Month: November 2025

When I call you up, your line’s engaged

Posted on by brucehhackett

I was listening to an old playlist recently and up popped the 1977 ELO hit “Telephone Line,” which starts with the sound you hear when you’ve placed a call and it’s ringing at the other end of the line. It got me thinking about how ubiquitous the telephone has been in our lives for so many years.

The phone has evolved significantly since the mid-20th Century, when there were such things as shared “party lines,” calls that required “operator assistance,” pay phones everywhere, home phones connected by cords to the kitchen wall, and pricey rates for long-distance calls based on the time of day you’re calling.

These days, of course, those things barely exist, if at all. Most people don’t even have “land lines” anymore. Instead, we have cell phones, where typing texts, taking photos and scrolling have taken precedence over actual conversations.

Remember calling someone and getting a busy signal? Until the “call waiting” feature was introduced in the 1970s, you had to keep trying until you finally got through. And once you got through, sometimes nobody was there and you had to call back later (until the advent of answering machines).

Remember “crank calls,” where you’d phone a random number and play a prank on them? Those went away once the caller could be identified (and maybe prosecuted) thanks to the “*69” and, later, “caller ID” features.

There’s no denying that the phone has been a crucial tool in helping us stay connected, from boys calling girls for dates to maintaining ties with friends who moved to another city. It has also been the focus of classic films (thrillers like “Sorry Wrong Number,” “When a Stranger Calls” and “Dial M For Murder”) and many dozens of popular songs.

A tune like The Turtles’ classic love note “Happy Together” makes brief mention of a phone call (“If I should call you up, invest a dime…”), while The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville” notes the futility of trying to talk on a pay phone in a rowdy location (“Now I must hang up the phone, /I can’t hear you in this noisy railroad station all alone…”). Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” urges a lover to phone her at the radio station (“Dial in the number who’s bound to love you… Call me at the station, the lines are open…”). Some songwriters have created lyrics structured to indicate the whole song is a phone call (Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me,” Adele’s “Hello”), even though a phone is never specifically mentioned.

I’ve researched the topic and have selected 16 pop/rock songs about telephones from as early as the 1950s to as recently as 2023. There are numerous “honorable mention” listing as well, all included on the Spotify playlist at the end.

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“Operator,” Jim Croce, 1972

This charming, wistful tune is the first one that came to mind as I was thinking of “phone songs.” It’s easily my favorite of Croce’s appealing song catalog, found on his 1972 LP “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim.” In the lyrics, the speaker is trying to find the phone number of his former lover, who has moved to Los Angeles with his former best friend. He is hoping to show both of them that he has survived their betrayal, but admits to the operator that he is in fact not over it. He then changes his mind and tells the operator not to place the call after all. It’s a marvelous melody and vocal performance, and a heartbreaker lyrically that peaked at #17 on US charts: “Give me the number if you can find it, so I can call just to tell ’em I’m fine, /And to show I’ve overcome the blow, I’ve learned to take it well, /I only wish my words could just convince myself that it just wasn’t real, /But that’s not the way it feels…”

“Telephone Line,” Electric Light Orchestra, 1976

When Jeff Lynne, ELO’s leader/songwriter/singer, was assembling tracks for the band’s sixth LP, “A New World Record,” he was aware that the British band’s popularity in the US was growing by leaps and bounds. So when he wanted to include a ring tone as a sound effect for “Telephone Line,” he concluded it needed to be an American ringtone. “We phoned from England to America to a number that we knew nobody would be at, just to listen to that tone for a while, and then we recreated it with a Moog synthesizer.” The song reached #7 in 1977, their second highest charting of 15 Top Twenty hits: “Hello! How are you? /Have you been alright through all those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights? That’s what I’d say, /I’d tell you everything if you’d pick up that telephone, /Oh, oh, telephone line, give me some time, /I’m living in twilight…”

