Coming home tonight just before dark and seeing into the living rooms and kitchens of houses where the lights had just been turned on but the curtains were open, I started thinking about this song.
I never heard any of The Hollies' music apart from their hit singles, but those from the mid-'60s still sound fresh and first-rate to me.
Good stuff. I’m not a big fan of 60s music in general but the things I do like tend to come from the mid-60’s like this one (which I don’t think I’ve heard before). I remember being very small, probably five or six, and visiting older cousins who had Dave Clark Five records, and being quite smitten with them.
That period was a real flowering. It seemed to have vast potential, which was realized by a few groups. So many of them just didn’t have the talent for more than a couple of hits that are mostly nostalgia pieces now. On the other end were the Beatles. The Hollies were a definite cut above, say, the DC5. Their songs, at least those singles, were really pretty brilliant. “Bus Stop,” “Carrie Ann,” “On A Carousel.” But as far as I know they didn’t make the successful transition to full good-all-the-way-through albums.
The first Hollies song that I remember hearing was “Long Cool Woman,” which would have been early 70’s. Didn’t like it much then, don’t like it now. But then it doesn’t sound like their mid-60’s stuff.
I disliked that one and was surprised when I found it who it was. Might as well have been a totally different bunch. May have been, in fact. As everyone knows Graham Nash quit the group in ’68 or so to be part of CSN, and I think they were one of those groups where the lineup changed a lot.
Uh, yeah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Hollies_members
So it seems that during their heyday (63-72) the core was Hicks, Clarke, and Elliott, with the rest being a revolving cast, especially after 72.
Wikipedia says that Clarke sang lead on “Long Cool Woman,” but what I didn’t know was that John Fogerty sued them for copyright infringement, citing the song’s similarity to “Green River.” They settled out of court with Fogerty getting half the proceeds.
Also interesting is that the song did not do nearly as well in the UK as it did in the US and Canada. It got to no. 2 and no.1 respectively in the latter but only made it to no. 32 in the UK.
Light On Dark Water 
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