"Midnight Train To Georgia" (Jim Weatherly) Copyright 1971, 1973 Universal-PolyGram International Publishing, Inc
Introducing a new segment of the podcast – “Creation & Evolution“, where we explore songs that travelled a long & winding road before they reached their final version. In this episode, we trace the history of a song that started from a phone call with Farrah Fawcett and ended up as Gladys Knight’s biggest hit.
“Midnight Train To Georgia” (Jim Weatherly) Copyright 1971, 1973 Universal-PolyGram International Publishing, Inc
TRANSCRIPT:
There’s the telltale theme music… it means it must be time for another episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network. My name is Brad Page, and I’m your musical tour guide, your geologist of another sort, as we explore the rock that made history.
This time, I’m introducing a new segment I’m calling “Creation and Evolution”, where we’ll take a look at both the birth and the journey a song takes before it ends up in its final form. Some songs have a rather short path from the writer’s pen to the final release, but some songs take the long way around, and that’s what we’re going to explore here on “Creation and Evolution”.
For example, what do airplanes, Houston Texas, and Farrah Fawcett have to do with “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips? Let’s find out.
Jim Weatherly was a songwriter from Mississippi who had written a few songs for Dean Martin and Peggy Lee. No hits, though he hadn’t really made his mark yet. One day in 1970, Weatherly called his friend, a struggling actor named Lee Majors, who would find fame as TV’s “Six Million Dollar Man”.
Majors wasn’t around, but his girlfriend, a struggling actress named Farah Fawcett, picked up the phone. She, of course, would eventually star in “Charlie’s Angels”.
Farah and Weatherly got to talking, and she told him she was just about to head out of LA to visit her family, leaving on a midnight plane to Houston. That phrase, “midnight plane to Houston”, stuck in his head. And as soon as he got off the phone, he sat down and in about 40 minutes, he wrote a whole song.
He based the song loosely on Fawcett and Majors. It was about a girl who went to LA to make it big, but when it doesn’t work out, she goes back home and her boyfriend follows her back. Weatherly recorded the song and included it on his 1972 solo album called Weatherly.
It’s a pretty modern country song, but the publisher had some faith in it and sent it around, hoping to find other artists to cover it. They even offered it to Gladys Knight.
But at this point, she passed on it.
They pitched it to another artist, singer Sissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mom. She liked the song, but not the title. She said, “my people are from Georgia, and they didn’t take planes to Houston or anywhere else”. They took trains. And this is just a guess, but I think she might have been concerned about some confusion since her name was Houston and the song was about the city of Houston. Either way, Weatherly agreed to change the lyrics to “Midnight Train to Georgia”.
And besides the title change, this version also changes the genders. Now it’s the man who has failed and is going back home, and it’s the woman who follows him.
Sissy Houston released her version in February 1973.
Meanwhile, in 1973, Gladys Knight and the Pips had left Motown Records and signed a deal with Buddha Records, which gave her more freedom to pick her own material. By this time, Gladys had already had a hit with another Jim Weatherly song, “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye” in 1972.
And when Gladys heard Sissy Houston’s version of “Midnight Train to Georgia”, she knew she could make it work. She envisioned it as an Al green style soul number.
Producer Tony Camillo had worked with everyone from Diane Warwick to Grand Funk Railroad. It was his job to record the instrumental tracks for “Midnight Train” for Gladys. But she wasn’t happy with what he came up with. Too polished, too orchestrated. She wanted something more stripped down. So he cut another version– and she rejected that one, too.
So working with engineer Ed Stasium, who would later become a legendary producer in his own right, working with The Ramones, Talking Heads, Motorhead and Living Color, just to name a few, they put together a small band: Jeff Mirinoff on guitar, Bob Babbitt on bass, Andrew Smith on drums, and Tony Camillo himself on piano. They banged out a simple backing track in an hour and sent it to Gladys, and that was exactly what she was looking for. They overdubbed horns and some strings, but for the most part, they kept it straightforward.
Gladys recorded her vocal in almost one take. No warm up, no run through, no punch-ins. She was well rehearsed and she knew what she wanted. She stepped up to the mic and four minutes later it was almost done. Except for some ad libs at the end, which we’ll get to later.
I love how she’s singing pretty softly there– she’s holding back, but then she lets loose a bit for the next part.
And here’s the first chorus.
Now, notice how the backing vocals by William Guest, Edward Patton, and Bubba Knight, along with Gladys herself, aren’t just singing harmonies or repeating lines from the lead vocal, they’re actually adding commentary. They’re in dialogue with the lead vocal. That’s something that Gladys and The Pips brought to the song. None of the other versions do that.
Here’s the second verse, and let’s bring up the vocals again so we can hear more of that interaction between the lead and the backing vocals.
I love this part.
And check out the backing vocals here.
James Jamerson is the bass player most associated with the Motown sound, and he’s a legend. But Bob Babbitt also played on many Motown classics, too, and he’s a phenomenal player as well. Let’s listen to some of Bob Babbitt’s bass work here.
You gotta love those woo-woos.
Now, I mentioned before how Gladys recorded her vocal in one take, and that’s true, right up until this point in the song. They wanted to have Gladys do some ad-libbing during the final choruses, some of those inspired, energetic interjections that can really add some emotional weight to a song.
The problem was that Gladys didn’t feel like she was a natural at that kind of thing, at least not at this point in her career. She didn’t feel comfortable and kind of froze up at the mic.
Merald Knight, who everyone called “Bubba”, was not only one of the pips, he was also Gladys’ brother. He took a mic into the control room, and with the backing track playing, he fed Gladys some lines into her headphones, and she sang them back as the tape rolled.
Now picture Bubba Knight in that control room looking at Gladys through the glass, singing these lines to her like, “my world, his world, our world”. And she’s singing them back and putting her own spin on them.
Gladys Knight and the Pips – “Midnight Train To Georgia”.
Buddha Records issued “Midnight Train to Georgia” as a single in August 1973, and eventually it worked its way to number one. It won the Grammy for best R&B vocal performance, and it would become Gladys Knight and The Pips calling card for the rest of their career.
Of the original Pips, Edward Patton passed away in February 2005; William Guest died in December of 2015, but Merald Bubba Knight, Gladys’s brother, is still with us, and Gladys herself, as of this recording, is still alive and well. She released her last album in 2014.
Jim Weatherly passed away in February 2021. He was 77.
Thank you for joining me for this episode. We’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, you can binge on all of our past episodes, they’re all on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com.
You can find us on Facebook to share your thoughts and feelings, just look for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, and you’ll find us. You can also send me email at lovethatsongpodcast@gmail.com.
This show is one of many great podcasts on the Pantheon Podcast Network, so be sure to seek out all those other great shows.
