Tag: Jeff Lynne

The Music of My Life – 1995

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.

In 1995 a new form of media was invented – The DVD. 1995 was also the year I hit the quarter century mark, turning 25.

30 years ago this month, in 1994, my partner, Rob, and I lost our jobs at Honey Radio. We searched for other radio work, but no one was looking for a morning team. I kept searching and eventually found some part time radio work. I also ventured out and began to host Karaoke at a few places every now and then.

My full time gig was working in the mail room at EDS. I spent a lot of time in the car and listened to a lot of radio. Many of these songs accompanied me on my deliveries.

After seven years of touring and three previous albums, Blues Traveler finally broke through with the song Run-Around. John Popper had a crush on the band’s original bass player Felicia Lewis. She was actually classically trained as a violinist. She was just playing bass for fun.

Guitar player Chan Kinchla says that Felicia was a great student and eventually became a doctor. “Her calling was medicine, not music” . When Bobby Sheehan was ready to take over on bass, Felicia stepped aside. Kinchla says, “It’s a very amicable situation. John always had kind of a crush on her, but they were friends, as well. So that song’s from that whole affair. They’re still very close. It’s just an unrequited love song.”

The song won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal in 1995.

John Hopper could really blow the harp! His harmonica stuff is just fantastic. It is hard to to hear this one and not feel happy. I often found myself having to set the cruise control, as this one often made me want to drive fast.

If you are a fan of the Wizard of Oz, you’ll appreciate the nod to the classic film in the video.

Run-Around

Until researching for this blog, I had no idea the story behind the next song. I Believe was a top ten record for Blessid Union of Souls. The song is about the power of love and the belief that it can impact life for the better. It is a powerful message.

The song came about because of the end of a relationship. Eliot Sloan recalls writing this song after his girlfriend’s father coerced her into breaking up with him. Many sources say that it was because of his race. Her dad went as far as threatening to cut off her college tuition, if she didn’t leave him.

They did break up, but she obviously meant a lot to him. He placed a message in the liner notes of the Home album. It says, “Lisa, give me a call sometime just to say hello, my number is still the same.”

Sloan says, “I always tell people, and it’s the truth, ‘I Believe’ was written in the middle of the night at about three in the morning. I always used to live in downtown Cincinnati, a really cool spiral staircase up to my bedroom, which kind of ended up as my studio. I kept a piano there that my mother got me when I was nine. In the middle of the night I was hearing the melody and I thought, ‘this is pretty.’ I just had to get up and play it.”

That piano line is really beautiful, and I love the way it intermingles with the strings. I love the message, too:

‘Cause I believe, that love is the answer
I believe, love will find the way

I Believe

There are many stories about how Better Than Ezra came up with their name. As far as I can tell, they’ve never really said. The one that I love is that they were playing at some event that featured many bands. The story goes that they followed a band called Ezra, and when asked what their name was they said, “Better Than Ezra.” I hope that is the real story, because I think that is hilarious!

We just heard I Believe about a break up. Better Than Ezra’s, Good, looks at a break up in a different way. As a matter of fact, I tend to look at my past break ups like this.

BTE’s Kevin Griffin wrote the song. In an interview with songfacts.com he said:

“I wanted to talk about the positive things that come from the end of a relationship. There’s always the hurt feelings and everyone’s guarded and it can be traumatic, but when the dust settles, it was about looking at the good things – no pun intended – that you got from that relationship. How did you grow? What did you learn emotionally? And to experience some stuff. And in this case it was just kind of reflecting on how this person changed.“

That isn’t always easy to do. I have to remind myself, for example, that while things with my ex-wife weren’t great, I have two amazing sons from that relationship.

As much as I heard this song, I find it hard to believe that it only reached #30 on the charts.

Good

A new Beatles song in 1995?! How can that even happen!? John Lennon had been dead for 15 years by then. Believe it or not, you can thank Yoko Ono for it. Yoko agreed to release a demo tape of John’s to the other Beatles the day after he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 1994 the three remaining Beatles recorded around his demo track to complete the song Free As a Bird. It was released as a single in 1995. Before their breakup, The Beatles won just four Grammy Awards. They picked up three more in 1997 when “Free As A Bird” won for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal and Best Music Video, Short Form.

It was Jeff Lynne of ELO who would produce the single. He The Daily Mail that of all the songs he’s produced, “Free as a Bird” is the one he’s most proud of. “I just had to improvise and come up with a few things to make it work,” Lynne recalled. “I did it late at night, 3 a.m. in the studio, just me and the engineer, because I didn’t want to do it in front of Paul and George. But I came in the next day and Paul gave me a hug and he said, ‘You’ve done it, well done!'”

My first records were Beatles songs. So it was so neat to hear all four of them together again for the first time in years!

Free As A Bird

Next is another song that I heard a lot while driving. It stood out for a few reasons. First, it was uptempo. I seem to remember a lot of ballads being played at the time. Driving while tired, uptempo is always good!

Second, it was short. It was very rare to have any song be under 3 and a half minutes on the radio. Many of them were 4 and 5 minutes. This one clocks in at just under 2 and a half minutes.

Finally, it reminds me of Run-Around by Blues Traveler. Ok, maybe it was Blues Traveler that reminds me of this one. I really don’t know.

The first time I saw the video, I laughed out loud. In it the guys from Del Amitri are being wheeled about in strollers by beautiful women. The band members’ heads were superimposed (badly) on the babies to create the effect. 

Roll To Me

When I worked at W4 Country in Detroit, they used to host a huge summer festival. It was downtown in Hart Plaza and all kinds of country artists came to play. It was called the Downtown Hoedown. At this time in my career, I had really never done a lot of backstage stuff.

Looking back now, I could kick myself. So many of the singers were just walking around backstage and in the area that was reserved for our staff. I took my ex wife with me and we were just sitting at a table drinking water. This guy walked by with a cowboy hat on and he looked familiar. I couldn’t place him to save my life.

As he walked by, he nodded and said hello to us. I didn’t know if it was an artist, a manager, a roadie, or someone else. We said hello and he continued walking. What was weird was that as he approached us, he kind of slowed down like he expected us to start chatting him up. I know now that this was David Lee Murphy.

Dust on the Bottle was a big hit for him, but it almost didn’t make his album. He tells the story:

“I had the idea for that song, but I hadn’t ever done anything with it. I just remember being at my house the second day [of recording]. We started recording on Monday, and Tuesday morning, I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table. I started playing the opening chords on my guitar for ‘Dust on the Bottle.’ It just came out of nowhere. The song just fell out in like 15 minutes.

I called Tony Brown, who was producing my record, and I told him, ‘Man, I just wrote this new song!'” Murphy continued. “We had all the songs picked out already for the album. He told me to bring it in and play it for him that day. When he heard the song, he said, ‘Man, we’ve got to cut this.’ So we cut it, and what’s on the record is the first take of the song. A lot of the vocals on it were the first time I sang it. It was really a special song, and it still is to this day.”

Dust On The Bottle

I will apologize for the next song right now. I had to include it because it was such a big song when I was DJing. In the US, the Macarena was the biggest dance craze of the 1990s. It was played at weddings, office parties, cruise ships, and just about anywhere there was dancing. Like the earlier dance craze, the “Electric Slide,” it was easy to learn and was done in a group. This made it perfect for Americans who lacked rhythm. It would spawn other dance crazes in the years ahead.

The song was one that had many “mixes.” The meaning of the song changes depending on what mix you are listening to. In the original version, Macarena is upset because her boyfriend, Vitorino, has joined the army. She retaliates by going out on the town and carousing with other men. In the Bayside Boys mix, Macarena gets mad at her boyfriend and goes out to shake it while he’s out of town. In this version, she seems to be more promiscuous. The Bayside Boys also made it a first-person account, with the lyrics being the voice of Macarena.

Macarena

I never cared for the song that much, however two years later, there was a country mix. It sounded ridiculous. I went out and bought one of those hillbilly hats with the feather on it and a corn cob pipe. I would get out and dance with it on. It only made it more silly.

The next song was one that got played a lot on the radio with dedications to someone who passed away. It was played at weddings in remembrance of a loved one, too. When my mom passed away, this was another of those songs that made me think of her.

Mariah Carey wrote One Sweet Day with Boyz II Men. She said she wrote a song that was identical to a song Boyz II Men had written, so they combined the two.

Mariah was in the middle of writing the poignant ballad with her longtime collaborator Walter Afanasieff when she had the idea to bring in the R&B group.“I just thought the chorus was crying out for the vocals that they do,” she recalled in a 1999 interview. “We contacted them, we went through all the channels, this and that, and we finally got together, sang them the song and Nate had written a song that was basically identical to my song in the theme and melodically – he could actually sing it over my song and it was really bizarro, it was like fate, so we put the two songs together and came up with ‘One Sweet Day.'”

This was #1 on the US Billboard charts for 16 weeks! That is longer than any other song up to that time. It held that record until 2019 when Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road was #1 for 17 weeks.

One Sweet Day

Despite being a 1995 release, Give Me One Reason was a song that Tracy Chapman had been performing since 1988. She also performed it on a 1989 episode of Saturday Night Live.

The song would wind up on her fourth studio album, New Beginnings in 1995. In 2005, she said “This is autobiographical,” before performing the song. “I left it on someone’s answering machine, and it worked. I wrote it late one night hanging out with my dog, a mini dachshund.”

The song would be her first hit since 1988’s Fast Car. The charts had changed a bit in 1995. Songfacts.com explains: The mid-’90s were a tougher time for female singer-songwriters with stories to tell, but Melissa Etheridge, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow and Jewel all got their piece of the pie even as the airwaves were dominated by R&B and dance singers, mostly guys. “Give Me One Reason” fell into this bucket, skewing to an older audience averse to hip-hop and modern rock.

I love this song because of the bluesy feel to it. That opening guitar lick and her voice are just so good!

Gimme One Reason

My final pick for 1995 comes from a gang member. Yes, you read that right. Lead singer Pauly Fuemana was a gang member in Auckland, New Zealand before achieving pop immortality with this song. He received his musical training in a New Zealand juvenile prison.

How Bizarre by OMC reached #1 in eight different countries, the first of which was New Zealand in early 1996. Others include Australia, Canada, and the US (on the Mainstream Top 40 chart). What is Bizarre is that it never entered the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. Why? It was released as a radio-only promo single. Therefore it was ineligible to chart on the Hot 100 according to rules in place at the time.

According to songfacts.com: OMC stands for Otara Millionaires Club, after the neighborhood in Auckland where Fuemana grew up. It’s a somewhat fanciful name, as the Auckland suburb of Otara is a ghetto/slum.

