In the early 1970s, Billboard called Emitt Rhodes “one of the finest artists on the music scene today” and called his first album one of the “best albums of the decade” – he was 20 years old then. By 24, Emitt Rhodes was finished in the music industry. What happened to this rising star, and better yet… who is he?
The pop songwriter hailed as the “One-Man Beatles” was a 15-year-old drummer from Hawthorne, CA, (the Beach Boys‘ hometown) when he got his first taste of stardom. His band, the Palace Guard, became a local sensation when Casey Kasem invited them to appear on his TV show, ‘Shebang,’ and they became regulars at the famous Hullabaloo nightclub.
Rhodes soon formed a band of his own, the Merry-Go-Round. They stayed together for several albums through the late 1960s, scoring a big regional hit with the song “Live” (later covered by the Bangles). They were noted in England, too, where Fairport Convention recorded a cover of Rhodes’ “Time Will Show the Wiser”. Unfortunately, the band members hated each other. “We used to spit in each other’s faces, bloody each other’s noses” in the studio, Rhodes recalled on his website. The group disbanded in 1969, leaving its talented frontman to pursue a solo career.
Recorded in the shed behind his parents’ suburban home, Rhodes’s self-titled debut earned him $5,000 from ABC/Dunhill Records. The album drew plenty of praise for its McCartney-esque melodies, and the first single, “Fresh as a Daisy” began climbing the national charts. Then the record business got in the way. A&M, which was still owed one final Merry-Go-Round record, took some of Rhodes’s demos and released them under his own name as the album ‘The American Dream.’ The sudden appearance of two albums by the same new artist confused record buyers, sinking his commercial prospects.
Trouble didn’t end there. Rhodes had signed a heavy contract calling for him to produce two albums a year for three years. When he fell behind, he found himself on the wrong end of a $250,000 lawsuit. By the time his next album, ‘Mirror,’ came out, the record company’s enthusiasm had waned. His third official solo album, the prophetically titled ‘Farewell to Paradise,’ would be his last. At age 24, he “retired” to a quiet, penny-pinching life as a recording engineer. Asked whether he thought of himself as a Baroque popper in a 2010 L.A. Record interview, the singer joked that he’s always been a “brrrroke popper.”
Not that fans of Beatlesque pop haven’t tried to resurrect his career. Proposed comeback albums in 1980 and 2000 were junked for various reasons; Rhodes had a momentary flurry of interest when music fanatic Wes Anderson included his song “Lullaby” on the 2001 soundtrack to ‘The Royal Tenenbaums.’ In 2009, Hip-O Records released a two-disc collection of his solo recordings, and an Italian film director made a Rhodes documentary called, of course, ‘The One Man Beatles.’
Whether or not he ever releases new material or reaches a more mainstream market, Emitt Rhodes definitely wrote some great songs. Listen to a short playlist of his hits below – what do you think, do you hear the Paul McCartney influence?
1) “Live till You Die”
2) “You Should Be Ashamed”
3) “Lullaby”
4) “Fresh as a Daisy”