To listen to the song again, complete and uninterrupted, stream it, download it, or buy it and support the music you love. Thanks again for joining me for this “Creation And Evolution” episode on Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia”.
Jeff Beck was the guitar player’s guitar player. Ask the great guitar players who they thought was the best, and chances are they’ll name Jeff Beck. His playing was in a state of perpetual reinvention, always evolving & improving. No mere technician, he was a master of emotion. When Jeff passed away in 2023, we lost a musical giant.
On this, our 150th episode, we pay tribute to Jeff by looking back at his 50+ year career, highlighting some of his finest moments.
Use the discount code “lovethatsong” to save 15% on your favorite band merch at Old Glory!
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome, friends. I’m Brad Page, host of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. And this just happens to be the 150th episode of the podcast. So, I wanted to do something different, something special with this episode. And one of the things that I’ve been wanting to do for a while is to pay tribute to Jeff Beck, the brilliant guitarist who died last year. Now, I could have rushed out an episode, but I wanted to do this right. Jeff Beck was a legend, an icon, an inspiration to millions of guitar players. And I believe he was the greatest rock guitarist of all time. So I wasn’t just going to throw something together.
Now, usually on this show, we dive into a specific song; we’ve also done shows where we take a look at a particular year, or focus on a certain event or an individual album, but we’ve never done a retrospective on one artist’s career– until now. So, for this, our 150th show, we’re going to explore the extraordinary career of Jeff Beck.
Why? Because you simply can’t capture what made Jeff Beck great in one song, or one album, or even in one decade of his career. Because there is no guitarist in rock history– I repeat, no guitarist– whose style and technique evolved so much over time, that by the end, he was playing like nobody else on the planet. That was no coincidence. It was the result of a restless spirit who could never stay in one musical place for too long. Someone who never stopped learning, who never stopped working on his playing, who just kept getting better. So let’s explore the sound, the passion, and the fury of Jeff Beck.
Jeffrey Arnold Beck was born June 24, 1944, near London. When he was six years old, he heard a song on the radio. “How High The Moon” by Les Paul and Mary Ford.
When he asked his mother what that sound was, she said, “it’s an electric guitar”, as if Les Paul was somehow cheating by using technology. But that made Jeff even more fascinated.
But it wasn’t until Jeff was about 12 years old before he actually played a guitar for the first time. A friend had an acoustic guitar that he wasn’t using, so Jeff borrowed it. That guitar was missing some strings, but Jeff fashioned some, using some wire from an old electric toy airplane. He saw the film “The Girl Can’t Help It”, which featured Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps playing “Be Bop A Lula”. And he was captivated by the playing of Cliff Gallup, the guitarist for the Blue Caps. Gallup would be a big influence on Jeff.
Jeff built his first electric guitar himself out of wood and parts that he scrounged together. He used to carry it around without a case, even strapping it to his back when he rode his bike, so that people would see it. He wanted to be known as a guitar player.
It was around this time that Jeff’s sister told him about this other kid in the neighborhood who also played guitar and decided to introduce them. That other kid happened to be Jimmy Page. Jimmy said “there was a knock on the door one day, and there was Jeff’s sister, with Jeff holding his homemade guitar”. They immediately became friends.
Jeff joined his first band, The Bandits, in 1960 when he was 16, and then joined the Deltones. He bought his first Fender Stratocaster around this time, it’s a big deal.
And in 1963, Ian Stewart, who was playing piano for the Rolling Stones, turned Jeff onto the blues. And Jeff was particularly struck by Buddy Guy, who became another major influence on Jeff.
He eventually joined the Tridents, and this is where he really started making a name for himself. By now, Jeff was playing a Fender Telecaster into a Vox AC30 Top Boost amp, with a Binson Echorec and a fuzz box he made himself. Here’s a recording of the Tridents playing “Nursery Rhyme”, recorded live in 1964.
The Yardbirds had formed in 1963, with Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass, Jim McCarty on drums, and Chris Dreja and Top Topham on guitars. When Topham quit, they replaced him with a hot, young guitarist named Eric Clapton. They were originally a straightforward blues bass band, but when they recorded the more radio-friendly “For Your Love”, that was a bridge too far for Clapton, who immediately quit.
By then, Jimmy Page was an in-demand session player, working in London’s recording studios and playing on hit records. The Yardbirds asked Jimmy to join, but he wasn’t interested. But Jimmy recommended his friend Jeff Beck for the job, and Beck became a member of the Yardbirds.
He joined them just in time to work on their next single, “Heart Full Of Soul”. The story goes that they had hired a sitar player to play on the song, but when they couldn’t get it to sound right, Jeff said, “let me just try it with my guitar”. And using his Fender Esquire and a Sola Sound Tone Bender fuzz box, he put down on tape the first iconic Jeff Beck guitar part.
Many other classic Yardbirds hits followed, including one of the all-time great psychedelic tracks, “Shapes Of Things”, featuring two layered guitar solos incorporating feedback. Groundbreaking stuff.
Another classic was “Over Under Sideways Down”, featuring an eastern-influenced melody from Jeff. Jeff also played bass on this song.
And one of my favorite Yardbird tracks is this one, an instrumental simply called “Beck’s Boogie” that says showcase for everything Jeff had to offer at this time: his tone, his creative playing and his speed.
But Jeff was always temperamental– accent on the temper. If a gig wasn’t going well, or he just didn’t like his sound, he’d kick his amp over or walk off the stage.
In May of 1966, five of the greatest British musicians got together in a London recording studio to form a “supergroup” that lasted for one song. The Yardbirds manager knew Jeff was unhappy and encouraged him to record some solo tracks, thinking that that would ease the frustration. At the same time, drummer Keith Moon from The Who was feeling antsy and looking for a new opportunity. Jeff went over to Jimmy Page’s house; Jimmy was playing his Fender twelve string electric, and they worked up a song that would become “Beck’s Bolero”. A couple of days later, on May 16, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page showed up at the studio; Keith Moon arrived in secret, wearing a disguise; Nikki Hopkins joined them on keyboards, and Jimmy brought in one of his session friends, John Paul Jones, to play bass. Jimmy played his electric twelve string, and Jeff played a Gibson Les Paul.
At one point during the track, Keith Moon screams and he hit the mic with his drumstick, just smashing the mic. From that point forward, all you can really hear of the drums is the cymbals.
There was talk of them forming a band, but they didn’t have a singer. So Keith went back to The Who, Jeff went back to The Yardbirds, and the supergroup never happened.
In June 1966, Paul Samwell-Smith quit The Yardbirds. They had just finished recording the album that became known as “Roger The Engineer” (in my opinion, that’s The Yardbirds’ masterpiece) and they had gigs lined up. This time Jimmy Page came to the rescue, replacing Samwell-Smith on bass, and on June 21, made his debut with The Yardbirds as their new bass player.
