1965 - The British Invasion Continues Quiz

Answer: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

So what were those seven previous releases that charted before "Satisfaction"? Over an eleven month period starting in May 1964, here they are with their chart position noted: "Not Fade Away" (48); "Tell Me (You're Coming Back)" (24); "It's All Over Now" (26); "Time Is on My Side" (6); "Heart of Stone" (19); "The Last Time" (9); "Play With Fire" (96).

In terms of accolades and honors, "Satisfaction" has achieved a number of interesting distinctions. In 2000, VH1 ranked it as the Number One greatest rock song ever in a list of 100 possibilities. In another list co-sponsored by Rolling Stone magazine and MTV that same year, it was ranked second only to "Yesterday" by The Beatles. Then in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine assembled another panel to determine the greatest song of all-time. Again, it ranked second with Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" copping top honors this time.

Before the 20th Century expired, The Rolling Stones would ultimately have 56 Hot 100 chart entries and it would appear that would place them in 13th position overall for the most Top 100 entries during the Rock era from 1955 to 1999. Who out charted them? Here's the list. Presley 151; James Brown 99; Ray Charles 76; Aretha Franklin 74; The Beatles 72; Sinatra 68; Fats Domino 66; Sir Elton John 65; Stevie Wonder 64; Pat Boone 60; Nat "King" Cole 60; and The Beach Boys 59.

Clearly, both the band and their signature song have stood the test of time.

Answer: Downtown

I have a hunch that most North Americans don't realise just how big a star Petula Clark was in Great Britain. On the left side of the Atlantic, we recognized her starting with this hit, "Downtown", and several others that were big hits through to 1967... songs like "My Love", "This Is My Song", "I Know a Place", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love" and her last significant Top Ten hit, "Don't Sleep In the Subway". Maybe a few others will recall that she was a leading lady in the movie "Finian's Rainbow" opposite Fred Astaire. Many will have seen her on tour or in entertainment destinations like Las Vegas or Branson, Missouri, venues where she had appeared during the late 1960s and periodically thereafter for decades.

The story was a trifle different in the U.K. where she was a veritable treasure starting in the early 1940s. Her first live performance was serendipitous. In 1942, she was at a BBC studio in queue to send a message to an uncle who was fighting in WWII somewhere in Europe. An air raid disrupted things and the station manager asked if someone could sing a song or otherwise entertain the listeners until the bombardment ceased. Nine year old Petula stepped forward and sang "Mighty Lak' a Rose". The public response was overwhelming and starting almost immediately she became a regular feature of the show, eventually making over 500 broadcasts during the war years. By 1944, she was appearing in movies and was being regarded as Britain's Shirley Temple. She became a TV star in the late 1940s with her own variety show and it was around then when she started her recording career although it wasn't until 1954 when she actually had a charting hit. She had a string of hits through to 1962 and also started developing a fan base on the Continent by releasing her songs in Italian, German, Spanish and especially French where her popularity almost equalled that of her homeland.

In 1964, Petula was in something of a charting slump. She had been working with composer Tony Hatch and during a meeting, he played a piece of music for her that she found enchanting. She said if he could create a lyric for the piece she would want a chance to record it. He did, she did, and her career in Great Britain was resurrected... not to mention that a whole new market in North America opened up to her thanks to executives with her record companies, Pye in the U.K. and Warner Bros. in the U.S., who shared her enthusiasm for "Downtown" and willingly promoted it.

By the 1970s, she had been in "the biz" for 30 years and started to scale back some of her activities and devote some energy to family matters. She would do TV specials, some limited tours somewhere on the planet, and limited engagements at the usual entertainment hubs like Vegas. Those activities were scaled back even further when she re-invented herself as a stage actress during the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1998, she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and with the turn of the century, she found herself still in demand making personal appearances, the occasional limited tour and the odd recording session. As an example, in late 2017 she completed a six week tour in the U.S.A. with 19 concert dates and released a new CD in November to boot. Pretty remarkable for an 85 year old. But then she's a remarkable talent.

Answer: Goldfinger

"Goldfinger" was the first James Bond movie theme song to crack the Billboard charts. The theme songs from the two previous Bond movies, "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love", did make appearances on the British chart, however. Shirley Bassey would also record the themes from "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Moonraker" making her the only performer to sing more than one Bond movie theme song.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that Shirley Bassey's career paralleled Petula Clark's. But if you scale it back a few notches, it did in several respects.

