An instant hit when it was first released in 1976, More Than A Feeling was a song that spent several years in the making. The founder of Boston, MIT graduate Tom Scholz, spent five years working on the song, recording and re-recording it in his basement while working his day job at Polaroid.
When Boston finally signed with CBS Records, More Than A Feeling was the first single released off of their debut album and it has since remained a classic rock mainstay, with the chorus riff becoming one of the most familiar sounds in the history of rock. Scholz has said that he was inspired to write More Than A Feeling by the Left Bank’s song, Walk Away Renée. “I see my Marianne walk away” was a reference to an older cousin whom Tom Scholz had a crush on when he was nine years old.
For me, though, More Than A Feeling will always be the song that I used to listen to whenever I was driving a stolen car around San Andreas, looking for hot coffee and trying to avoid the police.
Happy Thanksgiving! It is surprisingly difficult to find any good music videos about Thanksgiving so I decided to go with a video for a song that has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. It’s called Cold Turkey. Whether it has anything to do with turkey depends on who you ask.
When it comes to Cold Turkey, the official and most-accepted story is that John Lennon wrote it after a brief addiction to heroin and the song was inspired by the pain and difficult of quitting “cold turkey.”
Believe it or not, though, there are Cold Turkey truthers out there. Fred Seaman, who was Lennon’s personal assistant in the late 70s, wrote in his book, The Last Days of John Lennon, that Lennon confessed to him that Cold Turkey was actually written after a bout of food poisoning and that he allowed people to believe that it was inspired by heroin withdrawal because the food poisoning story was too silly. (Lennon claimed the poisoning was the result of eating a “cold turkey” on the day after Christmas.) Personally, I think this sounds more like an example of Lennon’s famously sarcastic sense of humor than anything else.
Regardless of what inspired the song, Cold Turkey was Lennon’s second single away from the Beatles and the first song on which he was credited as being the sole songwriter. (Even Give Peace A Chance was originally credited to Lennon-McCartney.) Lennon originally wrote the song to be included on Abbey Road but, when the rest of the Beatles showed little interest in the song, Lennon instead recorded it with the Plastic Ono Band.
In 1969, when Lennon returned his MBE to the Queen, he wrote, “I am returning this MBE in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey‘ slipping down the charts.”
Once In A Lifetime has since become one of the signature tunes of the ’80s but, when the song was first released in 1981, it didn’t even manage to break the top 100 on the US charts, peaking at 103. (The song did find more success in the UK, where it reached #13.) At the time, the song was not considered to be “radio friendly.” Not even the fact that the video was put into heavy rotation during the early days of MTV could change the minds of stubborn programmers who were convinced that the sound of David Byrne considering his life would lead to listeners switching the channel.
The video, which features multiple David Byrnes performing against a white backdrop, was directed by Byrne and the famous dancer/choreographer Toni Basil. (Basil, of course, had her own hit around the same time with her video for Mickey.) In the book, MTV Ruled the World – The Early Years of Music Video, Basil discussed making the video with Byrne:
“He wanted to research movement, but he wanted to research movement more as an actor, as does David Bowie, as does Mick Jagger. They come to movement in another way, not as a trained dancer. Or not really interested in dance steps. He wanted to research people in trances – different trances in church and different trances with snakes. So we went over to UCLA and USC, and we viewed a lot of footage of documentaries on that subject. And then he took the ideas, and he ‘physicalized’ the ideas from these documentary-style films … David kind of choreographed himself. I set up the camera, put him in front of it and asked him to absorb those ideas. Then I left the room so he could be alone with himself. I came back, looked at the videotape, and we chose physical moves that worked with the music. I just helped to stylize his moves a little.”
As for the song, Byrne has said that he came up with most of the lyrics while listening to radio evangelists and the song’s plaintive cry of “How did I get here?” should sound familiar to anyone who has ever heard any of the old style preachers going at it. The song’s signature bassline was developed by Tina Weymouth, who has said that she based it on the sound of her husband (and Talking Heads drummer) Chris Frantz yelling.