It didn’t take long for Chris Dreja to realize Jimmy Page was just a much better guitar player than he was, so he switched to bass and Jimmy took over on guitar, creating one of the all-time great twin guitar lineups in history: Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, both playing together.
It didn’t last though. Volatile and moody as ever, Jeff finally quit The Yardbirds in the middle of a US tour in late 1966. The Yardbirds continued on as a quartet, with Jimmy handling all the guitar work.
Unfortunately, there are only two tracks that feature the Beck/Page lineup: “Stroll On”, which was featured in the 1967 film “Blow Up “,and “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”, a psychedelic masterpiece, with Jeff Beck conjuring up everything from police sirens to revving engines and bombs dropping. This track also features John Paul Jones on bass.
So by 1967, Jeff Beck found himself at a crossroads, a situation he would find himself in throughout his career. He’d left The Yardbirds, but what to do next? Mickey Most was one of Britain’s most successful producers, and he figured he could turn Jeff Beck into a pop star. Mickey recorded three pop singles with Jeff. “Hi Ho Silver Lining”, “Tallyman” and “Love Is Blue”.
But Jeff Beck was just not meant to be a pop star. He had no appetite for that side of the business. He started putting together his own band, starting with a lead singer named Rod Stewart and a guitarist, Ron Wood, who switched to bass. Mickey Waller joined them on drums, and the first Jeff Beck Group was born. With the support of Peter Grant, who would become Led Zeppelin’s manager, the Jeff Beck gGroup signed to Epic Records and released their first album, “Truth”, in July 1968.
Whereas the Yardbirds mix blues with pop and psychedelia, the Jeff Beck Group’s debut album is a slab of heavy blues rock, beating Led Zeppelin to the punch by about five months.
Their second album, “Beckola”, followed in June 1969. This album featured Tony Newman on drums with Nicky Hopkins on piano. And if anything, it’s even heavier than its predecessor.
Both albums sold well, but the writing was on the wall and the band split up. They were supposed to play at Woodstock, but Jeff backed out. He didn’t think they were good enough. Rod Stewart, Ron Wood, and Mick Waller would go on to record Stewart’s first solo album, and then Stewart and Wood joined the Faces… but that’s a story for another podcast.
Meanwhile, Jeff formed a new Jeff Beck Group and released two more albums in ‘71 and ‘72. Though both records have their moments, neither is particularly strong and didn’t do particularly well, either critically or commercially. The albums are most notable for introducing two musicians, Max Middleton on keyboards and a drummer named Cozy Powell.
So Jeff broke up the band and tried his hand at another supergroup, teaming with bassist Tim Bogart and drummer Carmine Appice, who had played together in Vanilla Fudge and Cactus.
Around this time, Stevie Wonder got Jeff to play on the song “Looking For Another Pure Love”, which would appear on Stevie’s next album, “Talking Book”.
One day, while messing around in the studio together, Stevie came up with the riff to “Superstition”. He finished writing the song with the intention of giving it to Jeff, but when Motown heard the song, they insisted that Stevie record it, put it on the album, and release it as a single. But Beck, Bogart, and Appice did record a version of it, and it’s probably the highlight of the one studio album they released together.
Once again, egos and personality conflicts took over and the band split. So Jeff found himself at another crossroads. He wasn’t really getting anywhere in terms of critical or commercial success, and he felt he was spinning his wheels creatively. Something had to change.
So he went into the studio with Max Middleton, who played on the last couple of Jeff Beck Group albums, along with Phil Chen on bass, and drummer Richard Bailey, and a producer named George Martin– the same producer who worked with The Beatles, along with many others, including John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, who Jeff was really into at that point.
Together, they produced an album that took Jeff into a totally new direction, a jazz/rock/funk fusion that was unique. Didn’t sound like anything else at that time. But it wasn’t just the style of the music that changed. Jeff actually changed the way he played, a different way of approaching the guitar, reinventing his style and technique.
The album was called “Blow By Blow”, and it turned out to be his most commercially successful album ever. An all-instrumental album, no vocals, that made it to number four on the Billboard chart and earned Jeff a whole new level of respect.
Let’s look at a couple of tracks from the “Blow By Blow” album. This is my personal favorite Jeff Beck album. I can’t say for sure, but from what we know, Jeff was probably using his 1954 Gibson Les Paul with an Ampeg VT40 amp, Crybaby Wah Wah pedal, Colorsound Overdrive and a ZB Custom volume pedal.
One of the standout cuts on the album is a song called “Thelonious”, written by Stevie Wonder, and though he’s not credited on the album, Stevie actually plays clavinet on this track.
Another fan favorite is “Freeway Jam”, which became a staple of Jeff’s live performances. Seems pretty clear to me he’s playing a Fender Stratocaster on this one.
One of the outstanding moments on the album is “Because We’ve Ended As Lovers”, also written by Stevie Wonder. Another one of Jeff’s favorite guitarists was Roy Buchanan. Jeff dedicated this song to Roy, and you can hear Roy’s influence on Jeff’s playing here. This is one of Jeff’s greatest performances, and the song remained part of his live gigs for years. On this track, I believe Jeff was playing a modified Fender Telecaster with Seymour Duncan humbucking pickups installed in it.
Jeff hit the road in 1975, touring with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, then he returned to the studio with George Martin to record his next album, “Wired”. This time the band featured Jan Hammer on synthesizer– he played a key role in the sound of this album, pushing the music further into the jazz fusion direction. Jeff toured with the Jan Hammer Group in 1976 and they recorded a live album together.
Here’s another track from the “Wired” album, this is Jeff’s version of the Charles Mingus classic “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”.
Jeff recorded one more album in the jazz fusion arena called “There And Back” in 1980, and then he went quiet for a few years. His next album came out in 1985, called “Flash”. It’s kind of a hodgepodge, probably his most commercially oriented album. It’s also my least favorite Jeff back album.
You got the feeling that Jeff was at another crossroads, not sure where to go next, so he just retreated from the public eye again. But he didn’t stop playing. In fact, his playing went through the most radical reinvention yet. He stopped using a pick, developing his own unique finger style, and he developed a way of incorporating the Stratocaster’s vibrato arm, the whammy bar, into his playing that was entirely unique. Sui generis, unlike anything else. This was not the Van Halen dive bombs or the Hendrix freakouts; this was an extremely controlled use of the vibrato, using sustain feedback and a surgical like use of the whammy bar to create microtones– notes between the notes, sounds you shouldn’t be able to make on a guitar. It took years of painstaking work for him to develop this way of playing. I’m simply in awe of it.
This technique was in full display on his next album, “Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop”. Released in 1989, this album features Tony Hymas on keyboards and legendary drummer Terry Bozzio. And it’s another left-turn for Jeff’s career, incorporating the sounds and technology of the ‘80’s into his music.