Both entered the recording business in Great Britain while they were in their early 20s and both would have two chart topping hits among their 12 Top Ten hits. Bassey would have 31 charting British hits, the last coming in 1973. Clark would have 28 charting hits up to 1972 then a last swan song entry in 1988 with a remixed version of "Downtown". In 2000, Bassey was also honored as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and both are rightfully revered by the British public as entertainment icons. Finally, like Clark, Bassey continued to perform in concerts and with TV specials well into the new millennium.

There are two components to their careers that were significantly different. First, Clark was something of a "fair-haired" child developing in the entertainment business as a child star. Bassey, on the other hand, grew up in a tough Cardiff area under dire circumstances. She had to fight up the ranks to earn her glory and it was not an easy battle, especially for a woman of "colored" origins.

Then there is the rather significant difference in their career arcs vis-à-vis their impact on the North American market. Clark's legacy is of all-star proportions. Although Bassey toured extensively and successfully throughout the U.S. over a twenty year period starting in the mid-1960s, her record releases did not do well on Billboard charts, "Goldfinger" being her only Top Ten at Number Eight. Her other three charting releases could fare no better than a dismal Number 48 on the Hot 100.

Bassey now lives in semi-retirement in Monaco and just celebrated her 81st birthday as this quiz was being composed.

Answer: Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter

The Herman's Hermits' recording of "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter" was something of an afterthought. In the midst of compiling songs for the group's debut album in light of their recent Billboard successes, "I'm Into Something Good" and "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat", producer Mickie Most found he was one entry short. Recalling a song that actor Tom Courtenay introduced in a BBC TV show in 1963, "Mrs. Brown" was quickly recorded in one take to fill the breach.

The Hermits' next single released in the U.S. was a reworking of "Silhouettes" an old 1957 hit by The Rays. It debuted on the Billboard charts on April 3rd. In Canada, however, "Mrs. Brown" was the next single debuting on March 15th. Perhaps this was a stimulus for American DJs to play it because they were starting to with frequency and the clamor from the public was such that the MGM label rushed a pressing of the song to meet the perceived demand. On April 17th it debuted at Number 12, the highest debuting release in the history of Billboard's Hot 100 to that point and scooting past "Silhouettes" which was at Number 19. Two weeks later, "Mrs. Brown" hit Number One and would stay there for three weeks. "Silhouettes" peaked at Number Five, not a bad double dip for hits that were not flip sides.

What made such a seemingly simple song so popular? Critics tend to agree that it was a perfect vehicle for 17 year old lead singer Peter Noone. Sung with his Mancunian accent, he projected the unadulterated image of a naïve young teenager lamenting the break-up of what might have been his first relationship.

This success was followed up with a song that had bounced around British music halls for over 50 years - "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" which also was a Billboard Number One three months later. Mickie Most had found the key to their success and for the rest of their recording days, the Hermit's would record straightforward pop songs and achieve measured success with ditties like "Listen People", "Leaning on a Lamp Post" and "There's a Kind of Hush", their last significant hit at Number Four, in 1967.

Although a spin off group of Hermits still tours the oldies circuit mostly in Great Britain, the group essentially hit the wall in 1968. By then, most British Invasion groups had suffered the same fate. It also didn't help that none of their hits were self-written, an advantage that the few survivors like The Beatles and Stones possessed. Nevertheless, Herman and his Hermits distinguished themselves nobly during the early days of the British Invasion.

Answer: I'm Telling You Now

"I'm Telling You Now" was a Number Two hit in Great Britain in the spring of 1963 and it would stand out as Freddie and the Dreamers' biggest hit in that country out of eight charting releases. It was also released in the U.S. market that year but didn't chart at all. Metaphorically speaking, they started the British Invasion with a failed exploratory mission and slunk back to their own shores licking their wounds. When The Beatles, Rolling Stones and bands of that ilk proved that British groups could succeed abroad, the band's management group concluded that this song deserved to be re-released hoping to ride the British Invasion wave. Good move! Of course, as a Number One hit, it would stand as their most successful Billboard entry out of the four that ultimately made appearances on the Hot 100, all during the 1965 calendar year. In retrospect, when listening to it today, it was a pretty decent song. That year would also mark their final appearance on the British charts.

It's not that surprising that the group would have a short shelf life of popularity. Lead singer Freddie Garrity would leap around the stage and when he wasn't singing (and he did have a good voice) he would laugh maniacally while doing split jumps during the musical interludes. Meanwhile the Dreamers behind him would mimic Freddie shuffling from leg to leg doing side leg lifts. It seemed their intent was to have fun and entertain but if you tune in to a YouTube video of theirs, you could see how the act would get tiresome pretty quickly. I don't think the band's material and musicianship could sustain the "Shtick". Lester Bangs, a critic with Rolling Stone and not one to mince words, offered this assessment in The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll - "Freddie and the Dreamers [had] no masterpiece but a plentitude of talentless idiocy and enough persistence to get four albums and one film soundtrack released. The Dreamers looked as thuggish as Freddie looked dippy. Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and as such should be not only respected, but given their place in history." Damning with faint praise!