This was another one of those songs I would hear driving at work. Many of the drivers would come in to the mail room and if something unexpected happened they’d say “How Bizarre!” Some of my ex wife’s sisters would also say this a lot, but usually they’d say, “How Bizzaaaah.”

The song has a fun sound to it and it brings back some great memories.

How Bizarre

So that’s all for 1995. Did I miss one of your favorites? Let me know in the comments.

Next week, we move forward to 1996. My list includes movie music, a cover song or two, a couple artists I have had the chance to hang out with, and a few I’d like to hang out with. It also includes a song that was given to me by a girlfriend to express how she felt about us. Was it good or bad? Tune in next week!

The Music of My Life – 1989

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.

Before we get into the music, I have to take a moment to mark a blogging milestone. This blog will be the 1400th blog I have written since the Nostalgic Italian site went live.

1400 posts and here you are still reading. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am glad that you are here. Now, let’s celebrate by going back to 1989…. when I turned 19.

As I sorted through the singles from 1989, I noticed that there were a lot of duets recorded that year. After All from Peter Cetera and Cher, Don’t Know Much and All My Life from Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, were just a few of them. No duets made my list, however, as I just didn’t feel any of them connected with me enough to bump the ten songs I picked.

I grew up listening to Roy Orbison. He was a favorite for a long time. I used to ask my dad to play his songs on the stereo all the time as a kid. In 1988, Roy saw his career take on new life. He recorded with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan as part of the group The Traveling Wilburys (More on them in a moment) and had recorded a brand new album (Mystery Girl) in November of 1988.

On December 6, 1988, I was at the radio station when an “Urgent” Bulletin came across the AP Newswire stating that Roy had died after having a heart attack. I had never met Roy, but his music was such a big part of my life that seeing the story upset me quite a bit.

You Got It was the first single released from the Mystery Girl album in January of 1989. Orbison wrote the song with his Wilbury friends, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty. Lynne produced the track and also played guitar, keyboards and bass; Petty played acoustic guitar and sang backup. It would reach #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #9 on the Top 40 chart.

Orbison performed this song just once: at the Diamond Awards Festival in Antwerp, Belgium on November 19, 1988. This performance was used as the song’s music video.

You Got It

Every interview I have seen with the guys from the Traveling Wilburys always has them saying how wowed they were by having Roy in their group. When Jeff Lynne was asked about the recording sessions, he said, “Everybody just sat there going, ‘Wow, it’s Roy Orbison!’ … Even though he’s become your pal and you’re hanging out and having a laugh and going to dinner, as soon as he gets behind that [microphone] and he’s doing his business, suddenly it’s shudder time.”

Roy was in the group’s first video (for Handle With Care), and was set to travel to London a couple days after he passed away. One of those videos was for The End of the Line. One of the reasons that I love this video is that the group gives a heartfelt tribute to their friend. When Roy’s vocal happens, we see Roy’s guitar in a rocking chair next to a framed photo of Roy.

The End of the Line

I have never seen the movie Road House. My mom liked it a lot, because she liked Patrick Swayze. Jeff Healey and his band were shooting scenes for the movie (and Jeff had many scenes with Swayze) and recording his See The Light album simultaneously. One of the cuts from this album was Angel Eyes.

I had never heard of Healey before this song. I had no idea that he was blind and marveled at the way he played his guitar (on his lap, like a piano). I was really blown away by his vocals and his guitar playing. He was discovered by two blues legends – Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert Collins.

He toured and sat in with some fantastic people over the years including Buddy Guy, BB King, Eric Clapton, ZZ Top, The Allman Brothers and Bonnie Raitt (just to mention a few.) While he is mainly known for his bluesy style, by the year 2000 he actually was releasing many jazz albums.

He loved music and he was an avid record collector. He amassed a collection of well over 30,000 old 78 rpm records. Starting in 1990 he hosted a radio program of very early jazz on CIUT at the University of Toronto with Colin Bray. Later he went national on CBC Radio’s program entitled My Kind of Jazz, in which he played records from his vast vintage jazz collection.

Too many people write him off as a “One hit wonder” act. His music is fantastic and this song is so soulful … he was a talent taken too soon.

Angel Eyes

“Hey, man! Have you heard that new song by Marvin Young?” I can’t even imagine what type of music someone called Marvin Young would be singing! However, Young MC just screams rap music, right?! I’ve never been a big rap fan, but there was just something about the baseline and the catchy lyrics that made this a favorite for me.

Bust a Move was a song that whenever I played it, the crowd always new the words and sang along. The verse that every one knows is “Your best friend, Harry, has a brother Larry, in five days from now he’s gonna marry…” The whole rhythm of that verse and the baseline fit so well together. I also like the fact that while there is some sexual innuendo, there is no profanity in the song.

Interesting story from songfacts.com: Flea from The Red hot Chili Peppers played bass on this song and appears in the video, but he didn’t reap the rewards. He explained to Bass Player magazine: “I have a bitter taste in my mouth about that, because I feel as though I got ripped off. The bass line I wrote ended up being a major melody of the tune, and I felt I deserved songwriting credit and money because it was a #1 hit. They sold millions of records, and I got $200! Afterwards, my lawyer told them, ‘You should throw down Flea some cash,’ but the record company said, ‘We told him exactly what to play.’ No one was even in the room at the time but me and the engineer! It was ridiculous, but I learned from it.”

It was one of the first rap records to cross over to the mainstream charts. It went to #7! Young MC recalled to Rolling Stone: “People looked at rap and hard rock as the type of music that you slam your door after you argue with your parents, and bang your head in defiance. My record wasn’t necessarily rebellious, but it was clever enough to grab in a decent segment of people that didn’t listen to rap music.”

Bust a Move

The next song is one that I used to play for my prom date, Karen, after we started dating. This and Just You and I from Eddie Rabbit and Crystal Gayle were “our songs.” I remember the first time I heard Luther Vandross sing Here and Now. I remember how powerful the lyric was and just how perfect his voice was for the song.

Karen and I dated for a bit and broke up around 1990, only to get back together a year or so later before breaking up after another year or so. Somewhere during that time I had made her a mix tape of love songs. This was just one of many that made it to that tape.

It was hard for me after we broke up because I was DJing a lot of weddings and this was a very popular Bride and Groom song. I almost always had to put headphones on and listen to something else while it played. Today, I can listen to it and it doesn’t bother me, but at the time, it brought about a lot of pain.

Here and Now

My next tune is one that I have featured before and I wrote about how it was helpful to me post-divorce. You can read about it here:

Tune Tuesday – I’m On My Way

I’m On My Way

I have said many times that Willie Nelson always seemed to have one song on each album that I connected with personally. Many times it was more than that. In 1989, he released a fantastic album entitled “A Horse Called Music.” On the album is a cut that was co-written by Mike Reid (who played five seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals and had a brief country singing career) called There You Are.

I had heard the song many times when listening to the album, but it wasn’t until after the final break up with Karen (see above) that the song really hit me hard. At the time, I was still wrapped up in feelings and hated that we were not together. I found myself thinking about her more than I should have been, especially since she had moved on with her life. Then I heard this song…

I could have written this song! It literally was exactly what was happening to me. For no reason, she’d pop into my head. It was never bad things, it was always some good memory of when we were together. The string arrangement and Willie’s vocal convey those feelings in such a magnificent way. It is beautifully sad …

I had never seen the video for this song until I searched for it today. Willie cleans up pretty good…

There You Are

When you make a list of great songwriters – Leiber and Stoller always are on that list. The next song was written by Oliver Leiber, the son of Jerry Leiber of that aforementioned team. Oliver had already written a couple songs for Paula Abdul (Forever Your Girl and The Way That You Love Me) when he got a call saying that the label needed one more song for her album. That song would be Opposite Attract.

From songfacts: This song evolved into a duet with a cartoon cat named MC Skat Kat, who was actually the duo The Wild Pair. Oliver Leiber explains: “I wrote it all from the perspective of one person singing it. It wasn’t initially a duet. It was saying, ‘I like this and you like that.’ It was basically: I like potatoes, and you like po-tah-toes, all from one singer’s perspective. But I had these two singers I had been working with – Marvin Gunn and Tony Christian. They’re the guys that sang on Prince’s “Kiss” and they were incredibly soulful funky singers that I had been using as part of my sound on the first two tracks I did with Paula, helping to preserve the Minneapolis sound, because they sounded very Prince-y and it really added something to Paula’s vocals.

Basically, he had the Wild Pair sing the entire song and then got Paula to cut her lines later. He wasn’t happy with the original mix, which is why the album and the single versions sound so different.

In the video, the real Paula interacted with the animated MC Skat Kat. The concept of Paula dueting with a cat came from Anchors Aweigh, a movie where Gene Kelly dances with the mouse from Tom & Jerry. The video was directed by Michael Patterson and his wife Candace Reckinger, who also created the MC Skat Kat character and animation. Patterson said: “Gene Kelly loved it; he was a friend of Paula’s. Gene was also an inspiration to Candace and I.”

Fun Fact: Patterson and Reckinger got their start in music videos when they created the iconic clip for a-ha’s Take On Me

I loved the Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse dance, so naturally, I loved this video (and Paula) too!

Opposites Attract

Before I knew the song was about Elvis, I really loved the sound of Black Velvet by Alannah Miles. It was considered a power ballad, but to me it sounded more like a good blues song. Miles’ voice had that bluesy and sultry voice that fit with the groove of the song perfectly.

The story of how the song came to be is a good one. Co-writer Christopher Ward, who was Myles’ then-boyfriend, was inspired on a bus full of Elvis fans riding to Memphis attending the 10th Anniversary Vigil at Graceland, in 1987. Upon his return to Canada, he brought his idea to Myles and producer David Tyson, who wrote the chords for the bridge. The song was one of three in a demo Myles presented to Atlantic Records, which eventually got her signed to the label.

Songfacts provides a bit of lyric analysis:

“Black velvet and that little boy’s smile” – You can buy a black velvet Elvis painting at any respectable yard sale. Early female fans were drawn to his “Little boy smile.”

“Black velvet with that slow southern style” – Elvis delivered some of his songs with slow, undulating hips. Check out “Steamroller Blues” live.

“Up in Memphis the music’s like a heatwave” – Sun Studios. The epicenter of early rock music and where Elvis recorded.

“Love Me Tender leaves ’em cryin’ in the aisle” – Love Me Tender was a huge hit for Elvis in 1956.

“The way he moved, it was a sin, so sweet and true” – Elvis’ legendary hips swivel, the Pelvis.

