ALBUM: Them, ‘The Complete Them, 1964-1967’
“Them was intended as a vehicle, a way for me to sing and play the blues,” Van Morrison declares in the liner notes of the new compilation The Complete Them, 1964-1967 (Legacy Recordings). While the other members of Them might take umbrage at Morrison’s dismissal of their contributions, it is fair to say that, without Morrison, Them would never have ventured beyond Belfast to become Northern Ireland’s premier contribution to ’60s rock. Morrison, a short, surly redhead, made for an unlikely frontman. Nevertheless, he possessed a knack for songwriting and an uncanny voice indebted to the haunted croaks of Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker, but with a lived-in authenticity that transcended the sense of a white boy playing dress-up.
Morrison and bassist Alan Henderson were the only consistent members of Them’s original iteration, as the group’s lineup rotated with astonishing speed — which is likely why Morrison spends far more space in the liner notes praising session musicians rather than his bandmates. Despite the band’s rocky relations, Them managed to produce a solid, at times astounding, body of work during its brief heyday. The three-disc compilation The Complete Them, 1964-1967 reissues and remasters the band’s singles, both LPs, and various demos, alternate takes, and radio performances, many of which have never before been released.
Disc one opens with Them’s first single, “Don’t Start Cryin’ Now,” a fairly straightforward, if unusually vicious, take on Chicago blues. More intriguing is its B-side, “One Two Brown Eyes,” a psych-blues jam whose twilight organ and sense of space conjures some of the occult feel that set Them apart from its contemporaries. The band’s next single, and first hit), would marry the two sides: the Big Joe Williams (via John Lee Hooker) cover “Baby Please Don’t Go” is a feral black cat of a record, rawer yet sleeker than almost anything else of that era. Originally hidden on the flip — but not for long — is the even spikier “Gloria,” an ode to lust whose verses pulse almost painfully before erupting in cries of “G-L-O-R-I-A!” and spasms of percussion. If Them had only released this pair of sides, they would have been legends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLvBpnaVHE8
For the follow-up, however, Them flipped the switch in the complete opposite direction. “Here Comes the Night,” composed by producer Bert Berns, is yearning rather than lustful, nostalgic rather than burning with anticipation, set atop a classic pop melody instead of a bluesy jam base. And yet, Them pulls it off just as convincingly as its predecessor, and repeats the trick (albeit less successfully) with the next single, Morrison’s own romantic ballad “One More Time.” Not content to stay in one gear for too long, follow-up “Mystic Eyes” is one of the least likely records ever to grace the US Top 40, a churning flurry of improvised harmonica and organ with only a snippet of evocative lyrics tossed in at the end (“One Sunday morning / we went walkin’ / down by the old graveyard / the morning fog / I looked into / those mystic eyes”).
The first disc of The Complete Them closes with the album tracks from the band’s first UK LP, 1965’s The Angry Young Them, as well as the should’ve-been follow-up to “Here Comes the Night,” Berns’ “(It Won’t Hurt) Half as Much.” The Angry Young Them fills out with a handful of covers (Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City”; Bobby Troup’s “Route 66”), second-rate contributions from Berns, and solid, if largely undistinguished, efforts from Morrison. The best of the bunch are producer Tommy Scott’s “I’m Gonna Dress in Black,” whose imposing tempo and organ swirls recall “House of the Rising Sun,”; Morrison’s “You Just Can’t Win,” which treads similar territory as the Stones’ “Play With Fire,” if slightly more sympathetically; and a cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Don’t Look Back,” with a jazzy, laidback feel out of character with the rest of the album.
The 1966 album Them Again, which opens disc two of the compilation, is less cohesive than its predecessor. By this point, Morrison had firmly wrested control of the group from his (mostly departed) bandmates, and the Them of Them Again was largely more polished replacements or session musicians, rather than the angry young band that had incited Belfast’s Maritime Hotel into an uproar every night. For that very reason, however, Them Again is a more interesting album than the first, as Morrison now had more room to borrow from a wider realm of influences and attempt different styles. Rather than strictly Chicago blues, the covers encompass New Orleans R&B (Chris Kenner’s “Something You Got,” Fats Domino’s “Hey Josephine”), proto-funk (James Brown’s “Out of Sight”), and Morrison’s idol Ray Charles (“I Got a Woman”), as well as a smoky, scatting take on “I Put a Spell on You” indebted to Nina Simone’s cabaret-flavored version.
A few tracks on Them Again link to the previous incarnation of the band: Bobby Bland’s “Turn on Your Love Light” had been a live favorite dating to Them’s earliest days, and Tommy Scott’s “I Can Only Give You Everything” is a fuzzy garage rocker that could sit comfortably in a set next to “Gloria,” alongside Morrison originals like “Bad or Good” and “Bring ‘Em on In.” Other songs, however, such as “My Lonely Sad Eyes” and “Hey Girl,” find Morrison already piecing together his distinctive style of Celtic soul, which would reach its apex on his 1968 solo album Astral Weeks. Best of all is a version of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” that’s more understanding and less dismissive than Dylan’s original without feeling sentimental or weak, haunted by a keyboard motif like a fading memory. In the vast pantheon of Dylan covers, this is easily one of the greatest ever recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWxhoeERMZU
After Them Again, Morrison released a final trio of singles under the Them name. “Richard Cory” seethes with more visceral anger than Simon & Garfunkel’s original, probably because Morrison, a former window cleaner, truly understood the anxiety of the underclass, and had struggled to escape it. “Friday’s Child” is another precursor to Astral Weeks, while “The Story of Them (Pts 1 & 2)” consciously attempts to mythologize, and eulogize, a band that didn’t really exist anymore. Disc Two of The Complete Them closes rather anticlimatically with three blues covers pulled from a 1967 Dutch EP, probably outtakes recorded years earlier.
The third disc of the compilation comprises demos, alternate takes, single versions, and a pair of appearances on British radio. Per usual for a collection of odds and ends, this disc is mostly for the most dedicated of devotees. A few tracks bear interest for a more general audience, however — mostly notably, the demo of “Gloria,” which lacks the electric frisson of the finished version, but still has its dark, alluring heart. Morrison has always maintained that Them was at its best in a live setting; listeners can get a taste with a pair of live-in-studio sets recorded for BBC’s Saturday Club in 1965, even if these relatively restrained performances likely don’t match Them’s early days gigging at the Maritime Hotel. Last but not least, this disc houses “Mighty Like a Rose,” a sardonic Morrison original from 1966 that’s one of his great lost tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAtEx-cbpZ4
Morrison left Them in summer of 1966; the title of the compilation refers to the release dates of those final singles that trickled out after his departure. The newly solo Morrison reunited with producer Bert Berns, resulting in “Brown Eyed Girl,” which outperformed any Them single in the American charts (climbing to the Top 10 in mid-1967) and has equaled “Gloria” as an enduring, oft-covered favorite. Meanwhile, and rather improbably, various iterations of Them kept on trucking until 1972, releasing four more LPs after Morrison’s departure — twice as many as when Van was in the band. While those albums have their defenders, titling this compilation The Complete Them doesn’t feel like a misnomer; not too many people would expect a Complete Velvet Underground to include Squeeze, either. But The Complete Them isn’t just a portrait of Van Morrison’s early artistic development; it also is a valuable record of an oft-overlooked band that, long before the likes of the Doors and Led Zeppelin, brought the mystic side of blues into rock and roll.
