How Good It Is

Brothers Duane and Gregg Allman had been playing music since childhood, and by the late 1960s, Duane had become a sought-after session guitarist, working with artists like Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. But he had bigger ambitions: a band featuring two lead guitarists and two drummers. With Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, and Jaimoe Johanson joining the brothers, the Allman Brothers Band took shape in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969. The group’s first two studio albums struggled commercially, but their second, Idlewild South, contained a song destined to become a Southern rock classic. Gregg Allman wrote most of “Midnight Rider” while rehearsing in Macon, Georgia, but couldn’t quite finish the lyrics. Enter roadie Robert Kim Payne, who supplied the missing lines. Once the song was complete, the musicians were eager to record it. Unfortunately, the studio was locked, and nobody was willing to open it. What happened next probably wasn’t in the rental agreement. “Midnight Rider” tells the story of a man determined to keep moving despite the obstacles in his path. Although the original recording wasn’t a hit, the song eventually found success through versions by Gregg Allman himself, Willie Nelson, and even a Jamaican reggae singer. How did this late-night creation become an enduring classic? And what does it have to do with professional wrestling and a controversial insurance commercial? Join Mike Messner for the story of “Midnight Rider.” Or, don’t. We’re not your boss.  During the Trivia Answer, Mike mentioned Episode 159, which is Claude’s interview with The Yardbirds’ Jim McCarty. Here’s a quick link to that episode.

Somehow I think I undersold it when I called “Blue Suede Shoes” a game-changer. I think about stuff like this a lot when it comes to songs of this nature that I was too young to hear when it first came out: that opening drumbeat on “Like a Rolling Stone.” Grace Slick bursting out of the speakers on “Somebody to Love.” Dick Dale’s Mideast-inspired tones on “Misirlou”. And even the songs that maybe didn’t sound like anything especially new at first, but suddenly turned into a new experience, like “Whiter Shade of Pale” or “Smoke on the Water,” which turned into the most-sung riff of all time, at least until “Seven Nation Army” came along. (Side Note: I have to admit, of the songs I’ve linked here, I’m actually a little surprised at how long ago I recorded those episodes. But the fact remains that there are songs which, whether right away or just a little ways down the road, change the landscape of popular music. And “Blue Suede Shoes” was one of the first, “Rock Around the Clock” notwithstanding. (Another side note: a couple of days ago I had to go out in the rain and got my sneakers wet, which was unfortunate because we had to go back out a short time later. Fortunately the rain had subsided but my shoes were still pretty damp. My wife reminded me that I own a pair of blue suede Rockports and maybe I should wear those, so I did. How about those, baby?)  

Today’s episode is about a song that might make you wonder who—or what—is watching you. But despite what the title might suggest, George Orwell and Big Brother don’t really have anything to do with it. Alan Parsons was no stranger to a recording studio by the mid-1970s. He had worked on the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let It Be, and served as an engineer on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. Then, while sitting in the canteen at Abbey Road Studios one day, Parsons met songwriter and session pianist Eric Woolfson, who offered to manage his career. The partnership eventually turned into something more: the Alan Parsons Project. Their first album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, arrived in 1976, and was followed by a string of concept albums. I, Robot gave them “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You” and “Don’t Let It Show”; Pyramid turned its attention to the pyramids of Giza; Eve explored the problems women faced in a male-dominated world; and The Turn of a Friendly Card ventured into the world of gambling and gamblers. Along the way, the Alan Parsons Project became increasingly successful, even though it wasn’t really a conventional “band” at all. Then, in 1982, came both an album and a single called “Eye in the Sky.” The title certainly sounds Orwellian, but Parsons and Woolfson denied that connection. Woolfson did, however, remember the surveillance cameras he had seen watching gamblers from above during trips to Las Vegas. And the song itself? That “eye in the sky” turns out to have a much more personal reason for keeping watch. Parsons apparently didn’t think they had a particularly big hit on their hands—in fact, he bet guitarist Ian Bairnson one British pound that the song would flop. Somebody probably should have collected on that bet: “Eye in the Sky” became the Alan Parsons Project’s only American Top 10 hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. So where did that title really come from? Who—or what—is the “eye”? What does an NBA dynasty have to do with all of this? And how did a song about betrayal eventually get transformed into one about compassion and support? Let’s take a look at “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parsons Project.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but when I first launched this podcast, I recorded the first four or five episodes and then decided that I hated them, so I recorded them again, and that’s what went out to the world. Now, every podcaster looks at their first few episodes and they cringe at how those episodes sound, and I’m no exception to that, but the purpose of re-doing a bunch of these older episodes is to bring them a little more in line with changes I’ve made in formatting and program elements. So today we’re going all the way back to Episode One, to talk about 10cc’s breakout hit from 1975: where that funky background sound came from, what the title is about, and the rumors about how the band got its name. Also: listen to the episode before reading the last paragraph. During the episode, I noted that the song peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, and that in each of the three weeks it spent in that position, there was a different #1 song. Here are the three songs: When it first reached #2 the week of July 26, 1975, the #1 song was “The Hustle” by Van McCoy.       For the week of August 2, 1975, The Eagles’ “One of These Nights” was at #1.     And finally, on my oldest daughter’s (negative seventeenth) birthday, it was “Jive Talkin’” by the Bee Gees. As a 12-year-old that year, I was pretty immersed in pop music and I’d look at the Top 20 chart that was published in Long Island’s Newsday every week. I kind of remember that summer being one in which the charts churned a lot of change from week to week. So remaining in one position, even if it was #2, for several weeks, was still a bit of an event.

