Music / Lyrics by Graham Gouldman

“Bus Stop” Artist: The Hollies Music / Lyrics by Graham Gouldman Label: EMI / Parlophone, 1966

One of the most successful of the 1960’s British Invasion groups, the Hollies released a consistent output of melodious, infectious, vocal-heavy pop songs. The group’s signature vocals are no surprise, considering that founders Graham Nash and Allan Clarke were choirboys together at school, forming a skiffle band as teenagers and then working as an Everly Brothers- influenced duo before forming a rock band. The Hollies had a long string of hits, even after Graham Nash departed to found one of the great 1970’s “supergroups” with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. “Bus Stop” was the Hollies first American Top Ten hit, written by Graham Gouldman, later of the group 10cc (Gouldman also wrote the Yardbirds’ “Heartful of Soul,” Herman’s Hermits’ “No Milk Today,” and a number of other hits.)

Musical style notes

The British Invasion groups played an interesting role in American popular music, absorbing all kinds of influences from American rhythm and blues and then reflecting it back to us in “new clothes.” Those new clothes, both literally and figuratively, owed a lot to Britain’s own musical history, as the British Invasion groups brought England’s thousand-year old choral tradition to the table along with their brocade Carnaby Street jackets and other ruffled Restoration fashions. The injection of technically proficient male choral vocals, Anglo-Celtic modes and scales, chamber music textures, and the occasional harpsichord or recorder into the sounds of American rock and roll created a strange hybrid that was nonetheless very compelling to American audiences. While this hybridization reached its peak in the music of later British bands such as Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull, elements can be heard in a lot of earlier British groups, and the Hollies “Bus Stop” is a prime example. Listen for the combinations of acoustic and electric instruments; the virtuosic vocals; and the “modal” chord changes (meaning harmonies based on scales more common to medieval and British folk music than to rhythm and blues). The acoustic instrumental interludes feature two-voice counterpoint between two guitars, played over a repeating bass pattern – a combination straight out of Baroque music.

Musical “Road Map”

Timings Comments Lyrics 0:00-0:07 Introduction

Acoustic guitar over a pulsing, repeated-note bass figure; drum set introduces the verse. 0:07-0:35 Verse 1 Bus stop, wet day, she’s there, I say: “Please share my umbrella.”… 0:35-1:03 Bridge Every morning I would see her Waiting at the stop… Note complex harmony vocals – these are also unusual chord changes for a rock song, and more typical of folk or early music. 1:03-1:31 Verse 2 That’s the way the whole thing started; Silly, but it’s true…

1:31-1:45 Instrumental interlude

Listen to the counterpoint between the two guitars and a repeating bass pattern – classic baroque voicing! 1:45-2:14 Bridge Every morning I would see her Waiting at the stop… 2:14-2:42 Verse 1 repeats Bus stop, wet day, she’s there, I say: “Please share my umbrella.”…

…by August, she was mine. 2:42-2:53 “Baroque” style instrumental interlude; fades at 2:53