Year: 2022

You had me at “hello”

Posted on by brucehhackett

Every writer — novelist, speechwriter, essayist, lyricist — knows that you’ve got to have a great opening line. You need a thought, an image or a line of dialog that really grabs readers/listeners and pulls them in.

You might startle them, make them chuckle, shock them or just caress them in such a way that they have no choice but to stick around and see what happens next.

In the song lyrics of classic rock, there are many thousands of great examples of this. From The Beatles’ “I read the news today, oh boy” to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hello darkness, my old friend”, the archives runneth over with captivating opening lines that demand our attention.

Many songs take the easy way out and start things off by using the title as the opening line (“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad”, “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson”), and that has certainly been a successful tactic as well. I’m drawn, however, to the song lyrics that begin with some mystery, some indelible image, some phrase that I simply must follow to learn more.

I’ve selected two dozen of my favorite opening lines from rock songs of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s for you to ruminate on and identify. For the most part, these should generally be rather easy to pick out because they’re mostly from big hits. As usual, you can scroll down in the text to find the answers, and a little bit of info about what inspired the songwriters. And there’s a Spotify list at the end so you can enjoy hearing the lyrics performed by the artists.

Good luck!

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1 “I was a little too tall, coulda used a few pounds…”

2 “In the corner of my eye, I saw you in Rudy’s, you were very high…”

3 “Well, no one told me about her, the way she lied…”

4 “Way down here, you need a reason to move, feel a fool running your stateside games…”

5 “It was raining hard in Frisco, I needed one more fare to make my night…”

6 “It was the Third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day…”

7 “Ain’t it foggy outside? All the planes have been grounded…”

8 “I know you deceived me, now here’s a surprise…”

9 “Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time…”

10 “‘There must be some kind of way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief…”

11 “I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand…”

12 “It’s the same kind of story that seems to come down from long ago…”

13 “Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together…”

14 “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves…”

15 “Really don’t mind if you sit this one out…”

16 “On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time…”

17 “Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies…”

18 “Up all night, I could not sleep, the whiskey that I drank was cheap…”

19 “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair…”

20 “Hey, where did we go, days when the rains came…”

21 “You walked in to the party like you were walking onto a yacht…”

22 “If there’s a smile on my face, it’s only there trying to fool the public…”

23 “When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land?…”

24 “Gonna write a little letter, gonna mail to it my local deejay…”

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1 “Night Moves,” Bob Seger, 1976

After seeing “American Graffiti” upon its release, Seger was inspired to write his own story about adolescent love and coming-of-age challenges. He said he lacked self-confidence and felt physically awkward — “a little too tall, could’ve used a few pounds,” as he wrote in the opening line of “Night Moves” — but his ability to sing and play music gave him an in with the “cool” kids, he recalled.

2 “Black Cow,” Steely Dan, 1977

I could’ve picked almost any song from the Steely Dan catalog to include here. The Fagen-Becker songwriting team had an uncanny ability to draw you in with mischievously cryptic lyrics. In this song, they revealed years later, the narrator is talking about a girl he used to be involved with, who’s sitting stoned at Rudy’s soda fountain drinking a coke float (known as a Black Cow in some parts of the country).

3 “She’s Not There,” The Zombies, 1964

When Rod Argent was encouraged to write an original song for the group’s upcoming session, he was inspired by a John Lee Hooker song called “No One Told Me,” deciding that would be a great opening line to describe a cheating, dishonest woman who, when the shit hit the fan, up and disappeared. Breakup songs were popular, but one that vilified the woman for. being a chronic liar was something new in 1964.

4 “Mexico,” James Taylor, 1975

Based on this upbeat tune’s opening line and the lyrics that follow, you would think Taylor had spent some time south of the border, soaking in the laid-back vibe, getting away from the hustle of life in the record business. But by the song’s final moments, he’s singing, “I’ve never really been, but I’d sure like to go.” Turns out he was singing about a fantasy he had of traveling to an exotic land.

5 “Taxi,” Harry Chapin, 1972

Chapin developed an enviable reputation as a songwriting storyteller, introducing characters and their evolving relationships with uncommon flair. Here, in his signature tune, Chapin sets the stage by identifying the locale, the weather and the protagonist’s occupation all in one busy opening line. He goes on to introduce his former flame, who’s rich but evidently very unhappy (at least, compared to Harry).

6 “Ode to Billie Joe,” Bobbie Gentry, 1967

Here’s another fine example of an opening line that beautifully captures an image — in this case, life in the South one hot summer afternoon. It reads almost like a William Faulkner novel, and it sure makes me say, “Go on…” There’s a great deal more to the story, but it left certain crucial facts unstated, which created curiosity in listeners and kept them coming back to examine the lyrics many times over.

