Lou Christie Sang Lighting Striking Again What Year
Lou Christie: Lightnin' Strikes (1966)
Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Few people can say they celebrated their 23rd birthday in quite the same manner every bit Lou Christie, this single was number ane the U.s.a. -- and just starting to get global.
Information technology was quite a comeback for Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco from rural Glenwillard near Pittsburg: he'd had some skirmishes with the charts and been on Dick Clark'south Caravan of Stars traveling revue (he was seated side by side to Diana Ross for 72 sequent nights) but he'd been sidelined by a six month stint as an army reservist. And by that time the British Invasion was at its peak.
Few American teen idol acts like Christie -- his fellows in Bob Marcucci'due south management stable included Fabian and Frankie Avalon -- would survive the Invasion, simply Lou was always kind of dissimilar. Perhaps it was the tight trousers, maybe information technology was the falsetto.
Perhaps it was the gypsy woman?
When Christie was xv he and his sister Amy Sacco had formed a group chosen the Crewnecks. Information technology was when they attended a bogus audition that Lou met Twyla Herbert who was twice his age, a former concert pianist and psychic. They brutal in with each other (they shared a love of classical music, notably opera) and became songwriting partners.
Within a short period they spun out four pretty interesting hits including The Gypsy Cried which was released nether the proper name "Lou Christie".
Given his phonation, a lot of listeners idea he was a she. And pouty Lou looked like he might too liked to have a walk on the wild side.
A few other minor hits followed, and then came the army stint in early '65, the signing to Marcucci'southward roster, and this Herbert-Christie penned Lightnin' Strikes which had as much ear-piercing anguish as anything by Johnny Ray and Gene Pitney combined.
And sex activity: "If she gives me a sign she wants to brand time . . . I tin't stop, I can't stop . ."
It's an interesting song across its very compelling vocals, equally Christie noted: "The structure was unique then. There were 4 different parts to the vocal. We'd accept an intro, then part of a verse, then another refrain, and so the hook. The problem with that song was the glueing it together".
Things got a little unglued when some of his before cloth was rush released by a sometime label (thus disruptive the marketplace) but interestingly Lou as well co-wrote Cryin' in the Streets. "Anyone who has ever been to 42nd Street in New York City would know that vocal attempts to reverberate the jungle temper. People in that location are pretty much similar animals."
You do have to wonder if this Lou met the other Lou there at the fourth dimension.
Christie's next hit nonetheless was the fifty-fifty more salaciously sexual Rhapsody in the Rain (banned for its sexual beat of windscreen wiper rhythms and lyrics about making out in the rain).
After that things slowly unwound for Christie on the hitting-making front end despite Jack Nitzsche producing If My Car Could Merely Talk and the dramatic Shake Hands and Walk Away Crying.
Christie then label hopped (he was 4 years on Neil Bogart's Buddah), he enjoyed some success with I'm Gonna Brand You Mine and headed to Europe to practise cabaret. He lived in London in the early Seventies, married and had kids, battled an addiction, and went back to the States and quit music. He worked every bit truck commuter and on an oil rig.
He returned to practice some soundtrack piece of work, started doing gigs with Lesley Gore . . .
Just really not much beyond Lightnin' Strikes and Rhapsody in the Rain are worth serious attention.
But when that emotional drama and falsetto kick in, Lou Christie demands your near serious attention.
Look away of yous can.
For more unusual one-off songs with an interesting back-story meet From the Vaults.
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Source: https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/fromthevaults/3049/lou-christie-lightnin-strikes-1966/
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