Larry Williams: the man who soundtracked The Beatles’ rebellion
During The Beatles’ heyday, their musical appetite was insatiable, spanning various rock and roll genres. Each member of the Fab Four was drawn to artists who they believed could stir their creative impulses, from Chuck Berry’s infectious rhythms to Elvis Presley’s commanding stage presence. Amidst the myriad influences that shaped The Beatles’ sound, Larry Williams quietly occupied a significant place in their musical pantheon, his contributions leaving an indelible mark on some of their most iconic moments.
While Williams was far from being a mainstream star in his time, some of his biggest songs were still fine slices of rock and roll rebellion. Since his artistic brand was considered dirty for its time, various tracks of his border on punk for the 1960s made music to irritate his parents on pieces like ‘Bad Boy’.
Although he had all the makings of a classic rocker, Williams never saw his career flourish like his counterparts like Little Richard. Like many of the punk artists that would later emulate him, Williams would end up picking up a drug habit and fading into irrelevance, working his way into the background right before The British Invasion began.
Even if Williams’ story didn’t include him becoming a rock star, The Beatles were already big fans. Back when they were still playing at the famous Cavern Club, George Harrison remembered the band going into manager Brian Epstein’s music shop to get different records, where they were exposed to all kinds of music.
Since the band’s days in Hamburg before getting Epstein demanded them playing for eight hours at a time, they built up their repertoire by learning many of Williams’ tunes, even incorporating ‘Bad Boy’ and ‘Slow Down’ into their live sets. While the group would later emerge as a rock and roll tour de force thanks to John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s songs, they thought enough to include Williams covers across many of their classic albums.
On the B-sides of many of their singles, the outfit would include versions of ‘Slow Down’ and ‘Bad Boy’, with Lennon adopting that trademark rasp that Williams was known for. Compared to their own rock tracks like ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, the band cut loose on the Williams works much better than any other track.
Even when the song only demanded one lick like on ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’, the band made up for it with mountains of attitude, playing with the kind of swagger of a group twice their age. Later on in their career, it’s easy to see a piece like ‘Revolution’ as an example of Lennon taking the caustic sounds of Williams’s tracks and taking them one step further, featuring a screeching guitar that overloaded the channel.
Williams’ songs have also been adopted by loads of other stars to come. When not working within the confines of Motörhead, Lemmy was known to play in various rockabilly outfits, where he was seen covering works like ‘Bad Boy’ later on. While The Beatles took music to places that no one had thought possible before, their versions of Larry Williams classics are what they would have sounded like as a scrappy garage band rather than the lovable moptops.
