Song Stories

‘Go Now’. What a sublime composition. The early Moody Blues version is the one best known, but it was actually written by US producer Larry Banks with his wife Bessie in mind. Larry and Bessie were at the point of separating and the song caught that moment with great poignancy.

Bessie’s version was picked up by the Moody Blues in the UK whose version soon became a hit in the US because of the popularity of UK groups at the time. Bessie’s version stopped receiving airplay and became a footnote. Both versions are terrific.

Post your favourite song stories here.

 

Love that original! Thanks for posting.

 

I never even knew that "Go Now" by The Moody Blues" was basically a rip off from someone else, and lets face it that song more or less made The Moody Blues.

 

It is, though they did add an arrangement, the honky tonk piano and the vocal performance does it justice. It’s simply at that moment in history it was easier for a bunch of Brummies to get a hearing than Bessie.

I do have a soft spot for the Moodies’ later warblings when they became a very different band with wispy haired Martian botherer Justin Hayward.

The Bessie and Larry Banks story is moving though. Like ABBA they turned personal pain into great pop music.

 

Some good song facts on this one.

Hazard in Nebraska was the setting for the song and far from being annoyed at being chosen as the setting for random murder of a young woman the townsfolk invited Marx to be a dignitary at its Fourth of July Parade.

Marx thought the song to be uncommercial and only allowed it on his album to prove his wife, Cynthia Rhodes, who disagreed with him, wrong.

 

Apparently 'How Long (Has This Been Going On)' by Ace is not about marital infidelity but was written by Paul Carrack on the discovery that the bass player had been secretly working with the Sutherland Brothers. The Sutherland Brothers who recorded the original version of Sailing which was made into the hit we all love to hate by Rod Stewart.

 

Yes, interesting. I think I have heard the original but I don't recall the backstory.

I presume you are (mainly) referring to 'The Winner Takes It All' which is an absolutely sublime piece of pop music and of songwriting (as Steve Coogan says in 'The Trip', a song about the pain of a failing marriage wriitten by the husband for the wife to sing).

Another great Abba story song is 'The Day Before You Came'. Who, or what, came and changed life for good? I'm not sure we have ever been told?

A breakup behind this too, with Jimmy Webb's then girlfiriend working in offices opposite the park,. and everything described in the song something which Webb had at some point seen there, the whole being a sort of musical/pictorial representation of the end of the relationship ('melting in the dark').

 

I bet The Sutherland Brothers used to get you all of a-quiver!

 

You’ll be telling me next that ‘Howzat’ by Sherbet wasn’t about cricket.

 

Especially as Sherbet were Aussies; it must be about cricket!

 

I’m greatly taken by the stories (there are a few different ones) of how Patti Smith recorded ‘Because the Night’. Apparently a producer working with both her and Bruce Springsteen mentioned to Bruce that she needed a hit. Bruce had been working on the song, but had discarded it unfinished. He gave the producer a cassette and suggested he ask if Patti could make anything of it. Patti couldn’t believe her luck and tried out her version with Bruce on the phone from her hotel room.

 

Not sure. You've got me stumped.
You messed about, I caught you out.

 

Is "You're So Vain" about Warren Beatty? Or a member of this forum?

 

When she was knocking about with Robert Mapplethorpe, it was a running sort-of-joke between them that he would only be content when she had a chart hit....neither thought her style would ever recommend itself to such a thing. (No doubt, she thought trying for one would be like pi55ing in a river).
To be fair, her version of Gloria could easily have been a hit if she’d released it as a single after Because The Night.

 

Is it not about you?

 

I bet you think that, don't you.

 

It could be about several members of this forum

 

Best intro of any song, ever.

 

Loved ‘Without You’ by Neilson. Loathed it by Mariah Carey, enjoyed it as the ‘Ken Lee’ song, but didn’t know it was originally written by these lads.

 

Tubeway Army "Are Friends Electric?" was all about electronic prostitutes....

 

The Badfinger story is a bit of a tragedy all round.
"
Badfinger had four consecutive worldwide hits from 1970 to 1972: "Come and Get It" (written and produced by Paul McCartney, 1970), "No Matter What" (produced by Mal Evans, 1970), "Day After Day" (produced by George Harrison, 1971), and "Baby Blue" (produced by Todd Rundgren, 1972). Their song "Without You" (1970) has been recorded many times, and became a US and UK number-one hit for Harry Nilsson and, decades later, a UK number-one for Mariah Carey.

