Playlists

The stories we could tell

Posted on by brucehhackett

The archives of rock music are full of unusual anecdotes, bizarre historical notes, strange coincidences and amusing back stories. Here at Hack’s Back Pages, I have shared some of them in longer essays about major artists, or in brief write-ups about specific songs on a themed playlist. For this post, I’ve compiled 10 fascinating tidbits from the classic rock era that I thought would pique your interest. At the end you’ll find two playlists of songs I’ve referred to in the text.

Rock on!

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Steam’s B-side #1 hit

In 1969, a struggling young 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 go ahead 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 playing 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.

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Richie Havens and band at Woodstock

Because the organizers of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair had seriously underestimated the crowd turnout for the three-day event in August 1969, access to the site was hopelessly jammed, causing substantial delays for several of the musical acts who were scheduled to perform. Because of this, Richie Havens, a Greenwich Village folk act, valiantly stepped in to the opening slot and proved to be a welcome surprise.  Havens had intended to play a 45-minute set list of folk songs and covers, including his minor anti-war hit “Handsome Johnny,” but he was told to continue playing for nearly two hours because the bands scheduled after him still hadn’t arrived. Having run out of tunes, he ended up improvising on the old spiritual “Motherless Child” that ended up becoming one of the festival’s anthems, “Freedom.”  Said Havens later, “I’d already played every song I knew and I was stalling, asking for more guitar and mic, trying to think of something else to play – and then it just came to me.  My band and I riffed on a few chords and I just sang ‘Freedom!’ over and over. Hey, the establishment was foolish enough to give us all this freedom, and we used it in every way we could.”

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The Funk Brothers backing Stevie Wonder

From 1964 to 1969, Motown artists made an enormous presence on the US Top 40 airwaves. Artists like The Supremes, The Temptations, Smokey and The Miracles, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder had major chart success with multiple hit singles, and Mary Wells, Martha and The Vandellas, The Contours, Gladys Knight and The Pips, Kim Weston, Junior Walker and The All-Stars, and Brenda Holloway also took turns on the pop charts with records that are still enormously popular more than 50 years later.  The unsung heroes of all this dazzling music were the dozen top-flight session musicians who accompanied the singers on every one of their records. They were the Motown Records house band, and they referred to themselves as The Funk Brothers: Drummers Benny Benjamin and Uriel Jones, guitarists Robert White and Eddie Willis, keyboardists Joe Hunter and Earl Van Dyke, percussionist Eddie Brown and the incomparable James Jamerson on bass. Name any iconic Motown hit, and these guys played on it. Martha Reeves once refused to cut a track when key players were unavailable, declaring, “Ain’t no one recording nothing without The Funk Brothers!” You can now learn the whole story behind The Funk Brothers on the documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown.”

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Status Quo 1968 hit single

Just as there have been many dozens of artists who made it big in the US but are unknown in England, the reverse also holds true. Bands like Slade, The Jam, Blur and Manic Street Preachers have had broad chart success in the UK but made barely a dent in America. One of the more remarkable examples of this is Status Quo, who debuted in both countries in early 1968 with the psychedelic rock hit, “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” which peaked at #12 in the US and #2 in England.  American listeners never heard from them again, but in Britain, they set chart records that still stand today.  Once Status Quo switched from psychedelia to a boogie band, they have charted more than 20 Top Ten LPs in England and Europe, including four #1s between 1972 and 2019, and they have more than 60 singles, with 40 of them reaching the Top 20.  In the US, you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people who’ve ever heard of Status Quo, although “Pictures of Matchstick Men” might still turn up on ’60s “one-hit wonder” playlists from time to time.

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“The Graduate” soundtrack

In 1967, Mike Nichols was directing the rather controversial comedy film “The Graduate,” starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. When the time came to select music for the soundtrack, Nichols, a big fan of Simon and Garfunkel, approached Paul Simon to write some songs for it. Simon was hesitant, but agreed, coming up with plot-appropriate new material about divorce (“Overs”) and angst about the future (“Punky’s Dilemma”). Nichols wasn’t thrilled with either one, and opted to use S&G tracks like “The Sound of Silence” and “Scarborough Fair.” Simon mentioned he had another song he was working on called “Mrs. Roosevelt,” adding, “I guess I could change it to ‘Mrs. Robinson‘…” Nichols went nuts. “You have a song called ‘Mrs. Robinson’ and you weren’t even going to play it for me?!” Simon replied, “Well, I haven’t finished it. I only have the chorus.” Since Nichols was fast approaching a deadline so the film could be released before year’s end, he had S&G record just the chorus of “Mrs. Robinson,” which was used in a couple of different scenes when Hoffman’s character is driving. And that’s why you don’t hear the whole song in the movie. Simon completed it a month or two later, the duo recorded the full tune for their “Bookends” LP, and by June 1968, it was the nation’s #1 single.

