Johnny Remember Me

"Johnny Remember Me" is a song which became a 1961 UK Singles Chart #1 hit single for John Leyton, backed by The Outlaws. It was producer Joe Meek's first #1 production. Recounting the haunting – real or imagined – of a young man by his dead lover, the song is one of the most noted of the 'death ditties' that populated the pop charts, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the early to mid-1960s. It is distinguished in particular by its eerie, echoing sound (a hallmark of Meek's production style) and by the ghostly, foreboding female wails that form its backing vocal, by Lissa Gray. The recording was arranged by Charles Blackwell. Despite the line, "the girl I loved who died a year ago" being changed to the more vague "the girl I loved and lost a year ago", the song was banned by the BBC, along with many other 'death discs', which were popular at the time.[1]

"Johnny Remember Me"
Single by John Leyton
B-side"There Must Be" (Bob Duke)
ReleasedJuly 1961 (UK)
RecordedRGM Sound: 1961
GenreRock and roll, teen tragedy song
LabelEMI Top Rank JAR577(UK)
Songwriter(s)Geoff Goddard
Producer(s)Joe Meek (R.G.M. Sound)
John Leyton singles chronology
"The Girl On The Floor Above"
(1960)		 "Johnny Remember Me"
(1961)		 "Wild Wind"
(1961)

Creation and success

The song was written and composed by Geoff Goddard who awoke inspired and sang it straight into the tape recorder which he kept by his bedside.[2]

At the time of the recording, John Leyton played a rock star called "Johnny Saint-Cyr" in the TV series Harpers West One. In an episode of the show Saint-Cyr performs the song, surrounded by adoring female fans. The television exposure caused the song to become instantly well known. After it was released, it rapidly rose to the number one spot.[3][4]

Evaluations

On Juke Box Jury in 1961 Spike Milligan dismissed it as "son of 'Ghost Riders in the Sky'", predicting, along with the others on the panel, that it would not be a hit.[5]

In 2012 the journalist Tom Ewing described the song as "the weirdest and most gripping British record to hit the top yet", with Leyton's vocal "clutching at your sleeve, desperate to tell a story of loss and madness. Meek turns the drums into phantom horsemen and fills the record's dark spaces with melodrama – a keening female voice on the chorus rounds the effect off."[6]

Covers

The song was covered in French in 1963 by Les Chats Sauvages (lead singer Mike Shannon) as "Johnny Rapelle-Toi".

Finnish versions have been recorded by many artists, including Tapio Rautavaara (1962), Olavi Virta (1962), Topi Sorsakoski (1985), and Kari Tapio (1986).[7]

The song was covered in 1983 by singer John Spencer in Dutch, titled "Johnny, vergeet me niet".[8][9]

In 1985, Bronski Beat covered the song in a medley with "I Feel Love" and "Love to Love You Baby" in a collaboration with Marc Almond. Released as a single, it reached number 3 and earned Geoff Goddard a platinum disc with sales over 300,000.[10]

It was also covered by the Swedish rocker Little Gerhard and later by Showaddywaddy. In 1983, the British psychobilly band The Meteors released a version on their album Wrecking Crew, followed a couple of years later by Dave Vanian and the Phantom Chords. It was the opening track on the 1993 album Seasons in the Sun by Spell (Rose McDowall and Boyd Rice).

The creation and success of the song plays a significant role in the 2009 film Telstar: The Joe Meek Story in which Goddard is portrayed by Tom Burke and Leyton by Callum Dixon.

In 2018, Freddie Dilevi released a cover of the song on the album Teenager's Heartbreak, edited by Family Spree Recordings.[11]

References
  1. "16 songs banned by the BBC". BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 9 August 2014.
  2. Gordon Thompson (2008), Please Please Me, p. 78, ISBN 978-0-19-533318-3
  3. Arena, The Strange Story of Joe Meek, BBC, 1991.
  4. Rice, Jo (1982). The Guinness Book of 500 Number One Hits (1st ed.). Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Superlatives Ltd. p. 60. ISBN 0-85112-250-7.
  5. Get Reading, "Sixties Blast from the past on air", Reading Post, 8 January 2008.
  6. Tom Ewing, "The best No 1 records: John Leyton – Johnny, Remember Me1961: This Gothic romance tells a story of loss and madness", The Guardian, 31 May 2012
  7. Äänitearkisto: Hakutulos kappaleelle Johnny mua muistathan (in Finnish) Retrieved 14 June 2018
  8. Discogs: John Spencer – Johnny, Vergeet Me Niet
  9. TopPop performance of John Spencer's Johnny, vergeet me niet on YouTube
  10. Obituary - Geoff Goddard, 25 May 2000, The Guardian. Retrieved on 16 June 2009.
  11. "Johnny Remember Me, by Freddie Dilevi". Freddie Dilevi. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
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