Our special Bonus Holiday Episode for 2025 features a song that should be a Christmas staple– a brilliant power-pop gem from Doug Powell called “God Bless Us All“. Originally written for Ringo Starr’s 1999 Christmas album but didn’t make the cut, this is a lost Christmas classic that deserves to be a holiday favorite.
“God Bless Us All” Doug Powell – Copyright 2006 Muse Sickle Productions
In this episode, we welcome back author Gillian Garr to discuss her new book, “Tom Petty: The Life and Music“. We’ll take a look at the fascinating career of one of rock’s most beloved figures. From Petty’s early encounter with Elvis Presley to the eventual rise of The Heartbreakers, this episode is packed with anecdotes and insights that shed light on Petty’s enduring legacy.
Gillian shares stories about Petty’s struggles with record labels, his creative partnerships, and the pivotal moments that defined his career. We discuss the making of iconic albums like “Damn The Torpedoes” and “Wildflowers”, as well as the challenges he faced, including battles with addiction and the pressures of fame. With a mix of nostalgia and admiration, this episode is a heartfelt tribute to Tom Petty’s music and the impact he had on fans and fellow musicians alike.
Pick up Gillian’s book here:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tom+petty+the+life+and+music
TRANSCRIPT:
Greetings, all you rebels, refugees and heartbreakers. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, coming to you on the Pantheon Podcast Network. I’m your host, Brad Page.
Tom Petty is a big favorite here on the show– in fact, we first covered him way back on Episode 2 of this podcast. I’m a big fan of Tom, and the Heartbreakers too, as a band. Mike Campbell is one of my favorite guitarists of all time. So, when I heard that author Gillian Gaar has a new book out, celebrating the life and music of Tom Petty, I wanted to get her back on the show to talk about Tom and his remarkable career. You may remember Gillian from her appearance on this podcast, about eight months ago, when she joined me to talk about the 50th anniversary of Queen’s “Night at the Opera” album. It’s a pleasure to have her back this time to talk about the late, great Tom Petty.
Here’s my conversation with Gillian Gaar:
Brad Page: Well, Gillian Gaar, thanks for coming back on the podcast. And you’ve got a brand new book that’s out now. It’s out for the holidays– Hint, hint, folks, go pick it up. Perfect Christmas gift for any Tom Petty fan out there. This is a great package, great new book, “Tom Petty: The Life and Music”. And Gillian’s here to talk with me about the fascinating career of Tom Petty. He’s one of my favorite songwriters. There’s really great stuff in here of the whole band, the Heartbreakers, as well as Tom. I just had a great time reading the book.
Gillian Gaar: Oh, good.
Brad Page: Yeah. So, let’s start talking about Tom Petty. One of the most formative things about him, which I don’t know that I knew this before I read the book, is that Tom had actually seen Elvis Presley at a very young age, and that kind of set the stage for him for his future career in a lot of ways.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, I had no idea he had a close encounter with Elvis either. And I’ve written a lot about Elvis, so that was interesting. And, yeah, it came before Tom was really that interested in rock music as well. I mean, what’s interesting about that encounter is that it wasn’t a concert; he was watching Elvis on a film set. But he was just kind of dazzled by, I suppose you’d say, the accoutrements of show business and what that was like. Elvis had come back from the army and was focusing on making films. And his film “Follow That Dream”, which is about a family of homesteaders, was set in Florida. And one of Tom’s relatives worked as local crew on film shoots. So he was working on this film shooting, so he asked Tom, who’s, you know, like 10, would he want to come and meet Elvis? And he said, “well, sure”. And so he was, he was brought to the film set, they were filming on location. So then all the Cadillacs pull up with his entourage, the Memphis Mafia guys, and the anticipation’s building, and then Elvis comes and yeah, he was just really impressed by that moment of the girls shrieking and waving their album covers that they want to get signed.
Brad Page: Right.
Gillian Gaar: And fans would break past the barricades and you know, in and try and hug Elvis. So, oh, shop ruined, got to do it again. And Tom was just dazzled by this whole experience. And yeah, he talked a bit to Elvis, got to shake his hand and all that. And when he gets home that night, his friend who lives next door just wants to know all that information, every bit of detail, you know, about what happened. And Tom ended up trading a slingshot to his friend for a box of 45s, which included some Elvis 45s.
Brad Page: And then of course, like so many people of that era, kind of the next big thing was seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. And that was a life-changing experience for him.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, I mean I was watching too… though I didn’t, you know, end up in a rock band later. But we were all one of those 73 million people watching that night.
Gillian Gaar: It’s almost a universal thing for a whole generation of– and more– of musicians, that launching off spot. And Tom was one of them.
Gillian Gaar: I thought, though, in Tom’s case, you know, there he is watching the Beatles at 13 or so and just think, if you could have told him that in 20-some years he was going to be making a record with George Harrison, think how flabbergasted he would have been.
Brad Page: I know, right?
Gillian Gaar: He wouldn’t have believed you.
Brad Page: It’s incredible, I mean, how many of those 73 million that watched that show got that to that point? It’s really something.
So he forms– he has a couple of bands, but the first one that really kind of comes together and does anything is a band called Mudcrutch. And that’s where Tom meets Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell, who become kind of his left- and right-hands through the rest of his career.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, yeah, Mike Campbell in particular was always brought on with every project, solo as well as the band projects.
Brad Page: And Mudcrutch has some success. They go out to California, they get signed to Shelter Records. But it kind of falls apart, right?
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, it fell apart pretty quickly. They had all the Hollywood dreams, but I mean admittedly the single they put out was not that strong, either. I mean, I think it got some okay reviews in Billboard, but it didn’t take off. And the record label seemed to lose interest in them pretty quickly. Well, they dropped them– except for Tom. They hung onto to Tom because they recognized that he had the talent. He should probably be the main focus.
Brad Page: Right. They could see the potential. And he was actually doing some work as a songwriter; I think you mention in the book that he had a very short period where they were teaming him up with some LA studio musicians, and that really didn’t work for him. He’s a band guy and so he ends up kind of slowly but surely bringing in the members of the Heartbreakers, including those guys that came from Mudcrutch and they form this new band, The Heartbreakers.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, and you think about Mudcrutch, that was just the band named Mudcrutch, it was not Tom Petty and the Mudcrutchers or something. And his subsequent band, he thought of in those terms as well. They weren’t going to name it Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or Tom Petty and the such and such, but, one, it made sense. He was the one that had the contract with the record company.
Brad Page: Mhm.
Gillian Gaar: So he was kind of bringing them on as sort of his side musicians, except he wanted them to be a band and not just side musicians. So yeah, I think it was also at the label’s instigation that it became Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.
Brad Page: So Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers officially make their first album, and it comes out to, you know, it got some good reviews but it didn’t really do very much. And this is another thing I always thought was a really fascinating little aspect of the Tom Petty story, is that there’s this one guy, a promotions guy named John Scott, who almost single-handedly breaks the song “Breakdown” as a single. And it just shows you that there’s always these unsung heroes behind the scenes. John Scott really was an important figure in getting the Heartbreakers really going, getting their career going.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, it’s interesting to think about what if he hadn’t been there.
Brad Page: Right.
Gillian Gaar: You know, then maybe we wouldn’t have heard of the Heartbreakers. Because, as you say, the album got some good reviews, but it didn’t zoom up the charts and sell a million copies or anything. So, you know, kind of a lukewarm success, and they might not have progressed further.
Brad Page: John Scott heard something in the song “Breakdown” and started to get it on the radio. And before you know it, it’s a, it’s a minor hit, but it gets them going.
Brad Page: And then their second record, “You’re Gonna Get It”, which is, I think, a much stronger record than the first one, has some great tracks on it. “Listen to Her Heart”’s one of my favorites.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, yeah. That’s the one with the cocaine line in it, isn’t it? Right, yeah, that. got him in a bit of trouble because he referenced cocaine, even though it wasn’t really a positive reference. It’s more of a bribe than anything.
Brad Page: It sort of sets a precedent for Tom, that he would not change it. He was not going to budge on that. And that remained an element of his personality and his career through the rest of his life.
Gillian Gaar: That’s true, that’s true. Very much so.
Gillian Gaar: I remember he said they wanted him to change to champagne, and his argument was, you know, you can get cheap champagne in the store. That’s not much of a special thing to offer someone. Well, logically, that makes sense.
Brad Page: And then as they go into their third album, and it’s a convoluted story, but Shelter Records was distributed by ABC, or a subsidiary of ABC Records, and ABC Records gets purchased by MCA at the time, one of the large record conglomerates. And Tom doesn’t like the fact that his contract is essentially, he’s sort of owned by people that he never signed a deal with.
Gillian Gaar: Right, right.
Brad Page: And so he’s fighting against this contract, and eventually to get out of it, he declares bankruptcy.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, that was a pretty clever move.
Brad Page: On his part it was, but incredibly risky, too. And you know, in the meantime, he’s not getting paid, and the band’s not getting paid. And you know, they’re trying to get this third record off the ground.
Your first two records could be so-so, but by the time you get to the third record, you really, it was kind of a make-or-break kind of thing, and you got to start having legitimate hits if your career is going to continue. And so he’s in this very precarious place, where the first two records, they did okay, but nobody was beating down the doors to release Tom Petty records. And now he’s in a contractual dispute with his record label. Usually you almost always lose when you’re an artist in that perspective. Somehow, he’s obstinate and persistent enough that he pulls it out.
And so, amongst all of this precarious situation, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers end up releasing their third album, “Damn The Torpedoes”, which still to this day is my favorite Tom Petty record. I think this is a fantastic record. It’s as close to a perfect record as Tom Petty ever got. I think it’s so great.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, that’s a record, you just, you remembered seeing it everywhere. Not just hearing it everywhere, but yeah, I remember Tower Records and they would have the, those huge blow ups of the album covers, and that was there. I mean, that was probably the first Tom Petty record I really noticed. Because of that, because of seeing that everywhere.
Brad Page: Yeah, it was, it was exactly what he needed. It was a big hit record. It had a number of singles on it.
Just so many great songs on this record. I’m a huge fan. And that’s 1979, Tom Petty and “Damn The Torpedoes”.
That’s followed up by a record called “Hard Promises”. And we’re smack-dab into another controversy, because the record label, now having had a big success with “Damn The Torpedoes”, decides that they want to release this new album at a brand-new price point of $9.98. And Tom will not have it.
The average record price at the time was $8.98. And so he goes into a whole big fight with the record company about not releasing this record at a dollar more. It’s gotta be $8.98, to the point where he was almost gonna name the album “$8.98”.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. They called that “superstar pricing”. That was the surge pricing of its day.
Brad Page: Yes. Yeah. And it’s fascinating that, you know, he went from struggling with those first two records, had one big record, and suddenly now he’s a superstar, right? And they think they can charge a dollar more per record, which, you know, in those days, it was a big deal. $9.98 was a lot of money for a record back then.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah.
Brad Page: Of course, now we pay literally four times that for vinyl these days. But, yeah. And a number of great songs on the “Hard Promises” record. “The Waiting” is probably my favorite track from that one.
Brad Page: And then Tom seems to be everywhere, because he has this huge hit with Stevie Nick, “Stop Dragging My Heart Around”. And he just seemed to be, like, on the radio all the time. Between his solo career and this song with Stevie, it was, you could almost guarantee: turn on the radio and there’ll be something by Tom Petty on.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. It did seem like that kind of a third little golden era for him. I think it kind of harmed radio play in some instances, though, you know. Well, we got the Stevie Nicks song on. Why Do we need to play the Heartbreakers kind of thing.
Brad Page: Yeah. And I think “Hard Promises” did have a dip in sales compared to “Damn The Torpedoes”. And you could chalk some of that up to a little bit of over-saturation, maybe? And the fact that he’s almost competing with himself by having this song out with Stevie, because that was technically a Stevie Nicks song.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn’t on their on his album.
Brad Page: Correct, yeah. 1982, they released their fifth album, “Long After Dark”, which features another huge Tom Pety hit, “You Got Lucky”. That’s such a great song.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah.
Brad Page: I mean, he’s just racking up the hits at this point. And this is kind of a decisive moment for the Heartbreakers, because this is the last album for a while that they record with bass player Ron Blair. He was one of the original members, and he kind of gets fed up with the whole thing, and he leaves the band. So The Heartbreakers suffer their first casualty at this point, and they bring in a guy named Howie Epstein to play bass for them.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, it’s interesting that sometimes when they get their big break and they’re famous now, that it doesn’t always sit well with everyone. You think it would. You think, “Oh, yes, this is what we’ve been striving for”. And the musician themselves probably thought that, too. But then the constant touring… there are different kinds of pressures when you’re a success than when you’re trying to be a success. But then he missed the band and came back later. Seems like he was able to do that.
Brad Page: Right? Well, we’ll get to that, too. But, Mike Campbell talks about this in his book, that at some point early on, the management or whatever came to them and basically said in, you know, in no uncertain terms, that Tom is the star and you guys are hired hands, and it’s not an equal split. So, “We love you guys, you’re a great band. But make no mistake, Tom is where the money is.” And the guys in the band kind of had to live with that. And Mike Campbell seems to have rolled with those punches, but I think that’s when things started chafing with Stan Lynch, who was the drummer.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah. I think also, as The Heartbreaker’s career progresses, they’re working with Tom, but then there are longer breaks between the albums, and those other players like Mike Campbell, they go off and they work with other performers, too. So they’re developing kind of their own identity and their own career as well. In addition, you know, Tom’s the focus, The Heartbreakers are the focus. But then they start adding other things in there themselves, and I think that helped. But Mike, he seems to have been the savviest in learning how to negotiate that. I think he’s told this, yeah, you’re the side man, but he thinks, “Okay, how can I use this to my best advantage? How do I make this really work for me?” I think that’s the attitude he took.
Brad Page: Right.
Gillian Gaar: And I think that explains a lot to how Tom always turned to him when he was doing new projects. Sometimes, in starting an album, Mike would be the only person he’d bring in at first.
Brad Page: Right, right.
In 1985, they make this– to me, it’s sort of the odd album in Tom’s whole career– the “Southern Accents” record. Not my personal favorite record, but it’s a really interesting record, just because it’s a real departure, I think.
Gillian Gaar: Well, that’s one where he starts working with Dave Stewart.
Brad Page: Yes.
Gillian Gaar: So, see, it starts off as more of a Southern accent, and then Dave Stewart gets in there, so it’s kind of less of an accent. And there are some songs that were going to be on the album that were dropped, and they appear as B sides and, oh, they’ve come out on probably some of the many box sets they’ve done. And really, those songs would have fit better with the whole “Southern Accents” theme.
Brad Page: Yeah, it’s kind of a schizophrenic record because, like you said, he has this idea of kind of revisiting his– because, you know, he grew up in Florida, and he kind of wants to revisit his Southern roots. And so he starts heading down that vein and they cut a bunch of tracks, and then he starts to work with Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics, who is not Southern at all, and takes the rest of the record in a whole different direction. And you get things like, you know, “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, which was a big hit, but that sounds nothing like any connection to Southern rock or whatever. It’s a strange record.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. I mean, I think some of his bandmates were frustrated with that, too, and not that keen on working with Dave Stewart at first, though obviously, they got over that and produced a, you know, ended up turning out a good album.
Brad Page: It was a really successful record, but still, you know, when I look back at his records, this one always seems to me to be the odd one out. But people do love that record.
We start to see him get involved in, well, he does Live Aid, but he also gets involved in Farm Aid, the initial launch of Farm Aid. He and The Heartbreakers, they tour as Bob Dylan’s backup band, essentially, which was pretty fascinating.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Oh, they really liked doing that. I mean, again, that generational thing. Bob had a huge influence on people, but yeah, through their work on Live Aid. You know, I love how it came together.
Brad Page: Yeah, you tell the story in the book how they didn’t really even know what they were getting into. Their manager, it seems like essentially just booked them for Live Aid and they said, “Okay”. And they were halfway across the country or whatever. And it was, “All right, you guys, you got to get up and get on this plane and fly to Pennsylvania” or whatever. “We’ll do this gig”. And then they show up and it’s Live Aid, and they’re like, wow!
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, there’s this massive audience and oh, by the way, you’ve got like a worldwide audience of so many millions.
Brad Page: Right. Not only a stadium packed full, but you’re being literally broadcast around the world. So, you know, “better be good”
Gillian Gaar: “ Relax. Have a good time.” “Oh, okay.”
Brad Page: And so, yeah, working with Dylan, of course, that sets us up for some things that come down the road. But almost immediate impact from that is they work on their next record, which is “Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough”, comes out in 1987 and that features at least one co-write with Bob Dylan.
Brad Page: So there was a lasting relationship established between Tom and Dylan. I think “Let Me Up, I’ve Had Enough” is an underappreciated Heartbreakers record. It’s one of my favorites. I think this record deserves a little bit more love than it typically gets.
Gillian Gaar: Well, it’s got a great title for one thing. I’ve always liked that aspect about it.
Brad Page: Right.
Gillian Gaar: But then, you know, that’s kind of the problem when you put out a lot of albums.
Brad Page: There’s an ebb and flow of everyone’s career, right? There was certainly more to come from Tom Petty, but the same year, 1987, just a really frightening experience: his house burns down. Luckily, his instruments are safe. But you know, he and his, not just him, but I mean, he’s married with two daughters. I think he had both of his daughters at this point, right?
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, but one of them was at a friend’s home. So it was only one daughter that had to go through that. But, you know, they lost all their stuff, and think how traumatizing that would be.