7 “Sandman,” America, 1972

From the first time I heard it, I thought the first words of this electric folk tune were intriguing. Is someone stuck at an airport, or a mountain resort, perhaps? What’s the situation? Who’s the vague, possibly nefarious guy who calls himself “Sandman,” and why is someone running from him? The beauty of the track is that we don’t learn a whole lot more about their identities or their fate. It’s up to us to imagine.

8 “I Can See For Miles,” The Who, 1967

Pete Townshend has a secret for the deceptive girl he’s pursuing, and that is, he knows she’s lying to him. He has the figurative ability to see “for miles” right through her manipulations. He warns her that she’ll have to “stand trial” someday and choke on her untruths, and he’ll be there to see it all unfold. Townshend made the words all the more effective by putting them to one of The Who’s most powerful rock arrangements.

9 “It’s Too Late,” Carole King, 1971

Breakup songs can be brutal and full of bitterness or, conversely, they can be tender and tinged with sadness. Carole King’s sometime collaborator Toni Stern came up with this treatment that approaches its subject gingerly, knowing that the end of the relationship has arrived but wanting to end it on soft ground without so much heartbreak. Who hasn’t wanted to stay in bed longer rather than face a tough decision?

10 “All Along the Watchtower,” Bob Dylan, 1967

Even though Jimi Hendrix’s ferocious cover version is the one most people know, Dylan’s stark original does an amazing job of capturing the same apocalyptic intensity in a different way. The opening line is a grabber, but it has been said that Dylan’s brief tale actually begins with the final verse, and ends with the beginning, where the princes stood in the watchtower keeping an eye out for the impending doom.

11 “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” The Rolling Stones, 1969

I can’t count the number of times I’ve used this opening line as I have approached a female friend holding a glass of vino at a wedding reception. The woman Mick Jagger sings about here turns out to be out of reach because she has another agenda. He wrote this amazing song as a philosophical treatise on how to balance our desires for the unattainable with our basic needs for the more basic elements of life.

12 “Hypnotized,” Fleetwood Mac, 1973

The insistent, hypnotic music created by this earlier lineup of Fleetwood Mac is matched by furtive lyrics that remind us, “There’s no explaining what your imagination can make you see and feel.” It begins by telling us its story is like so many others “that seem to come down from long ago,” and it coaxes the listener in with a mixture of everyday images and visions of “a strange, strange pond,” among other mysteries.

13 “America,” Simon and Garfunkel, 1968

One of the most concise, literary songs ever, about a romantic couple eager to hit the road and explore the world and search for their souls simultaneously. Simon chooses to open the track with dialog as the man asks the woman to share his dream of traveling to find their future together. It struck a chord with many, because America was experiencing violent, angry times when this album and song were released.

14 “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen, 1975

On a brilliant album chock-full of marvelous imagery, the first line of the first song might be the best. The hero is waiting in his car as the radio plays when his girl Mary emerges from her house to come join him for another adventure. Who can’t relate to the sound of a screen door slamming to announce someone’s arrival or departure? It’s a universal thing, and Springsteen knew it.

15 “Thick as a Brick,” Jethro Tull, 1972

What a bold thing to do: Compose an epic, 45-minute piece of progressive rock music with multiple sections, movements, moods and instrumental passages, with lyrics about generational relationships, and then undercut the whole thing by starting it with the line, “Really don’t mind if you sit this one out.” Tull’s Ian Anderson knew that it needed to have self-deprecating humor so as not to be taken too seriously.

16 “Year of the Cat,” Al Stewart, 1976

England’s version of the songwriting storyteller was Stewart, who had studied historical fiction and different world cultures and became quite good at creating both short and long tales about romantic encounters and entanglements. For “Year of the Cat,” he began by recalling the setting of the classic film “Casablanca” in a nameless North African country “where they turn back time.” I’m hooked, how about you?

17 “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” Beatles, 1967

Recreational drug users swear that this John Lennon fantasy simply must be experienced under the influence of psychedelics to be fully appreciated. Maybe, but at the very least, he sucks us in with colorful, idyllic images that invite us all to join him in his boat on the river. Other dazzling phrases (“rocking-horse people,” “cellophane flowers”) follow, taking us further into his apparent dream sequence.

