HISTORY:
The Aerovons'
story sounds like a fairytale, and in most respects it was a fairytale
come true, except for the anticlimactic and grim ending. It was probably
the dream of millions of teenage American boys to meet the Beatles and record at Abbey Road Studios in the late '60s. The Aerovons,
unlike virtually every other such band, did so. Personnel instability
intervened, however, and the group only got to issue a couple of rare
singles before splitting up. They did record an entire album of
promising material heavily influenced by the late-'60s Beatles, which finally saw release on CD in 2003.
The Aerovons
were formed in 1966 in St. Louis, and in late 1967, guitarist/pianist
Tom Hartman recorded a demo of his composition "A World of You" at the
instigation of his mother. The demo was heard by a representative of
Capitol Records, and though he offered the group a session in Los
Angeles, Hartman's mother told him the band wanted to record in London.
In early 1968, the still-young Aerovons
-- Hartman was 16 -- flew to London to play their demo for EMI. EMI was
impressed enough to sign them when Hartman and his mother returned to
London in August 1968, and the Aerovons even got another offer at the
time with Decca. The whole band came back to London in March 1969 to
record.
Over the next few months the group cut about an
album's worth of material at Abbey Road. Unsurprisingly considering the
surroundings, and considering that the Beatles were the group's heroes anyway, the material sounded much like the Beatles did circa 1967-1969, though on the lighter side of what the Beatles
themselves came up with. More surprisingly, the album was produced by
Hartman himself, who also wrote most of the songs laid down in the
studio. Though the sessions were quite well-produced and well-arranged,
with some of the settings also reminiscent of the late-'60s Bee Gees or (more distantly) Hollies,
the songs were still too derivative to have stood much chance of making
a big mark had everything been issued at the time.
In a perfect world, perhaps such a young group
should have been given some more time to hone a more original sound. It
was and is an imperfect world, however, and before an album could even
be released, fate intervened to end the Aerovons' brief career. The
sessions had themselves been done as a three-piece, although they'd come
over to London as a quartet, when guitarist Phil Edholm
left before recording began. Shortly after returning to St. Louis in
mid-1969, drummer Mike Lombardo left. EMI, concerned about the personnel
shifts, canceled the album, and the band split up shortly afterward,
though a couple of rare singles were issued on Parlophone in 1969.
Hartman did a single for Bell in 1970 before abandoning the record
business to go to college, though he later got into writing music for
television, radio, and film. The Aerovons'
canceled album was issued on CD by RPM in 2003, with both tracks from a
non-LP single, a demo, and an unreleased song added as bonus cuts.
THE ALBUM:
The dozen songs that would have been on the Aerovons' album had it come out (though a couple of the songs did come out on a 1969 single) form the core of this release, Resurrection,the
U.K. bonus edition also tacks on four bonus tracks. The Aerovons'
unusual story -- a band from the American Midwest recording in Abbey
Road in 1969, led and produced by their 17-year-old singer-songwriter --
might be the main reason there was interest in excavating these
sessions, but this CD is not a mere curio. It's quite respectable
late-'60s Beatles-style
pop/rock, if a little green around the edges and pretty derivative. In
fact, in a couple of spots it's downright imitative, with "Say Georgia"
taking licks from "Oh! Darling," and "Resurrection" itself lifting from
"Across the Universe." (Neither of those songs had yet been released by the Beatles
at the time of the sessions, but the group heard them by virtue of
working in Abbey Road.) Fortunately, those are the only blatant cops,
though Beatles comparisons abound throughout, particularly in the Paul McCartney-esque piano-playing. Songs like "With Her" and "The Years" recall the acoustic outings of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney on The White Album, while "Bessie Goodheart" uses McCartney's more vaudevillian Sgt. Pepper-era
outings as an obvious launching pad, and "Something of Yours" brings to
mind "Michelle." To this list you could also add the very Lennon-esque echo on the vocal of "The Children." The Aerovons leaned more toward wistful and sadness-tinged moods than the Beatles
did, though. One of the best tracks, "World of You," brings out that
quality very well, recalling the better late-'60s orchestrated Bee Gees opuses. The bonus tracks include both sides of a non-LP 1969 single ("The Train," their poppiest number, which echoes both the Hollies and the Bee Gees), the outtake "Here" (very much like McCartney's piano ballads), and a demo of "World of You." (Richie Unterberger allmusic.com)
If you love the Beatles mid- to late 60's than you maybe will love this (like me) or you will hate it because you think this is nothing more than a rip-off or plagiarism. But this is really well done and the songs themself are quite good. I like this record very much. Hope you like it and have fun
Frank
New link
Originally released in 2014, the debut long player
from the Derbyshire-based rockers is an unapologetic blast of
earworm-heavy, modern rock/punk-pop in a neo-glam wrapper, and as
cocksure as it is calculated. Imagine a Slade-crazed, real life version of Russell Brand's Infant Sorrow (the band from Get Him to the Greek) fronted by a man who delivers each and every "R" with a brazen alveolar trill in a voice that's an amalgam of Freddie Mercury, Dee Snider, Noddy Holder, and David Johansen. Everybody Wants
is not a subtle album. It's all pomp, circumstance, bluster, and nasty,
sugary goodness; an 11-track set (13 on the 2016 U.S. reissue) of
hook-laden, radio-ready party songs that embrace both sleaze and cheese.
Luke Spiller is a born frontman. He's got the Jagger swagger, but where Mick's antics invoked the American south, Spiller is a purely East Midlands creation, and like the Darkness' Justin Hawkins,
his flamboyant English delivery will likely be the barometer listeners
use to gauge the duration of their stay. 
