Every wondered where the songs Leader of the Pack, We Gotta Get Out of This Place, River Deep Mountain High, The Locomotion and many more came from? Adelaide’s own award- winning performers Amelia Ryan, Michaele Burger and Michael Griffen take us on a voyage of songs from The Brill Building, a hit factory in the heart of New York’s music scene.
Songwriters such as Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond, Phil Spector, Sonny Bono and Paul Simon all wrote songs for other people in The Brill Building before becoming famous in their own right. The Brill was indeed a factory, the young songwriters, writing in cubicles, churning out songs for other people to record day after day.
The singers came on stage to the band playing the tune On Broadway, before we were introduced to the music of The Brill Building. It all started with Tin Pan Alley music in the 1940’s before the changing of music in the 1950’s with the introduction of records. How Much Is That Doggie in The Window and others were performed in a medley before the Rock N Roll songs started, with a perfect rendition of Rock Around the Clock, complete with amazing sax playing.
Bobby Darin’s Splish Splash was the first hit from the building in 1958, with many more to come, including Stupid Cupid, Oh Carol, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, all played by the band.
With the 1950’s moving to the 1960’s the girls did a quick costume change from the 50’s red velvet dresses to the 60’s sparkling silver miniskirts. The hits keep coming in Locomotion, Hanky Panky, Be My Baby and many, many more. As hits tended to be two minutes or less in those days you can pack a lot of songs into this show.
The performance of band and singers was excellent, doing true renditions of the songs, as well as filling us in with stories about the writers and their songs. During Leader of the Pack, the girls had a gentleman in the audience doing the motorcycle sounds in the song, much to his embarrassment. Da Doo Ron Ron bought the sax player front and centre to a dazzling solo.
For seven years The Brill Building was the epicentre of rock music. By 1965 it was all over.
The final encore consisted of a soulful You Lost That Loving Feeling, a highly moving (You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman and a very powerful rendition of River Deep Mountain High.
In an industry that was dominated by males in the 50’s/60’s (and still is to a certain degree today), The Brill gave females their first steps into rock ‘N’n roll, as singers and as songwriters. It could be said Taylor Swift owes a lot to these ladies.
Simply Brill is a show for anyone aged 8 to 80 interested in music. It is worth seeing to check out the fascinating world of rock before The Beatles came along.