When Collections was recorded, the Rascals had already established themselves as the top blue-eyed soul group in the United States with the 1966 #1 smash "Good Lovin'." Like their debut album, The Young Rascals (also reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music), it was a solid seller, reaching #14 in early 1967, one notch above where its predecessor had peaked. Unlike all of the group's other first five LPs, however, it didn't contain a Top Ten single, although it had three hit 45s. The album captured the band in a transitional phase—still steeped in their R&B roots, yet also starting to explore more innovative directions, particularly in their original material. Yet they were still finding their way as songwriters, as evidenced by how only six of the eleven tracks were group compositions, though that was a dramatic increase in that department relative to The Young Rascals, which contained just one original number.
The evolution
toward a
self-penned repertoire and a more expressive style was not just
admirable, but necessary to keep pace with the British Invasion groups
that had in part inspired the Rascals to form in the first place. "We
hadn't even been formed and this big English thing was happening in the
States with the Beatles and all the English groups," observed
organist/singer Felix Cavaliere in Melody
Maker in December 1966. "We got together four of the best guys
on their instruments in the state and we thought: 'The English groups
have got good images. They're professionals and they're thinking
intelligently.' We decided that we'd show there were people in America
whose musical intelligence was equivalent."
Continued Cavaliere in the same piece, "We felt we
wanted to show that we had the same sort of groups in the States. That
was the reason behind us. Also for all the different ideas we wanted to
put into our sound. The entire music tells the way you feel and the way
you think. Ours is sensuous music. We want to say things to people and
we'll be continuing as long as possible. Each of us has different
musical backgrounds. Gene Cornish, our guitarist, comes from upstate
New York [actually he'd been born in Ottawa, Canada] and listened to a
lot of country music and blues. [Singer] Eddie [Brigati] and myself are
more soul men. I shaped myself on Ray Charles. Dino Danelli was just
the best drummer I had ever heard."
It's also sometimes forgotten that at their outset,
the group, a la other American bands such as Paul Revere & the
Raiders, dressed themselves in uniforms that could have been
interpreted as tongue-in-cheek satires of or rebuttals to those worn by
British Invasion bands. In the Rascals' case, they were known for their
knickers, first worn by Brigati in emulation of Italian men in his
neighborhood who were their grandfathers' knickers. "We put them on as
a joke," Gene Cornish told Rolling
Stone in 1970. "We didn't want to wear suits because it was too
stiff. And we didn't want to wear dungarees—it really wasn't being done
except for the Stones and we didn't want that kind of image."
With the development of their songwriting came more
solidified roles for the quartet. Felix Cavaliere emerged as the
group's principal composer, whether working alone or in collaboration
with Brigati. Felix also took more of the lead vocals than anyone else,
though Brigati took almost as many leads, and was important on even the
tracks on which he didn't sing lead as a backup vocalist, handheld
percussionist, and onstage frontman. Dino Danelli was both one of the
most underrated rock drummers of the era, and one of the most
flamboyant, as surviving film clips of him twirling sticks in mid-song
demonstrate. Brushing his hair forward by the time of the cover photos
for Collections accentuated
his uncanny resemblance to Paul McCartney, one that was remarked upon
by both press clippings and television hosts of the time. Cornish, it's
sometimes forgotten, wrote and sang lead occasionally himself, and also
filled in some bass parts in the studio, though onstage the group
relied upon Cavaliere to supply the lower end. As Felix told Melody Maker, the huge role his
organ played in their sound was one of the Rascals' chief
distinguishing trademarks: "I use the organ differently to most groups.
That is, we use it to throw a big blanket around the sound."
For all their expanding creativity, it took a while
for the Rascals to match the success of "Good Lovin'," and Collections was built around four
tracks taken from their three follow-up singles to that monster. Oddly,
their Top Twenty follow-up to "Good Lovin'," "You Better Run," was not
included on Collections—it
would show up on their third LP, Groovin'—but
its B-side, the Cavaliere-Brigati-penned "Love Is a Beautiful
Thing," was. With its startling ascending and descending riffs
serving as the intro and links between verses, it showed them capable
of writing a quality midtempo soul number in as natural a style as the
African-American soul stars of the era. With Felix and Eddie sharing
lead vocals, it was probably strong enough to have passed muster as an
A-side, even generating a cover version by Wilson Pickett on his 1967
album The Sound of Wilson Pickett—fair
play, as the Rascals had done the Wicked One's "In the Midnight Hour"
on their debut LP.
Also on Collections
were both sides of their fourth 45, the A-side of which, "Come on Up,"
stalled at a disappointing 43 in Billboard—the
Rascals' lowest-charting single in the 1960s, with the exception of
their very first one. The Cavaliere composition was certainly a solid
effort, however, featuring a more aggressive sound—particularly in
Cornish's squalling, fuzzy guitar—than any of their previous 45s. The
Cavaliere-Brigati-authored flip, "What Is the Reason," demonstrated the
pair's rapidly flowering knack for classy romantic soul-pop songs. But
it would take Felix's Motown-ish "Lonely Too Long"—built around a
haunting four-note piano hook in the verses—to restore the Rascals to
the Top Twenty.
The other songs on Collections
were more reflective of the Rascals' roots as an R&B-soaked club
band, as well as their occasional appetite for pop balladry. The soul
covers probably surprised no one, given the group's obvious affinity
for the form. "Land of 1000 Dances" had first been cut by New Orleans
soulster Chris Kenner, though it took Cannibal & the Headhunters'
Top Thirty cover in 1965 to make it a national hit; Wilson Pickett's #6
hit cover of the same tune the following year, however, would have been
the version with which the Rascals' audience was most familiar. "Too
Many Fish in the Sea" had been a hit for the Marvelettes a couple of
years earlier, and would be a hit just after the release of Collections for the Rascals' top
rivals for the blue-eyed soul group crown, Mitch Ryder & the
Detroit Wheels. The Rascals also covered another Motown smash, the
Miracles' "Mickey's Monkey" (in which Brigati changes the lyric to
refer to himself by first name), putting it into a medley that segued
into "Love Lights," here credited to the Sonics' Gerry Roslie, though
it took inspiration from Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Turn on Your Lovelight."
"Since I Fell for You"—the jazzy pop ballad written
by Buddy Johnson in the mid-1940s, and taken to #4 by Lenny Welch in
1963—is not the sort of song one associates with the Rascals. But
apparently Eddie Brigati, who sings lead, enjoyed these kind of
numbers—not only did he sing it live with the band on The Mike Douglas Show, but he also
took lead on a similar song on the other side of the LP, "More," which
(as an instrumental) had been a Top Ten 1963 hit for jazz trombonist
Kai Winding. The remaining two tracks on the album were both sung by
Cornish, who wrote one of them—"No Love to Give," an orchestrated
romantic ballad with little rock or soul influence—on his own. The
other, "Nineteen Fifty-Six," was a 1950s-style rock'n'roller co-written
by Danelli and Cornish, with a spiky guitar solo that couldn't fall to
recall George Harrison's in the Beatles' cover of Little Richard's
"Kansas City/Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"
By the time of their third album, 1967's Groovin', the Rascals had graduated
to writing all but one of the songs themselves. Also including a couple
of classic hit singles that restored them to the upper reaches of the
charts, that LP has also been reissued on CD by Collectors'
Choice Music. -- Richie Unterberger
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