It Never Rains in California (1972)

Performer: Albert Hammond                                  Writers: Albert Hammond & Mike Hazelwood
Highest US Chart Position: #5                               Label: Columbia Records (Mums)
Musicians: Albert Hammond, Larry Carlton, Michael Omartian, Joe Osborn and Hal Blaine

This is one of those songs that emerged from the mists of time to lodge in my memory, and it still stirs my emotions. Since this was still a year before I really became conscious of popular music on the radio, my primary associations with the song come from television. In those days they used to sell all kinds of hits packages on LP produced by companies like K-Tel. As the titles and performers of the songs scrolled up the screen snippets of the song would play, and the chorus of this one was an absolute hook for my psyche. I was in fifth grade at the time the song was released, but I didn’t get a copy of it until a year and half later when I purchased The Now Explosion at the local department store. I came close to wearing out the grooves on that album and this song was one of the reasons why. The actual title of the song is “It Never Rains in Southern California,” though the “Southern” is only mentioned a couple of times in the lyrics--which always bothered me. Sure, it does rain in Northern California, but if we’re smart enough to figure that out without much of a distinction in the lyrics, it’s a good bet we’ll be able to do without it in the title.

Albert Hammond was a British singer-songwriter who grew up in Gibraltar and played primarily in Spain when he first began performing. In the mid sixties he moved back to England and met Mike Hazelwood when they formed the band The Family Dogg and the two became longtime collaborators. Hammond and Hazelwood went to Los Angeles in 1971 and recorded an album of their songs, It Never Rains in Southern California, for the Columbia subsidiary Mums Records. While this song was his biggest hit as an artist, the team also wrote another top ten hit in “The Air That I Breathe.” After the song appeared on Hammond’s album it was given to Phil Everly for his 1973 solo album, but is most well known from the version recorded by the Hollies which went to number six in 1974. While Hammond’s album only made it to number 77 in the album charts, the single, with “Anyone Here in the Audience” on the B-side, went all the way to number five on the sixteenth of December in 1972. The lyrics of the song mirror Hammond’s struggles to become a performer in Spain, begging for money in train stations, and too embarrassed to tell his parents because they would naturally have wanted him to quit.

Veteran studio drummer Hal Blain kicks off the tune on the upbeat of three and the downbeat of four, while arranger Michael Omartian’s piano flourish on the and of four leads into the downbeat jangle of Hammond’s guitar. Overdubbed flutes, an octave apart, play the intro melody and Hammond begins his lyric by hopping a plane to L.A. without a thought, lured by the promise of stardom. The harmonies on the chorus sound doubled by Hammond, and the whole thing is backed by an interesting arrangement of strings throughout. The bridge is a nifty example of wordplay, but the chorus is what really catches the ear. In a twist on the Morton Salt slogan, it never rains in California, but when it pours, man, it pours. After a third verse that begs not to tell the folks back home of his failure, the song ends on a final chorus and then fades out on the flute intro. The theme of the song’s lyrics is well-trodden territory, echoed in everything from Jim Croce’s “Box Number Ten,” which is set in New York City, to “Hollywood Heckle and Jive” by England Dan and John Ford Coley. “It Never Rains in Southern California” is a wonderful example of early seventies studio recording and clever songwriting, and still one of my favorite songs.