The underrated artist Steve Van Zandt said was “right there with the rest of them”
Steven Van Zandt’s cool credentials are unchallengeable. When you’re a 50-year veteran of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and widely recognised as Tony Soprano’s consigliere, your opinions are obviously gonna carry a little more weight than your average radio DJ. Even among radio DJs, for that matter, Steven Van Zandt has managed to build another cult following for himself, as his syndicated satellite radio show Little Steven’s Underground Garage has been going strong for over 20 years now.
On the program, Van Zandt shares his encyclopaedic knowledge of the early rock acts that inspired him as a kid in New Jersey while also shining a light on newer acts that are carrying the torch for the garage rock ethos. It’s when he’s digging through his personal archive of essential vintage 45s, though, that Van Zandt seems most in his element.
It’s no surprise then that Uncut magazine recently reached out to Little Steven as part of their celebration of the 60-year anniversary of the British invasion. The assignment was to select an essential top ten list of British invasion 45s.
This was probably a Herculean task for a guy who has literally heard it all, but for the most part, Van Zandt keeps his list focused on the popular rather than the obscure, the singles that truly struck a big cultural chord and launched their performers into the international stratosphere. The Beatles’ ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ is there, plus the Stones’ ‘Tell Me’; the Kinks’ You Really Got Me’; the Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’; and the Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’. In fact, the whole list is a roundup of Hall of Famers, save for one interesting selection that seems–from our modern perspective–a bit out of place.
That surprise 45 is ‘Bad to Me’ by Billy J Kramer, a Liverpool-based Beatles contemporary who found success performing numerous John Lennon-Paul McCartney-penned tunes during the early to mid-1960s, both as a solo artist and with the band the Dakotas.
“Billy was managed by Brian Epstein,” Van Zandt told Uncut, “So he had some Lennon-McCartney songs like ‘Bad To Me’, but he would have success with other songs. He was pretty big that year [1964], right there with the rest of them.”
Kramer’s connections to the entire Beatles apparatus–Epstein, producer George Martin, and the willing songwriting assistance of John and Paul–did indeed make him a major player during the initial British invasion. This included an appearance on the legendary Ed Sullivan Show in the US and a rare “double hit” stateside single, as his 1964 release of ‘Little Children’ with ‘Bad to Me’ as a B-side resulted in both songs charting in the top ten in America. ‘Bad to Me’ was also a big hit in the UK, reaching number one on the charts and earning Kramer a gold disc.
Commercial success for both Kramer and the Dakotas waned in the late 1960s after moving away from The Beatles’ umbrella, but Billy himself continued to perform over the decades that followed, maintaining a loyal fanbase. He was part of a British invasion 50th Anniversary Tour in both the UK and the US in 2015 and released an autobiography in 2016 titled ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’ (a reference to another Lennon-McCartney song he’d scored a hit with). In some respects, he is a relative footnote in the British invasion story, but as Steven Van Zandt is careful to point out, Kramer was right there, front and centre, when the rock world first turned upside down in ‘64.
