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Del Shannon: Trilogy of Escape and Despair no 2: Keep Searchin' (We'll follow the Sun)

  • unclestylus
  • Jun 20, 2018
  • 1 min read

Charles Weedon Westover aka Charlie Johnson aka Del Shannon always seems to me like a man on the run, starting out as a truck driver, changing his name and moving from state to state, Michigan, New York, California......no it's no surprise that he is once again looking over his shoulder in "Searchin' ":

"....she's been hurt so much

they treat her mean and cruel

they try to keep us far apart

there's only one thing left we can do"

only this time he AND her are on the run together, but he turns it around so that they are the personification of Romeo and Juliet style young love, standing in the face of the older generation, and ...the world.

"We gotta keep searchin, searchin'

find a place to hide

searchin', searchin'

she'll be by my side

if we gotta keep on the run

we'll follow the sun"

This may have come out three years after Runaway, but it's the spiritual sequel, down to the driving guitars, the glorious Hammond solo at the end, with the raging paranoia underlined by Del's keening treble as they fade into the sunset, doomed, we feel, to forever be searching and on the run.

This is the epitome of romantic young love, especially with the five beat heartbeat handclap overlapping with "we'll follow the son". And that organ break gets you every time.

 
 
 

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