Brad Page: All your photo albums, I mean all of that kind of stuff goes up in flames, literally. And then it turns out to be a case of arson, which is even more frightening. It wasn’t accidental, somebody set his house on fire.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. And it’s still unsolved to this day, so we don’t know who it was or why they did it. So, you know, he had to live with that for the rest of his life.
Brad Page: Yes. And he’s a public figure, and you can only imagine, like, the thoughts that go through your head now, you know, that it becomes very real, the danger of being a public figure. And now you’re out on the road, literally in front of the thousands of people every night, and what could happen. Scary.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Page: Talk about the downsides of fame that you don’t think about when you’re coming up and you’re just, you’re dying to be a rock star, and then you get there and you realize there’s a whole dark underside of it. And Tom certainly lived through some of that.
A year later– the Traveling Wilburys, which is the supergroup of all supergroups, right?
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Oh, I think so.
Brad Page: And it all starts because George Harrison basically needs a B-side, which is the most throwaway beginning to one of the most incredible supergroups of all time! And George Harrison writes this song, “Handle With Care”, that is tailor-made for, it ust shows what a great songwriter George Harrison was. Because there’s a moment in that song for each of those vocalists to kind of do what they do best. Of course, the record company heard it and said, “oh, this is way too good for a B-side!”
And Tom follows that up with the “Full Moon Fever” album in 1989, his first solo album, produced by Jeff Lynne, so that relationship continues out of the Traveling Wilburys. It’s a hugely successful record. Big hits off this record. And of course, Mike Campbell is there through the whole thing. Still his right hand man. Indispensable, I think.
Gillian Gaar: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. That was such a partnership. I think about how Mike just must still miss him so much.
Brad Page: I know. What a team. Just great songwriters. And Mike Campbell is one of my all-time favorite guitar players, because he always plays the right thing– the exact right thing that’s necessary, even if it’s only one note. He never overplays. He always finds something interesting to play. Just a great, great player and a great songwriter. And yeah, one of my favorite musicians, Mike Campbell.
Gillian Gaar: But that’s the one that the record company didn’t like initially, isn’t it?
Brad Page: Which surprised me because it was such a huge record!
Brad Page: “We don’t hear any hits.”
Gillian Gaar: Right. And literally half the record was hits! You know sometimes record companies, they don’t know anything more than we do. Nobody really knows what makes a hit.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. If they did know, then every record put out there would be a hit, right?
Brad Page: Yeah. Jeff Lynne also produces the next Heartbreakers record, which is “Into the Great Wide Open” in 1991.
Brad Page: And now, when did Stan lynch, the drummer, leave the band?
Gillian Gaar: It was when they were recording the tracks for the “Greatest Hits” album. That was the last session he did with them. He just, he always comes across as a kind of prickly character. He was the one who seemed the most resentful about, you know, this whole sideman thing and that Tom would go off and work on his solo things and “Who’s this Dave Stewart guy”, etc. And yeah, he was unhappy during the recording of the new songs for “Greatest Hits” and that was just kind of it for him. He didn’t, he seemed to feel that he wasn’t being appreciated enough, so he just left.
Brad Page: Interestingly, Stan was replaced by a drummer named Steve Ferrone, who was a journeyman player, but I grew to love him from his work in the Average White Band, which is a band that I am really fond of. I love the Average White Band and he’s a really funky drummer, very different kind of drummer than Stan, but seemed to fit right in with the Heartbreakers and was a mainstay of the band, right up until the end. Steve Ferrone.
And Tom, in 1994, releases his second solo album, “Wildflowers”, which has gone on to be a big fan favorite. A real classic record. They released that deluxe box set version of it.
Gillian Gaar: The band members that worked on that album consider it a highlight of Tom’s career, he did himself. And, it was natural it would get this sort of deluxe box treatment. I don’t know if any other album in his catalog has received that, you know, because they put out a lot of extra stuff, here have been other box sets…
Brad Page: Yeah, it was like a 5 LP set, I believe.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, just on the one album.
Brad Page: It does have a more intimate feel than you get from a typical Heartbreakers record.
Brad Page: 1996. This is another kind of oddball record in their catalog, a soundtrack album called “She’s The One”, which the movie didn’t really do anything, and I think the record really didn’t do too much.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, Tom seemed to have pretty mixed feelings about it, ultimately. One thing that definitely harmed the record’s chances was that it’s all completed, but then they decide to delay the release of the movie, but for some reason they don’t delay the release of the soundtrack. So they put the soundtrack out months before the movie, which makes no sense to me. Yeah, you know, they put it in the soundtrack section, which was not where a Tom Petty fan is necessarily going to look for the latest Tom Petty album.
Brad Page: Yeah, exactly.
Gillian Gaar: And he himself seemed to feel conflicted about even working on the project. Like, he agreed and then I think he regretted it. First it said it was going to have other musicians doing their own tracks, but then he would have to reach out to them, and he didn’t like doing that. So then he would write everything, and that just became a hassle, too. So, not one of his most best-realized projects, though they did revamp it somewhat. I think it was recorded around “Wildflowers”, but he didn’t really want to mix it up too much. So some of those songs ended up on the “Wildflowers” reissue. And they reworked the soundtrack completely and I think even gave it a new title.
Brad Page: Uh, and this is also, it gets into a pretty uncomfortable time for him that he really didn’t like talking about very much… but he had a serious drug addiction at that time.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Not just drugs, but heroin. And I don’t think I knew this until researching and reading about him for this. Well, of course, he kept it under wraps, and he wasn’t collapsing in public or anything like that. But, you know, even his friends were surprised.
Brad Page: Right.
Gillian Gaar: To hear that. “Heroin? You’re using heroin?” I mean, if he’d, say, become a drunk or something…
Brad Page: Like heroin, that can kill you pretty quickly. Luckily, he pulled himself together, but you get the feeling it was a really, really rough time for him. Of course, he was going through a divorce at that time, too, right.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah, and not an entirely amicable divorce. So you have that weighing on you as well. I remember this friend of mine in an obituary she was writing for Lane Staley, she said, “No one starts using heroin thinking they’re going to be an addict.”
Brad Page: Right.
Gillian Gaar: And, you know, they generally end up that way. “Oh, I can handle this”. Well, then six months later, “Oh, gee, I guess I was wrong about that.” And I could see also for someone in his case, or his situation rather, that it would be easy to fall into because he’s not going to have the problems of someone that doesn’t have the money. He does. You know, he doesn’t have to go out and break into people’s homes to steal their stereos and computers to get money for his habit, right? He could take care of that easily. And so I think that, you know, that’s another barrier removed.
Brad Page: Yeah. It becomes too easy.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. And, well, if you know, the music industry, it’s kind of full of leeches, too. There’s more than enough people that are happy to provide you with whatever you might think you want.
Brad Page: Sure.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. I was surprised to learn about that. But, you know, good on him for getting out of it. Not everyone does.
Brad Page: And I’m sure it was… again, he didn’t really like talking about it, because I don’t think he wanted to glamorize it. He was, I think, ashamed.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, you definitely get that sense. A lot of shame. But I think his story with it is a cautionary tale.
Brad Page: Yes.
Gillian Gaar: I don’t see how anyone could read what he went through and think that sounded at all glamorous, because it doesn’t. You know, he was just isolated in this new home, in a kind of rural setting, and not doing anything except taking drugs and nodding off. Oh, yeah, that sounds like fun, doesn’t it? So, yeah, I definitely think it’s more of a cautionary tale and not glamorous at all.
Brad Page: I do respect the fact that he wasn’t trying to cash in on it in any way. I think it would have been probably beneficial for some people for him to maybe have talked a little bit more openly about it, but at the same time, he didn’t make a spectacle of himself about it and hang his dirty laundry out for everyone to see. But, you know, these are such personal things you can’t fault anyone for however they feel like they have to deal with it. The reality is, thank God, he did deal with it, and by 1999, he was pretty much cleaned up.
The Heartbreakers release a new album called “Echo” in 1999. Produced by Rick Rubin, right?
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Page: That seems to have been a very difficult record to make. I think they had, again, working with an outside producer, there’s pluses and minuses to that. I think towards the end, Tom wasn’t super happy with Rick Rubin. I guess he left at the end to go work on a Red Hot Chili Peppers record, and kind of left Tom drifting in the wind there to finish up the record. But I think this probably started when he was, either still had his drug issues or he was working hard to get out of it, but that all was part of it, right? And made for kind of a difficult recording of that record.
And it’s the last record they make with bass player Howie Epstein, because Howie also had a serious drug problem, and they ended up having to let him go.
Gillian Gaar: And then he died not long after that.
Brad Page: Right, right. So, I mean, on one hand you have Tom, who’s able to make it through, and his fellow bandmate, who’s not so lucky.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah.
Brad Page: And it could have gone either way, really.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. That must have been quite a sobering moment for him. You know, “there but for the grace of God go I” type of thing.
Brad Page: Yeah. We do have some great songs on that “Echo” record, though. I’m a big fan of the song “Swingin’”.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Page: Ron Blair, the original bass player, he comes back. You know, it’s getting the old gang back together again. He could have probably had any bass player he wanted, but he brings in Ron Blair.
Gillian Gaar: Well, you mentioned earlier about how Tom liked working with these musicians regularly, even on solo projects, because it was a comfort level type of thing. And I think that’s one reason that Ron was able to be integrated back into the band so readily. Because, yeah, they had to get a new bass player and you could see that’s always a bit of a hassle. And so when they knew he was interested, I mean, it must have seemed perfect because here’s a guy who worked with them and up to a certain point, you know, was familiar with everything the Heartbreakers had done. Hadn’t played on the recent stuff, but he was a guy who I think they saw, he can get back in the groove pretty quickly.
Brad Page: Talk about “The Last DJ” album, which comes out in 2002. That’s the record that Ron Blair returns for. And that’s kind of a concept album, which is another interesting turn for Tom. But he was just so frustrated with the state of commercial radio that he just comes up with this whole concept record, basically lambasting the radio biz.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, it’s like this attack on consumerism that I enjoy quite a lot.
Brad Page: Yeah, I like that record a lot. And of course, you know, there were radio stations that refused to play it, and real petty stuff– no pun intended– real petty behavior. But I think it’s a strong record and, I mean, he makes his case pretty well.
Brad Page: 2006, Tom records his third and final solo album, a record called “Highway Companion”. And to me, this is the really forgotten or overlooked record in his career. It wasn’t as popular as the other records. It’s probably one of the least selling– I’m guessing, but I think it’s probably one of the lowest-selling records of the career.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, you know, I’m looking, certainly among the solo albums; the other two solo albums went platinum, but “Highway Companion” just went gold, so yeah, that means lower sales.
Brad Page: Yeah, I’m not sure why that is. I think it’s a perfectly fine record. There’s quite a bit of stuff on that that I like. Maybe the solo thing just kind of ran its course, I don’t know. But it always seems to be the record that people forget about.
Brad Page: 2007. A real left turn: He reassembles Mudcrutch. And they put out an album. And he plays bass, because that was his original role in the band; he was the bass player, not the guitar player. And you just get the feeling that he just, on a whim, just said, you know what, I want to get the old guys, the really old guys, back together and just have some fun.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, that really came out of left field.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: If you were trying to predict what Tom Petty was going to do next in his career, bringing back Mudcrutch to not only play some shows, but release an album…
Brad Page: They ended up releasing two albums, actually. Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: Two! Well, again, that’s just his love of music there. It is kind of like a Wilburys type of thing.
Brad Page: That’s a level of fame– where you can go back to your high school band, get them back together and actually get records put out. Not everyone can do that.
Gillian Gaar: Yes.
Brad Page: Also in 2007, we finally get an officially released documentary, the Running Down a Dream documentary, which is like three hours long.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Brad Page: Well worth watching. One of my favorite rock docs.
Gillian Gaar: And you know, Peter Bogdanovich, too, a noted film director, not known for putting out musical films. Kind of unusual choice.
Brad Page: I got the feeling from reading your book that he didn’t even really know much about Tom Petty.
Gillian Gaar: No, that’s also another interesting aspect about that. I mean, he came from a very different world, the film world. Best known for his work in the 70s, I think, with the Last Picture Show, and Paper Moon and what’s Up Doc. Yeah, so, that just shows it’s an interesting choice. I think at first he was even a little surprised, like, “Why do you want me?” But then he got to know Tom and liked him quite a bit.
Brad Page: Yeah, yeah. He comes out of it being a Tom Petty fan, but he didn’t go into it that way. But I think that lends a certain, um, maybe an objectivity to that documentary? And a curiosity, kind of a mix of both of those things, right? That he’s not smitten, like a fan film.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah.
Brad Page: But he’s also, there’s a curiosity about it that if you knew everything there was to know about Tom Petty, a die-hard fan, you might not ask some of those questions.
In 2010, The Heartbreakers released the “Mojo” album, which is one of my favorite records of their later period. Post 1990’s records, that’s my favorite. There’s some really hard rocking tracks on that record; there’s one track where I think they give Led Zeppelin a run for their money.
Gillian Gaar: That’s one thing about the whole breadth of his music. Just the sort of range in styles. I mean, they were always a rock band, but they really did seem to have the most fun when they were rocking out like that.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: And they probably didn’t do it often enough.
Brad Page: And that was followed in 2014 by “Hypnotic Eye”, which would turn out to be the last Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album.
Gillian Gaar: And that was his first number one album, which is, you know, kind of surprising.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar I guess his only number one album certainly during his lifetime.
Brad Page: Which is an odd fact for someone that successful, right? You would have thought they would have had number one albums. He’s had, of course, big hits, but the albums always fell a little short of hitting number one, until “Hypnotic Eye” all the way in 2014.
Gillian Gaar: Like “Mojo” and “Damn The Torpedoes”, they both reached number two, but yeah, not quite the peak.
Brad Page: Yep. I remember “Hypnotic Eye” getting a lot of really great reviews. So right up until the end, critics loved him; obviously, fans loved him, because it hit number one. But if you gotta go, going out on a high point like that, it says something.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, yeah.
Brad Page: They performed their last show on September 25, 2017. During that tour, Tom had had an injury.
Brad Page: At least the account I had read was that he fell and he had a hairline fracture and he thought he could just deal with it later. But over time, you know, it became more of a full-on break.
Brad Page: Yeah, because he’s on stage, he’s on the road and you know, he’s a trooper. He doesn’t want to cancel the shows, he wants to go out and play and do his thing, do what he does best. And so he stupidly, really– but we’re all prone to these kind of things– he decides just to grin and bear it. And he’s going on stage every night, which is a physical thing, you know, you’re on stage, you’re stomping around, you can’t help but rock out, right?
Gillian Gaar: Yeah.
Brad Page: He’s putting more and more pressure on that hip. He’s not a young man anymore. And it keeps getting worse and worse. And so he starts self-medicating, always a dangerous thing to do when you’re, you have a history of addiction, because again, like you were saying, no one goes into taking heroin thinking that they want to be an addict. I’m sure he’s going into this thinking, “I’m just trying to take care of this pain. I can handle it. Hell, I kicked heroin, I can do it.”
Gillian Gaar: Yeah, yeah.
Brad Page: And ends up just a couple of weeks after the Tour’s over, on October 2, 2017, he just takes the wrong mix of medications… and he’s gone.
Gillian Gaar: When they released the toxicology report, he was taking prescription fentanyl, but he was also taking non-prescription fentanyl. And you were saying self-medication is a dangerous thing, and I mean, it’s kind of doubly dangerous if you’re taking prescribed drugs too.
Brad Page: Right?
Gillian Gaar: You’re taking prescribed drugs, you’re adding things on top of that. And if your doctor doesn’t know that you’re doing that, that can set up a lot of dangerous interactions. So I mean, clearly he was doing that to deal with the pain. When you’re taking all these different kind of substances, then, yeah, it’s like a roll of the dice every time you do that. It’s a gamble, it’s a roll of the dice. And he unfortunately lost that day.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: I gotta say, I gotta say the one thing that’s kind of doubly frustrating is that the issue was not that serious. And of course, in retrospect, we say, “Well, he should have canceled the tour. The fans would certainly have come to see him after recovery.” But you know, he needed hip surgery. And, yes, there’s a risk with every surgery, but it’s very common and the risk is relatively low. So, it was just a relatively simple thing to take care of. So that’s, I must admit, as I’m writing that part, I’m thinking, why didn’t you just have the hip surgery?
Brad Page: I know you just think, “Oh, Tom, why were you so stupid?” But you get the feeling he was, obviously, he was a stubborn guy, for better or worse. It served him well in his career. Until it didn’t.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. I mean, it was sad to read things from his bandmates on that last tour who would kind of help him get on stage and could see that he was in a lot of pain.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: Uh, and saying, “Are you going to be okay?” And he’d say, “Just get me on that stage.”
Brad Page: Yeah. And it’s the “show must go on” mentality that so many artists have. And it’s an admirable thing, but all things being said, I think we would all rather still have Tom Petty today.
Gillian Gaar: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Page: But, yeah, And I remember hearing the news and what a shock it was.
Gillian Gaar: Well, yeah, that was another thing that just seemed to come out of nowhere.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: Because, you know, there was no serious illness. There wasn’t any obvious drug problem. And he just finished this successful tour that had gotten the usual strong reviews. And then I think it was just about a week, two weeks later, “Oh, he died”.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Gillian Gaar: “What? Something’s wrong with this picture.”
Brad Page: Yeah, it’s one of the… you just don’t, you don’t believe it. It’s so hard to fathom. Such a shame. A huge loss for the music business.
