This article was
taken from the February 1971 issue of the US magazine Hit
Parader. It was put together by Roy Carr, the journalist
who covered many Christie shows for UK publications.
Christie turned in one of the fastest-selling
singles on the British scene, and more or less represented
that scene on the American side in 1970. Yet Yellow
River was a big hit for the group before they actually
had played their first gig together.
The number was written by Jeff Christie,
singer, composer and bass guitarist for the group.
"You could say the Christie are a
rock'n'roll band, for we will play basic, exciting music,"
Jeff said. "There will be quite a few songs that I
have written and some really good old rock standards like
Slow Down and some Carl Perkins
ravers.
"As a band we want to
try and recapture the old feeling and bring back some of
the excitement of the early days of rock.
"This includes updating the Everly
Brothers sound. For ages, far too many bands have been getting
too clever and playing way above the heads of their audience.
If you call that clever."
I inquired from Jeff how come he had written
such an obviously country-rock flavoured song in such an
exotic locale as Leeds, one of those dark, gloomy, cotton
mill towns in Yorkshire.
He replied: "I just got up one morning
and said to myself, 'I'm going to write a song', and out
came Yellow River. The title
came first and after that, everything just fell into place.
I find I get the best results if a song just takes me a
couple of hours to complete. Well, this is exactly what
happened in this case."
When Yellow River
broke in the UK, Christie went into retreat to plan and
rehearse a good strong, stage act.
"We spent a couple of weeks making
sure that when we started to make public appearances, the
people who came to see us wouldn't be disappointed,"
Jeff said.