Johnny Remember Me on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
"Johnny Remember Me" is a song which became a 1961
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...
#1 hit single for
John Leyton
John Dudley Leyton (born 17 February 1936) is an English actor and singer. As a singer he is best known for his hit song "Johnny Remember Me" (written by Geoff Goddard and produced by Joe Meek), which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart ...
, backed by
The Outlaws. It was producer
Joe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 – 3 February 1967) was an English record producer, sound engineer and songwriter who pioneered space age and experimental pop music. He also assisted in the development of recording practices like over ...
's first #1 production. Recounting the haunting – real or imagined – of a young man by his dead lover, the song is one of the most noted of the '
death ditties' that populated the pop charts, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the early to mid-1960s. It is distinguished in particular by its eerie, echoing sound (a hallmark of Meek's production style) and by the ghostly, foreboding female wails that form its backing vocal, by Lissa Gray. The recording was arranged by
Charles Blackwell. Despite the line, "the girl I loved who died a year ago" being changed to the more vague "the girl I loved and lost a year ago", the song was banned by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, along with many other 'death discs', which were popular at the time.
Creation and success
The song was written and composed by
Geoff Goddard
Geoffrey Goddard (19 November 1937 – 15 May 2000) was an English songwriter, singer and instrumentalist. Working for Joe Meek in the early 1960s, he wrote songs for Heinz, Mike Berry, Gerry Temple, The Tornados, Kenny Hollywood, The Outlaws ...
who awoke inspired and sang it straight into the
tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
which he kept by his bedside.
At the time of the recording, John Leyton played a rock star called "Johnny Saint-Cyr" in the TV series ''
Harpers West One
''Harpers West One'' was an ATV television drama series about a fictional department store, Harpers, in the West 1 district of London.
The show was created by John Whitney and Geoffrey Bellman and ran in one-hour episodes from 1961 to 1963. I ...
''. In an episode of the show Saint-Cyr performs the song, surrounded by adoring female fans. The television exposure caused the song to become instantly well known. After it was released, it rapidly rose to the number one spot.
Evaluations
On
Juke Box Jury
''Juke Box Jury'' was a music panel show which ran on BBC Television between 1 June 1959 and 27 December 1967. The programme was based on the American show '' Jukebox Jury'', itself an offshoot of a long-running radio series. The American serie ...
in 1961
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish actor, comedian, writer, musician, poet, and playwright. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Raj, British Colonial India, where h ...
dismissed it as "son of '
Ghost Riders in the Sky
"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend" is a cowboy-styled country/western song written in 1948 by American songwriter, film and television actor Stan Jones.
A number of versions were crossover hits on the pop charts in 1949, the most ...
'", predicting, along with the others on the panel, that it would not be a hit.
In 2012 the journalist Tom Ewing described the song as "the weirdest and most gripping British record to hit the top yet", with Leyton's vocal "clutching at your sleeve, desperate to tell a story of loss and madness. Meek turns the drums into phantom horsemen and fills the record's dark spaces with melodrama – a keening female voice on the chorus rounds the effect off."
Covers
The song was covered in French in 1963 by
Les Chats Sauvages
Les Chats Sauvages (The Wild Cats) was a French rock and roll band, that was formed in 1961. Together with Les Chaussettes Noires, they were among the first outfits to perform rock and roll music in France.
Career
Les Chats Sauvages was originall ...
(lead singer Mike Shannon) as "Johnny Rapelle-Toi".
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
versions have been recorded by many artists, including
Tapio Rautavaara
Kaj Tapio Rautavaara (8 March 1915 – 25 September 1979) was a Finnish singer (bass-baritone), athlete and film actor.
Life Early years
Tapio Rautavaara was born in the municipality of Pirkkala (now Nokia), a suburb of the industrial city o ...
(1962),
Olavi Virta
Olavi Virta (originally to 1926 Oskari Olavi Ilmén) (27 February 1915 in Sysmä, Grand Duchy of Finland – 14 July 1972 in Pispala, Tampere, Finland) was a Finnish singer, acclaimed during his time as the "King" of Finnish tango. Between 1939 a ...