It’s an incredible catalog of music. I’m a huge fan of so much of it. I really enjoyed the book, Gillian, you did a great job of putting this story, just telling this story. It’s just a fun read. And the photos are great, the layout of the book is great, the package is great. They did another great job with the slipcover and everything on this book. It’s beautiful.
Like I said at the beginning, if you’re a Tom Petty fan, or if someone in your life is a Tom Petty fan, and you’re looking for a Christmas gift, look no further. This book is great. It’s an excellent gift. It’s going right up on my shelf with my collection of books. I’m happy to have it.
Gillian, thanks so much for joining me again on another episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. Always a pleasure to have you on.
Gillian Gaar: Well, it’s fun to be here.
Brad Page: Well, thanks again, Gillian. I appreciate it. Always a pleasure. Have a great holiday.
Gillian Gaar: You too. And everyone listening!
Brad Page: And that’s a wrap on this episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Just a few notes before I sign off:
#1: Don’t forget to subscribe or follow the show so that you never miss an episode. And please share the show with your family and friends.
#2: Share your thoughts and your opinions on our Facebook page. Just look for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, you’ll find us there. Or you can send an email to lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com
#3: If you’d like to support the show, head on over to oldglory.com and buy a T-shirt or some merch from your favorite bands. They have tons of stuff in stock, including some Tom Petty stuff. And you can use our discount code lovethatsong to get 15% off. That’s oldglory.com with the discount code lovethatsong .
And finally, #4, pick up a copy of Gillian’s book. It’s called “Tom Petty: the Life and Music”, and it can be found on Amazon or fine bookstores anywhere. Go get it. You won’t regret it.
Thanks for listening. Hope to see you again on the next episode.
RESOURCES:
Gillian Garr
https://www.quarto.com/authors/Gillian-G.-Gaar/
Tom Petty
https://www.tompetty.com
Traveling Wilburys
https://www.travelingwilburys.com
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Petty_and_the_Heartbreakers_(album)
You’re Gonna Get It! (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_Gonna_Get_It!
Damn the Torpedoes (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn_the_Torpedoes_(album)
Hard Promises (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Promises
Long After Dark (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_After_Dark
Southern Accents (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Accents
Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Me_Up_(I%27ve_Had_Enough)
Into The Great Wide Open (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Great_Wide_Open
Greatest Hits (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Hits_(Tom_Petty_album)
Wildflowers (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildflowers_(Tom_Petty_album)
She’s The One (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_and_Music_from_%22She%27s_the_One%22
Echo (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_(Tom_Petty_and_the_Heartbreakers_album)
The Last DJ (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_DJ
Highway Companion (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Companion
Mudcrutch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudcrutch
Mojo (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojo_(Tom_Petty_and_the_Heartbreakers_album)
Hypnotic Eye (album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_Eye
with Stevie Nicks: Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Draggin%27_My_Heart_Around
Released in 1979, “Message in a Bottle” was the opening track on The Police’s second album, Regatta de Blanc. The song features the signature sounds of the band: Sting’s evocative vocals and bass, Andy Summers’ intricate guitar work, and Stuart Copeland’s dynamic drumming. But what exactly makes this song resonate with so many listeners, even decades later? Listen to this episode and we’ll find out.
“Message In A Bottle” (Sting) Copyright 1979 G.M. Sumner, published by Magnetic Publishing Ltd and Administered by EMI Blackwood Music in the USA and Canada
Take advantage of our discount code lovethatsong and save 15% off t-shirts & merch from your favorite bands at OldGlory.com!
TRANSCRIPT:
Sending out an SOS over the Pantheon Podcast network– it’s time for another edition of the “I’m in Love With That Song” Podcast. My name is Brad Page, and I’m the host of this modest podcast, where each episode we examine a different song, hand-picked from my library of favorite songs. We’ll put the song under the microscope and take a close look at all the elements that make the song work– discovering where the magic comes from. No musical expertise is required here; amateurs and professionals, players and fans, and first-time listeners all are welcome here.
This time around, we’re traveling to 1979 and setting our sights on one of the most important bands of the era. Andy Summers, Stuart Copeland, and Gordon Sumner, who you probably know as Sting: Three very different personalities who came together as The Police and recorded a long list of classic tracks, including this one… a Song called “Message In A Bottle”.
In 1976, Stuart Copeland was playing drums for Curved Air, a progressive rock band, and during a tour of England, he met a bass player named Gordon Sumner, who was a semi-pro musician playing in a local jazz band; he worked as a teacher for his day job. Sumner used to wear a black and yellow striped shirt on stage, which earned him the nickname “Sting” from his fellow bandmates.
The two of them decided to form a band and were joined by a guitarist named Henry Padovani. They played some gigs and in May 1977 released a single called “Fallout”.
That would be the only recording of the Police with Henry Padovani. Sting and Copeland had been working in a side project called Strontium 90, which featured Mike Howlett of the band Gong, and a guitar player named Andy Summers. Summers was ten years older than Sting and Copeland, and had played with The Animals, Kevin Ayers and Dantalian’s Chariot. Now, go back and listen to our “Rubble” episode if you want to learn more about Dantalian’s Chariot.
But Andy Summers had a lot of experience and definitely made an impression with his guitar playing, and he was asked to join the band. The police only played two gigs as a four-piece, and then Padovani was fired, and the famous trio was in: Copeland, Summers and Sting.
In February 1978, the band was offered a spot in a Wrigley’s Gum commercial under the condition that they dye their hair blonde. Apparently, that made them look more “punk”. They were a struggling band, desperate for money, so they said, “sure”. And that’s how the police got their distinctive look– those three blond heads. They did end up filming that commercial, but it was never aired.
Stewart’s older brother, Miles Copeland, was an executive in the music biz and got them a deal with A&M Records. On a shoestring budget, they recorded their first album, “Outlandos d’Amour”.
But the band was not a hit right out of the box. When “Roxanne” was first released as a single in the UK, it didn’t chart. The second single, “Can’t Stand Losing You” did better. But the third single, “So Lonely”, that didn’t chart either.
But in February 1979, “Roxanne” was released as a single in the US and it managed to make it to number 32, which in turn caused it to be reissued as a single in the UK. And this time it made it up to number twelve.
The band came to America in 1979 and famously drove themselves and their equipment all around the country on tour in a little Ford Econoline van. About as unglamorous as it gets. But stardom was on the horizon.
By October 1979, they released their second album, “Regatta de Blanc”, recorded earlier that year on another tight budget. This time, though, that was intentional. They had made enough money off of the first album to cover the cost of the second album, as long as they did it cheaply enough, which meant that they could do it all on their own without any record company interference.
The first single released from the album was “Message In A Bottle”. It’s also the song that opens the album– side one, track one. The song was written by Sting, and features Sting on lead vocal and bass, Andy Summers on guitar and Stuart Copeland on drums.
The song kicks off with the drums and some guitars. Let’s focus on those guitars for a minute. What I’m hearing is two guitar parts, one on the left and one on the right. But they both have a heavy amount of chorus effect on them, which thickens them up and can actually make it sound like more than one guitar. So now let’s just hear the guitar that’s on the left channel. And here’s the one on the right. They sound pretty similar when you listen to them separately, but put them back in stereo, panned left and right, and it really sounds three-dimensional.
Okay, so after that intro, there’s a quick drum fill that brings us right into the first verse. Let’s hear what Stuart Copeland is doing on the drums during the verse.
And that brings us to what I would call the pre-chorus. There’s some layered vocals here, along with an organ that’s pretty low in the mix. Listen for that.
That organ is just kind of holding down a drone or what’s sometimes called a “pedal tone”. Again, it’s really low in the mix. This is one of those things that’s kind of meant to be more felt than heard. But let’s bring that to the front and also listen to those overdubbed vocals.
Let’s hear just sting’s lead vocal.
Listening to that, I’m actually surprised at how restrained it is. He’s singing that pretty softly compared to the energy level of the rest of the parts. And I particularly like that gentle “yeah” at the end of “Message In A Bottle”.
Sounds like Sting clucks his tongue there. Let’s back that up and hear that again.
Just a couple of tasty guitar licks there from Andy Summers. Theres also a few simple but well-placed tom hits that lead us into the next verse.
Copeland is playing something completely different on the drums on this verse than he was in the first verse. So let’s hear a little of that.
That brings us to another pre-chorus. This time, that organ is a little bit more to the front. There’s some more guitar licks there, way in the background, almost inaudible. Let’s bring those front and center.
I gotta admit, I never even noticed those were there before. So let’s back it up and listen to the final mix again. And now that we know those guitar licks are there, let’s see if they pop out to us any better now.
Now, these licks are a lot more noticeable. We haven’t really listened to Sting’s bass part yet, and he’s no slouch on the bass, so let’s hear a little of that.
And now let’s bring in Stuart Copeland’s drum part. His work on the hi-hat is especially great.
And meanwhile, to counterbalance all of that, Andy Summers is playing some lush chords, drenched in that chorus effect. Andy also gets in some more of those guitar licks in the background here. So let’s isolate those.
Now let’s put that all back together and hear the final mix.
I like that extra guitar chord flourish at the end there. It’s almost kind of spacey and dreamy for a few seconds there.
And that brings us into the last verse. Let’s hear the vocal.
Fantastic drumming here by Stuart Copeland. Let’s go back and just listen to that.
They’re multitracking the vocals here, and now they’ve added harmony to the vocal.
More Andy Summers guitar. We’ll listen to that.
Do you ever notice at the very end of the fade, sting does something a little different with the vocal? Maybe it’s a mistake. Let’s see if we can crank that up and hear it a little better.
The Police – “Message In A Bottle”
The Police would go on to release three more albums, total of five albums– studio albums– in their career. It’s a relatively small catalog, but every one of those albums is a classic.
They split in 1986. They did one reunion tour in 2007, but otherwise, they focused on their solo career. I suppose it’s possible there could be another reunion, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. They gave us five great albums and establish a sound that still resonates and inspires today. Thats more than most. Thats enough.
Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast. I’ll be back in approximately two weeks with another new episode. If you’d like to support the show, head on over to oldglory.com and buy a t-shirt or two. They have a bunch of Police shirts, along with all the other bands that you love. And if you use our discount code, “lovethatsong”, you’ll get 15% off, and we get a little kickback. So it’s a “win-win”, as the corporate weasels like to say.
And please tell a friend about this show, because your recommendations really do help to spread the word.
You can find all of our previous episodes on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, and you can communicate with us on Facebook. If you’d like to find more podcasts like this, check out the Pantheon Podcast network. Its home to a ton of other music related podcasts.
Well, thanks for being a part of this show, and for listening to this episode on “Message In A Bottle” by the Police.
On the latest episode of our podcast, we take a fascinating journey into the world of music trends and data with Chris Dalla Riva, author of “Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us About the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.” This episode is a must-listen for anyone who has ever been curious about the stories behind the hit songs and the charts that track their popularity.
This episode is a treasure trove of insights for music lovers and anyone interested in the intricate relationship between data and pop culture. Chris Dala Riva’s “Uncharted Territory” serves as a compelling guide to understanding the numbers behind the music we love. Tune in now to discover what the charts reveal about ourselves and the biggest hits!
GET YOUR COPY OF THE BOOK HERE (Highly Recommended!):
https://www.amazon.com/Uncharted-Territory-Numbers-Biggest-Ourselves/dp/B0F78P8RZN/
Chris Dalla Riva’s newsletter “Can’t Get Much Higher” can be found here:
https://www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/
Take advantage of our discount code lovethatsong and save 15% off t-shirts & merch from your favorite bands at OldGlory.com!
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the “I’m In Love with That Song” podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network. I’m your host, Brad Page, and this time we’re going to take a step back from looking at an individual song and take a look at the charts, and the data behind them, and what that tells us about ourselves.
On this episode, I’m joined by Chris Dalla Riva. He’s a musician, he works for the streaming service Audiomack, and he is an author with a brand new book– it’s out right now– called “Uncharted Territory”. This is a nice, long conversation, so let’s jump right into my discussion with Chris about his new book.
Brad Page: Well, Chris Dalla Riva, thanks for joining me here on the “I’m In Love with That Song” podcast. Your new book is called “Uncharted Territory: What the Numbers Tell Us About the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves”. And it’s really kind of using data to understand pop songs.
I will say at the outset, I am not a chart person; the charts rarely reflect what I’m listening to. But that being said, I found the book really fun and pretty fascinating, and a great read. So it’s a pleasure to have you on the show and to talk about these particular songs– which your book focuses on all of the songs that hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, right?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yep. Yeah, that’s Billboard’s pop chart, effectively.
Brad Page: Right. The overall “master of all charts”, right, for Billboard beginning from the very first official chart in 1958, correct?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yep. The Hot 100 started in August 1958.
Brad Page: And you go up until almost ‘til today. I mean, obviously, you have to stop writing the book at some point. And the book is available on November 13th, you said hitting the streets November 13th, 2025?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yes, November 13th. I’m excited to get it out there.
Brad Page: Yeah, well, congratulations on getting the book published. I recommend it to everyone who listens to the podcast.
So, starting in 1958, what was the first song to top the Billboard charts in 1958?
Chris Dalla Riva: The first was Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool”, which I always sort of joke is it sounds like a song from 1958; you know, it has a little jangling guitar and it’s a short little love song, but at the same time I feel like it’s indicative of many other things that were to come. You know, songs about lost love is probably the top topic for any number one song in the history of the charts, still common today. And Ricky Nelson himself was a television star on his family’s television show. And many pop stars today, from Sabrina Carpenter to Olivia Rodrigo, also started on television. So it’s cool that it was the first number one hit for those reasons.
Brad Page: Yeah. And it’s kind of interesting how that trend continues through the years, right?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah. And that’s the stuff that, I love tracing trends that are just weird things that happen in a particular moment. But I also love the stuff that weaves through time and can connect people of today to the stars of 60 years ago. Because in one sense, so much has changed; in another, sort of the same thing over and over again.
Brad Page: Right. Tthat’s so interesting. Getting back to the earliest days of the charts, one of the things that we see a lot in those days is the teen tragedy songs.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yes.
Brad Page: And probably “Leader of The Pack” is, that would be my pick, is probably the greatest of the teen tragedy songs. Let’s talk about that one for a little bit.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I think, I say in the book that I think “Leader of The Pack” is the teenage tragedy song to end all teenage tragedy songs.
Chris Dalla Riva: It’s like a movie playing out in your ears. And by the Shangri La’s, who I also think are just a tremendously underrated girl group from the 60s. Actually, the motivating factor for writing this book was me starting to listen to all these number one hits and hearing teenage tragedy songs come up sort of again and again in those early years, which for those who don’t know this was a sort of strange trend in the late 50s, early 60s where the topic of the song was two teenagers in love. Typically there’s an accident where one of them dies, usually involving a car. And then, you know, the other one says they’ll reunite again someday. And everything from Mark Denning’s “Teen Angel” to The Shangri La’s to Pat Boone’s “Moody River”. And that trend did die out right around the mid-60s. In a way, the Shangri La’s “Leader of The Pack” was the apex of the genre and also like the end of the genre popularly.
Brad Page: Yeah. I always kind of wonder, when you have a song like that, that like you said, it’s the ultimate teen tragedy song… like, where do you go after that? Everything else after that kind of becomes a pale imitation. Can’t top that one.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, the only, the only more grandiose take I think is “Bat Out of Hell” by Meatloaf, which was like Jim Steinman’s ode to the teenage tragedy song. And as with all Meatloaf songs, it’s 10 minutes long and completely over the top. Yeah, there’s really nothing much more to say after “Leader of The Pack”.
Brad Page: Some of the other trends that we see, that you kind of trace through the book, just interesting things like fade-outs– songs that fade out.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah. I also write a newsletter, and once a month people write in questions and I answer them. And someone literally just yesterday wrote in and said when they listened to oldies radio, a lot of the songs fade out. And he was like, “I feel like I almost never hear a pop song on the radio these days that has a fade-out”. And this is an absolutely correct observation. It’s not like there’s no fade-outs anymore. But in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the fade-out was the top way to end a song.
Brad Page: Right.
Chris Dalla Riva: And what I discuss in the book is with a lot of these things, it’s connected to the technology at the time. There are limits to how much sound can be held without degrading on, um, a 45 or a vinyl single.
Brad Page: Mhm.
Chris Dalla Riva: So if you, if your song was running too long, you could put the longer version on the album, but on the single you would just fade it out. So that’s really connected to the technology at the time. And at the same time, radio was very, very focused on short three-minute song. So same deal. If you’re the Animals and you have a five-minute version of “House of the Rising Sun”, sure, put it on the full length. But for the single, for the radio, you faded out during the solo at like 3 minutes and 5 seconds. So I love that trend, because as you point out, it seems sort of like a silly observation like, “Oh, that’s funny, there used to be more fade-outs”, but it’s really indicative of the technology we were using to record at that time and the way we were listening to music at that time. We sort of see that again and again throughout the book, Right?
Brad Page: Yeah. Those are the kind of things that really interest me. There’s the statistic about it, but then there’s the “why” behind it. One of the first things like that, that really jumped out at me, is one of the things that I love in any great song– are hand claps.
Chris Dalla Riva: Oh, yeah.
Brad Page: And just how something so simple as the sound of humans clapping along to a beat can really add an element of joy to a song. You know, you don’t typically do it on a sad song or a slow song, but you get some of the greatest pop songs in history, particularly Motown, and they’re riddled with these wonderful hand claps that just make you want to join in, right?
Chris Dalla Riva: Totally. And that’s what I found interesting is, you know, the Motown sound and all of the imitators that Motown inspired loved hand claps. And it does make a lot of the 60s pop feel incredibly joyful. But what’s interesting was that some of those Motown songs are. They’re upbeat, but they’re sort of sad. You know, “Where Did Our Love Go” by the Supremes or “Baby Love”.
