Halloween Song: The Hollies - “Lullaby To Tim”

The Hollies surrounded by spooky stage props. Photo from The Hollies Official Facebook page.

Another repost from the BHT haunted vault.

The Hollies are often regarded as “a singles band” and while they did notch a number of Top 40 hits (more so in England than America), some of their best songs are deep cuts from their albums. “Lullaby To Tim” appeared on the group’s surprisingly psychedelic 1967 album Evolution, which was sandwiched between two other excellent LPs, Stop Stop Stop and Dear Eloise/King Midas In Reverse (For Certain Because and Butterfly respectively in the UK).

The magical imagery on “Lullaby To Tim” kicks off with the very first lines, “Would you like to slide down a rainbow?/Catch a falling star in your hand?/Chase a moonbeam, ride by your window?” The secret to experiencing these adventures couldn’t be more simple: go to sleep. And that’s just the start of the fun things to entice a child to hit the sack “while the moon is peeping.” We hear about dragons, castles, and kisses changing frogs into princes. The kid can also see “witches fly on their broomsticks, stirring cauldrons, casting their spells,” which strays somewhat into nightmare territory.

“Lullaby To Tim” has a slow, almost acoustic arrangement that blooms into a full orchestra at the midway point. But its most noticeable aspect is that Graham Nash seems to be singing in a bath tub. Beneath the water. In his fascinating book on track . . . The Hollies every album, every song, Andrew Darlington describes this vocal approach as phasing. “It is achieved by running two identical tapes together, but slightly out of synch, or in-and-out-of-synch to create a fuzzy distortion.” Darlington suspects “Lullaby To Tim” is an homage to “LSD-guru” Timothy Leary. However, other credible sources state Hollies lead vocalist Allan Clarke wrote the song for his son.