But the highlight of the record is a track called “Where Were You” that fully displays his new approach to playing. Using just the volume control on his Strat, along with the vibrato arm, he manipulates fretted notes and harmonics to produce a hauntingly beautiful vocal-like sound.
Jeff went on a co-headlining tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan and it was very successful. But when it was over, he stepped back again, this time due to his increasing issues with tinnitus, a severe ringing in the ears.
Jeff spent the next few years doing occasional session work and guest appearances, turning up on records by John Bon Jovi and Roger Waters. Then in 1992, he released two almost simultaneous projects, and they couldn’t be more different. One of them was the soundtrack to a TV series called “Frankie’s House”. The other was a tribute to his original guitar hero, Cliff Gallup– an album of Gene Vincent covers called “Crazy Legs”. Here, he sets aside all of his newly-developed technique and pays tribute to Gallup by emulating that classic sound and style.
Occasional session work followed, and one big tour in 1995 with Santana, but we didn’t get any new music until 1999, when he released “Who Else!”, The first of three albums inspired by electronica and bands like The Prodigy. It was also the first album where Jeff worked with another guitarist, Jennifer Batten. Jennifer was one of the most sought after hired gun guitarists in the late 80’s and 90’s. She toured with Michael Jackson for ten years. But Jeff was one of her heroes and she jumped at the chance to work with him.
Jennifer was a major contributor to the album and co-wrote the song “What Mama Said”.
That album was followed a year later by “You Had It Coming”, an album that again featured Jennifer Batten, with a guest appearance by Imogene Heap on a version of the old Muddy Waters classic, “Rollin’ And Tumblin’”
This album also features what I think is one of Jeff’s crowning achievements: a simply stunning track called “Nadia”. He had heard the track originally recorded by Nitin Sawhney and was fascinated by the female vocal melody.
This vocal style makes use of microtones that aren’t part of our western musical notation. These are notes that aren’t playable on a traditional guitar. But Jeff, using his meticulous vibrato bar technique, painstakingly learned that vocal melody, phrase by phrase. I can’t even begin to explain the complexity and difficulty of pulling off something like this, but Jeff did it, and would continue to do it as part of his live show.
Jeff released a third electronica-themed album, simply called “Jeff” in 2003, which included another of his vocal adaptations, this time drawing inspiration from the Bulgarian Female Vocal Choir on a track called “Bulgaria”.
That was a very fertile period for Jeff, releasing three albums within four years. He hadn’t been that prolific since the early 70’s. But after that last album, he stepped back again. He did release a live album in 2008 that’s one of my top favorite Jeff Beck records. It’s called “Live At Ronnie Scott’s” and Jeff is just brilliant on that album. It features an amazing version of the Beatles song “A Day In The Life”, which he won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
In 2009, he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame for the second time, as a solo artist. (He was already inducted as a member of The Yardbirds.) In 2010, he returned with his 10th studio album called “Emotion And Commotion”. Half of those tracks featured guest vocalists like Joss Stone and Imelda May. The other half were instrumentals. Here’s one called “Hammerhead”.
Absolutely ferocious. Jeff was 65, 66 years old when this record came out, and he was still as fierce a player as ever. But of course, he could also be incredibly delicate. The same album includes a beautiful version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”, recorded in the studio with a live 64-piece orchestra.
Six years later, in 2016, he released what would be his final solo album, a record called “Loud Hailer”. And this is one of my favorite Jeff Beck studio albums. Jeff had heard these two women, vocalist Rosie Bones and guitarist Carmen Vandenberg– they have a band called Bones UK– and Jeff liked what he heard and asked them to collaborate on this album.
Now, let me point out one thing that’s worth noting here: going back to Jeff’s work with Jennifer Batten, through his tours featuring the great bass players Tal Wilkenfeld and Rhonda Smith, to this album where he shared the spotlight with Rosie and Carmen, Jeff was a real supporter of women musicians. Not just for novelty or “eye candy”, these were all women who could really play and deserved to be there. But he gave these women a chance in the spotlight and brought them in front of new audiences around the world. He deserves some credit for that.
Almost all of the tracks on “Loud Haler” are co-written by Jeff, Carmen and Rosie, and shows, once again, Jeff fitting his style into a modern context.
Jeff would release one more album, kind of a one-off duo with Johnny Depp in July 2022. And then on January 10, 2023, Jeff Beck died from a bacterial meningitis infection. He was 78 years old.
It was a shock in the guitar playing community. Virtually every guitarist you can think of paid tribute to Jeff.
There have been many great guitar players; I believe Jeff was the greatest. There are many reasons why– I won’t go through them all, but here’s just one reason: Jeff never stopped getting better. His playing grew and changed and improved.
Let’s look at most of the iconic players. Of course, Jimi Hendrix died young, so we don’t know what his playing would be like now. Same for Randy Rhodes and Stevie Ray Vaughan. But let’s look at Eric Clapton, who I really admire as a player, but some people think his playing peaked with cream in the 60’s, others think it peaked in the 70’s… But either way, if you listen to Eric Clapton today, has he evolved much since then?
Let’s look at Jimmy Page– Again, another player who I absolutely love, but has he done anything that surpassed his work in the 70s?
What about Eddie Van Halen? His guitar playing shook the world in 1978, but from then to his death in 2020, can you honestly say his playing radically improved or changed? I don’t hear it.
No disrespect meant to Eddie, or to Brian May or Tony Iommi… Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse, Joe Bonamasa, they may all be better technical players, in terms of speed or knowing more theory, but none of them– no one– revamped, revised, rebuilt their style and technique from the ground up as much, or as often, as Jeff Beck. None of them changed and evolved and improved over the course of their career as Jeff Beck. And he was still improving. He was never satisfied and he was always pushing himself to get better.
There is no contemporary or current guitarist who continually developed and improved over their career like Jeff Beck. Nobody who went from this:
To this:
To this.
To the point where he was playing radically different and better in his 70’s than he did in his 20’s. It’s amazing, nobody could touch that technique. He was one of a kind.
There are new generations of brilliant guitarists, from Bumblefoot to Buckethead. players like Omar Garcia-Lopez, Tosin Abbasi, Plini, Rabia Massad… they are all brilliant players at the top of their game, but we’ll see– when they’re in their 70’s, will their playing have evolved and deepened as much as Jeff Beck’s?
Thank you for joining me for this special episode looking at the career of Jeff Beck. Trust me when I say we’ve just scratched the surface of his work. Go pick up some of his albums. A great place to start is the “Live At Ronnie Scott’s” album. There’s also a great documentary called “Still On The Run”, which I highly recommend.
I’ll be back in two weeks with another new episode. Thanks for being a part of the last 150 shows, and if that’s not enough, you’ll find even more shows on the Pantheon Podcast Network, enough to satisfy any music junkie.
