BYE BYE LOVE
THE EVERLY BROTHERS
THE EVERLY BROTHERS
Written by: Bryant/Bryant
Recorded by: The Everly Brothers (1957)
Recorded by: The Everly Brothers (1957)
BYE BYE LOVE’ MARKED the start of
a hugely successful run of hits for
Don and Phil Everly who had been
performers in their parents’ radio country music
show since childhood and whose adolescence
happily coincided with the birth of rock ’n’ roll. In
the 1950s they were the latest – and arguably the
last – in a long line of country brother acts that
had included The Delmore Brothers, The Blue
Sky Boys and The Louvin Brothers, none of whom
ever broke into the mainstream, weighed down as
they were by their loyalty to religious or doom-
laden old-timey material that had definitely passed
its sell-by date by the early 1950s. The Everlys,
though, were something else, melding faultless
traditional harmonies with youthful concerns like
defaulting on parental curfews (‘Wake Up Little
Susie’), teen parties gone wrong (‘Poor Jenny’)
and unashamed adolescent self-pity (‘When
Will I Be Loved’). Their rich acoustic guitars
were complemented, as often as not, by Hank
Garland’s elegant electric guitar fills as well as
contributions from Chet Atkins, further reflecting
their astutely commercial blend of the old and
the new. Many of their songs were written by the
husband and wife team of Boudleaux and Felice
Bryant, talented country music writers with an
unerring ear for pop fashion. ‘Bye Bye Love’ was
the Bryant composition that launched The Everly
Brothers in the summer of 1957. Thereafter any
group wanting to sing two-part harmonies listened
to The Everlys, usually tacitly acknowledging
that while the standard was probably too high to
a hugely successful run of hits for
Don and Phil Everly who had been
performers in their parents’ radio country music
show since childhood and whose adolescence
happily coincided with the birth of rock ’n’ roll. In
the 1950s they were the latest – and arguably the
last – in a long line of country brother acts that
had included The Delmore Brothers, The Blue
Sky Boys and The Louvin Brothers, none of whom
ever broke into the mainstream, weighed down as
they were by their loyalty to religious or doom-
laden old-timey material that had definitely passed
its sell-by date by the early 1950s. The Everlys,
though, were something else, melding faultless
traditional harmonies with youthful concerns like
defaulting on parental curfews (‘Wake Up Little
Susie’), teen parties gone wrong (‘Poor Jenny’)
and unashamed adolescent self-pity (‘When
Will I Be Loved’). Their rich acoustic guitars
were complemented, as often as not, by Hank
Garland’s elegant electric guitar fills as well as
contributions from Chet Atkins, further reflecting
their astutely commercial blend of the old and
the new. Many of their songs were written by the
husband and wife team of Boudleaux and Felice
Bryant, talented country music writers with an
unerring ear for pop fashion. ‘Bye Bye Love’ was
the Bryant composition that launched The Everly
Brothers in the summer of 1957. Thereafter any
group wanting to sing two-part harmonies listened
to The Everlys, usually tacitly acknowledging
that while the standard was probably too high to
match, it certainly offered an inspiring model. ‘Bye
Bye Love’ featured in The Quarrymen’s repertoire
as did another Everly/Bryant classic ‘All I Have
To Do Is Dream’. “I’d be Phil and John would
be Don,” recalled Paul McCartney in his 1990
concert movie Get Back. On ‘Please Please Me’
The Beatles employed a harmony device that The
Everlys had made famous on ‘Cathy’s Clown’,
Paul McCartney acknowledging: “I did the trick
of remaining on the high note while the melody
cascaded down from it.” Later Simon & Garfunkel
would also identify their debt to The Everlys, first
with a tribute version of ‘Bye Bye Love’ on their
Bridge Over Troubled Water album and in 2003
inviting the semi-retired brothers to perform a few
songs during their reunion tour, Simon poignantly
introducing them by saying: ‘When we started out
we were fans of the Everly Brothers. Well, we’re
still fans.’ However, not for the first time the rise
of The Beatles had coincided with the decline
of an act they admired. In the US The Everly
Brothers started to go out of fashion in the face of
the Beatles-led sixties’ British Beat invasion. Don
Everly once commented that when Beatlemania
broke out, “Everyone told us ‘They sound like
you.’ We thought ‘Oh. What did we do?’”
Bye Love’ featured in The Quarrymen’s repertoire
as did another Everly/Bryant classic ‘All I Have
To Do Is Dream’. “I’d be Phil and John would
be Don,” recalled Paul McCartney in his 1990
concert movie Get Back. On ‘Please Please Me’
The Beatles employed a harmony device that The
Everlys had made famous on ‘Cathy’s Clown’,
Paul McCartney acknowledging: “I did the trick
of remaining on the high note while the melody
cascaded down from it.” Later Simon & Garfunkel
would also identify their debt to The Everlys, first
with a tribute version of ‘Bye Bye Love’ on their
Bridge Over Troubled Water album and in 2003
inviting the semi-retired brothers to perform a few
songs during their reunion tour, Simon poignantly
introducing them by saying: ‘When we started out
we were fans of the Everly Brothers. Well, we’re
still fans.’ However, not for the first time the rise
of The Beatles had coincided with the decline
of an act they admired. In the US The Everly
Brothers started to go out of fashion in the face of
the Beatles-led sixties’ British Beat invasion. Don
Everly once commented that when Beatlemania
broke out, “Everyone told us ‘They sound like
you.’ We thought ‘Oh. What did we do?’”
Phillip and Isaac Donald Everly were theultimate country brother duet. Their
adolescence coincided with rock ’n’roll and
so gave them a career far more successful
than all the brother duets that had gone
before. While they were riding high they in fl
uenced every act that strove for two-part
harmonies, including The Beatles.