“Every word of every song that he sang was for you. In a flash he was gone, it happened so soon, what could you do?” – Elvis died suddenly in 1977.

Black Velvet

For me, the last song for this week is something that I continue to work on in my personal life. In my first marriage and throughout that period of my life, I just found it easier to back down and make everyone happy. I did this even if it made me unhappy. It is challenging to stand your ground and not back down from what you believe in or what you feel is right.

Tom Petty’s song was helpful to him as well. Before recording his Full Moon Fever album, an arsonist burned down his house while he was in it with his family and their housekeeper. They escaped, but Petty was badly shaken and spent much of the next few months driving between hotel rooms and a rented house.

Songfacts says that: It was on these drives that he came up with many of the songs for the album; the fire was a huge influence, especially on this song. Petty felt grateful to be alive, but also traumatized – understandable considering someone had tried to kill him. “I Won’t Back Down” was his way of reclaiming his life and getting past the torment – he said that writing and recording the song had a calming effect on him.

The song was used as a patriotic anthem after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Regarding that, Tom said: “The song has also been adopted by nice people for good things, too. I just write them, I can’t control where it ends up.”

The song has a Wilburys connection.  The video features Ringo Starr on drums, with Wilburys’ George Harrison and Jeff Lynne on guitar. Harrison did play on the track and contributed backing vocals, but Ringo had nothing to do with the song itself.

I Won’t Back Down

That’s it for the 1980’s! We’ll dive into a brand new decade next week. 1990 was a good year for music. Starting in the 1990’s my music choices tended to lean a bit more country as far as new stuff. In 1990 alone, I could have picked 10 country songs for the list. I didn’t, but I could have.

Next week’s list will feature and interesting mix of music, largely due to the radio station where I was working at the time … some classic rock, some soulful songs, and big pants ….

Did I miss a favorite of yours from 1989? Tell me all about it in the comments. See you next week.

The Music of My Life – 1988

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.

1988 was a very big year for me. It was the year I graduated from high school. It was also the year that I landed my first radio job. As graduation day grew closer, I began counting all of the “lasts.” The last marching band performance. The last band concert. The last final exam. To say that I was an emotional wreck would be an understatement.

After graduation, I had a full time radio gig (making a whopping $12 an hour) and so I gave up thinking about doing anything else. I was that clueless to think that I’d have this radio gig until I retired. Can you imagine? Typical 18 year-old!

I mentioned last week that 1988’s list would present some songs that may or may not seem out of place. I suppose that those who know me well will not be surprised by the songs I picked, and there certainly is a variety! Well, I suppose I should get right into the tunes …

I have to remind myself that it is not Movie Music Monday, because my list includes not one, but two songs from the soundtrack to Tom Cruise’s film, Cocktail. My buddy Steve and I cruised a lot our senior year. He was always bringing new music for me to listen to. I am almost positive that he was the one who told me about the Georgia Satellites’ version of the Hippy Hippy Shake.

The version I was familiar with was done by the Swinging Blue Jeans, and was a song we played at my first radio station. I had no idea that the song was written and recorded first by Chan Romero in 1959. Anyway, when I hear the Satellites’ version really rocks and it was a great song to cruise to.

Hippy Hippy Shake

In 1987, the song La Bamba was a hit again. This time it was Los Lobos from the soundtrack to the hit movie starring Lou Diamond Phillips. It made for the perfect parody song for Weird Al Yankovic. His version was called, Lasagna. Now, what Italian wouldn’t like this song?!

It is on my list because when my dad booked my graduation party, he also gathered up a few of his band friends. He had the sax guy, keyboard guy, and bass guy come. It was either my cousin or my uncle who brought their drum kit, and my dad brought his guitar. No rehearsal, all they had was some lyric sheets with chords on them and they jammed through the whole party. It was awesome!

My dad played so many great blues songs. Everyone seemed to take turns singing something. My dad called me, and my friends Steve and Joe up to the stage and handed us the lyrics to Weird Al’s Lasagna. I’m guessing it didn’t take much coaxing for us to sing, and it was probably awful. However, it is a great memory of me and my pals.

Lasagna

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, they say. Robert Palmer had great success with his Addicted to Love video. So he brought back the models from the previous music video for this one. Only this time they’ve multiplied! Five of them do choreographed dance moves, but another eight stand behind Palmer looking bored. It worked, though, as Palmer won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male for this song. It was the same award he won two years earlier for “Addicted To Love.”

Songfacts.com says: The big, sexy hook in this song is the pause after Palmer sings, “Now I find her.” After some drumbeats, he comes back with “…simply irresistible.” The song was in the works for three years before Palmer came up with this part, making the song complete. “A little thing like that makes the difference between an idea and the complete song,” he wrote in his Addictions: Volume 1 liner notes, adding, “I like the manic military rhythm and the strong counter melody.”

This was yet another song that made it to our “cruising cassettes.” It was another great sing along song for us.

Simply Irresistible

My next song is one that I always thought was very creative. I Hate Myself for Loving You is such a great line. I relate to in in a few ways. As a young punk, I kinda fell for gals pretty hard. I let many of them treat me bad and I just kept hanging on with them. I always felt that I would just keep on loving them through it all. Yeah, I was an idiot. Today, that title makes me smile and makes me think of young Keith, who just wanted to make someone happy.

Thanks to Songfacts, I learned that that wasn’t originally the title: Joan Jett’s producer Kenny Laguna told us that Joan came up with the guitar riff for this song and wrote it as “I Hate Myself Because I Can’t Get Laid.” She took it to the writer/producer Desmond Child, who thought the title would never fly and convinced Joan to change it to something with “Love” in the title. Child, who got a co-writing credit on the song.

I Hate Myself For Loving You

The next song is the only country song on my list. I am guessing that I never really heard this when it was released, and became familiar with it a year or so after when I had my first stint at a country station.

I was familiar with the Oak Ridge Boys, of course. I mean, who wasn’t? Elvira was all over the radio when it was out. They guys had great harmonies and when I first heard Gonna Take a Lot of River, that is what stood out to me. This would have been sometime in 1991, when my girlfriend had broken up with me.

That being said, the lyrics now really hit home. I spent a lot of time at the beach and on the pier watching the waves during that time. So the lines “Because my baby’s long gone and nothings going my way. I’m gonna let this muddy water just wash away my blues.” resonated with me.

Today, when I hear it I just love listening to the harmonies and fumble every time I try to say, “Monongahela.”

Gonna Take a Lot of River

The variety of songs continues …

1988 brought us the only acapella song to go to number one in the United States. It is the second song from the Cocktail soundtrack. Don’t Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin was unlike anything on the radio at the time. Bobby recorded it using only his body to make all the sounds. The simple message and unusual sound made it a surprise hit.

The inspiration for the song came from a poster that Bobby saw featuring the Indian guru Meher Baba. It simply said, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Bobby says that when he saw it he thought it was “a pretty neat philosophy in four words.” If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, Don’t Worry, Be Happy in 1988 alone, I’d be financially set for life.

The video was a silly one and a received lots of airplay on MTV. It featured Robin Williams and the lesser-known comedian Bill Irwin (who plays Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street). It is interesting to note that the video is a bit shorter than the single.

I always think of my best friend, Jeff, when I hear this one. He would always say the line, “I’ll give you my phone number, when you worry, call me, I’ll make you happy.” We found that line hilarious for some reason.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

The next song was something I heard while cruising with my girlfriend. I’m sure we were listening to that Love Song show (Pillow Talk). It grabbed me from the intro. It was a smooth groove that reminded me of some old Atlantic or Stax soul songs. I was surprised to learn it was Glenn Frey.

Glenn’s Soul Searching album was his third solo album. I picked up the album because of the song True Love. My feelings about the song were justified when I read the liner notes.  Frey wrote of the song “For those of you who have my previous albums, I apologize. I just can’t shake my obsession with this Al Green-Memphis thing. Like Wilson Pickett says, ‘Don’t fight it’.” Cash Box magazine even called the song: “a classic R&B tune replete with hornbreaks and soul-tinged arrangement and production.”

My favorite part of the song is the fake ending. After a second or two, the drum kicks back in and the sax wails away at a solo. Love this song. I wish the video would have started with the song instead of the cheesy acting by the actors … LOL

True Love

Who would have thought that Tom Jones would have a career boost in 1988?! Tom enjoyed great success in the mid 60’s and the 1970’s. He never really stopped making records and was always on tour. In the early 1980s, Jones started to record country music. From 1980 to 1986, he had nine songs in the US country top 40, yet failed to crack the top 100 in the UK or the Billboard Hot 100.

Prince had recorded Kiss in 1986. The song was a big hit and continues to be played in a regular rotation on Adult Contemporary stations all over the country. I know that many will not agree with me when I say that Prince’s version sounds weak compared to the Tom Jones/Art of Noise version. Tom commands the song and I cannot love it more!

According to Songfacts, after his country songs, he “made a left-field decision to cover this song, and in doing so revived his career. He told the Observer Music Monthly December 2008 how this came about: “If I hear a song I like I’ll do it in the show, so when I heard this I sang it (Kiss) in an R&B style. Then I was due to go on Jonathan Ross’s program in 1987 to perform the ballad ‘A Boy From Nowhere,’ and he wanted something upbeat too. My philosophy has always been: when in doubt, do ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ But Jonathan asked if I had anything new. Art of Noise were watching and they asked if I’d do a version with them. When they sent me the finished version I thought: ‘If this isn’t a hit, I’ll bloody well pack it all in.’ It was a busting hit.”

Tom tells a great story about Prince. When he met Prince and thanked him for the song, but didn’t ask what his thought of his version, as he wasn’t sure he would like the answer. “I saw a movie once that Bette Midler did called The Rose,” Jones said in a Songfacts interview. “She goes to see Harry Dean Stanton, a country singer, because she’d recorded one of his songs. She says she’s a big fan of his, and just before she walks out the door he says, ‘Could I say one thing to you? Don’t you ever record one of my songs again. ‘That hit home. I thought, s–t, I’m never going to ask a songwriter what he or she thinks of my version. I’ll leave that to them. That always sticks in my mind. So I just thanked him for writing it.”

Fun fact: Prince and Tom Jones were both born on the same day, the 7th of June (Prince in 1958, Jones in 1940)

Kiss

I am sure that I have talked about the next song before. I am also sure that I talked about the album before. It was truly a monumental event!

