On Friday, March 10, 2023, my blog will be blessed…it will be guest hosted by many of you wonderful bloggers out there. I asked some bloggers to write about their favorite Beatles song or somewhere along those lines. In the next week or so that is what we will have.
I truly appreciate all of them writing on this subject. I admire all of them for their writing abilities and having fantastic sites. I’m calling it Beatles Week but in truth, it WILL go longer than a week. If it does so be it…I’m not going to rename it to Beatles 8 or more days… I think “week” has a certain ring to it.
We will have one post a day BUT…I will still have my Star Trek posts to work in on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Now…if any of you reading this would want to write about a favorite Beatle song…just tell me and I’ll get you in…although I’ll need to know by Friday. I so appreciate all of my readers and it’s been a joy working with all of these different bloggers. We do have a great community here on WordPress.
This song is worn out but I still get excited when I hear that intro! You also have one of the top vocalists in his generation…Paul Rodgers. I’ve always loved the feel of this song. The lyrics won’t challenge Dylan at any point but the feel makes up for it.
The band combined singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke from the band Free, guitarist Mick Ralphs from the band Mott the Hoople, and bassist Boz Burrell from King Crimson.
This song was their debut single off of their debut self-titled album. The song peaked at #5 on the Billboard 100, #3 in Canada, and #15 in the UK. The album Bad Company peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #3 in the UK, and #27 in New Zealand in 1974.
I will never understand why Mott The Hoople turned this song down. It was written by Mick Ralphs when he was still with Mott the Hoople, but the band rejected it. When Ralphs joined Bad Company, they didn’t mind it one bit. Ralphs also brought “Movin’ On” with him, which became the group’s next single, as well as “Ready For Love,” which he originally recorded with Mott The Hoople, but redid the song with Bad Company.
Bad Company had just formed and they were signed by Peter Grant (Zeppelin’s manager) to Led Zeppelin’s new Swan Song record label. This was by far the label’s best signing of outside artists…the most successful anyway. Grant traveled with Bad Company and gave them a lot of attention during this period. After a couple of years, no artist at Swan Song would get much attention.
They recorded the album with Ronnie Lane’s mobile studio at Headley Grange. That is where Zeppelin recorded a few of their albums.
Simon Kirke: “We were scattered all over this country house. Bad Company were doing their first album and I believe it was one of the first songs that we did. I was in the basement, Boz [Burrell] the bass player was in the boiler room, Mick Ralphs and Paul Rodgers were up in the main living room where the guitar amps were. So, in order to get their attention, because we couldn’t see each other, I did the count: ‘1, 2… 1, 2, 3…’ and then I did this ‘guh-brah’ to get everyone’s attention. And that’s how we kicked it off. It was born out of necessity.”
Can’t Get Enough
Well I take whatever I want
And baby I want you
You give me something I need
Now tell me I got something for you
Come on come on come on and do it
Come on and do what you do
I can’t get enough of your love
I can’t get enough of your love
I can’t get enough of your love
Well it’s late and I want love
Love that’s gonna break me in two
Don’t hang me up in your doorway
Don’t hang me up like you do
Come on come on come on and do it
Come on and do what you do
I can’t get enough of your love
I can’t get enough of your love
I can’t get enough of your love
I must admit…the first line threw me off when I first heard it at age 19. “Kicking off from centerfield” left me confused. Baseball has a centerfield but you don’t kick off. Of course, it’s soccer but back then I had no clue about the game.
Bulbs was the only single to be taken from his 1974 album Veedon Fleece, with a B-side of “Cul de Sac” for the US release and “Who Was That Masked Man” for the UK release.
I bought Veedon Fleece sometime in the mid-eighties right after I bought his first six albums. I was heavily into Van the Man at that time…and still am. I thought this album was an improvement to the previous one called Hard Nose The Highway. The song kicked off the second side of the album. I would always buy the album and record it on cassette immediately so I could listen to it in my car.
Van Morrison is an interesting person. His musical landscape spanned so many genres in his career. You had the garage rock of Gloria and Here Comes The Night, the blues with Thank God For The Blues, jazz with Moondance, and everything in between including conventional rock and roll with Wild Night.
Van would be in the top 2-3 of my favorite vocalist of all time. I saw the man live on March 7, 2006, at the Ryman Auditorium. I had admired his voice for years but was knocked out by how great he was in concert. I’ve seen film clips of him live but you don’t get the full effect unless you see him in person.
Veedom Fleece peaked at #53 on the Billboard album charts, #80 in Canada, and #41 in the UK in 1974. He had a stretch of albums from 1968 to this one that is hard to beat. Astral Weeks, Moondance, His Band and the Street Choir, Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic’s Preview, Hard Nose The Highway, and this one. I do like his other albums also but I like his late sixties to early seventies sound…The first time I noticed Van was on Saturday Night Live when he appeared and played songs from the album Wavelength. I was too young to know who he was though. It was when I heard Brown Eyed Girl in 1985 that I started to buy his albums and haven’t stopped liking him since.
