The Music of My Life – 1975

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life.  In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.  I turned five in ’75, so let’s give a listen together…

Why not start off with a song that soared to number one?  Shining Star was released by Earth, Wind and Fire in January of 1975. Maurice White was taking a late night walk while recording the album That’s the Way of the World and was inspired by the stars in the sky.  He took the idea back to other members of the band and wrote the song.

The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008 and still sounds great today!  One music critic called the song, “sweaty funk” … So let’s get funky!

Shining Star

Honestly, I wasn’t really into KISS when I was five.  I suppose I was in my teens when I came to appreciate some of their songs.  We played one or two at the first oldies station I worked at and I heard them a lot when me and my buddies would go play pool together.  One that always played was Rock and Roll All Night.

Originally released on their Dresses to Kill album, the studio version only went to number 69 on the singles chart.  Later, the live version would go all the way to number 12.  I would guess that it has become their “theme” song.  It has been the song that the group has used as a closing concert tune in almost every show since 1976.

The song was written by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons in Los Angeles, but on January 26, 1976, Stanley told an audience at Cobo Hall in Detroit that the song was written in and for Detroit!  I like that, so I’ll go with it…

Rock and Roll All Night

(Studio version)

(Live version)

Speaking of Detroit, the next song comes from hometown hero Bob Seger.  Bob released his Beautiful Loser album in ’75 and Katmandu was a cut from it. Katmandu wasn’t a huge hit, but it has always been one of my favorite Seger tunes. It was later featured on his Live Bullet album.

Seger says that the song was written at a time in his life where he wasn’t sure if he was going to make it.  He said, “It’s an exasperated song. It’s like: ‘I’m never gonna make it, I’m just gonna go to Katmandu.'”

He says that Glenn Frey and Don Henley pulled him aside and “told me that the Beautiful Loser album was the first little step in the right direction for me. Then the next step after that was Live Bullet, which was a huge step. And the next step was Night Moves, which was an even huger step. By 1980 both records were at six million, and they kept selling continuously. Beautiful Loser was a transitional album, and in the song “Katmandu” I still had some of that defeatist mentality and you can hear it in there.”

Katmandu

The next song was released one day before my fifth birthday.  Low Rider appeared on War’s Why Can’t We Be Friends album.

From song facts.com:

The group’s sax player, Charles Miller, came up with the idea for the song. Harold Brown told Songfacts: “What happened on ‘Low Rider’ was in the studio, we were jamming, and I was supposed to have been on the downbeat. But all of the sudden I was on the upbeat. And I said, ‘Oh, boy. I got the beat turned around.’ I didn’t panic. I said, ‘Wait a minute. Stay there. Don’t change it. Stay.’ Because as long as you keep doing it over and over and over, it won’t be a mistake.

We were just messing around, you know. Then the next thing I know, Charles started just singing, ‘Low ri-der drives a little slower. The low…’ he was just pumping it. And then the next thing I know Lee’s over there putting that harmonica on, because Lee is a melody man all the time. And then – boom.

If you’d hear the original version of it, all with that jam, that would be worth a million right there. When we finished it, all of us looked at it, ‘That’s a hit.’ We didn’t know that it was going to be an icon.

Low Rider

In June of ’75, Bad Company released a classic.  Did you know that Feel Like Makin’ Love is actually a combination of two separate songs?

Several years after Paul Rodgers wrote the song, he played it to Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs, who came up with some big chords for the chorus. Ralphs recalled:

“I came up with the riff, and I suggested we put the two together to create a song. I think that’s the feel of the song, the verses are very appealing to the ladies, probably more than the men; and then the riff comes in which is all bloody macho. It’s a big chorus and it worked out really well.”

It reached number 10 on the Hot 100 Chart.

Feel Like Makin’ Love

Despite being a song of their second album, Orleans scored their first Top 40 hit with “Dance With Me.” The song was released in July of ’75. It was written by group member John Hall and his then wife Johanna. John told Songfacts.com:

“I started playing it on acoustic guitar and developed it, just jamming by myself in the living room. The whole song – the verses, the bridge, the ending – was all complete coming out of my acoustic guitar. Johanna yelled from the other room, ‘That sounds like ‘Dance With Me.” And I went, ‘Can’t we come up with something a little bit more unusual than that?” And she said, “I don’t know, it really sounds like ‘Dance With Me.”

She couldn’t get past that and I couldn’t get past that any further, so I played the instrumental version for Larry Hoppen and he said, ‘Boy, you really need to finish that, that sounds like a hit song.’

