Search - Peter & Gordon :: A World Without Love/I Don't Want To See You Again

The music is great, the total package, not so much

Michael L. Tiefenbacher | Menomonie, WI USA | 09/23/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Peter and Gordon have been unjustly ignored in the annals of rock history in general and in the assessment of the British invasion in particular. This could be attributable to the sorry state of their recorded canon on CD, which up until the three Collectable twofer collections, comprised a long series of very nice but generally redundant greatest-hits CDs. Unfortunately, Collectables barely exceeded the minimum amount of effort in creating their reissues, for whatever reason.



As is obvious from most of their product, Collectables doesn't have a lot of money for graphics or design. Their approach on licensed product from major labels indicates they also try to save on the total number of tracks, rarely exceeding 24. (Sadly, Capitol never did a P&G "Definitive Collection" like they did with their other British invasion acts, which took full advantage of the CD capacity, often with 30 or 31 songs.) Each of the three discs in their Peter & Gordon reissues adheres to this rule of thumb, as if this will somehow fulfill any possible collectors' needs. Collectables obviously chose to only consider reissuing the six Capitol LPs that charted on Billboard's Top 200. Their other four Capitol albums were skipped: their fifth, 1966's "Peter and Gordon Sing The Hits of Nashville, Tennessee" (which preceded "Lady Godiva" by about a month) and their final three, 1967's "Knight In Rusty Armor" (featuring two of the "bonus" tracks from these three CDs, "Knight in Rusty Armor" and "To Show I Love You") and "In London For Tea" (featuring the other two "bonus" tracks, "Sunday For Tea" and "The Jokers"), and 1968's "Hot, Cold and Custard," (their final hurrah, an adventurous LP which was critically acclaimed and incredibly hard to find). That the bonus tracks are all we will be getting from these four albums is hardly indicative of either their quality, or any dearth of rare tracks they could easily have added to those first three CDs in their stead.



Although more popular in the U.S. than in their native England, the first two Peter & Gordon albums appeared there first, and when Capitol imported them for release, they were no kinder to their running order than they were to the Beatles. In particular, their second LP "In Touch With," featured three songs never released in America: "Barbara Allen," "Ain't That Lovin' You Baby," and "Leave Me In The Rain." Additionally, the '64 UK EP "Just For You" featured "Roving Rambler," while the '64 French EP, "Nobody I Know," contained "Leave My Woman Alone." A 1966 45 appeared only in Germany: "Wunder" b/w "Liebe, Gluck und Treue," while a four-song French-language EP also appeared in France that year, "Chantent En Francais." Two B-sides fell through the cracks: 1966's "Start Trying Someone Else" (B-side of "To Show I Love You," later used in the UK as the B-side of "Sunday For Tea"), and 1967's "The Town I Live In" (the quickly withdrawn original B-side of "Lady Godiva"). The final single tracks that never appeared on LP or CD were also their final record as a duo: "I Can Remember (Days Gone By)" b/w "Hard Time, Rainy Day." The first Gordon Waller solo single "Speak To Me" b/w "Little Nonie" appeared only in the U.S. while the pair were still together in 1967; four more 45s by Gordon alone appeared on EMI labels (two in England only, one in Europe only, and one, the Buddy Holly song "Everday" b/w "Because of a Woman," came out in America, England, and presumably the rest of the world--all in 1968. (Two more Waller singles appeared on Bell in '69 and '70, but that would require two separate licenses.) Live versions of their early hits appeared on both 1964's "Tribute to Michael Holliday" ("A World Without Love") and 1990's "The Sullivan Years: The British Invasion" ("I Don't Want To See You Again.") So there are fifteen released studio tracks, ten solo Gordon Waller EMI songs, and a couple of live tracks, sufficiently spread out over the years to provide quite appropriate bonus tracks which wouldn't have stood out production-wise for the proposed five CDs which would have contained the original ten LPs. And except for that final single and the solo Gordon songs, all of them appear on British or Japanese CDs which are still in print!



Instead, we got the still-quite-enjoyable three discs featuring only a portion of the team's output, restricted (except for those "bonus" tracks) to their first two years' work, and rendered non-essential to anyone who has the original LPs. Because of the way Capitol spread out the recordings, many of the tracks left off the final two British albums "'66" and "Somewhere..." appear on the 1967 albums Collectables chose not to reissue. And we're all deprived of the experience of hearing "Hot, Cold and Custard," which those of us who couldn't find the money to buy it at list price on LP in 1968, really can't afford it now when it generally goes for in excess of $50 at a minimum.



Oh, what should have been. I still believe that both Peter & Gordon and their fans deserve far better.

"