It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “I’m Alive” by The Hollies
July 14, 1965
“I’m Alive” by The Hollies
#1 on the Record Retailer Singles Chart (UK), June 24-30 & July 8-21, 1965
The Beatles’ sudden surge to American superstardom in 1964 parted the Atlantic, allowing dozens of British rockers to speed their way across to near-certain success in the States. Any act tangentially similar to the Fab Four, from the gentle folk of Chad & Jeremy, to the heart-stirring pop of Petula Clark, to the nasty R&B of the Rolling Stones, found a welcoming audience of newly-minted Anglophiles stateside. While the British Invasion’s exports seemed to encompass nearly every talented and popular band gigging around the UK, particularly in the Beatles’ home region of Northwest England, a few latecomers missed the first boat across the pond.
One such band of transatlantic stragglers were the Hollies, formed in late 1962 by lead singer Allan Clarke and guitarist/vocalist Graham Nash in Manchester, roughly 35 miles inland from Liverpool. The group struck gold in their homeland almost immediately; their very first single, a cover of the Coasters’ “(Ain’t That) Just Like Me,” cracked the UK Top 40 in 1963. An unbroken string of hits swiftly followed, nearly all of which peaked within the Top 10, including “Stay,” “Just One Look,” “Here I Go Again,” and “Yes I Will,” before the group finally topped the charts in mid-1965 with “I’m Alive.” Despite their homeland success and surefire crossover appeal, however, the Hollies remained virtually unknown in the US.
All of the group’s early singles, with the exception of 1964’s “We’re Through,” were either covers of American hits or were contributed by outside writers. (The success of 1966’s “Stop Stop Stop” decidedly shifted the balance toward self-penned hits.) Texan songwriter Clint Ballard Jr. wrote “I’m Alive” for the Hollies the same year that his song “Game of Love” became a US #1 hit for fellow Manchester-based band Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders.
“I’m Alive” was the Hollies’ best hit yet, vividly depicting how falling in love can make a person feel as though they have finally discovered how to live. The song begins with relatively dry, low-pitched verses, describing the narrator’s colorless existence (“Did you ever see a man with no heart? / Baby, that was me”). Suddenly, the narrator detects his senses as if for the first time (“Now I can breathe / I can see / I can touch / I can feel / I can taste all the sugar sweetness in your lips”). Clarke sings each line a step higher than the one before it, before erupting in ecstatic cries of “I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive!”
“I’m Alive” is a canny reproduction of the Beatles’ sound circa A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles for Sale, with similar chiming guitars, unusual chord sequences, and rolling, staggered rhythms. The resemblance was further enhanced by the fact that the Hollies, like the Fab Four, made heavy use of three-part harmonies (sung by Clarke, Nash, and guitarist Tony Hicks). Yet there’s enough of the Hollies’ own distinct character to keep “I’m Alive” in the inspired homage category, rather than sounding like one of the spate of craven Beatles knockoffs that clogged record bins in the mid-’60s.
Despite topping the UK charts, “I’m Alive” failed to register at all across the Atlantic. It would take the group’s next single, “Look Through Any Window,” to finally break the group into the American Top 40. The Hollies may have filled out the rear ranks of the British Invasion, but they quickly made up for lost time, eventually earning 12 US Top 40 singles, half of which were Top 10 hits. (Once Nash left the band in 1968, however, the Hollies were soon overshadowed in America by his new group: Crosby, Stills & Nash.)
While the Hollies were one of the most popular British rock bands of the ’60s, and earned two of their biggest international hits in the ’70s with “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and “The Air That I Breathe,” “I’m Alive” would be the group’s only #1 hit for over 20 years. It wasn’t until a re-release of 1969’s “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” soundtracking a 1988 ad campaign for Miller Lite, that the Hollies finally topped the chart for the second time. The Hollies may not have been the first or most successful band to emerge from the British rock boom, but they made up for it in staying power.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