From Songfacts: Handle With Care was the first single from The Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup created by George Harrison and Jeff Lynne. Initially an informal grouping with Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, they got together at Bob Dylan’s Santa Monica, California, studio to quickly record an additional track as a B-side for the single release of Harrison’s song “This Is Love.” “Handle With Care” was the song they came up with, which Harrison and his record company immediately realized was too good to be released as merely a B-side. The five superstars decided to form a band and make an entire album, recording nine more songs at Dave Stewart’s (of Eurythmics) house in Los Angeles in a 10-day window when they were all available.

This was the only video that included Roy Orbison. A short time after the album was released, he passed away of a heart attack. I was working at the radio station the morning that news of his passing came across the news wire. I will never forget that.

Handle With Care

When I was DJing parties and weddings, I would often find out about new dance songs from people who made requests. Many of the songs were line dances like the Cupid Shuffle or Cha Cha Slide. Over the years, I was introduced to The Biker Shuffle, The Turbo Hustle, The Dougie and many others that way. I was always surprised at how they would fill the dance floor.

I remember someone asking for a song called Da Butt and I laughed. It was from a Spike Lee movie, but I had never heard of it. That week, I stopped by a DJ supply store and there on one of the many compilation CD’s they made was Da Butt by a group called EU. I bought it, took it home and gave it a listen.

It certainly had a funkiness to it and I could see how this might be something that people could dance to. It didn’t take long to find out because I had a wedding the following weekend. Once I started the song, the crowd screamed and got on the dance floor. Before I knew it, everyone was shaking their rear end. I would use this song a lot over the years.

I always think of one of my college instructors when I hear this because I DJ’d a birthday party for one of her kids and SHE was the one who asked me to play it.

I would often get out on the dance floor with these poster board signs I had made for my gigs. I had one that said “Oh-We-Oh. Whoa-Oh” and I would hold it up for audience participation during that part of the song. While it is not the most family friendly song, it did give me a chance to have some fun at a lot of DJ gigs.

Da Butt

I couldn’t let this year pass without touching on one of the big controversies of the year. In June of 1988, Gail Brewer-Giorgio released a book called “Is Elvis Alive?” Along with the book, there was a cassette tape with alleged phone conversations that Elvis had with someone long after he was supposed to have died.

This played right into the rumor in the music industry was that Elvis had faked his death. In the years following his death, there were many sightings of him (including my home state of Michigan – at a Kalamazoo Burger King), and in late 1988 record label LS Records released “Spelling on the Stone” to capitalize on the popularity of the phenomenon. According to LS Records owner Lee Stoller, who produced the song, his daughter Tammy received the recording in August 1988 from an anonymous man who arrived at the label’s offices in a limousine. After obtaining distribution rights, LS Records released the song on radio by the end of 1988, with the single’s release not crediting an artist. The song’s title refers to the fact that Presley’s middle name, Aron, is misspelled as “Aaron” on his tombstone, which was a common argument against his death at the time. The song features an uncredited vocalist with a delivery similar to Presley’s; it tells a first-person narrative, purportedly from his perspective, to suggest that he had faked his death.

Some people claim that the impersonator is actually a guy named Dan Willis, who recorded at LS Records. Others think it really is Elvis. I say Balderdash …

Bonus Song: Spelling On the Stone

1988 had so many great songs. There have been times I wonder if I should pick 15 instead of 10. I know that in future years, I will struggle to pick 10, so I won’t. What one of your favorite 1988 hits did I miss? Mention it in the comments.

Next week we move to 1989. The list isn’t as all over the place like this one and includes some great songs. Join me next week and we’ll give them a listen….

The Music of My Life – 1987

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 would turn 17 in 1987. It was my junior year in high school and I did what I had to do to get by in all my classes except band class. I was completely devoted to band class. I was an officer in band class (I was one of the librarians who helped sort, catalog and distribute music). I often stayed late and practiced with a couple other band nerds.

It was also the year I dated a gal who was kinda sorta toxic. It was an 8 month relationship that really had me messed up. I won’t go into details. We had some good times, but the bad times outweighed them. As I have worked ahead for this feature, I began to notice how some songs really hold some big relationship memories. The power of a song and the memories attached to them aren’t always happy, but I have noticed that there are more happy ones than bad ones.

Off to 1987 and my ten picks …

One of the best concerts I ever attended was Billy Joel and Elton John. There were two piano greats and a night of fantastic music. I am always interested to find out an artist’s hero, or favorite artist. Billy has often said that his favorite was the great Ray Charles. Put the two of them together and you’ve got one very cool song.

According to songfacts.com, when Ray showed up at the session, they met for the first time, and Joel was in awe. To break the ice and get to know each other, they each played piano for a while before recording the song. Whenever Charles would meet someone for the first time, he would touch that person’s face. When he did this to Joel, he said, “relax,” since he could tell Billy was nervous.

In a 1986 promotional interview, Joel said he was sitting at home trying to find inspiration for the song in his surroundings when his baby grand sparked his imagination. “I began looking around at things that have been consistent in my life, and in this age of synthesizers and electronic keyboards the piano has almost become an old-fashioned instrument,” he recalled. “I glanced at the baby grand piano and realized that I had a lot of love for that thing. The piano has provided me with a nice living, a career, and happiness. It’s gotten me women, and it’s gotten me through some strange times.”

He continued: “Sometimes at night I’d sit down and give myself a concert, and it’s almost like the piano did it – I didn’t even have anything to do with it. When I was thinking about a theme for Ray and me, it seemed apropos: you know, Ray Charles, piano player. Billy Joel, piano player. Let’s talk about a real love in our lives – the baby grand. ‘Baby Grand’ is really a love song to an instrument.”

Personally, this is just one of those magical musical songs to me. It’s a bluesy love song played by two talents who love their instrument – and making music. And that is good enough for me.

Baby Grand

I’m sure that every radio market had an adult contemporary station that played love songs at night. Usually, it was hosted by a deep voiced DJ who would smoothly deliver requests and dedications over the air. In Detroit, we had “Pillow Talk” hosted by Alan Almond.

In 1987, I had my driver’s license and I would go out cruising around with my friends. When I began dating, I would often “park” and listen to the love song show. As I was going through songs for this feature, I was overwhelmed by just how many of those songs were nightly staples on that show.

While there were times that my girlfriend and I would make out in a parking lot, there were also a lot of times when we sat and listened to the music and talk. There were a lot of ballads that came out in the mid-80’s. Many of them continue to be played as wedding songs and such.

One song that really stood out on the radio was an instrumental by Kenny G. It was his hit, Songbird. It sounded so out of place, yet perfectly fit. Because it was an instrumental, the DJ would often use it to read those lovey dovey dedications. “Sarah wants Josh to know that she misses him so much tonight.” “William called in to thank Beth for a wonderful first date.” “Deborah wants Tim to know that she is very sorry for the argument they had tonight and wants to dedicate this one to him.”

Fun fact: “Songbird” is all Kenny G – he played every instrument on the track (including the drum programming) and recorded it in his home studio. “I created a whole sound based on what I was hearing inside me,” he told Vanity Fair. “It came out, and Whoa! That’s exactly what I wanted!”

When I hear Songbird, I am reminded of those nights where I thought I was really in love and had no idea what true love was at the time.

Songbird

MTV turned 6 in 1987 and as we have seen in the past few weeks, there were many creative videos to boost record sales. I could list about 50 videos that are forever etched in my brain, and up near the top would be the one for the next song – Doing It All For My Baby.

Mike Duke (who played with the Outlaws) cowrote the song with Philip Cody. They couldn’t get anyone to record it. Mike went on tour with Delbert McClinton and at some point was doing club gigs in Mississippi. Some guys from Huey’s band came in to see the gig and he was playing ‘Doing It All For My Baby.’ The guys in the band said, ‘Wow, we love this song. We’re going to bring it to Huey.’ And they brought it in, and three years after we wrote the song, Huey Lewis & the News recorded the song and put it on their biggest selling album ever.”

The band produced an extended video for the song that lasted almost 8 minutes and resulted an one of the iconic MTV images of the ’80s: the band’s heads on display in glass cases while they sing this song. In the video, the band gets stranded somewhere spooky, and end up in various Frankenstein scenes with Lewis playing Dr. Frankenstein. It was truly one of those “fun” videos!

This song features the Tower of Power Horns. I can’t imagine the song without them!

Doing It All For My Baby

When I used to DJ, I would often play music at the VFW hall that my dad belonged to. I met so many great people there and remain friends with many of them. It was here that I became familiar with a lot of songs that I hadn’t heard before. One of them was my next song.

Jimmy Mac, as he was known to all of us, used to always ask for stuff like Barry White, Deon Jackson and the Whispers. Rock Steady never failed to get people on the dance floor. I started playing it at other gigs afterward and it always worked.

According to songfacts.com, the song was written and produced by the team of L.A. Reid and Babyface. It was one of the first songs the pair worked on for another artist – they were members of the group The Deele at the time. In 1989, they formed LaFace Records and became music moguls as well as hit producers. TLC, OutKast and Pink were all signed to LaFace. It would be their biggest hit, reaching #7 on the chart.

Rock Steady

It has taken me 17 weeks to finally “Rickroll” you. Sorry. Of course, Rickrolling wouldn’t even become a thing until 2007, but you have to admit that the song was an earworm. Once you heard it, it was stuck in your brain for hours. (The same thing happens to me with his song, “Together Forever.” Which is almost the same song, really!)

At the time, however, this was a pretty big thing. I remember it playing at all the high school dances and all the kids dancing to it, well, not me, but you know what I mean. Astley’s story is actually a cool one …

He worked for the British production team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s studio for two years. While he was there he was operating tape machines, singing on recordings for other singers, learning the trade and famously making the tea before the production trio wrote and produced this song for him, which became his first hit. It was recorded in October 1986, but wasn’t released until July 1987, as the producers were waiting for the right environment to break a new artist.

It was inspired by a woman Pete Waterman had been seeing for three years. Rick Astley was staying with Waterman at the time, and after a three-hour phone call with the woman, Astley said, “You’re never gonna give her up.” Aitken and Waterman then changed the story a bit and made him the one who was vulnerable. It was the biggest hit of 1987 in the UK, and went to number one here in the states.

I guess the nice thing about this blog is that you don’t have to click on the video, but you KNOW you want to! Do it! Click it!

Never Gonna Give You Up

Time to clear your musical pallet of Mr. Astley. I’ll do it with the phenomenal blending of three beautiful voices.

The group Trio was made up of Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris. These three ladies were good friends with each other and admirers of each other’s work. The first attempted to record an album together in the mid-1970s, but scheduling conflicts and other difficulties (including the fact that the three women all recorded for different record labels) prevented its release. Record labels were real peculiar about that kind of thing, I guess.

