SONGWRITING
The world’s greatest songs. By the people who made them. THIS WEEK:
T
even meant to be a single, and why he revived the song’s character on his 2019 solo record... INTERVIEW: GEORGE GARNER
here’s no way I ever thought that Long Cool Woman was going to be a hit. It was never even going to be a single, that’s why it doesn’t have any of The Hollies’ signature harmonies on it. I just thought it would be a great album track. But things happen when you don’t expect them, and that’s what happened with this song... At the time, I had started writing with Roger Cook – whenever we had time together we’d try to write songs. We were sat in an office, I had my guitar and Roger his ukulele, and we started with some lyrics based on what Roger had. After about 30 minutes, we had Long Cool Woman. I thought it was a great rock‘n’roll song because it chugs along, I think Chuck Berry influenced my playing on it more than anybody else.
In terms of the inspiration behind the opening lines: ‘Saturday night I was downtown, working for the FBI’ – that’s brilliant, who cares what it means? These things come, stick in your head and you make a story around them. ‘Sitting in a nest of bad men, whiskey bottles piling high’ – your imagination takes you into that dive bar somewhere in New York. For me, Jessica Rabbit was the Long Cool Woman, but she actually came out after the song so there must have been someone of that ilk on my mind when we wrote it. When I took it to AIR Studios I played it to the guys and Tony [Hicks, guitar/vocals, The Hollies] said, ‘Well, you’ve written it, you play the guitar’. We put the track down, and I quite surprised myself because I thought it sounded good!
In the months after that, I said to The Hollies that I wanted to go out and make a solo album. Because of Long Cool Woman and the sort of songs I was writing with Roger and other people, I really wanted
36 | Music Week 25.11.19
to do an album on my own. What they thought, I’m sure, is that if I left and had a hit album, then I would leave like Graham [Nash] left, and that was not my intention whatsoever at all. Basically they said to me, ‘If you do that, you would have to leave’. I thought, ‘Well, if that’s what it takes, I’m going to do it…’ because I needed to get it out of my system.
While I was doing my solo album away from The Hollies, the Distant Light record had been released in America. I got a phone call from a guy from a publishing company in New York, who said, ‘I want to publish Long Cool Woman’. I asked why and he told me he thought it was going to be No.1 – that’s the first time I heard about it going up the charts. I asked if there was any chance of me getting over there because it was my song and he said, ‘Not really, because The Hollies are coming out and touring’. So that was a bit of a letdown but, anyway, that’s in the past.
For my new album Resurgence, I started writing a song called Sometimes The Right Way Is The Wrong Way To Go. But I’d also been playing around with an idea for about five years about the DA man who’d run away with the Long Cool Woman where, unfortunately for him, she ditched him. So I thought, ‘How can I put these two things together?’ And that’s how she came back on the scene for [2019’s] Long Cool Woman’s Back In Town. I didn’t actually know the original had been streamed over 100 million times on Spotify, that must mean they owe me about £100!? [Laughs] I really don’t know why the original has endured, but I’m very pleased it has. Long may people keep on playing it! It was a huge hit in America, and all around the world, so now I always say you should never put any song down, because you never know what’s going to happen to it.
“I never
thought it was going to be a hit, it wasn't even going to be a single...”
ALLAN CLARKE ON LONG COOL WOMAN (IN A BLACK DRESS)
In 1972, The Hollies scored a multi-million selling hit with Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress). Here, Allan Clarke recalls how it was never
Cool customer: Allan Clarke’s new album Resurgence is available now via BMG
musicweek.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