Bulbs
I’m kicking off from center field A question of being down for the game The one shot deal don’t matter And the other one’s the same
Oh! My friend I see you Want you to come through (alright) And she’s standing in the shadows Where the street lights all turn blue
She leaving for an American (uhuh) Suitcase in her hand I said her brothers and her sisters Are all on Atlantic sand
She’s screaming through the alley way I hear the lonely cry, why can’t you? And her batteries are corroded And her hundred watt bulb just blew
Lallallal, alright, huhuhhuh
She used to hang out at Miss Lucy’s Every weekend they would get loose And it was a straight clear case of Having taken in too much juice
It was outside, and it was outside Just the nature of the person Now all you got to remember After all, it’s just show biz
Lallalal, huhuh, lallal
We’re just screaming through the alley way I hear her lonely cry, ah why can’t you? And she’s standing in the shadows Canal street lights all turn blue And she’s standing in the shadows Where the street lights all turn blue And she’s standing in the shadows Down where the street lights all turn blue Hey, hey, yeah
I will say it again today, unfortunately….our power has been out since Friday. Right now I’m using the last charge on my laptop with my phone as a hotspot. I called the county department and our electric company… over 200 trees were blown over on power lines. Some have electricity and some don’t…our road has a tree over the power lines. We are pretty much stuck here in the dark…Our electric company has called in help from other states…but right now all we can do is wait. This is a pic of my road. So I won’t be commenting much if any until there is once again power. Funny how we take some things for granted.
Now I have to go to my car to charge my dying phone again.
I almost didn’t post this song at all. Everyone knows that I’m non-political to the core. Even for a song that is over 50 years old… this one has drawn its admirers and haters. Was it a parody or was he serious? It goes both ways.
I always wondered if Merle Haggard was serious in this song. I really didn’t think he was totally and as it turns out he wasn’t on most of it. The song started as a joke but more and more people took it on face value and the song became huge. Merle said: “‘Okie’ made me appear to be a person who was a lot more narrow-minded, possibly, than I really am.”
As Haggard and his band were going to Muskogg Oklahoma he and drummer Eddie Burris started to write this song as a parody. Haggard spotted a sign that read, Muskogee, 19 miles, and he joked to Burris that they probably didn’t smoke marijuana in the small town. The rest of the band joined in and threw out other activities that probably wouldn’t be happening in Muskogee, and because of the times they were in, talked about the Vietnam War.
There are things Haggard didn’t like though… he didn’t like the protesters giving soldiers a hard time when Vietnam was going on when they didn’t have a choice but to go. When Johnny Cash visited the White House, Nixon wanted him to play this song. Cash refused and later said the song was a lightning rod for the anti-hippie movement.
I remember it as a kid very well. Country radio would play it to death back then. I would just sing along because it’s super catchy. There are a few country artists I really like. Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Roy Clark, Buck Owens, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker, and the king of them all…Hank Williams Sr. I don’t care too much about what a fellow blogger…Jeff calls “Bro Country” which is on the airwaves now.
The song peaked at #1 in the Billboard Country music charts and #3 in the Canadian Country music charts in 1969-70.
I did find an interesting cover version by The Grateful Dead AND The Beach Boys together at the Fillmore in 1971. Mike Love is singing lead and you can hear Jerry Garcia’s guitar. The Dead also covered Mama Tried.
Merle Haggard:“We wrote it to be satirical originally. But then people latched onto it, and it really turned into this song that looked into the mindset of people so opposite of who and where we were. My dad’s people. He’s from Muskogee.”
Merle Haggard: “When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away. During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause we don’t even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There’s something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys. We were in a wonderful time in America and music was in a wonderful place. America was at its peak and what the hell did these kids have to complain about? These soldiers were giving up their freedom and lives to make sure others could stay free. I wrote the song to support those soldiers.”
Oki From Muskogee
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
‘Cause we like livin’ right, and bein’ free
We don’t make a party out of lovin’
But we like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo
We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do
And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all
Leather boots are still in style for manly footwear
Beads and Roman sandals won’t be seen
And football’s still the roughest thing on campus
And the kids here still respect the college dean
And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all
And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all
In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA
Hello everyone. Because of the storms in our area we do not have electricity… I’m not sure when I will be able to comment. I have to charge my phone with the car.
The more I hear Ronnie Lane’s deep cuts the more I like him. The reason I started to blog is because of songs like this. Lane was with the Small Faces and then The Faces. He was a key member of each band. In the Small Faces, he played bass and wrote most songs with lead guitarist and guitar player Steve Marriott. Lane also sang some songs for them as well.
In the Faces, again he played bass and wrote songs by himself and with other members of the band. Again…he sang some songs but the lead singer was Rod Stewart. I like Lane’s voice a lot but he happened to be in two bands with two of the best lead singers of their generation.
The Poacher appeared on his 1974 album Anymore for Anymore released in 1974 after he left The Faces. His music was earthy, rootsy….real. You could almost picture Ronnie Lane on your back porch replicating these wonderful songs. No studio tricks just good melodies and lyrics. I’ve always been a lyric guy and I love a good phrase. For instance this song…Bring me fish with eyes of jewels, And mirrors on their bodies, Bring them strong and bring them bigger Than a newborn child. It just rolls so well together.
He had a dream of bringing music back to the people and all of them traveled in a gypsy-type caravan around the country like a circus. He thought that playing music just for money and fame was wrong. The lyrics to this song back that up…And I’ve no use for power And I’ve no use for a broken heart I’ll let this world go by. He is essentially rejecting the world and leaving himself behind.
The album was recorded with his mobile studio at his farm. You can hear animals and you can hear children playing in the background when you listen. It’s down to earth as Ronnie Lane was in real life. It’s a beautiful song that needs to be discovered by more people. It barely hit the UK charts when released.
