Billy Fury - Will The Real Man Please Stand Up/ At This Stage

 

First release on Fury's own brand label

Label: Fury

Year of Release: 1972

Billy Fury's career wasn't to be sniffed at. He was one of the few British artists to have a large audience both prior to and after the beat boom, with a run of hits from 1959 right through to the mid-sixties. He was also (in common with Cliff Richard) a by-word in the business for "professionalism" - his rebellious sounding name may have whiffed of slashed cinema seats and disaffection to the teens buying his discs, but while his early shows were deemed "sexually suggestive" and had to be toned down, he toured diligently and was a smart and slick guest on any entertainment show who booked him. 

By 1966, however, his record sales began to wane, and the following year saw him disappear from the charts entirely. From that point, there's a string of Billy Fury singles from "Hurtin' Is Loving" right through to "Paradise Alley" in 1970 which were utterly ignored outside his hardcore fanbase. It wasn't for want of trying to keep up with the times. 1968's enjoyable "Silly Boy Blue" was a cover of a David Bowie track (and is now supremely collectible as a result) and 1970's equally desirable "Why Are You Leaving?" has a slightly stoned countrified feel in keeping with many of the more credible pop discs of the era. 

His most progressive act during this period was to cover Jimmy Campbell of 23rd Turnoff's dark and warped adolescent lullaby "In My Room", about a rejected and troubled man alone in his bedroom surrounded by pictures of "Hitler, John and Paul"; by this point, Fury wasn't afraid to wrap even his most delicate work in risky barbed wire sentiments.

All the progression failed to pay off, though, and as "proper" record labels began to get increasingly twitchy about his lack of current success, his last big gesture was to launch his own label through a deal with the budget arm Avenue. In the event, this was the only Billy Fury disc pressed up on it, and the other four catalogue numbers were generously given over to Jimmy Campbell's new group Rockin' Horse (appearing under the pseudonym Atlantis) a pre-Alvin Stardust Shane Fenton (whose track "The Fly" under the name Jo Jo Ellis is seriously odd in a good way) and fellow sixties exile Johnny Hackett. None were successes and the project was terminated after catalogue number FY305, Fenton's flop waxing "Eastern Seaboard". 

A few of these singles are little gems, though, and "Will The Real Man Please Stand Up" is one of them. It's determined seventies pop, the kind Elton John and Bernie Taupin could have written and recorded (indeed, Taupin adored Billy Fury, as evidenced on the 1987 tribute track of the same name). It doesn't sound like a hit, but it's a credible and creditable performance which sounds as if it's in the perfect pair of hands. The flipside "At This Stage" also has vague hints towards the kind of angst referenced in "In My Room".

Shortly after this venture failed, Fury decided to retreat slightly from the entertainment world, but it didn't last for long before he was coaxed back for the film "That'll Be The Day". From that point bad luck and health dogged his life, and he passed away from heart problems at the unjustly early age of 42 in 1983, shortly after having signed a new deal with Polydor. That contract did see a slight revival of interest in his work, with all three of his eighties singles managing modest Top 75 placings, but poor health prevented him from touring and promoting the work properly. 

His death occurring only a few years after John Lennon's led to inevitable comparisons and comments about the pair's Liverpool roots and how much Lennon had admired his work. While the deaths of sixties stars feel crushingly common in the present day, at the time it was a shocking newsflash. Back then, British rock and roll stars were healthy establishment figures in their forties, wheeled out for chat show appearances and profitable revival tours, not taken away in emergency ambulances. Fury's exit shook up a nation which wasn't yet used to these departures. In time, of course, we would become much more numb to them.

If the previews below aren't working properly, please go right to the source.