Chris Dalla Riva: These songs, the lyrical topics aren’t upbeat, but the hand claps and the arrangement really make them feel like, you know, you should be smiling while you’re singing along. And I think hand claps are a way, as you said, feel like the audience can or the listeners are part of the song. You know, anyone can clap for the most part.
Brad Page: Right. It’s the simplest way to encourage any kind of audience participation because you don’t have to know the lyrics, you don’t have to have heard the song before. You just have to have some basic sense of rhythm to be able to clap in time. And you can become part of the song, and you can join in, and you can participate.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I mean, once Barry Gordy and the people at Motown got going, they really. They really figured out the formula for what makes an enjoyable three minutes of popular music. And hand claps definitely seem to be part of that formula. And like I said, that’s. There are charts and graphs in the book, and I use numbers in a certain way. But the thing that always motivates me is I– as the name of your podcast– I love falling in love with a song, and I love just feeling it course through my veins. And “Where Did Our Love Go” is a perfect example of a song like that. It’s just so fresh.
Brad Page: One of the other things that you kind of explore in the book is, I guess what I would call the Kennedy-Beatles effect. Let’s talk a little bit about that, and kind of your take on that– the idea that partly why the Beatles captured America, the youth of America, was the assassination of President Kennedy just shortly before they broke in America. But you’re kind of skeptical of that.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, this is something that I’d heard. You know, there are so many stories and myths about the Beatles that you hear when you’re growing up and you’re learning the Beatles story. And this was one that I had come across. And the timeline sort of lines up. Kennedy’s assassinated, November 22, 1963, I believe “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is released in the US Just after that. The Beatles end up on the Ed Sullivan show in 2-6-64. And then that’s, that’s Beatlemania. That’s the beginning of the British Invasion.
And you’ll read passages that basically say, America was very sad, of course, after the assassination of JFK. And then suddenly, these four smiling British boys show up with really peppy pop music. And it lifted America from this societal depression.
It’s a good story, but it doesn’t exactly line up. Like I said, the timeline sort of works. But there was already growing interest in the Beatles before Kennedy was assassinated. You start seeing news reports on major news networks covering them at, like, the beginning of November. And there had been Beatles records released in the US at small. On small labels previously, but they really did not have that marketing push that a new act needs. And “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, released by Capitol Records, finally had much more money behind it. And again, it came out right after Kennedy was assassinated. So of course there was a bit more interest. But like I said, at the same time, even newspapers and television networks started covering the Beatles in early November 1963. So it just sort of happens that Kennedy is assassinated in the middle of that and makes it look like it’s a perfect connection between Kennedy’s assassination and the Beatles rise. But really it’s just, it sort of just happened at the same time. I’m sure there was some sort of connection there, but it’s not as strong.
Brad Page: I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence, but it’s like so many things– rarely in life is there one thing, one cause of something. There’s usually a bunch of other things in the stew that are all interacting and affecting things. And I think the general mood of the culture, post Kennedy assassination is part of it, but it’s… it’s certainly not like, “Well, if Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated, the Beatles never would have been big”. You know, I think that’s completely, you know what I mean?
Chris Dalla Riva: And that’s, that’s sort of the point that I try to get across is that, like, the Beatles were going to come to America whether Kennedy was killed or not. It’s possible that his assassination maybe gave them some sort of boost in popularity that set off the whole chain of dominoes that led to, you know, Beatlemania and whatnot. But the Beatles I don’t think would have been some obscure British band had Kennedy served out his term.
Brad Page: Another area that you explore a little bit in the book is, I guess what we’d call “literary lyrics”, and a song that you call out is “Ode To Billy Joe” by Bobby Gentry.
Chris Dalla Riva: There’s this idea that I would always come across is that the late 60s, something was going on in general, just in the music space, but specifically with lyrics. I mean, you get songs like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “The Sound of Silence” that clearly have a more literary feel than your pop songs at the beginning of the decade. At the same time, you get a bunch of pop songs that are responding to external events. “Eve of Destruction” by Barry Maguire comes to mind. Or “People Got to Be Free” by the Rascals, “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, even something like “Harper Valley PTA”. So something was clearly in the air. And “Ode To Billy Joe”, for me, is the perfect representation of a song that I think only could have topped the charts in the late 1960s, when there was clearly this literary flavor to some popular lyrics. As I point out, of course, not every song. You know, Herb Alpert was still incredibly popular at the time– no disrespect to him, but, you know, those aren’t lyrics you’re picking apart in your English class. But “Ode To Billy Joe” is like this very complicated narrative that you would almost think could not work in a popular song. And at the same time, it has a perfect string arrangement. It’s an incredible vocal by Bobby Gentry, and it just illustrates, again, just lyrical trends that I don’t think could have happened at any other time. It’s a. It’s a perfect song in my opinion, another song I would say that I love.
Brad Page: I think one of the things that we forget is that at that time in the 60s, you know, the Beatles were big, but they weren’t necessarily big with everybody initially, right? You had the college crowd, which is not an insignificant purchasing audience. There was much, you know, folk music was kind of the hip thing to that crowd. And pop music. And what we would think of rock and roll as kind of, you know, more of sort of the Chuck Berry kind of thing was not what a lot of those college kids were listening to. They were getting into, it’s the scene that Dylan, of course, would come out of. But all of those acts, from Joan Baez on, that was what was cool if you were listening, if you were a college kid in those days listening to music, you weren’t probably listening to the Beatles so much until things started crossfeeding each other, right?
And then Dylan gets inspired by the Beatles, the Beatles get inspired by Dylan. They’re writing better lyrics. You’ve got a band like the Byrds that meld the two things together. And then you start seeing that these things can be hit records. Peter, Paul and Mary take kind of a more pop approach to Dylan, and have a big hit with “Blowing in the Wind”. But initially, I think– at least my take on it– when I look back, kind of what I see is there’s always kind of a division in a way; of like, if you are a freshman in college, sophomore in college in that era, you probably were looking a little askance at Herman’s Hermits and the British Invasion stuff, and kind of lumping the Beatles in with that, in a way.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah. And one thing I really liked about listening to every number one hit is that you get a taste for all of these different things that were popular at the same time. Because it’s really easy to look at the 60s. And to your point, just think that, oh, everyone was listening to this very highbrow, popular, folksy music. When at the same time, you have other British Invasion bands. Herman’s Hermits is a perfect example. That’s not the most sophisticated music, which was also popular at the time. But I think you’re totally right that by the end of the decade, you really have a crossover between a lot of these different crowds into the mainstream. And it leads to, I think, some of the most interesting popular lyrics that you hear in the 20th century.
Brad Page: Absolutely. And the kind of lyrics that you never heard seven, eight, ten years before that.
I mean, I think Chuck Berry– there’s a lot of things you can say about Chuck Berry, but I think as a lyricist, I think he’s one of the great rock and roll lyricists. But it’s a completely different thing than what you would later see, you know, Lennon writing or of course Dylan. The lyrics really changed a lot once you get into the 60s and, you know, pop music got smarter.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah. I mean, there’s… I don’t know if this is an apocryphal story, but apparently when Chuck Berry wrote Johnny B. Goode, one of the opening lines is, “There lived a country boy”, supposedly was supposed to be “There lived a colored boy named Johnny B. Goode”. And the record label was like, “Nah, that’s not gonna work”. I feel like if that song were released at the end of the 60s, you would probably have had that more socially aware lyric. Because there were so many popular songs that were clearly socially conscious in a way that they weren’t, like you said, not just in the 50s, I mean, four or five years earlier. It’s a rapid change.
Brad Page: Yeah. Yeah. Just the difference between, say, 1964 and 1967.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yes.
Brad Page: You know, just a few years difference. But you just listen to the music from on either side of those dates, and it’s very, very different. Yeah. And you know, Chuck Berry songs like “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” are very coded in their racial references, but you don’t have to scratch too deep to kind of see what he’s, what he’s saying there. But it wouldn’t be too much longer than you could say what you actually wanted to say– You could be Curtis Mayfield in writing those kind of songs.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah.
Brad Page: Just a few years later.
Chris Dalla Riva: Exactly.
Brad Page: And another thing that you highlight in the book that I really found interesting, something that I kind of mulled over but I never really put my finger on it quite the way you did, is something you call “multiple discovery”. Can you talk about that for a bit?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, this is, I think, another thread that sort of runs through the book. And this is not a, it’s not a musical idea, it’s just this idea that we often think of invention as the brilliant man or woman shows up and they discover gravity, like Sir Isaac Newton or what have you… or the law of gravity– I don’t know, I’m not a physicist.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Chris Dalla Riva: But there’s this alternate idea that usually ideas are sort of bubbling at the time, and we see people come up with the same thing sort of right around the same time in similar places. One of the example, really famous examples of this that I mentioned in the book is again, Sir Isaac Newton and this guy Leibniz both happen to create calculus, like, literally right around the same time. And you would think calculus is a really complicated math. How did two people stumble into this at the same time?
And this is something you sort of see over and over again, is that the time was ripe for a discovery. There were all those things that led up to it, and there were people, of course, looking into the same thing. There are occasionally times when something is invented or discovered and it’s just pulled out of thin air and nobody was close to it. But I try to apply this idea to music, and I don’t say it to, like, disparage artists that we give tons of credit, like Dylan or the Beatles, but it creates a much simpler story when you can be like, The Beatles showed up and suddenly everyone was doing more stuff in the studio, or artists started writing their own songs. When history is usually more complicated than that. There’s usually a bunch of people who are starting to explore these ideas at the same time. So I try to frame it as artists writing and producing their own songs was a multiple discovery of sorts. You know, I’m applying a scientific idea to an artistic area, but I think it sort of applies.
Brad Page: Yeah, for sure. And there’s a podcaster named Andrew Hickey who does a show called “The History of Rock Music In 500 Songs”– fantastic podcast…
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, that’s tremendous.
Brad Page: …and he’s great, and one thing he always says– it comes up on almost every episode– is “There is no first anything”, meaning that, like, something simple, like “what was the first song to have a distorted guitar on it?” Well, there’s dozens of examples because, like you say, there’s always things bubbling up at the same time, and somebody in New York could be applying the same record technique as someone in LA, completely unknown to each other. It just sort of happens, it’s something strangely in the air, in the ether at the time, and things just kind of come up.
So really identifying the first of anything is virtually impossible, because there’s always something that’s, well, almost the same thing, or very close to it, that was happening around the same time. And it’s usually the one who gets the hit record is the one who gets to write history, so to speak. You know what I mean?
And it’s no diss on Dylan or the Beatles to say that they weren’t exactly the first… You know, the Beatles didn’t really invent those haircuts.
Chris Dalla Riva: No.
Brad Page: But they were able to take that look and present it in a way that worked. I mean, to me, the person who’s, I always think, is kind of the greatest at that kind of thing, was Bowie. Because a lot of the things that Bowie became famous for, and the changes that he went through… like, he was not the first glam artist. He was not the first artist to go to Germany and do the “Low”/”Heroes”, period kind of music. You know what I mean? He wasn’t the first guy to do that white soul singer kind of thing. But he was always able to take that inspiration and figure out, “how do I make that work for me?” And many times did it better than anyone else.
But he didn’t necessarily create out of thin air any of those trends. But somehow, he was able to take those trends and master them in a way and present them to an audience in a successful way to make him— and not just once, but to do it multiple times over his lifetime. To me, that’s the genius of Bowie: Not that he invented glam, but that he was able to take it and make it work in such a successful way.
Chris Dalla Riva: There are so many artists like that, they can take a sound and distill it in a way that nobody else can, even if they didn’t create it. I think that’s also an example of genius, which, you know, part f genius is inventing something, part of it is perfecting it.
Brad Page: Right. Let’s jump ahead a little bit into the 70s and talk about Disco. And one of the songs that you called out to me to kind of highlight is “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer. So let’s talk about that.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, When I talk about the book, people are always like, “Oh, did you discover any music that you didn’t think you’d like that you did?” My go-to answer is always disco. Because I had the perception of disco as being this silly, you know, Dance music from the 70s, almost cartoonish. And there are some disco songs that are like that. But there’s really a lot of great stuff that came out of the disco movement. And “Hot Stuff” is a great song. Donna Summer.
Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder made a ton of great music during the mid to late 70s. And part of the way I talk about, or the reason I bring up “Hot Stuff” is in a discussion around genre. There is a long history of genre being tied to race. Genre is very tied up with race. And I feel like when you look at, say, classic rock radio today, it’s heavily dominated by white artists of that era. Even though there are black stars from that time who were making music with guitars that could very easily fit on classic rock radio. And I point to “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer because it has a searing guitar solo… yes, you know, it’s got that disco beat, but they’re really rocking that song in the same way that the Stones were rocking the disco beat on like, “Miss You”, and “Miss You” is something you’ll hear on every classic rock station.
I’ve suggested this online that “Hot Stuff” could be heard on a classic rock station, and the reactions I get are always crazy. But it’s just a good illustration of how our perception of genre is not always tied to what the music sounds like. It’s tied to who the artist is, what they look like, who is typically thought of as listening to that music. And there’s a lot of stuff, I think in the disco world, a lot of women who made music around that time who were making rock or rock adjacent music, but we don’t think of it that way.
Brad Page: You could take that song and take the disco beat out of it, put a little bit of heavier drums in it… You wouldn’t have to change it that much to, like you say, make it a straight on classic rock song. It’s. It’s got that riff, you know, that works on heavy guitar.
At the same time, you’ve got a song like “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd, which has a disco beat, right? “Miss You” by the Stones… Had those artists been black and played those exact same songs, they wouldn’t have gotten played on rock radio, simply because of this artificial racial thing that we layer on top of the music. Right?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah. That has always fascinated me, and I feel like another good example, And this isn’t, this is less about race, but I’ve always thought that the song “Tragedy” by the Bee Gees, which was a number one in the late 70s, has like a metal riff, but it’s obviously performed as a disco song, and I’m always looking for someone to cover it as a metal song!
Brad Page: You called out one song as having predicted the future, and that was “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” by PM Dawn. So talk about that one.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, bold claim from me here. I write about this in Chapter Nine of the book. I wasn’t familiar with this song before I heard it. It’s an interesting hip hop song from the early 90s, but it’s more in the alternative hip hop space. If you’re familiar with A Tribe Called Quest, I feel like it’s a little bit closer to that than something like NWA or even MC Hammer, some other artists that were popular at that time. And I say it predicted the future for two reasons: One, because it was the first number one hit under Billboard’s new system called SoundScan. Previously, Billboard tracked their charts just by calling up record stores and being like, “Hey, what’s selling?” Which was obviously a valid way to create a chart, but not the most accurate way.
Brad Page: Yeah, and lent itself to a lot of… maybe corruption is too strong a word, but certainly manipulation.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yes. And even if you’re not actually, even if no one’s actively trying to manipulate things, there’s still just biases that are going to creep in because, you know, humans make mistakes. But under this new system, it was an accurate reading of what were people actually purchasing when they scanned a barcode. That data was sent to Nielsen, who ran SoundScan and ultimately trickled into Billboard. So “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” was the first number one under this new paradigm. And what was really interesting was when Billboard flipped the switch, the charts sort of changed overnight. A lot of pop stars and rock stars from the late 80s were no longer on the charts, and it was more dominated by hip hop, country music, and alternative rock. So it seemed like the charts were being manipulated in a certain way. And I say this song predicted the future because it was symbolic of how hip hop was going to be the dominant cultural force for the next few decades. But at the same time, there are things about the song that I think predict the future too, in the sense that, again, it’s a hip hop song. Hip hop’s about to become much more popular.
PM Dawn’s a black duo. And what we also see after the SoundScan change is that there are many more black artists on the charts. And of course, there were black stars before 1991, but again, it was the same thing. And black artists in the past had complained about this, that Billboard wasn’t surveying the record stores where black listeners would go purchase music. So symbolic of that shift too.
And I sort of joke that “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” has the word “damn” in it. You know, not the most explicit of explicit words. But with the rise of hip hop, we see more explicit content in lyrics because hip hop is a much more lyrical genre than anything that had come before it.
So I say that it predicts the future because of just the happenstance that it was the first number one under this new paradigm, but also because of who the artists were, what kind of music they were making, what they looked like, what they were saying. It was an early example of many things that were to come throughout the 90s and 2000s. And plus, like I said, it’s more of a melodic hip hop style. And that would become popular in like the 2010s. So it was sort of a precursor to that too.
Brad Page: You mention, and this is another thing that kind of really interests me in the book, it’s something I’ve thought about a lot too, is the role of context in how you absorb a song. You know, is it a song that’s suited for a bar or an arena? Is it a song you associate with being in your car, or listening to in your living room, and how that affects how you take in a song?
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I mean, if you listen to house music while you’re sitting in your house, it’s probably not going to sound good, as if you went out to some dark club and we’re listening to it with a bunch of other bodies packed next to you. So context is very important if you are going to enjoy certain music. David Byrne talks about this in his book “How Music Works”. And he positions it as, like a very radical idea, that we really write music to fit where it’s going to be heard. And I think it’s logical when you think about it.
And now sometimes if there’s a song I don’t like, I’m like, “oh, uh, you know, maybe I’m not hearing it in the right situation”. I think about that with a lot of dance music and I’m just sitting at home working my job listening to dance music. Yeah. Maybe I’ll enjoy it as I’m punching around in Excel, but I’m sure I enjoy it a little bit more if I was out at a club.
