IN 1967 Gene Pitney recorded Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart. Twenty-two years later here-recorded the same song with Marc Almond and it went to No 1 inthe British charts. All by way of illustration.
Pitney has been around for a long time, his matenal has always been strong and he has stuck at it. Famous or his renderings of numbers such as Burt Bacharach's Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa, Pitney's own songwriting is sometimes lesspublicly recognised. Perhaps even some of his own fans don't realise hehas written some of the most enduring songs in pop history includingHello Mary Lou, He's A Rebel and Rubber Ball.
Born in 1941 in Rockville, Connecticut, Pitney's early days were informed by his interest both in music and in electronics. He had his own local band called Gene Pitney and the Genials, and although he opted for a time to study electronics at the University of Connecticut, the music was to win out in the end.
He first began performing with Ginny Amell, with whom he recorded a single, Classical Rock 'n' Roll in 1959 but, having luckily escaped being renamed HomerMuzzy, the new solo Gene Pitney emerged as both a singer and a promising songwriter.
"The thing I guess that influenced me most in Rockville was the thingthat influenced the nation at the time and that was the birth of rock.We had no country music stations, the only thing we ever got was WWVA in West Virginia and it had to be a rainy night to get it - so what I'm talking about are the black groups who originally fused rhythm 'n' blues and country and maderock. Most of them had bird's names - the flamingos, the Crows, The Orioles, The Penguins and I loved that stuff.
"That's where I really fell in love with music. I was a freshman in high school when the Penguins' Earth Angel came out. I was in algebra class singing that song! I still listen to a lot of that music now but I notice things now that I didn't notice when I was growing up. Sometimes it's out of pitch, or out of time. The problem is that my listener's ears are gone."
This observation is typical of someone who is fascinated by recording techniques. Certainly he is a perfectionist and a bit of a tech-head, but this interest was always there. It is no surprise perhaps that one of his closest associates was Phil Spector, himself a pioneer of studio sound.
These days, when not touring, Pitney is occupied with the studio he built at his Connecticut home. There, with his son Todd, he has been recording songs for his next CD to be released next year. "That technical side has served me well. You have to realise that I started out when two-track recording was state of the art, and now my studio at home is a 32-track machine - it's amazing. I got credit for overdubbing and yes, it was the beginning of that type of thing, but we did it out of necessity. We didn't have any money so I played piano, guitar and a little bit of drums. I was able to do all of that plus the vocals and the 'oohs' and 'aahs' in the background for about 30 bucks!"
In the very early days, however, Pitney had no real notions of being aperformer. He was happy enough to play in his own band at a time when, as he puts it, if you could play three chords you could play the Top 20. His break, as he recalls it, came in a very cliched fashion, when in walked the usual fat man with the cigar. His name was Marty Kugell and he asked Pitney if he wanted to make a record. But Pitney's early success came not as a performer, but as a writer-his songs being covered by the big stars of the day, RoyOrbison, Bobby Vee and Tommy Edwards. Getting a song placed in such stellar company was the job of the publisher, an occupation for which Pitney has a great affection.
"I had an excellent publisher and I wrote for him - a guy called AaronSchroeder and he was very aggressive with my songs. I didn't reallywrite in the direction of anybody in particular, but he would take the song away and go after the artist he thought it would fit. One day I was in Philadelphia promoting a record of my own when I turned on the radio and along came Rick Nelson with Hello Mary Lou. I was so surprised that I almost fell out of thecar! I didn't even know my publisher had gone to him. I would never even have thought of him recording that song. I think that probably the best source of satisfaction I've had in the entire business has been creating a song, my baby lyrically and musically, and then hearing somebody record it. Especially if they have a different conception of it than I had when I wrote it. I think that'sterrific.
"There's a song I wrote called Louisiana Mama which was a B-side to one of my early releases which hadn't been very successful. Louisiana Mama was a B-side but the success of that song in Japan has been phenomenal - nowhere else! Theincome from it is tremendous. Publishers were real in those days - now everybody is a publisher."
By this stage, however, Pitney was also having major success in his ownright as a performer. A string of hits was to turn him into a major star -Town Without Pity. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Only Love Can Break a Heart, Twenty Four hours From Tulsa and so on. His recording of the latter established his reputation as an interpreter as well as a writer of songs - hisstrange voice and dramatic delivery regarded as particularly effective with Bacharach and David material. It was almost as if there were two Gene Pitneys with different careers.
"What happened was this. When those first songs were successes I really hadn't had any success recording myself. But then b the time Hello Mary Lou was a hit I'd also had a hit of my own as a recording artist. I was working so hard tryingto create that recording artist side that I virtually stopped writing. I'mnot a travelling type of writer, so when I came back from tours they would have to go to other sources to get songs. Of course the very best were right on my doorstep at 1650 Broadway. I could go down a couple of floors and ask B any Mann and Cynthia Weill or Gerry Goffin and Carole King what they were writing.
"That was a wonderful period of time to be doing anything. There won't be another time like the 1960s ever again. The business is not run now by the creative colourful people that were around back then. People like Phil Spector. People would say that Phil was a wacko - but I'd say that he was eccentric and unusual and that's why he was so successful. People like that have a different way of expressing themselves. Now, the whole thing is, unfortunately, a different business."
For a substantial period, Pitney could do no wrong. A major star and a major influence, his endorsement even played a part in breaking the Rolling Stones in the US. Pitney recorded a hit version of Jagger an Richards's That Girl Belong to Yesterday and later played piano on the Stones's Little By Little with PhilSpector providing percussion by shaking a half dollar piece in an empty cognac bottle. Those wet great days for Pitney and he recalls them with affection. He had scored a quite spectacular run of hits, but this, he admits brought with it certain problems of its own.
'I have to admit that there When you have top 10 hits and then you don't have one, you don't really know if you're capable of surviving as an artist. So then you get out there and you do some tours without having that hit under your bellAnd that's a pretty good feeling actually because be ore that you just don't know. But I've been yes lucky with material. We spent a much time in pre-production and just picking the song that I've always had really wonderful material. If the songs that I had to do were dogs, and I had to do them nightafter night, that would be really tough to do and I don't know if I'd still be doing it."
Pitney still lives in Connecticut. He works out three or four times a week just to keep in shape for performances which are reportedly a passion-filled as ever. Still very much in demand, he regularly play Las Vegas, Atlantic City, CarnegaHall and even the Grand Ole Opry. He visits Europe every year and especially popular in Italy. His aim is to keep going and, as someone who once had four simultaneous hits in Europe, Britain and the US pop and country charts, there'every chance that he will. And he's fully expecting another hit at anyminute.
"For years now the music business has been trying to find a direction for pop music and I don't think they've been very successful. One a the reasons is that it's money driven now. If it was driven by an actual need for creativity and for something to happen from the artist themselves, then it might have made a turn that might have mean something. But who knows? It may go back to what I like because I've always stayed true to lyric and melody and I think that might just be something that might come to the fore again. I can't see how it can't.