Bizarre and overblown Gordon Lightfoot cover backed with organ-drenched rocker
Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1972
Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" has been subjected to many cover versions over the years, most (if not all) of them barely registering with the public. Gordie's original is both impossible to improve upon and too subtly intricate to allow much room for wild interpretations. Those lyrics, focussed on the crumbling state of his marriage, require a gentle touch - you can't just pack them up and move them to Rockville or the dancefloor without sounding like a very peculiar performer indeed.
Perhaps that's why Hull singer Dev Douglas - aka Sherman - took a pair of giant scissors to them in this rendition, which hacks out some of the more despairing imagery and leaves us with... well, patent nonsense to be truthful. That unsteady editing does, however, allow a bombastic seventies production to work its way in, with wah wah pedals, orchestral swells, soulful hollering, a choir of female backing vocals and the entire damn kitchen sink thrown in.
I still can't make up my mind what I actually think of it. On the one hand it's an audacious cover version, the kind of thing you can imagine Jarvis Cocker nodding approvingly at, but on the other there's a very fine line between audacious and ridiculous. Fantastically arranged this might be, but it sounds like the noise of a breakdown (somebody losing the plot, making out they're OK when they're not?) rather than the gentle acoustic contemplation of life's tragic twists and turns Lightfoot intended this to be. It's one man howling on the floor, bare chested but for a medallion, while the noise of his partner's wheelie suitcase thumps down the hallway stairs.
The flipside is a pretty mean little rocker penned by Barry Blue (here operating under his "Green" alias) which I feel less ambivalent about. Blue also produced and co-arranged the A-side, proving that he was largely responsible for the concept.
As for Dev Douglas (aka David Tenney) this was very much a final attempt at a solo career. He had four singles out on Parlophone between 1963-65 ("I Won't Miss You", "I'm Writing To The Guy Who Stole My Gal", "I Don't Know" and "What Am I Doing Here With You") before becoming a session guitarist. It's not clear what caused this 1972 comeback, although given that the early seventies were filled to the brim with sixties figures getting second chances, the question "Why not?" is probably utterly valid.
The B-side to "I Won't Miss You", the self-penned novelty effort about a Football Pools winner "I Don't Like Being Posh", was later used as a song for Horace Hare in Pinky & Perky's "Where There's Life There's Soap". Douglas also later provided some of the voices for The Firm's "Star Trekkin" later in his career. It's a fine line, kids.
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