Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is perhaps a standard that many of us are loathe to do, the action of being able to say to someone with no uncertain terms that their company is not wanted because they make you feel ill, inadequate or they fill you with the a type of unhealthy fear of being aside if they weren’t there to bug you. It is the action of fore and after thought that some people are able to get under your skin, make the surface layer of your very being feel as though it crawling with the sign of the desperate need to be liked that we forget that in their non-handshake, their snide remarks and back-handed compliments, that in the end they don’t need us, don’t even like us, so why persist?
It takes music or the arts to push that thought through, to make the darkest moment of insecurity the antipathies of the love song that cradles such negative emotion and it takes a very special band to be able to pull it off. Anyone can write a sonnet or a love song, but to write a tune in which a singular moment of clarity abounds, a line in which the hero retorts that they don’t want to hear from you no more, takes courage and instinct.
The Liverpool public, and beyond, have taken The Hummingbirds very much to their hearts for that particular instinct alone and in songs such as Knocking On My Door it is easy to see why. The sheer class that comes through the band’s lyrical expertise and the refinement of style in the song shows exactly why they have come so far in a relatively short time.
The title of the song may allude to heartbreak in such a way that Graham Gouldman’s lyrics for Herman’s Hermits, the powerful pop song No Milk Today was able to capture with such an eye for detail, but it is more of affirmation that at times we are too hard on ourselves, we believe that those who hurt us with their comments are doing it for own good, that they do it because they care. It is one short step from that belief to the physical side of bullying which is just as unacceptable but sadly gets less attention that the egotistical who uses power to dominate a group to get their own way.
Knocking On My Door is a great song that must have taken great courage and feeling to write, for not everybody can see the damage such relationships take on the toll on the psyche.
Ian D. Hall