“Call Me,” Blondie, 1980

Giorgio Moroder, the Italian composer/producer known as the “Father of disco” for pioneering Euro-disco with Donna Summer in the mid-to-late ’70s, wrote the music for this hugely popular track from the “American Gigolo” film soundtrack in 1980. Moroder had approached Stevie Nicks to write lyrics and sing vocals for it, but she declined, and instead, Debbie Harry of Blondie agreed to participate. The lyrics Harry wrote were from the perspective of the lead character, a male prostitute played by Richard Gere, who took his assignments via telephone solicitations. “Call Me” was released in three versions (single, album, and Spanish-language), with the single holding the #1 slot on US pop charts for six weeks: “Call me on the line, Call me, call me anytime, /Call me, oh my love, Call me for a ride, /Call me for some overtime…”

“867-5309/Jenny,” Tommy Tutone, 1982

In the summer of 1981, songwriter Alex Call wanted to write a basic 4-chord rock tune. “I had the guitar lick, and I had the name and phone number, but I didn’t know yet what the song would be about. My friend Jim Keller, guitarist for Tommy Tutone, stopped by, heard it and said, ‘Well, it could be a girl’s phone number on a bathroom wall.’ We had a good laugh, and I said, ‘That’s exactly right, that’s what it should be!’ He and I wrote the verses in about 15 minutes.” Tommy Tutone recorded it and took it to #4 on US pop charts in 1982. From coast to coast, there were multiple instances of annoyed people with the 867-5309 phone number who were continually pestered with prank calls, and a few of them were even named Jenny! “If I ever met the guy who wrote it, I’d punch him in the face,” said one: “I know you think I’m like the others before who saw your name and number on the wall, /Jenny, I got your number, I need to make you mine, /Jenny, don’t change your number, 867-5309…”

“All I’ve Gotta Do,” The Beatles, 1963

“That was me trying to imitate Smokey Robinson,” said John Lennon about this tune from the “With the Beatles” LP in 1963. He said he wrote it specifically with the American market in mind, because the idea of calling a girl on the telephone was unthinkable to a British youth in the early 1960s. “I loved the idea of merely picking up the phone in order to talk to a girl. That seemed fantastic to me, because phones weren’t part of an English child’s life at that point. I had never called a girl on the phone in my life, but in America, it happened all the time.” “And when I wanna kiss you, yeah, /All I gotta do is call you on the phone, and you’ll come running home, /Yeah, that’s all I gotta do, /And the same goes for me, whenever you want me at all, /I’ll be here, yes I will, whenever you call, /You just gotta call on me…”

“Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” Steely Dan, 1974

So many of the songs Donald Fagan and Walter Becker wrote for the Steely Dan records offered cryptic lyrics open to different interpretations. Some stoners thought “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” referred to a joint the speaker had given to the woman, but Fagen dispelled that rumor. “I’d had a crush on a woman named Rikki, a professional writer who was married to one of my college professors. I slipped her my phone number as she was leaving the country in the hopes she would be flattered enough to call me, but she never did.” Years later, the woman said she was stunned when she heard her name in the lyrics of the song on the radio, where it reached #4 on US pop charts in 1974. “Rikki ,don’t lose that number, /You don’t wanna call nobody else, /Send it off in a letter to yourself, /Rikki, don’t lose that number, It’s the only one you own, /You might use it if you feel better when you get home…”

“Telephone Song,” The Vaughan Brothers, 1990

Stevie Ray Vaughan emerged from Austin, Texas in the early ’80s as the hot new stud on the blues guitar, and was credited with bringing blues music back into vogue commercially. Concurrently, Vaughan’s older. brother Jimmie had been a key figure in The Fabulous Thunderbirds, who also achieved some chart success in the late ’80s. In 1990, the Vaughan brothers pooled their talents for one LP, “Family Style,” which was released one month following the tragic death of Stevie Ray in a helicopter crash that year. It reached #7 on US album charts, and included memorable original blues tunes like “Telephone Song,” which Stevie Ray co-wrote and sang: “Woke up this morning, I was all alone, /Saw your picture by the telephone, I was missing you so bad, /Wish I had you here to hold, all I’ve got is this touch telephone, /Guess I’ll have to give you a call…”