Please keep in touch and until the next time, I’ll leave you with one final track. This is from the aforementioned “Live At Ronie Scott’s” album. It’s the live version of Jeff playing “Where Were You”. This is how he closed that show, and it’s a fitting way to close out this episode. Jennifer Batten described this as “basically impossible, it’s an impossible tune”. Well, impossible for anyone– except Jeff Beck.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Jeff Beck https://www.jeffbeck.com/
"Dead End Street" (Ray Davies) Copyright 1966 Davray Music Limited. Carlin Music Corporation.
“Dead End Street” marked a shift in Ray Davies’ songwriting. His songs began to take on a more UK-specific focus. And if not political, it was at least more socially pointed, as he sings about an out-of-work, impoverished couple who wonder, “What are we living for?” 50+ years on, many still ask that same question.
“Dead End Street” (Ray Davies) Copyright 1966 Davray Music Limited. Carlin Music Corporation.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Greetings to all of you dedicated followers of fashion, my name is Brad Page, host of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, here on the Pantheon Network of Podcasts. Each episode of this show, I pick one of my favorite songs and we explore it together, on our quest to understand what makes a song great. You don’t have to be a musical expert or know anything about music theory. We don’t get that technical here. We just use our ears to do some “forensic listening” and see what we discover. On this episode, we’re digging into an all-time classic song by one of the all-time classic bands: this is The Kinks with “Dead End Street”.
The Kinks are indeed a legendary band, one of the most important and influential bands to come out of the 60’s. But in some ways, I think they’re overlooked. Although in recent history they’ve been viewed in a new light, I don’t think they ever received commercial success that’s commensurate with their influence.
The Kinks formed in 1963 in an area of north London called Muswell Hill. Two brothers, Ray and Dave Davies, were the nucleus of the band. Now, I’ve heard that their last name should actually be pronounced “Davis”, but here in America, for literally decades, it’s been pronounced “Davies”. And if I said “Davis”, no one would even know who I was talking about. And I’ve been saying “Davies” for almost 50 years. And honestly, if I tried to change it now, I’m sure I would slip up somewhere along the line in this podcast, which would just make it more confusing. So, I’m going to continue pronouncing it “Davies”, and I apologize to anyone who’s annoyed by that.
Ray Davies was the primary singer and songwriter, and he played guitar. His younger brother, Dave Davies, played lead guitar and would occasionally sing a lead vocal. The original lineup of the band that became The Kinks included Pete Quaife on bass and Mick Avery on drums. Working with producer Shell Talmy, they signed a record deal with Pye Records in early 1964. The band was persuaded to cut a version of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” and release that as their first single. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a great version. From what I understand, it was a song that they’d never even played before, and it doesn’t feel to me like their hearts were really in it. Not surprisingly, the song failed to make much of a dent on the charts.
Their second single was an original written by Ray Davies called “You Still Want Me”, which sold even less than that first single. It didn’t even make the charts, but at least it was one of their own compositions.
But their third single, that was a different story.
Written by Ray Davies, “You Really Got Me” was released in August 1964 and was a number one hit in the UK. It was a top ten hit in the US. But beyond being a hit, this song earned its place in history based on their performance and the sound alone. As legend tells it, guitarist Dave Davies slashed his speaker with a razor to get that gnarly guitar sound. As opposed to blues or 50’s rock and roll, this was the sound of Rock music, arguably the first real Rock Guitar riff. It set the template for all the hard rock and, yes, heavy metal that would come. You cannot underestimate the importance of this song.
They followed that with a string of incredible singles. Most of them have become classics, including “All Day And All Of The Night”, “Tired Of Waiting”, “See My Friends”, “A Well Respected Man”, “Till The End Of The Day”, “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” and “Sunny Afternoon”. Just an amazing run of songs.
And in November 1966, they released their 15th single– at least I believe it was their 15th single in the UK—“Dead End Street”, once again written by Ray Davies.
Ray had been continually improving and evolving as a writer, and “Dead End Street” is, I think, somewhat of a milestone in he Kinks catalog. In previous songs, Ray had explored topics like class, fashion and wealth, all with a satirical bent. But he was tackling something a little more serious here. This is a song about poverty. It’s been said that this is the song where Ray’s lyrics moved from social observation to social commentary.
Ray started with a backstory for this song: it was about a couple that wants to emigrate to Australia under what was known as the Assisted Passage Migration scheme, which was instituted to increase the population of Australia. But the couple in this song can’t find a job in Australia, so the plans fall through and they are stuck in England with no work there either.
Ray and Dave’s sister Rose had actually emigrated to Australia, so that was a source of inspiration. And in fact, a few years later, Ray would write a whole concept album based on Rose and her husband—“Arthur”.
Now, in June 1966, before they recorded this track, Pete Quaife was injured in a car accident and decided to leave the band. John Dalton joined the band on bass and he plays on this track. However, shortly after the song was recorded, Pete Quaife returned to the band. So Quaife appears in the promo film for this song. It’s kind of a proto-MTV video. You can find it on YouTube, but it is John Dalton who actually plays on this track.
The band recorded two versions of “Dead End Street”. They initially recorded it with their regular producer at the time, Shell Talmy. Talmy added an organ and a French horn to the song, but the band was unhappy with that version. So when Talmy left for the day at 05:00, the band decided to rerecord it on their own, this time bringing in the great Nicky Hopkins on piano. And Ray decided that he wanted a trombone instead of a French horn. So they went down to the local pub, where a lot of the session musicians would hang out. And they found a trombone player named John Matthews, and they dragged him back to the studio to add a trombone part.
So, the song features Ray Davies on lead vocals, Dave Davies on backing vocals, acoustic guitar and bass, John Dalton on backing vocals and bass, and Mick Avery on drums, with Nicky Hopkins on piano and John Matthews on trombone.
Now, you may have noticed that I credited both Dave Davies and John Dalton with playing bass, and that’s because there are actually two bass parts on this song. One is played on a typical Fender bass, while another part is played on a Danelectro bass, which has a brighter, twangier sound. When the song begins, you can hear both bass parts with that twangy Danelectro sound right up front.
And let’s hear a little of that trombone part. And that short intro will take us right into the first verse.
At this point, Ray was writing songs so rapidly that he was pulling ideas and inspiration wherever he could find them. He was living in an old house at that time. That had a crack in the ceiling and he used that to kick off this first verse.
On the second part of the verse, Ray doubles his vocals.
The instrumental backing also follows that vocal line, which reinforces the melody. Let’s hear that all together now.
That section there that leads us into the chorus that takes advantage of the woozy but mournful sound of the trombone, and there’s a nice simple snare drum fill that kicks off that part.
