Sadly, a page of music has turned. American rock and country pioneer Don Everly of the Everly Brothers duo died on Saturday. Tributes have been raining down. By announcing the news on Sunday, the Country Music Hall of Fame recalled that he was one of “the most talented artists and having had the most impact in the history of popular music”.
Died at the age of 84 in Nashville, Tennessee, capital of country music, he formed with his brother Phil a very influential duo for this musical genre typical of the United States. The cause of his death has not been communicated. Don had survived his brother, who died in 2014 at age 75.
First success in 1957
The duo recorded their first album in 1957, singing country music melodies from their native Kentucky mixed with rock. Their music influenced a whole generation of bands in the 1960s, starting with the Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who early in their careers were nicknamed the “Foreverly Brothers”. Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys and the Byrds also owe them this way of singing in harmony. Their influence “exceeds even their fame”, wrote Paul Simon in the magazine. Rolling Stone, calling the duo “the most important in rock history”.
Slicked back hair, thin tie: the two brothers cultivated a good boyish look at the start of their careers and began their careers in Nashville, the mecca of country music. They break through in 1957 with Bye Bye Love. One of their songs, Made to love, will be taken up in 1962 by Claude François, who will change the lyrics, under the title Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful.
Complex fraternal relationships
But the Beatles’ supremacy in the 1960s got the better of the Everly Brothers, who fell into drugs and alcohol and clash more and more often off stage. In 1973, the duo broke up in the middle of a concert in southern California, only to reform in 1983 during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The brothers produced two albums in the 1980s and played a few concerts in the 1990s, but remaining strangers to each other. “We are completely different, except when we sing together,” Don Everly told the Los Angeles Times in 1999: “I am a liberal democrat, he is quite conservative”.
With the two brothers gone, the world of music is now a bit orphaned. Messages thus poured in after the announcement of Don’s death, notably from Carole King, Roy Orbison Jr, or Julian Lennon who said in a tweet: “RIP Don of the” Everly Brothers “, who with his brother Phil wrote some of the most memorable songs of all time.