The Everly Brothers' melodic harmonies influenced an entire generation of artists.
They may have been the picture of '50s clean-cut musicians,
but things got a little messy behind the scenes. Here's the untold truth of the Everly Brothers.
Not all bands with "brothers" in their name are actual brothers, but Don and Phil Everly
were, and they came from a musically inclined family. Their father Ike was a coal miner who
had musical ambitions of his own. Don and Phil spent much of their childhood in Shenandoah,
Iowa, where their father earned a living by playing country music on local radio stations.
When he got his own early-morning radio show on the station KMA, he enlisted some help from
his wife Margaret and their two sons, as 8-year-old "Little Donnie" and 6-year-old
"Baby Boy Phil" harmonized with their dad. Ike also taught the boys how to play the guitar.
Throughout the '40s and '50s, the Everly Family Show performed live in the Midwest
and the South. As Don recalled during a 2016 interview with his old radio station KMA,
"We used to go on the road, and do some show and dance. And, it was really fun for me as a child.
I was riding in the small backseat of a car, sleeping after a gig. It was really fun for me."
By 1955, the teenaged Don and Phil Everly were living in Knoxville, Tennessee and performing
as a country duo under the moniker of the Everly Brothers. Don also began to write
songs for other artists, including "Thou Shall Not Steal" for country singer Kitty Wells and a
tune for Anita Carter, sister of June Carter Cash. The brothers soon caught the attention
of Nashville music pioneer Chet Atkins, who got them a contract with Columbia Records in 1956.
Alas, the Everly Brothers' first single for Columbia, "Keep A' Lovin Me," was also
their last. It flopped upon release and Columbia subsequently dropped the brothers,
but Atkins still believed in their talent. He introduced them to music executive Wesley Rose
of the Acuff-Rose music publishing firm, who recognized their songwriting talent.
So Rose cut the Everly Brothers a deal: If they signed with Acuff-Rose as songwriters,
he would help them land a record deal. The brothers agreed and signed with them in late 1956.
They later signed with Cadence Records, in part because of their good looks.
On January 3, 1957, the Everly Brothers recorded "Bye Bye Love," which was written by Felice and
Boudleaux Bryant. It would go on to be their first hit single. The song had previously been
rejected by 30 artists, including Elvis Presley. Country music star Porter Wagoner was set to
record the song, but Chet Atkins brought things to a halt because Boudleaux refused a chord change.
Nevertheless, the Everly Brothers saw the song's potential and they
were permitted to give it a twist of their own in the form of the choppy guitar intro,
which was taken from a song Don had written called "Give Me a Future."
"Bye Bye Love" enjoyed a 22-week run on the charts, and it became the Everlys' first single
to sell a million copies. Despite that success, Elvis probably wasn't too upset about missing out,
as "Bye Bye Love" peaked at Number 2 behind his own hit, "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear."
Following that success, the Bryants went on to write a string of hits for the Everly Brothers.
Moving away from the simplicity of "Bye Bye Love," they brought more intricacy
to their next songs, including "Wake Up Little Susie" and "Poor Jenny," to
accommodate the brothers' prowess when it came to harmonies and rhythm guitar.
On September 6, 1957, the Everly Brothers embarked on an 11-week rock 'n' roll roadshow
tour across the United States. They performed alongside major acts like Chuck Berry, Paul Anka,
Eddie Cochran, the Drifters, and the Crickets, the latter of which was fronted by Buddy Holly.
The star-studded group played five shows a day and ultimately covered 78 U.S. cities.
The Everlys formed a mutually beneficial friendship with Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
Holly wrote songs for the brothers, and they gave him Boudleaux Bryant's song
"Raining in My Heart," as they felt that it wasn't right for them. The Everlys also
gave the Crickets some fashion tips. As Don told Rolling Stone in 1986,
"We took [them] down to our clothes stores in New York [...]: Phil's Men's Shop,
Lefcourt's for shoes. We had just learned to dress a little sharper ourselves, and they noticed it,
so we took them to all the places. If you look at pictures from back then, you'll see all of
us in the same jackets -– Ivy League, like. Same photographer, too: Bruno of Hollywood."
"We became such friends that over the years, it just became part of our lives, the way they were."
After Holly died in a plane crash in 1959, Phil flew to the funeral in Lubbock, Texas,
and sat with Holly's parents, while Don stayed home. As he recalled to Rolling Stone,
"I wouldn't go. It just freaked me right out when Buddy died. I took to my
bed. Quit riding planes for a while, too."
In 1960, the Everly Brothers left Cadence Records over a dispute about royalties. The
brothers wanted to release the song "Temptation," but their manager Wesley Rose didn't want them to
because the song had been written decades earlier by a writer who wasn't signed to Acuff-Rose,
and thus the company wouldn't get any publishing royalties from the record.
