T e Everly Brothers

“Wake Up Little Susie”, a story-song about missing curfew with a date and bracing for scandal, was even more popular than “Bye Bye Love” – although the song was banned in Boston by the Catholic archbishop. Spending the night with a girl, even if you were innocently dozing at the drive-in, was far too salacious. It doesn’t help that the brothers sing it like they’re trying to get their stories straight.

Like the girl groups just then becoming popular, the Everlys spoke directly to fans, their harmonies heightening that sense of intimacy. They sang often about dreaming, as though they understood that it was a crucial aspect of adolescent life, a survival mechanism for the cataclysm of young heartbreak. “Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream”, they sang on one of their biggest and most covered hits. “When I’m dreaming daydreams, who comes into view?” they ask on “Always It’s You”. Especially after seeing girls go crazy for Elvis, the brothers invite their fans to daydream about them which primed the shrieks and screa thatgreetedTheBeatles.

UT Don and Phil couldn’t stay young forever. Following a royalties dispute with Cadence, they jumped ship to Warner Brothers in 1960, then followed Elvis into the military. Both brothers enrolled in the marines, although neither shipped out for as long as Pre Still, they emerged to find thepoplandscape profoundly changed. They still scored hits, including Don’s composition “Cathy’s Clown”, but they chased trends more than they set them. In their quest to reconnect with a new generation of record buyers, however, they made a wildly diverse string of albums that showed the breadth of their range and the depth of their talents. With just their guitars and voices, they re-embraced twang on 1963’s The Everly Brothers Sing Great CountryHits,coveringHankWilliams,Johnny sh and Don Gibson. Three ars later, they added The ollies’ electric guitars and ig Beat drums to their British nvasion covers. The ’60s were not kind to the rly Brothers, and for many their career ends there, with Don and Phil playing perpetual teenagers, young men trapped in the amber of their fans’ daydreams. They sensed as much at the time, with both Don and Phil struggling with drug addiction as they dealt with increased pressure and decreased rewards. Their creative and commercial frustrations strained their relationship, to the extent that they spent time together only on stage. But those stages were getting smaller and smaller.

In 1968 they released what is generally considered their best album, Roots, which strategically allied them with the West Coast folk-rock bands that counted the Everlys as a foundational influence. Produced by Lenny Waronker, it features a mix of country covers (including Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried”) and new songs (including a few by The Beau Brummels’ Ron Elliott) that would have sounded even more adventurous at the time. It sounds a bit more frayed than their older material, a bit more stoned,astheyfindnewemotionstoexpresswith

Hippie dreamers: in the late-’60s Roots era

The brothers are sworn into the US Marines in 1961

Albert Lee – The Everly Brothers’ longtime guitarist and musical director – recalls five decades with the volatile and influential siblings

“I FIRST met them in 1962. I was playing a club in London with this cool little band and these guys were standing in the corner listening to us. Turns out they were Americans and they were working with The Everly Brothers. My jaw dropped because I was such a huge fan. That was the start of a long relationship.

“In the ’70s, I did some American shows with The Crickets and I was invited to do a gig at the Speakeasy in Los Angeles. It’s a small, late-night club where a lot of musicians used to gather. I went down on a Tuesday night and played with Don. After that, we spent a lot of time playing together and got quite close. We’d do a couple of gigs together, or we’d spend a Sunday afternoon jamming at his apartment in Sunset Towers on Sunset Boulevard. I think he appreciated having me as a sidekick there for a while, because he missed his brother on stage.

“In 1983, they were deciding which musicians they wanted at their reunion show at Royal Albert Hall, and to my great luck they both chose me to be their guitar player. Itwas a really successful concert, en a few months later they said we’re all going to do an album and o on the road. They were looking or a young producer with a modern pproach, so Dave Edmunds was uggested. We did two albums with im and they went really well. But do remember Phil resented any uggestions by Dave about how he hould do the harmony singing. You on’t tell an Everly how to sing!

“On the tour we’d be out there playing and those two guys upfront were nailing it. But it depended on the mood Don was in. Some nights he wasn’t serious about it, and it would be a misery. But other nights he was working really hard and it was just magic. They had a pretty volatile relationship over the years. They travelled in separate buses and separate limos. Don liked to spend time on his own. They played shows together for 20 years. After Phil said he’d had enough, I didn’t see either of them very much. But I was fortunate to spend so much time with them. I loved Don’s solo singing and especially his great rhythm guitar playing. I still channel him in the way I sing and play.”

those familiar harmonies. In a way they’d finally grown into those voices, but the album went nowhere. Few listeners wanted to hear the adult Everlys.

Still, it pointed them in new directions, as they began to loosen up their songs and let them sprawl. Don’s 1970 self-titled solo debut is a wild affair, opening with a deconstructed cover of the cowboy classic “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” and traipsing into exotica, psych-rock, and weirdo country. Like Roots, however, Don Everly was not heavily promoted and so was nothing close to a commercial breakthrough, but both add new layers to the Everlys legend.

