HEARTBREAK AND HARMONIES
With the death of DON EVERLY, aged 84, time has finally been called on THE EVERLY BROTHERS – one of rock’n’roll’s earliest and most important duos. Stephen Deusner reflects on the pioneering music made by Don and his brother Phil, while Ray and Dave Davies recall the impact the Everlys had on a generation of musicians: “Don and Phil influenced many of us”
Blues brothers: Phil and Don Everly in 1963
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VIA GETTY IMAGES/
Photo by MICHAEL LEVIN
On the case: Phil and Don in 1958
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N the mid-’50s, no-one wanted to cut “Bye Bye Love”. The songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant shopped it around Nashville and got 30 rejections. Then the song found its way to a teenage duo freshly arrived in town and signed to Cadence Records. Don and Phil Everly – 19 and 17 years old respectively – agreed to cut it. But once they got in the studio with a band, led by their mentor Chet Atkins, they realised something was missing.
During a break, Don started practising a riff on his acoustic guitar –a choppy, staccato rhythm with an emphatic downward strum.
He’d based it on a Bo Diddley lick.
Boudleaux Bryant loved it. They added it to the song’s intro as a fanfare, and the single nobody wanted quickly shot to No 2 on the Country charts. By the time they performed it at the Grand Ole Opry, they had a crossover hit on their hands. No more country package tours; they quickly graduated to rock shows organised by Alan Freed.
Don Everly’s riff was significant – not just as a revved-motorcycle opening to one of the great singles of the ’50s – but also a demonstration of how he and his brother bridged black R&B and white country music to put a new spin on rock’n’ roll. “Bye Bye Love” heralded a band steeped in expressive songwriting – by the Bryants, but also by Don himself – and taut sibling harmonies. The song’s subject matter is bleak – “Hello emptiness, I feel like I could die”– but their harmonies are upbeat, chipper, cavalier, as though this teenage heartbreak is an everyday affliction. They don’t brush off those bad feelings but complicate them in a way that resonated with fans then and fans now.