Click images for desktop size: "Clog Them Veins" by Bigger K There's a little carnival at the field where we practice tonight. After practice we watched them set up, you know making the rides safe while they struggled through hours of driving and hang overs.
Someone was playing a radio and it was there that I heard that Gene Pitney had died on April the fifth. People are generally confused by my fascination with Gene Pitney.
As a performer I hated him. He was a “Sharp Stick Boy”, you know, the careening falsetto thing. He had a light tenor but tried for the big pop opera effect perfected by Roy Orbison. He was a skillful arranger and knew how to get a pop orchestra to hit those giddy little hooks and give them weight.
Seeing him live was fascinating. I hated the whole show but even then it felt like I'd been wrung through an emotional cement mixer.
Then when I was about to discount him totally I'd find out something by chance, like he wrote the Crystals, “He's A Rebel”. Or that he wrote “Hello Mary Lou” while parked in his cherry red 39 Ford Coupe, parked along the reservoir. He wrote Bobby Vee's cool hit, “Rubber Ball” because he loved Buddy Holly.
For me those things are totally cool and not in keeping with the guy who did, “The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance” or the uselessly lurid “A Town Without Pity”. And then without even thinking about him you'd hear a track like “Follow The Sun” a totally cool tune with rolling tympani's and pound sparse drums. And when you recognized it was Pitney you'd kind of curse yourself for being fooled, for liking something he'd made.
When he recorded “Something's got A Hold Of My Heart” as a duet with Marc Almond (Soft Cell) when Pitney sang he dominated the recording and made it painful to hear Almond's voice when it came back. That record went to number 1 so you had to hear way to often but somehow Pitney's voice had character. It had sincere emotion.
When you heard pop divas covering it tracks, like “I'm Going to be Strong” and “It Hurts to Be In Love” its painful. They never got the point. Pitney's main skill was in gross manipulation. Its one of the reasons it was so easy to hate him. He knew how to do it and knew that bombast had to be edged into. He knew that screeching away like every word was important and meant the end of the world was wearisome and fatiguing.
All in all I suddenly had to concede he had talent. Probably a lot of talent.
I've got the windows open and I can hear the sounds of the carnival down the street. You know how the carnys play music loud through cheesy speakers. Been listing to old elvis stuff and just now they played Pitney's “It Hurts To be In Love”. The only one of his angst tunes that had a heavy beat.
Pitney died after performing a sell out concert in Cardiff Wales. He showed no signs of illness. He went to his hotel room and died in his sleep.
I think I'm going to miss him.

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