During the recording of Rough Mix with Pete Townshend…Lane diagnosed with was Multiple Sclerosis. He still toured with Eric Clapton and others afterward and released an album in 1979 called See Me.
Ronnie Lane died of Pneumonia while in the final stages of Multiple Sclerosis in 1997
Ronnie Lane:“The idea for The Poacher came to me when I was living in a fortune teller’s caravan by the side of the River Thames at Pete Townshend’s back garden.”
Pete Townshend:“He was homeless at the time and they lived like gypsies and they used to cook in the open air.”
For you Jam/Paul Weller fans…here is Lane’s band Slim Chance and Weller playing this song.
The Poacher
Was fresh and bright and early
I went towards the river
But nothing still has altered just the seasons ring a change
There stood this old timer
For all the world’s first poacher
His mind upon his tackle
And these words upon his mind:
Bring me fish with eyes of jewels
And mirrors on their bodies
Bring them strong and bring them bigger
Than a newborn child
Well I’ve no use for riches
And I’ve no use for power
And I’ve no use for a broken heart
I’ll let this world go by
There stood this old timer
For all the world’s first poacher
His mind upon his tackle
And these words upon his mind:
Bring me fish with eyes of jewels
And mirrors on their bodies
Bring them strong and bring them bigger
Than a newborn child
I love the guitars in this song. Great hooks all the way around. This song was not released as a single…I would have bought it.
This song was on their debut album All Over The Place. It was written by Hoffs and Peterson. The song has no mention of Dover in the lyric…the title comes from the poem Dover Beach, published by the Englishman Matthew Arnold in 1867. The beach in question is the one at the bottom of the white cliffs in Dover, England, as in the 1940 song “The White Cliffs Of Dover.”
When they released this song they were part of the Paisley Underground scene… a Los Angeles scene with bands like Rain Parade, The Dream Syndicate, Green On Red, and others. The Bangles were undoubtedly the most successful band to come out of that group of bands.
Their album All Over The Place was released in 1984. It didn’t have a hit single and the album only peaked at #80 on the Billboard 100, #32 in New Zealand, and #86 in the UK. However…the album sold respectively and stayed on the charts for 30 weeks and that set their next album up.
Their next album Different Light shot them to stardom with the hits Manic Monday, Walk Like An Egyptian and my favorite song by them… If She Knew What She Wants. They made just one more album called Everything before breaking up in 1989. It had the hits In Your Room and Eternal Flame.
Dover Beach, although not a single, remains on their current setlist.
Vickie Peterson: “Susanna and I were slightly geekish about opening the Norton Anthology of English Literature, flipping through that and going, ‘Hey, this is a great line.’ She had come across the Matthew Arnold poem Dover Beach at some point and that inspired that song, that idea of applying the fantasy of escape and the reality of what that would really mean. It was a really fun time to just mine the world for ideas.”
Dover Beach
If I had the time
I would run away with you
To a perfect world
We’d suspend all that is duty or required.
Late last night you cried
And I couldn’t come to you
But on the other side
You and I, inseparable and walking.
Yeah, oh woe.
If we could steal away
Like jugglers and thieves
But we could come and go
Oh, and talk of Michaelangelo.
Oh woe.
If we had the time (we had the time)
We had the time.
The day you looked at me
And it was on your mind
The world is no one’s dream
We will never ever find the time.
Oh woe.
If we had the time
I would run away with you
To a perfect world
(To a perfect world).
It all started with a cracked single of the song Eleanor by The Turtles when I was a kid. I was hooked on this band and soon got the greatest hits. They had some nice pop songs in their catalog. If you ever get a chance to see Flo and Eddie…go see them. I saw them on July 20, 1987, with many more bands…though not many original members, Flo and Eddie were there though. They kicked off the concert with Bon Jovi’s Shot Through The Hot…and said…”No no…we don’t play that crap…we play this crap” and proceeded to start playing their songs. I saw them at the local minor league baseball team’s stadium…they played at the end of the game.
This song was written by Gary Bonner and Alan Gordon…the same two who wrote their biggest hit…Happy Together.
The band was formed by Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They were saxophone players who did whatever was trendy in order to make a living as musicians. They were also in the choir together in high school.
They played surf-rock mostly at the time. They also played backup for The Coasters, Sonny And Cher, and The Righteous Brothers when they came through. After a while, Howard and Mark gave up the sax and became singers. They signed a deal with White Whale Records as The Crosswind Singers. When British groups took over America, they tried to pass themselves off as British singers and renamed themselves The Turtles.
Like The Byrds, The Turtles recorded a Bob Dylan song for their first single It Ain’t Me Babe and it was a hit. In 1967 they released Happy Together which peaked at #1. She’s Rather Be With Me was the follow-up single. Not a bad song to follow up the massive hit. This song peaked at #1 in Canada, #3 on the Billboard 100, #8 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK in 1967. The two songs were on their album Happy Together. It peaked at #25 in the Billboard Album Charts…which is peculiar with you think about it…having two singles hit #1 and #3 off of that album but they were more of a singles band.
The Turtles recorded for a small record company named White Whale. They broke up in 1970 and part of the reason was to get away from their manager…who was also their first manager that got the job again.
Volman and Kaylan were very smart. When White Whale’s master recordings were sold at auction in 1974, the duo won the Turtles’ masters, making them the owners of their own recorded work. When the 80s came around and CDs were sold…they made the money and not their old record company. They also hosted some radio shows in the 70s and 80s and recorded soundtrack music for children’s shows like the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake.