The Trio album was released in March of 1987. One of four singles that was released was called Those Memories of You. This song was recorded by Bill and James Monroe in 1950! Mel Tillis’ daughter, Pam, released a version in 1986 (reaching #55), but the Trio version is the one that was the hit. It was a top 5 song on the Country charts. The video starred a familiar face – actor Harry Dean Stanton.

The Trio album won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

It is one of those songs that I could get lost in the vocals and the harmonies.

Those Memories of You

The next song is on my list because of my brother. He listened to a lot of music in his room, but I can distinctly remember Madonna and Debbie Gibson music playing a lot. If memory serves me right, he saw her in concert a few times. Shake Your Love seems to be the one song from this album that I always heard from down the hall.

Out of the Blue was Debbie’s debut album and Shake Your Love was the second single from it. What is impressive to me is that she wrote every song on this album and was only 16 when the album was released! This and her first single (Only in My Dreams) were both top 5 records for her.

Another 1980’s superstar helped Debbie with the dance moves in the video for this song – Paula Abdul.

Shake Your Love

Desmond Child has written and co-written some very big songs, including You Give Love a Bad Name and Livin’ on a Prayer for Bon Jovi. When a record rep suggested that Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith write a song with him, they were not thrilled.

Child told songfacts.com: Steven was much more friendly, as he is, and was very generous, really, and showed me a song that they had started called ‘Cruisin’ for the Ladies.’ I listened to that lyric, and I said, ‘You know what, that’s a very boring title.’ And they looked at me like, ‘How dare you?’ And then Steven volunteered, sheepishly, and said that when he first wrote the melody he was singing ‘Dude Looks like a Lady.’ It was kind of a tongue twister that sounded more like scatting. He got the idea because they had gone to a bar and had seen a girl at the end of the bar with ginormous blonde rock hair, and the girl turned around and it ended up being Vince Neil from Motley Crue. So then they started making fun of him and started saying, ‘That dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady, dude looks like a lady.’ So that’s how that was born. That’s the true story of how that was born. So I grabbed onto that and I said, ‘No, that’s the title of the song.'”

I have always loved the story of how the song came to be. It really became the comeback song for the group, as their last hit was back in 1978. When I first saw Mrs. Doubtfire with Robin Williams and they played this song, I laughed out loud.

Dude Looks Like A Lady

In 1982, George Harrison released his Gone Troppo album and it didn’t do well. It can be said that a lot of his work was well off the mainstream, using unusual instruments and based on Indian music. “Got My Mind Set On You” proved that he could release a song requiring very little thought and send it up the charts. Naturally, many of Harrison’s ardent followers can’t stand this song.

The song was written by Rudy Clark and originally recorded by James Ray in 1962. George had bought a copy of the single in the summer of 1963 when visiting his sister Louise in Illinois. Many years later when he was writing his Cloud Nine album, he remembered the song and decided to cover it.

Songfacts.com says that when Harrison conceived the Cloud Nine album, he looked for a producer who could carry some of the load and not be intimidated by working with a former Beatle. He sought out Jeff Lynne of ELO for the role even though he had never met him – he connected with Lynne by having their mutual friend, Dave Edmunds, get him the message. It ended up being a great fit. Lynne brought his distinctive production sheen to the tracks and helped out writing some of the songs. Lynne’s influence can be heard in the backing vocals of the “Got My Mind Set On You” chorus. Harrison and Lynne are responsible for bringing together Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty, forming The Traveling Wilburys in 1988.

MTV played the video a lot for this song and VH1 had recently gone on the air, so it aired there, too. As simple as this song is, I’ve always loved this one by George.

There were two videos for the song, the first I was unaware of until I stumbled on it for this piece. Both were directed by Gary Weis. The first features a young guy trying to win a ballerina for a gal he sees in an arcade. She is watching the video of George on a kinescope. Here is that video:

Got My Mind Set On You

This second video is the one I am most familiar with. It was inspired by the then-recently released movie – Evil Dead II. As George sits in a study singing, furniture and knick-knacks (including a stuffed squirrel, sentient chainsaw, a suit of armor, and mounted stag and warthog) begin to sing or dance along with the song. FYI, the backflip is performed by a stunt double.

I have made it no secret that I love Roy Orbison’s music. I remember being thrilled that he was making a comeback in the late 80’s. His stuff with the aforementioned Wilburys is so good. His posthumous Mystery Girl album was a fitting sendoff for him.

The original version of crying was recorded in 1961. Roy claimed to have written this as the result of an encounter he had with an old flame with whom he was still in love. He refused to say how much she meant to him, and when he ran into her again it was too late. It has one of the most powerful endings in music, in my opinion.

He claimed the stunning climax at the end of the song was not contrived, but just happened in the course of the song. He told the NME in 1980: “Immediately I thought of a past experience and just retold that, was the way that came about. It was the retelling of a thing with a girlfriend that I had had. I couldn’t tell you right now what notes I hit at the end of the song, or anything.”

In 1987, shortly after he signed with Virgin Records, he recorded a duet of this song with kd lang which was released as a single and later used as the B-side to his 1989 release “She’s A Mystery To Me.” This duet won the 1988 Grammy award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, and was re-released in the UK in 1992, where it hit #13. Lang said that when they met to do the recording, it was obvious that their voices had a “tonal connection.”

I do not disagree with her. To me, the 1961 version is perfection. When I hear it, I am mentally exhausted. It is so moving. How can you top it? Add kd lang. Wow. To say that I was blown away by this version is an understatement. The arrangement and the vocals are just powerful and beautiful at the same time.

There was a time in my life where I could relate to the lyrics of this song. It was a painful time, and the hurt conveyed in the song was very real to me.

Crying

Boy, this week I Rickroll you and end on a sad note. Sorry about that. Next week will be better.

We’ll travel to 1988 next week. It was my senior year, and there are some fun ones on my list. I hope you will come back and check out the list.

What was your favorite from 1987? Drop them in the comments ….

The Music of My Life – 1983

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 13 in 1983. I had a paper route and a weekly income because of it. I spent my money on toys, books and music. I loved going into Harmony House and buying 45’s or albums. As I get deeper into the 80’s, I’m seeing more and more songs that I “had” to have.

I am noticing something about a lot of the songs on my lists. There have been some that have not necessarily been meaningful to me the year they were released, but wound up being important later on in my life. That is the case of a few of them from this year. That being said, let’s check out my list….

When Lionel Richie left the Commodores, he had a number one song with “Truly.” The follow up song has always been one of my favorites. I can still see and hear my mother singing along the the chorus of “You Are.”

What I love about this is the fact that while it is a love song, it has some tempo to it. It also has a horn section. Future hit maker Richard Marx sang backup on this track. His first job in music was singing on the Lionel Richie album, and he proved himself on this track, which required some deft background vocals. Richard told songfacts.com: “Every session I ever did with Lionel, or for him, was a very fun atmosphere. I’ve been on so many sessions where it’s a downer, and you just try to get through it and nobody is having fun. Lionel is always having fun – no matter what.”

You Are

When I worked in country radio, I used to go to the Country Radio Seminar. It was a place where you got to hear various panels discussing programming, promotions and more. There were plenty of artists there (both old and new) to entertain. We’d often bring stuff for artists to sign so we could auction them off for St. Jude.

Every night there was always a show somewhere. Everyone had always talked about “the boat.” One record label would bring folks about the General Jackson Showboat and provide dinner and drinks. While us radio people would sit and eat, they would bring artists out on the stage to play for us. Many times it was familiar artists featuring their new songs or new artists that the label wanted to showcase.

One of the things about the boat was that there were always one or two surprise guests. You never knew who might show up. The year before my first boat ride, Huey Lewis had mad an appearance. The first time I was on the boat, they wheeled out this piano on the stage. Next, they brought out Ronnie Milsap and I was thrilled. I had always loved his music and he did not disappoint.

He came out laughing and joking and cranked out a few songs, including Stranger In My House. It was written by Mike Reid, who was a defensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals for five seasons and had a couple country hits of his own. The song was a country hit and also crossed over to the AC and Hot 100 charts.

The song is done in a minor key and from the opening chords, I was hooked.

Stranger In My House

Anyone who goes through a divorce or a break up knows that what follows can be a rough road. The next song is an example of a song that meant nothing to me at the time, but years later it did.

The fighting, the bickering, the pettiness, the blame, the suffering, the accusations and all the things that comes with a divorce is difficult enough. Once they hand you the final decree, it is important to start anew. I had a wonderful support system in place for me and as time passed, I looked back to see that I was making it. I had been through the war and I had made it to the victory.

Elton John’s I’m Still Standing was used in an animated movie called “Sing.” It was while watching that with the kids that I really heard and felt the lyrics. I can look in the mirror and know that I’m Still Standing and life is GOOD!

I’m Still Standing

Remember ELO’s song “Motor Factory?” Of course, you don’t. That’s because as the group was recording the song, it went through a bunch of changes. They lyrics were completely changed and it became Rock and Roll Is King. The song was released as a single from their Secret Messages album.

ELO’s Dave Morgan said in an interview, “I sang on quite a few tracks, I sang on ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Is King’. I played on that one, but it wasn’t called that, it was something about something about working at Austin Longbridge! It was full of car plant sounds, you could hear it going clank, clank, clank, like somebody hitting a lathe with a hammer, and Jeff went away and made it into ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Is King’, wiped off everything we’d done, no, there was still some backing left in there, It was much better how he finished it off than it was before.”

I remember recording this off the radio as a kid. I didn’t realize that there was (what we radio guys call) a “fake cold” ending. That’s where the song stops, you think it’s over, and they come back and sing again. The first time I recorded it off the radio I hit pause on the fake cold, only for ELO to start singing again. Urgh! I got smart after that and went and bought the single.

Rock and Roll Is King

Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham released a few solo albums in the 80’s. Despite some songs that were Top 40 hits, not many folks can recall them. There is, however, one song that folks know thanks to the misadventures of a family named Griswold.

Thanks to National Lampoon’s Vacation, Buckingham’s song Holiday Road had become his best known song. That’s really saying something for a song that never cracked the Top 40 and peaked at #82 when it was released. The song almost didn’t happen.

Actor/director Harold Ramis asked Buckingham to create two songs for his film National Lampoon’s Vacation. He was initially reluctant, believing that soundtrack work “wasn’t part of his discipline.” Thankfully, he decided to grant Ramis’s request, and wrote. Buckingham recorded “Holiday Road” without seeing the entire film. He figured that the movie “had to be somewhat uplifting and a little bit funny”. To keep in line with that, he added dog barks near the end of the song, unaware that the movie featured a scene where a dog is accidentally dragged to death from the bumper of a car.

