Being A Teenager In The 1950s Was Hard. The Everly Brothers Understood
The last weeks of this stifling August have offered a profound lesson about creativity, music history and the magic of being part of something larger than yourself. The deaths of Tom T. Hall, Charlie Watts and Don Everly prompted reminiscences about these key popular music players — one a songwriter who helped invent the late-20th-century Nashville point of view; one the drummer behind one of the central bands of the classic rock era; and one whose close harmonies and rhythm guitar interplay with his brother set the tone for rock and roll itself. The loss of Don Everly (who died at age 79 last Saturday), felt particularly poignant, signaling the near- if not total demise of the cohort that made what once felt like a teenage trend into an anchorage. Guitarists praised Everly's rhythmic innovations on rockers like "Wake Up Little Susie"; songwriters marveled at the heartrending insight in ballads like "It's Just Too Much." Always, though, the tributes returned to the main point: the collaboration between Don and his brother Phil, who'd died in 2013. Their harmonies and telepathically sympathetic work in the studio remains rock's greatest example of two hearts beating as one.
I grew up listening to the Everly Brothers' hits, as did many people bent on absorbing the history behind rock and soul — Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, for example, who recorded an Everly's tribute record in 2013, or Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, whose vocal blend reflects that of the siblings. Yet only in writing my 2017 did I come to realize the crucial role the Everlys played in defining not only the sound, but the spirit, of early rock and roll. Tracing the ways in which this music spoke