“Beechwood 4-5789,” The Marvelettes, 1962

Co-written by Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson, this frothy Motown tune was a modest hit in 1962 for the “girl group” The Marvelettes, reaching #17 on pop charts. Its anachronistic title refers to the then-standard use of telephone exchange names like Beechwood, Yellowstone, Skyline and Sweetbriar, with the first two letters of the exchange name substituting for digits. It sounds pretty dated today, but it was the first pop song to use a phone number in the title and lyrics. The song was covered 20 years later by The Carpenters as one of the duo’s final singles before Karen Carpenter’s premature death in 1982. “I’ve been waiting, standing here so patiently for you to come over and have this dance with me, /And my number is Beechwood 4-5789, you can call me up and have a date any old time…”

“Switchboard Susan,” Nick Lowe, 1979

In 1978, veteran British guitarist/songwriter Mickey Jupp was working on a comeback album with two different backing bands on various tracks. One was Lowe’s band Rockpile, who helped him record a great rocker called “Switchboard Susan,” but Jupp was so unhappy with it that he sent Lowe on his way, saying, “And take that song with you. I don’t want it anymore.” Lowe and Rockpile chose to include the track (with a new vocal overdub by Lowe) on his 1979 LP “Labour of Lust,” which included the hit single “Cruel To Be Kind.” “Switchboard Susan” flopped as a follow-up single despite creatively suggestive lyrics about the singer’s infatuation with a telephone operator: “Switchboard Susan, won’t you give me a line? /I need a doctor, give me 999, /First time I picked up the telephone, /I fell in love with your ringing tone, /I’m a long distance romancer, /I keep on trying till I get an answer… /When I’m near you, girl, I get an extension, /And I don’t mean Alexander Graham Bell’s invention…”

“Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You,” Sugarloaf, 1974

In 1970, the Denver-based group Sugarloaf had a #3 hit with the catchy “Green-Eyed Lady,” but it took them four years to come up with a follow-up hit. Lead singer Jerry Corbett wrote lyrics which describe the difficulty of breaking into the music business and securing a contract from the record company, who claims that the band is good, but too derivative of other popular bands at the time. Said Corbetta, “Bands get that kind of response all the time — ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ — and I thought it would make a great song, and a great title.” Sure enough, it became a #9 hit on US charts in late 1974, using the sound of a touch-tone phone entering a number: “He said ‘hello’ and put me on hold, /To say the least, the cat was cold, /He said, ‘Don’t call us, child, we’ll call you’…”

“Memphis,” Johnny Rivers, 1964

Chuck Berry wrote this basic early rocker in 1959, then entitled “Memphis, Tennessee,” and several other artists shortened the title to “Memphis” and covered it in later years, including The Beatles (found on their “Live at the BBC” album), and especially Rivers, whose version peaked at #2 in 1964. The lyrics hark back to a time when we could call “long distance information” to learn a phone number and be connected to it. If you listen closely, you’ll see that the girl (named Marie) that the caller is trying to reach from many miles away is not his lover or ex-wife, but his six-year-old daughter: “Help me, information, more than that, I cannot add, /Only that I miss her and all the fun we had, /Marie is only six years old, information, please, /Try to put me through to her in Memphis, Tennessee…”

“Call Me Maybe,” Carly Rae Jepsen, 2012

In her early 20s, Jepsen turned heads with stirring performances on “Canadian Idol,” the Canadian edition of the popular US TV program. By 2012, she became an international sensation with “Call Me Maybe,” which reached #1 in more than a dozen countries. Interestingly, it was written as a folk song, “but when we hit the studio to record it, the producer urged us to ‘popify’ it,” Jepsen said. The lyrics describe the feeling of “infatuation and the inconvenience of love at first sight,” as one critic put it. “It’s an eyelash-fluttering flirtation, a perfect summer pop song that straddles the line between irresistible and sickly sweet.” Said Jepsen, “It’s basically a pick up. What person hasn’t wanted to approach somebody but hesitated because it’s scary? So you slip them your phone number.” “Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, /But here’s my number, so call me, maybe? /It’s hard to look right at you, baby, /But here’s my number, so call me, maybe?…”