They became known as Flo (Phlorescent Leech) and Eddie. Kaylan and Volman joined Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as Flo and Eddie because of contractual restrictions of their record company. Kaylan and Volman sang backing vocals on several recordings by T. Rex, including their worldwide 1971 hit “Get it On (Bang A Gong). Later they did the backup vocals on Bruce Springsteen’s Hungry Heart.
If you are in any way interested in watching band documentaries… watch The Turtles doc! It is hilarious. I will include the full doc above the song.
Here is the documentary…watch it if you have time. What they did to their last manager (who was also their first) is classic! Now…I hope if you didn’t read most of this…READ NOW…if you don’t do anything else today…on the video below…their documentary… GO TO 1:12:46 and listen (or just click the link)…it’s very funny and very sad…this happened all of the time. Of course they were gullible…that helped! It is only a couple of minutes and starts with them talking about their 8 managers.
She’d Rather Be With Me
Some girls
Love to run around
Love to handle everything they see
But my girl
Has more fun around
And you know she’d rather be with me
Me oh my (me oh my, I’m a lucky guy)
Lucky guy is what I am
Tell you why, you’ll understand
She don’t fly although she can
Some boys (some boys)
Love to run around
They don’t think about the things they do
But this boy (this boy)
Wants to settle down
And you know he’d rather be with you
Me oh my (my)
Lucky guy is what I am (my)
Tell you why, you’ll understand (my)
She don’t fly although she can (my)
Some girls (some girls)
Love to run around
Love to handle everything they see
But my girl (my girl)
Has more fun around
And you know she’d rather be with
Yeah, she’d rather be with
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
You know she’d rather be with me
Dave at A Sound Day gave writers a question to write about. If you could safely go back in time and move about for one day, what one concert or live performance would you choose to go to?
Well, that narrows it down to me because there are two cities that come to mind after he asked that. Now…if this was a baseball question I would go to New York in the twenties and see who I think was the best baseball player ever…Babe Ruth. But it’s music so the two cities are Hamburg and Liverpool…the Star Club in Hamburg or the Cavern in Liverpool…and I shouldn’t have to name the band.
I’m going to pick Hamburg…and the reason is The Beatles would play 6-8 hours a night compared to lunchtime sessions at the Cavern so to Germany I go! From everything I’ve read the performances there were off the charts. They played loud sweaty rock and roll there and accumulated way past 1000 hours playing there in a 3-year stretch from 1960 to 1962. It’s not a stretch to say at that time they could have had more hours on a stage than any other rock band.
The Beatles played over 250 nights in the seedy red-light district of Hamburg. If you average 6 hours a show that would be 1500 hours…that is why they could play so well with a wall of screaming in their ears later on. They would get to know the gangsters who would buy them champagne, the barmaids who would sell or give them Preludin (a type of diet pill speed so they could play all night…”prellies”), and the prostitutes who would take them in and befriend them. They also met Little Richard, Billy Preston, and Gene Vincent there.
They slowed down in 1962 and didn’t play as long of sets but at the end they had Ringo. I would want to see them in 1960-61 when Stuart Sutcliffe was on bass and Pete Best was drumming. Other bands from England started to come over but none of them had the impact of the Beatles. They lived off of prellies and beer when they played and would go have an English breakfast when they could afford it. There are pictures of them holding a Preludin metal tube (what they came in) and grinning manically.
They would write a few songs but mostly played covers through this period of learning. They caused all kinds of trouble and there were rumors of John Lennon urinating off of a balcony on nuns…but that has been disproven…no he did urinate off of balconies but left the nuns alone. He once appeared with a real toilet seat around his head on stage after being angered and ripping it off a toilet. George was booted out of the country for being underaged and Paul and Pete were accused of trying to burn down a cinema. Stuart Sutcliffe found his true love there Astrid Kirchherr. He would die in 1962 of a brain hemorrhage at 22.
When they came back from Hamburg in 1960 to Liverpool…people were amazed and at first thought, they were a German band with their all leather clothes. They were a sensation because they played like no one else. Without Hamburg…there would probably be no Beatles. After they got back they started to play the Cavern regularly and the promoters were wary of them because of their reputation but soon knew they would make them a lot of money. They were NOT the grinning moptops that the world came to love. They were rough and tough growing up in Liverpool with further education in Hamburg. Often after shows in Liverpool, they would have to fight because of the rough audiences being jealous of their girlfriends who were fawning over them.
Well, that was long-winded…but Hamburg in 1961… is where I want Dave’s time machine to take me. I might hijack it and make another trip to the Cavern if Dave is not watching. So what is the saying about rock music? Sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll? This probably helped that saying along.
There are some low-fi recordings of them in Hamburg in 1962 with Ringo drumming which shows how stripped down and raw they were.
This was left over from last week so I thought today would be a good day to put it to use.
I first heard this on AM radio in the 70s as a kid. I didn’t know it was a cover at the time but later I bought Springsteen’s debut album and found it. I know I’m in the minority on this one…I like Bruce’s version more. I do like Manfred Manns’s version though…they made it an epic production and song…and if it wasn’t for their version…the song would not be as well known today so they did a great job on it. I like the way Bruce did the vocals and the extra verses are some lyrical gymnastics.
When putting their own spin on “Blinded by the Light,” Manfred Mann’s Earth Band changed a few of Springsteen’s original lyrics. The most recognizable part of the song, Blinded by the light / Revved up like a Deuce / Another runner in the night, was initially, Cut loose like a Deuce / Another runner in the night.
