ALLMUSIC – 2011
As Dave Thompson writing for Allmusic described Only Lovers Left Alive by the Wanderers: “This album remains one of the most foreboding records ever released and plunges the listener into a world of Bolshevik plots, duplicate Popes, and a third World War that is so close you can smell it.”
(February 2011)
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Most sources believe that Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher basically took over vocal duties for almost all of the recordings by the Rip Chords thereafter. Allmusic claims that Phil Stewart (who has a distinctive bass/baritone voice) was the vocalist on only two songs on Three Window Coupe, the band’s second album – “Bonneville Bonnie” and “Old Car Made in ’52” – and that Ernie Bringas didn’t perform at all on the album. However, Bringas insists that all four vocalists collaborated as to who would handle the singing, and that the hit song “Hey Little Cobra” is about the only song where neither he nor Stewart sang at all. For instance, both he and Bruce Johnston were singing the falsetto part on the Top 30 follow-up to their big hit, “Three Window Coupe” (co-written by Jan Berry of Jan & Dean). (The full list of vocalists and their parts on various songs is provided on Ernie Bringas’s website, www.ripchords.info).
(July 2011)