It is one of those songs that makes you unconsciously press down a bit too much on the gas pedal if your driving while it is playing. I’m not sure I ever “got” the video for the song, though.

Holiday Road

ZZ Top’s Eliminator album was one of few albums that have sold over 10 million copies in America, earning Diamond certification. I helped it get there! This was an album that I remember buying and dropping the needle on for the first time. It had such a neat sound.

Billy Gibbons says that he got the idea for Sharp Dressed man when he saw a movie and a character was listed in the credits as “Sharp-Eyed Man.” According to songfacts.com, the song attracted a slew of new fans to ZZ Top when the video ran constantly on MTV. Their long beards made them instantly recognizable and the babes certainly helped, but the car was the real star.

Prior ZZ Top albums had a Tex-Mex vibe, but when it came time to sort out visuals for the album, the hot rod was finally ready – Gibbons had been working on it for years. It was good timing, giving them an MTV-friendly focal point just when they needed it. They had never made videos before and had no acting experience, but their videos provided everything MTV’s target audience craved: girls, rock and roll, and a really sweet ride.

The music video was the first that was a sequel. It picked up the story from the “Gimme All Your Loving” video of the down-on-his-luck gas station worker who is swept away by three beautiful women. In “Sharp Dressed Man,” he’s a valet, and he encounters the same three girls and is once again given the keys to the Eliminator, Billy Gibbons’ 1933 Ford Hot Rod.

Sharp Dressed Man

I had no idea in 1983 that I would be working as a sleep technologist. The next song is one that is based on a real sleep disorder – somniloquy (Sleep talking). “Talking In Your Sleep” is the biggest hit of The Romantics’ career. In fact, it’s their only Top 10 hit, and only one other song by them (“One in a Million”) even made it to the Top 40. Contrast that with the number of times you’ve heard their song, “What I Like About You,” which only made it to #49.

I love this story about the song: As usual, MTV helped boost The Romantics’ success right around this time with videos of their songs. In Greg Prato’s book MTV Ruled the World, Romantics’ lead singer Jimmy Marinos talks about this song: “That was the last song recorded for the album In Heat. All we had was a backtrack, the instrumental part of the song. And we realized it was too good a track to leave unfinished. So everybody put their heads together, and in a couple of days, we finished up the song melodically and lyrically.” Ha also mentions that the video was filmed at 8:00 in the morning in Detroit, surrounded by girls in their jammies, at what was deemed “not really rock ‘n’ roll hours.” So if they look like they just woke up, that’s because they did – and it works great!

Check out their hair in this video!!

Talking In Your Sleep

Two years ago, Dave Ruch invited a bunch of us to write a column for his Turntable Talk feature. The first topic was about why the Beatles are still relevant, the next song is an example of their influence.

When Genesis began to write That’s All, it was intended as an attempt to write a simple pop song with a melody in the style of The Beatles. Phil Collins even acknowledged in a subsequent interview that the song also features one of his attempts at a “Ringo Starr drum part.”

Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks was one of the first to use an Emulator, which was one of the first digital samplers (it was introduced in 1981). Banks would record his bandmate Mike Rutherford as he noodled around on his instruments, then play around with those samples to craft a track, which is how this song developed.

That’s All was the band’s first Top 10 hit in the US, setting the stage for their tremendous success the rest of the decade as they adapted their sound from progressive rock to tighter pop songs. The video certainly played a part in the success of the song, too. It depicts the band as homeless men taking shelter outside a disused factory. They perform the song, eat soup, play cards, and keep warm around an open fire. It was the first time Genesis used director Jim Yukich, who would direct the majority of their next videos as well as many of Collins’s solo videos.

That’s All

Remember the group Blue Angel? Me either. It was the group that Cyndi Lauper was in in 1981. It was her solo career and her first single, however, that made her famous. It is interesting to note that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun didn’t start out as the female anthem that Cyndi made it.

A Philadelphia singer/songwriter named Robert Hazard, who had a band called Robert Hazard and the Heroes, wrote it. He recorded a demo of it in 1979. Speaking with Rolling Stone, Lauper said that she had to alter the lyrics from Hazard’s original. “It was originally about how fortunate he was ’cause he was a guy around these girls that wanted to have ‘fun’ – with him”

Believe it or not, Cyndi didn’t want to record this song, but her producer, Rick Chertoff, was convinced it could become her anthem. The challenge for her was figuring out how to sing it. She ended up doing her vocal in the style of the ’50s hit “Let the Good Times Roll” by Shirley & Lee, which Shirley Goodman sings in a high-pitched voice. It obviously worked as the song went to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

MTV again played into the success of the song, as this was a very fun video to watch. The video, which ran constantly on MTV, features the wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Lauper’s father, and also Lauper’s real-life mother, who had no acting experience but did just fine. It won the first ever award for Best Female Video at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards.

The song had a huge influence on how girls dressed in the 80’s. When I think of it, I can picture so many of my gal friends who dressed like Cyndi.

Girl’s Just Want To Have Fun

Everyone I grew up with had the 1984 album from Van Halen. The song actually was a bigger hit in 84, but it is on this list because it was released in December of 1983. Jump is just one of many songs that used synthesizers in the 80’s. The synthesizer intro for Van Halen’s Jump is iconic, but not everyone in the band wanted to use it.

The synthesizer was a point of contention in the band. Eddie wanted to use it, but lead singer David Lee Roth thought it would look like they were selling out to get more radio play. Eddie was classically trained on piano growing up – he didn’t start playing guitar until he was a teenager – so it wasn’t that far a stretch for him. Had the band brought in an outside keyboard player they probably would have gotten a lot of flak, but Eddie was held in such high esteem that fans were happy to hear him on another instrument.

Songfacts.com says: 1984 was David Lee Roth’s last album with Van Halen before he left the band in 1985; the video for “Jump” inflamed the tensions that led to his departure. The video was produced by Robert Lombard, who wanted to show the personal side of the band on stage. Roth, however, wanted the performance intercut with footage of him doing other things, so they shot him doing things like riding a motorcycle and getting arrested while wearing nothing but a towel. Lombard edited the video and used none of the extra Roth footage, taking it to Eddie and Alex for approval. Two days later, the band’s manager fired him for bypassing Roth. Lombard says he never received the award the video won from MTV.

Jump

Next week, we’ll look at songs from 1984. 1984 was a big year for me in a lot of ways. Musically, it was a big year for ballads. With a mix of country, R&B, and a song that led to me embarrassing myself on the air years later, it will be an interesting list!

Tell me about your favorite from 1983 that I may have missed in the comments and I will see you next week.

The Music of My Life – 1979

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.  In the final year of the 70’s, I turned 9 years old. 

1979 is a year where I was surprised to find many of the songs that wound up on my mom’s ballad 8-track tape.  I could easily have posted all of those songs in this blog, but then you would fall asleep listening to them, just like my brother and I did on our way up north. Instead, I will list them at the end of this blog, and if you wish, you can search them on YouTube.

So let’s begin with the first of two “out of place” or “odd” songs….

The first song is part of the soundtrack of my summer of 1979. The song seemed to be playing in a very hot rotation and was always on the radio when we were up at my grandparents place.

Frank Mills wrote and recorded “Music Box Dancer” in 1974, but it did not become a Canadian single until December 1978. By Christmas of that year, it was in the top ten of many European and Asian pop music charts. It was released as a single in the United States in January 1979 and got up to number three on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.

In 1974, Mills released an album that featured the song, but it was not initially a hit. When he re-signed with Polydor Records Canada in 1978, the label released a new song as a single, with “Music Box Dancer” on the B-side.  Because of a mistake, a single of “Music Box Dancer” found its way into the hands of a pop station in Ottawa – the single was only supposed to go out to adult contemporary stations. The station’s program director listened to the A-side and wondered why it was sent to him. He played the B-side and liked what he heard anyway and began airing it in rotation. Next thing you know, the album’s gone gold in Canada.

Music Box Dancer

The next song makes the list because it was on the iPod of my ex. My oldest son used to take it and listen to it all the time and I can still hear him in his toddler voice singing the chorus of this one.

Hot Stuff is a single that was on Donna Summer’s 7th studio album, Bad Girls. The song is unique in that while many consider it disco, many others consider it rock. As a matter of fact, when the Best Female Rock Vocal Performance category was added at the Grammy Awards in 1980, Donna Summer won for “Hot Stuff.”

The song has ties to other music as well. It was written by Pete Bellotte, Harold Faltermeyer and Keith Forsey. Bellotte co-wrote a few other hits for Summer, including “Love To Love You Baby” and ” Heaven Knows.” Faltermeyer had a solo hit in 1984 with the theme from Beverly Hills Cop, “Axel F” and Forsey’s credits include “Don’t You Forget About Me” for Simple Minds and “Shakedown” for Bob Seger.

This was Summer’s second #1 hit on the Hot 100; her first was her disco cover of “MacArthur Park.”

Hot Stuff

Here is a song that is missing one of the things the band is known for. Don’t Bring Me Down was the first ELO song that did not use strings. According to Songfacts, after recording it, they fired their string section, leaving four members in the band.

ELO leader Jeff Lynne wrote this song late in the sessions for the “Discovery” album. He came up with the track by looping the drums from a song he recorded earlier in the session, then coming up with more music on the piano. The words came last, as Lynne put together some lyrics about a girl who thinks she’s too good for the guy she’s with.

Here’s a fun fact: Wanna know why Jeff Lynne repeatedly sings the word “groose” after the song’s title line? Apparently it was a made-up place-keeper word to fill a gap in the vocals when he was improvising the lyrics. When the German engineer Reinhold Mack heard the ELO frontman’s demo, he asked Lynne how he knew “gruss” means “greetings” in his country’s language. Upon learning the German meaning, Lynne decided to leave it in.

Don’t Bring Me Down

“Hey Ringo, play something hot!”

Those are the words that Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Caddyshack says to the band at the snobbish country club as he throws money at them. As the money falls, the band plays the opening 5 note stings from Boogie Wonderland from Earth Wind and Fire (With the Emotions). I’ve always loved that song because of the movie connection.

The song, while it is upbeat and happy sounding, it really isn’t. Songfacts calls it one of the more complex and misinterpreted songs of the disco era. Written by Jon Lind and Allee Willis, it was inspired by the movie Looking For Mr. Goodbar, which stars Diane Keaton as a lost soul who goes to clubs every night to dance away her misery.