As for the song, it may not have charted but it has gone on to become one of the defining songs of the 80s. The song would also be one of the highlights of the greatest concert film ever made, Stop Making Sense.
Girlfriend In A Coma is another happy song from The Smiths.
The song is straight forward. It is literally about a girlfriend in a coma. The only question is whether her boyfriend is being sincere when he sings that he hopes that everything will be okay or is he instead telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t want to see her.
Some clue as to how the singer feels about his girl comatose girlfriend might be found in video’s use of clips from The Leather Boys, a British film from 1964. An example of British kitchen sink realism, The Leather Boys is about a biker named Reggie (Colin Campbell) who marries his girlfriend, Dot (Rita Tushingham), but would still rather spend most of his time with his fellow biker, Pete (Dudley Sutton). At the time of its release, the film was considered to be shocking because it openly dealt with gay themes at a time when homosexual activity was still illegal in the UK. Just as the film ends with Reggie still unsure about his sexuality, Girlfriend In A Coma ends with Morrissey still sounding unsure about whether or not he wants his girlfriend to wake up.
Girlfriend In A Coma was the first single to be released from The Smiths’s final studio album, Strangeways, Here We Come. The album was named after Strangeways, an infamous prison in Manchester. Before the UK absolished the death penalty, Strangeways was famous for its gallows. A total of 100 prisoners were hanged at Strangeways between 1869 and 1964.
Long before the financial crisis of 2007 and the Great Recession that followed, 1992 saw the collapse of several economic institutions. That was the year that the European Stock Market crashed and it was revealed that the powerful Bank of Credit and Commerce International was a massive money laundering scheme. Following the mysterious death of British tycoon Robert Maxwell, it was discovered that he had been propping his companies up by stealing from other people’s pensions. In the United States, the House banking scandal revealed that hundreds of Congresspeople were being allowed to bounce checks without being penalized by the House bank.
Be Quick or Be Dead, the first single to be released off of Iron Maiden’s Fear of the Dark, was inspired by these scandals. If there was ever any doubt, the video, which specifically calls out both BCCI and the Federal Reserve, left no doubt that the members of Iron Maiden were as pissed off as everyone else in the world.
Be Quick or Be Dead peaked at number 2 on the UK charts. It may be best remembered for the cover of its single, which featured Ed getting vengeance on a suit-wearing banker who bore a resemblance to Robert Maxwell.
From the very early days of music videos (this was back when they were still called “promotional videos”), comes the much beloved video for Madness’s Night Boat To Cairo.
The video was hastily put together to help promote the release of Madness’s Work, Rest, and Play EP, which explains the video’s improvised, deliberately messy feel. The video, which featured the members of the band dressed like stereotypical British explorers, takes place in front of a chroma keyed backdrop of an Egyptian backdrop. While the band runs around the set, the lyrics of the song appear bouncing ball style. It may not be the world’s slickest music video but it feels perfect for Madness.
Night Boat To Cairo was an early hit for Madness, peaking at #6 in the UK music charts and becoming the song with which they traditionally end their shows.
Made up of 3 former members of Bauhaus and named after the comic book series by the Hernandez Brothers, Love and Rockets had their first minor hit with this cover of Motown’s Ball of Confusion.
Ball of Confusion was one of the many songs that Norman Whitefield and Barrett Strong wrote for The Temptations during their “psychedelic soul” period of the late 60s and the early 70s. (Another one was War, which became a much bigger hit when it was covered by Edwin Starr.) When Ball of Confusion was first released, the lyrics dealt directly with the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration, and drug abuse, making it one of Motown’s more directly political songs. However, the song’s power and message has remained timeless and it was subsequently covered by everyone from Tina Turner to Anthrax to, of course, Love and Rockets. The Love and Rockets cover was released shortly before their first album, Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven. Despite being the band’s first hit, the song was not included on the album until it was eventually reissued in 2000.
