A little bit of this, a little bit of that
This week, I’ve gathered some interesting anecdotes, historical notes, strange coincidences, amusing back stories and personal reflections from rock music’s golden years to share with you all.
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On May 13, 1950, a boy was born prematurely in Saginaw, Michigan, and put on oxygen treatment in an incubator. Evidently, an excess of oxygen aggravated a rare visual 
condition known as “retinopathy of prematurity,” which caused total, irreparable blindness. The lack of sight seemed to turn to an advantage, as the boy realized his heightened sense of hearing allowed him to acutely absorb music of all kinds. He sang in the church youth choir at age four. In rapid succession, he learned piano, drums and harmonica, all by age nine. No one could have possibly predicted the dizzying heights this prodigy would attain by his mid-20s. Stevland Hardaway Judkins — later Stevland Morris when his mother remarried — became, by 1962, “Little Stevie Wonder,” a true phenomenon who evolved into Stevie Wonder, one of the two or three most important musical artists of our time.
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Wild Cherry was a straight-ahead rock band in 1975, struggling along as they played 
nightly gigs in clubs around their native Pittsburgh. One night, a group of black patrons approached them during a break and said, “Hey, are you white boys going to ever play any funky music tonight?” Lead singer Rob Parissi immediately sat down and wrote a song around that thought. The group worked on it over the next week, coming up with a dance groove they liked, and found a sympathetic producer at Epic/ Cleveland International to record it. Two months later, “Play That Funky Music” was the #1 song in the nation, ultimately snagging two Grammy nominations in the year disco began its rule of the airwaves.
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When James Taylor was a young unknown songwriter on the East Coast in the 1967-1968 period, he had little luck getting noticed by record labels and music industry types. Struggling with his insecurities and a predilection for drug use, Taylor decided to go to 
London for a while to see what opportunities might happen there for him. Sure enough, Peter Asher, a talent scout working for The Beatles‘ new label, Apple Records, heard Taylor’s demos and brought them to the attention of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, who both agreed they should sign him. When Taylor came into the studios to record his music, some of the songs were still incomplete and in need of tweaking. As he worked on “Carolina in My Mind,” he couldn’t help but notice McCartney, Harrison and Ringo Starr in the control booth listening in. Naturally, this unnerved him, but it gave him the lyrics he needed for the bridge: “And with a holy host of others standing ’round me, still I’m on the dark side of the moon, and it looks like it goes on like this forever, you must forgive me…”
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In 1974, Genesis was in the process of writing and recording its opus, “The Lamb Lies 
Down on Broadway,” when Peter Gabriel was approached by film director William Friedkin, who was then riding high with his hugely successful movie “The Exorcist.” Friedkin 
was keen on making a science fiction film and was looking for “a writer who’d never been involved with Hollywood before.” As a fan of Genesis, he had read the sleeve notes on the back of the “Genesis Live” LP — a typically fantastical short story by Gabriel — and thought maybe they could collaborate. Gabriel was excited about it, but the other members of Genesis weren’t receptive to him putting the band, album and tour on hold for this side project. When Friedkin heard his offer might result in the demise of Genesis, he backed off, since his sci-fi project was still just a nebulous idea and, as a big fan of Genesis, he wanted the group to continue. We’ll never know what Friedkin and Gabriel might’ve come up with.
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In late 1974, Fleetwood Mac‘s guitarist/singer Bob Welch announced he was departing, leaving remaining members Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Christine McVie in a bind. They had lost guitarists before; founding member Peter Green had abandoned the group four years earlier, as did Danny Kirwan in 1972. But this time, they had just relocated to L.A. from their native London and were in precarious trouble financially. Maybe this was the end of the line for the once top-ranked British blues band. Fleetwood 
was determined, though, and went to visit a new recording venue called Sound City. While he was there, he heard a guitar player named Lindsay Buckingham working on material in one of the studios. Intrigued, he introduced himself, and within the hour, he asked Buckingham if he’d like to join Fleetwood Mac as their new guitarist. “That sounds great, we’d love to,” he replied, “because my girlfriend comes with me.” He was referring, of course, to Stevie Nicks, the singer-songwriter who had been his lover and professional partner for several years. Fleetwood hesitated about accepting Nicks as well but then decided, what the hell, let’s go for it. Eighteen months later, the group that had never managed much chart success in the US had the #1 album in the country.
