formidable repertoire of original material – and with the arrival of bassist Iain Whitmore at the end of 73, the group boasted three fine writers. The classic SEAL line up gelled with master drummer Mike Wackford in early summer 1974 and they were soon recording their self-titled debut waxing. When it hit the stores that October it was a time for celebration. Produced by Dan Loggins, it was a delight from start to finish, though it had turned out rather differently to how Loggins had planned it (cover versions of songs by Dylan, Jackson Browne and Mike Nesmith had been scheduled but ditched in favour of group material as the sessions rolled). The band sang and played their hearts out and many of the numbers were instantly memorable – like the debut 45 ‘Money is No Friend of Mine’ with its stomping chorus line, dexterous mandolin work (from Lindisfarne’s Ray Jackson) and Poole’s jangling Rickenbacker riff – or the gentler country rock of McGeeney’s ‘Closer to you Now’ with BJ Cole’s sweet pedal steel. ‘Going Down’, the opener meanwhile ripped along with intent and featured some powerful guitar breaks – the first of which by Poole especially was a cracker. Songs like the Moby Grape-style rocker ‘50/50’ and ‘Nobody Home’ (the second 45 taken from the LP) should have lit up the radio and torn up the charts – some 33 years later it’s hard to see why they failed to.
Undeterred by lack of sales and chart action, the band decamped to Rockfield Studios in March 1975 to make Thought Talk. This was a tighter, more together SEAL and Loggins’ production was far more assured – Thought Talk was heavier, more arranged and had the bite that the first waxing lacked – a super record that took on some serious themes. The sometimes winsome nature of that first LP was replaced by a far more confident band – it positively oozed with studio craft. ‘Good Love’ was the slow-burning, organ-dominated opener whilst Poole’s ‘One Foot in the Boat’ was the kind of song that Roger McGuinn back then seemed incapable of writing after his Byrds heyday – and Whitmore’s ‘Fool’s Gold’ showed he was as adept as his other band mates at delivering the goods – an intricate acoustic number with a haunting cello arrangement and measured vocals, this was yet another highlight.
‘Flames in the Rain’ was the album’s epic – the kind of song that showed that the band could match its West Coast counterparts – a rousing, windswept classic with raging guitars and righteously angry lyrics. This still manages to leave me slack jawed three decades on. The original Thought Talk ended with its eponymous title track a lyric-less jazz-based groove with soaring harmony vocals and buzzing guitars that recalled the peaks of David Crosby’s 1971 If Only I Could Remember My Name LP. Fabulous!
From this vantage point it might be easy for the uninitiated to put them down as mere Byrds copyists but Starry Eyed looked both back and forward – there was a certain innocence to their early songs that harkened back to the 60s golden age of pop, similarly they were developing that 60s sound and had they stuck it out I’m sure they’d have been at the forefront of 1978’s short-lived power pop phenomenon – was it mere coincidence that The Records ace 45 with its spiralling ‘Eight Miles High’ riff was entitled ‘Starry Eyes’? Listening now to these albums puts me as much in mind of the Soft Boys or the dbs and all those great 80s paisley bands as it does of SEAL heroes the Byrds or CSN.
This collection compiled by Tony Poole is your chance to revaluate them – bringing together both CBS albums, various Flo & Eddie sides and other sundry bits and bobs including at long last a version of their signature tune that does them full justice. I was a convert to them first time around but one listen to this now should have you equally hooked – what a fine band they were.
Nigel Cross
