Bye Bye Love

 

Country acts aren't generally referred to as cool kats, so maybe that's why brothers (in order of appearance in the above photograph and not age or importance) Phil and Don Everly did the next best hip thing and segued into rock 'n' roll. Even by 1950s standards, their brand of rock was on the soft side, but that didn't make it any less listenable, and the two handsome siblings had a string of hits including "Bye Bye Love", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and the shotgun wedding lament "Wake Up, Little Suzie." Then came the '60s, where their signature harmonizing is said to have influenced three of the most successful pop acts of the era: The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Simon and Garfunkel. Unfortunately, the brothers themselves met with less success as the decade wore on. Drug and alcohol abuse as well as the fact that Phil and Don got kind sick of each other after spending so many years in the recording studio and on the road together also took its toll. In 1973, they decided to perform one last time at Knott's Berry Farm amusement park in California's Orange County. I don't know why they picked that place to end their careers, but according to French academic Caroline Rolland-Diamond, who has apparently taken a scholarly interest in how we Americans spend our leisure time, in the late 1960s and early '70s, Knott's Berry Farm  "...appealed to conservative Americans, young and old, because the idealized representation of a past devoid of social and racial tensions that it offered stood in sharp contrast with the political and social upheavals affecting California since the Free Speech Movement erupted at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964." Be that as it may, when Don showed up intoxicated, Phil (himself hardly a choir boy) smashed his guitar on stage and stormed off, leaving his older brother to finish the show by himself. While I doubt it topped what happened at Berkeley in '64, it must have been shocking to all those young and old conservative Americans in the audience expecting an idealized representation. With the exception of a few words exchanged at their father's funeral, the two brothers didn't talk to each other for a whole ten years. Meanwhile, their solo careers went nowhere. They finally reunited at London's Royal Albert Hall, and a short time afterwards released the Paul McCartney-penned "On the Wings of a Nightingale", a mild hit. The two remained a popular touring attraction right up to Phil's death in 2014 at age 74. As for Don, he died just yesterday at age 84.