So coming back from a show in Ithaca, New York, on the western part of the state, through the Woodstock area again, Johanna and I were riding in the car, and suddenly she says, ‘Pick the beat up and kick your feet up.’ She starts scribbling on another one of those envelopes, and by the time we got home, we had kicked the ideas back and forth and finished the lyric.

I love the guitar work and harmonies in it.

Dance With Me

I was probably about 4 years away from my introduction to Willie Nelson in 1975. When I was finally introduced to him, it was thanks to my dad and my grandfather. They had a cassette of Willie’s Stardust album and they played the heck out of it. It drove us kids crazy! After my grandfather passed away in 1981, I began to listen to more and more from Willie and came to really love his music.

Willie is a fantastic song writer, having written hits like “Crazy,” “Hello Walls,” and so many others, but he did NOT write Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. It was written by Fred Rose in the late 1940’s. It was recorded by Roy Acuff, Hank Williams Sr., Ferlin Husky, Bill Anderson and Conway Twitty all before Willie recorded it in 1975 for his Red-Headed Stranger album.

In October 1975, the song became Willie’s first Number 1 hit as a singer, and at year’s end, was the third-biggest song of 1975 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It got Top 40 airplay, too, reaching number 21 on the Hot 100 Chart. At the 18th Annual Grammy Awards, the song won Willie a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.

Fun (but sad) Fact: Elvis Presley recorded a version of the song in the Jungle Room at Graceland in 1976. The song would be the last one he played before he died. In the early morning of August 16, 1977, he played it on his piano in Graceland. Later that day, he died.

Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain

Earlier I mentioned playing pool with some my friends in my teens and many of the songs I mention will be ones that played on the jukebox while we were there. One of those songs was Tush by ZZ Top. Before the song’s release in 1975, they were well known in Texas, but Tush became their first nationwide hit.

According to Dusty Hill, the song was written in under ten minutes during a soundcheck in Alabama. Billy Gibbons said “We were in Florence, Alabama, playing in a rodeo arena with a dirt floor. We decided to play a bit in the afternoon. I hit that opening lick, and Dave Blayney, our lighting director, gave us the hand [twirls a finger in the air]: ‘Keep it going.’ I leaned over to Dusty and said, ‘Call it ‘Tush.’

So what does it mean? In a 1985 interview with Spin magazine, bass player Dusty Hill explained: “Tush, where I grew up, had two meanings. It meant what it means in New York. Tush is also like plush, very lavish, very luxurious. So it depended on how you used it. If somebody said, “That’s a tush car,’ you knew they weren’t talking about the rear and of the car. That’s like saying, ‘That’s a cherry short.’ But tush as in ‘That’s a nice tush on that girl,’ that’s definitely the same as the Yiddish word. I don’t know how we got it in Dallas. All it could have took was one guy moving down from New York.”

Tush

The next song is one that comes from my family’s infamous red 8 track tape. It was one of the first things I blogged about when I started this site. You can read that blog here:

The Red 8 Track Tape

Songfacts.com says: In the DVD Hell Freezes Over, the Eagles discussed this song’s origins. When they were a struggling band in Los Angeles, they saw a lot of beautiful women around Hollywood who were married to wealthy, successful men, and wondered if they were unhappy. One night they were drinking in a bar (their favorite watering hole: Dan Tana’s) when they spotted this stunning young woman; two steps behind her was a much older, fat, rich guy. As they were half laughing at them, Glenn Frey commented, “Look at her, she can’t even hide those lyin eyes!”

Realizing they had a song title, the band members began grabbing for cocktail napkins to write down lyrics to go with that great observation.

The song reached number 2 on the Hot 100 Chart.

Lyin’ Eyes

In 1975, Capitol Records couldn’t seem to make up their mind about which song to release first from Linda Ronstadt’s Heart Like a Wheel album. It was a toss up between You’re No Good and When Will I Be Loved and the prior won out. Linda’s Everly Brothers cover would be the second single, released in March of ’75.

Both the Everly’s and Linda had top ten hits with the song, but Linda’s went to number 2 while the Everly Bros peaked at number 8. Linda’s version also went to number 1 on the country chart. Singing with Linda on this single are Kenny Edwards (from her band the Stone Poneys) and Andrew Gold (Who later had success with Thank You For Being a Friend). I absolutely love the harmonies on this one.

And there are my picks for 1975! What did I miss?

Next week, I’m sure there will be a shiny disco ball hanging over the dance floor as we head to 1976! See you then.