Really nice use of gang vocals here. Leading into the chorus, Ray sings, “We’re strictly second class and we don’t understand.” And then the crowd chants “Dead End” like they’re voicing their anger and frustration.
Then the call and response pattern switches. Instead of the crowd chanting first, they respond to Ray’s call of “Dead End Street” with a defiant “yeah”.
And that brings us directly into the second verse.
And that trombone plays a pretty prominent part in this verse.
Let’s listen to that.
And here’s the part of this song where he talks about losing the chance to emigrate to Australia and not being able to work.
“People live on Dead End Street, people are dying on Dead End Street, I’m going to die on Dead End Street”. You know, a lot of Ray’s songs are satirical, sardonic, farcical, but this song, lyrically, this song can be straight up bleak. I think Ray saw himself as kind of a champion for these people. The working class. He would mock those of us who were pompous, spoiled and greedy. But at this point anyway, he sympathized with the common man.
Mick Avery does some tasty little drum fills during the chorus, so let’s go back and listen to that.
That brings us to a short instrumental section that features the trombone. You can also hear that twangy Danelectro bass here. And they also add in some hand claps.
Let’s bring up the vocals again on this chorus.
There’s some terrific bar-room style piano under the chorus, played by the great Nicky Hopkins. Nicky was the go-to guy at the time. He must have been the busiest piano player in England all through the into the 70’s, he played on so many records. Let’s see if we can bring up his piano in the mix.
As the song approaches the final fade out, the hand claps return and the trombone takes a solo on the way out.
The Kinks – “Dead End Street”
As I mentioned before, The Kinks shot a promotional film for this song. It’s one of a number of films that could claim to be the first music video; it’s always a fuzzy science to determine the first of anything like this, but the clip for “Dead End Street” was definitely a very early precursor to the MTV style video. Instead of lip syncing to the song, the film shows the band acting out a scene where they’re dressed as undertakers carrying a coffin. Eventually the body, or the ghost from the body, jumps out of the coffin and escapes.
Of course, the BBC refused to show it, they said it was in bad taste. But you can watch it on YouTube now.
Thanks for joining me for this episode. If you enjoyed this one, there’s plenty more like it. You can find all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. Or just search for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on Amazon, Google, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere that you can find podcasts, you’ll find this show.
You can keep in touch with us on our Facebook page, just look for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. That’s also a great place to leave comments or feedback. And if you’d like to support the show, the best thing you can do is to just tell people about it. Share it with your friends, because your word of mouth is the best advertising that any podcast could get. I will be back in two weeks with another new show. Until then, check out some of the other great podcasts on the Pantheon Network. And thanks for listening to this episode on “Dead End Street” by the Kinks.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: The Kinks https://www.thekinks.info/
"See No Evil" (Verlaine) Copyright 1977 Double Exposure Music Ltd. ASCAP
Television came out of the CBGB’s scene in New York (in fact, they were the first rock band to play the legendary club), but they never fit the “Punk” or “New Wave” label. They were unique, which is why their debut album Marquee Moon sounds timeless, as fresh today as the day it was released in 1977. Fronted by two great guitarists– the mercurial Richard Lloyd and the enigmatic Tom Verlaine, who also provided unorthodox vocals and most of the songwriting– Television would influence generations of bands that followed. Though they never achieved commercial success, Marquee Moon regularly appears on virtually every “Greatest Albums Of All Time” list. On this episode, we explore the track that opens the album, “See No Evil“.
“See No Evil” (Verlaine) Copyright 1977 Double Exposure Music Ltd. ASCAP
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello once again, fellow music travelers. My name is Brad Page, and this is the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast, coming to you on the Pantheon Podcast Network. Each episode of this show, I pick a favorite song and try to get a handle on why it’s such a great song; what is it about this song that draws me in? Hopefully you find something in each of these songs, too. We don’t get deep into technical details or music theory, I’d rather talk about the arrangement, the performances, the production, and the emotional effect of the song. Our journey on this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast brings us to the band Television and the song “See No Evil”.
[Music]
A couple of years ago, back on Episode 39 of this podcast, we explored a song by Richard Lloyd, one of the guitarists in Television, and we talked about Television quite a bit then. But last year– in fact, one year ago this month– we lost Tom Verlaine, the other guitarist and primary singer and songwriter for television. He passed away on January 28, 2023. So, I wanted to revisit Television and dive into one of their classic songs.
Television was one of the first, if not the first, so-called punk band to play the legendary CBGB’s club in New York City, and were critical in launching the punk and new wave movement that changed music history. Television was founded in late 1973 when two friends, Richard Myers and Tom Miller, who had run away to New York City in the 60’s, met a guitarist named Richard Lloyd, and they recruited a drummer, Billy Ficca. Billy had played with Myers and Miller before, in a band called Neon Boys, but they never went anywhere. Myers and Miller were actually more successful writing and publishing their own poetry. By the time Television came together, guitarist Miller had changed his name to Tom Verlaine, and Myers, on bass, became Richard Hell. This kind of self-invention is an essential element in the sound and the approach of Television. This was the era of glitter and glam, of long hair and Led Zeppelin. But Television, largely driven by the aesthetic of Richard Hell, wore their hair short and dressed in tattered clothes. Legend has it that Malcolm McLaren was inspired by Richard Hell’s look and brought that image back to England, and the Sex Pistols who he managed.
Patty Smith was there for Television’s early gigs at CBGB’s and as a writer and a critic for magazines like Cream, she was an early booster of Television and the whole CBGB scene, publicizing the sights and the sounds and helping to create the mythology that was the New York punk scene of the 1970’s.
In 1974, the band went into the studio to lay down some demos with Brian Eno producing. But Verlaine was not happy with the results, and no record label signed the band. So they returned to CBGB’s, playing two sets a night. These Eno demo tapes have never been officially released and remain among the most legendary, infamous bootlegs, much like the Beatles in Hamburg, Germany.
Television’s steady gigs at CBGB’s tightened them up and refined their sound. But tensions grew between Verlaine and Hell, as Verlane became more and more the focus of the band, and Hell quit the band in April 1975. It was a pretty acrimonious split. He was replaced by Fred Smith, who’d been playing bass with Blondie.
The band got tighter, better, and some songs got longer, with extended dueling guitars between Verlaine and Lloyd. This interplay is one of the most important elements in Television sound, right up there with Verlaine’s lyrics and idiosyncratic voice. Bands with two distinctive lead guitarists were not new, but Television brought the guitar solo into a punk and new wave context in a unique way. And it’s the thing that I love the most about this band.
Finally, around 1976, Television signed a recording contract with Electra Records. By this point, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and Patty Smith had already released albums, even though Television had been on the scene first. They hit the studio in November ‘76 with producer Andy Johns, whose resume includes albums by Led Zeppelin and the Stones. Andy Johns has worked on some of the greatest records of all time. Verlane said they chose Andy Johns because he got decent rock and roll sounds without messing with the arrangements.