18 “South City Midnight Lady,” The Doobie Brothers, 1973

Spending a restless night trying to recover from another episode of trying to drown your sorrows in booze is an experience to which many people can relate, and Patrick Simmons captures it nicely in this pretty masterpiece from The Doobies’ “The Captain and Me” album. The protagonist ultimately returns to the woman he loves, full of remorse for his shortcomings and gratitude for her love.

19 “Hotel California,” The Eagles, 1976

This is one of the most thoroughly examined songs in classic rock, with multiple interpretations of what Don Henley and Glenn Frey were talking about here. They certainly set the table from the outset, as someone approaches on one of California’s dark desert highways. Is Hotel California a real place, or a metaphor for the allure of the Los Angeles entertainment industry? You decide.

20 “Brown-Eyed Girl,” Van Morrison, 1967

The fun and frolic of this song is evident from the get-go as Morrison describes what he and his young brown-eyed girl would do and where they’d go — down in the hollow, down in the old mine, along the waterfall, behind the stadium. He has said the lyric originally focused on a “brown-skinned girl” he met in Jamaica, but his conservative record label insisted he change it to something less controversial.

21 “You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon, 1972

You can just picture the guy, oozing with ego and cockiness, that Simon is describing in that opening line. The song goes on to become a damning indictment of a man so full of himself that he has no concern for others, particularly the many women he loves and leaves with careless abandon. Simon has said she was writing about three different men who shared this trait, one of whom was actor Warren Beatty.

22 “Tears of a Clown,” Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, 1970

The idea of a happy-face clown actually being a sad person behind the makeup was not new, but in this marvelous slice of Motown, Robinson used it to describe a man who puts on a brave face to the world even though he’s brokenhearted inside about a romantic breakup. The music was written by Stevie Wonder, who struggled with the lyrics until Robinson helped him find the right words to complete it.

23 “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Elton John, 1973

Lyricist Bernie Taupin used one of his favorite films, “The Wizard of Oz,” as a metaphor for the trappings of success in the rock music business. He said in 2014, “I said I wanted to leave Oz and get back to the farm. I was never turning my back on fame or saying I didn’t want it. I was hoping that maybe there was a happy medium way to exist successfully in a tranquil setting. My naiveté was believing I could do it so early on.”

24 “Roll Over Beethoven,” Chuck Berry, 1956

As rock ‘n’ roll was gaining momentum, Berry was amused by the idea of writing a song in which rock (and R&B) would replace classical music. At home, Berry’s sister was often at the piano playing classical pieces, leaving Berry frustrated enough to wish that Beethoven, Mozart and the rest would “roll over” out of the way and make room for his new musical art form. And don’t forget to “tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

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Honorable mentions:

“Kodachrome,” Paul Simon, 1973 (“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school…”); “Sympathy For the Devil,” The Rolling Stones, 1968 (“Please allow me to introduce myself…”); “Space Oddity,” David Bowie, 1969 (“Ground control to Major Tom…”); “A Day in the Life,” The Beatles, 1967 (“I read the news today, oh boy…”).

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All good things must end some day

Posted on by brucehhackett

What’s that pop culture superstition about celebrities dying in threes? It’s pretty much nonsense, is what it is. How close together must their death dates be for it to qualify as a hat trick of celebrity deaths, anyway?

Three notable people in the rock music world died within a few days of each other at the end of May, but then this week, there was a fourth… Or was it the first of the next group of three? I think you see my point. Regardless, four very different but similarly influential musicians have just passed away, and Hack’s Back Pages has decided to pay a modest tribute to each of them. Their individual careers, backgrounds and preferred musical genres had little to do with each other, but they all operated under the broad umbrella of classic rock music, and are consequently deserving of our attention here.

The Spotify playlist at the end includes a batch of songs from each honoree’s catalog. These are songs that typically wouldn’t ever be on the same playlist, but they do show the diversity to be found in the music of the classic rock era…

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Ronnie Hawkins

Referred to in a New York Times obituary as a “rockabilly road warrior,” Ronnie Hawkins was actually much more than that. Though he was born and raised in Arkansas, he relocated to Ontario, Canada, and is credited with kickstarting the Canadian rock music scene in the mid-’60s, bringing his infectious blend of gregarious rock ‘n’ roll and R&B.

Hawkins died May 29th of cancer at age 87.

Born in 1932, Hawkins came from a musical family that included his father, two uncles and a few cousins who played the honky-tonk circuit in Arkansas and Oklahoma in the ’30s and ’40s. In the ’50s, cousin Dale Hawkins wrote and recorded “Suzie-Q” (later made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s rendition in 1968). While serving in the Army, Hawkins was astounded when he heard a black group perform “a cross between the blues and rockabilly,” and ended up joining them for a while as the Blackhawks. “Instead of doing a kind of rockabilly that was closer to country music, I was doing rockabilly that was closer to soul music, which was exactly what I liked,” he recalled.