“Star 69,” R.E.M., 1993

Following the runaway success of the pop-oriented “Automatic For the People” album in 1992, R.E.M. did an about-face and embraced a harder-edged approach for their “Monster” follow-up LP in 1993, which featured the single “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” One of the more popular tracks was the glam punk anthem “Star 69,” whose title refers to the access number for the last-call return feature of North American telephones. The lyrics offer a tale of mysterious celebrity obsession, kind of a rough cousin of “Pop Song 89” from their breakthrough “Green” LP. “Three people have my number, the other two were with me, /I don’t like to tell, but i’m not your patsy, /This time, you have gone too far with me, I know you called, I know you called, I know you hung up my line, star 69…”

“If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me,” Jimmy Buffett, 1985

Buffett was famous for writing light-hearted, whimsical songs with lyrics that poke fun at our foibles. Titles like “Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful,” “Off to See the Lizard” and “We are the People Our Parents Warned Us About” are great examples of his clever wordplay. There’s some disagreement as to whether he coined the phrase “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me” — it appears in a few country songs in various forms — but regardless of its origin, it’s a marvelous way of telling someone you’re moving on and won’t be calling anymore. The song appears as a deep album track on Buffett’s 1985 LP “Last Mango in Paris” (more amusing wordplay there)… “If the phone doesn’t ring, you know that I’ll be where someone can make me feel warm, /It’s too bad we can’t turn and live in the past, /If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me…”

“634-5789,” Wilson Pickett, 1966

Singer/songwriter Eddie Floyd and guitarist/songwriter Steve Cropper were both major behind-the- scenes figures at Stax Records in Memphis, oner of the important hotbeds of soul music in the 1960s (along with Detroit). Floyd had his own hit with “Knock on Wood,” while Cropper was the de facto leader of the Stax house bands on dozens of hit singles. They teamed up to write “634-5789″ for Wilson Pickett,” who turned it into a #13 hit on pop charts in 1966 (and #1 on R&B charts). The song is a direct nod to The Marvelettes’ earlier hit “Beechwood 4-5789” (see above), with lyrics that repeat the “call me and I’ll come right over” theme, but with a far grittier and authentic soul style: “No more lonely nights when you’ll be alone, /All you gotta do is pick up your telephone and dial now, 634-5789, that’s my number! /Oh, I’ll be right there, just as soon as I can…”

“She Calls Me Back,” Noah Kahan with Kacey Musgraves, 2023

Kahan has become wildly popular on the strength of his excellent 2022 LP “Stick Season,” full of great songs he wrote while holed up in Vermont during the COVIN pandemic. Said Kahan, “‘She Calls Me Back’ is about calling somebody, knowing that the relationship is ending, but still hanging on to it by the skin of its teeth. The narrator is bitter at being left but angry at himself for still needing to keep calling.” In 2023, Kahan recorded new versions of several tracks in duets with other artists, including “She Calls Me Back” with Musgraves, who wrote and sang a new verse that moves the lyrics forward. “It’s the other person on the phone being like, ‘Hey, I’m moving on.’ It offers the other side, which allows the song to move into a place of resolve instead of this bitter tension that exists in the original.” Kahan: “Lost for a long time, two parallel lines, /Everything’s alright when she calls me back…” Musgrave: “If you think that you could wake me up, then you don’t know how well I sleep, /You love me and I don’t know why, I only call you once a week…”

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Honorable mentions:

“Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair),” Sheena Easton, 1983; “Call Me,” Chris Montez, 1966; “Answering Machine,” The Replacements, 1984; “Man On the Line,” Chris DeBurgh, 1984; “Off the Hook,” The Rolling Stones, 1965; “Don’t Lose My Number,” Phil Collins, 1985; “Telephone,” Lady Gaga with Beyoncé, 2009; “Hello It’s Me,” Todd Rundgren, 1972; “Hello,” Adele, 2015; “Call Me Back Again,” Paul McCartney and Wings, 1975; “The Telephone Always Rings,” Fun Boy Three, 1982; “The Phone Call,” The Pretenders, 1980; “Hanging on the Telephone,” Blondie, 1978; “Call Me Back,” The Strokes, 2011; “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” Stevie Wonder, 1984.

