Jet Harris & Tony Meehan – ‘Diamonds’

22 February 1963

Pop pickers of 1963 surely knew Jet Harris and Tony Meehan as previously the bass player and drummer with The Shadows. Pop pickers of more recent origin won’t recognise those names but instead will no doubt remark on how the acoustic guitar and bass on their hit single ‘Diamonds’ were played respectively by Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, future members of Led Zeppelin. That’s showbiz, baby!

As with The Shadows’ recent ‘Dance On!’, ‘Diamonds’ is another US-influenced, country-rock-n-roll-sounding UK instrumental of twangy, tuned-down guitar and shuffling drum fills. If the limits of your pop-culture exotica were ’40s and ’50s westerns at the cinema then I can see how this would be the second-generation creative output. Hooks were evidently still being rationed in Britain too. ‘Diamonds’ sounds quaint and dated today, probably sounded so too when its two additional session musicians released their first Led Zeppelin album a mere six years later, and perhaps even also by the end of 1963 when Ringo’s barrelling, swinging rhythms were putting Meehan’s style into the old folks’ home. The pace of change in ’60s music really was frightening; ‘Diamonds’ is a snapshot of what got left behind.