"Nowhere to Run" is a 1965 pop single by Martha & the Vandellas for the Gordy (Motown) label and is one of the group's signature songs. The song, written and produced by Motown's main production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, depicts the story of a woman trapped in a bad relationship with a man she cannot help but love. Holand-Dozier-Holland and the Funk Brothers band gave the song a large, hard-driving instrumentation sound similar of the sound of prior "Dancing In The Street" with snow chains used as percussion alongside the tambourine and drums.
This version was ranked #358 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The record's brass-heavy arrangement and chorus of "nowhere to run to, baby/nowhere to hide" have made the song a popular one at sporting events, whether played in its original version or reinterpreted by a marching band. The song has also been seen as one of the songs played heavy by troops during the Vietnam War and has since been a title and inspiration in TV shows such as Quantum Leap and Murphy Brown.
This is a song that really rocks, and should be an enormous amount of fun for an a cappella group. The trick with a piece like this is to expand the groove and use variation to create tension and energy without a brass section, drums and snow chains. You got to use the forces you have and do it vocally!
Silence is Golden
It's as taught in Zen - things are made of their opposites. Music is made up of silence just as it is made out of sounds. Negative space makes the positive space more powerful and impressive, and that's what we're going for with Nowhere To Run. I create silence and hushed intensity to allow headroom for the big stuff, making it seem even bigger. For example, when I have the upper voices hit some of their chords like brass hits, they explode out of this quieter space driving the intensity higher.
Another Problem
The song is a dance song. It does not need to go anywhere. It starts at Defcon 7 or 8 and stays there start to finish. As I've said before, your audience probably won't be dancing - they will be all ears and all the dancing will probably be in their mind's eye. If verse 1, verse 2 and verse 3 are all the same, they will begin wondering if they left the oven on back home. You don't want them drifting off like that! You gotta develop things and vary them without breaking the driving force concept of the piece.
To do this, I broke down one verse into a taut duet with the soloist against the tenor 2's. This diminishes the volume in a way that draws in the listener to something even more intense than staying at full overdrive. The bass line continues underneath keeping up the rhythmic underpinnings, making the verse a kind of trio. You'll see this below. Hmm, more silence to create space and tension....
What Else?
Well, I try to develop patter instead of nonsense sounds imitating guitars, drums and instruments. Don't get me wrong, I love the chung-chung and beatbox stuff. But when I have the opportunity for voices to sing, and can weave a vocal texture that stimulates the mind, it's just a lot a fun! My basses are always ribbing me about the stupid sounds I make them sing, so I try to give them more words to contribute something greater to the whole. Basses can really add a whole other dimension singing words.
Patter usually echoes the lyrics and sentiments of the solo line. One thing I often do is use patter is to create tensions against the main lyric. You know the tenor is always wailing on about how "She left me" and "What will I do without her", "Can I get her back", and all that stuff we love in pop songs.
I found when I give my backup voices a position of their own and a perspective that is other than that of the soloist, it creates drama, and sometimes it creates comedic tension and hilarity. It's perfect, for example, when the tenor is wondering what went wrong and the basses, with their low tones, become the natural voice of reason and authority. They adopt a position of telling it "like it is", saying things like "I told you so" and "It's just wrong" and "If I were you, this is what I'd do".
In Nowhere To Run, I let the basses be this third person witness to the "trapped" soloist, and you can see how this creates so much drama and fun, adding another dimension to the overall expression. I let them become quite outrageous.
As I drive to the finish with the final verse, I break it down once again, and use the layering technique to build the energy back to climax. This is driven further underneath with the basses' patter becoming wilder and more insistent so the climax reaches a dizzying point, ending with a big "brass" hit on a really dirty chord by all voices. The silence afterwards is deafening!
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