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She’s a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis

Posted on by brucehhackett

In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s — and in the decades since as well — pop music songwriters occasionally got a kick out of writing songs with references to other musical artists in their lyrics, delighting their listeners with sometimes thinly veiled, sometimes overt mentions of well-known colleagues in the rock/pop arena.

When folk music started morphing into folk rock in the mid-’60s, folk artists like Peter, Paul and Mary found themselves waning somewhat in popularity.  The solution:  Paul Stookey collaborated with songwriters James Mason and Dave Dixon to write “I Dig Rock and Roll Music,” a whimsical tune that name-dropped several of the rising (and established) stars of the new genre, and the result was a comeback #9 hit for the trio:  “I dig The Mamas and The Papas at the Beat, Sunset Strip in L.A., they’ve got a good thing going when the words don’t get in the way…”  “I dig Donovan kind of in a dreamed out, tripped out way, his crystal images, hey, they tell you ’bout a brighter day…  And when The Beatles tell you they’ve got a word ‘love’ to sell you, they mean exactly what they say…”

Similarly, R&B singer Arthur Conley teamed up with Otis Redding in 1967 to rework the old Sam Cooke song “Yeah Man” with new lyrics that called out several of the hot soul singers of that period.  The result, “Sweet Soul Music,” was a #2 hit on the pop charts and a Top Ten hit in Europe:  “Spotlight on Lou Rawls, y’all… Spotlight on Sam & Dave, y’all… Spotlight on Wilson Pickett, now…  Spotlight on Otis Redding, now… Spotlight on James Brown, y’all, he’s the king of them all, y’all…”

The musical fraternity of artists from the American South have supported each other throughout their careers, perhaps never as overtly as on The Charlie Daniels Band’s 1975 anthem “The South’s Gonna Do It,” which references no less than eight groups from that region:   “Well, the train to Grinder’s Switch is runnin’ right on time, and them (Marshall) Tucker boys are cookin’ down in Caroline, people down in Florida can’t be still when ol’ Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s pickin’ down in Jacksonville, people down in Georgia come from near and far to hear Richard Betts pickin’ on that red guitar…  Elvin Bishop sittin’ on a bale of hay, he ain’t good lookin’, but he sure can play, and there’s ZZ Top, and you can’t forget that old brother (Wet) Willie‘s gettin’ soakin’ wet, and all the good people down in Tennessee are diggin’ Barefoot Jerry and C.D.B...”

The Mamas and The Papas chief songwriter John Phillips wrote the 1966 autobiographical song “Creeque Alley” that told the background story of how he, Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot all used to hang out (and perform) with artists who later went on to greater fame in other bands.  Six verses of lyrics dreminisce about the days when they sang in Greenwich Village clubs and eventually worked their way to Los Angeles:  “(John) Sebastian and Zal (Yanovsky) formed the (Lovin’) Spoonful, Michelle, John, and Denny gettin’ very tuneful, (Roger) McGuinn and (Barry) McGuire just a-catchin’ fire in L.A., you know where that’s at…”

In “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Billy Joel’s #1 hit from 1989, he assembled a virtual grocery list of celebrities and events that marked the years from roughly 1950 to the late 1980s.  He didn’t comment on them, he just rattled them off, like a CNN feed line across the bottom of the TV screen.  A few of these were fellow musicians:  “Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland…”  “Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, space monkey, Mafia…”  “Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo…”  “Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion…”