The first television album, “Marquee Moon”, was recorded in three weeks. The band wanted to keep the sound stripped down and minimal. No horns or strings, no synthesizers, no acoustic guitars. They wanted to capture their live sound, but they had spent months before rehearsing for the record, and they were ready.
Their debut album, “Marquee Moon”, is widely considered one of the greatest debut albums of all time. An incredibly influential album, even though sales-wise it was considered a flop. It sold less than 80,000 copies in the US and didn’t even crack the Billboard Top 200. But today, look at any list of the greatest albums of all time and you’re guaranteed to find Television’s “Marquee Moon” on that list somewhere. It’s just another example where sales and charts are no indication of greatness.
The album opens with the song “See No Evil”. “See No Evil” was written by Tom Verlaine and performed by Billy Ficca on drums, Fred Smith on bass, Richard Lloyd on guitar, and Tom Verlaine on guitar and lead vocals. It was produced by Andy Johns and Tom Verlaine.
The track begins with Verlaine’s guitar on the left. The bass comes in with a few notes high up on the neck, and then the drums join in, along with Richard Lloyd’s guitar on the right.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the guitars here, because there’s two very different approaches happening: Tom Verlaine’s guitar is about as straightforward as you can get. It’s one guitar track, no overdubs or doubling of parts. Just Tom on his 1958 Fender jazz master, probably playing through a Music Man 410HD amplifier.
Lloyd, on the other hand, is playing multiple parts, doubled, tripled or more. Most likely, he’s playing his Fender 1961 Stratocaster through a Fender Super Reverb amp. So, you’ve got this mix of simplicity and complexity going on. Let’s hear that intro again.
This is where Tom Verlaine’s vocals come in for the first verse. Verlane’s vocals are easily the most punky thing about the band. If they had had a different, more traditional singer, they might not have even been lumped in with punk or new wave. Underneath the vocal, the band keeps churning, especially Richard Lloyd’s guitar and Billy Ficca’s drums, both giving the song the sound of a repetitive, unstoppable machine. Remember, this is the first song on their first album, and the first thing we hear out of Tom Verlaine’s mouth is “What I want, I want now” — quite a statement of purpose from a young band breaking new ground.
That delivers us to the first chorus. As the backing vocals repeat, “I see no”, Verlaine sings over the top, “I understand all destructive urges, it seems so perfect”. And then the band builds to a climax on “I see no evil”.
I love that chorus. There’s just so much great stuff going on there. Let’s listen to the bass and drums first. Listening to them by themselves, you might get the impression of a disco song. This was New York in 1976. Disco was at its peak and hadn’t worn out its welcome yet. That sound was in the air everywhere in New York City at that time, and a little bit of that flavor made its way into this track.
Add the guitars back in and they bring the edgier rock and roll elements again. Listen to the contrasts between the guitars. Verlaine’s guitar on the left plays big slashing chords, bringing the aggression, while Richard Lloyd’s guitar is playing arpeggios on the right, adding a sense of suspended tension, waiting to be resolved by that final walk down the scale to return to the verse melody.
And here we have the second verse. Let’s talk about Verlaine’s lyrics for a minute. Rarely anything literal, his lyrics move from really clever wordplay to indecipherable phrases. This verse has a little of both. It begins, “I get ideas, I get a notion, I want a nice little boat made out of ocean”. I like that one.
Then it continues. “I get your point. You’re so sharp”. That’s great. And then he sings “Getting good reactions with your Bebo talk”. Now, if you have any idea what “Bebo talk” means, please let me know. I think maybe only Tom Verlaine understood that line.
Now, if I had to guess, I would say that he was singing “when your people talk” there. But according to the official lyric sheet that comes with the album, it’s “Bebo talk”, so your guess is as good as mine.
There’s a nice, tasteful little drum fill there by Billy Ficca, and that gets us into the next chorus.
This time. Let’s bring up the vocals on the chorus.
That scream at the end there is great. That leads right into a guitar solo by Richard Lloyd. Both Verlaine and Lloyd were excellent soloists with their own distinctive style. On some Television tracks, they trade lines or play off of each other, but on this song, Richard Lloyd takes the solo by himself. He’s overdubbed this solo. You can hear his multi layered, repetitive pattern continuing to play in the right channel while the solo sits on top, in the middle. He begins with a melodically climbing pattern.
He tosses off some rapid-fire licks there, and then plays a descending phrase that has a middle eastern feel to it. I really like this bit a lot.
Again, some pretty flashy playing there at the end. As guitarists, both Lloyd and Verlaine were in a whole other league compared to most of the bands on the CBGB scene.
Let’s bring up the bass and the drums on this final verse.
Verlaine concludes this verse by returning to the opening lines, “what I want, I want now and it’s a whole lot more than anyhow”. And then he adds, “get it?” to drive the point home.,
Now as we reach the end of the song, they kind of merge the verse and the chorus together. Here’s what the guitars, bass and drums start playing. On top of that, you have one voice repeating “I see no evil”, while at the same time, another voice sings variations on “I’m running wild with the one I love. Pull down the future with the one you love”. It’s a somewhat chaotic but exuberant call to action. It’s a great way to end the song, and to open one of the most essential albums in rock history.
The bass is really grooving during this part. There’s also a guitar playing a nice little descending part in there, too.
Television – “See No Evil”.
Many critics raved after the release of the “Marquis Moon” album, the band toured both the US and the UK. They were more successful overseas, but in the US, outside of New York, they were relegated to playing clubs and college towns. Verlaine believed that the band were just too closely identified with that New York scene and that the punk label hurt them.
The band was broke. At one point, they had to sell all of their equipment just to survive, and Richard Lloyd was developing a serious heroin habit. The band recorded their second album, “Adventure”, released in April 1978. The album doesn’t really capture the magic of that first record. For one thing, Richard Lloyd had been hospitalized for weeks due to a heart condition caused by his drug abuse, and so his participation on that second album was limited.
At any rate, the second record fared no better than the first, and by July 1978, Television called it quits. Years later, a few reunions would follow, and they even recorded one final album in 1992.
As I mentioned at the top of the show, Tom Verlaine passed away one year ago, on January 28, 2023. He was 73 at the time of this recording. Billy Ficca, Fred Smith, and Richard Lloyd are still with us.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I will be back in two weeks with another new episode. Until then, catch up on all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com. Or you can also find us on any podcast, app or service– Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Yada yada yada, this podcast is available on all of them.
