One very interesting way to see how groups were viewed while they were still together is to read contemporaneous articles and liner notes. On this page are the liner notes to the Capitol P&G LPs. All material is Copyright Capitol Records. They're a bit propagandistic, but they're all good fun!
Peter and Gordon are the biggest thing to hit the American music scene since the Beatles.
That's what newspapers and trade papers are saying about this spectacular young pair from England,. But that information is really only incedental, for just one listen is enough to prove that this great young duo would have become famous here had their friends the Beatles never sung a note to pave the way for British artists on our side of the Atlantic.
It was Peter and Gordon's recent hit "A World Without Love" that started everybody listening and talking - a song specially composed for them by Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The equally sensational flip side of that release "If I Were You," was written by Peter and Gordon themselves, and the pair have also co-composed the big beat pace-makers "You Don't Have To Tell Me" and "Last Night I Woke." All four of those songs are included here in the boys' first American album, along with a wonderful program of their biggest selling hits from Britain; and they're all backed beautifully by Geoff Love, one of England's finest and best-known arranger-conductors.
If you hadn't heard, by the way, Peter is Peter Asher, 19, and Gordon is Gordon Waller, 18, and they started singing and playing guitar in coffee bars and clubs in England after meeting and becoming freinds at school.
They're young, they're new, and they're great. Matter of fact, next time a fine new group arrives in this country from England, people will undoubtedly be saying, "They're the biggest thing to hit the American music scene since Peter and Gordon!"
Since their first massive record success with "A World Without Love" Peter (Asher) and Gordon (Waller) have continued their rise, straight up, with one smash after another. So nothing could be more clearly in the stars for these two than this second album that features their newest pair of chart toppers, "I Don't Want To See You Again" and "Nobody I Know" (by Beatle writing team of Lennon & Mc Cartney), plus three great Peter and Gordon originals, "Love Me, Baby;" "Soft as the Dawn" and "Leave Me Alone."
Like so many of today's top performers, these two likable young Londoners rose to prominence while singng their way through England's new-found talent showcases, the coffee bars and folk dens that brought fame to the Beatles. And their close friends from Liverpool, Peter and Gordon have been greeted with the same kind of acclaim that started them on their way in England.
What we have heard here in America and liked so much about Peter and Gordon is their exitingly different approach to music that combines thew best in driving pop style with a fine touch of folk. Sometimes more rock: "Love Me, Baby;" "Two Little Love Birds;" "Lonely Avenue"...sometimes more "hoot:" "Willow Gared;" "Land of Oden;" "Soft as the Dawn"...but always a rhythmic, moving combination of popular song styles and a wonderful vocal blend.
A world without Peter and Gordon? Impossible!
As young students just starting their careers, Peter Asher and Gordon Waller every evening climbed a twelve-foot wall to get out of the school grounds and off to the nearby clubs where they were a hit as a singing, guitar-playing duo. This phenomenal pair from England has never stopped climbing - right to the tops of the record charts with hit after wonderful hit! This album contains some of their newest big ones - "I Don't Care What They Say," composed by Peter and Gordon themselves, "Sleepless Nights," "Tears Don't Stop," "All Shook Up," and many others, performed in the driving, exitingly different pop style that has brought them enthusiastic acclaim all over the world.
And, of course, here also is their recent new hit single, "I Go To Pieces." With a title like that, this song just had to be Peter and Gordon's most smashing success to date!
When you're talking about Peter & Gordon (and today who isn't?) you're talking about the greatest ballads with the biggest beat on today's music scene.For these two talented lads from London are currently riding high on popularity charts from Los Angeles to Liverpool with a sound that is unmistakably theirs.
In this, their fourth Capitol album, they once again show the reasons for their phenomenal success. Appropriately, Peter and Gordon composed four of the ballads: the rocking Don't Pity Me and the lonely-of-heart Hurtin' Is Lovin', the solid-rhythm I Told You So and the haunting folksong When The Black Of Your Eyes Turns To Grey. In the vocal credit department, Gordon solos on a driving Who's Lovin' You and Peter does the honors on the romantic Any Day Now. For the balance of the program, they work as a team backed by the rich, romping sounds of strings and orchestras.
So here you have all this and True Love Ways too, as Peter & Gordon go again with the ballads and the beat that have earned them countless friends and fans on both sides of the Atlantic!
This album demonstrates, once and for all, the universal appeal of superior songs coupled with outstanding performances, no matter what field either may favor. And more specifically, it's British-born Peter & Gordon's uniquely creative way of showing their high regard for the musically influential hits of Nashville, Tennessee...the place where it was all actually recorded.
But how did it all come to be? Well, England is the admitted gold mine of today's driving Liverpool sound, and Peter and Gordon are star residents of the highest hit-making standing. Likewise, Tennessee's ever-growing city of Nashvile - Music City, U.S.A. - is the firmly established capital of the most distinctly authentic American sound around. Now, if you have singing sensations from the popular "groovy" field sing the great songs of the equally popular Country Field - songs made famous by the esteemed likes of Buck Owens, Hank Williams, Faron Young, Hank Locklin, and others - you come up with a kind of music that should have just about everything working for it. And it does! For here's an intercontinental, transatlantic session that reflects a beautiful and harmonious partnership of styles and temperaments that does credit to both.
As a matter of fact, the two-worlds combination comes off so well that today's "top 40" swingers and dedicated Country and Western boosters are bound to sign a mutual admiration pact. And it's only natural that they do... as natural as the rewarding combination of P & G and C & W itself.