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Mick Hucknall

Dynamic lead singer and front man Mick Hucknall sported a head of long, unkempt red hair, which made him the undisputed visual focal point of his group, a Manchester punk band known as The Frantic Elevators. Although they disbanded in 1984, Hucknall started anew with a fresh lineup, performing British soul music.  They chose to adopt the name Red (Hucknall’s nickname, of course), but one night, the promoter of a club where they were performing asked them their name, Hucknall responded, “Red.  Simply Red.”  Sure enough, when they went on stage an hour later, they were introduced as “Simply Red.”  They were amused by the misunderstanding and decided to keep the name, becoming enormously popular in the UK and, to a lesser extent, the US as well.

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Gregg Allman

In early 1969, electric guitar virtuoso Duane Allman had finally assembled the powerhouse group he had been looking for: a rock-solid bass player, not one but two drummers, and a second lead guitarist, with whom he could trade solos and build inventive harmonies on blues classics and originals alike. But he was missing a singer, and he knew exactly who he wanted.  “There’s only one guy who can sing in this band, and that’s my baby brother,” Duane said defiantly. Gregg Allman, keyboard player/singer/songwriter, was still under the thumb of a record company in L.A., where the brothers had been pushed into recording two unsatisfying albums as The Hour Glass.  Duane had bailed on the contract in favor of session work back in Georgia, leaving Gregg to appease the label. Duane implored his brother to return, so Gregg hitchhiked home and walked into a rehearsal, where the group dove in to a Muddy Waters song they’d been working on called “Trouble No More,” and Gregg was floored.  Duane told Gregg to sing, and he confided, “I don’t know if I can cut this. I don’t know if I’m good enough.”  The older brother retorted, “You little punk, I told these people all about you, and you’re not gonna come in here and let me down.”  They counted it off and Gregg gave it all he had.  “Afterward, there was a long silence,” Duane said, “and we all knew.”

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“Maybellene”

It was May of 1955, and the record business was about to undergo a sea change. In addition to the six major labels that dominated the industry, smaller independent companies were making their mark with lesser known niche artists who enjoyed some success on a regional basis with narrower audiences.  One of these was Chess Records in Chicago, which specialized in blues and R&B music with artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Etta James. Label honcho Leonard Chess was eager to find a “crossover” act — a black musician who could take the energy of R&B and make it acceptable to white radio stations and audiences. “What I need,” he mused, “is someone who can successfully merge country music with blues music.” Enter Chuck Berry, who shared the desire to merge the fire of blues with the story-telling of country. He took an old Nashville song called “Ida Red,” gave it a bluesier beat and wrote lyrics about two cars challenging each other. Chess was overjoyed, but changed the title and chorus to “Maybellene,” and within a couple months, it reached #6 on the Top 40 charts as the first mainstream rock ‘n roll song.

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“Sittin’ In”

Jim Messina had been the producer (and a musician) on Buffalo Springfield’s last album in 1968, and had then joined forces with Richie Furay to form Poco, producing that group’s first three albums as well. By 1971, he decided to sign a six-album deal with Columbia as an independent producer. The label assigned him to crooner Andy Williams (“it just wasn’t a good fit”), and then tried pairing him with Dan Fogelberg, who wanted to make an album “just like Poco,” but Messina wanted something different. He accepted an offer to groom newcomer Kenny Loggins, who had great songs and a voice but not much else. Messina set him up with a talented band of players, helped him hone his existing songs and co-wrote a few more with him, and ended up singing and playing on many of the tracks as well. By the time the LP was ready for release, Columbia thought Messina was so integral to the project that they chose to call it “Kenny Loggins With Jim Messina Sittin’ In.” He brought name recognition and was included in the cover photo as another card player around a poker table. The solo artist became Loggins & Messina, a duo that lasted for seven successful albums over six years.

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“McCartney”
“John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band”
“All Things Must Pass”
Ringo’s “Beaucoups of Blues”

The Beatles last recorded together in the summer of ’69 for the “Abbey Road” album, but their final album release came in the spring of ’70 with “Let It Be,” even though those tracks were recorded 18 months earlier. Soon enough, solo albums from each Beatle were released. So the public at large, especially those who didn’t come of age until decades later, can be forgiven for sometimes mistaking songs from solo albums as Beatles tracks. Many people think “Maybe I’m Amazed” is a group effort, but it comes from “McCartney,” Paul’s solo debut. Tunes like “What Is Life” and “Isn’t It a Pity” certainly have a Beatlesque flavor to them, but they both appear on George Harrison’s first solo LP, “All Things Must Pass.” John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” sounds like a lost track from “The White Album” sessions. Even Ringo’s hit “It Don’t Come Easy” (co-written with Harrison) sounds like a Beatles tune. Just for fun, a couple of years ago I assembled two dozen songs from the four musicians’ 1970-1971 solo albums and labeled it “The Lost Beatles Album,” which envisions what might have resulted if they’d stayed together another year or so. I’ve included it as a separate Spotify playlist below.