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On behalf of everyone here at the Pantheon podcast Network, I thank you for supporting all of our shows, and thanks for listening to this episode on “See No Evil” by Television.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Television (band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_(band)
CBGB’s club https://www.cbgb.com/
Tom Verlaine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Verlaine
Richard Lloyd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lloyd_(guitarist)
"Run Through The Jungle" (John Fogerty) Copyright 1970 Jondora Music
Creedence Clearwater Revival were quite the phenomenon from 1967 to 1972. During that short period– only 5 years– they racked up ten songs in the Top 20, 5 of them making it to #2. In the middle of that run, they released “Run Through The Jungle” in April 1970. The song is often identified with the Viet Nam war, but we explore the true roots of the song and listen to the individual elements that make up this great track.
“Run Through The Jungle” (John Fogerty) Copyright 1970 Jondora Music
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, friends, it’s Brad Page, host of the ““I’m In Love With That Song”” podcast here on the Pantheon Network. It’s time to put on your explorer helmet and spelunking boots one more time, because we’re about to explore another song and see what we discover. As always, no prior musical knowledge or experience is required; we don’t get technical here. If you’re willing to just listen a little more intently, and want to learn more about what goes into making a great song, you’ve come to the right place.
This time, we are heading back to 1970 to cross paths with Creedence Clearwater Revival and explore one of my favorite songs of theirs, “Run Through The Jungle”.
The band that we know as Creedence Clearwater Revival began in El Cerrito, California, sometime around 1959. Back then, they were known as the Blue Velvets: John Fogerty on guitar, his brother Tom also on guitar, and both of them shared lead vocals back then, with Stu Cook on bass and Doug Clifford on drums. Here’s a single recorded by the Blue Velvets in 1961 called “Come On Baby”. It was written by Tom Fogerty, and it’s Tom singing lead.
In 1964, they signed a contract with Fantasy Records. The record company changed their name to the Gollywogs– which they hated. Blue Velvets wasn’t a great name, but I don’t know why the label thought Gollywogs was any better. I’d hate that name, too.
Anyway, the Gollywogs recorded quite a few singles. Here’s one from 1965 called, “You Got Nothing On Me”.
In 1967, the band changed their name to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their first single as CCR, a song called “Porterville”, didn’t chart. But their second single, their version of “Susie Q”, that was a hit.
“Susie Q” would be their only Top 40 hit that was not written by John Fogerty. By now, John had become the driving force in the band. He was writing the songs, he was singing the songs, he was producing the records. Creedence Clearwater Revival was now essentially John Fogarty’s band.
A boatload of hit singles would follow. We may revisit a couple of them on the show in the future, you never know. But today, we’re going to focus on the song “Run Through The Jungle”.
Originally released as a single in April 1970, it was what they used to call a “Double A-sided” single, because both sides of the 45 record were earmarked for potential hits and radio play. The other side of this single was “Up Around The Bend”, which was indeed a hit, too. Both songs were included on their album “Cosmos Factory”. Released in the summer of 1970, “Cosmos Factory” was their fifth studio album. Creedence would eventually release seven studio albums; six of them became platinum albums, selling over a million copies each. In fact, “Cosmos Factory” would go on to sell 4 million copies. It’s their biggest selling album, and in my opinion, it’s their best.
“Run Through The Jungle” was the song that closed out Side One of the album. The song opens with a pretty psychedelic effect. Sounds to me like a piano in the middle with guitars panned left and right, heavy with echo. The guitar in the right channel begins to oscillate. That’s when the echo feeds back on itself. This is an ominous way to start the song.
There’s that tambourine that sounds like a rattlesnake. And then the main guitar riff comes in, which is sitting primarily in the right channel. Tom fills and hand claps in the left channel.
The rest of the band joins in and we’re off.
And that’s pretty much it. Musically, the song stays with the same riff for the duration of the song. That repetition of the riff, it’s almost like a drone. It’s hypnotic. It sets such a mood to me, it never gets boring. Here’s the first verse.
The vocals are thick with a slapback echo. It’s very 1950s style sound. Let’s listen to John Fogarty’s vocal track.
Now, here’s something interesting. This song has often been interpreted as being about Vietnam. The song came out in 1970 when the war was still raging, and the song’s been used in movies and tv shows as a soundtrack to Vietnam era scenes. But when Fogerty wrote this song, he wasn’t thinking about the jungles of Vietnam. He was thinking about the urban jungles right here in America. Here’s a quote from John Fogerty from an interview he did with Dan Rather back in 2016. He said, “the thing I wanted to talk about was gun control and the proliferation of guns.” I think that puts a whole different spin on the imagery in the song. Let’s pick it up at the second verse.
I know gun control is a controversial issue, so I’m going to let John Fogerty speak for himself. Here’s a clip from that same interview”
“I think I remember reading around that time that there was one gun for every man, woman and child in America, which I found staggering. We’re talking about privately held guns. Um, and so at somewhere in the song, I think I say 200 million guns are loaded. Not that anyone else has the answer. I did not have the answer to the question. I just had the question. I just thought that it was disturbing that it was such a jungle for our citizens re to just to walk around in our own country, at least having to be aware that there are so many private guns, um, owned by some responsible and maybe many irresponsible people.”
Let’s hear the vocal track for this verse again. And the first line has one of those classic idiosyncratic fogey phrasings on the word “Heard”.
John Fogerty takes a harmonica solo here, but let’s check out some of the backing tracks here as well. Like all Creedence songs, they keep it pretty basic. Just a couple of guitars, bass and drums.
First, let’s check out those bass and drums. That’s a pretty gnarly bass sound. Let’s listen to a little bit of that for a while. Here’s the main electric guitar part. I think this is two separate guitar parts. One in the left, one in the right. The one on the right is louder, but it could just be one guitar. There’s so much tremolo effect on the guitars, it’s hard to tell. It’s a great riff though.
That harmonica part along with the other guitar part played by Tom Fogerty, plus some overdubbed percussion and some acoustic guitar accents.
The harmonica continues to play on in between the vocal lines.
Let’s listen to a little bit more of that harmonica’s unsettling effects from the opening of the song return some of it played backwards this time.
“Run Through The Jungle” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Here’s an interesting fun fact for you: According to the Billboard Hot 100, Creedence has the distinction of being the band with the most number two hits without any number one hits. Over the course of their career, Creedence had ten songs that made the top 25 of those made it all the way to number two, but none of them made it to number one. Just an interesting bit of trivia.
Thanks for listening to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. New episodes of this show magically appear on the 1st and the 15th of every month, so we’ll see you back here in about two weeks. Until then, you can catch up with all of our previous shows on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com or on Apple Podcasts, Google, Amazon, Spotify. Basically, anywhere you can find podcasts, you’ll find our show.
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We are part of the Pantheon network of podcasts, where you’ll find a ton of other great music related shows, so check them out.
And thanks again for listening to this episode on Creedence Clearwater Revival and “Run Through The Jungle”.
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