Before the future spouses teamed up as a duo, they carved out careers backing other artists. Both Daryl “The Captain” Dragon and Toni Tennille played with The Beach Boys on tour, and Toni sang backup for Elton John and, later, Pink Floyd. While on tour with The Beach Boys, Toni began writing the album’s third track, “The Way I Want to Touch You,” an eventual No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The Beach Boys association is all over this debut album from 1975, with covers of “Disney Girls” and “God Only Knows” and songs written or co-written by Beach Boys members. However, the major song is the Neil Sedaka/Howard Greenfield-penned title track.
Sedaka released his own version of “Love Will Keep Us Together” in 1973, but the C&T version took the world by storm. It was No. 1 for four weeks, nominated for a Grammy for Song of the Year, and won Record of the Year. It’s easy to knock C&T as schmaltzy or goof on their short-lived variety show, but as far as pop candy goes, it’s the real stuff.
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Comments
Very thoughtful to run this feature from the new issue here today, on Toni Tennille’s birthday. She and Daryl were true musicians, collaborating with some of the biggest (and best) musicians and groups in the business. This album HAS stood the test of time, and captured the zeitgeist of this specific section of the ’70s.
It also kind of closed out the singer-songwriter era of music. Toni’s “The Way I Want I Want To Touch You” alone would make the album worth buying. But without question, the title song by Sedaka and Greenfield was a winner from the beginning, but took C & T’s arrangement, interpretation, and her voice to make it the hit it was.
It’s definitely still a favorite, but mainly the version in Spanish most people don’t know, “Por Amor Viviremos” that takes it to this cool other exotic level that’s fantastico! It really kicks it into high gear at the start of the (in English) ‘Young and beautiful’ bridge.
The cover’s just so great too, radiating positivity with their two bulldogs at the time, Broderick and Elizabeth. One of the songs on it (Broddy Bounce) is a fun head trip song about Broderick that’s a little hard to describe. In the end, this album captured the optimism of the Ford pre-Bicentennial year after Vietnam and Watergate, and before the return of difficult times in the decade’s final years.