Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”
In memory of Marvin Gaye who died 28 years ago on April 1, 1984—and whose 73rd birthday would be April 2—here’s the story behind the enduring classic “What’s Going On.”
Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz
It’s Thursday, Oct. 1, at the Sunset Sound recording studio in Los Angeles. Janis Joplin asks producer Paul Rothchild to roll tape. She has a song she’d like to sing.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
As the holiday season of 1938 came to Chicago, Bob May wasn’t feeling much comfort or joy. A 34-year-old ad writer for Montgomery Ward, May was exhausted and nearly broke. His wife, Evelyn, was bedridden, on the losing end of a two-year battle with cancer. This left Bob to look after their four-year old-daughter, Barbara. [...]
The Christmas Song
It was a sweltering hot July afternoon in 1945 when Mel Tormé showed up for a writing session at the Toluca Lake house of his lyric partner Bob Wells. Mel let himself in and called out for Bob. No answer. He walked over to the piano, and there, resting on the music board, was a [...]
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!
On December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired on CBS, preempting The Munsters and following the Gilligan’s Island episode “Don’t Bug the Mosquitos.” It became one of the network’s most successful specials, airing more times than even The Wizard of Oz, and has been honored with both an Emmy and Peabody Award. The [...]
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Wimoweh. For the last 50 years, that happy little word has been a universally recognized shorthand for the song known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” From Pete Seeger’s version in 1952 (titled “Wimoweh”) to the Tokens’ No. 1 single in 1961 to its featured role in the hugely popular Disney film and Broadway musical The [...]
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
On November 3, 1956, The Wizard of Oz—a film made and released in 1939 by MGM—made its television debut. CBS paid MGM $225,000, a huge amount in ‘56, for the rights to televise the film and to re-broadcast it if the telecast was a success. And what a success it was, becoming the most-watched film [...]
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper
Prior to recording their fourth album, Agents of Fortune, Blue Oyster Cult were just that—a cult band. They had a mystic logo which represented the Greek god Chronos (who, in a related story, ate his son, the Grim Reaper). They played heavy-riff rock with lyrics that touched on the weird (“She’s as Beautiful as a [...]
The Mary Tyler Moore Show Theme Song
On September 19, 1970, The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted on CBS. And it’s impossible to think of it without smiling and humming a little “Love Is All Around.” That ditty became 56 seconds of TV theme song history and the deal of a lifetime for songwriter Sonny Curtis who wrote and performed it. Curtis, [...]
Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”
Otis Redding had never seen anything so peaceful. The California sunlight sprinkling diamonds on the calm water of the bay, the seagulls circling overhead in an azure sky, the old fishermen hauling in their nets near the docks. While on the West Coast for an engagement at the Fillmore in June 1967, Redding and his [...]
Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”
“Bohemian Rhapsody” is like a condensed version of the second side of Abbey Road, with makeup and tights. Six minutes of flamboyant patchwork pop—a capella intro, sentimental verses, faux-Italian chorale, a thundering glam-metal climax—it’s a testament to Freddie Mercury’s adeptness as a songwriter and Queen’s musicianship that the disparate parts add up to such a [...]
Jimmy Webb’s Story Behind “The Highwayman”
I was in London, finishing an album, El Mirage, with [Beatles producer] George Martin. My friend Harry Nilsson was there, and we were doing some professional drinking. He left my apartment one night, and I went to sleep and had an incredibly vivid dream. I had an old brace of pistols in my belt and [...]
Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode To Billie Joe”
In August 1967, Lyndon Johnson announced that he was sending 45,000 more troops to Vietnam. Black power advocate Stokely Carmichael called for violent revolution in the streets. Beatles manager Brian Epstein died from an overdose of sleeping pills. But around water coolers, the hot topic was what Billie Joe McAllister and his girlfriend threw off [...]
The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
On May 7, 1965, Keith Richards woke up in the middle of the night with a melody in his head. He was in a room at the Gulf Motel in Clearwater, Florida. His guitar was on the bed beside him. Fumbling around in the dark, he found his portable cassette recorder on the nightstand. He [...]
Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”
“The title came from [producer and Monument Records founder] Fred Foster. He called one night and said, ‘I’ve got a song title for you. It’s “Me and Bobby McKee.”’ I thought he said ‘McGee.’ Bobby McKee was the secretary of Boudleaux Bryant, who was in the same building with Fred. Then Fred says, ‘The hook [...]
Ray Davies on The Kinks’ “Picture Book”
I always knew that song would have its day,” Ray Davies says of 1968’s “Picture Book.” “Sometimes you just know. It was never a hit, but it’s become a hit in another way.” Tucked away as an album track for 36 years, “Picture Book” finally had its day when it was featured in an innovative [...]
Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide”
The story behind “Landslide” as told by Stevie Nicks: It was written in 1973 at a point where Lindsey [Buckingham] and I had driven to Aspen for him to rehearse for two weeks with Don Everly. Lindsey was going to take Phil’s place. So they rehearsed and left, and I made a choice to stay [...]
“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”
By late 1969, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were kings of the pop songwriting game. With over 20 Top 40 singles by their vocal muse Dionne Warwick, cover versions of their songs by an A-Z of artists including Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and Ella Fitzgerald, movie soundtracks, TV specials and a Broadway musical, they’d done [...]
Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”
“I’d like to write a great peace song,” Irving Berlin told a journalist in 1938, “but it’s hard to do, because you have trouble dramatizing peace.” Years before John Lennon or Bob Dylan were even born, Berlin took up the challenge of penning an anthem that would inspire his fellow men to live in harmony. [...]
Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young”
“When I wrote ‘Only the Good Die Young,’ the point of the song wasn’t so much anti-Catholic as pro-lust,” Billy Joel said. The object of Joel’s affections was one Virginia Callahan, an unrequited crush from his high school days in Levittown, Long Island. In 1999, the piano man reminisced, “One of the first gigs I [...]
“Happy Birthday to You”
It is the world’s most well-known and popular song. It has been sung hundreds of millions of times each year for over three-quarters of a century. It has been heard in outer space, at baseball stadiums, in movies and in domiciles from the White House to the most remote backwoods shack in Mississippi. It has [...]
The Swell Season’s “Falling Slowly”
It is December 2005. Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová are at the Sono Records recording studio, a few miles outside Prague, to lay down a couple of songs for Czech filmmaker Jan Hřebejk’s movie Beauty in Trouble. Friends since 2001, they’ve been collaborating on a series of intimate, emotionally jagged ballads based around Irishman Hansard’s [...]
Elvis’ First #1 Hit: “Heartbreak Hotel”
A suicide note was the unlikely inspiration behind the song that became Elvis Presley’s first No. 1 hit and million-selling single. Steel guitarist and session musician Tommy Durden read a newspaper article about a man who had killed himself, leaving behind a piece of paper with the haunting words: “I walk a lonely street.” Durden [...]
Bill Haley & The Comets: “Rock Around The Clock”
The American Legion and the Boy Scouts denounced it. The New York Times called it “nightmarish and bloodcurdling.” And after it incited a near riot in a local theater, the city of Memphis banned it. 50 years ago, when The Blackboard Jungle hit screens across the country, the controversial opening salvo of the film was [...]
