Sunday Music - Dear Eloise

Today’s music video is Dear Eloise from the English band The Hollies.

Link to Video at You Tube

This video was posted to You Tube by Hollies Tunebox

The Hollies were an English band from that period of time called The British Invasion, when most of the top bands came out of the UK. They had a series of major hits in the UK and while not as successful in the U.S. they still had some of those songs make it as hits in America. They were a prolific band from their first Single in 1963 for almost 15 years. They had 18 of their Singles get into the Top Ten, most of them in the Top Five, and while they only had 3 Number One Hits, there were a prolific number of English bands in that mix at the time, so to have so many hits is testament to how big they were as a band. Some of their songs that did not make it all the way to the top in the UK were in fact Number One hits at other places in the World, notably here in Australia, where they were really popular.

In a time when almost flat out rock music was becoming the norm, The Hollies were renowned for their seemingly slower style, and their really tight harmonies. The founder members were Allan Clarke and Graham Nash. Early on, they sang songs written for them, but this original pair joined later by Tony Hicks started to pump out their own works, and turning them into hits.

While a lot of the focus was on Graham Nash, both Clarke and Hicks proved beyond doubt that the band could survive after the departure of Graham Nash, as The Hollies had many more major hits following Nash’s departure, including arguably their biggest hit, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, and The Air That I Breathe after Nash left the band, both songs making it to Number One.

The song I have picked for today’s featured video was not even a hit for the band in their homeland, and oddly was one of their songs that was in fact quite successful for them in the U.S. getting into the Top Ten on National Charts. This song was recorded in mid to late 1967, just prior to the departure of Nash, and he’s the first face you see, as he writes the imaginary letter. While the first part of this song is relatively soft and melodic, the middle part is quite a bit faster, and then Nash reprises the soft almost spoken part of the song. Again, as you can see from the accompanying video clip, this was done long before Michael Nesmith invented the rock video with his legendary clip for Rio, shown at this link. Here, The Hollies just did what all bands did for TV airplay, just stand around and lip sync the song. and pretend to play their instruments. This video clip actually does have something that little extra than the band just standing around doing their song, and shows that while they brought out great songs, they also had a streak of humour in them as well.

Around this time, Graham Nash had become a little disillusioned, mainly due to the probably incongruous fact that the band was so popular. What that led to was that when performing live, the audience was made up mostly of screaming young girls, and that made it difficult to for the band themselves to hear the music they were playing, especially when such tight harmonies were required.

Nash left the band with one intent to just write songs. He turned up in the U.S. having previously knowing David Crosby from when The Hollies toured the U.S. By now Crosby had left the band he was with, The Byrds, and now, together with Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield, this trio formed one of the first major super groups, Crosby Stills and Nash, and later Neil Young, also from Buffalo Springfield joined them.

THE OTHER ELOISE SONG

In 1968, a year after this song was released by The Hollies there was another song released with the same girl’s name Eloise. This was a completely different song from another English artist, in this case Barry Ryan. This was a monster Number One Smash Hit across the World.

Barry Ryan started out as a duo act with his twin brother Paul, but Paul suffered severely from the stress related with performing live. Barry continued on his own, and in fact they had greater success in this manner than previously. Paul wrote the songs and Barry performed them, emphasising the almost perfect symbiotic relationship known from twins. This song alone has sold more than three million copies. It features Barry’s soaring vocals and a full orchestration adding to the obvious melodrama of the song. While they had some local hits, this was by far their biggest hit. It actually topped the popular music charts in an incredible 17 Countries.

Man, did we ever have big hair like that, and here I’m talking about the guys that is. And don’t you just love the screaming at the end of the song.

Link to Video at You Tube

This video was posted to You Tube by PTVictor

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Tagged: Barry Ryan, Music, Music Video, The British Invasion, The Hollies

Posted in: Music, Videos