There is nothing obscure about the 60s. Everything has been discovered and rediscovered, remastered, reevaluated and repackaged. But all the same. I have been thinking about Honeybus quite a lot lately. I have been thinking about Peter Dello and Colin Hare and Ray Cane and some of the greatest and, well, underappreciated songs of the 60s. I have been thinking, too, about how I got to know them in the first place. I first heard Honeybus on an old, crackling 10-inch vinyl record, and the friend from Northern England who played them to me introduced the song by simply saying: "This is a classic single from the 60s".
The song was "(Do I Figure) In Your Life" and it just sounded God-like. The strings, the subtle yet soaring melody, the vocal delivery that made me swoon with delight... The way Pete Dello intones 'wild people' - all these years later, I still can't get over it.
What I discovered later was that there was more. In late 60s, the band came up with a string of classic but blatantly unfashionable singles that rival anything else released at the time. In addition to the aforementioned "(Do I Figure) In Your Life", Pete Dello and company wrote such aural delights as "I Can't Let Maggie Go" (surely one of the most infectious melodies ever written), "She Sold Blackpool Rock" (those strings are criminally gorgeous) and "Would You Believe" (B-side, but what a tune).
Honeybus was a silly name, and there was nothing about the band's aesthetics to suggest popularity. By 1967, their singles sounded outdated and the band showed little in terms of creative evolution. What they had in spades, though, was the ability to pen a timeless tune. Peter Dello was the primary songwriter but, as it often happened in the 60s (think of Chris Hillman, for instance), it did not take long for other band members to discover their dormant song-crafting talents. In fact, Peter Dello was not even involved in writing what ended up being the band's only full-length LP, Story (★★★★). The album was all Colin Hare and Ray Cane, and there was no reason for it to be as good as it was. However, effortless pop songs like "He Was Columbus", "How Long", "She's Out There" and "I Remember Caroline" are enough to place Story alongside baroque pop classics like Walk Away Renée / Pretty Ballerina.
But, again, there was more. In 1971, both Peter Dello and Colin Hare released solo albums. And while Colin's March Hare (★★★½) was patchy countryfied folk pop with a few knockout ballads ("Bloodshot Eyes", "Find Me"), it is Peter Dello's Into Your Ears (★★★★½) that remains an exquisite, low-key masterpiece of baroque-styled pop. Sometimes upbeat, sometimes less so - but always infused with that swoonsome optimism of Dello's voice. Whimsical and effortless, Into Your Ears would appear light were it not for the songwriting depth that can be found everywhere on the album, from the astonishing harpsichord-driven "On A Time Said Sylvie" to the seemingly throwaway-ish putdown of music industry titled "Good Song".
And still there was more, for in 1972 there was supposed to be the second LP called Recital (★★★★). Despite the survival of promo copies, the album had never been officially released until 2018. Dominated by songs by Ray Cane and Peter Dello (classics include the toe-tapping "Baroque 'n' Roll Star", the plaintive "Be Thou By My Side" and the strings-laden "For You"), Recital would not have made them famous. Nobody needed that album in the year of Roxy Music and David Bowie. But hearing it now, 50 years later, is a joyous experience, simply because enough time has passed for us to abandon historical contexts and take this music for it was: timeless and utterly beautiful.
Honeybus disbanded soon afterwards, and a few half-hearted reunions notwithstanding, there has been no new material. Colin Hare is still releasing records today, and Peter Dello is teaching music somewhere in England. We are left, however, with a striking body of work (comprehensively covered by the compilation She Flies Like A Bird: The Anthology) that keeps yielding undiscovered gems. "Françoise", "Caterina", "Texas Gold"... These are just some of the songs that, in a parallel universe, could have been released on 10-inch vinyl so that years later, in a house in Northern England, my friend could introduce them with the words that I once so longed to hear: "This is a classic single from the 60s".