“American Pie,” one of the biggest hits of 1971-72, famously chronicles the development of rock and roll from its mid-’50s infancy through the end of the ’60s.  Most of McLean’s lyrics use code words to identify the artists he’s singling out — “the jester” (Bob Dylan), “the king” (Elvis Presley), “the players” (The Rolling Stones) and “the marching band” (The Beatles).  Perhaps most easily identifiable was his allusion to Mick Jagger in the phrase “Jack Flash sat on a candlestick,” and the reference to The Byrds and their hit single in this line:  “Helter skelter in the summer swelter, the birds flew off to the fallout shelter, eight miles high and falling fast…”

By the mid-’70s, rock music had already lost several of its stars to untimely deaths, so the time was ripe for a song like “Rock ‘n Roll Heaven,” which calls out the names and hits of four fallen stars.  Just before  The Righteous Brothers recorded it, songwriters Alan O’Day and Johnny Stevenson added a final verse to include two additional deaths, and the song ended up a #3 hit in the summer of 1974:  “Jimi (Hendrix) gave us rainbows, and Janis (Joplin) took a piece of our hearts, and Otis (Redding) brought us all to the dock of a bay., sing a song to light my fire, remember Jim (Morrison) that way…”  “Remember bad bad Leroy Brown, hey, Jimmy (Croce) touched us with that song, time won’t change a friend we came to know, and Bobby (Darin) gave us ‘Mack the Knife,’ well, look out, he’s back in town….”

One of Stevie Wonder’s biggest hits of the ’70s was “Sir Duke,” which came from the multi-platinum LP “Songs in the Key of Life.”  Wonder was a huge fan of Big Band music and its legends, and the track’s lyrics pay homage to Duke Ellington and four more of his peers from that period:  “But here are some of music’s pioneers that time will not allow us to forget, for there’s (Count) Basie, (Glenn) Miller, Satchmo (Louis Armstrong), and the king of all, Sir Duke, and with a voice like Ella (Fitzgerald) ringing out, there’s no way the band can lose…”

The Beach Boys were on both ends of the name-dropping bandwagon.  In 1973 for their “Holland” LP, they wrote a suite called “California Saga,” in which they mentioned a stalwart of the outdoor festival scene: “Have you ever been to a festival, the Big Sur congregation, where Country Joe (McDonald) will do his show, and he’d sing about liberty…”  Soon after, Neil Young referenced California’s favorite sons in his song “Long May You Run,” recorded by The Stills-Young Band in 1976:  “Maybe The Beach Boys have got you now, with those waves singing ‘Caroline,’ (oh Caroline No)…”

Steely Dan name-checked two artists in two different songs in their catalog.  First, in the track “Everything You Did” from the 1976 LP “The Royal Scam,” the lyrics outline an argument between a warring husband and wife.  One of them offers a suggestion to keep others from eavesdropping on their conversation:  “Turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening…”  Then on “Gaucho” in 1980, the big hit single “Hey Nineteen” offers lyrics that illustrate the challenges of dating someone considerably younger who may not be familiar with your favorite artists:  “Hey Nineteen, that’s ‘Retha Franklin, she don’t remember the Queen of Soul, it’s hard times befallen The Soul Survivors, she thinks I’m crazy but I’m just growing old…”

“Free Fallin,” the opening track on Tom Petty’s 1989 solo LP “Full Moon Fever,” became his highest charting single, peaking at #7 in 1989. It offers a simple version of the tried-and-true theme of “good girl falls for bad boy and gets heart broken.” The lyrics focus on how bad boys cherish their independence, even though it means hurting the women who love them. In the opening stanza, Petty describes the girl who’s headed for heartache because she fell for the wrong guy: “Loves her mama, loves Jesus and America too, she’s a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis, loves horses and her boyfriend too…”

The Dutch rock band Golden Earring has had a long history of success in their native Netherlands, but their big moment on US airwaves came with the 1973 Top Ten hit “Radar Love,” a classic tune about a guy who’s always on the road, and dying to get home to his lady.  To drive the point home, the lyrics refer to a long-ago romantic hit by a long-forgotten female vocalist who used to top the charts:  “The radio is playing some forgotten song, Brenda Lee‘s comin’ on strong…”