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David Robert Jones, born in working-class England in 1947, showed an interest in music 
at an early age, learning recorder and ukulele and singing in the school choir. He especially shone in a “music and movement” class that presaged his mesmerizing stage shows. His father changed his life the day he brought home a stack of 45s by American R&B artists. “I thought I’d heard God,” said the boy when he heard “Tutti Frutti.” He moved through a number of ragtag rock bands in his teen years, playing saxophone and guitar and often handling lead vocals, even winning a contract or two along the way, but nothing came of the records from that period. In 1966, Davy Jones of The Monkees became a celebrity, so David Jones knew he’d better change his name and, in honor of “the ultimate American knife” he’d always admired, he became David Bowie.
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Some people are so damn talented. Steve Winwood was only 15 when he joined his older brother in the Spencer Davis Group, where he played keyboards and sang with an 
expressive, high, bluesy voice that even then drew comparisons to the great Ray Charles. At 18, he wrote two songs with Spencer Davis that became Top Ten hits in the US and the UK, “Gimme Some Lovin'” and “I’m a Man.” At 19, he formed Traffic, one of the most inventive British bands of the late ’60s. At 21, he joined forces 
with Eric Clapton in Blind Faith, producing amazing tunes like “Can’t Find My Way Home” and “Sea of Joy.” He then reformed Traffic at 22 to produce more classic albums like “John Barleycorn Must Die” and “Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys.” By the time he was only 26, he disbanded Traffic and took a well-deserved break for a few years. Then at 32, he finally kicked off a hugely successful, Grammy-winning solo career. Incredible.
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Savvy bands know that relentless touring is the best way to increase awareness and support for their music. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, following the release of 
their breakthrough LP, 1979’s “Damn the Torpedos,” certainly knew this, and their venues and crowds got commensurately bigger as they did so. As the group returned to the studio, MCA Records decided they would (literally) capitalize on the band’s success by slapping a $9.98 “superstar pricing” on the next release (“Hard Promises”) instead of the then-customary $8.98. Petty balked at the obvious greed, and withheld the master tapes in protest, which helped make the issue a popular cause among music fans. When he threatened to rename the album “$8.98” to drive home his point, the label reluctantly backed down.
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Everyone has heard the story about how the introduction of Yoko Ono into John Lennon’s life was a key factor leading to the breakup of The Beatles. Probably less known is the story of how singer Rita Coolidge played a role in the premature breakup of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. To be fair, CSN&Y was a volatile mix of egos from the get-go, with each member brimming over with musical talent and confidence. They each felt their songs were better than those of the others, and each wanted more than just two 
songs apiece per album, and more time in the spotlight during concert performances. In the midst of this tense atmosphere, Stephen Stills met Coolidge, had become very attracted to her, and was eager to build a relationship with her. The twosome arrived at a party one night, and within minutes, Graham Nash turned on his British charm and spirited Coolidge away. This enraged Stills, and it proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He swore he would never work with Nash again, and headed off to pursue a solo career. CSN(&Y) split up weeks later, and though they would reunite years later, the momentum they’d built was lost, and things were never quite the same between them.
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In the election year of 1972, shock-rocker Alice Cooper was getting plenty of exposure with the single “Elected” and its just-in-fun lyrics about running for president. The rock journalists knew the whole thing was just a joke, but a few hard news reporters from Time Magazine and The Washington Post starting asking him his opinion on the political issues of the day. One demanded to know which candidate he intended to support in November. He laughed out loud and responded, “If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.”
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In the early ’60s, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon had 
been playing club gigs using the name The Detours and, for a brief spell, The High Numbers. Nobody was particularly enchanted with those names, but they kept on until something better came to them. One night, Townshend, who still lived at his parents’ house, was heading out the door to see another band play at a local club. His hard-of-hearing grandmother, who also lived in the Townshend household, asked him where he was going. When he mentioned the name of the band, his grandmother shot back, “You’re going to see the who??” A light bulb went off in Townshend’s head, and after a quick huddle with the rest of the group, The Detours officially became The Who.