Hawkins (second from left) with The Hawks (Helm at far left)

In 1958, he formed a band of Arkansas-based players called The Hawks that included a young drummer named Levon Helm, still in high school. Country singer Conway Twitty urged Hawkins and his band to tour in Ontario, Canada, where rockabilly music was becoming popular at the time, so Hawkins and The Hawks split their time between Arkansas and Ontario, eventually releasing their first album there on Roulette Records. The album failed to chart, but the first single from it, “Forty Days” (a version of Chuck Berry’s 1955 hit “Thirty Days”), peaked at #4 on the Canadian charts and made it as far as #45 on the US pop charts. The follow-up, “Mary Lou,” was a Hawkins original that reached #26 in the US and was later covered by ’70s stars Steve Miller and Bob Seger, among others.

Once Hawkins moved permanently to Ontario and became a Canadian citizen, the rest of The Hawks dropped out, and their ranks were filled by guitarist Robbie Robertson, organist Garth Hudson, pianist Richard Manuel and bassist Rick Danko, who would go on to international fame as The Band, one of the most influential groups of the ’70s.

Ronnie Hawkins with Robbie Robertson circa 1964

Hawkins nurtured a reputation as a startling showman on stage, doing backflips and handstands, and something he called the “camel walk,” which some say was the progenitor of Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk” move in the ’80s. The raw energy of his musical output made him a big draw in the Toronto club scene, playing a repertoire that included scorching renditions of classics like Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t,” Chuck Berry’s “Memphis, Tennessee,” Dion’s “Ruby Baby” and Billy Lee Riley’s “Red Hot.”

You may recall seeing Hawkins as a featured performer in The Band’s celebrated concert film, “The Last Waltz,” or playing the role of Bob Dylan in Dylan’s 1976 experimental film “Renaldo and Clara,” or in Michael Cimino’s 1980 box-office bomb “Heaven’s Gate.”

Danko with Hawkins in “The Last Waltz”

In his later years, he became something of a respected “elder statesman” of Canadian rock music and, having made shrewd investments, lived handsomely and owned several prosperous businesses.

But he remained a devilish rascal at heart, chuckling as he summed up his life: “Ninety percent of what I made went to women, whiskey, drugs and cars,” he said. “I guess I just wasted the other 10 percent.”

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Jimmy Seals

With their precise high harmonies and deft use of guitars, mandolin and fiddle, Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts crafted some really gorgeous melodies that earned them mainstream success in 1972-73 and made them the darlings of the New Age crowd, thanks to lyrics that often emphasized a spiritual approach.

Seals, who died Monday at age 80, was a gentle soul from small-town Texas who learned fiddle and sax at a young age and began collaborating with the like-minded Crofts while they were still teenagers. By the early ’60s, they had moved to California and met session guitarist Glen Campbell, with whom they performed as part of The Champs and in other configurations. Seals and Crofts eventually became part of a band called The Dawnbreakers, named after a book chronicling the evolution of the Persian religion known as Baha’i, and soon became strong devotees of that faith.

“I think our music is a combination of the Eastern part of the world and the Western,” Seals said in 1971. “We’ve had people from Greece, Israel, England, France, China, everywhere, listen to our music and say, ‘Oh, it’s music from the old country.’ It really seemed strange to us because we didn’t realize it ourselves until we started comparing our work with, for example, Persian music, which, when you listen to it, is really very close to ours. We had no knowledge of this at all beforehand. So it’s just something that happened.”

Their first two LPs received little notice, but beginning with 1972’s “Summer Breeze,” they enjoyed a run of four Top 20 hits and two Top Ten albums that put them right up there with James Taylor and Cat Stevens in the singer-songwriter sweepstakes that dominated the early ’70s. “Hummingbird,” “Diamond Girl” and “We May Never Pass This Way Again,” each offering sunny, positive messages, received heavy airplay. These albums included an impressive diversity of styles and instrumentation on deeper tracks like “It’s Gonna Come Down on You,” “The Euphrates, “Wisdom” and “Say.”

