Their name might not ring through the annals of the British Invasion like some of their peers. But in terms of an influential sound, The Searchers made quite the impact, especially on their 1964 single “Needles and Pins.”
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Those circling guitars would reverberate into the songs of some massive artists through the years. Here’s how The Searchers took a song that was barely a minor hit and turned it into a major one.
More Liverpudlians
A band that hailed from Liverpool, England, and emerged from their origins as a skiffle group to play beat music: Where have we heard that story before? Yes, The Searchers followed in the path of The Beatles, and they weren’t all that far behind the Fab Four when it came to their development, as they scored their first big hit in the summer of 1963.
The band took their name from a famous John Wayne western movie. One major difference between The Searchers and The Beatles was the former group, at least at the beginning of their career, didn’t write their own material.
Nonetheless, The Searchers did quite well in finding songs that worked for them, starting with the No. 1 U.K. hit “Sweets for My Sweet.” They added another big single in “Sugar and Spice” before the year was over. But for their U.S. breakthrough, they managed to find a song created by several principals who had carved out impressive names for themselves in the States.
Threading the “Needles”
The first version of “Needles and Pins” was released by Jackie DeShannon in 1963. DeShannon would later claim she had a hand in writing the song, although it was credited only to Sonny Bono and Jack Nitzsche, who were building a reputation at the time as an ace writing/producing team. (They’d go on to spearhead Cher’s pop success.)
DeShannon’s version of the song sort of saunters along with a stop-and-start rhythm that was common at the time. But it failed to make much of an impact, barely hitting the U.S. Top 100. The Searchers first heard it from a fellow British artist named Cliff Bennett, who included it in his sets.
When The Searchers recorded the song, they added the jangling guitars that would become emblematic of several of their hits. That guitar style would find its way to The Byrds and The Beatles not long after, and even years down the road, artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Tom Petty to even R.E.M. would owe a debt to it.
What is “Needles and Pins” About?
“Needles and Pins” stands out because of its interesting structure, the way the rhymes come at unexpected places to make the song sort of roll off the tongue. It’s about a guy who is watching his love with someone new and seems torn between trying to get her back and letting her be.
The title refers to the tingling feeling that’s torturing him: But still they begin, needles and pins. He seems paralyzed by indecision: Why can’t I stop and tell myself I’m wrong, I’m wrong, so wrong / Why can’t I stand up and tell myself I’m strong. He hopes that the anguish he’s feeling will one day be visited on her: She’s worse to him than me, let her go ahead / Take his love instead and one day she will see.
Sung in impassioned fashion by The Searchers’ Mike Pender, the song not only soared in Great Britain, but it also gave the band their first smash in the U.S., hitting the Top 20 in 1964. As catchy as it is influential, “Needles and Pins” still casts a wide shadow, thanks to top-notch songwriting and an indelible performance.
Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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