How Cliff Richard was Made

I was grateful to have The Dreamer by, allegedly, Cliff Richard passed on to me and I'll give it a good home. Although it is written in Cliff's cheery tone of voice, it's likely that somebody else did the actual writing. Whether it's going to New York, doing their first gig, having a hit record or sitting in the same place Elvis usually sat in a restaurant, most things are fantastic. But, to be fair, he was very successful from the beginning and much of it must have been fantastic in those early years of the pop music industry.

Even so, he doesn't come across as The Dreamer. He seems to know what he's doing from the start and more than sixty years of success in such a fickle world as pop doesn't happen by accident.

As fits his user-friendly, inoffensive public demeanour, this account is all about the positive - of which there's always been plenty - and it doesn't dwell on the negative any longer than it really has to. The Drifters become The Shadows as better musicians are found to replace the old mates he started out with but, for the most part, the casualties of such professionalism remain on good terms. No connection is made between the 'inappropriate relationship' Cliff has with Carol Costa and how,

Since Jet Harris and Carol Costa had split...Jet's drinking had been getting worse and he was starting to be a liability in the band

which is why he didn't last much longer as a Shad.

Going on before the Kalin Twins, who were top of the bill, in a show, The Drifters were 'blowing the headliners off the stage' but the young Cliff was 'tough' and not sufficiently all sweetness and light to agree to go on in the first half to give the Klain Twins a chance. That's not how it works.

If at first sight The Dreamer might look like an anodyne story of how a poor but tremendously good-looking boy got lucky and became Britain's longest-lasting, and vastly successful, pop singer, the real story of how Cliff Richard was made out of Harry Webb is here. It's just done with the same velvet gloss that was applied to his whole career, accentuating the best-looking bits. It's hardly any different from Black Sabbath, the Sex Pistols or the Prodigy maximizing their appeal as bad boys, Pink Floyd or Emerson, Lake & Palmer designing something for teenage boys who thought they were intelligent or The Spice Girls being marketed as powerful role models for impressionable young girls. Cliff certainly did fancy himself as the British answer to Elvis and was very taken with the 'wilder' personalities of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard but he was able to reach a compromise with Norrie Paramour, who wanted to make albums with an orchestra, and negotiated half the tracks for the rock'n'roll band. There really is nothing wrong with being 'mainstream', especially if the big idea is to sell records and you can include both the 'safe' and more adventurous parts of the demographic in your target audience. Most such successful careers have been at least as much due to good business sense as good 'art', whether it was Shakespeare, Handel or Damien Hirst. 

I'm not halfway in the book yet, not quite as far as the making of his best records in the early 60's and certainly nowhere near halfway through the life-long, as it has turned out, commitment to his career, which has survived such setbacks as Christianity, being left off radio playlists for being 'uncool' and the scurrilous accusations made against him in 2014. By that time I was very much one of his admirers and was glad to be one of those that supported his cause. I hadn't always been so dedicated to his cause. 13 year old boys are far too much taken up with their own neuroses and in 1972 I took music very seriously indeed. But, if you're lucky, you can grow out of that.

 

In 1959, Cliff had a bit of a European holiday with Tony Meehan and a couple of friends, decided to find where Elvis lived, in Germany, on the way back, and knocked on his door but Elvis wasn't in. 

 

I've never been overly devoted to Elvis Presley. Cliff only had to wait another 52 years before he met Freda Payne. That was much more worthwhile, I'd have thought,