Bruce’s version is more stripped down as a more common song. The lyrics flow everywhere. The keyword Bruce wrote was “Deuce” and it came out as Douche in the Manfred Mann version. Bruce once said ” “Deuce was like a Little Deuce Coupe, as in a 2-seater Hot Rod. Douche is a feminine hygienic procedure. But what can I say, the public spoke.”
When the band was recording “Blinded by the Light,” they did everything they could do to make it a hit. As they played in the studio, they got stuck trying to transition between the chorus and the verses. Near the end, the drummer Chris Slade said to put the piano tune “Chopsticks” over it. Mann was skeptical of the idea and turned it down multiple times. But when Slade kept insisting, they tried it out. It worked surprisingly well.
The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #8 in New Zealand, and #6 in the UK in 1976-77.
Manfred Mann:“When we finally finished the album track I thought it had a great vibe, but the next question was how to get that into a single. The real problem was how to get from the chorus to the verse smoothly. The way we did it on the album wouldn’t work. I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it. And then – and this is why you need to be in a band – our drummer Chris Slade said: ‘Play Chopsticks over it’. We already had that elsewhere in the song, and I told him it wouldn’t work. But he kept insisting, and I kept saying no, until I suddenly realised that he wasn’t hearing Chopsticks itself, just the chords, which fitted perfectly. So we recorded those as backing vocals and added that to the original. This was in the days when you had to try and lock two tape machines in tandem, so that took another two days.”
Blinded By The Light
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer
with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps
His way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin’ kinda older
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin’ sneezin’ and wheezin’
The calliope crashed to the ground
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Some silicone sister with a manager mister
Told me I got what it takes
She said, “I’ll turn you on, sonny, to something strong
Play the song with the funky break”
And go-kart Mozart was checkin’ out the weather chart
To see if it was safe outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly
And asked me if I needed a ride
Asked me if I needed a ride
But she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tired
She’s gonna make it through the night
She’s gonna make it through the night
But mama, that’s where the fun is
But mama, that’s where the fun is
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun
But mama, that’s where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone
Preacher from the east
Says, “Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in it’s funny bone
That’s where they expect it least”
And some new-mown chaperone was standin’ in the corner
Watchin’ the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin’ with his frozen zone
Remindin’ him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night
Blinded by the light (madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (with a teenage diplomat)
Blinded by the light (in the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (his way into his hat)
Blinded by the light (with a boulder on my shoulder, feelin’ kinda older)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (I tripped the merry-go-round)
Blinded by the light (with this very unpleasin’ sneezin’ and wheezin’)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (the calliope crashed to the ground)
Blinded by the light (now Scott with a slingshot finally found a tender spot)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (and throws his lover in the sand)
Blinded by the light (and some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddy’s within earshot)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (save the buckshot, turn up the band)
Blinded by the light (some silicone sister with a manager mister)
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night (told me I got what it takes)
Blinded by the light (she said, “I’ll turn you on, sonny, to something strong”)
She got down, but she never got tired
She’s gonna make it through the night
I want to thank all of you for reading last week’s “covers” week. Based on the positive response…I’ll start doing covers on Tuesdays coming up.
I just finished another Grateful Dead book so I’ve been listening to the Dead’s albums. Wake of the Flood has slowly become one of my favorites. It’s hard to beat American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead but it’s up there.
The verses of this song are straight-up Grateful Dead but the chorus reminds me a little of The Beatles. No, the Dead didn’t copy anything but it’s a type of chorus that the Beatles would attempt. Phil Lesh’s bass is prominent in this song…so is Jerry Garcia’s wonderful weaving guitar playing.
Garcia wrote the music and the Dead’s lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the verses. The song was influenced by a tragic event. Robert Hunter wrote in his book: Remembering the great Vanport, Washington flood of 1949, living in other people’s homes, a family abandoned by father, second grade. Hunter didn’t state the proper year or state of the flood but some about him.
Hunter was not in the flood but he was 7 years old and in second grade when it happened. His father around this time also abandoned his family. Hunter would live in different foster homes until he returned to his mom.
The song is about the flood that happened in Vanport City Oregon in 1948. Calling this a flood would be treating it mildly. It actually washed the town away. On Monday at 4:17 p.m. on Memorial Day 1948, a combination of heavy rainfall and the Columbia River heavy with melted snowfall broke a portion of the dike surrounding Vanport. Floodwaters fifteen feet deep washed Vanport away.
Residents had been assured by authorities that the dikes were holding and that they would be warned in ample time to evacuate. The break caught everyone, including the authorities, by surprise. Thankfully, the swamps within Vanport absorbed the initial surge, allowing around 40 minutes for most people to escape Vanport to higher ground along Denver Avenue. Still, 15-16 (different sources) people lost their lives in the flood.
Vanport is no more. Several acres of the former city became “West Delta Park” which is now the Portland International Raceway.
The song was on the Wake of the Flood album released in 1973… but not without its problems. It came three long years after the Dead’s previous studio album, American Beauty. They did release the live Europe 72 between the two albums. The Dead had just left Warner Bros and were without a record deal. So they did what other bands did at that time…make their own record company. This was the first album released on their new label.
Mickey Hart was not part of the Grateful Dead at this time. Mickey’s last show was 2/18/71 at the Capital Theater and he rejoined the band the last night of the “Farewell” shows at Winterland in October of ’74.