Willis says, “When I saw Mr. Goodbar, I got kind of fascinated with people who did go to clubs every night, whose life was kind of falling apart, but they lived for the night life, though it didn’t seem to be advancing them as humans in the end. So if you really look at the lyrics of ‘Boogie Wonderland,’ unlike ‘September,’ it’s not a happy song at all. It’s really about someone on the brink of self destruction who goes to these clubs to try and find more, but is at least aware of the fact that if there’s something like true love, that is something that could kind of drag them out of the abyss. So ‘Boogie Wonderland’ for us was this state of mind that you entered when you were around music and when you danced, but hopefully it was an aware enough state of mind that you would want to feel as good during the day as you did at night.”

Boogie Wonderland

The second “out of place” or “odd” song is also a movie song. It may seem like a very simple kid song, but if you listen to what the songwriter says about it, the song is deeper than you can imagine.

This was written by songwriters Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher for The Muppet Movie, which came out in 1979. In the film, it is sung by Kermit The Frog as the Muppets set out to find adventure. In a interview Williams said: “Rainbow Connection was the first number in The Muppet Movie. It’s the one that establishes the lead character. We find Kermit sitting in the middle of the swamp. Kenny Ascher and I sat down to write these songs, and we thought… Kermit, he’s like ‘every frog.’ He’s the Jimmy Stewart of frogs. So how do we show that he’s a thinking frog, and that he has an introspective soul, and all that good stuff? We looked at his environment, and his environment is water and air – and light. And it just seemed like it would be a place where he would see a rainbow. But we also wanted to show that he would be on this spiritual path, examining life, and the meaning of life.

It tells you that he’s been exposed to culture: ‘Why are there so many songs about rainbows?’ Which means, obviously, he’s heard a lot of songs. This is a frog that’s been exposed to culture, whether it’s movies, or records, or whatever. And I also like the fact that it starts out with the negative: ‘Rainbows are only illusions, rainbows have nothing to hide.’ So the song actually starts out as if he’s going to pooh-pooh the whole idea, and then it turns: ‘So we’ve been told, and some choose to believe it. I know they’re wrong, wait and see.’ And again, he doesn’t have the answer: ‘Someday we’ll find it.'”

Now, with that in mind, give this masterpiece a listen!

Rainbow Connection

Next is my “go-to” Karaoke song. I’ve always loved the line, “You had me down 21 to zip, the smile of Judas on your lip.” What a great line. Bad Case of Loving you was written by Moon Martin who released the original version on his 1978 album Shots From a Cold Nightmare. Martin is a singer/guitarist/songwriter with his band Southwind. When the group broke up in 1971, he took on studio work. He paired up with Linda Ronstadt, and played on her self-titled album. He nearly joined some of Ronstadt’s other backing musicians in a little band called the Eagles, but ended up a solo artist and signed a deal with Capitol Records.

Martin’s album got some good reviews but went nowhere on the charts. A song called “Hot Nite In Dallas” was chosen as a single, but “Bad Case Of Loving You” was only given limited release in Europe. Enter Robert Palmer. He heard the song when he was being driven to one of his shows by a rep from his label, who played it for him. Palmer included it in his set and got a great response, so he recorded it for his Secrets album.

Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)

In 1989, Palmer released a remix of this song for his Addictions: Volume 1 greatest hits album. “Looking back at the 1978 original the performance was there but someone was asleep at the mixing desk,” he wrote in the liner notes. “The original mix in comparison sounded like a band rehearsing in a garage and this sounds like the finished song.” I can’t listen to the original cut much anymore. The remix is SO MUCH better!

I LOVE good harmonies. This song kicks right off with a cold open and the amazing a cappella harmony of The Little River Band. Most of the band’s hits were written by founding members Graham Goble, Beeb Birtles or Glenn Shorrock, but “Lonesome Loser” was written by guitarist David Briggs, who joined in 1976 after the band’s second album.

The lyric uses a lot of gambling imagery to tell the story of the lonesome loser, who staked his heart and lost. His adversary is the “Queen of Hearts,” who will always win this game of love. The same year this song was released (1979), Dave Edmunds had a UK hit with a song called “Queen of Hearts” that used the same metaphor. That song, of course, became an American hit when Juice Newton covered it in 1981.

Lonesome Loser

Speaking of great harmonies and the Eagles, the next song features both. Heartache Tonight was written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey with Bob Seger and J.D. Souther. Songfacts says: When Frey was a 19-year-old in Detroit, Seger took him under his wing and got his music career started. Souther, who is sometimes considered an “Unofficial Eagle,” was the first person Frey met when he moved to Los Angeles in the late-’60s. J.D. Souther, told us how this song started: “Glenn Frey and I had been listening to Sam Cooke records at my house. So we were just walking around clapping our hands and snapping fingers and singing the verses to those songs. The melody sounds very much like those Sam Cooke shuffles. There’s not much to it. I mean, it’s really just two long verses. But it felt really good.”

Bob Seger’s contribution to this song was the chorus. JD Souther says, “We didn’t get to a chorus that we liked within the first few days, and I think Glenn was on the phone with Seger, and he said, ‘I wanna run something by you,’ and sang it to him, and Seger just came right in with the chorus, just sang it and it was so good. Glen called me and said, ‘Is four writers okay on this?’ And I said, ‘Sure, if it’s good.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, it’s great. Seger just sang this to me,’ and he sang it to me and I said, ‘That’s fantastic.'”

According to Seger, he was in the room with Glenn Frey when he came up with the chorus. He told Entertainment Weekly: “Glenn had the verse: ‘Somebody’s gonna hurt someone before the night is through.’ We hadn’t been sitting down for more that five minutes and I just blurted out, ‘There’s gonna be a heartache tonight!’ His eyes lit up huge.”

Heartache Tonight

The next song is one that I used to hear on the way home from elementary school. I had a buddy who got a ride home every day and his mom would often give me a lift, too. Keep in mind the ride home was 5 to 7 minutes tops, but it always seemed to be on the radio when we were in the car.

Freddie Mercury wrote Crazy Little Thing Called Love while Queen was recording The Game in Germany. He wrote it while taking a bubble bath in his room at the Munich Hilton. Peter Hince, the head of Queen’s road crew, recalled to Mojo magazine September 2009: “The idea for the song came to him while he was in the bath. He emerged, wrapped in a towel, I handed him the guitar and he worked out the chords there and then. Fred had this knack of knowing a great pop song.”

Freddie acknowledged that perhaps his limited talent on the guitar helped shape the song:

On stage, this was an important part of the show. Brian May often used three different guitars during the song: the first verse was played by Freddie alone with his guitar, then Brian joined with another Ovation Acoustic; before the third verse he had already switched to a Telecaster on which he performed the solo. During the singalong part (famous for its “ready Freddie” line) Brian again changed instruments to his homemade Red Special. From 1984 onwards Mercury replaced the acoustic with another Telecaster.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

The final selection comes from a band who was formed on Valentines Day of 1977 in Detroit. That is what inspired their name – the Romantics.

Believe it or not, the band have only two US Top 40 hits, and “What I Like About You,” now their best-known song, isn’t one of them. ( Their two Top 40 hits were “Talking In Your Sleep” and “One In A Million”). It attracted little attention and was only a minor hit when first released in 1980 on their debut album. This song’s resurgence had a lot to do with MTV. The band made a simple performance video for the song that MTV put in rotation when they launched in 1981. It fit the criteria the network was looking for: American band, rock, catchy song, acceptable production quality. Since few American artists made videos at the time, MTV made do with lots of European imports when they started.

Since then the song has also become a fixture at sporting events, bars and nightclubs, and parties and celebrations of all kinds, and has taken its place as one of the most popular rock anthems of all time. It’s nice to wrap up the last year of the decade with an uptempo, fun song!

What I Like About You

I’m sure I have missed a few favorites, and the more I look ahead, the more I wonder if I need to expand to more than ten songs. I’ll tackle that issue if I have to later on.

Next week, we ring in a new decade – 1980! The 80’s sound certainly can be heard in some of these late 70’s songs and from here on out, the sound progresses quickly!

Tune Tuesday – Queen & ELO

I have to admit that I almost picked a Ringo Starr song today, because of his birthday this week.  I didn’t because I really couldn’t decided whether to pick a solo song or some of his Beatles stuff.  I am guessing that’s a future blog – I’ll add it to my “blog topics” list.  Instead, the picture below was posted on Facebook this week and prompted the songs I am writing about.

CamyNoaWwAAzbDl

I’ll be the first to admit that I did my share of recording songs off the radio.  I cannot remember how old I was when I got my first “boom box.”  I do remember getting it for a birthday gift.  I remember buying tons of cassette tapes to record songs on, and I spent many hours listening for my favorite songs.

Not knowing that I would eventually become a radio DJ, I remember how difficult it was to record a song without the DJ talking over the intro.  You would hope to catch the song coming out of a jingle or sweeper – that was usually a good way to catch it with a “talk free” intro.  Guys like me got pretty good at timing and using the pause button.

I can distinctly remember being the listener that would eventually drive me crazy!  I spent many hours calling up the radio station asking for songs.  When I didn’t hear them, I would call back and ask again.  Of course I didn’t know how radio worked and that with each call, I was just pissing off the DJ!  The more you call, the more likely the DJ will NOT play your song!  I also did the “kid disguising my voice to sound like an adult” thing, which every DJ can hear immediately!  (You’re not fooling us, kids!)

At any rate, there are two songs that I can distinctly remember trying to record on tape.  (Let me interject here that I am sure I had my paper route at this time, and why I just didn’t go buy the record is beyond me).  I guess I remember these two in particular, because I have two specific memories to accompany the songs.  On to song #1:

Queen – Crazy Little Thing Called Love

I remember calling over and over to ask for this song.  I remember I was in elementary school and my friend Billy used to get his mom to give us a ride home.  This song always seemed to play on our ride home (I know this probably was not the case now, knowing how music is scheduled and such).  I remember us both asking his mom to turn up the radio when it played.

The story goes that Freddie Mercury wrote this while the band was touring in Germany.  He wrote it on an acoustic guitar and it didn’t take him long to do it.  He said it “took me five or ten minutes. I did that on the guitar, which I can’t play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It’s a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn’t work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.”

Some sources say he wrote it as a tribute to Elvis. Roger Taylor said he wrote it while lounging in a bath at a hotel during one of their extensive Munich recording sessions.  Some stories say that Freddie also played the original guitar solo, but it was lost and Brian May then played it for the single (Not sure how true this is).  Brian played the solo on a Telecaster guitar (Perhaps to make it sound like an older song.  Many artists played Telecasters).  Brian, however, didn’t really care for the Telecaster and when playing the song live, he’d play the solo on it, and go back to his favorite guitar (his Red Special).