(1962),
Topi Sorsakoski
Pekka Erkki Juhani Tammilehto (27 October 1952 – 13 August 2011), better known by his stage name Topi Sorsakoski, was a Finnish singer. His father was Finnish tango singer Yrjö Johannes "Tapio" Tammilehto.
Career
Sorsakoski started his care ...
(1985), and
Kari Tapio
Kari Tapani Jalkanen (22 November 1945 – 7 December 2010), better known by his stage name Kari Tapio, was a Finnish schlager and country & western singer. During his career, he was one of the most popular singers in Finland for decades; having ...
(1986).
The song was covered in 1983 by singer
John Spencer in Dutch, titled "Johnny, vergeet me niet".
In 1985,
Bronski Beat
Bronski Beat were a British synthpop trio which achieved success in the mid-1980s, particularly with the 1984 chart hit "Smalltown Boy", from their debut album '' The Age of Consent''. "Smalltown Boy" was their only US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 s ...
covered the song in a medley with "
I Feel Love
"I Feel Love" is a song by American singer and songwriter Donna Summer. Produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, it was recorded for Summer's fifth studio album, ''I Remember Yesterday'' (1977). The album concept was to have ...
" and "
Love to Love You Baby" in a collaboration with
Marc Almond
Peter Mark Sinclair "Marc" Almond, (born 9 July 1957) is an English singer. Almond first began performing and recording in the synthpop/ new wave duo Soft Cell where he became known for his distinctive soulful voice and androgynous image. He ...
. Released as a single, it reached number 3 in the UK chart and earned Geoff Goddard a
platinum disc
Music recording certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped, sold, or streamed a certain number of units. The threshold quantity varies by type (such as album, single, music video) and by nation or territory (see ...
with sales over 300,000.
It was also covered by the Swedish rocker
Little Gerhard
Little Gerhard, (born ''Karl-Gerhard Lundkvist'', 17 May 1934) is a Swedish singer and rock musician. He had big music hits between 1958 and the mid-60s, with songs like "Buona Sera", "What You've Done to Me" and "Den siste mohikanen".
Biography ...
and later by
Showaddywaddy
Showaddywaddy are a rock and roll group from Leicester, England. They specialise in revivals of hit songs from the 1950s and early 1960s, while also issuing original material. Showaddywaddy spent 209 weeks on the UK Singles Chart, and had 10 T ...
. In 1983, the British psychobilly band
The Meteors
The Meteors are an English psychobilly band formed in 1980. Originally from London, England, they are often credited with giving the psychobilly subgenre — which fuses punk rock with rockabilly — its distinctive sound and style.
About.co ...
released a version on their album ''Wrecking Crew'', followed a couple of years later by
Dave Vanian and the Phantom Chords
Dave Vanian and the Phantom Chords (a.k.a. (the) Phantom Chords) were a 1990s British rock band, featuring The Damned's Dave Vanian on vocals. The band's style is a fusion of rockabilly and gothic rock, which has been classified as gothabill ...
. It was the opening track on the 1993 album ''Seasons in the Sun'' by Spell (
Rose McDowall
Rose McDowall (née Porter; born 21 October 1959) is a Scottish musician, forming Strawberry Switchblade with Jill Bryson in 1981.
History
McDowall was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1959. Her first venture into music was in the Poems, an art-pun ...
and
Boyd Rice
Boyd Blake Rice (born December 16, 1956) is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s, archivist, actor, photographer, author, member of the ''Partridge Family Temple'' religious group, co-founder of ...
).
The creation and success of the song plays a significant role in the 2009 film ''
Telstar: The Joe Meek Story'' in which Goddard is portrayed by
Tom Burke and Leyton by
Callum Dixon
Callum Dixon is an English actor.
Career
Theatre
Dixon's work in theatre includes: ''Market Boy'', '' Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads'', ''Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead'', ''The Wind in the Willows'', '' The Day I Stood Still'', '' Somewhe ...
In 2018, Freddie Dilevi released a cover of the song on the album ''Teenager's Heartbreak'', edited by Family Spree Recordings.
References
{{authority control
1961 singles
UK Singles Chart number-one singles
Song recordings produced by Joe Meek
Songs written by Geoff Goddard
Teenage tragedy songs
Songs about ghosts
1961 songs
EMI Records singles
Songs banned by the BBC