Yesterday, when I wrote about the video for Shout by Tears For Fears, I apparently made up a song that doesn’t actually exist. I wrote that Shout was the band’s signature song, along with Everyone Wants To Rule The World. I also wrote about the joint vocalist of Tears for Fears, Richard Orzabal. Not only did I make up a song that didn’t exist but I also created an extra member of Tears For Fears. As everyone knows, the song is called Everybody Wants To Rule The World and the singer is named Roland Orzabal. I don’t know how I screwed up those two simple facts last night. Maybe I was writing from Earth-2.
For many people, Everybody Wants To Rule The World will always be the song from Real Genius. The song actually first appeared on the 1985 album, Songs From The Big Chair, for which it was a last-minute addition. Roland Orzabal has said that he originally felt that the song was too lightweight and that it wouldn’t be a good fit with the rest of the album but producer Chris Hughes convinced Orzabal to include the song. Hughes felt that the song would chart well in America and he turned out to be correct. Would the song have been as popular if it had been called by its original title, Everybody Wants To Go To War? That’s like asking if War and Peace would have been as much of a success if Tolstoy had called it War! What Is It Good For?
As for the video, it features Curt Smith driving through the desert, people racing dune buggies, men dancing in front of gas pumps, and the Cabazon Dinosaurs. The scenes of Curt in the desert were filmed in California and Nevada while the scenes of Tears For Fears performing were shot in London. Curt Smith has said that the shooting of the video was a “disaster” and that there was a serious accident involving the dune buggies that led to a child being thrown from one of the vehicles and hitting his head on a rock, leaving him temporarily unconscious. Despite all of the difficulty involved in shooting the video, it was still placed in heavy rotation on MTV and played no small role in making the song a hit.
Everybody Wants To Rule The World spent two weeks as the number one song in the U.S. In the UK, it peaked at number two, the only thing keeping it from reach the top being the charity single, We Are The World.
Tears For Fears frontman Roland Orzabal and keyboardist Ian Stanley were both practitioners of primal scream therapy, in which people confronted their fears and insecurities by shouting. This song was inspired by both the treatment and political protest.
The video, which was put in heavy rotation on MTV and become one of the defining videos and songs of the 1980s, features Orazbal and Curt Smith letting it all out on the cliffside at Durdle Door in Dorset. The video was one of the 300-something videos to have been directed by Nigel Dick, who has done videos for almost everyone.
Shout spend three weeks as the number one single in the US and has since become Tears for Fears signature song, along with Everybody Wants To Rule The World.
In an interview with the now-defunct Kicking It Old School Blog, T’Pau’s Carol Decker explained the genesis of the song that would become Heart and Soul. It all began when her bandmate and then-boyfriend Ron Rogers purchased a new keyboard with a built-in synthesizer:
“He was just trying to get used to the gizmos in it and while messing around with the sequencer he started the ‘bum bum buh buh bum bum bum’ of the bass riff. T’PauI started to sing a melody over it, the wafty vocal and came up with ‘more than an ocean keeps us apart.’ … The lyrics were about when I went on holiday with my parents and Ronnie couldn’t come. I missed him so much, but then I morphed the story into a fictitious one of not being loved back (which I was) … The rap was the idea of Andy Piercy, our then producer. He said the gaps needed filling, so I started these syncopated sort of nonsense noises. I then turned those noises into words which took about a week to get right.”
The song reached #4 in both the U.S. and the UK Charts. In the UK, it became a hit after it was used in a clothing advertisement while, in America, its success was largely credited to the above music video, which was put into heavy rotation on MTV.
The song is best known for its vocal layering, with Decker’s melody lines coming in over the rap. Stylistically, the video’s is similarly layered, resulting in a perfect synthesis of audio and visual.
Heart and Soul is song that epitomizes an era. Personally, I have fond memories of fleeing from the Liberty City police while listening to it.
Everything’s better with a little heart and soul.
And yes, T’Pau was named after a Vulcan who appeared on an episode of Star Trek. Before Decker saw that episode of Star Trek, the band was called Talking America.
Through the Shattered Lens 