One of my favorite parts of the song is when the bass guitar has its solo moment toward the end.

This thing called love
I just can’t handle it
This thing called love
I must get round to it
I ain’t ready
Crazy little thing called love

This thing (this thing) called love (called love)
It cries (like a baby) in a cradle all night
It swings (ooh, ooh), it jives (ooh, ooh)
It shakes all over like a jelly fish,
I kinda like it
Crazy little thing called love

There goes my baby
She knows how to rock-n-roll
She drives me crazy
She gives me hot and cold fever
She leaves me in a cool, cool sweat

I gotta be cool, relax, get hip
Get on my tracks
Take a back seat, hitch-hike
And take a long ride on my motorbike
Until I’m ready
Crazy little thing called love

I gotta be cool, relax, get hip
And get on my tracks
Take a back seat, hitch-hike
And take a long ride on my motorbike
Until I’m ready (Ready Freddie)
Crazy little thing called love

This thing called love
I just can’t handle it
This thing called love
I must get round to it
I ain’t ready
Crazy little thing called love [repeat to fade]

cassette_tape_sony

The second song I have a distinct memory of is from ELO.

ELO – Rock and Roll is King

The reason why I remember recording this song off the radio is simple – I screwed it up the first time I tried to record it! It has what we call in the radio biz a “fake cold.”  A cold ending is when a song doesn’t fade out, it just stops.  This song has a point before the last line, where the song stops….there is silence….and then the band comes back for the final line and the real cold ending.  I remember it because when the fake cold happens, I hit the pause button on my cassette player and messed up the recording because I missed the end of the song!

The song could be found on ELO’s 1983 album Secret Messages.  I read an article that said the song was originally called something else and had an entirely different set of lyrics before it was re-worked.  The song reminds me a bit of their 1981 hit “Hold on Tight,” as it has the same sort of feel to it.  The song only made it to #19 on the charts in the US.  This was one of the first songs I heard from ELO, and it made me start picking up more of their stuff.  I really thought it was cool how they used string instruments in their songs.

“Rock ‘N’ Roll Is King”

 

Listen everybody let me tell you ’bout the rock ‘n’ roll
Feel that rhythm and it’s really gonna thrill your soul
She said come along with me, to a land of make believe

She said wamalamalamalama rock ‘n’ roll is king

She loves that rock ‘n’ roll and she plays it all night long
That’s all she ever tells me when I call her on the telephone
She says feel that jumpin’ beat, and git up on your feet

She says wamalamalamalama rock ‘n’ roll is king

 

[Chorus:]
Oh let those guitars play
Play for me play for me
Oh let that song ring out

That’s how it’s meant to be

It rolls like a train that’s comin’ on down the track
She rolled over Beethoven and she gave Tchaikovsky back
She loves that drivin’ beat, she goes dancin’ on down the street

She said wamalamalamalama rock ‘n’ roll is king

 

[Chorus]

When she comes around and I’m listenin’ to the radio
She says you can’t do that ’cause all I wanna do is rock ‘n’ roll
Now here I’m gonna stay where that music starts to play
She says wamalamalamalama rock ‘n’ roll is king
Jeff Lynne wrote the song and I love the line “She rolled over Beethoven and she gave Tchaikovsky back.”  It is obviously a nod to Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven (which ELO covered, and is awesome!).
Jeff, continues to tour with his current version of ELO, and also was a member of the Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison.
What songs do YOU remember taping off the radio??
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The Big O

Roy Orbison 1

Roy Orbison is a rock and roll legend.  I refuse to debate this.  It is a fact.  The Beatles and Elvis Presley (both legends in their own right) had stated on record that Roy was a major influence on their music.  Roy’s music was different – it had it’s own style and a certain darkness to it.  My first exposure to Roy Orbison was when I was about 4 or 5 years old.

I remember my dad had an album of Roy’s Greatest Hits.  My favorite song as a kid was Dream Baby.  I didn’t know that was the name of it.  I know this because when I asked him to play it, I would ask for it by singing the opening bass line: “Daddy, play ‘boom boom boom, bum bum boom.'”  I remember the first song on the album was Candy Man, which started with a harmonica.  That is the instrument Roy asked for as a kid.

When asked hey wanted for his sixth birthday, Roy told his parents he wanted a harmonica.  Luckily for the music industry, his father bought him a guitar instead.  While some stories differ, most biographies claim that Roy learned how to play from his father Orbie Lee Orbison.  Some sources say that he learned from his Uncle Charlie, Orbie’s brother.

He wrote his first song in 1944, and entered a talent show in 1946.  He and another act tied for first place and the first prize of $15 was split between Roy and the other winner.  How much of a class act was Roy?  He gave half of his $7.50 to the friend of his who carried his guitar to the contest!

He formed a band while in Wink, Texas called the Wink Westerners and that band played some high school dances.  While in college, two friends of his had written a song called “Ooby Dooby.” They began playing that in their shows and because of their success, they got their own radio show on station KMID. In 1955, the band got their own TV show and artists came to play and sing on it.  Among them, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.

Roy pulled Johnny aside and asked for advice.  He wanted to know how to get a record released on the radio.  Johnny suggested that he call Sam Phillips over at Sun Records in Memphis.  Johnny gave Roy the number and sure enough Roy called.  I am sure he was not expecting what happened.  Sam Phillips answered the phone and after a brief conversation, Sam hung up on him, but not before telling Roy, “Johnny Cash doesn’t run my record company!”

Roy eventually found a place to record and recorded “Ooby Dooby” with his band, now called the Teen Kings.  The song was released in 1956 and Roy took it to a well known record dealer named Cecil “Poppa” Hollifield. He heard the song and immediately called a “connection” he had in Memphis and played him the record over the phone.  His connection asked for a copy of the record, and three days later he called Poppa up to tell him he wanted the Teen Kings in Memphis in three days to record in his studio.  That connection was none other than Sam Phillips of Sun Records!

That deal got him out on tour with Johnny Cash, Faron Young, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Horton among others.  In 1958, Roy was asked to tour with the Everly Brothers.  During the tour, the Everly Brothers told Roy they needed a new single and asked if he had any songs.  He picked up his guitar and sang the song Claudette.  They liked it, and asked him to write down the words and chords.  The song was the B-side of All I Have To Do Is Dream.  Roy had some of his other songs recorded by artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and even Ricky Nelson.

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In 1959, Roy was signed to an independent label called Monument.  It was at this label that so many of Roy’s big hits came, starting with Uptown.  That was followed by Only The Lonely (which reached #2), Blue Angel, and I’m Hurtin’. What followed was Roy’s first #1 song, Running Scared.

Roy had hoped to change up the “pop” sound and try something different.  They recorded the song twice and he was disappointed with the two takes, so they cut it again.  Instead of using a falsetto voice, Roy sang the high natural A and nailed it.  The accompanying musicians were awestruck and had never heard anything like it.  Producer Fred Foster said “Nobody had ever hear anything like it before!”

What followed was four solid years of top 40 hits.  Those hits included Crying, Candy Man, Dream Baby, Working for the Man, In Dreams, Pretty Paper, Leah, Blue Bayou, Mean Woman Blues, and Its Over. His success got him a spot opening up for some concerts in England. He was the opening act for a few guys who were known as The Beatles (they had yet to become a big thing in the US).  The tour sold out in minutes, and on the first night of the show, they say that Roy played 14 encores before the Beatles ever got on stage!

In 1964, Roy recorded what is probably his biggest hit, Oh Pretty Woman.  It would be his last big hit while at Monument records.  Touring hurt his personal life, and his wife Claudette began having an affair.  One day while writing with songwriter Bill Dees, Claudette entered the room and said that she was going to Nashville.  Roy asked her if she had any money, and Dee’s replied, “A pretty woman never needs any money.” With that phrase, and about 40 minutes, they wrote Oh, Pretty Woman, which went to number 1 in almost every country in the world.

In 1966, Claudette was killed when a pickup truck pulled out in front of her and she hit the door.  She died instantly.  Two years later, Roy was on a tour in England and he received a call that his home had burned down.  As if that wasn’t enough bad news, he was also told that his two oldest sons were killed in the fire.  He tried to cope by keeping himself busy with work.  He starred in the film The Fastest Guitar Alive, which ended up being his only lead role.

Roy changed labels a few times after this and eventually re-signed with Monument.  In 1987, Roy Orbison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Bruce Springsteen was there to do the honors.  A TV special followed.  Roy had always wanted to do one and this special included some powerful special guests:  Elvis Costello, k.d.Lang, Tom Waits, Bonny Raitt, Jennifer Warrens, Jackson Brown, and Bruce Springsteen.  The special was called Roy Orbison and Friends – A Black and White Night Live. It was aired on cable and released on video and became one of Roy’s great concerts.

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Jeff Lynne of ELO was busy producing George Harrison’s Cloud Nine album, and was working on Tom Petty’s and Roy’s albums at the same time.  This led to them all getting together with Bob Dylan for the Traveling Wilburys project which was a huge success! Handle With Care was a big hit from the album.  A song that was supposed to be a group song on the album was You’re Not Alone Anymore.  It was decided that there was really only one voice that could do the song justice, and that was Roy.  It is an amazing vocal and an amazing song!

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In late 1988, Roy put the finishing touches on the Mystery Girl album.  It was set for release in 1989.  There would be a world tour to support the project.  The album would include the smash hit “You Got It”.  On December 6, 1988, Roy was complaining of chest pains.  Just before midnight, he had a heart attack and collapsed at his mother’s home.  Roy Orbison died at the young age of 52.

I was still a senior in high school and I was going to WKSG to rip news and type up stories for the news director.  I would stay till 6am and then head to school.  I remember going to the AP wire and seeing the URGENT breaking news that Roy had died.  We were an oldies station and this was big news.  I remember when we broke the news.  It is one of those moments I will never forget.

You Got It was released after Roy’s death and reached the top 10.  One of the coolest tributes to Roy was when the Traveling Wilburys released the song End of the Line.  In the video, the group is on a train singing.  When Roy’s vocal comes on, the camera is on a rocking chair in which Roy’s guitar is sitting.  Next to it, is a framed photo of Roy.  Powerful!

Roy Orbison is a legend.  His music was like no one else.  His style was like no one else.  His vocals were indescribably beautiful, haunting, and amazing.  Heaven’s choir is blessed to have him in their baritone section.  Happy Birthday, Roy!