A blast of hormone-fueled power pop by one of the bands that created the template for the genre. Eric Carmen’s image as a sensitive balladeer may predominate as the result of his solo career and hits like “All By Myself”. But those four albums his former band recorded stand as a reminder that he was once a true belter fronting a pretty hard-hitting rock band.
When Eric Carmen wrote the Raspberries’ first and most timeless hit, the quintessential power pop classic “Go All the Way”, he took inspiration (to say the least) from some other great songs. Let’s have a listen:
Although The Who and Faces are most often mentioned as the templates for the Raspberries’ sound, I think The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” is the closest match for Carmen’s opening riff and may have inspired it. This is speculation on my part, but there’s a clear similarity:
The next bit isn’t speculation at all; Carmen has admitted he lifted the staccato guitar in the verses from The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby”:
For the chorus, Mr. Carmen said he was aiming for the sound of The Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee”. This isn’t quite as obvious, but see if you can hear the similarity:
The bridge pretty clearly seems to be nicked from The Beatles’ “Please Please Me”:
Here’s an edit containing all four points of comparison:
Amazingly, this Frankenstein of assembled stolen song parts turned out to be not a mess of ugly stitches, but a seamless pop classic in its own right, perhaps even the equal of those that inspired it:
Even the idea for the song was directly inspired by another song–The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together”. When Carmen saw them perform it on TV, forced to sing it as “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”, he got the idea to write a sexually explicit lyric that would be understood by kids but could avoid similar censorship. Carmen also cleverly had the most explicit line, ‘please go all the way’ come from the song’s female subject and not directly from its male protagonist. As you can see by its performance on the Mike Douglas show below, he succeeded in skirting the censors.
Raspberries trivia: the band’s first album came with a raspberry scented scratch-and-sniff sticker. While searching for names for the band, one member rejected another’s suggestion by quoting a line from the old Our Gang comedies saying, “Aw, raspberries”. It stuck.
This song is in several ways atypical of what the Raspberries were all about. Eric Carmen was the band’s primary songwriter, for one thing, and “Should I Wait” was written by bassist David Smalley. So it’s like using one George Harrison song to represent the Beatles. Moreover, the Raspberries usual sound was a Wall of Sugar, if you will: snarling and bombastic like Faces or the Who, but sweet and hyper-melodic like the Beatles and Beach Boys. Something like this:
Sounds like this were the very reason the term “power pop” came into being, and the Raspberries were as definitive of the genre as anybody.
I’ll digress to mention that Carmen’s 1972 classic “Go All the Way” is a brilliant synthesis of some great pop singles from the previous decade. Notice the staccato guitar stabs in the verses, straight out of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby”. Then the chorus comes in with cascading harmonies reminiscent of the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee”. And for good measure, a call-and-answer “Come on!” bridge that calls to mind the Beatles’ “Please Please Me”. And yet “Go All the Way”, far from sounding like a mere knockoff, is a great pop song in its own right.
Up-front guitar pyrotechnics and thunderous drums colliding with sweet melodic pop were the band’s staple, and I recommend any of the Greatest Hits collections on the market for a generous selection of that proto-power pop sound. But the almost-country rock “Should I Wait” won’t be on those compilations since it wasn’t a single (which is probably because it wasn’t written by Carmen, but that’s another story–one that ends with the band’s acrimonious breakup).
Anyway it’s probably the best of the great-but-short-lived band’s non-singles and it deserves a listen.
Every Moment Has A Song 