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THE VENTURES & THE SHADOWS:
WALK, DON'T RUN, APACHE AND BEYOND

[20] RUNAWAY



RUNAWAY
(Del Shannon/ Max Crook)
Ventures: August 1963 LP Let’s Go! (US No.30)
Shadows: September 1982 LP Live At Abbey Road (UK No.24)

The first Ventures brush with this fabulous hit from the late, great Del Shannon took the form of a full-blooded instrumental — thoroughly enjoyable with its nice fruity guitar sound and all-round ultra-slick performance, though The Hunters’ marvellously echo-laden blast from February 1962 comes top of my own list here. The composition was adopted in due course by The Ventures as a stage vocal. Now whereas Don Wilson plays it by the book and sings like Don Wilson, The Shadows on their Live At Abbey Road LP sang it in the style of Marvin Welch & Farrar, slowing the pace and so stripping away all momentum; worse still, they treated a quintessentially angst-ridden song to an overpowering dose of mellifluous harmonies, not exactly in lullaby territory but perilously close, opening up the prospect of a whole new subgenre, Chilling Out With Del-Boy: ‘Cry Myself Soothingly To Sleep’, ‘I Go Composedly To Pieces’ …



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