The album peaked at #18 on the Billboard Album Charts and #30 in Canada in 1973. This song was the B side to the single “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away.”
This would not be a Dead post if I didn’t give you a live version of it.
Here Comes Sunshine
Wake of the flood, laughing water, forty-nine
Get out the pans, don’t just stand there dreaming
Get out the way, get out the way
Here comes sunshine
Here comes sunshine
Line up a long shot maybe try it two times, maybe more
Good to know you got shoes to wear, when you find the floor
Why hold out for more
Here comes sunshine
Here comes sunshine
Asking you nice, now, keep the mother rollin’
One more time, been down before
You just don’t have to go no more, no more
This ends Under The Covers Week. I hope you all have enjoyed it…I wrote a few more but I will post them later.
I’ve stayed away from Steve Miller as far as posting because of the constant play on classic radio he gets. I have to admit though, that guitar lick in the intro never gets old. I always thought he wrote this song. I had no idea that someone did this before.
Jet Airliner was written by Paul Pena, a blind folk singer from Cape Cod. Pena played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1969 but was unable ever to make it big in the music business. Pena wrote this song in 1973 and the song tackled his unhappiness over working on his album New Train which, as a result of disagreements, remained unreleased for 27 years. In 2000 it was finally released and praised.
He was grateful that Steve Miller covered this song. For the rest of his life, his royalties from Miller’s version was his only source of income. In 1997 he was in a fire and with heavy smoke inhalation and was in a coma for four days. In the last years of his life, he had diabetes and pancreatitis…he passed away in 2005 because of both complications. In the eighties, he also lived through his wife passing away.
In 1975, Steve Miller needed one more song to record his Book Of Dreams album. This one fit perfectly…the original song had angry verses that Miller re-shaped and it turned out to be a big hit for him. Personally, I like both versions but Pena’s is really raw and I like it. Miller tightened it up and streamlined it.
The album peaked at #2 in the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, #5 in New Zealand, and #12 in the UK in 1977. He had 2 top twenty hits off of that album along with Jungle Love which peaked at #23.
The song peaked at #8 on the Billboard 100, #3 in Canada, #12 in New Zealand, and didn’t chart in the UK.
Steve Miller talked about Pena’s song: “‘Jet Airliner’ was about those people and his treatment on the East Coast when he went out, He really didn’t want to leave California and go to the East Coast and record this record, and this was a song about it. When he brought it to me, he had recorded an album, and nothing had happened. On that album, there were five or six really, really great songs, and I needed one song.”
Steve Miller:“it was very long, verse after verse after verse of anger, a lot of it. So I took the song and said, ‘Can I reshape it? Can I play with it?’ They said, ‘You can do anything you want to with it.’ I remember laying out all the lyrics, typing them up on big sheets of paper… I had them all out on my kitchen table, moving the verses around… then I got it all together and went, ‘Yeah, this’ll work – it’s great!’”
Jet Airliner
Leavin’ home, out on the road
I’ve been down before
Ridin’ along in this big ol’ jet plane
I’ve been thinkin’ about my home
But my love light seems so far away
And I feel like it’s all been done
Somebody’s tryin’ to make me stay
You know I’ve got to be movin’ on
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Goodbye to all my friends at home
Goodbye to people I’ve trusted
I’ve got to go out and make my way
I might get rich you know I might bet busted
But my heart keeps calling me backwards
As I get on the 707
Ridin’ high I got tears in my eyes
You know you got to go through hell
Before you get to heaven
Big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Touchin’ down in New England town
Feel the heat comin’ down
I’ve got to keep on keepin’ on
You know the big wheel keeps on spinnin’ around
And I’m goin’ with some hesitation
You know that I can surely see
That I don’t want to get caught up in any of that
Funky shit goin’ down in the city
Big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah
Big ol’ jet airliner
Don’t carry me too far away
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s here that I’ve got to stay
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
Carry me to my home
Oh, oh big ol’ jet airliner
‘Cause it’s there that I belong
This is such a powerful song no matter who covers it. Sonny Curtis of the Crickets wrote this song and the most famous version is by The Bobby Fuller Four in 1965. This song was made for the Clash to cover and they do a great job on this.
The Clash’s version only charted in Ireland at #24 in 1979. It was on the EP The Cost Of Living. The original song sounded like a punk song before punk was a genre. The song was written two decades before The Clash recorded it in 1959. The song was ranked No. 175 on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.
The Clash covered the song after they heard Fuller’s version on a jukebox. When playing the song live they made the song bleaker, changing the line, “I left my baby” to “I killed my baby.” Their version got them noticed in America, where the song was released in 1979, with “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” as the B-side.
The song was re-released in 1988 and peaked at #29 in the UK and #17 in New Zealand.
Sonny Curtis: “It was some time during the summer of 1959, and I would have been about twenty-one at the time,” the now 84-year-old songwriter tells Classic Rock. “I was sitting in my living room, about three o’ clock in the afternoon, in a little town called Slaton, Texas, outside of the city of Lubbock, where Buddy and a whole bunch of us started out.
“It was a real windy day, which happens a lot in west Texas. The sand was blowing outside. I picked up my guitar, and I can’t imagine where the idea came from, but I just started writing this song, I Fought The Law. It only took about twenty minutes. You can tell that it didn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with those lyrics. But it’s my most important copyright.”
