Gene Pitney; Telegraph obituary
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 06/04/2006) The Telegraph
Gene Pitney, the singer and songwriter who was found dead
yesterday in a Cardiff hotel aged 65, found success in the
1960s with a string of hits, including 24 Hours from Tulsa,
Town Without Pity and I'm Gonna be Strong; he enjoyed a
revival in 1989, reaching Number 1 in the British charts
with a reprise of his 1967 hit single Something's Gotten
Hold of My Heart, performed as a duet with Marc Almond.
As a singer, Pitney's natural state was a fever pitch of
romantic angst, his lungs and vocal chords at full throttle
as he belted out over-the-top ballads of torrid love gone
horribly wrong. Songs in which the protagonist was
unceremoniously dumped, or tortured by unrequited love,
suited his distinctive nasal tenor, with its rapid vibrato
and ability to jump three octaves. "These are not love
songs," remarked The Daily Telegraph's critic Tony Parsons
after listening to Pitney's sobbing rendition of Nobody
Needs Your Love. "These are suicide notes." Even in his
biggest hit, 24 Hours from Tulsa, in which the protagonist
finally stumbles on true love, Pitney's prevailing mood was
one of heartbroken desperation.
No situation was too calamitous for Pitney to describe in
song. Backstage (I'm Lonely) found him sobbing in his
dressing-room, oblivious to the cheers of the crowd. Two
People on Earth (1965) had him suffering the vagaries of
love during a nuclear war. "I didn't have much interest in
the content," he admitted of this unlikely piece, "so much
as the singability of the song."
By the age of 22 Pitney had sold a million records and, when
not enjoying success from his own singing career, he was
writing hits for others. He wrote Rubber Ball for Bobby Vee;
Today's Teardrops for Roy Orbison; Hello Mary Lou for Ricky
Nelson; and He's a Rebel, which became a huge hit for the
Crystals and Phil Spector in 1962. He also helped the
fledgling Rolling Stones to break into the American market
by recording the Jagger and Richards composition That Girl
Belongs to Yesterday, and played piano in the background of
several Stones' numbers.
If anything jarred about Pitney it was the incongruity
between the melodramatics of his songs and the ordinariness
of the man. The emotional roller-coaster of his music never
reflected his personal life, and throughout the 1960s he
seemed strangely impervious to the experimental excesses of
the time. He liked to joke that he was "probably one of the
few acts from the '60s who can actually remember where
they've been". But his schoolboyish, clean-cut charm won him
a huge army of faithful fans - particularly in Britain,
where he continued to tour regularly until his death.
The middle of five children of a lathe operator, Gene
Francis Alan Pitney was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on
February 17 1941 and brought up at nearby Rockville. He was
descended from a private in the Royal Marines who served in
Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.
An unusual, solitary child, instead of playing football with
his friends he preferred trapping muskrats, mink and raccoon
and taught himself to skin and stuff them, though he
admitted that he had never been much good as a taxidermist.
Though musical as a child, he showed little potential as a
performer. His first solo effort at school degenerated into
an embarrassing whimper as he succumbed to stage fright. But
in his teenage years at Rockville High School he learned to
play the guitar and piano, and formed a schoolboy band, the
unfortunately named Gene and the Genials. It was during one
of the band's gigs that he was talent-spotted by "the
proverbial fat man with a cigar", who took him to New York.
Pitney was signed with the publisher Aaron Schroeder, who
occupied an office at 1650 Broadway. Another aspiring
songwriter, Al Kooper, was in Schroeder's office when the
singer walked in to audition "wearing a salt and pepper
jacket, heavily greased down DA ("Duck's Ass") hairdo and
white bucks. Three dressing schools tied together - very
strange. The creature was quickly ushered in, sat down at
the piano and proceeded to mesmerise us for two
uninterrupted hours with his incredible songs and bizarre
voice. He was an original." According to Kooper, Schroeder
signed Pitney to a contract "so thorough it might've
included bathroom privileges".
Pitney's early efforts as a singer flopped, but in 1961 he
began a collaboration with Burt Bacharach and Hal David that
resulted in the recording of his first hit single, (I Wanna)
Love My Life Away, followed by his first big hit, Town
Without Pity. Bacharach and David co-wrote Only Love Can
Break a Heart, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance and 24 Hours
from Tulsa, all of which became huge hits for Pitney.
At about this time Pitney met the music producer Phil
Spector, who informed him, by way of introduction, that his
(Spector's) sister was in a lunatic asylum and "she's the
sane one in the family". In spite of their different
temperaments they got on well, and worked together on
Goffin-King's Every Breath I Take, an early example of
Spector's "wall of sound" productions.
From then on Pitney was rarely far from the hit parade.
Surviving the "British invasion", he had hits in 1964 with
It Hurts to be in Love and I'm Gonna Be Strong. In 1965 and
1966 he recorded country albums with George Jones and Melba
Montgomery.
Although Pitney's star had begun to wane in America by this
time, he had never been more popular in Europe -
particularly in Britain, where he had his first highly
successful tour in 1962 and had no fewer than six top ten
hits in 1965-66, including the Randy Newman numbers Nobody
Needs Your Love and Just One Smile. Pitney toured Britain
regularly for more than 40 years and his concerts became
almost ritualised affairs. An important part of the ritual
was the reading out of cards and letters from enraptured
fans - a wearisome process for the uninitiated.
Cherubic-looking into his sixties, and with an enviably
nimble physique, Pitney kept fit with a rigorous daily
exercise regime, a careful diet and regular doses of
vitamins. His only known vice was fishing, a passion he
indulged whenever he could.
After returning to the charts with the remake of Something's
Gotten Hold of My Heart in 1993, Pitney returned to the
American concert stage for the first time in almost 20 years
with a sell-out concert at the Carnegie Hall.
In 1966 Gene Pitney married his childhood sweetheart, Lynne
Gayton, after an eight-year engagement. They had three sons.
His wife and sons survive him.