Brad Page: Yeah. There’s a thing I always find– and a lot of it’s generational…. I’m an old fart at this point, and there’s a lot of modern music that I don’t, it just doesn’t resonate with me. I got nothing against it, it’s just, it’s not written for me.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah.
Brad Page: But I find that a lot of stuff, hip hop or hip hop adjacent stuff, that sounds great on record but like if you, if you see the acts perform live, it’s just, It kind of falls flat. I think because it’s music that’s designed in the studio, for earbuds, and not really designed for live in concert type performance.
Chris Dalla Riva: I don’t even think that’s a– as someone who likes a lot of hip hop music, I don’t think that’s a particularly hot take. Not a knock on the genre. I think you can go see hip hop artists in concert, but it’s very different than if you were to go see a rock artist in concert.
Brad Page: Yeah. And I think that’s evolved over time because, you know, hip hop was originally music literally from the streets, right? Yes. Guys plugging turntables into lamp posts on the street in New York.
Chris Dalla Riva: Right.
Brad Page: And from that, you got acts like Public Enemy, that I think are incredible and that music is so intense and I think works really well live because there’s so much energy and power to it. But as things evolved over time to be more produced with loops and samples and got further and further away from a live setting. Yeah, I just, I don’t feel like it works nearly as well live as it does on record.
Chris Dalla Riva: I mean there are, there are literally even people today who will get signed to a big record contract because they’ve built up a big audience online, and they have never performed live one time. And then suddenly, you know, the label’s got to stick them out there because you do have to perform live eventually and it’s horrible. Some of them, some of these people become good live performers. But we live in a very strange time where you can build a huge audience without ever stepping foot on a stage.
Brad Page: Yeah. It is a very, very interesting time that we’re in for music now, and we’ll get there, as we go through this conversation.
But as we kind of work our way forward, you spend some good detail talking about Milli Vanilli– an act that, you know, I’m not particularly fond of, but I do think got a bum deal compared to where we are today. And this idea of what was once controversial eventually becomes commonplace. And today we see all kinds of acts, including mainstream classic rock acts, performing with backing tracks and vocals that aren’t live.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah.
Brad Page: And it cost these guys their career and, you know, at least one of them their lives, I think. And yet today, turn on most TV, whether it’s the Grammys or Saturday Night Live or whatever… go see a concert, and there’s a damn good chance that the performance you’re seeing, a chunk of it is not live. It’s acts performing to backing tracks, maybe not even singing their actual vocals.
Chris Dalla Riva: It’s fascinating. A sort of sad thing to think about. And I agree with you– You know, if I was on a podcast called “I’m NOT in Love With That Song”, I would pick basically anything from the Milli Vanilli catalog. I’m not here defending the music. But it does seem like they got… Like, they got the Grammy stripped from them. I mean, I understand why people were upset.
Brad Page: It’s just when you look at it in the context of today, like, literally hundreds of artists are doing today what they did then, and nobody bats an eye about it.
Chris Dalla Riva: No. And I think they did get a raw deal in that sense. And I sort of mentioned that in the book, and I’m actually glad you mentioned, you bring up how it’s not just, like, young pop stars– it’s like classic rock artists who are touring now. So I do think it’s become something that people expect.
And something that the one guy who’s still living from Milli Vanilli said, in a book called “I Want My MTV”, which is a great oral history of MTV, he’s trying to defend himself, and he’s like, you know what popular entertainment is just about, “if the audience is entertained, nothing else matters”. I don’t know if I agree with that completely, but in terms of just the music business, it’s clear that people agree with that. And it’s clear in this day and age, fans don’t really care– like, they’re not going to shows to hear a live performance, people are going to just party. So Milli Vanilli, in a way, predicted the future, too.
Brad Page: Another area that you delve into in the book that I always find fascinating is everything revolving around copyright.
Chris Dalla Riva: Oh yeah. One of my pet peeve topics. Yeah, yeah, copyright. I mean, incredibly vital to making it possible for the music industry to exist. If you look at like early songwriters in the 1800s, I mean, these guys would die penniless, and they would write really popular songs, because there’s really no copyright protection. Copyright’s a vital, vital tool.
People have gotten crazy with it over the last couple of decades. First, copyright terms are really, really long. Now they last for the life of the creator plus 70 years. The idea that your copyright would outlive you is like, who is that benefiting? Eventually your works belong to the people to some degree.
And we’ve seen this over the last few years, where financial firms have gotten involved in the music industry. They’re buying up tons and tons of copyrights. And I think copyright lasting that long really does a disservice to younger artists, because it makes it more attractive to invest in music of the past than to spend money trying to develop new talent.
Like I said, if you know The Beatles’ music is going to be generating royalties until 2100, why not spend money acquiring that catalog rather than spending it developing up-and-coming talent?
Brad Page: Mhm.
Chris Dalla Riva: I just think the tremendously long copyright terms create a lot of distortions that are actually bad for artists. Unless you are the most successful artists of all time. And because of that, those people who are making all that money, they have a tremendous amount of power to prevent people from using their work in any way possible. I just think there are a lot of bad incentives around copyright terms that last that long.
Brad Page: Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it and I’ve… and honestly, I don’t really know exactly where I come down on certain things, because on one hand, I do feel like nobody wants to see an artist that you love die penniless in their 80s in some terrible nursing home because they got screwed out of their royalties or whatever. And the idea that if you’re an artist with some integrity, that you don’t necessarily want your songs to be selling tires or cans of soup or whatever it is, you know, or to be used as the theme song on “The Apprentice” or something.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah.
Brad Page: But at the same time, like you said, you don’t want things that are going to shut out new artists from being successful. So I just, it’s just something that I wrestle with and it’s not a clear-cut way to come down on it. And I just, I don’t really know what the answer is.
Chris Dalla Riva: I’m not copyright lawyer so I don’t have all the answers. But I do just like to wrestle with the complexities of…
Brad Page: Well, I think as serious listeners, that we have to wrestle with these kind of things. Everything from the inherent racism in the industry to issues like this, and copyright, and kind of everything in between. Because we as listeners are fueling this with our purchasing dollars and our continued support of the music and the artists, so we have a responsibility as listeners, I think, to at least engage with these kind of deeper pieces of the business and think about what are we supporting.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I totally agree.
Brad Page: Later in the book, as time marches on, you talk a lot about the emergence of the Swedish songwriters and we start to get the Britney Spears era. They’re masterful in a way, and yet, at the same, time often feel to me like they’re stamped out of a machine. Like there’s kind of like an assembly line of making pop songs. When it works it’s, you know, you can’t really argue with it. But there is also, I don’t know, I kind of feel like a assembly line structure to some of that stuff.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, the short story there is that in the 90s, this Swedish studio called, I think it’s Cheiron Studios, was created in Sweden by this guy named Denniz Pop. Denniz Pop ends up tragically dying from stomach cancer very young. But his proteges, the most successful of which is a guy named Max Martin, start producing all of the big boy and girl groups of the late 90s. Think Britney Spears, NSync, Backstreet Boys. And then Max Martin just goes on to become arguably the most successful songwriter of all time. To the point I’m talking, like, more successful than Paul McCartney in terms of charting songs.
Brad Page: Right.
Chris Dalla Riva: He’s worked with everyone. He’s worked “Since You’ve Been Gone”, Kelly Clarkson, all the big Katy Perry hits.
Chris Dalla Riva: Big Weeknd hits, Taylor Swift hits. It goes on and on and on. I mean, the man is tremendously talented and successful. And the controversy is, you’re sort of getting at is that, but there are a lot of good pop songs, but it does come across as formulaic. And this idea that, if I want to hit, I’ll just go see what some middle-aged Swedish man is thinking and all American teenagers will gobble it up.
The counterpoint that I always try to, I actually don’t bring this up in the book, but sometimes when I talk about this I do, is how different is it from what we were talking about earlier? Like the Motown machine. Motown clearly had a formula and a sound. And I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s that much different. I understand when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But when it works, it can be quite good.
Brad Page: Yeah. And again, these are the kind of things that I wrestle with, because I love so much of Motown. And yet at the same time, I get annoyed by some of the Max Martin stuff. And you’re right, there’s not a huge difference in the general sense of, like, you go to these producers for a sound, they’re creating a sound. Motown is a sound. And it is one of the most production line sounds in rock history. You know a Motown song before you hit the first verse, right? You can identify it by the sound and the style and the vibe of it. And that doesn’t bother me. Why does that not bother me and yet I get annoyed by some ancillary Max Martin production? You know, I don’t know. It’s just, these are the things that make us human beings, I think– we’re just, just inherently contradictory and hypocritical. There’s never been a person born who wasn’t hypocritical on something.
Chris Dalla Riva: I think the one thing, like, I mean, you could even point to, like, songs from Tin Pan Alley, sort of. They were trying to write hit songs.
Brad Page: Sure.
Chris Dalla Riva: I think the one thing with Max Martin that I find fascinating, Max Martin, like all of his acolytes, is that they’ve had success for such a long time. Whereas, I mean, the the height. Motown was successful technically for decades, but the height of its power, where they have like a very specific sound, I mean, that’s only a couple of years, right? Whereas the Max Martin domination, I mean, it’s been… I was born in the 90s. I mean, it’s been literally my whole life that his specific brand of pop music has been popular.
And the other thing is he hops around styles. It’s like in the early 2000s, say pop punk is popular. You know he’s going to write “Since You’ve Been Gone” for Kelly Clarkson. But then in the same breath, you know, that style goes out of favor and he’ll jump on whatever the next popular trend is. He’s great at writing melodies and great melodies can live in any genre. But he’s not like inventing new styles and stuff. And I feel like I could understand people getting fed up with that. And I say that as I like a lot of his songs, but I don’t like all of them. Yeah, I need a break from every songwriter every once in a while.
Brad Page: Sure. And that kind of brings us into the modern era, and how things have been changed so much– I feel like now maybe more than ever– by social media and things like TikTok, and how just the length of songs are affected by what you can get on TikTok.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I mean, same thing, I always like to compare things across time. In the 80s people were certainly making music to fit the MTV format or to make great music videos, because they knew it would sell records. People today definitely write to TikTok. I think the problems with TikTok are that you are getting bite-sized pieces of content. So you could have a song that is actually really horrible and it could have a 15-second moment that is just perfect for a TikTok trend. And artists definitely try to write to this.
Brad Page: Yeah.
Chris Dalla Riva: And then the song itself does not have legs. Whereas that was really not exactly possible in the past where you could have like one little 15-second tidbit that was gonna work and then the rest of the song didn’t. I’m sure there are some examples you could point to, but I don’t know if it’s a problem for music specifically but just the Internet in general. It’s just like the TikTok-ification of everything, where we’re supposed to consume content in tiny little bite-sized pieces that mess with our ability to consume longer-form, more serious, longer form content. I think that’s a problem.
There have been great songs that I found on TikTok. There have been horrible songs that I found on TikTok. But I think the music is just dealing with a larger societal issue about how we consume media. Just this unfettered slop of content that– how long does it take to watch a movie? Two hours? In two hours, I could go through literally thousands of TikToks. It certainly doesn’t feel healthy.
Brad Page: Yeah. And everything from, nowadays you have songs that become hits, whatever a hit even means on something like TikTok, that has virtually nothing to do with the participation of the actual creator of the music. And you talk about this in the book, about how somebody can put a piece of music out there in the world and it doesn’t really go anywhere until somebody else, completely unrelated, picks it up and does a dance video to it. And then that’s what catches on. But the artist is almost forgotten in that process, right? Because it’s not the artist’s participation that made it a hit, it was the fact that, oh, now everybody’s making a dance video to this song, that they probably don’t even know who the actual creator of the song is.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I write about this sort of frequently. I call it “the anonymization of the pop star”. Whereas, you know, I was comparing this to MTV before, but one of the key differences is when you tuned in to watch the video for “Like A Virgin”, like it was clearly Madonna made that video and you were associating the song with Madonna. Whereas if “Like a Virgin” came out today, exactly to your point, it’s possible that some kid starts dancing to it, it goes viral and people become very familiar with the sound, but they don’t associate it with the artist specifically.
Brad Page: They associate it with the dance or whatever. But, but like “Madonna, who’s she? Uh, never heard of her”. Hard to believe, but that kind of thing is happening today.
Chris Dalla Riva: Like I said, that’s what I sort of started at the beginning of this, with this idea, there are some ideas that you see while listening to thousands of popular songs over the decades that are really of a specific moment. And there are certain things that come up again and again and again, and it speaks to human psychology and speaks to the technology that we’re using. And there’s always, there’s usually pros and cons. With a lot of this stuff streaming, it’s incredible. I can go on and listen to quite literally any piece of recorded music ever. I mean, that’s still eye-popping to think about.
Brad Page: It’s incredible. But at the same time, you have to.. you don’t know what you don’t know. So if you don’t know to ask for it, and if it’s just going to deliver the same slop that was being delivered to you on the radio, that frustrates me a little bit– that all the music in the world is available to us, but you have to know where to start to look.
Chris Dalla Riva: No, that’s, that’s a totally fair criticism of the system.
Brad Page: Well, this is as good a place as any to wrap up our conversation. So, thanks for coming on the podcast, Chris. I hope you enjoyed it.
Chris Dalla Riva: This was, this was unbelievable. This was the most in-depth conversation I think I’ve had about music in promotion of this book. So thank you so much.
Brad Page: Well, thanks for that. And before we go, tell everyone one more time about the book.
Chris Dalla Riva: Yeah, I mean, if you enjoyed our conversation, definitely check out my book, “Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us About The Biggest Hit Songs And Ourselves”. My name is Chris Dalla Riva, you can find me all over the internet very easily. I’m on most social media platforms, and I have a newsletter called “Can’t Get Much Higher”. But definitely go check out the book. It’ll be available wherever you purchase books online. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Books A Million, all that jazz. So if you like the conversation, check it out. And thanks for having me, Brad.
Brad Page: Oh, it’s been my pleasure, Chris.
Chris Dalla Riva, everyone. I highly recommend this book. I had a great time reading it, I know you will too. Go get it.
I will be back in two weeks with another new episode. Check out all of our previous episodes on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or look for them in your favorite podcast app.
Support this podcast by telling people about the show. Share it with your friends.
Thanks again for listening. I’ll meet you back here soon for another edition of the “I’m In Love with That Song” podcast.
When it comes to classic rock albums, few are as iconic as Machine Head by Deep Purple. Released in 1972, this album has cemented its place in rock history, not just for its groundbreaking music but also for the incredible story behind its creation. In this episode, we take a journey through the making of this legendary album, and focus on the track they *thought* was going to be the hit from this record (and it wasn’t “Smoke On The Water“).
“Never Before” (Richie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord & Ian Paice) Copyright 1972 R. Feldman & Co LTD trading as HSC Music
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TRANSCRIPT:
Whether you’re a child in time, a speed king, or a highway star, you’ve managed to find yourself here at the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page, and each episode of this show, I pick a favorite song and we explore it together, on our quest to understand what makes a great song work. You don’t have to play an instrument or read music, we don’t get into music theory here. This is just about listening.
We’ve talked about Deep Purple on this show before, back on episodes 72, 127, and with Greg Renoff on episode 104. But this time, we’re going back to 1972 and their biggest selling album “Machine Head” for a song called “Never Before”.
The most popular lineup of Deep Purple, what fans refer to as the “Mark II” version, came together in 1969 when guitarist Richie Blackmore, keyboard player Jon Lord, and drummer Ian Paice fired their original singer and bass player, and hired vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, both from the band Episode Six. The first album from this Mark II lineup was “Concert for Group and Orchestra”, which is really more of an oddity than anything. It was the next album, “In Rock” that really established Deep Purple as a band to be reckoned with.
They followed that album with “Fireball” in 1971. This album gets some mixed response; some people really like it– and I think Ian Gillan has even said it’s his favorite Deep Purple album– but other people thought it was a bit of a letdown after the “In Rock” album. I like it.
One thing that’s definitely true about the “Fireball” album is that most of the songs on the record weren’t really suited for live performance, at least as far as the band was concerned. Most of the tracks from that album were never played in concert. And since Deep Purple were, above all, a band that excelled at live performance, this was a bit of a problem. So when the band set out to record their next album, they specifically wanted songs that would work well in their live set.
In fact, the original plan was to record this next album in a live setting. So they booked the casino in Montreux, Switzerland, with the intention to set up on stage and record just like they were playing a gig. The casino was about to close down for the season, so they’d have the venue all to themselves. There was one last show booked at the casino, a concert by Frank Zappa. And then once that was done, Deep Purple could move in and set up. Perfect.
Except, and everyone probably knows this story by now, but during Frank Zappa’s show, one of his crazy fans shot a flare gun into the ceiling and it set the whole casino on fire. Miraculously– and it really is amazing– everybody made it out alive, partly due to the heroic efforts of a guy named Claude Nobs, who risked his life to get some of those attendees out safely.
So suddenly, Deep Purple’s recording plans went up in smoke… literally. So, what are they going to do now? First, they booked a theater called the Pavilion, but the neighbors complained about the noise, so that didn’t work. Eventually, they landed at the Grand Hotel, which was closed down for the winter. They took over a floor and set up in rooms and corridors of the hotel, and parked the Rolling Stones Mobile studio truck outside and ran all the wires between the hotel and the truck. For the band to get from the truck to their recording positions in the hotel, they had to go past the reception, through the kitchen, across the landing, and then out on the balcony, climb in through a window every time they needed to switch between recording their tracks and listening to the playback. Apparently, this was such a pain in the ass that they were determined to get everything in one take just to avoid that hassle.
