Tag: Mr Turnkey

If you want to break up a party…play this song…it will clear a room with quickness. So enjoy the post and song!

To say it’s bleak is an understatement. I’ve always been interested in it though. It was released in 1969 and the other chart songs around it were happy…Sugar Sugar, Dizzy, the cool Crystal Blue Persuasion, and Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In… this one seems out of place in that bunch. The duo was Denny Zager and Rick Evans. Rick Evans wrote this song.

It peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #1 in the UK, and yes #1 in New Zealand. It was number one around a week before the Apollo Space Mission. This doom and gloom song was recorded in a studio in the middle of a cow pasture in Odessa, Texas in 1968.

The line that I noticed was Everything you think, do and say Is in the pill you took today. Hmmm, kind of reminds me of a thousand pills made now to control your illnesses or just make you feel better. Also if you really want to read into it… In the year 5555, Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides Your legs got nothin’ to do, Some machine’s doin’ that for you. That machine today would be a phone or a computer doing about everything. Buying your groceries, playing your music, and reading Max’s blog about that.

The other line I think about… You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too, From the bottom of a long glass tube. Well, that happened on July 25, 1978, with the first test tube baby.

You probably guessed it by looking at the names but this was Zager and Evans, only hit. What are they doing today? The author, Rick Evans, sadly passed away in February 2018 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 75. Denny Zager is a highly acclaimed Guitar maker who makes his home in Nebraska. Nebraska is where both of them were from.

Their follow-up song was “Mr. Turnkey,” a song about a rapist who nails his wrist to his prison cell because he is sorry for his crime? Yeah, I wonder why that one didn’t hit? I admire the ambition but maybe a little too much inspiration was going on.

I have a quote from Zager at the bottom but here is another one and it’s interesting….Denny Zager: Before John Denver was discovered, he used to write to me all the time asking how we knew about “test tube babies” and things that hadn’t even been discovered yet. Rick used to tell him he had been abducted by aliens and “saw into the future.”

Denny Zager:  Rick (Evans) said he wrote the lyrics in 10 minutes in the back of a Volkswagen van after a night of partying and a lot of Mary Jane. He tried the song with a few bands he was playing with at the time, but the music wasn’t right and it wasn’t working. I thought the lyrics were intriguing, so I rewrote the music so it blended better with the lyrics. The first night we played it live we knew it was special because the crowd looked stunned and wanted to hear it again and again. 

Denny Zager: Like any band Rick and I had our squabbles, but there was a point in time that I felt we could have written some of the best music of the century. I miss him.

The follow-up!

In The Year 2525

In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find
In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
You ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin’ to do
Some machine’s doin’ that for you
In the year 6565
You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God’s a coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He’ll look around Himself and say
Guess it’s time for the judgment day
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down, and start again

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wonderin’ if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing

Now it’s been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew, now man’s reign is through
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight
So very far away, maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find