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It never felt so good, it never felt so right

Posted on by brucehhackett

As the story goes, a Texas woman named Wilma Oday gave birth in 1947 to “nine pounds of ground chuck,” as Wilma’s husband Orvis described the infant’s reddish appearance.

Marvin Lee Aday soon came to be known by his initials “M.L.,” which also stood for Meat Loaf among those who would bully and tease the boy for his large, chubby frame.

That this kid would grow up to become one of the most unlikely rock stars of his generation speaks volumes about how serendipity, perseverance and a phenomenal voice can combine to create one of the best-selling albums in the history of rock and roll.

Meat Loaf died last week at age 74. There’s no official word on the cause of death but it appears to be due to complications from the coronavirus. What a sad ending to a dramatic life.

But I don’t want to dwell on that, because this is a rock music blog, not a medical science forum or political soapbox. Let us focus, if you please, on Meat Loaf’s talents, his accomplishments and his unique story that thrilled many millions of record buyers and concert goers between his dizzying debut LP in 1977 and his passing in 2022.

The man’s name may have been Marvin Aday (which he later changed to Michael), but the entire world knew him as Meat Loaf, which means that, on second reference, I’m supposed to refer to him as Loaf, which seems either awkward or amusing. (The staid New York Times, following its formal newswriting style, would always refer to him as “Mr. Loaf,” which I found hilarious.)

Getting the facts about this guy’s story is a challenge, largely because he relished the opportunity to continually embellish it with fantastic tall tales that contributed to his larger-than-life persona. In most articles published since his death, the authors have conceded that they don’t know for sure which anecdotes are fact and which are fiction.

For example, Meat Loaf himself claimed that when he was 16, he was hit in the head with a 12-pound shot put thrown from 50 feet away, and woke up the next morning with a three-octave voice of great power and nuance. True? It’s never been verified, but it makes great copy. In a 2013 interview, he stated he had survived 18 concussions, eight car crashes and a three-story fall. Any proof of this? Nope.

Here’s another: When his mother passed away in 1966 when Loaf was 19, he insisted that his violent, alcoholic father tried to kill him following her funeral, kicking open Loaf’s bedroom door and coming at him with a butcher knife. “I rolled off the bed just as he put that knife right in my mattress,” he had said. “I fought for my life. Apparently I broke three of his ribs and his nose, and left the house barefoot in gym shorts and a T-shirt.” (Note the use of the word “apparently.” Even Loaf isn’t sure what happened.)

What we do know for certain is that Loaf played tackle on his high school football team but also sang in his high school chorus and appeared in drama productions of “The Music Man” and “Where’s Charley?” His passion for and abilities in the arts led him to Los Angeles in the late ’60s, where he shone in rock and soul bands while also appearing in stage productions. His band Floating Circus warmed up for bands like The Who, The Stooges and the Grateful Dead, and concurrently, he appeared in the L.A. cast of “Hair.” Improbably, this led to a contract with Motown, where he was teamed with Shaun “Stoney” Murphy and, as Stoney and Meatloaf, released one album in 1971 that included a single “What You See is What You Get,” which managed to reach #36 on R&B charts (and #74 on the pop charts).

Meat Loaf in 1971

Overall, though, Loaf found his initial experience in the music business to be unsatisfying. He once said his biggest struggle in life was “not being taken seriously in the music industry. They treated me like a circus clown.”

Consequently, he pursued theater arts again by moving to New York and rejoining the cast of “Hair,” this time on Broadway, and also appeared in several other productions alongside future acting stars like Raul Julia, Mary Beth Hurt and Ron Silver. In 1973, Loaf appeared in an L.A.-based production of Richard O’Brien’s notoriously campy “The Rocky Horror Show,” a chaotic but hugely successful mix of science fiction, B horror movies, transvestism and ’50s rock and roll. When the play was made into the film “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in 1975, Loaf was again cast as the deranged Eddie, a small but important role that led to bit parts in more than 50 movies over several decades. Most were forgettable, but his appearances in “Wayne’s World,” “Black Dog,” “Spice World” and “Fight Club” drew good reviews.

Meat Loaf as Eddie in “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in 1975

In 1973, during his time with “Rocky Horror,” Loaf met eccentric songwriter-producer Jim Steinman, who had been working on developing “Neverland,” a futuristic rock version of the Peter Pan story, for which he had written several lengthy, grandiose songs. Steinman worked with Loaf on the set of the stage show “National Lampoon: Lemmings,” where Loaf served as understudy to John Belushi. Hearing and seeing Loaf sing and perform convinced Steinman that the two should collaborate, and with singer Ellen Foley also involved, they set out to create demos of four of his songs: “Bat Out of Hell,” “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

Each of these extravagant, theatrical tracks were presented to, and rejected by, dozens of record companies over the next couple of years. They were told the material didn’t fit any “recognized music industry styles,” a typically myopic view that record executives have adopted in almost every decade of the rock era.