So the brothers then left Cadence and signed a decade-long, million-dollar contract with Warner
Brothers Records. But then they learned that Rose had given himself veto power over any future
songs they recorded that were written by Acuff-Rose songwriters. Their contract with
him thereby cut them off from recording any songs written by the Bryants and many other
of the major songwriters of the time. However, the Everlys had enough songwriting chops on their own;
for example, Phil wrote their last top-ten hit for Cadence, "When Will I Be Loved," in
a car parked in front of a root beer stand. But Rose's configuration of their contract even kept
them from recording songs they'd written while under a songwriting contract with Acuff-Rose.
In November 1961, when the Everly Brothers were at the height of their fame, they enlisted in
the United States Marine Corps. They reportedly did so to avoid being drafted into the Army.
They completed 12 weeks of basic training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, and they
were then stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County. The Everly Brothers completed their basic
training on February 13, 1962. That same day, Don married actor Venetia Stevenson in the chapel at
the Naval Training Center. Phil was his best man, and both brothers wore their Marine uniforms.
While they were in boot camp in 1962, the Everly Brothers' top 10 hit "Crying in the
Rain" was released, but they were unable to tour to support the song.
But on February 18 of that year, shortly after graduating from boot camp, they performed that
song and "Jezebel" on The Ed Sullivan Show while wearing their Marine uniforms. Despite
that gig, their music career took a bit of a nosedive during their stint in the Marines.
In 1961, to cope with the demands of fame,
Don Everly began receiving "Ritalin therapy," a combination of a stimulant drug
and vitamins. He quickly became addicted. As he recalled to Rolling Stone in 1986,
"People didn't understand drugs that well then. They didn't know what they were messing with.
It wasn't against the law [...] But it got out of hand, naturally. It was a real disaster for
a lot of people, and it was a disaster for me. Ritalin made you feel energized. You could stay
up for days. It just got me strung out. I got so far out there, I didn't know what I was doing."
Don quit using Ritalin while he was in the Marines, but then he got back on it shortly
after leaving. One day in 1962 while touring in London, he attempted to overdose on barbiturates.
His wife took him to a hospital to get his stomach pumped, but he returned to
his hotel room and tried again. He was then sent to a psychiatric ward in New York City
where he was treated with electroshock therapy. As he recounted to Rolling Stone,
"They say shock therapy is good for some things, but it didn't do me any good.
It was a pretty primitive treatment at the time — once they gave it to you, you couldn't remember
how long you'd been there. It knocked me back for a long time. I thought I'd never write again."
On July 13, 1973, Don Everly told a reporter,
"It's over. I'm tired of being an Everly Brother."
The following night, he swigged tequila before taking the stage with his brother
Phil at the John Wayne Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California.
After a drunken Don proceeded to mess up the lyrics to "Cathy's Clown," an onsite manager
stopped the show halfway through. Phil smashed his guitar on the floor before storming offstage,
and then Don played the rest of the show alone. At one point, he said,
"The Everly Brothers died ten years ago."
As Don later told Rolling Stone in 1986,
"People thought that night was just some brouhaha between Phil and me. They didn't realize we had
been working our buns off for years. We had never been anywhere without working;
had never known any freedom. We were just strapped together like a team of
horses [...] What we needed was to take a long vacation, to get off the merry-go-round [...]
The tensions between Don and I ... existed from day one, from birth. And will go on forever."
The Everly Brothers' show at Knott's Berry Farm was their last as a duo, and one of the last times
they would see each other, for a decade. Other than a brief reunion at their father's funeral
in 1975, they didn't see each other again until the early '80s. But by 1983, the Everly Brothers
were considering a comeback; they just needed a little help from their friends. So their
producer Dave Edmunds called Paul McCartney. As Don Everly recounted to Rolling Stone,
"Dave said it was the hardest phone call he ever made, because McCartney is always being asked
for something. Paul said if he could come up with anything, he'd give a call. Dave forgot about it,
but about six weeks later, the phone rang, and it was McCartney. He said, 'I think I've got one.'"
"The Everlys were a very special thing."
That song, "On the Wings of a Nightingale," was released on the Everly Brothers' comeback album,
EB '84. The single and the brothers' comeback tour both proved to be a success.
And then in 1986, the brothers teamed up with another musical titan of the time:
Paul Simon. He enlisted the brothers to sing harmonies on the title track of
his album Graceland, which he described as "the perfect Everly Brothers song."
"It's good to be back."
On January 3, 2014, Phil Everly passed away, just 16 days shy of his 75th birthday.
Don honored Phil with a statement in which he said,
"I was listening to one of my favorite songs that Phil wrote
and had an extreme emotional moment just before I got the news of his passing.
I took that as a special spiritual message from Phil saying goodbye.
Our love was and will always be deeper than any earthly differences we might have had."
Seven years later, Don died at home in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 21, 2021. Two years earlier,
he'd been voted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville. In an honorary video, Rolling
Stones guitarist Keith Richards called Don "one of the best rhythm guitar players I've ever heard."
Upon Don's death, a spokesperson for the Everly family said in a statement,
"Don lived by what he felt in his heart. Don expressed his
appreciation for the ability to live his dreams ... with his soulmate and wife,
Adela, and sharing the music that made him an Everly Brother."
"We love their music. He certainly lives on."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available.
Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)