Then Seals and Crofts let their fiercely held beliefs get the better of them. They took a calculated risk in 1974 when they released “Unborn Child,” which took a strong anti-abortion stance in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision a few months earlier. “Warner Brothers warned us against it,” said Seals. “They said, ‘This is a highly controversial subject, we advise that you don’t do this.’ But we said, ‘You’re in the business to make money; we’re doing it to save lives. We don’t care about the money.” The duo insisted the song’s message was simply “don’t take life too lightly,” and to reconsider abortion as an option. Conservative fans applauded their brave stance, but critics were merciless, and the controversy severely impeded their commercial momentum. The song stalled at #66, although the album of the same name did reasonably well at #14, thanks to other fine tunes like “Desert People” and “The Story of Her Love.”

“I figured either it (‘Unborn Child’) would be very much accepted on the strength of the song itself, or that it would be the biggest bomb that we ever had. But it was incidental by that point, because the music was gone. I was out of gas already,” Seals revealed years later.

Actually, Seals and Crofts continued making music throughout the ’70s, changing their style to match changing tastes. Singles like “I’ll Play For You” (1975), “Get Closer” (1976), “My Fair Share” (1977) and the disco-flavored “You’re the Love” (1978) kept them in the public eye, but the bloom seemed to be off the rose by 1980 when Warners dropped them and they called it quits.

Seals and his family subsequently split their time between their Tennessee home and their coffee farm in Costa Rica, only occasionally reuniting with Crofts for one-off shows, and one album in 2004 (“Traces”). A stroke in 2017 ended Seals’s public appearances.

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Alan White

In 1972, Yes was the biggest progressive rock band in the world. Riding high on the strength of “The Yes Album,” “Fragile” and the then-new opus “Close to the Edge,” the group was about to embark on a major U.S. tour when they found themselves in a serious quandary.

Bill Bruford, Yes’s brilliant drummer from the very beginning, had grown frustrated and impatient with the group’s internal squabbles and drawn-out songwriting/recording process. He decided to take a leap of faith and accept an invitation to become the drummer for prog rock pioneers King Crimson.

Yes needed a capable drummer, and fast. They turned to the most logical choice: Alan White, a prolific London session musician who had just completed a European tour in support of Joe Cocker. White had, in fact, been present during a Yes recording session a few months earlier for the track “Siberian Khatru,” filling in when Bruford had to leave early. White eagerly accepted, spent five intensive days learning the band’s concert setlist, including the dense, 20-minute “Close to the Edge,” and off he went.

Yes in 1973, with Alan White at lower right

White never looked back, holding on to the slot as Yes’s drummer for more than 40 years, through numerous personnel changes and reunions, more than 15 albums and nearly 30 tours.

White died May 26th at age 72 after a brief illness. He had already begged off participating in the upcoming Close to the Edge 50th Anniversary Tour.

As early as age 17, White was getting gigs with London area bands like Griffin and the Alan Price Set, and was called on to be the drummer in numerous studio sessions as well. Seemingly out of nowhere, in September 1969, White was approached by John Lennon to join him, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton and Klaus Voorman for a quickly arranged trip to Toronto to perform as the Plastic Ono Band at a festival there. The appearance was captured and released as a live LP called “Live Peace in Toronto 1969.” Recalled White, “I thought for sure it was one of my mates pranking me, pretending to be Lennon, but it was the real deal. It was all very exciting for me.”

That experience brought about further collaborations between White and Lennon, including the early 1970 session for Lennon’s “Instant Karma!” single, and also some of the tracks for his #1 LP “Imagine” in 1971.

White in 2014

Following the death of bassist Chris Squire, one of Yes’s founders, in 2015, White became the band’s longest reigning member.

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Andy Fletcher

Despite being a founding member of Depeche Mode, one of the most successful and influential electronic music bands of the ’80s, ’90s and beyond, Andy Fletcher is not a widely recognized name, even among fans of rock music. He was not the lead singer or the main songwriter, and even he would have admitted that his instrumental and vocal contributions were relatively inconsequential.

Indeed, in a scene from a 1989 documentary about the band, Fletcher had this to say: “Martin (Gore) is the songwriter, Alan (Wilder) is the good musician, Dave (Gahan) is the vocalist, and I bum around.”

Depeche Mode, L-R: Andy Fletcher, Gahan, Gore, Wilder, circa 1988

Upon the band’s founding in the early ’80s, Fletcher played bass, synth bass and synthesizer, and supervised the use of sampling. By his own design, he took a supportive role in Depeche Mode, sometimes serving as a tiebreaker in group discussions. Fletcher was typically described as the group’s figurehead, playing a mostly managerial role, taking care of the business affairs of this entity that has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. “I’m the tall guy in the background, without whom this international corporation called Depeche Mode would never work.”

Fletcher died on May 26 at age 60. Cause of death has yet to be officially announced.

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