Ultimately the band folded in the late 1960s but Freddie resurrected the group in the early 1980s and they played the oldies circuit for over 20 years before emphysema forced him to retire. He would succumb to the disease in 2006.

Answer: Love Potion Number Nine

"Love Potion Number Nine" would prevail as the biggest hit of The Searchers' brief tenure on the Billboard charts. The song was a middling Number 23 hit for The Clovers in 1959 so The Searchers' cover was a significantly bigger hit. It was written by the eminent team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. They were prolific composers during the 1950s and 1960s and Elvis Presley recorded several of their pieces such as "Jailhouse Rock", "Hound Dog", "Don't" and "Treat Me Nice". Another group who relied enormously on their talents were The Coasters. They had ten Top 40 hits and nine of them were Lieber/Stoller compositions. Other notable hits from their pens were "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King, "Ruby Baby" by Dion, "There Goes My Baby" by The Drifters and Peggy Lee's classic "Is That All There Is?"

Essentially, The Searchers saved their best for last. They did have a couple of more releases sneak into Top 30 status in Billboard but by the end of 1965, their race was run and in fact met the same fate in their homeland the following year. They never just faded away either as the group persevered with changing personnel until 1985. I think a couple of factors led to their slide into irrelevance. The first obvious reason was that the initial enthusiasm for the Brit Beat phenomenon was quickly declining in North America... unless the band was creatively pursuing new musical directions. Unfortunately, they relied on wedding their sound to other people's creations. In the past they had also covered material by Jackie DeShannon, Sonny Bono and Tony Hatch. Like Herman's Hermits, they lacked a skilled composer among their ranks and in those days, that was starting to spell doom.

Following the amicable (I think) breakup of the band in 1985, the two founding members formed two new groups under The Searchers banner - Mike Pender's Searchers and the original band with new personnel under the leadership of John McNally. Both groups followed the cabaret circuit in Britain well into the 2010s decade performing their old hits with some new material.

Answer: The Game of Love

Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders scored with this Number One hit but later on that year, Fontana, who was a little eccentric, split from the band during a U.S. tour in support of the song. In fact he walked out in the middle of a concert! Nonplussed, Eric Stewart and Bob Lang assumed the reins of the band, renamed it "The Mindbenders", and had a successful follow-up hit almost exactly one year later in 1966, the Number Two "Groovy Kind of Love" co-written by Carole Bayer-Sager.

Perhaps it was just fate but neither Fontana nor The Mindbenders would score another Top 40 Billboard hit. To be precise, Fontana never had a charting hit of any sort in America or the U.K. after 1966 while The Mindbenders fared only marginally better. "Ashes to Ashes", another Bayer-Sager concoction, managed a respectable Number 15 placement on the British chart but languished at Number 55 on Billboard, their swansong on that chart. In a final futile gesture, they tried a rush release of their version of "The Letter" in the U.K. before The Boxtops could release their American version abroad. The Boxtops version peaked at Five, their release topped out at Number 42! In 1968, Lang left the group, replaced by Graham Gouldman but before the year was out, the group succumbed for good. Maybe the "Mindbenders" name was the jinx. Stewart and Gouldman would later form the group Hotlegs and charted at Number 22 with the aptly named release "Neanderthal Man" in 1970. Later still, that group would morph into 10cc which would have several hits both in the U.K. and abroad.

Answer: For Your Love

If you remember this song by title, the most successful hit the group would have on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, it's an easy question. If you didn't, you still may have deduced the right answer. "Diamonds and Pearls" was a big Number Three smash hit for Prince in 1991-2, "This Diamond Ring" topped the Hot 100 in 1965 for Gary Lewis and The Playboys and 10cc took "The Things We Do For Love" to Number Five in 1977.

The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 but it certainly wasn't by virtue of an extensive list of Billboard hit recordings, of which they would only have six, nine if you include those which couldn't even achieve Top 40 rankings. Nope. It was because during their brief five year existence, they were blessed to have among their number, at various points, three of the best lead guitarists to ever handle a pick.