After Apple Records folded in 1973, Badfinger struggled with a host of legal, managerial, and financial problems, leading to Ham taking his own life in 1975. The surviving members struggled to rebuild their personal and professional lives against a backdrop of lawsuits, which tied up the songwriters' royalty payments for years. Their subsequent albums floundered, as Molland and Evans alternated between co-operation and conflict in their attempts to revive and capitalise on the Badfinger legacy. In 1983, Evans also killed himself."

 

Grim.

 

Decent midfielder for the 'Orns, too.

 

I was reminded by this fantastic version being replayed on Later recently that Joan Armatrading had an unorthodox route to becoming a musician. Her father banned her from touching his guitar and eventually her mum got one from a Pawn Shop after trading in a pram. She then taught herself.

All those music lessons and trying to encourage kids to play aww that’s lovely as the cat hides from some terrible violin screeching - pointless. Just ban your kids from what you want them to do.

This is great.

 

It’s her voice though, surely? She has such a great, soulful, almost conversational style.

If she had been on Motown she would have been a global megastar.

 

I always liked the fact that Terry Jacks's syrupy goodbye 'Seasons in the Sun':

was actually a re-working of Belgium's mirthmeister Jacques Brel's 'Le Moribond' in which a dead man castigates those standing around his graveside at his burial - particularly his widow and her new lover (his best friend):

 

And that it was a top terrace chant.

 

The 'Police' song that's beloved by chavs at their engagements/weddings - it's about a stalker/obsessive fan:

 

Forum members of a certain age will remember the moment when both the song I don't like Mondays and the San Diego school shooting that inspired it briefly gripped the World. The shocking events that left two dead, several injured and the apparently casual dismissal of them by the perpetrator, Brenda Spencer, seemed to crystallise a feeling of OMG what kind of nihilistic sort of hell hole is the World becoming and viewed Spencer as if she was some sort of regular kid who simply decided against ballet lessons on the day and shot the place up.

The truth is very different. Spencer was a deeply troubled child who lived alone with her alcoholic father and certainly abused substances herself (though she was not apparently high at the time of the shooting). It was described that she and her father slept side by side on the floor and some years later Spencer claimed that he abused her. Whether he did or not, he wasn't parent of the year. For Xmas in 1978 she asked her dad for a radio. This being the US, he bought her a gun, despite her having been arrested for burglary, for shooting windows with an airgun and being recommended for residential psychiatric treatment by a probation officer, which her father refused.

Spencer also had an undiagnosed brain injury and untreated epilepsy occasioned by a fall from a bicycle some years earlier. She was described as 'deeply depressed'. She made no plans to leave the scene and fully expected to die, leading to conclusions that her actions were murder suicide. It wasn't hard for the cops to get her out. They simply offered her a burger king and she surrendered.

She remains in prison to this day, having been refused parole on several occasions and is apparently a skilled mechanic who finds comfort in fixing things. She did a dreadful, dreadful thing, but she was not a normal girl.

 

Apparently, “Bertha” by the Grateful Dead is not about some bunny-boiler ex always coming round to hassle, but actually a rogue heavy duty electric fan that was prone to career around the recording studio when they were rehearsing.
“Bertha, don’t you come around here anymore.”

 

My earliest memory of watching Top Of The Pops was when The Kinks sang about Lola. Then way above my 8yrs old understanding of course, but the song was written by singer Ray Davies about the band's manager's dance at a night club with a transvestite and subsequent dinner date. However not so well-known is that the cross-dresser in question is supposed to be the same person referred to by Lou Reed in 'Take A Walk On The Wild Side'.

 

This was the story I was gonna share. The songwriter was burdened with debt and killed himself. Shortly after, Nilsson had a monster hit with their song and the royalties would've solved all his problems. So sad.

I might have this wrong by the way, as the dates don't seem to match.

 

It really encapsulates the frustration of a Sunday, doesn't it? You wake up in the morning, you've got to read all the Sunday papers, the kids are running round, you've got to mow the lawn, wash the car, and you think "Sunday, bloody Sunday!"

 

“There’s been a lot of talk about this song, perhaps too much talk. This is not a rebel song, this song is Sunday Bloody Sunday”.
Bono introducing it on a live album from 1983....before they became insufferably pompous and pious.