The Fool Over the Hill

That time Eddie Fisher covered The Beatles

Whenever I’m digging for old records, it’s not uncommon to come across 45s whose labels have been written on by their previous owner. In collectors’ circles, writing on the label (or “WOL” as it’s known) lessens a record’s value, but it doesn’t bother me at all; on the contrary, it gives me a feeling of connection with whomever once loved the record so much that they felt compelled to write their initials on it (and sometimes their full name and address). I try to imagine where they bought the single, what junior high or high school parties they took it to (maybe stacked with 15-20 others in one of those old cylindrical plastic carrying cases), and what was going through their mind while they listened to it in their bedroom. And every once in awhile, I’ll find out exactly what they thought about it.

This past Saturday, I pulled the above 45 out of a dusty cardboard box at Rocket Number Nine Records in Kingston, my favorite Hudson Valley vinyl emporium. I generally pass on all things Eddie Fisher — but once I saw the title and songwriting credits, I knew in an instant that it would be coming home with me.

Ever since I first picked up Penny Stallings’ screamingly funny Rock ‘N’ Roll Confidential back in 1985, I have been fascinated by that period in the late 1960s where older artists (or at least artists who were old enough to know better) tried to muscle in on the Great Psychedelic Trip. It’s a period that Rhino’s Golden Throats series mined to much hilarity in the late ‘80s, rescuing William Shatner’s spoken-word version of the Bob Dylan/Byrds classic “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Mel Torme’s smooth-crooned rendition of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” from obscurity, and my antennae are always up for items of this nature. While rarely genuinely good (though I quite liked the 45 I once unearthed of Bud Shank doing “I Am the Walrus”), they’re nonetheless usually good for a laugh and a stimulating round of discussion along the lines of “What the hell were they thinking?”

The previous owner of this copy of Eddie Fisher’s 1968 Beatles cover clearly saw no humor — or artistic merit — at all in the matter. “BAD,” they wrote in all caps on the label, offering what the great English horror writer M.R. James would have called a warning to the curious. (Given that this is a promo copy, this three-letter review may well have been the work of a radio station’s program director.) But like a protagonist in one of James’s short stories, I let my curiosity get the better of me. And you know what? That reviewer wasn’t wrong…

Eddie Fisher was 39 years old when he cut this Beatles track in late 1967, which in the pop cultural parameters of the day made him about 75. Once one of the most popular singers in America — from 1950 to 1956, he racked up 25 US Top 10 pop hits, including four Number Ones — Fisher committed career suicide in 1959 when he left his wife Debbie Reynolds and their two small children (one of whom, Carrie, later became a star in her own right) to shack up with Elizabeth Taylor. NBC canceled his TV show over the scandal, RCA dropped him for a time from their label; and even after the outrage died down (and even after Taylor left him for Richard Burton), Fisher was never able to regain anything close to his former commercial momentum.

According to Discogs, “The Fool On the Hill” was the last single of his that RCA ever released, so the choice of the track — which had only recently been released in the US by The Beatles on their Magical Mystery Tour LP — was probably a record company gambit to wring a few more bucks from the soggy carcass of Fisher’s career before kicking it to the curb once and for all. Whatever the case, they certainly did him no favors by pairing him with Dick Reynolds; a conductor and arranger best known for his work with The Four Freshman, Reynolds clearly had no idea of what to do with the material, turning Paul McCartney’s wistful, lightly psychedelic tune into a grim march. Fisher, who by all accounts was completely out of touch with that “the kids” were into at this point, may not have even known that this was a Beatles song until he was given it to sing; despite the positive Billboard review below, his strident enunciation and wide-of-the-beat phrasing sound less to me like a “sensitive” personal reinterpretation of the song than the work of someone who has never actually heard the original recording.

And yet… I have to admit that I find Fisher’s rendition of “The Fool On the Hill” oddly charming, at least in a “square TV variety show” kind of way. Though totally out of his depth, Fisher’s still totally going for it like the old showbiz pro that he is. Sure, his vocals on the “round and round” sections sound not unlike the moans of a man undergoing an overly rigorous prostate exam, but you’ve gotta at least give the guy props for trying.

[EDIT: Props to my pal Darian Sahanaja for reminding me that producer Al Schmitt also produced After Bathing at Baxter’s and Crown of Creation for The Jefferson Airplane. Fisher would have been recorded this single with him just about a month after the release of the former and about another month before work began on the latter. Schmitt had previously produced several other singles for Fisher, and his other 1967 productions included Hugo Montenegro, Peter Nero and Glenn Yarbrough, so he was clearly as comfortable working in the “straight” world as he was wrangling the psychedelic chaos of an Airplane session.]

The flip side of the single is a cover of Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny,” which Fisher sounds much more comfortable singing - not to mention more familiar with - though Ralph Burns’ arrangement of the song is oddly dreary for its subject matter. (You’ll have to trust me on this, as no clip of this seems to exist on YouTube.)

It’s a perfectly competent performance all around, one which the reviewer liked enough to scrawl “OK” on the label. But I’ll probably never listen to it again, because it’s completely unremarkable on every level. After all, the “OK” side of town has never held much interest for me; take me to the “BAD” side every time.

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