Edison Lighthouse

We Say...

Review by Lenny Kaye

The perfect hit single transcends artist. With the emphasis on anonymous song, infectious hook, seductive arrangement and the all-important lodge in the inner cranium, the great three-minute special that is the "hit" gets you, regardless of the aesthetic baggage you bring to its listening moment.

"Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)," a 1970 worldwide smash by the Edison Lighthouse, is a grand pop song, and whenever it appears like magic over my radio, or discovered amongst my unsorted 45s or downloaded into the random jukebox of my computer, I turn it up, simply, and sing along. I don't have a choice. It short-circuits any critical faculties; it just wants to be adored, taken for a spin, make you feel good and even better when the key change takes the listening experience up a notch. I can analyze why — the internal rhymes (grows-goes-knows) and guitar figures and soaring strings — but really, who cares? It never fails to make me feel blissful. As the song sings, "I just gotta say, Hey!"

Behind the scenes, "Love Grows" is part of an outcropping of British hits of the turn of the '70s that stood in stark contrast to the weightiness of then-progressive rock. Unabashedly pop confections, singles like "My Baby Loves Lovin'" (the White Plains), "Smile a Little Smile for Me" (the Flying Machine), "United We Stand" (the Brotherhood of Man), "Beach Baby" (First Class) and "Gimmee Dat Ding" (the Pipkins) were studio creations, productions overseen by their writers and producers, performed by session musicians. Along with "Love Grows," what they have in common is the lead voice of Tony Burrows, a former member of the Ivy League and the Flowerpot Men ("Let's Go to San Francisco") who tired of the road and decided to become a studio singer. In one delirious week in 1970, he appeared on the English chart show Top of the Pops in three different bands, leading the BBC to ban him from the show lest it seem manufactured; which of course it was. That's the point.

As might be expected, the album surrounding the hit doesn't hold the proverbial candle to the incandescence that is "Love Grows." Cover versions tinged with the Beach Boys and Four Seasons and Bread and the Brooklyn Bridge, soft-rock verging on the airiness of cotton candy, Burrows off to the next session: the short attention span of the pop chart. Next!