Notwithstanding the entirely acceptable omission of 1981's rather desperate Stars-on-45-style retro-medley "Holliedaze," this rather definitive
Greatest Hits collection contains every single Hollies song that ever tickled the mass fancy of record buyers anywhere in the world, ever. Even the sleeve notes dispense with the scantest of biographical detail to present a veritable almanac of impressive global chart statistics, including mentions of #1 singles in Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Holland, South Africa, Singapore, Ireland, and Switzerland, as well as the UK. Of course, the Hollies were nothing if not adaptable. The grinning beat pop and "pap pap she waddy wops" of "Stay" through to the folky overtures of "I've Got a Way of My Own" (like an estrogen-free version of the Mamas and the Papas) were obviously marvelous and yet entirely generic responses to the overriding cultural dominance of the Beatles and Bob Dylan. But much the same thing can be said for the majority of their peers.
Still, the 1960s were a golden age for the Hollies and to hear the Graham Gouldman-penned "Bus Stop", "Carrie Anne" (part Kinks, part Beach Boys, part calypso), or the sweet-shop bubblegum of "Jennifer Eccles" is to be reacquainted with a sunny lost world of short skirts, Mini Coopers, and policemen on bicycles. Even the knee-jerk cod-psychedelia of "King Midas in Reverse"--a full-on trumpets-blaring, cello-charging microcosm of
Revolver and
Sgt. Pepper-isms--deserves revisionist plaudits. There is one newly recorded track on the album (featuring Allan Clarke's replacement, the former Move vocalist Carl Wayne) called "How Do I Survive". Regrettably, it's a disco-cum-AOR rock thing that sounds like the result of an unfortunate liaison between James Ingram and Foreigner. Still, when faced with the spine-tingling, classic gold timelessness of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" and "The Air That I Breathe," it would matter not one jot if the bonus track was a three-part harmony rendition of a page out of the telephone directory.
--Kevin Maidment
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