As the 1970s wore on, neither brother did much to disguise his frustrations. It all came to a head in July 1973, when they played Knott’s Berry Farm in California. They were scheduled to perform three shows, but before they ever took the stage, Don announced he was leaving the duo: “I’ve been wanting to quit for three years now and it is finally time to just do it,” he told reporters. “I’m tired of being an Everly Brother. I still like to sing ‘Bye Bye Love’ sometimes, but I don’t want to spend my life doing it. I’ve got to find something else.” Their first set started shaky and went downhill from there. Five songs in, Phil abruptly walked to the side of the stage, smashed

his guitar and stormed off. Don finished out the next two shows by himself. They didn’t speak to each otherfor10years. t the peak of their success in the ’50s, the Everly Brothers played the Royal Albert Hall in London several times, including their final performance with their father. But their biggest show on that stage came long after their heyday, when they were at their lowest point creatively and commercially. In September 1983, they reunited for what was intended to be a one-off event. They ran through the usual hits from the late ’50s and early ’60s, their voices showing the wear of age but still Sole brother: Don in 1970, on the release of complementing each other beautifully. The response was his solo debut startling. The event sold out, while a live album documenting the performance gave them their biggest hit in memory. While it didn’t mend the brothers’ relationship, the reunion opened a new and much longer chapter in their career, and they’d stay on the road together for the next 25 years. The Everlys’ comeback album in 1984 was something like a victory lap. Not only did it demonstrate the durability of their sound but they roped in some of the bigger stars FIVE SONGS IN, PHIL WALKED OFF, SMASHED they had influenced. On EB 84, producer Dave Edmunds gave them pub-rock muscle, while Jeff Lynne and Paul McCartney gave them songs that didn’t sound like castoffs. McCartney’s “On The Wings Of A Nightingale” was a graceful HIS GUITAR AND showcase for their voices, capturing the spirit of their early hits without STORMED OFF sounding nostalgic. After 1988’s so-so Some Hearts failed to chart, however, the Everlys stopped recording new material altogether. But they continued touring for another 20 years, weathering minor dust-ups and health issues. In 2003 they joined Simon & Garfunkel on their reunion tour, playing a short set in the middle of the show and singing “Bye Bye Love” with two of their biggest acolytes. After that, Phil called it quits, claiming he’d had enough of the road, enough of those songs, enough of his brother. He died in 2014 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Don stopped performing. He had always needed a foil for his voice, if not his brother then someone who could sing like his brother. He kept to himself in Nashville, rarely getting out much. For someone who didn’t want to spend his life singing “Bye Bye Love”, that song figured prominently in his final years. At a Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame tribute in 2014, just months after Phil’s death, Don was coaxed on stage to perform it as an encore. Four years later, he joined Paul Simon in Nashville to sing it one more time. “Well, that makes my night,” In harmony Simon told the crowd at Bridgestone Arena. again: at their Albert Hall reunion show, “I got to be Phil Everly for a night.” That was Don’s last public performance, but he’d been Sept 22, 1983 saying bye-bye to us for years.

Will Oldham on What The Brothers Sang, his 2013 Everlys covers album with DawnMcCarthy

“I first heard Dawn McCarthy’s music in the early 2000s and asked her if she wanted to tour. We started talking about songs we might do together each night and I suggested a couple of Everly Brothers songs, including ‘So Sad’. Singing with her is a uniquely rewarding experience. Later she suggested we record some of those songs, and she had no idea what she was getting into.

“When people talk about The Everly Brothers, they’re pretty much talking about that first string of hits – their golden sound. Their first four years of making records when they were teenagers. And that’s cool. But they led lives dedicated to music and there’s much more to them than that one period. Have you heard them do ‘House Of The Rising Sun’? There’s a part when Don is singing lead and he changes the lyric to, ‘Tell my brother Philip not to do what I’ve done’. He sings it with extreme energy and emotion. He’s just wailing and wailing. I didn’t think I needed to hear another cover of that song, but it’s really powerful.

“They put so much emotion into their voices, kind of like Frank Sinatra or somebody who knew how to use their vocal instruments, knew the ins and outs of the song and conveyed the lyrics every time. No matter what song the Everlys sang, even if it was a novelty song, you felt like you understood that they knew what every word meant and how it worked in the song.

“I was excited that Dawn wanted to do it, so I started sending her songs. That’s how we came up with our master list. We went down to Nashville and recorded with my friend David Ferguson, who was buddies with Don. So he had some stories and we got to learn about the origins of some of the stuff we were singing. There’s one song we did called ‘My Little Yellow Bird’, which is credited to Mickey Zellman. Who? I learned that Don used that name as an alias to hide royalties from his ex-wife in the late ’60s. It’s a wild, beautiful, interesting song and we didn’t even know it was by Don Everly.”