The Belles: The forgotten garage rockers who rewrote Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’
‘Gloria’ is one of the most recognisable and revolutionary tracks from across rock and roll history. Penned by a teenage Van Morrison back in 1963, the rousing rock anthem was first recorded by Them the following year, released as the B-side to their homage to Delta blues ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’. Quickly, the Them track became a defining anthem for the garage rock generation, spawning countless cover versions which added entirely new layers of appeal to the timeless track.
Perhaps the most infamous recording of ‘Gloria’ came over a decade later, when Patti Smith reinterpreted its garage rock genius for her proto-punk masterpiece Horses. However, Smith was far from being the only pioneering punk to take on Van Morrison’s track. Years prior, the song had become a staple of the blossoming garage rock scene, leading hundreds of obscure grassroots outfits like The Belles to record and reinterpret the song during the golden age of garage in the mid-1960s.
Rather than following the crowd, The Belles took an entirely different route when re-interpreting ‘Gloria’. Hailing from North Miami, The Belles were already something of an outlier within the male-dominated world of garage rock. Writing, recording, and performing their own material, the group put their male peers to shame, finding a knack for crafting compelling, infectious, and DIY rock and roll recordings during the mid-1960s.
If you have never heard of The Belles, do not fret; you are probably in the majority. The Miami group never boasted an extensive discography and didn’t garner much mainstream attention during their existence. The band released only two singles in the 1960s, both via the Florida label Tiara. Perhaps the most notable of the two was their storming 1966 record, ‘Mevlin’. Don’t be fooled by its title, the track is not an original composition, but is instead a rewritten, gender-swapped version of Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’.
The attitude and inherent themes of the original track remained, with subtle differences such as ‘she’ and ‘her’ being changed to ‘he’ and ‘his’, and ‘five feet four’ to ‘six feet four’. However, the crucial difference between the two recordings is in the name of the love interest being sung about so adoringly. Gloria is a triumphant, bold name, derived from the Latin word for glory, evoking the image of an enchanting femme fatale with an infallible degree of power. So, when The Belles were tasked with coming up with a male version of the name, they landed upon (drum roll…) Melvin.
This is certainly not a slight on anybody named Melvin, but, as a name, it certainly does not recapture the glorious nature of a name like Gloria. Why The Belles landed upon this name remains unknown – it could be something as simple as the fact that an ‘I’ in the name was essential for the lead into the song’s chorus. Regardless, the track’s new name gives it an entirely different mood and atmosphere.
Belting out Melvin’s name with vigour throughout the chorus, The Belles almost seem to offer a satirical take on the original song. In many cases, switching the gender of a song written about a woman expertly reveals the strange and often chauvinistic way in which male writers view women, and ‘Melvin’ is no exception, whether that was the intent of The Belles or not.
Although there are countless covers of ‘Gloria’, recorded by everybody from The Doors to Patti Smith, The Belles’ version certainly stands out, both for the novelty of its gender-swapping and for the raw musical expression at the heart of the performance. The Miami outfit are certainly not the only all-female garage outfit to have fallen victim to obscurity over the decades, but they are certainly among those who deserve to be revisited.