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In 1969, a band known as Steam recorded a song called “It’s the Magic in You Girl,” selected by their label as a potential hit. They were then told, “Okay, now record 
something else, anything at all, to put on the B-side of the single. It can be instrumental, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.” They started doing a light, accessible groove, jamming for 20 minutes while the singer added a bunch of “na na na”s and other off-the-cuff lyrics, and they were done. The producer edited it down to the best three minutes, slapped it on the back of “It’s the Magic in You Girl,” and shipped it out. As it turned out, DJs thought the A-side was lame and ignored it, but they were taken by the catchy ditty on the B-side. Within a few weeks, “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” was the #1 song in the country.
One of McCartney’s simplest melodies and prettiest acoustic guitar playing features lyrics with a serious yet uplifting message. He said the words were inspired by his hearing the call of a blackbird while on retreat in Rishikesh, India in early 1968 with the other Beatles and, alternatively, by the unfortunate state of race relations in the United States in the 1960s. “It wasn’t really about a blackbird whose wings are broken. It’s symbolic of black people’s struggle in the southern states,” said McCartney years later. “You were only waiting for this moment to be free, blackbird fly, black bird fly into the light of the dark black night, blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly, all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise…”
In a primitive attempt to monitor how lethal the air quality was becoming in their working environment, coal miners routinely took a caged canary with them. When it keeled over, they knew the time had come to exit for a while. Police songwriter Sting found that an intriguing subject for a song, comparing the canary to a timid woman who became afraid at the first sign of trouble. Their track appeared on their 1980 LP “Zenyatta Mondatta,” which reached #5 in the US and #1 in their native UK: “First to fall over when the atmosphere is less than perfect, your sensibilities are shaken by the slightest defect, you live your life like a canary in a coalmine, you get so dizzy even walking in a straight line…”
It’s a shame we never got to hear more from this San Francisco-based group, but their manager chose to squirrel them away in a Seattle apartment to write songs and play small clubs there. By the time they’d returned, they had grown tired of each other and split up, but not before writing and recording this stunning tune, which was an FM radio favorite of the era. “We were like caged birds in that attic — no money, no transportation, and the weather was miserable,” said singer-songwriter David LaFlamme. “We were just barely getting by. It was quite an experience, but it was very creative in a way.” “White bird in a golden cage on a winter’s day in the rain, white bird in a golden cage alone, white bird dreams of the aspen trees with their dying leaves turning gold, but the white bird just sits in her cage growing old, white bird must fly or she will die…” (I can’t seem to find the original version of “White Bird” on Spotify, so my playlist has a live rendition that isn’t as good…)
Solid hard rock was the recipe for the bulk of Bad Company’s impressive debut LP, which reached #1 in 1974. The sleeper tune on the album was “Seagull,” which used acoustic guitars in its comparatively gentle approach. Said songwriter/vocalist Paul Rodgers, “‘Seagull’ was written sitting on the beach. Music is about atmosphere, and an effective way to create the atmosphere you want is to actually be there. You don’t have to imagine it — it’s right there. You could see the horizon.” The lyrics, penned by Rodgers, wax philosophically about the cosmos: “Seagull, you fly across the horizon into the misty morning sun, nobody asks you where you are going, nobody knows where you’re from, here is a man asking the question, is this really the end of the world? Seagull, you must have known for a long time the shape of things to come…”
Stephen Stills was entering his most remarkable, prolific songwriting period when he came up with this amazing song on the Springfield’s best album, “Buffalo Springfield Again.” The original version (heard on my playlist ) uses a banjo in the final moments, but on the extended rendition found on a later collection album, Stills takes off on a soaring electric guitar solo that Joe Walsh tried to emulate on the cover version he recorded with The James Gang in 1969. “Listen to my bluebird laugh, she can’t tell you why, deep within her heart, you see, she knows only crying, just crying, there she sits, a lofty perch, strangest color blue, flying is forgotten now, thinks only of you, just you…”
Joni’s 1976 LP “Hejira” is a song cycle about traveling and searching, part of the ongoing self-analysis she has done throughout her extraordinary career. “Black Crow,” with its superb acoustic guitar rhythms and soaring vocals, offers amazing imagery that equates her relentless search with that of the crow, looking for the next important morsel: “In search of love and music, my whole life has been illumination, corruption, and diving, diving, diving, diving, diving down to pick up on every shiny thing, just like that black crow flying in a blue sky…”