PETER AND GORDON are at it again! After one short year of phenomenal success (four hit albums plus a fistful a hit singles) they're currently singing up a storm that's bound to keep Britania rulling the waves for many seasons to come. Their unique version of Anglo-Saxon Sound has won happy fans on both sides of the Atlantic; fans who not only collerct their records but jam their concerts and cheer their TV appearances. In light of all this it would seem that two boys from Britain can easily find fame on American shores when their names are Peter and Gordon!
How do they do it? As far as the team is concerned all that they'll tell you is that they are both non-conformists. Their music and songs imitate no one. "In fact," they confessed recently, "we're not sure what label to pin on our music. It's a strange cocktail of sound. We're in with the rhythm-and-blues addicts, the middle-of-the-road pop buffs and the Rock fans."
Actually, their fans will tell you, it doesn't matter what you call the P&G sound. What really matters is what happens when they start performing as they do here. Woman is a throbbing tribute to all that's irresistable on the feminine side of life. Wrong From The Start, composed by Peter and Gordon, is a blues-type number rich in the soul-felt kind of sadness they express so well. The boys go their seperate ways for two memorable renditions: Gordon turns in a haunting rendition of the beautiful As Long As I Have You while Peter solos memorably on the rockin' Brown, Black And Gold. On such time-tested favorites as Green Leaves Of Summer and High Noon they prove what a great thing togetherness is.
Big sound, big beat, big pleasure, that's what you get consistently when you're hearing the sensational Sound called Peter and Gordon!
NAME: Peter Asher
BORN: England
Owns and operates a shock of wild bright red hair, a pair of round light blue eyese equipped with square-shaped shades a brain brimming with miscellaneous information, a five-foot-ten wiry-lean frame and a personality designed to charm "birds" from trees. For reasons best known to himself, he likes to gorge on snails and steak.
NAME: Gordon Waller
BORN: Scotland
Is the out-going extrovert. Wears his nut-brown hair in a long loose flop; if it were bleached blond he'd be the perfect surfer type. He's nearly six-feet high, has grey eyes speckled with yellow and a crooked smile that laughs with irresistable ease. Secret ambition: to be an actor.
From the moment A World Without Love hit the US two short years ago, Peter and Gordon have been hailed as the greatest import since the Beatles. And right through their recent success Woman they've more than lived up to that reputation. Their rocking-mellow style has, indeed, added a solid new dimension to that now-famed British Sound.
Where did it all begin? As the oft-told tale of these two schoolmates has it, P & G met at Westminster School for Boys in London where they began fooling around with guitars and voice harmonies until they were good enough for school concerts. Lock-up at the school dorm being 9 p.m., they crawled through the bushes and scaled a 12-foot spike-topped wall to work side-jobs in the local coffee houses and clubs. Paul McCartney, then courting Peter's sister Jane, began writing a song for P & G... that song was of course the above-mentioned best-seller "A World Without Love."
"On the day that we cut that first record," Gordon recalls, "our horoscopes foretold for Peter 'You have a chance to turn a hooby into a career' and for me, 'A long-standing wish will come true and past achievements will be excelled in more ways than one.'"
As these performances testify, Peter and Gordon have handsomely fulfilled that success story as it was written in the stars.
Who ever heard of a "knight in rusty armor" ("or" as the Amercians choose to spell it)? Peter and Gordon have and they've just seen to it that hundreds of millions of other people are equally familiar with that oxidized gallant's every chivalrous squeak. Yes, Knight In Rusty Armour ("our" as the British choose to spell it) is the hottest jolly-old-English musical myth since P & G boldy bore Lady Godiva to the top of the international pop charts.
But as is customary with Peter and Gordon albums, all of the songs - not just the title smash - are worth the price. In keeping with the "now" sound of Rusty, there are such chart-challenging P & G singles favorites as Stranger With a Black Dove, The Flower Lady, To Show I Love You, and I Would Buy You Presents, all of which appear in a long-playing album for the first time. And along with these are some great performances never before available in the U.S. in any form - Peter and Gordon's A Boy With Nothing, My First Day Alone, Colour Blue, Baby What You Want Me To Do and Young Girl of Sixteen - each a new musical triumph for Peter Asher and Gordon Waller, those two dashing young knights in shining armor ('armour").
They're clever, these Peter and Gordon lads. Spreading "crumpets and jam" all over the best-seller lists, they are. (While serving up a proper swingin' Sunday for Tea.)
Saluting London's Big Ben, "waitin' like an old friend," with the biggest big beat in a month a midnights. (While luving the beautiful sound of that beautiful sight, London at Night.)
They're clever, these Peter and Gordon lads. Topping hit after hit with yet anither hit - title song from the film The Jokers!
Coming up with a sensational new album full of meaningful now-style hits that are today's Peter and Gordon. Period. There's a great new slow-rock "You've Got Your Troubles," a so-big beat "Stop, Look and Listen" (pure heart with a touch of soul). Their "Goodbye My Love" might well be titled "hello sadness;" and if Sally doesn't heed their advice to "Go 'Round the Roses" then she well deserves the thorny side of life. And as for "Please Help Me," here's a Peter-and-Gordon unforgettable from the Country-side of love.
IN LONDON FOR TEA is your latest invite to partake of what they themselves (clever lads) call "our cocktail of sound."
It's a smasher!(A happy rhyme with Gordon Waller & Peter Asher!)
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