Soft rock crooner Stephen Bishop enjoyed success in the ’70s and ’80s with hits like “It Might Be You” (from the “Tootsie” film soundtrack) and “Save It For a Rainy Day,” but his biggest chart hit was the 1976 tearjerker “On and On,” which referenced Ol’ Blue Eyes himself in the second verse:  “Poor ol’ Jimmy sits alone in the moonlight, saw his woman kiss another man, so he takes a ladder, steals the stars from the sky, puts on (Frank) Sinatra and starts to cry…”

British rockers Deep Purple were scheduled to perform at a venue in Montreux, Switzerland, which was to be recorded for a live album, but at a concert held there the previous night, a reckless fan accidentally started a fire.  Deep Purple turned that story into their 1973 signature song, “Smoke on the Water,” and the lyrics called out the band that had been performing:  “We all came out to Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline to make records with a mobile, we didn’t have much time, Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around, but some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground…”

On Nirvana’s third (and, as it turned out, final) album “In Utero” in 1993, Kurt Cobain included the song “Pennyroyal Tea,” and I always assumed the title was a play on words about a songwriter earning a “penny royalty.” In fact, pennyroyal is a medicinal herbal abortive that has been used by women as a home remedy to end a pregnancy. “The song is about a person who’s beyond depressed,” Cobain said in 1993. “My therapy when I was depressed was to listen to Leonard Cohen music, which actually made it worse.” The lyrics state: “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld so I can sigh eternally…” After Cobain’s suicide in 1994, Cohen said, “I’m sorry I never got the chance to speak to the young man. I might’ve been able to help him…or maybe not.”

Don Brewer, the drummer for Grand Funk Railroad,  came up with the song “We’re An American Band” and they got studio wizard Todd Rundgren to produce it, resulting in a #1 US hit that broadened the band’s audience.  The lyrics relate the ups and downs of life on the road, where their time spent offstage was sometimes spent in the company of other artists:  “Up all night with Freddie King, I got to tell you, poker’s his thing, booze and ladies keep me right as long as we can make it to the show tonight, we’re an American band…”

In 1972, British rockers Mott the Hoople were about to hang it up due to lack of commercial success.  They got a big lift from David Bowie, who penned “All the Young Dudes” for them to record, and it ended up becoming one of the anthems of the glam rock movement on both sides of the Atlantic.  Two references to other artists show up in the lyrics:  “Television man is crazy saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks, oh man, I need TV when I’ve got T. Rex…”  “And my brother’s back at home with his Beatles and his Stones, we never got off on that revolution stuff, what a drag, too many snags…”

Elton John’s lyricist Bernie Taupin finally got around to referencing another musician on Elton’s 1989 LP “Sleeping With the Past,” which contains songs meant to reflect the style of 1960s R&B.  On the Motown-inspired “Club at the End of the Street,” which leveled off at #28 on the U.S. singles chart, Taupin described the atmosphere you might find in smaller tucked-away venues:  “From the alleyways where the catwalks gently sway, you hear the sound of Otis (Redding) and the voice of Marvin Gaye, in this smoky room, there’s a jukebox plays all night, and we can dance real close beneath the pulse of a neon light…”

In the early ’70s, when Neil Young wrote a couple of songs (“Southern Man,” “Alabama”) taking the South to task for its racist history, Lynyrd Skynyrd took exception and wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” in defense of their homeland.  Their lyrics came right out and mentioned Young not once but three times in one verse:  “Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her, well, I heard ol’ Neil put her down, well, I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow…”

In 1983, for his underrated LP “Hearts and Bones,” Paul Simon wrote the song “The Late Great Johnny Ace,” which used the name of the often neglected ’50s R&B singer to talk about that awful night in 1980 when John Lennon was shot:  “On a cold December evening, I was walking through the Christmastide, when a stranger came up and asked me if I’d heard John Lennon had died, and the two of us went to this bar, and we stayed to close the place, and every song we sang was for the late great Johnny Ace, yeah yeah yeah…”

