Bread – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Bread – Mother Freedom

When I was 6 or 7 I thought this was a hard rock song. That distorted guitar sounded so good to those young ears. This is Bread letting their soft rock guard down and opening up a good electric riff. It took me a long time to admit that I liked this band but I do now. They did soft rock well but they also covered other genres. Most of the hits though were David Gates’s melody-driven soft rock songs.

This was one of Bread’s more upbeat songs and was usually played just before the encore that their concerts. The band was known for soft rock hits like Baby I’m-A Want You, If, and Everything I Own.

On this Gates written track, David Gates played the two rhythm guitars on the track, and James Griffin played the guitar solo. Gates sang lead, while Griffin sang backup.

David Gates had already been playing live in various bands for four years by the time he moved to Los Angeles in the early sixties. There, he began writing hits “Popsicles and Icicles” by the Murmaids and “Saturday’s Child” for the Monkees, and producing Glenn Yarbrough’s “Baby, The Rain Must Fall”.

In 1967, Robb Royer suggested to Gates that they form their own group, along with mutual friend Jimmy Griffin, and after being inspired by a bread truck passing by, the group Bread was born. Their debut album was released in 1969 and contained the song It Don’t Matter To Me.

Mother Freedom was on the Baby I’m-a Want You album released in 1971. The song peaked at #37 on the Billboard 100 in 1972. The album did well and peaked at #3 in the Billboard Album Charts, #9 in Canada, and #9 in the UK.

So dust off your door beads, fire up your Chevy van, check your mood ring, and crank up some Bread…

Mother Freedom

Freedom, keep walkin’
Keep on your toesand don’t stop talkin’ ’bout
Freedom, get goin’
Lots to be learned and lots to be knowin’ ’bout
People, gotta reach ’em
Sit ’em right down and then you gotta teach ’em ’bout
Freedom, gotta win it
Gotta put yourself smack dab in it

Hey tomorrow
Now don’t you go away
Cause freedom
Just might come your way

Freedom, keep tryin’
People stay alive and people keep dyin’ for
Freedom, so don’t lose it
Ya gotta understand ya just can’t abuse it
Freedom, get movin’
Never gonna stop till everybody’s groovin’ on
Love for, one another
Callin’ some friend and callin’ some brother

Hey tomorrow
You’re not so far away
Mother freedom
We’ll know you well someday

Bread – If …1970’s AM Radio Gold Week

Bread was one of the first bands I found out about. My sister loved them because every time she started to date someone or broke up with someone…out came the Bread albums. She is 8 years older than me so I was just 6 when she was 14 but I knew the dating cycle of a teenage girl rather well at that time.

My sister now…(she will kill me if she finds out I posted this)

Bread was a soft rock band that later on I probably would have never claimed that I liked…but I did…and still do. I called them a guilty pleasure (the guilt-o-meter peaks) for a while but hell…I like them. When I hear the opening guitar in this song, it’s the early seventies again.

The song peaked at #4 in the Billboard 100 and #6 in Canada in 1971. It also peaked at #1 in the Easy Listening chart in America and Canada. The song was on the album Mana that peaked at #21 in the Billboard Album charts and #16 in Canada.

David Gates was the writer who wrote most of the hits. Gates is a very good singer songwriter who knows how to write a good pop melody. In this song there is no chorus to speak of but it works well.

David Gates: “I wrote that one night at the dining room table, after my kids and my wife had gone to bed. It took me about an hour and a half, with an extra verse left over. If you look at it, there’s a few bizarre lines in there, like ‘you and I would simply fly away’ – that’s kind of an unusual thought. When I was done, I said, ‘That’s the best song I’ve ever written and probably will be the best song I’ll ever write.’ For me it’s really held up over time, more than any of the others.”

One odd fact about this song… Kojak actor Telly Savalas recorded a spoken-word version that went to #1 in the UK in 1975.

If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show the you I’ve come to know.
If a face could launch a thousand ships,
Then where am I to go?
There’s no one home but you,
You’re all that’s left me too.
And when my love for life is running dry,
You come and pour yourself on me.

If a man could be two places at one time,
I’d be with you.
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.
If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,
I’d spend the end with you.
And when the world was through,
Then one by one the stars would all go out,
Then you and I would simply fly away