American groups – like any number of those Nuggets bands you can reel off in your sleep – or The Turtles or The Byrds (‘animal’ name, weird spelling – coincidence?!?) grew their mom’s apple pie American boy crewcuts out the moment The Beatles first yelled ‘yeah!‘ They adopted the instruments…the stance…the harmonies…everything they could that might align them with the collarless coattails of the hottest act on the planet. And good on them, for using the Lennon/McCartney approach gave the world more great records.
When John Sebastian sat down with his guitar to write a song for his new band The Lovin’ Spoonful, he looked back a year or so for inspiration, to the pop sounds that were already proven to shake and shimmy American teenagers to their core. He didn’t need to look east, across the Atlantic and towards Liverpool. I mean, he could’ve, for there was plenty there that he might chose to cop. Instead, Sebastian looked north to Detroit, to the sound of the Motor City and the hand-clappin’, finger-snappin’ giddy abandon of Motown.
And so it is that Do You Believe In Magic? wafts in on the same chords as Martha Reeves and The Vandellas‘ (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave.
Martha Reeves and The Vandellas – (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave
Other than the chord sequence at the beginning, the two songs are poles apart, of course. The Lovin’ Spoonful come across like grassed-out, close-miked preppy stoners with the knack of making an unforgettable melody appear as natural as breathing.
Martha and The Vandellas crash in with all the urgency of a group who’ve been told that this might be the only record they make. There’s a rifle shot of snare, a cavalry charge of handclaps, deep sea baritone sax that climbs to the surface and punctuates every second beat, a hundred mile an hour poundin’ pianer, a guitar that hammers on the chords like life itself depends on it and a bass line (James Jamerson?) pinning the whole thing to the floor lest it falls off and causes an imbalance on the Richter Scale. And that’s just the first 30 seconds.
Martha introduces herself by gleefully kicking in the doors of pop. ‘Whenever I’m with him, somethin’ in-si-hide…starts to burnin’ and I’m filled with dee-za-hire…‘
Ah. So it ain’t about the summer weather in Detroit then. No! It is – like a gazillion Motown songs before and since, a heartfelt paean to the joys of young love, when the world’s your oyster and no-one, daddy-o, feels like you do. Holland-Dozier-Holland have captured lighting in a bottle here. Martha is beside herself with excitement and her willing Vandellas are being dragged along in her slipstream. Falsetto ‘Heat Wave!‘ backing vocals ramp it up further. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!‘ they go in the outro, the piano player’s fingers still locked on the groove, the sax player somehow saving enough breath to see his way to the song’s thumping, tumbling conclusion.
Motown may have billed itself ‘The Sound of Young America’, but (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave could be billed ‘The Sound Of Young Motown’ and few would counter that claim. Give it a good listen again and tell me I’m wrong.
A decade or so later, back over this side of the Atlantic, another young songwriter with a magpie approach to creation was cribbing the chords and calls and response that he could twist into his own shapes. That Paul Weller should dig black American pop music is never in doubt; from the version of Wilson Pickett’s Midnight Hour on The Jam’s second album, via the You Can’t Hurry Love bassline that drives A Town Called Malice to the smattering of choice cuts across his b-sides (Move On Up, Stoned Out Of My Mind), The Jam’s frontman knew a well-crafted pop-soul hit when he heard it.
The Jam cut their version of Heat Wave for their fourth album Setting Sons. Maybe they were low on original material. Maybe they just fancied cutting loose. Either way, their ramalama take on Heat Wave closes the second side of the record in good, old-fashioned killer style. Dig it!
The Jam – Heat Wave
It’s the clang of the Rickenbacker…the call and response of Buckler and Foxton, the Vandellas to Weller’s Martha…the incessant pummelling of the drum kit…the vamping piano player…the subtle introduction of a brass section that would soon be far more prominent in the sound of The Jam…but, for now, the sheer, goddammed urgency of it all. Let’s get this album finished and let’s finish it NOW!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
* And to answer that titular question: sadly, it has. That’ll be a job in education for ye,
Plain Or Pan 