I Fought The Law
Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I needed money ’cause I had none
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I left my baby and it feels so bad
Guess my race is run
She’s the best girl that I ever had
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the
Robbin’ people with a six-gun
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I lost my girl and I lost my fun
I fought the law and the law won [x2]
I left my baby and it feels so bad
Guess my race is run
She’s the best girl that I ever had
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the
I fought the law and the law won [x7]
I fought the law and the
I hope you enjoy this Byrds cover by Tom Petty. One of the best B-side songs I can think of.
I posted The Waiting not long ago and talked about the similarities between The Byrds and Tom Petty. This Byrds song fits Tom Petty perfectly but the original song was not sung by McGuinn but by its writer…Gene Clark. Clark wrote this song in the mid-sixties when a girl he was seeing started to bother him. He also co-wrote Eight Miles High.
Although the song was the B side to The Byrd’s song All I Realy Want To Do, it gained a lot of promotion from Columbia Records and a lot of radio air time. It also became a classic rock standard, with dozens of artists giving their versions of the song.
This song was on Tom Petty’s solo album Full Moon Fever in 1989. The original name of the album was Songs From the Garage. It would have been an appropriate name for it. They worked on this album mostly in Heartbreaker Mike Campbell’s garage. This album caused a riff in The Heartbreakers. The other members thought Tom was going to leave the band. He kept reassuring them but they were not sure.
What’s unbelievable about it is, MCA rejected the album because they didn’t hear a single. This album would have 5 singles released from it.
Tom was absolutely stunned and depressed. He went back and added Feel A Whole Lot Better and the song Alright For Now and presented MCA with basically the same album again. There had been a regime change at MCA and this time they loved it. Ah…record companies…sometimes they are the spawn of Satan.
Although the album was released in 1989…Petty recorded it back in 1987 and 1988. MCA caused much of the delay when they rejected it.
Gene Clark of the Byrds: “There was a girlfriend I had known at the time, when we were playing at Ciro’s. It was a weird time in my life because everything was changing so fast and I knew we were becoming popular. This girl was a funny girl, she was kind of a strange little girl and she started bothering me a lot. And I just wrote the song, ‘I’m gonna feel a whole lot better when you’re gone,’ and that’s all it was, but I wrote the whole song within a few minutes.”
Tom Petty:“I didn’t see much of the Heartbreakers during that period, Mike I kept in touch with, of course, because he was working on Full Moon Fever with me. I never thought of leaving. And I kept reassuring them that I wasn’t going to leave. But I think there was some doubt in their mind.”
Feel A Whole Lot Better
The reason why, oh, I can’t say
I had to let you go, baby, and right away
After what you did, I can’t stay on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Baby, for a long time, you had me believe
That your love was all mine and that’s the way it would be
But I didn’t know that you were putting me on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Now I gotta say that it’s not like before
And I’m not gonna play your games any more
After what you did, I can’t stay on
And I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Yeah, I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Oh, when you’re gone
Usually, I don’t like covers better than the original but with this song I do. John Lennon sounds demented and he pushed his vocals over the edge. Lennon has said he screamed the lyrics more than sang them but it worked. He provided the power to this song with just his vocals. The Beatles didn’t have monitors live…no one else at this time didn’t either so they had to sing loud to be heard. Author Mark Lewisohn called it “arguably the most stunning rock and roll vocal and instrumental performance of all time.”
This is probably close to sounding like they did live in Hamburg and The Cavern. This session took place on February 11, 1963, at EMI Studios in London, which was later renamed Abbey Road Studios. The Beatles did 10 songs that day, nine of which ended up on Please Please Me, their first UK album. Think about that for a minute… in one day they recorded their debut album except for the song Please Please Me which was recorded later.
When The Beatles played the Royal Command Performance with the Queen watching. During the introduction to this song, John Lennon famously said,“For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands and the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” He told Brian Epstein that he was going to say “rattle your fu**ing jewelry” and Epstein was on pins and needles worried that John would go through with that…but he didn’t. John wasn’t a fan of playing at these functions.
They actually did two takes of the song and kept the first one. John was sick with a cold and had stripped off his shirt to let himself sweat it out, but he pulled it off. The next day…February 12, 1963 – The Beatles played two shows, one at the Azena Ballroom in Yorkshire and another at the Astoria Ballroom in Lancashire. No rest for the weary.
This was the first song ever written by Bert Burns. He went on to write, Piece of My Heart, Here Comes the Night, Hang on Sloopy, Cry to Me and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love to name just a few. He signed Van Morrison to his first solo deal with Bang Records. Unfortunately, he died at 38 of a heart attack in 1967. Phil Medley did get a co-writing credit on the song.
The song peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #5 in Canada, and #1 in New Zealand in 1964. The Beatles version was not done yet. In the film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986, the song was used and charted again. It peaked at #23 on the Billboard 100 and #16 in Canada.
The Isley Brothers’ version is great and there have been many other charting versions of it.
Norman Smith engineer: “Someone suggested they do ‘Twist and Shout’ with John taking the lead vocal. But by this time all their throats were sore; it was 12 hours since we had started working. John’s, in particular, was almost completely gone so we really had to get it right the first time. The Beatles on the studio floor and us in the control room. John sucked a couple more Zubes (a brand of throat lozenges), had a bit of a gargle with milk and away we went.”