Back in 1980, when John Mellencamp was going by the name Johnny Cougar, he had his first chart success (#17) with “Ain’t Even Done With the Night,” his first attempt at writing a soul song.  The lyrics speak of the frustration and eager hormones involved in early romance, referencing one of the best singers from that genre:  “Well, our hearts beat like thunder, I don’t know why they don’t explode, you got your hands in my back pockets, and Sam Cooke‘s singin’ on the radio…”

“Thunder Road,” one of Bruce Springsteen’s most celebrated songs from his pivotal “Born to Run” album, tells the tale of a young man longing to break out of his dead-end existence and coax the target of his infatuation to join him on his journey of discovery.  He uses the name of a ’50s icon to push the point home:  “Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, hey, that’s me, and I want you only, don’t turn me home again, I just can’t face myself alone again…”

In 1972, Van Morrison boldly kicked off his “Saint Dominic’s Preview” LP with “Jackie Wilson Said (“I’m in Heaven When You Smile),” an overt reference to the energetic R&B singer (and his debut single, “Reet Petite” from 1957).  The lyrics use Wilson’s name to start the song, but the rest of it is really just a joyous love tune:  “Jackie Wilson said it was ‘Reet Petite,’ the kind of love you got knock me off my feet, let it all hang out, and you know I’m so wired up, don’t need no coffee in my cup, let it all hang out…”

This trend shows no signs of slowing down, either.  Barenaked Ladies had two songs on their 1992 debut LP called “Brian Wilson” and “Be My Yoko Ono.”  Then there’s Taylor Swift’s 2006 debut single “Tim McGraw,” followed not so coincidentally by Tim McGraw’s 2007 song “Kristofferson” and Eric Church with his 2011 country hit “Springsteen.”  Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera teamed up that same year with the #1 pop hit “Moves Like Jagger,” which focused on how the narrator claims he can mimic the famous singer’s stage presence:  “Look into my eyes and I’ll own you with them moves like (Mick) Jagger, I’ve got the moves like Jagger…”

Even Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, two of the most celebrated songwriters of the past half-century, have not been averse to mentioning another artist by name.  Mitchell’s wonderfully playful “Barangrill” from 1972’s “For the Roses” album cites one of pop music’s icons from the ’40s and ’50s: “The guy at the gas pump, he’s got a lot of soul, he sings ‘Merry Christmas’ for you just like Nat King Cole…”  Dylan’s 2006 track “Thunder on the Mountain” makes a blatant reference to a relatively new singer he admired:  “I was thinking about Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying, when she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line, I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be, I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee…”

On 1968’s “The White Album,” John Lennon’s track “Yer Blues” made reference to a character from the 1965 Bob Dylan track “Ballad of a Thin Man” to describe his own depression: “The eagle picks my eye, the worm he licks my bone, /I feel so suicidal, just like Dylan‘s Mr. Jones, /Lonely, wanna die…” Then in 1970, in the song “God” from his solo studio LP “Plastic Ono Band,” Lennon mentioned both Dylan and Elvis Presley, and The Beatles themselves, as things in which he no longer had faith: “I don’t believe in Elvis, I don’t believe in Zimmerman, I don’t believe in Beatles…”

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There have even been bands and artists who have gone so far as to use another artist’s name as a song title: “Brian Wilson” by Bare Naked Ladies (“Dr. Landy, tell me you’re not just a pedagogue, ’cause right now I’m lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did…); “Tim McGraw” by Taylor Swift (“When you think Tim McGraw, I hope you think of me…”); “Springsteen” by Eric Church (“Funny how a melody sounds like a memory, like a soundtrack to a July Saturday night, Springsteen…”); the disturbing “Don Henley Must Die” by Mojo Nixon (“He’s serious, pretentious, and I just don’t care, Don Henley must die!…”)

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