Despite the allusion in the title, today’s song has no spiritual content or religious references. It’s just a description of life on the road with a hard rock band that’s paying its dues. And, as the band members would tell you, they were–and are–a rock band, not a punk band, thank you very much. AC/DC was formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young in their hometown of Sydney, Australia. The band name came from an electrical adapter on a sewing machine owned by their sister and not, dear reader, from the street slang that hints at one’s sexual orientation. Within two months, the brothers Young were in the studio at their first recording sessions, and five months after that’s they were touring Australia supporting and opening for Lou Reed. Their first lead singer, Bon Scott, joined the band in time to record their first studio album, High Voltage, in November 1974. That record was released in a limited market at first, but it did give the band its first Top 20 hit (“Baby, Please Don’t Go”) and their first radio play in the United States. The follow-up, T.N.T., led to an international deal with Atlantic Records in 1976. The next five years were undoubtedly the golden years for the band. Their third offering, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, was released in late 1976, and the band toured extensively around Australia, Europe and the Americas for the better part of the next three years. Put yourself in their shoes — 4 albums in as many years, with each album requiring at least 128 concerts a year — and you’d start to think of the road as being hellish. And that’s the origin of the song we dive into in this episode.

And once again my voice has a case of Peter Brady. I need to quit recording late at night. We have a variety of diss tracks here for you, all but one of them dating back to before they were even called such a thing, before the rise of hip-hop music. This isn’t to take away from the overall impact of hip-hop on modern music but rather to demonstrate that, once again, what came before can have an influence on what we have now. Kitty Wells walked so that George Harrison could run, and all that. But this was, in fact, a fun episode to research and write, and I think we may need to take another dive into this subgenre of music in a future episode. Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show. Patrons get a newsletter about 46 times a year and oftentimes a sneak peek at episodes or videos we put together.

Today’s episode is about a song that was written just up the hill from where I was born and in the same town where my wife and and I were wed. So it most definitely “strikes close to home.” Neil Young had emerged from the great north woods of Canada into the public limelight in the mid–1960s. He joined up with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay to create the Buffalo Springfield, an LA-based band that asked the musical question “Stop, hey, what’s that sound” before disintegrating – but not before Young himself had quit and rejoined the band several times. Then, in 1969, he made a self-titled solo album that had great songs, including “The Loner,” (one of my personal favorites) but which didn’t sell well. And then Young really came into his own. His second solo album got him some much needed publicity, and he hit a creative chord with an ensemble of garage musicians that he dubbed Crazy Horse. His next stop was to sign on with Crosby, Stills, and Nash (wherein he added his own last name to the group) and played the Woodstock festival with them. His participation in the CSNY album Deja Vu brought him both acclaim and paychecks, which he used to purchase a sprawling ranch in the mountains of the San Francisco Bay Area.  One day, Young took a ride around his newly purchased estate with the property’s caretaker, who was at least forty years older than Young at the time. The two men had a long conversation, and the result of that little open-air chat became the basis of one of Young’s most enduring acoustic songs. Let’s find out how the song came together, who played on it, and how the listening public took to it.