In the end, the album was recorded in two weeks. It cost $8,000 to record. When it comes to a recording budget, that’s nothing.
All of this story is told in the lyrics to “Smoke On The Water”. It’s right there in the song. Their biggest hit is a straightforward account of this whole crazy situation in which the album was made. Initially, though, the band didn’t think “Smoke On The Water” was anything special. They certainly didn’t think it would become a big hit. There was another song on the album that the band thought was going to be a hit single. It’s a song called “Never Before”.
“Never Before, like all the songs on the album, is credited to all five band members. It features Richie Blackmore on guitar, Jon Lord on keyboards, Roger Glover on bass, Ian Paice on drums, and Ian Gillan on vocals. All five members are also credited as producers. The album was engineered by Martin Birch.
The song kicks off with a very funky riff. Totally has that live in the studio feel, just the four of them jamming on that riff. Ian Paice is one of rock’s greatest drummers. Let’s hear what he’s laying down.
This is the only time they play that riff. It’s right here at the beginning of the song, then they never return to it again. It’s too bad, because I could listen to them vamping on this riff all day. Such a great groove.
But before we move on to the rest of the song, I just want to point out one thing about the recording. You can really hear the sound of the room. Listen especially to Richie Blackmore’s guitar part: you can really hear that room sound. For an album that wasn’t recorded in a real studio– remember, they’re set up in a hotel, just trying to make it work– considering the circumstances, this is a great sounding record.
Let’s back it up and listen to just the instrumental part under the vocal, because this is a great riff, too. Deep Purple were one of the tightest ensembles out there when they locked in. You just can’t beat them.
That’s the chorus. And you can see why the band thought that this was going to be the hit, because that’s a damn catchy chorus. Let’s listen to the instrumental track underneath the vocal. The real magic here is the piano part that Jon Lord overdubs on the chorus. It’s a rollicking, fun part that really adds a lot, makes the chorus stronger. And the chorus ends with a nice little riff that leads us right back into the verse.
Let’s go back and hear that drum fill by Ian Paice. Then we’ll move on to the next verse.
Let’s go back and bring up Ian Gillen’s vocals on this verse.
This time, that riff leads us into the bridge, which is a whole different feel than the rest of the song. Also notice that Gillan doubles his vocal part here rather than harmonize.
That descending part feels very orchestral to me, but it’s just one guitar part playing off of the organ. The organ and the guitar hold a chord there, but the bass climbs up the scale.
And that takes us right into the guitar solo. It’s a great solo by Richie. Richie Blackmore’s never played a solo that wasn’t great, but this solo is more old-school rock and roll than what you typically get from Richie; it’s even some Chuck Berry-style licks at the end. Richie said that with the exception of “Highway Star”, all of the solos on this album were not worked out in advance, he’d just improvise. That just goes to show what an innate sense of melody, flow and structure he has. He’s one of the greats.
Pretty sure he’s overdubbed another guitar on that last chord to thicken it up. And because it’s not 100% matched perfectly, the slight deviation in the bending of strings makes it sound fuller.
And that takes us into the last verse.
Then we have the last chorus. First, let’s hear the bass and drums together. Roger Glover on bass; he’s certainly the least flashy player in the band, but he’s more than just rock solid. He and Ian Paice on drums make a mighty rhythm section.
And now let’s hear that all together.
Next up is a piano solo by Jon Lord. He’s playing an electric piano, but he’s also running it into a Marshall guitar amplifier to get that distorted sound. Also, notice how the guitar is panned to the left and the organ to the right.
Deep Purple – “Never Before”
When “Never Before” was released as a single, it kind of flopped. Didn’t get past # 35 on the charts. But when they released the album, which they named “Machine Head”, in March of 1972, the album became a hit, of course, driven by the success of “Smoke On The Water” and all the other great tracks on that record.
By any measure, “Machine Head” is a classic album. You’ll find it on just about every list of classic albums that’s ever been made. I love every track on this album. In fact, one of my favorite Deep Purple tracks was recorded for this album, but it never made it onto the record. Just too many good songs to choose from, they couldn’t fit them all. It’s called “When A Blind Man Cries”, and it was only issued as the B-side of the “Never Before” single.
Thanks for listening to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast. I really do appreciate it. New shows come out on the 1st and the 15th of every month, so I’ll be back here soon with another new episode. That’s your warning.
You can keep in touch with the show on our Facebook page, or on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, where you’ll also find all of our previous episodes. And of course, were also available on Amazon, Apple, Google, YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, pretty much anywhere you can find podcasts, you will find this show.
If you’d like to support the show, the best thing you can do is to tell your friends about it, share it with your friends and family, because your word of mouth carries a lot of weight and really helps us to grow our audience. So thanks for that.
We are part of the Pantheon family of podcasts, where you’ll find a ton of other music-related shows. So if you like this kind of thing, check some of those shows out too.
Thanks again for listening to this edition of the I’m in Love With That Song Podcast on “Never Before” by Deep Purple.
This episode, we return to the “Creation & Evolution” theme as we trace the history of the song called “Black Betty”. It’s a fascinating story, from its origins as an African-American work song to its transformation into a rock anthem by Ram Jam. We’ll explore the musical evolution of this enduring track. Join us for this captivating musical journey.
“Black Betty” New Words & Music Adaptation by Huddie Ledbetter – Copyright 1963 (Renewed) 1977 (Renewed) Folkways Music Publishers Inc.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network. I’m Brad Page, host of the show, where each episode we take a song and put it under the microscope, so to speak, looking at all the elements that make the song work. We look at the performance, the arrangements, the production, all the various components that go into making a great song. No musical expertise is required here, this show is for anyone who’s curious about the strange alchemy, the magic of music.
This episode is the second in our occasional series that I call “Creation and Evolution”. This is where we look at songs that have an exceptionally long, involved, and sometimes convoluted history. You may remember that back on episode 152. I used the “Creation and Evolution” theme to explore the song “Midnight Train To Georgia”, that classic track from Gladys Knight and The Pips. Some songs are written pretty quickly, in a burst of inspiration. Other songs might be meticulously worked on, written and rewritten over time. But some songs, passed through various hands, are recontextualized or mutated as different writers and performers add their interpretations and revisions. Sometimes this can happen over generations.
Case in point, the song we’re discussing today has its roots, at the very latest, in 1935, but probably much older than that. Eventually, it made its way onto a single in 1977 by an unknown rock band who became a one-hit wonder thanks to this song. This is Ram Jam with “Black Betty”.
Tracking the history of the song called “Black Betty” is difficult to do with any certainty. Its origin is considered to be as an African-American work song. The first recorded version was by a prisoner named James “Ironhead” Baker. John Lomax and his son Alan traveled across the country recording and documenting the folk music of America. During a visit to the state prison in Sugarland, Texas, they recorded James Baker, along with other inmates, singing a version of “Black Betty”.
The most well-known version for quite some time was recorded by Huddie Ledbetter, otherwise known as Lead Belly. He was also a former prisoner, convicted of murder, who recorded dozens, maybe hundreds of songs for the Lomaxes that made Lead Belly famous… but never rich. In April 1939, Lead Belly recorded a medley of three work songs, “Looky, Looky Yonder and “Yellow Woman’s Doorbells”, with “Black Betty” sandwiched in between.
Lead Belly was credited as songwriter on that version, and his name still appears in the credits sometimes today. But the song surely predates him.
So, who– or what– exactly is “Black Betty”? Well, the first reference we know of was published by Benjamin Franklin, of all people, in 1736. Appears in his “Drinkers Dictionary” as a term for being drunk; when someone was pretty tipsy, you could say “he’s kissed Black Betty”. It could also refer to a whiskey bottle.
Others have described “Black Betty” as a whip that was used against prisoners. Some say it refers to a gun. And some people said it was a term for the transfer wagon at the penitentiary. That later morphed into referencing a cardinal or motorcycle. One thing that seems pretty clear in all of these early interpretations is that Black Betty was probably not a woman.
There are many more versions of “Black Betty”. Some notable versions include one by Odetta in 1964. Like Lead Belly, she included it in a medley with “Looky Yonder”.
You’ve probably noticed at this point, we’re getting some musical accompaniment with guitars, and not just the acapella version.
As far as I can tell, it first appeared in a rock context by Manfred Mann in 1968. But in their version, they called it “Big Betty”.
And by this time, the “Black Betty” in this song appears to have transformed into a woman.
Now, there was a band called the Lemon Pipers in the late sixties. They were signed to Neil Bogart’s Buddha label, home to quite a few bubblegum pop bands in the sixties and seventies. The label pushed the band into a more pop direction, and they did score one big hit, the psychedelic pop classic “Green Tambourine” in 1967.
By 1969, the Lemon Pipers had split up. Their guitarist and singer, Bill Bartlett, formed a Band called Starstruck. In 1973, Starstruck recorded their version of “Black Betty” as a single and released it on their own label. It ran 4:45 seconds and was performed by Tom Kurtz on rhythm guitar, David Fleeman on drums, David Goldflies on bass and Bill Bartlett on lead guitar and lead vocals.
And the song became a regional hit around the Cincinnati area. A couple of producers out of New York, Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffrey Katz, who had done a lot of work for Buddha Records, they heard the Starstruck version of “Black Betty” and thought they could do something with it. So, they took Bill Bartlett and formed a whole new band around him, which they called Ram Jam.
Ram Jam released their first album, self-titled, in 1977, which includes “Black Betty”. It’s actually the opening track on the album. But except for Bill Bartlett, none of the members of Ram Jam play on the song. Producers Kasenetz and Katz took the original Starstruck recording and edited it; they reordered the parts and deleted some sections altogether, editing the 4:45 seconds Starstruck version down to just 2:25 seconds for the Ram Jam single. Now, the version released on the Ram Jam album is closer to the original’s length– it’s 3:57 seconds. But once you know that this track has been significantly edited, you can pretty easily hear where the edits were made.
So, now let’s get into the track– and remember, this is just the same musicians that played on the Starstruck version, re-edited into this Ram Jam version.
It’s the same intro as the Starstruck version, including a gong with a phasing effect on it.
Here comes that gong again with more of that phasing or flanging effect on it.
Now, right there, is the first of the edits, and it’s maybe the most noticeable edit in the whole Song.
Now this is interesting… it’s actually kind of crazy. They are going to take the intro of the song– which you just heard less than a minute ago– and they’re going to splice it in here, repeating the exact same intro, including the same guitar solo again.
There’s clearly another edit right there. It’s particularly noticeable in the way the cymbal or gong is abruptly cut off rather than its natural decay.
They’re double tracking his vocals here.
Now, the Starstruck version has this whole guitar riff thing that they do here, and then they go into a sped-up version of the verse. On the Ram Jam edit, they move that guitar riff to later in the song, and delete the sped up verse altogether. Instead, they take a different guitar riff from later in the song and move it up here.
We even get a little mini drum solo here.
After that, we get a short dual guitar harmonized part, and then the song speeds up, but only for the guitar solo. There’s no vocal part here.
Bill Bartlett is ripping it up on guitar there. But it’s equally impressive what the bass player and drummer are doing behind him. This was played by David Fleeman on drums and David Goldflies on bass, both from Starstruck.
And now here’s where they splice in that riff played earlier in the Starstruck version.
And here comes another drum break– It’s actually the same drum solo from earlier in the Song, edited back in again.
Here’s another twin guitar part. I really like this one. First, let’s hear just the guitars.
And now let’s hear that with the whole band.
“Black Betty” by Ram Jam. Or should I say Starstruck?
The song’s been covered quite a few times since then, including a version by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; that version is pretty reminiscent of the old Lead Belly version.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this song has had its share of controversy. The NAACP called for a boycott of the Ram Jam song when it first came out… and you can see why a bunch of white guys singing about “Black Betty” could be seen as offensive. But considering the fact that the song was originally written and performed by black artists, and it’s always been murky whether the song was about liquor, a gun, a prison wagon, a whip, or a woman, I feel comfortable enough including the song in this show. I hope you liked it, and maybe learned a little something about the creation and evolution of songs.
Thanks for joining me for this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast here on the Pantheon Podcast Network. If you’d like to support the show, one way to do it is to tell your friends about the show and help spread the word.
Another way you can support the show is to buy a t-shirt from oldglory.com. You’ll find shirts and merch from all your favorite bands at oldglory.com, and when you use our discount code, lovethatsong, you’ll get 15% off and you’ll be helping to support the show. The website is oldglory.com and the discount code is lovethatsong. Thanks in advance for helping us out. I will be back in about two weeks with another new episode. Until then, turn up your favorite version of “Black Betty”. Bam-a-Lam!
REFERENCES:
Ram Jam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Jam
Black Betty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Betty
Midnight Train to Georgia
Creation & Evolution: Gladys Knight & The Pips “Midnight Train To Georgia” – The “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast – Music Commentary, Song Analysis & Rock History (lovethatsongpodcast.com)
James Ironhead Baker
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/james-iron-head-baker-mn0001048749
John Lomax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lomax
Alan Lomax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lomax
Lead Belly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly
Odetta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odetta
Manfred Mann
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Mann
Lemon Pipers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lemon_Pipers
Green Tambourine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Tambourine
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cave_and_the_Bad_Seeds
NAACP
https://naacp.org/
Humble Pie is often overshadowed by bands like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Queen, but they were a considered a “supergroup” when they formed in 1969– fronted by Steve Marriott from the Small Faces and Peter Frampton from The Herd. Their first 2 albums are a mixed bag, but by the time they signed with A&M Records in 1970 they had refined their style down to a bluesy, hard-rockin’ sound. Rock On (1971) was their most successful album to date and features “Stone Cold Fever“, which is itself a stone-cold classic.
“Stone Cold Fever” (Steve Marriott, Peter Frampton, Greg Ridley, Jerry Shirley) Copyright 1971 Unart Music Corp (BMI), UMG Recordings, Inc.
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TRANSCRIPT:
I’ve got a Stone Cold Fever, but I don’t need no doctor! Welcome to the “I’m In Love With That Song” Podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page. In each episode of the show, I pick one of my favorite songs and we explore it together, looking at it from every angle, trying to get a handle on what makes the song work, and why do I like it so much? Musical knowledge or experience is not a prerequisite here. We don’t get technical. This show is for anyone who loves music.
This episode, we’re taking another look at one of the best hard rocking bands from the 1970’s, a band that’s kind of overlooked now. They’ve been overshadowed by groups like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Queen… those all became iconic bands, but for a while there, Humble Pie was right up there with them. This time out, we’re digging into a song that’s one of their classics, from a pivotal album in their career. This is “Stone Cold Fever” by Humble Pie.
Humble Pie were somewhat of a supergroup when they formed in 1969. Steve Marriott had been the front man for the Small Faces, and Peter Frampton was the breakout star from a Band called The Herd. They got together and formed a new band with Greg Ridley on bass– He’d been playing with Spooky Tooth– and a young drummer named Jerry Shirley. He was only about 17 when he joined Humble Pie.
Now we’ve discussed Humble Pie, and the Small Faces. on this show before, so I’m not going to rehash everything again, you can go back and listen to those episodes. But essentially, both Marriott and Frampton wanted to be taken more seriously as musicians. They were tired of being perceived as pop stars, so Humble Pie was their shot at credibility.
They signed with Immediate Records and released their first album, “As Safe As Yesterday Is”, in August 1969. Interestingly, one of the earliest uses of the term “heavy metal” appears in a review for this album. I don’t think anybody today would describe this album as anything close to “heavy metal”. In reality, this record is kind of a mixed bag with some rockers, but also some bluesy numbers, acousticy folk, and even a touch of post-psychedelic rock.
Their second album, “Town And Country”, was released just a few months later, in November 1969. This one was more acoustic than the first album, but Immediate Records was in financial trouble and they quickly went bankrupt. So this album, “Town And Country”, was never even released in the US at the time.
After the collapse of Immediate Records, they signed a new deal with A&M Records, and the band refocused. Most of the acoustic stuff was gone. They developed a harder, heavier sound and they concentrated on the American market, determined to break through here. Their first album for A&M, which most people in America thought was their first album period, was just called “Humble Pie” and came out in July 1970. It features a great version of the Muddy Waters classic “I’m Ready”.
They continued to refine their sound, and in March 1971, they released their strongest, most successful album yet, “Rock On”. There’s a half-dozen rock-solid songs on this album, including “Stone Cold Fever”. Most of the tracks on “Rock On” had been part of their live set for a while, so they’d worked out all of the kinks and they were well rehearsed by the time they hit the studio to record this album.
The album was produced by the band along with Glynn Johns. All four band members share songwriting credit on “Stone Cold Fever”. The song was performed by Peter Frampton on guitar and backing vocals, Greg Ridley on bass and backing vocals, Jerry Shirley on drums and Steve Marriott on guitar, harmonica, keyboards and lead vocals. The track begins with the guitar riff– and what a great guitar riff this is. It’s played by Peter Frampton in the left channel.
After two times around, the rest of the band starts coming in, including Steve Marriott’s guitar in the right channel.
They add these little trills to the guitar riff. Marriott does it first in the right channel, and then Frampton adds a harmony to it.
Let’s back it up a bit and we’ll play into the first verse. It’s an interesting vocal sound on this track. I used to think that they just used some heavy slapback echo on the vocal to get that sound, but now, listening to it more closely, I think that Steve Marriott actually double-tracked his vocal; he sang it twice. So, the natural inconsistencies in any human performance keep the tracks from sounding 100% identical, which produces the sound we hear on the final mix.
So, let’s try to isolate each one of these vocal performances. Here’s the first one.