The phrase “Vulture culture” is about a love and appreciation of the natural world and animals, and how vultures keep an animal’s spirit alive by keeping its bones and celebrating its beauty. The Parsons Project album of that name, and its title track, twisted that reference to describe unworldly people steeped in the arts and the ever-increasing ruthlessness of mankind in a world of stark economic reality: “Vulture culture, use it or you lose it, vulture culture, choose it or refuse it, Hollywood is calling, won’t you join the dance, moving onto Wall Street, why not take a chance, it’s a vulture culture, never lend a loser a hand, just a vulture culture, living off the fat of the land…”
One of my favorite deep tracks from the first and best phase of John’s extraordinary career is this final tune from his 1972 LP “Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player.” Bernie Taupin wrote it about a young woman he knew who had become involved in drugs and ended up committing suicide. “My high-flying bird has flown from out my arms, I thought myself her keeper, she thought I meant her harm, she thought I was the archer, a weatherman of words, but I could never shoot down my high-flying bird…”
In 1993, when the massive CD/DVD/book project “Beatles Anthology” was underway, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr convened in a home studio with producer Jeff Lynne to record the first new Beatles music in 25 years. As a way of involving the spirit of John Lennon in their work, they used the rough demo of a song Lennon had written and recorded in 1977, and the result was a #6 hit in the US. The additional lyrics they added to Lennon’s framework referenced their 1969 breakup: “Where did we lose the touch that seemed to mean so much? It always made me feel so free as a bird, like the next best thing to be…”
Cohen had been an accomplished poet and writer who began composing songs at age 30. He suffered from occasional bouts of depression, but his ladyfriend at the time, Marianne Ihlen, helped him by urging him to pick up his guitar as they sat in their apartment on the Greek island of Hydra. Outside the window, telephone poles and wires were being installed, and a lone bird came to rest on a wire there, inspiring Cohen to write what became one of his signature songs, later covered by the likes of Judy Collins, Joe Cocker, Joe Bonamassa, Jennifer Warnes and k.d. lang: “Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free….”
Prince wrote this song upon request from “Purple Rain” director Albert Magnoli, who wanted a tune to accompany a scene that intermingled parental difficulties and a love affair. “When Doves Cry,” by the way, is almost an anagram for “When love dies”: “How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that’s so cold, maybe I’m just too demanding, maybe I’m just like my father, too bold, maybe you’re just like my mother, she’s never satisfied, why do we scream at each other, this is what it sounds like when doves cry…”
Marley, like most songwriters, was inspired by the things he saw around him every day. Outside his Jamaica home, three canaries made their nest and were regularly within earshot and eyeshot of Marley, so naturally, he wrote what became one of his trademark songs about them. Three women who sang in concert with him claim the lyrics also refer to them, as he would ask, ‘What is my three little birds saying?” “Rise up this mornin’, smile with the risin’ sun, three little birds pitch by my doorstep, singin’ sweet songs of melodies pure and true, sayin’, ‘This is my message to you-ou-ou,’ singin’, ‘Don’t worry ’bout a thing ’cause every little thing gonna be all right’…”
The brother-sister team of Inez and Charlie Foxx wrote and recorded this R&B track as a novelty song in 1963, playing on the nursery rhyme “Hush Little Baby,” and to their surprise, it reached #7 on the pop charts that year. It was soon covered by Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin, among others, and finally by then-husband-and-wife James Taylor and Carly Simon, appearing on Simon’s 1974 LP “Hotcakes,” where it reached #5 on the pop charts: “Everybody have you heard, he’s gonna buy me a mockingbird, and if that mockingbird don’t sing, he’s gonna buy me a diamond ring, and if that diamond ring won’t shine, he’s gonna surely break this heart of mine…”
Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins came up with the chords to this iconic power ballad and was searching for the right lyrics to accompany them. One day his girlfriend Kathy, whom he later married, asked him, “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?” He was struck by her words and used it as the opening line to “Free Bird.” Singer Ronnie Van Zant, who co-wrote the lyrics, said the song is “what it means to be free, in that a bird can fly wherever he wants to go. Everyone wants to be free. That’s what this country’s all about.” “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? For I must be traveling on now ’cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see, but if I stayed here with you, girl, things just couldn’t be the same, ’cause I’m as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change…”
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