Twist and Shout
Well, shake it up, baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out Well, work it on out, honey You know you look so good You know you got me goin’ now Just like I knew you would
Well, shake it up, baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out You know you twist, little girl You know you twist so fine Come on and twist a little closer now And let me know that you’re mine, woo
Ah, ah, ah, ah, wow Baby, now Twist and shout Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now Come on and work it on out You know you twist, little girl You know you twist so fine Come on and twist a little closer now And let me know that you’re mine Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, baby, now Ah, ah, ah, ah
Our small town got a record store in 1982. We had one in the seventies but it went out of business. In the new one…this is the first single I bought there. The store only lasted a year at the most but we enjoyed it while we had it. In 1982 you could not go to school, a store, or anywhere without hearing this song. If you didn’t hear it you heard someone hum it. Much like Another One Bites The Dust from two years earlier…you just couldn’t escape it.
In 2016 I saw The Who in Nashville and I didn’t know who was opening up. I was pleasantly surprised when Joan Jett was announced. She and her band were tight and very loud. The Who had ties with Jett back in 1979 as they helped finance Jett’s debut album Bad Reputation.
This was originally recorded by a British group called The Arrows in 1975, and it was written by their lead singer Alan Merrill and guitarist Jake Hooker. The song was released as a B-side with The Arrows’ “Broken Down Heart.” Co-writer Alan Merrill said “That was a knee-jerk response to the Rolling Stones’ ‘It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll.’ I remember watching it on Top of the Pops. I’d met Mick Jagger socially a few times, and I knew he was hanging around with Prince Rupert Lowenstein and people like that – jet setters. I almost felt like ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’ was an apology to those jet-set princes and princesses that he was hanging around with – the aristocracy, you know. That was my interpretation as a young man: Okay, I love rock and roll. And then, where do you go with that?”
The Arrows did get their own TV show called The Arrows Show. It ran from 1976-1977 in the UK for two full 14-week seasons on the ITV network. It was this show that Joan Jett saw in 1976. A fun fact about the song. The Arrows were based in England, where they don’t use dimes. At that time they would put a sixpenny in the jukebox to buy a song. That would have had a different ring to it, but the original producer Mickie Most liked dime because it sounded American, and that’s the way The Arrows recorded it. Joan Jett didn’t really differ much from the Arrows version…just a little louder.
When the Runaways broke up in 1979, Joan Jett and her producer Kenny Laguna put her first solo album together with studio time and travel arrangements fronted by The Who. They struggled to get a record deal and had to form their own label, Blackheart Records, to release the album in America. Joan remembered The Arrows singing I Love Rock N Roll in 1976 while touring the UK and knew it sounded like a hit. She wanted the Runaways to cover the song but they turned it down. The reason they turned it down was that they had already covered a song called Rock and Roll by Lou Reed on their debut album and didn’t want another song with “rock” in the title at that time.
Jett recorded it with Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols and released it as a B-side in 1979. Polygram Records owned that version of the song but they were not excited about the song or Joan Jett. They basically let her go and signed some of the other Runaways. Boy was that a mistake! Joan would end up being the best-known Runaway. Lita Ford was successful also along with Michael Steele with the Bangles but neither became as popular as Joan Jett…and this song was a big reason.
I like the original and both Jett covers. The hit version peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #1 in New Zealand, and #4 in the UK in 1982.
The album was called I Love Rock And Roll released in 1981. The album peaked at #2 on the Billboard Album Charts, #1 in Canada, #1 in New Zealand, and #25 in the UK in 1982.
The producers were Ritchie Cordell, Kenny Laguna, and Glen Kolotkin.
The song’s co-writer, Alan Merrill, died at 69 on March 29, 2020. Joan Jett offered condolences on Twitter, posting: “I can still remember watching the Arrows on TV in London and being blown away by the song that screamed hit to me.”
Joan Jett:“I think most people who love some kind of rock ‘n’ roll can relate to it. Everyone knows a song that just makes them feel amazing and want to jump up and down. I quickly realized, this song is gonna follow you, so you’re either gonna let it bother you, or you gotta make peace with it, and feel blessed that you were involved with something that touched so many people.”
Producer Kenny Laguna on Polygram Records: “They could care less about Joan Jett, they were busy signing every other Runaway. They thought Joan was the loser and they signed the other girls, who we’re all friends with, but I looked at the band and thought she was the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the band. The company decided that if I would pay the studio cost of $2,300, I could have all the rights, and I got three songs. I got ‘I Love Rock and Roll’ with The Sex Pistols, I got ‘You Don’t Own Me’ – they did a great version of the Lesley Gore hit, and they did a song Joan wrote called ‘Don’t Abuse Me.’ So I buy these songs back. In the meantime, Joan has a couple of fans. Rodney Bingenheimer of K-ROCK, KMAC in Long Beach, BCN in Boston, LIR in Long Island, they were playing The Sex Pistols’ kind of cruddy version of the song, and it was #1 on the alternative stations. It was really alternative music, they were way-out stations that would play some pretty adventurous stuff, that’s why they would play Joan, because Joan was not getting a record deal, Joan was way on the outside, like a Fugazi of her day. We saw some kind of potential there. I remember these guys from the big record distributors in Long Island kept calling and saying, ‘This is a hit record, we’re getting so many requests for it.’ So we cut it over and did a really good version of it.”
THE 1979 VERSION
I Love Rock and Roll
I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
He smiled so I got up and’ asked for his name
That don’t matter, he said,
‘Cause it’s all the same
Said can I take you home where we can be alone
An’ next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me
Next we were movin’ on
He was with me, yeah me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
Said can I take you home where we can be alone
An we’ll be movin’ on
An’ singin’ that same old song
Yeah with me, singin’
I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me
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