Enter Todd Rundgren, songwriter/singer/producer and still one of the true innovators in rock. “They set up in a rehearsal studio, Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf and (singer) Ellen Foley, just the three of them, and they essentially performed most of what turned out to be the first record for me. I saw the whole presentation as a spoof of Bruce Springsteen, a guy who I thought needed to be spoofed. That’s why I decided to get involved. There was a lot of interesting stuff in there.  Steinman kind of wove this sense of humor into the material in a way that Springsteen didn’t.  I was rolling on the floor laughing at how over-the-top and pretentious it was.  I thought, ‘I’ve got to do this album.’”

Rundgren added guitar parts and brought in his bandmates from Utopia, plus Edgar Winter on sax, and even Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, pianist and drummer with The E Street Band. Rundgren brought an intensity and “Wall of Sound” richness to the production, befitting the bombastic nature of the material.

“Bat Out of Hell” wasn’t well received in the US upon its release. Critics found it overly operatic and ostentatious, and radio program directors didn’t quite know what to make of it. Some DJs embraced it from the beginning, like the great Kid Leo on Cleveland’s dominant WMMS-FM, but it was slow to get any sort of national attention. Intense, persistent marketing efforts by Steve Popovich of Epic Record’s Cleveland International label eventually paid off, and once Meat Loaf and company performed on “Saturday Night Live” in March 1978, the floodgates opened. Suddenly, there was praise. As critic Stephen Erlewine put it, “It’s epic, gothic, and silly, and it’s appealing because of all of this. Steinman is a composer without peer, simply because nobody else wants to make mini-epics like this. It may elevate adolescent passion to operatic dimensions, but it’s hard not to marvel at the skill behind this grandly pompous yet irresistible album.”

“Bat Out of Hell” now ranks third on the list of all-time most successful albums, with more than 45 million albums sold. It still sells something like 200,000 units a year.

Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf in 1978

Meat Loaf and his ensemble toured relentlessly as momentum continued to build, which took its toll on the star, who was diagnosed with a chronic heart condition made worse by his frenetic delivery on stage. He was advised to step away from performing for a while, but he eventually resumed recording, with and without Steinman on hand to write songs for him.

Four Meat Loaf LPs in the 1980s — “Dead Ringer” (1981), “Midnight at the Lost and Found” (1983), “Bad Attitude” (1984) and especially “Blind Before I Stop” (1986) — stiffed pretty badly in the US, although they always seemed to find an appreciative audience in Britain. It wasn’t until Loaf and Steinman reunited fully in 1993 and had the audacity to release “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell” that they were able to pull off one of rock’s greatest comebacks. The album matched the first one’s grandiosity, reaching #1 in a dozen countries, and its lead single, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That),” also topped the charts around the world.

Loaf’s 1995 follow-up, “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” did respectably, as did the single, “I’d Lie For You (And That’s the Truth).” But by 2006, it was clear he’d gone to the well one time too many. He and Steinman had had a series of legal disputes that delayed production of “Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose,” and it showed. Critics pounced, calling it “overblown and frequently ridiculous.” The fact that it’s the only Meat Loaf LP unavailable on Spotify says all you need to know.

Throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, Loaf seesawed between suffering poor-health episodes (heart attack, shattered leg, exhaustion/collapse) and following a physical therapy regimen that permitted periodic returns to touring. You’ve got to give him credit for staying in the game for as long as he did.

Many people, including my wife, regard the original “Bat Out of Hell” album as life-changing, an absolute classic of teenage angst and bravado, and I’m inclined to agree. I’m crazy about the title song, and the funny sex romp of “Paradise” never fails to liven up a party. Without question, it has earned its place in the pantheon of pivotal rock and roll music. Not bad for a guy who Foley once described this way: “Growing up in a bumfuck Texas town, he might have become a serial killer or the guy who shot up the local 7-Eleven. But the first time I saw him, he walked in with this incredible bravado and confidence, like in his mind he was already fully formed. He had this will that allowed him to do what he had to do to survive and exorcise a lot of his demons through music. But there’s a lot of sadness and anger, which is pretty much at the core of what he does.”

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I’ve assembled a Meat Loaf playlist on Spotify that features songs from throughout his career, many of which, admittedly, I didn’t know until I took a deep dive into his catalog over the past seven days. Naturally, my list emphasizes the “Bat Out of Hell” material, but also includes early tracks like his “Rocky Horror” moment, “Hot Patootie – Bless My Soul,” and other worthy tracks from his later years.