And here’s the second vocal.
Now, they sound pretty much the same when you listen to them in isolation, but if we can combine them together, you can hear how those slight differences between the two tracks provide the sound we hear in the final mix.
All right, let’s go back, put that all together, and hear that verse again in the final mix.
That leads us into a new riff. The first time through, Marriott and Frampton play it in unison. The second time around, Frampton plays a harmony which climbs with each cycle.
Next is a short harmonica solo played by Steve Marriott over the main riff. Also notice Jerry Shirley’s banging on a cowbell in the background.
Let’s go back and listen to the two guitars during that verse. They’re essentially playing the main riff, but each of them are playing it pretty loosely, improvising around it as they go along. They’re not trying to play it exactly or perfectly, and they’re not trying to match each other. This gives the recording a spontaneous live feel. Again, its Frampton in the left channel, Marriott in the right.
And that brings us to the second riff with the harmonica.
After that nice drum fill by Jerry Shirley– and remember, he was only about 19 when they made this record– that fill takes us into a jazzy section featuring a fantastic guitar solo by Peter Frampton. Frampton’s name doesn’t often come up when listing the great guitarists, but I absolutely think he’s one of the best. So, let’s hear just his guitar first.
Frampton is an incredibly tasteful player, and his jazz-influenced licks are really distinctive. There’s no one else who really plays quite like him. Now let’s hear how that solo works in the final mix.
Then we get a short harmonica break before the guitarists return with another riff.
The next riff is accentuated with some backing vocals. Let’s hear those backing vocals first.
And now let’s hear that in context.
“Stone Cold Fever” by Humble Pie.
“Rock On” was their best-selling album up until this point, but Peter Frampton was feeling frustrated. He was fine with the harder rocking material, but he wanted more than that, too. And he wanted to be more than just the guitar player; he wanted more opportunity to write and sing. And let’s face it, Steve Marriott was not the easiest guy to deal with. So later in 1971, just after they had recorded a live album, “Rockin’ The Fillmore”, Frampton left to pursue a solo career.
When “Rockin’ The Fillmore” was released, it became a big hit. It’s still the album that Humble Pie is most remembered for, and as Frampton watched his former band’s album climb the charts while he struggled to get his solo career off the ground, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a big mistake. But things worked out for him a few years later, though. That’s a topic for another podcast.
As we’ve mentioned on previous podcasts, Steve Marriott died tragically in a fire, in April 1991, age 44. One of the greatest vocalists of his generation.
Greg Ridley died in November 2003 from complications from pneumonia. He was 56.
Peter Frampton suffers from a somewhat rare progressive muscular disorder called Inclusion Body Mitosis. He initially announced his retirement from music, but he’s still been able to play, so he’s kept going. Above all, he is a true guitar player at heart, and he’ll play for as long as he can.
Jerry Shirley is still with us, and thankfully, as far as I know, he’s still healthy and still playing drums today.
Thanks for joining me here on the Pantheon Podcast network for this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. If you’d like to support the show, and I hope you do, zip on over to oldglory.com and buy a t-shirt or two. They carry shirts and merchandise from all of our favorite bands, and if you’re like me, you can never have too many t-shirts. So support your favorite artists, wear their shirts with pride. And when you use our discount code, “lovethatsong”, you’ll get a nice discount and you’ll be helping out this show. That website is oldglory.com and the discount code is lovethatsong. Thanks in advance.
I’ll be back in about two weeks with a new episode, so I’ll see you then. In the meantime, catch up on all of our previous episodes– there’s over 180 of them now– on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or find us in your favorite Podcast app.
Now go dig out some Humble Pie records and rock on with “Stone Cold Fever”.
RESOURCES:
Humble Pie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Pie
Peter Frampton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Frampton
Steve Marriott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Marriott
Rock On album
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_On_(Humble_Pie_album)
Glynn Johns
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyn_Johns
Rockin’ the Fillmore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_Rockin%27_the_Fillmore
Inclusion body myositis
https://www.mda.org/disease/inclusion-body-myositis
Immediate Records
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immediate_Records
A&M Records
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%26M_Records
Small Faces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Faces
The Herd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herd_(UK_band)
Spooky Tooth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooky_Tooth
Imagine a time when a band could sell out Shea Stadium faster than The Beatles, without the support of radio airplay or the blessing of music critics– and no social media. Grand Funk Railroad did just that, and in this episode, we’re back with another look at the high-octane world of live rock concerts. Discover how Grand Funk Railroad became a music phenomenon, becoming one of the biggest bands of the ’70’s. We’re delving into a live album where the opening tracks weren’t just songs but declarations of a rock and roll manifesto. From the adrenaline rush of “Footstompin’ Music” to the soulful grooves of “Rock ‘N Roll Soul,” this episode isn’t just a history lesson– it’s a backstage pass to one of the greatest shows on earth.
“Footstompin’ Music” (Mark Farner) Copyright 1971 Storybook Music – BMI
“Rock ‘N Roll Soul” (Mark Farner) Copyright 1972 Cram Renraff Co. – BMI
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TRANSCRIPT:
We’re coming to your town, we’ll help you party it down– we’re the Pantheon Podcast Network, and this is the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page– I’ve got the whole show, that’s a natural fact. In this episode here, we explore one of my favorite songs, getting a deeper understanding of what makes them tick, what makes them a great song.
On the last few episodes, we’ve been looking specifically at live recordings, how a song can come to life when played by a real band in front of a real audience. We’ve been looking at some of the different aspects of live music, how a song can be reinterpreted live, how a band can really take flight live and just play.
And one of the other aspects is the full concert experience itself, from the opening number to the final encore, how a show is built and paced. Some of my favorite moments on live albums are the first tracks; the show openers — from the way deep purple tear into “Highway Star” on their classic “Made In Japan” album; Cheap Trick, kicking off “At Budokan” with “Hello There”, the perfect opening track; when Paul McCartney and Wings open the “Wings Over America” live album with the medley of “Venus and Mars” into “Rock Show” into “Jet”– It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard.
Another one of my favorite one-two punch opening numbers is when Grand Funk Railroad opens their live album, “Caught In The Act” with two back-to-back tracks that set the tone for a rock and roll celebration. So this time, on this episode, we’re going to be listening to not one, but two songs. So let’s get this party started with “Footstompin’ Music” and “Rock ,N Roll Soul” by Grand Funk Railroad.
You may think I’m exaggerating when I say that for a time, Grand Funk Railroad was the biggest rock band in the world. But in the early seventies, they were bigger than Black Sabbath or Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin. They had at least six platinum-selling albums in a row and sold out Shea Stadium in 72 hours– that was faster than the Beatles did. And they did this with virtually no help from the critics or the radio. The critics hated them, and they got almost no airplay on the radio until their 7th album. But let’s start at the beginning.
Terry Knight was a local DJ in Flint, Michigan and a Grade A hustler. He formed a band called Terry Knight and The Pack, which included a drummer named Don Brewer and a bass player named Mark Farner. The Pack never had much success, though they released two albums and some singles and gigged around a lot. Eventually, Terry Knight left the band to start a solo career in New York and ended up as a producer. Meanwhile, Brewer and Farner carried on with The Pack, but eventually they hit rock bottom. Stranded on Cape Cod in Massachusetts in February, in the middle of a blizzard, with no gig and no money, they returned home to Flint and contacted Terry Knight because they knew he had contacts.
Knight agreed to manage them, but at a cost: he wanted complete control as manager and producer. But with no other options, they agreed. By now, Mark Farner had switched to playing guitar, so the first thing they did was recruit a bass player, Mel Schacher, who had been playing with Question Mark and The Mysterians.
The next thing they did was change their name. Terry Knight rechristened them Grand Funk Railroad. It’s kind of a pun, based on the Grand Trunk and Western Railroad, which ran through the Midwest.
Their first big break came when they were able to get on the bill at the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1969. They weren’t even paid for the gig, but they made the most of it by playing their asses off and earning a standing ovation. They went over so well that they were invited back the next day, and the day after that. By the end of the festival, they were the hot new thing and immediately signed to Capitol Records.
Their first album, “On Time”, came out in August 1969. In December, only four months later, they released their second album. It’s just called “Grand Funk”, but fans like to refer to it as “the Red Album”.
They steamrolled across the country, selling out shows, some concerts ending in riots. They released their third album, “Closer To Home” in March. That’s three albums in less than a year. But they were actually getting better. This was their strongest album yet.
Terry Knight celebrated their success by erecting a 60-foot-high billboard in Times Square to promote the “Closer To Home” album. Terry Knight kept up the hype, and he kept the boys busy by constantly being on the road… and away from their books. Knight was taking a big cut of their royalties and performance fees. Mark, Don and Mel were essentially just employees of Grand Funk Railroad enterprises. Terry had all the control.
By now, the band were selling out shows not just in the US, but in the UK and Japan. It was in July 1971 when they sold out Shea Stadium faster than The Beatles. More records followed, including “E Pluribus Funk”, in my opinion, the best of their early albums.
But trouble was brewing. The band was chafing under Knight’s control, and they started wondering, “where’s all the money?” A bitter dispute followed. They sued Knight, and he sued them back. This legal battle went on for two years, and in the end, Knight ended up with a big load of cash and the rights to all their recordings and their songwriting royalties. All the band was left with was the rights to the name Grand Funk Railroad. Ironically, if they had just waited three more months instead of suing, that contract would have expired.
In 1972, they brought in a fourth member, keyboard player Craig Frost, and they released album number six, “Phoenix”. This is kind of a dividing line for fans, from “Phoenix” on. They embraced their R&B roots more, and their sound got just a little more melodic, more hooks. To some fans, this is where they get off the Grand Funk train. But for me, this is where the records get better.
It’s certainly where the records get more popular. In 1973, they bring in Todd Rundgren to produce their next album, “We’re An American Band”, and the title cut is their first number one hit.
They bring Todd Rundgren back to produce their next album, “Shining On”, in 1974, which includes their hit version of “The Locomotion” and the title cut, “Shining On”.
By December of 74, they release another album, “All The Girls In The World Beware”, which featured two big hits: “Some Kind Of Wonderful” and “Bad Time”.
They toured in ‘74 and ‘75 and then released their second live album. They had released a previous live album in 1970, simply called “Live Album”. This second live album is called “Caught In The Act”, and it features all the hits, plus a ton of great album cuts. The band, Mark Farner on vocals, guitar and occasionally keyboards; Craig Frost on keyboards; Mel Schacher on bass; and Don Brewer on vocals and drums, are augmented on this tour by The Funkettes, two backing vocalists named Lorraine Featherson and Jana Giglio.
The original album opens with a long introduction. The sound of the crowd and fireworks going off. That lasts almost three minutes. When the album was issued on CD, they cut most of that out, fading up the crowd just before the band kicks off their opening number “Footstompin’ Music”.
Don and Mel laying down the groove. So there’s Don on drums, Mel on bass and two keyboard parts, because both Mark and Craig are playing organ here. Mark’s keyboard is in the right channel, Craig is in the left. Sounds like Craig maybe switched to playing a clavinet while Mark stays on the organ. Let’s hear just those keyboard parts for a bit.
That’s Don Brewer with the ad libs there. It’s Mark handling the lead vocal.
Let’s focus on just the bass and the drums here, especially that great walking bass part that Mel Schacher is playing.
There’s some great dueling organ swirls there. Let’s just listen to that.
Now Mark is going to step away from the organ and do some good old-fashioned rock and roll preaching.
Now, Mark has had his guitar on this whole time, but he hasn’t played a note on it until now. On this tour, Mark was playing a Valeno 72 Standard. It’s a pretty unusual guitar; it’s made of aluminum. Mark has a fairly unique guitar tone all through this album, but how much of that is strictly due to this guitar? I don’t know.
Let’s bring up this guitar solo in the mix.
And Mark is going to switch back to the organ here.
Let’s bring those vocals to the front.
Let’s go back and just hear that drum fill.
Alright, here comes the big finale. And listen to Mel Shocker’s bass in particular; he is riffing like a madman.
Here’s another great drum fill by Don Brewer.
So “Footstompin’ Music” ends right there. But the party is just getting started. They pause for just a few seconds and then they count right into the next number. “Rock ‘N Roll Soul”. I really dig this whole introduction.
So right there, Mark says “we done this song a long time ago”. This concert was recorded in 1975; the song originally appeared on the “Phoenix” album in 1972. So I don’t know, three years doesn’t seem like a long time ago to me. But I suppose when you’re still in your twenties, releasing two to three albums a year and living at the pace these guys were, three years maybe seems like an awful long time.
I love that transition into the actual song.
Let’s bring up the vocals.
Notice how they change up the groove on this section, especially on the drums. Don Brewer is going to take over the vocals for this section. And I really like what Craig Frost is doing on the keyboards in the left channel. It’s very simple, but I love how it plays off the rhythm of the guitar and the drums.
Mark Farner takes another guitar solo. But first I want to hear what the bass and drums are doing under this section.
Okay, let’s go back and hear that with the guitar solo. More guitar. Now he’s got a flanger on his guitar.
The base goes wild again.
“Footstompin’ Music” and Rock ‘N Roll Soul” by Grand Funky Railroad.
This would be the peak for Grand Funk Railroad. They would release a couple more albums, but sales were declining, and there was tension building within the band… and by 1976, they split.
Mark Farner released a couple of solo albums and Frost, Brewer and Schacher soldiered on, releasing one album under the name “Flint”. They got back together a few times, starting in 1981, and released a couple more albums. In my opinion, those records don’t really hold up.
For quite a while, both Brewer and Frost joined Bob Seeger’s Silver Bullet Band. In fact, Frost still plays with Bob Seeger today. Mel Schacher left the music biz for a while, but he and Brewer have toured versions of Grand Funk Railroad since the late nineties. Mark Farner does his own thing with Mark Farner’s American Band.
Grand Funk can sometimes be a punchline today. They are, after all, Homer Simpson’s favorite band.
But they’re no joke to me. Yes, it’s meat and potatoes rock, but there is some great stuff in their catalog, and I legitimately love this album. As a teenager, I played it over and over, and spent many an hour playing air guitar to this record.
Thanks for joining me here on the Pantheon Podcast Network for another edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. We’ll be back in about two weeks with another new episodes, so join me again then. All of our previous shows, and there’s over 160 of them, can be found on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or find them in your favorite podcast app. Just look for us. You’ll find us in there.
Keep in touch with us on Facebook or send me an email– Lovethatsongpodcastmail.com is the address. And if you’d like to support the show, all I ask is that you tell a friend about it because your recommendation is worth more than any advertising.
I thank you again for listening to this episode. Now go find yourself a copy of “Caught In The Act” by Grand Funk Railroad; put it on your turntable and crank up those first two tracks, “Footstompin’ Music” and “Rock ‘N Roll Soul”.
RESOURCES:
Grand Funk Railroad
https://www.grandfunkrailroad.com/
Shea Stadium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shea_Stadium
Terry Knight and the Pack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Knight_and_the_Pack
Mark Farner
http://www.markfarner.com/
Don Brewer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Brewer
Mel Schacher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Schacher
Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band
https://www.bobseger.com/
Mark Farner’s American Band
http://www.markfarner.com/
Caught in the Act (album by Grand Funk Railroad)
https://www.discogs.com/Grand-Funk-Railroad-Caught-In-The-Act/master/99202
Strap in for a wild ride with Elvin Bishop and his fiery ensemble as they tear through the raucous track “Calling All Cows“, from the rollicking 1977 live album Raisin’ Hell. We dig into this electrifying live performance that showcases a band at the top of their game. A prime example of the musicianship that made the ’70s a golden era for live albums; Elvin Bishop’s Raisin Hell stands out as a testament to that time.
For those who have never heard Elvin’s work, this episode is a perfect introduction. And for long-time fans, it’s a chance to fall in love with his music all over again.
“Calling All Cows” (Earley Dranne) Copyright Excellorec Music Co. BMI
Take advantage of our discount code lovethatsong and save 15% off t-shirts & merch from your favorite bands at OldGlory.com!
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. You are listening to us on the Pantheon Podcast Network, and I am your host, Brad Page. And each episode of this show, I pick one of my favorite songs and we dive into it together, listening for all of those little moments, the special touches that make it a great song. No musical skill or knowledge is required here– all you need is a love for music, and you’re going to fit right in here.
Now, usually on this show we focus on studio recordings, looking at how songs were put together in the recording studio. But on this batch of episodes, we’re focusing on live recordings, tracks from some of my favorite, and kind of lesser-known, live albums. On this episode, we’re going to listen to a track by Elvin Bishop from his 1977 live album “Raisin’ Hell”, featuring his smokin’ hot band, showing just how exciting it can be when a really tight group of musicians cut loose and play. This song is six minutes of pure fun. It’s called “Calling All Cows”.
Elvin Bishop’s image has always been as a country boy, a real hayseed. But as is often the case, the truth, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that. He was born in Glendale, California, in 1942, but he grew up on a farm in Iowa with no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. His family moved to Oklahoma when he was ten, but he was a smart kid. He graduated from high school as a National Merit scholar, earning him a full scholarship to the University of Chicago. Ostensibly, he went there to major in physics, but not coincidentally, it just happened to bring him closer to the blues and R&B music that he loved.
While at the University of Chicago, he met a harmonica player named Paul Butterfield, and they would visit the Chicago clubs, learn from the blues greats, people like Otis Rush, Hound Dog Taylor, Buddy Guy. They formed the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1963. Though Bishop was the original guitarist in the band, he was largely overshadowed by Mike Bloomfield, who joined in 1965. That’s not surprising, as Bloomfield was one of the greatest guitar players of his generation. Almost anyone would have taken second fiddle to him, but Elvin was no second-rate guitarist.