One of the things that always amazed me about the songs that became big hits in the pop era between the 1950s and the 1990s was the sheer variety of musical styles that topped the charts. When doing research for this show I went into a bit of a spiral looking at Billboard charts for the late 1970s, and I got stuck on the summer of 1978, with the amazing wealth of songs that were in the top 20 at the time. Some of the songs, of course have fallen into the mists of time because they don’t get the oldies airplay anymore, and that’s a shame because there’s still some very good stuff there. This was the Top 20 chart for the week ending August 19, 1978 according to The Real American Top 40 Wiki page: Commodores – Three Times A Lady (↔) Frankie Valli – Grease (↔) Donna Summer – Last Dance (↔) Rolling Stones – Miss You (↔) Foreigner – Hot Blooded (↔) A Taste Of Honey – Boogie Oogie Oogie (↔) Pablo Cruise – Love Will Find A Way (↔) Barry Manilow – Copacabana (↔) Walter Egan – Magnet And Steel (↔) Andy Gibb – An Everlasting Love (↔) Olivia Newton-John – Hopelessly Devoted To You (↔) Joe Walsh – Life’s Been Good (↔) Toby Beau – My Angel Baby (↔) Atlanta Rhythm Section – I’m Not Gonna Let It Bother Me Tonight (↔) Evelyn King – Shame (↑4) Exile – Kiss You All Over (↑2) Steve Martin – King Tut (↔) Chris Rea – Fool (If You Think It’s Over) (↑3) Earth Wind & Fire – Got To Get You Into My Life (↑10) Jackson Browne – The Load-Out/Stay (↔) Pretty much all of these songs, I wouldn’t mind listening to again. And that’s not always the case with songs at this level of the charts. (“Having My Baby,” anyone?) We have here a mix of disco, R&B, retro pop, ballads, a live track, a novelty song, a soundtrack title,  about a half-dozen well-established acts and three one-hit wonders (I’m not counting Steve Martin there because it’s a novelty). And they’re all at varying levels of “good”! All of this is prologue to the fact that Stevie Nicks was in the thick of the music industry for a three-year period, either as a writer, a lead or a backup singer. All of which cemented her in the musical firmament. If she’d done nothing else after 1979, she’d still be fondly remembered. But in addition to being all the things above, she was also a muse for several artists, much of which we’re covering in this episode. I bumped into some problems with regard to quantifying songs about her, but I did my best and I’d be curious to know what you may think I’ve overlooked, because there were a few I did research on and got nowhere.

Hidy, friends and neighbors. Good to be partnering up with Claude on another podcasting project! This episode is about a song whose title vaguely sounds like the result of a chemical spill, but which is actually a classic piece of rockabilly. John Fogerty and his brother Tom were natives of Northern California, and their family vacations often were to a cabin in Yolo County, just west of Sacramento. That cabin was next to both a lake and a creek, and the Fogerty boys would play in and around that creek during vacations. And yes, you’ve guessed it, the water there did have a greenish tint because of algae and other natural phenomena.  Coincidentally, Green River was John’s favorite flavor of soda pop as well (though I’m not sure I would drink anything with that name these days). Fast forward a few years to the mid 1960s, and John and Tom, along with their buddies Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, are in a local band called the Golliwogs. They picked a new name in January 1968, shortly after they got their record contract, and were thereafter known as Creedence Clearwater Revival. They followed the natural route of local gigs, then national tours, and then record releases. The song titles are familiar: Susie Q, Bad Moon Rising, Born on the Bayou, Proud Mary (which Claude covered on an episode of How Good It Is a while back, and then the song that hearkened back to John’s salad days at that creek in Yolo County.   Give it a listen to see how Roy Orbison rubbed off on the boys from El Cerrito, and how the song fits into the overall CCR legacy. Click here for a transcript of this episode.  Click here to become a Patron of the show.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the queen of them all. Pattie Boyd was the inspiration for a huge number of songs. Some of them went to the top of the charts, some of them weren’t released as singles, but nearly all of the songs about her are well-known, and not just because they’re about her; because they’re actually pretty darn good. And the crazy part is that all of them came from two men: George Harrison and Eric Clapton. There’s a song in Clapton’s catalog that could have easily been about her if you try to read into the lyrics, but it’s more coincidence than anything else, since it wasn’t written by Clapton. But it’s also quite possible that the lyrical content is one of the things that gave it its appeal to Clapton. Who knows. When I return to this topic (in two episodes), we’ll talk about the other contender for the big title. If you’re a Patron of the show, you’ve already gotten this episode in your Patreon feed. Feel free to listen again here, if you’re so inclined. Newsletter should be back next week; I’m still readjusting my work flow. You can click here to become a Patron of the show. Click here for a transcript of this episode.