When the group was formed in 1963, a chap named Top Topham was the original lead guitarist but through parental pressure, he was obliged to leave the band to be replaced by Eric Clapton. His presence elevated them into one of the elite Blues oriented groups in London and enabled them to replace The Rolling Stones as house band at the renowned Crawdaddy Club when the Stones no longer needed that gig. Although they had recorded some classic blues covers, none had become decent sellers and so in 1965, they recorded "For Your love", a decided departure from their blues roots. Commercially successful, it came at a price. Clapton had no interest in recording "pop" music and left the band, recommending Jimmy Page as his replacement. Page demurred at the time, content with his role as one of the top session men in the business. He in turn, however, suggested Jeff Beck as a candidate and he gladly hooked up with the group. He would last for about 18 months and toward the end of his stint, Page had a change of heart and joined as well. The dual lead guitar experiment lasted only for a few months and one recording, the group's last Top 40 entry, the Number 30 "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" in late 1966.

Things unraveled very quickly thereafter. As that last hit was climbing the chart, Beck left the group pleading exhaustion. He would form the Jeff Beck Group immediately after but was far more content working at his own leisurely pace. The Yardbirds pressed on for about 18 more months, issuing nondescript recordings that didn't sell but remaining a dynamite concert draw. Finally, the death knell was sounded when Page departed, founding the New Yardbirds in the process. They would eventually become a group you might have heard of... Led Zeppelin!

Ultimately, the band would be remembered for the experimentation their guitarists, especially Beck and Page, did with their instruments in creating "fuzz" effects, distortion, feedback, and so on that stimulated the onset of psychedelic music and later, heavy metal. Whether you liked those genres or not, this group was at the forefront of their incubation and rock music would never be the same!

Answer: It's Not Unusual

"It's Not Unusual" was that hit and it preceded your other options by a minimum of two years. The Number 11 hit "Green, Green Grass of Home" was released in 1967; "Delilah", which peaked at Number 15 charted in 1968; his biggest Billboard success, the Number Two "She's a Lady", didn't appear until 1971.

The song was written by the duo of Les Reed and Gordon Mills and was originally intended for Sandie Shaw, one of the hottest British vocalists at the time. Jones recorded the demo for her to hear and when she did, she declined the opportunity to record it suggesting that a Jones recording would be the definitive version. Nobody but him could do it better. Jones has frequently credited Shaw for kindly providing him with his big break.

Reed was a musician to start but eventually quit performing and devoted his efforts exclusively to song writing, usually in collaboration with a partner of which he has had several over the years. Among his shared compositions were "There's a Kind of Hush", "Delilah" and "The Last Waltz", Engelbert Humperdinck's signature song. To Mills, song writing was more of a hobby. His forte was management and his major clients were Jones, Humperdinck and Gilbert O'Sullivan. Together, they allowed Mills to amass a significant fortune and at one time, shortly before his death at the age of 51 in 1986 due to cancer, he was reported to have owned the largest private zoo in the world.

I must admit to some curiosity as to what percentage of you fine folks will choose the right answer. I have a sneaking hunch that many of you will have forgotten this song and will have chosen one of the other leads. Personally, I consider this among his finest efforts and remember well when I first heard it... that powerful voice made a lasting impact on me.

Answer: Help!

This was an exceptionally enormous hit for The Beatles. It reached Number One on 14 different national charts as follows: 9 weeks in Brazil; 8 weeks in Hong Kong and Australia; 6 weeks in Norway; 5 weeks in New Zealand; 4 weeks in Spain; 3 weeks in the U.S. and the U.K.; and, 1 week in Canada, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and West Germany.

In many ways it was a turning point for the group as well. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1970, Lennon suggested that up to that point most of the material they composed was part of the job... they sat down and wrote songs like most music composers do. "Help!" was different. Lennon stated that he was being overwhelmed by the Beatlemania phenomena. He was over-eating, over-drinking, getting fat and his marriage was suffering under the strain. At the time they were working on a movie with a working title of "Eight Arms to Hold You" but a title song had yet to be composed. In a moment of pure exasperation he wrote "Help!" as an honest plea for just that. Consider the two verses:

"When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone I'm not so self-assured
Now I find I've changed my mind, I've opened up the doors

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I've never done before"


Clearly, Lennon admitted to some professional uncertainty, to a vulnerability that he had never experienced before. I suspect expressing it was cathartic and it may have been the last occasion he experienced these sorts of emotions. Also, through the process, it may have freed him up to express other pent-up emotions and feelings in some of his later compositions. The chains were unshackled!

It so happened that Paul McCartney was on his way to Lennon's house just as he was finishing the lyric. Much later, McCartney revealed that he was totally taken aback by the lyric and had no idea that Lennon was under such duress. Anyway, he helped complete the song with a few musical technicalities to earn his co-writing credit. When the song was presented to the powers-that-be at the movie studio, the theme song was set... the title of the movie became "Help!"