The Butterfield Blues Band released their first album in 1965 and about a year, later cut their second album called “East West”. “East West” is one of the most influential albums of the 1960’s. Along with a selection of typical blues covers, the album features two lengthy instrumental tracks which let the band cut loose, experiment with jazz and elements of Indian ragas. One of the first albums to incorporate these exotic elements in a rock and blues context.
Mike Bloomfield quit the Butterfield band after “East West”. Elvin Bishop would hang on for two more albums, and then he left, too, to start his solo career in 1968. The first Elvin Bishop group album was released in 1969, and over the course of four or five more albums, Elvin built a band around him of tasteful, flexible players who could really jam.
Donnie Baldwin on drums. Michael “Fly” Brooks on bass, Johnny Vernazza on second guitar. These guys were tight, but these albums were all largely under the radar; none of them were close to breaking any sales records.
A singer named Mickey Thomas had been singing background vocals on the last few Elvin Bishop group albums. But on their 6th album, “Strutting My Stuff”, in 1975, Mickey was promoted to full-time band member and got to sing lead vocals on a few tracks, including a little number called “Fooled Around And Fell In Love”.
That was it. That was the secret sauce. The band needed a group of super-tight players who could really hit the groove. Elvin’s guitar out front and Mickey Thomas’ vocals on top. They had a bona fide hit.
They followed the “Strutting My Stuff” album with their next record, “Hometown Boy Makes Good”, and then in 1977 released a live album called “Raisin’ Hell – Elvin Bishop Live”.
1977 was peak Live Album era; everyone was releasing live albums. Many of them became big hits. This is a pretty typical live album of the period. It’s a double album offering a nice retrospective of Elvin’s solo career with a few surprises thrown in. Robert Christgau, the “Dean of American rock critics”, actually gave this album an A minus. So that’s at least one thumbs up. But I really like this album a lot. It’s a selection of tracks recorded across five shows, from March 1976 through February 1977. This particular track, “Calling All Cows”, was recorded at the February 1977 show at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco. “Calling All Cows” originally appeared on the “Juke Joint Jump” album from 1975. Here it’s expanded a bit to really let the band play. And this was a big band. There’s a lot of players on that stage. Of course, you have Elvin Bishop on lead guitar and lead vocal on this track. Mickey Thomas on backing vocals. Johnny Vernazza on guitar. Melvin Seals on keyboards. Don Baldwin on drums. Michael “Fly” Brooks on bass. Billy Slais on saxophone and keyboards, Renee Slais and Debbie Cathey on backing vocals. And Chuck Brooke, Bob Claire, Dave Grover and Bill Lamb on horns. The album was produced by Alan Blazek.
The song kicks off with a drum fill, and it sounds like there’s some percussion, conga drums maybe in there, too. Then the bass and synthesizer play a funky little riff together.
Elvin’s telling someone to wait a minute, I don’t know if he’s talking to the band or the audience, but this song isn’t stopping for anyone.
I love that bass part right there. They’re hitting such a great groove already. Listen to how the horns punch up certain little bits throughout the song. It’s classic.
And now we got a twin guitar part. Elvin and Johnny V playing in harmony. They’re both playing slide guitar here.
Let’s hear just the bass and the drums. Listen to that groove they’re laying down. Here comes the first verse sung by Elvin with, I think, Johnny V singing along with him.
“We’re gonna have a little milk we’re gonna have a little cream, we’re gonna have a little butter, a little margarine”. I mean, come on, is that great or what? I love this song.
There’s a great little lick in there in the left channel. I think it’s played by Johnny V on guitar. But then again, it could be Melvin Seals on keyboards. Let’s back it up a bit and play into that second verse.
Listen to those horn accents and the way they’re locked right in with the drums. This band is tight.
Let’s bring up those twin guitars. Notice how the guitar solo takes a break for the horns to do their thing, before we go back to the guitars. This isn’t just a free form jam. There’s an arrangement here. It feels like they’re just jamming, but there’s a structure behind it all.
Elvin is going to play a little solo. Listen to how the horns are building things up behind the solo, and then they bring it down to just the groove.
The keyboards get a few licks in here. And now another taste of those twin harmony guitars by Elvin and Johnny V. Another crescendo from the horns and back to the twin guitar riff.
And then the last verse. Let’s back off the vocals and just listen to the groove the band is laying down behind them.
Let’s bring the vocals back up now. Here comes a new little piece with some tasty guitar work. On the studio version of this track, the song just fades out at some point. They added this section, and this is actually where they would end the song live, right there. But by this time, they had added the horn section. And here they let the horns pick it back up right at the break and lead the band into an extended finale. It’s an example of how a song can evolve and grow as it’s performed live.
Listen to the bass and drums build the tension here. And then how the whole band just hits this riff. Listen to that bass.
We continue to build to a big finale. They are not done yet. They are going to squeeze every little bit out of this big ending.
The Elvin Bishop Group, “Calling All Cows”.
Commercial success was fleeting for Elvin Bishop. “Fooled Around And Fell In Love” was his one and only hit. But he’s kept making records and touring. He’s a member of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame, and he’s been nominated for a Grammy for Best Blues Album quite a few times, though he hasn’t won yet. At 83 years old, he’s still playing, still got a shot at that Grammy. Hope he gets one. He deserves it.
Mickey Thomas would leave the Elvin Bishop Group after this live album, and not long after that, he joined Jefferson Starship. I love Mickey Thomas’ voice, and I expect we’ll hear from him on this show again sometime.
You know, Elvin has always portrayed himself as a fun-loving, good time boy, but there’s more to his life than just that image. Honestly, I kind of hesitate to bring this up because I don’t like to sensationalize things, but Elvin has suffered real tragedy and pain in his life. In August of 2000, both Elvin’s wife and his daughter were murdered. I can only imagine the toll that that must have taken on him. And again, I don’t want to play up anyone’s suffering for the sake of a podcast, but I think it’s important to acknowledge Elvin Bishop as a full person and respect what he’s been through and his ability to carry on.
Thanks as always for being a part of this episode. I’ll be back in about two weeks with another new show. Who knows what we’ll be talking about then, but I hope you join us. If you missed any of our previous episodes, you can catch up on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com or find us wherever you listen to podcasts. We’re on iTunes and Spotify and YouTube and pretty much everywhere you can listen to podcasts.
If you’d like to support the show– and I hope you do– he first thing you can do is to just tell someone about the show, share it with your friends or family, because it’s recommendations by smart, knowledgeable people like you that really help us out.
On behalf of all the shows here on the Pantheon Podcast Network, I thank you for listening. Go out and find yourself a copy of Elvin Bishop’s “Raisin’ Hell” album. Crank it up and listen to this version of “Calling All Cows”.
RESOURCES:
Elvin Bishop
https://www.elvinbishopmusic.com
Raisin Hell Album
Raisin’ Hell – Elvin Bishop | Album | AllMusic
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/paul-butterfield-blues-band-mn0000019552
East West Album
East-West (The Butterfield Blues Band album) – Wikipedia
Jefferson Starship
https://jeffersonstarship.com
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
https://www.rockhall.com
Blues Hall of Fame
https://blues.org/blues_hall_of_fame/
We dive into the electrifying atmosphere of live music on this episode, as we take a detour from studio recordings to explore the raw energy and spontaneous magic of live performances. This time around, we’re sizing up “Meadows” by Joe Walsh, from his dynamic 1976 live album, You Can’t Argue with a Sick Mind.
Join us as we trace the origins of Joe Walsh’s musical journey and examine the intricate layers of “Meadows,” from the driving guitar riff that hooks you in, to the dual drummers and star-studded band lineup that includes the likes of Don Felder, Jay Ferguson, and Willie Weeks. With two drummers, two keyboard players, and a percussionist, you’ll discover how this ensemble manages a tight, uncluttered sound that defines true musicians. Whether you’re a die-hard Joe Walsh fan or just love the thrill of a great live album, tune in and turn it up.
“Meadows” (Joe Walsh & Patrick Cullie) Copyright 1973 Songs of Universal Inc., Barnstorm Music Inc. and Belkin Music Company
TRANSCRIPT:
We are back once again for another edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. We’re here on the Pantheon Podcast Network, and I’m your host, Brad Page. Each episode, I pick one of my favorite songs, and we delve into it together to see how it works: what goes into making it a great song? As always, musical knowledge or experience isn’t a prerequisite here. We don’t get into music theory or anything too technical. We’re just going to use our ears and sharpen our listening skills.
Now, usually on this show, we focus on studio recordings, where we can examine how a song was put together, the choices made during production and recording. But in the next few episodes, I want to take a look at some live recordings. There are a lot of great live albums out there, some pretty popular and some really famous ones. You know the ones I’m talking about– from “Frampton Comes Alive” to “Kiss Alive”, Allman Brothers “At the Fillmore East”, Thin Lizzy “Live and Dangerous”, Humble Pie “Performance Rocking The Fillmore”, I mean, there’s just so many great live albums.
But what I want to do is go off the beaten path a little bit and play some probably less familiar tracks that highlight different aspects of what I love about my favorite live albums. This time, we’re looking at a track by Joe Walsh from his 1976 live album, “You Can’t Argue With A Sick Mind”. This is a song called “Meadows”.
Joseph Fiddler was born in Kansas in 1947, but he was an army brat and moved around a lot. His father was killed in a plane crash in Okinawa, Japan, when Joe was only a year and a half old. His mother would later remarry when Joe was five, and he took his stepfather’s surname, Walsh.
Like many kids, he was insecure. Never felt like he fit in. But he had a talent for music. His mom was a classical piano player. Maybe he inherited that from her. He got a guitar when he was about ten years old, but it was hearing The Beatles for the first time that really kicked him into gear.
He went to college at Kent State in Ohio and gigged around regularly with a band called The Measles, and eventually hooked up with the James Gang out of Cleveland and became their guitar player. The James Gang was originally a five-piece. But when their keyboard player and lead singer quit right before a gig in Detroit, Joe stepped up and became their lead vocalist as well.
The James Gang built a following, got a recording contract and released three albums between 1969 and 1971, and they had a pretty big hit with the song “Funk #49”.
But Joe was restless with the limitations of that band, and quit the James Gang in ’71. He put together a band called Barnstorm and recorded a couple albums with them, which were really marketed as solo albums. The second album featured “Rocky Mountain Way”, which of course became a big hit.
It was around this time that Joe had met Irving Azoff, who became his manager. Azoff was also managing a little band called The Eagles.
In April of 1974, his wife was driving his daughter to school when someone ran a red light and crashed into them. His wife was knocked unconscious, but his four-year-old daughter suffered major head trauma and didn’t survive. As you can imagine, it was heartbreaking and pushed Joe further into alcohol and cocaine abuse.
At the end of 1974, he released his next album titled “So What”. A number of The Eagles appeared on various tracks on that album, and within a year or so, Joe would become a permanent member of The Eagles.
But in November 1975, before he officially joined The Eagles, Joe was invited to appear on “Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert”, one of the all-time great rock music TV shows. So many great performances on that show, and they’re worth watching just for Don Kirschner’s awkwardly stiff introductions. Classic.
Anyway, Joe put together an all-star band and filmed a live show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on November 26, 1975. It was broadcast on Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert and billed as “Joe Walsh And Friends”. I don’t believe the video of that show was ever officially released; you can find it on YouTube, but the quality is pretty rough. But some of those tracks were released as a live album in March 1976. It was called “You Can’t Argue With A Sick Mind”.
This was the height of live album mania, of course. “Frampton Comes Alive” came out that same year, but this album was a relatively concise single LP. It doesn’t feature everything from the Don Kirchner footage, but it’s really well recorded and well performed. And it’s one of those live albums where I prefer most of these versions over the original studio versions.
This episode we’re listening to the song “Meadows”, which is the second track on this live album. First, let’s have a quick listen to the original studio version, which was released on Joe’s second solo album called “The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get” in 1973.
The live version is a few beats-per-minute faster, as is often the case, but I think the riff and the groove of this song really benefit from being faster. It just feels, well, livelier. And the performance is just great. I mean, look at the lineup of this band:
Of course, you’ve got Joe Walsh on guitars and vocals; Don Felder of The Eagles, also on guitar; Jay Ferguson on keyboards– e was in Jo Jo Gunne and Spirit. We covered one of his Spirit songs in a previous episode. He also had a big solo hit in the seventies called “Thunder Island”.
You also have David Mason on keyboards. This isn’t the Dave Mason who played in Traffic. This is a different David Mason who spent some time playing in Todd Rundgren’s Utopia. You have the great Willie Weeks on bass; he was one of those go-to players. He was on records by David Bowie, George Harrison, Donnie Hathaway, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder. He just played on tons of albums.
And then there are two drummers on this song, both playing together. Andy Newmark and Joe Vitale. Again, both highly regarded session players. Each of them has a credit list a mile long.
Plus you have a percussionist, Rocky Dzidzornu, also known as Rocky Dejon. He played on tons of tracks, including “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones. Now that is what you call an all-star lineup.
Now, let’s get into the track. It begins with Joe Walsh playing the riff before the whole band joins in. I gotta say, this is one of my favorite guitar riffs of all time. So let’s just hear those guitars for a second.
Let’s go back and hear the full band version. And remember, besides two guitars and bass, there are two keyboard players, two drummers and a percussionist all playing together. But notice it doesn’t sound cluttered. Nobody’s over playing. They’re very tight. Those are signs that you’re dealing with real professionals here.
The verses are a little mellower. The keyboards come more to the front. Jay Ferguson is playing piano while David Mason is on the organ. And of course, Joe Walsh with the lead vocal.
Let’s try to bring up the piano and the organ so you can hear how they interact.
I wouldn’t describe Joe Walsh as a typical singer. There’s a lot of quirks to his voice, but I’ve always loved it. It’s unmistakably him. I think he sounds great on the next part of this verse, so let’s hear that.
The riff comes back. Listen to that bass part by Willy Weeks.
Here’s the next verse. Some things are left unspoken some things are handed down the circle stands unbroken sending it back around.
Around during the verses, Andy Newmark is playing the traditional drum kit, but Joe Vitale is just adding fills, playing kettle drums with a pair of mallets. Listen for that.
Now at this point, we come to a new section featuring a guitar solo played by Don Felder. This is different than the studio version. There’s no guitar solo here on that version.
Now if you listen closely, you can hear a buzzing sound, probably coming from one of the guitar amplifiers. These days, they’d be able to remove something like that, but I kind of like it when these things are left in. It makes it feel like a genuine live recording, that they’ve captured something real. Let’s bring up Don Felder’s guitar.
Another thing to note about that section is that Joe Vitale switches from playing drums to playing synthesizer. So there’s only one drummer during that section, but there’s actually three keyboard parts.
At this point, the song builds back into the final verse, but there’s still plenty more of the song left to go.
We’re back to two drummers playing here. And this drum fill coming up is one of the few times where it’s very clear there are two drummers on this song.
Some more tasty playing by Willy Weeks on bass and a nice little Joe Walsh guitar lick here.
Now this is interesting: this is where the song seems like it should end. But they add a whole new section– and this is not part of the original studio version. Jay Ferguson is going to play a little bit on piano and then we’re going to get some extended guitar playing from Joe Walsh and Don Felder. That’s Joe Walsh on the right and Don Felder on the left. This is the kind of dueling guitars that these two would perfect on Hotel California, but they did it here first.
And here’s another new piece of music. Again, this is not part of the original studio recording, either. Jay Ferguson is once again going to take the lead on piano and now Joe Walsh is going to take a solo on his own. Let’s bring up Joe’s guitar for a little bit.
Joe Walsh – “Meadows”.
You can find the video of this performance on YouTube. Just search for “Joe Walsh Meadows live” and you’ll find it. It’s worth watching. Joe wears this goofy coon-skin cap through the whole performance. It looks ridiculous, but that’s Joe. It’s such a great performance though.
Of course, The Eagles would go on to massive success before imploding in 1980. Joe continued making solo records, but he descended deeper into alcoholism and drug dependency. When The Eagles started talking about reforming in 1992, they told Joe straight up they couldn’t do it unless he cleaned himself up. And he did. He got sober, and against all odds, Joe Walsh is still with us today– looking, playing and sounding great.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. We’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. If you missed any of our previous shows, you’ll find them all on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, or look for them in your favorite podcast app.
Be sure to share your thoughts on this song, or any of the other songs we’ve talked about, on our Facebook page; just search for “I’m In Love With That Song” on Facebook and you’ll find us. And of course, you can always send an email to lovethatsongpodcastmail.com.
And if you’re hankering for even more music related podcasts, well, the Pantheon Podcast Network has a bunch of other great music related shows, just waiting for you to discover them. So check them out.
And as always, if you’d like to support this show, the best thing that you can do is to tell someone about it. Recommend it to your friends, your family, or your coworkers, because your endorsement carries a lot of weight. So thank you.
I’ll see you again soon. Thanks for listening to this edition of “I’m In Love With That Song” featuring “Meadows” by Joe Walsh.
RESOURCES:
Joe Walsh
https://www.joewalsh.com/
The James Gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gang
Kent State University
https://www.kent.edu/
Jo Jo Gunne
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Jo_Gunne
Spirit (Band)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(band)
Todd Rundgren’s Utopia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(American_band)
Willie Weeks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Weeks
The Eagles
https://eagles.com/
Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Kirshner%27s_Rock_Concert
The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get (Album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smoker_You_Drink,_the_Player_You_Get
Hotel California (Song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California_(Eagles_song)
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